July 1998 Personal Letter

A Jewish View on Jews for Jesus

By Rabbi Jordan S. Ofseyer, senior rabbi at
Congregation Shearith Israel in Dallas and an
adjunct professor in the religious studies department at SMU.

Who are “Jews for Jesus?” And why are we Jews concerned about their efforts to evangelize us? Our concerns inhere not in the evangelizing. Jews for Jesus have every right to do that in this free and open society. Our concerns stem rather from the deceptive nature of how they present themselves and how they go about their mission of having us become part of them.

Jews for Jesus are Christians. They came into existence some 25 years ago as a new (read: deceptive) way to seek to convert Jews. They acknowledge as much in literature intended to be read by fellow Christians. In one communication distributed some years ago — “What Evangelical Christians Should Know About Jews for Jesus (A Confidential Report not to be Distributed to Non-Christians)” (italics mine) — they made it quite clear how and why they started and who they are. (The quotations in this column are from that source.)

Jews for Jesus came into existence because “There was a need to encourage the Jewish believers to accept and enjoy Jewish culture so that their Jewishness might glorify the Lord Jesus Christ.” Who are they? “We define ourselves as evangelical fundamentalists.” And: “We consider ourselves an arm of the local church.”

For almost 2,000 years, or since the death of the historical Jesus of Nazareth, those who have believed that he was the Messiah became and are Christian. Those who were and are Jewish, who did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, remained Jews. Belief in Jesus as Messiah remains, as it always has been, the defining difference between Christians and we Jews, who yet await the Messiah.

The issue here is not the right of Jews for Jesus or any other group to believe and practice as it chooses. That right is guaranteed by the First Amendment to our Constitution. The issue is truth in labeling, truth in packaging. They who make it quite clear in communicating to fellow Christians that they are Christians represent themselves as Jews when interacting with Jews. Check the Yellow Pages and you will find them listed under both “Synagogues” and “Churches.”

Jews must recognize the carefully crafted efforts by Jews for Jesus and other messianic groups to target them for conversion: They have developed a slogan, “Jews for Jesus,” that serves as a theology and lends a certain seeming legitimacy. “The slogan ‘Jews for Jesus’ caught on. The news media took notice and began referring to the ‘Jews for Jesus movement.’” What began as “an evangelistic campaign that was to be different from any previous one” hit on a slogan that is sufficiently unclear to allow it to be Christian for Christians, and seem to be Jewish for Jews. This is quite an accomplishment for a slogan that, after the fact, has been elevated to the status of a theology and the name of a movement.

Jews for Jesus have established places of worship with Hebrew-sounding names (Beth Sar Shalom, for example) and which prominently display Jewish symbols such as the Jewish star and menorah outside the building. They use Hebrew in services, aspects of Jewish synagogue rituals and “melodies that are reminiscent of Eastern European, American and Israeli Jewish music.” These visual and auditory cues are used to induce unsuspecting Jews to believe that they are in a synagogue and among fellow Jews.

But don’t Jews realize that Jews for Jesus are not the real thing? Not when such groups target, as the Jews for Jesus do, the most vulnerable among us — those who know little English and even less about Judaism. In Dallas and across the country, Jews for Jesus developed a concerted initiative directed toward the many Jews who have come recently from Russia. And these Jews are often unwittingly drawn to the Jewish symbols and seeming Jewish atmosphere in Jews for Jesus churches.

Experience has taught me that for every Jewish person who understands the Jews for Jesus, there are many more who do not — and who do not realize that they’re really Christian. Jews for Jesus deceptively exploit that ignorance, and deception is at the core of our concern. To be “for Jesus” is to be Christian. To be a Christian is to be part of a major world religion of significant theology and impressive ritual. Why, then, create Jews for Jesus with a synthetic theology and pseudo-Jewish ritual, if not for the purpose of deceiving Jews?

We want fellow Jews to know, and Christian friends and neighbors to understand, who Jews for Jesus really are. They are Christian.

Jesus — He Remains the Jew’s Jew

by Zola Levitt

In response to Rabbi Ofseyer’s article A Jewish View on Jews for Jesus, let’s imagine for a moment that Jesus really was the Jewish Messiah. In that case, I would expect to have the Old Testament full of prophecies about Him, which it is. I would expect Him to have given His message in the only Jewish country of the world, which He did. I would expect Him to choose Jewish disciples and Jewish apostles, which He did. I would expect that the New Testament, the Bible inspired by Him, would be written entirely by Jewish authors and published by them, which it was. I would expect that all of His original followers would have been Jews, which they were, and that every generation would contain Jewish Believers (or “Jews for Jesus”), which they have.

I would also expect that the unbelieving Jews would turn away from Scripture, which would tend to constantly remind them of the Messiah they missed. I would expect a new kind of Judaism to become invented by a new kind of priesthood, the Rabbis. And I would expect that Judaism, without its Messiah, would become fragmented, argumentative and diverse, which it has. I would expect Jewish people to become disenchanted with synagogue worship and a majority to just give it up, which is happening.

As to the Rabbi wanting Jewish Believers to call themselves Christians, they never did this. The original Jews who believed in Messiah didn’t stop being Jewish but rather felt they had found the fulfillment of the Jewish hope. The biggest problem they had was deciding whether they should let non-Jews participate in this totally Jewish faith.

When Rabbi Ofseyer says that Jews who believe in their messiah are no longer Jewish, I wonder how that happens. Does a Jew stop being a Jew if he becomes an atheist? a materialist? a follower of a cult? None of those would make a Jew stop being a Jew. Oddly, the Rabbis argue that those Jews who believe the Torah with all their hearts and believe that Yeshua (Jesus) fulfills all that Moses and the prophets foretold are the only ones that cease to be Jews.

As for me, I was totally convinced of the Messiah by the Jewish Scriptures. Isaiah 53, written by a Jewish prophet to a Jewish audience in the Old Testament — along with 300 other such prophecies — convinced me. I was thoroughly educated in the synagogues with Bar Mitzvah and Confirmation, but now at last, I understand what it means to be truly Jewish. I have a new understanding of and love for Israel. And despite my many failings, my life as a Messianic Jew feels complete and fulfilling. Truly this is really living.

In the New Testament, I read that Jesus told the devout Jew Nicodemus, “You must be born again” (John 3:3). I saw that Paul, a Rabbi of Israel, advised that the good news of the Messiah is to go “to the Jew first” (Rom 1:16). He appealed to us, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved” (Rom 10:1). And he proclaimed “For I also am an Israelite… God hath not cast away His people” (Rom 11:1–2). He was sent among Gentiles, but His heart remained with His own people. All Jews who believe in the Messiah weep for their own people who, like the Rabbi, mean all that they say with the best of intentions, but are without faith in the Messiah who said, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mat. 15:24).

What really happened is this. Jesus came to the Jews because He was their Messiah. After some believed in Him and found how wonderful their lives had become, they wished to share this good news with everyone who would listen, including the Gentiles. The Gentiles believed in great numbers, and the Jews continued to come per capita. Today, we have a thriving Gentile church containing Jewish Believers who want nothing more than to do what their first-century brethren did — share their faith — and they especially have warm hearts toward the Jewish people, their own.

Far from being deceptive, the Jews for Jesus are merely trying to give their landsmen the greatest of all gifts.

In good faith, Zola Levitt