Choosing the right Christian

Jan Jaben-Eilon reports on the benefits and pitfalls of Jewish-Christian cooperation.

By JAN JABEN-EILON
Choosing the right Christian (photo credit: ELIANA APONTE / REUTERS)
Choosing the right Christian
(photo credit: ELIANA APONTE / REUTERS)
When Clifford M. Weiss, Atlanta attorney and businessman purchased the 86-year-old Atlanta Jewish Times in early 2012, the local Jewish community was understandably relieved.
The previous owner, Andrew Adler, had been forced to resign as editor and sell the publication after he wrote a column about Israel’s possible options for dealing with a nuclear Iran in which he suggested that Israel should “give the go-ahead for US-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place.”
The result was international notoriety and condemnation for the newspaper, and a hands-off stance from the organized Jewish community.
For the most part, the local Jewish community easily accepted the new direction of the new owner.
“My vision is to revitalize the Atlanta Jewish Times newspaper, promote a newspaper and website created by the entire Jewish community, for the entire Jewish community, as well as for people of all faiths and backgrounds who are interested in Jewish causes, values, culture and Israel,” Weiss pledged. Circulation is expected to grow from a dismal 2,500 copies a week to a healthier 10,000.
Expanding the readership of the city’s mainstay Jewish newspaper into the Christian community perhaps should not have surprised Atlanta Jews. After all, this is the Bible Belt, where Christian evangelicals and Southern Baptists dominate. The Consulate General of Israel in Atlanta actively reaches out to the Christian community in the Southeast. In 2011, the consulate co-sponsored a pro- Israel rally organized by a brand new group, Americans United with Israel, which also won the enthusiastic support of a wide-ranging group of churches.
Notably, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has a full-time employee based in Atlanta whose job is to reach out to the Christian evangelical community. In March 2012, the Forward reported that AIPAC had launched an aggressive outreach program to Christian groups that support Israel. It seems AIPAC, like the Atlanta Jewish Times, realized that to grow, it could not be limited to Jewish supporters.
But this has revived the question of with whom and how closely can the Jewish community associate itself with Christian groups? The issue has mostly been raised in terms of support of Israel, the argument being that Israel needs all the friends it can get, so it should not reject support from anyone in the Christian community.
But should that include evangelical Christians? Kaylene Rudy, who launched Americans United with Israel and who is now business manager of the Atlanta Jewish Times, readily acknowledges that she learned some hard lessons when she was gathering sponsors and participants for a community rally to launch her new organization.
She accepted sponsorship money from a local messianic Jewish congregation, only to discover that the established Jewish community did not want to be associated with the self-described synagogue. Now she understands that she needs to be more sensitive to which groups are acceptable to include in her pro-Israel outreach, both for Americans United with Israel, and also for the expanding readership of the Atlanta Jewish Times.
When controversial Colorado-based Christian president and founder of Simchat Torah Beit Midrash Ralph Messer anointed local New Birth Missionary Baptist Church Bishop Eddie Long as “king of the Jews,” wrapping him in a Torah scroll, Rudy – as well as several national messianic Jewish organizations – condemned the desecration and quickly dissociated themselves from the videotaped ritual in which Messer called himself a representative of Israel.
But as an increasing number of Christian organizations borrow symbols of Judaism, such as the tallit, Passover Seders, Torah scrolls, and even Christian Passover Haggadas, and declare themselves lovers of Israel and the Jewish people, where does the organized Jewish community draw the line? In 2009, Eric Yoffie, then president of the Union of Reform Judaism (URJ), called on the American Jewish community not to embrace Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and its leader Pastor John Hagee. Yoffie said that Hagee and other so-called Christian Zionists “may advance their theology but they do so at the expense of Israel’s security and well-being.”
Now president emeritus of URJ Rabbi Yoffie tells The Jerusalem Report he has advised rabbis over the years that they should not associate with groups that “badmouth” Muslims or support all West Bank settlements, which flies in the face of US policy.
While CUFI, he says, is now sensitive to these two criteria, Yoffie warns Jewish groups that “reasonable due diligence is recommended” before associating with Christian groups who say they support Israel.
Yoffie says that CUFI has since “adjusted” its positions, removing any anti- Muslim comments from its website and “made an effort not to present themselves” as supporting all Israeli settlements in the West Bank. “This is a trickier issue, but if we deal with people who support Israel, we must define it,” he says.
“I was critical of AIPAC when they invited Hagee. They gave him prominence he would not have had; they gave him legitimacy at a time when I felt fundamental issues had not been resolved,” says Yoffie.
Those fundamental issues which raise concerns in the Jewish community about evangelical groups center not so much about their viewpoints on domestic issues such as gay rights, abortion and churchstate separation, but more on any hidden agendas of the Christian groups. Is their ultimate goal to convert Jews or encourage Jews to immigrate to Israel to bring about the “End of Times” that will result in the death of Jews who do not convert? “My own view,” says Yoffie, “is that it’s hard to gauge people’s motivations and intentions.”
Fundamental issues
Yoffie acknowledges that the dividing lines are tricky. “This is not easy; the world is complicated. But there are some lines to draw. Messianic Judaism, for instance, is built on a lie and it approaches an anti- Semitic premise. We should not work with them in any way; I don’t care what their position on Israel is,” he says.
When Yechiel Eckstein, an Orthodox rabbi, founded the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews 30 years ago, he set down clear guidelines that seem to have worked. His Christian-sourced cash has made his organization the single largest donor to Israel and brought him political power with a seat on the executive committee of the Jewish Agency and other major organizations.
“It has always been and will continue to be our policy not to work with any group involved in missionary work to Jews,” Eckstein tells The Report. “While these groups do exist, and this is something Jewish groups must be aware of, in general, this is not the motivation of Christians who support Israel. The truth is, evangelicals support Israel for a variety of reasons, political and moral as well as religious – and even the religious reasons do not necessarily involve ‘end times.’” Even among evangelical supporters of Israel, however, there are lines to be drawn, according to Earl Cox, a Christian advocate for Israel and head of Israel Always.
“There is a segment of Christians who call themselves evangelical or conservative; these Christians differ significantly from the majority of so-called Christians in mainline denominations today,” says Cox.
“The ‘so-called Christians’ I am referring to are those who embrace the faulty theology known as ‘Replacement Theology’ which, in essence, claims that the modern-day church is ‘spiritual Israel’ and that God is finished with literal Israel.”
He says there is “a great gulf between the pro-Israel and the anti-Israel segments of Christianity.”
He further points out that because more Israelis understand the differences between evangelical Christians and those who support Replacement Theology, many Israelis are reaching out to evangelicals.
Earlier this year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu named both Cox and Efrat Rabbi Shlomo Riskin as Good Will Ambassadors from Israel to Jewish and Christian communities around the world.
Riskin launched the Center for Jewish- Christian Understanding and Cooperation, after he realized that only evangelicals were continuing to visit Israel during the second intifada. Riskin and Hagee were both due to address the CUFI annual conference in July 2012 in Washington DC.
Spiritual spa
Riskin is one of many Israelis who have endorsed the proposed Galilean Resort & Spa, a spiritual center designed to help Christians reconnect with their Jewish roots through Bible study and cultural programs. The founder and president of the resort is Anne Ayalon, the evangelicalborn wife of Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon. Among the endorsees are Pastor Hagee and Jay Sekulow, who is an advocate for Jews for Jesus and works for Christian Broadcasting Network founder and chairman Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice, which defends the rights of messianic Jews. Sekulow was presented with the Ministry of Tourism’s 2011 Israel Ambassador Award at the National Religious Broadcasters convention.
JewishIsrael.com is an organization which takes a critical look at Israel’s alliances with fundamental Christian groups, and monitors evangelical missionary campaigns directed at the Jewish people. On one page of its website, it illustrates the crossover between evangelical “Christian Zionists” and messianic missionary endeavors.
Many US Jewish leaders are clearly worried about the breakdown of barriers between faiths as evangelicals strive for a theological unification between Judaism and Christianity, and a growing messianic Judaism movement confuses the line between Judaism and Christianity.
In a northern suburb of Atlanta, Rabbi Fred Greene of Temple Beth Tikvah – which is not far from a large messianic Jewish congregation – told The Report that he was compelled to write to the local newspaper when it included messianic congregations under a listing of Jewish congregations. “I told them that you can’t group them with our congregations,” he said.
As Jewish organizations and especially evangelical Christian groups form closer relationships in support of Israel, Yoffie warns that the Jewish community should become more informed and show more sophisticated discernment.