Jews for Jesus

Beliefs

A summary of Jews for Jesus' beliefs:

Jews for Jesus takes the mainstream Christian positions that Jesus is the Messiah, that his coming was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible, and that Jesus is the son of God, the second person of the Trinity. Jews for Jesus believes that their views of the Messiah are entirely compatible with the view of God presented in Jewish scriptures, and that the doctrine of the Trinity, fundamental to the Christian faith, is not entirely alien to Judaism.

According to an article on Jews for Jesus by B. Robinson of Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance,

Their doctrinal statement is basically indistinguishable from Evangelical and other conservative Christian groups. ... They differ from some Evangelical Christian groups in their belief that Israel continues to exist as a "covenant people." They also integrate some Jewish customs and use Hebrew and Yiddish in some literature.

History

Jews for Jesus was founded by Moishe Rosen in San Francisco in 1973. It was originally called Hineni Ministries, after the Hebrew word meaning "Here I am". Originally, "Jews for Jesus" was simply one of the organization's several slogans but after the media began to call the group "Jews for Jesus" the organization adopted that name. David Brickner has been the executive director of Jews for Jesus since 1996.

Funding and outreach

Jews for Jesus is funded by donations from like-minded Christians. It has a full-time staff of more than 200 employees running branch offices in nine cities across the United States. There are also branch offices in Australia, Brazil, Canada (in Montreal and Toronto), France, Germany (in Essen), Hungary, Israel, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Ukraine (in Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Kiev and Odessa). In addition to its English-language website, the group has websites in Hebrew, Portuguese, Polish, Persian, Italian, Spanish and Korean.

According to the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, the group's total income in FY 2010 was US$20,728,530.

Evangelism

The majority of evangelism used by Jews for Jesus consists of handing out literature on the streets, one-on-one Bible studies, full-page ads in leading newspapers and magazines, ISSUES (an eight-page evangelistic publication for Jewish seekers) and internet evangelism. The organization uses colorful pamphlets and T-shirts to get their message across, engaging with populations of Jews which they see as receptive to their message such as recent immigrants, college students, senior citizens and interfaith couples.

On their official website, Jews for Jesus says that they give out 8 million pamphlets a year. They use college-age volunteers for some of their short-term evangelism campaigns. Each July they send a team of 20 to 30 to New York City, which they say has the world's largest and most diverse Jewish population.

Mainstream Judaism

Belief in Jesus as deity, son of God, or even a non-divine Christ/Messiah or Prophet (as in Islam), is held as incompatible with Judaism by all Jewish religious movements. In a 2013 Pew Forum study, 60% of US Jews said that belief in Jesus as the Messiah was not "compatible with being Jewish", while 34% found it compatible and 4% didn't know.

In 1993 the Task Force on Missionaries and Cults of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (JCRCNY) issued a statement which has been endorsed by the four major Jewish denominations: Orthodox Judaism, Conservative Judaism, Reform Judaism, and Reconstructionist Judaism, as well as national Jewish organizations. Based on this statement, the Spiritual Deception Prevention Project at the JCRCNY stated:

On several occasions leaders of the four major Jewish movements have signed on to joint statements opposing Hebrew-Christian theology and tactics. In part they said: "Though Hebrew Christianity claims to be a form of Judaism, it is not ... It deceptively uses the sacred symbols of Jewish observance ... as a cover to convert Jews to Christianity, a belief system antithetical to Judaism ... Hebrew Christians are in radical conflict with the communal interests and the destiny of the Jewish people. They have crossed an unbridgeable chasm by accepting another religion. Despite this separation, they continue to attempt to convert their former co-religionists."

The director of a counter-missionary group Torah Atlanta, Rabbi Efraim Davidson, stated that "the Jews for Jesus use aggressive proselytizing to target disenfranchised or unaffiliated Jews, Russian immigrants and college students" and that "their techniques are manipulative, deceptive and anti-Semitic."

In an interview for Beliefnet, Orthodox Rabbi Irving Greenberg, the author of For the Sake of Heaven and Earth, said:

There are Jews for Jesus who use the trappings of Judaism to bring people into a religion that teaches that Judaism is finished. Jews for Jesus are worse theologically than the mainstream of Catholicism or Protestantism, which now affirm that Judaism is a valid religion. Jews for Jesus say that it is not. They use the Jewish trappings, but de facto, they are teaching the classic Christian supersessionism—that Judaism was at best a foreshadowing of Christianity.

Christian

Some Western Christians object to evangelizing Jews because they see Jewish religious practice as valid in and of itself. Some Liberal Protestant denominations that have issued statements criticizing evangelism of Jews include the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church USA, which said in 1988 that Jews have their own covenant with God. The Board of Governors of the Long Island Council of Churches opposes proselytizing of Jews, and voiced these sentiments in a statement that "noted with alarm" the "subterfuge and dishonesty" inherent in the "mixing [of] religious symbols in ways which distort their essential meaning", and named Jews for Jesus as one of the three groups about whom such behavior was alleged.

In 2003, the sponsorship of Jews for Jesus by All Souls Church, Langham Place, a Conservative Evangelical Church in London, with a launch event on Rosh Hashanah launching a UK mission targeting the Jewish community led to the Interfaith Alliance UK, a coalition of Jewish, Christian and Islamic religious leaders, issuing a letter of protest to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Other

The Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington includes Muslims, Jews, and liberal church groups. The Conference states that they "support the right of all religions to share their message in the spirit of good will"; however Rev. Clark Lobenstine, has condemned the "proselytizing efforts" of "Jews for Jesus and other messianic Jewish groups". His wording matched the Conference's 1987 "Statement on Proselytism", which makes claims against "groups that have adopted the label of Hebrew Christianity, Messianic Judaism, or Jews for Jesus", so it is unclear which claims are directed at Jews for Jesus in particular.

America's Religions. An Educator's Guide to Beliefs and Practices contains "[a] note about Jews for Jesus, Messianic Jews, Hebrew Christians, and similar groups: Jews in these groups who have converted to Christianity but continue to observe various Jewish practices are no longer considered part of the Jewish community in the usual sense".

There are several other organizations that oppose identification of Jews for Jesus as a Jewish group.

1998 and 2005–2006 – online name

Jews for Jesus has been involved in litigation regarding Internet use of its name. In 1998 they successfully sued Steven Brodsky for cybersquatting — registering the domain name jewsforjesus.org for a site criticizing the organization. The domain now belongs to Jews for Jesus and is used for their main site.

In 2005 Jews for Jesus sued Google for allowing a Blogspot user to put up a site at the third-level subdomain jewsforjesus.blogspot.com. In September 2006 Christianity Today reported that "Jews for Jesus settled out of court with a critical blogger identified as 'Whistle Blower' on jewsforjesus.blogspot.com. The evangelistic ministry assumed control of the site."

2006 – misuse of Jackie Mason name

In 2006 comedian and actor Jackie Mason filed a lawsuit against Jews for Jesus, alleging that they unlawfully distributed a pamphlet which used his name and likeness in a way that suggested he was a member of the group. In fact, Mason is Jewish and not associated with Jews for Jesus. Jews for Jesus has issued a detailed response to the allegation on their website.

A judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York denied a preliminary injunction against Jews for Jesus over the pamphlet, finding the distribution of the pamphlet to be protected by the First Amendment, and also stated that the pamphlet did not suggest that Mason was a Christian.

In December 2006, Mason dropped the lawsuit against Jews for Jesus after they issued a letter of apology to Mason. The group's executive director, David Brickner, stated in the letter to Mason that he wanted "to convey my sincere apologies for any distress that you felt over our tract." Brickner continued that he believed its publication was protected by the Constitution, but the group was willing in the interest of peace and love for Israel to retire the pamphlet. Mason replied in front of the federal court in Manhattan where he accepted the apology, "There's no such thing as a Jew for Jesus. It's like saying a black man is for the KKK. You can't be a table and a chair. You're either a Jew or a Gentile."

"That Jew Died for You" video

In 2014, Jews for Jesus published a three-minute YouTube video called That Jew Died for You, to coincide with Passover, Holy Week and Holocaust Remembrance Day on 28 April. A long-haired Jesus dragging a large wooden cross appears in the film until an Auschwitz extermination camp guard sends him to the gas chambers and says "just another Jew" in German. Jews for Jesus said that the objective of the film was for Jesus to be identified with the victims rather than the perpetrators of the Holocaust and that "the Holocaust has been used – perhaps more than any other event or topic – to prevent Jewish people from considering the good news of Jesus." Jay Michaelson, writing in The Jewish Daily Forward, described it as "the most tasteless YouTube video ever" and wrote "not to state the obvious, but it desecrates the memory of six million Jews to use their suffering as a way to convert Jews to Christianity." Fox News and the History Channel refused to play an advert for the film.