Traditional Jews on Attack to Shelter Flock From Messianics’ Influence

In many ways, a Saturday morning service at Ahavat Zion in Beverly Hills is like Jewish Sabbath worship in Conservative synagogues everywhere.

The men wear yarmulkes on their heads and blue-and-white fringed prayer shawls over their shoulders. A cantor plaintively intones the alternating major and minor chords of Hebrew songs from the siddur, the traditional Jewish prayer book. And the congregation faces a covered ark, containing the Torah scrolls, or Jewish Scriptures, illumined by a pair of seven-branched candelabrum, or menorah.

Ahavat Zion’s bearded spiritual leader--known to his congregation of 40 families as Rabbi Barry Budoff--steps to the pulpit emblazoned with the six-pointed Star of David.

Similarity Ends

But when he speaks, the similarity to traditional Judaism abruptly ends:

“The Lord open my lips, and my mouth shall speak the name of Yeshua . . . Yeshua, the Messiah,” he says.

Ahavat Zion is a Messianic Jewish congregation. Its members believe that Jesus--Yeshua in Hebrew--is the promised Messiah, the son of God who died and rose again for their salvation. Their rabbi is not recognized by any traditional Jewish body. And yet they insist they are truly and completely Jewish.

“That’s as impossible as Kosher pork,” countered Orthodox Rabbi Ben-Tzion Kravitz, who heads Jews for Judaism, a counseling program in Los Angeles to keep young Jews out of cults and Messianic mission groups.

In particular, say the defenders of traditional Judaism, the mushrooming Christian mission to the Jews--fueled by new support from America’s resurgent fundamentalist churches--is deceptive, fraudulent, a form of spiritual genocide and anti-Semitic.

But despite the storm of protest, congregations like Ahavat Zion are continuing to pop up in cities with large Jewish populations across the country and even in Israel.

Message Spread

And aggressive evangelical missionary groups like Jews for Jesus--the best known, most visible, controversial and colorful Jewish missionary organization--increasingly spread the message that Yeshua is not only Messiah of Israel but Savior of Jew and Gentile alike.

Most Jews today accept as historical fact that Jesus lived and recognize his teachings as valuable. But they do not consider him to be the Messiah of Israel nor in any way part of the Godhead. Most Jews look for the fulfillment of Messianic prophecy either in the form of a personal Messiah yet to come or in the coming of a so-called Messianic Age. Others consider the nation of Israel to be the “suffering servant” Messiah.

No one knows for sure how many Messianic Jews there are in America; estimates range from fewer than 10,000 to more than 100,000. In any case, the numbers have swelled rapidly during the past five years. And observers claim that more Jewish people have accepted Jesus as Messiah in the last 19 years than in the past 19 centuries.

“They are more visible,” said Philip Abramowitz of the Interfaith Coalition of Concern About Cults in New York. “There is a determination and belief--getting evangelical support--that the year 2000, a second millennium, is coming upon us, a target date, a chance to resurrect Christ and bring converted Jews to Israel” before the end times.

Existed Since 1850s

Christian missions to the Jews have existed in this country since at least the 1850s. But, Jewish affairs analyst Mike Masch of the University of Pennsylvania noted, it has only been since “America’s . . . growing acceptance of cultural and ethnic pluralism” that Christian missions started to appeal openly and self-consciously to Jewish young people.

That evangelization, Masch added, has been related “to the coming of age of a Jewish baby-boom generation that was more independent of its parents and more ignorant of its heritage than any that had come before.”

But as the efforts to evangelize Jews have escalated, so have the attempts by mainstream Jewish groups to counterattack:

--In Philadelphia, known as a “hotbed of Jewish evangelism,” 15 organizations are attempting to missionize Jews. A 400-member Hebrew Christian congregation called Beth Yeshua has been the particular target of Jewish-led “anti-Yeshua” rallies. Mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic leaders in Philadelphia have strongly criticized Messianic Jewish groups for creating interreligious tensions. And the city’s Federation of Jewish Agencies recently hired a full-time anti-missionary worker.

--In New York, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, representing Reform Judaism, has set up a National Committee on Cults and Missionaries. Its head, Annette Daum, said educational materials are being developed in response to a survey of local Reform congregations, whose “biggest problem is the activity of these Hebrew Christian groups and the fundamentalist organizations that cooperate with them.”

Meanwhile, the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, through its Task Force on Missionaries and Cults, wrote to Long Island rabbis in February urging them to put pressure on “Christian colleagues” to prevent Hebrew Christian groups from renting space in churches, social halls and restaurants for interfaith Passover seders (banquets). Jews for Jesus retaliated by suing the New York Jewish group, saying it violated New York’s civil-rights law that forbids discrimination in the use of public places on the basis of creed. The suit is pending.

--In Miami, where Messianic Jewish activity is proliferating rapidly, Rabbi Rubin Dobin has launched Jews for Jews, an organization that pickets and confronts Jews for Jesus and cult groups. In addition, anti-missionary specialist Sandy Andron teaches a class of 1,500 Jewish teen-agers to “inoculate them . . . against the fraud these cults and missionaries are perpetrating.”

--In Phoenix, the Jewish Federation has widely disseminated a brochure, “What in G--d’s Name is Going on in Arizona?! Impostors Hiding Behind the Star of David.”

“We are just beginning to respond to this issue,” said Rick Ross of the Phoenix Jewish Family and Children’s Service, adding that a particular threat has been the Jewish Voice radio and television program emanating from Phoenix. With 50 radio affiliates and two satellite cable networks, Jewish Voice--operated by Assemblies of God minister Louis Kaplan--attempts to evangelize Jews worldwide.

--And in Los Angeles, 36 Jewish organizations endorsed a statement in May “condemning deceptive Christian proselytization of Jews.” Nevertheless, the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations held its sixth annual conference in August in Los Angeles--the group’s first meeting on the West Coast. About 600 delegates from 45 Messianic congregations in the United States and Canada attended the four-day gathering. Topics included evangelizing Jews and Gentile-Jewish intermarriage.

There are perhaps 100 local and national organizations of Hebrew Christians, experts estimate. The oldest in this country, the American Board of Missions to the Jews, was founded 90 years ago in New York by Rabbi Leopold Cohn, who became a believer in Jesus as Messiah. The group, low-key in its approach, has about 30 missions worldwide and about 100 full-time ministers.

Jews for Jesus is by far the most unconventional Messianic missionary organization.

$5.5-Million Budget

With an annual budget of $5.5 million, a full-time staff of more than 100 in 56 cities, and a modern print shop and multimedia operation at its San Francisco headquarters, the organization is the extended vision of the Rev. Martin Meyer (Moishe) Rosen, 53.

How did Rosen, reared in an institutional Orthodox synagogue in Denver, turn out to be a Jew for Jesus?

“Well, it wasn’t because I thought Christianity was nicer than Judaism,” he said as he snacked on a kosher burrito in his office. “Nor was it because I wanted to renounce my birthright, as many have said. Basically, I accepted Jesus (at age 21) because, after searching the Scriptures, I found Him to be true. . . .

“If anything, I appreciated my heritage and family even more, and somehow the many things puzzling me about the Jewish religion--the strictness of the law, the necessity for obedience, the importance of revelation--were answered in my heart, not in propositional terms, when I received Jesus.”

Between 1956 and 1970, Rosen, who is an ordained Baptist preacher, was minister to the Beth Sar Shalom congregations of the American Board of Missions to the Jews in Los Angeles and New York City--the nation’s two largest Hebrew Christian fellowships at the time.

But Rosen’s bent for activism and colorful phrases led him to take over a scruffy group of street Christians in San Francisco in 1970. He soon had a movement on his hands, and media attention magnified his peppery outreach.

His organization moved into a former Salvation Army training post on Haight Street in 1978, but a bronze plaque outside the door proclaims: “Jews for Jesus, Est. 32 AD, give or take a year.”

Mark Jewish Traditions

Jews for Jesus followers mark Jewish traditions and customs, and some attend synagogues as well as Protestant churches. The Liberated Wailing Wall, Jews for Jesus’ eight-person singing group, tours the country, belting out rhythmic Jewish-style evangelistic melodies in conservative Christian churches to raise funds and handing out religious tracts with catchy slogans to passers-by in shopping malls and airports and on college campuses.

The tracts--some 2.5 million are passed out each year--include such themes as “Jesus Made Me Kosher,” and “On the First Day of Christmas My Rabbi Gave to Me . . .”

Rosen, a hulking man standing 6-foot-2 and weighing 360 pounds, has gone to court more than once to enforce Jews for Jesus’ rights to free speech and to pass out literature. In a recent skirmish, Avi Snyder, director of the Los Angeles branch of Jews for Jesus, successfully challenged a resolution by the commissioners of Los Angeles International Airport that prohibited distribution of religious tracts. (The federal district judge’s decision that the central terminal is a public forum is now being appealed.)

Virtually every segment of the Jewish community has reacted furiously against an annual Christmastime advertising campaign Jews for Jesus first launched in 150 major newspapers and magazines in December, 1982.

Full-page Jews for Jesus ads ran in December, 1984, for example, in the Los Angeles Times and other major newspapers in New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Washington, as well as in Time magazine.

Ads Cost $900,000

It cost $900,000 for the group to place the ads--and resulted in 30,000 responses to an offer for a free book, said Sue Perlman, administrative assistant to Rosen.

The ads also have stirred a countercampaign to influence publishers not to accept the advertising.

Rabbi Shelton Donnell of Wilshire Boulevard Temple and vice chairman of the Task Force on Cults and Missionary Efforts, an arm of the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation-Council of Greater Los Angeles, said he believes the ads suggest that “Judaism as it is understood by the Jewish community in and of itself is not complete. (That) borders on theological anti-Semitism, or at least anti-Judaism.”

Countered Rosen: Jesus and his early followers all were Jewish. Jesus’ message was delivered to Jews and to suggest that only Gentiles can be saved would itself be anti-Semitic.

“Only Jews say you are not a Jew if you are a Christian,” Rosen said. “Rabbis are fond of saying that Judaism is not a religion of creed but of deed. . . . Basically they want to excommunicate us by definition, by defining away our Jewishness and then using propaganda terms like fraudulent and deceptive to describe our activities.”

Angry Reaction

Such reasoning angers Rabbi Stephen Robbins, who co-chairs the Los Angeles Task Force on Missionary Efforts. It is an attempt to supplant the existing Jewish community by redefining Judaism, he said, with Messianic Jewish groups creating their own synagogues, co-opting traditional Jewish symbols and superimposing their own theology.

“When they do that they are delegitimizing Judaism. . . . That is a new phenomenon we find despicable,” Robbins, spiritual leader of Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, said.

Most mainline Protestant denominations and Roman Catholic leaders are at best lukewarm in their support of Messianic Judaism and even cooler toward groups like Jews for Jesus.

Interfaith church councils have tended either to remain on the sidelines of the controversy or to side with established Jewish agencies and synagogues.