ANTI-MISSIONARY - ISRAEL IS G0D'S CHOSEN PEOPLE
You came to my house to fix my stove. I had a terrific fever and invited you in. You insisted on asking me some questions, to which I replied, and then you launched into a tirade about your religion. I asked you to cease but you responded that since you had listened to me I must now listen to you.
Now you must listen to me. I hope that others will listen, like the millions of American Jews who are targeted for conversion by the Southern Baptists, and by the many other groups which believe that Jews must be "saved." A Russian Jew without funds was told by missionaries that if he converted and brought his friends he would receive a lot of money. The Russian Jew knew nothing about Judaism so he did it. He later found true Judaism and recanted. There were earlier days when the missionaries didn't bother to fool around, they just forced people to convert or be burned. It is amazing to me how people can come to Jews, who are sensitive and benevolent, and tell them about the glories of a religion spread by the fire and sword. As late as the nineteenth century, a Catholic nurse worked for a Jewish couple who had a precocious child. The maid felt that it was a shame that such a child should be a Jew, and so she sprinkled "holy water" on it and kidnapped him. The pope ruled that the baby was a Catholic and refused to return him. The boy later became a Cardinal. The pope told him: "You don't know what you cost me." By the nineteenth century it was something of an embarrassment to kidnap Jews and convert them, but it was done. But in earlier times the church had no compunction, they encouraged forced conversion, but the people of the faith of "love" needed no encouragement. When a Jew refused to convert, the pious mob flocked gleefully to the festivities to watch the burning.
How many Jews were murdered because they refused to accept that Isaiah 7,14 prophecied the birth of YESHU, the founder of Christianity. Mary was not married when she had YESHU and thus the Christians claimed that she gave birth a virgin. They claim that in Isahah 7,14 the passage about a young woman conceiving refers to YESHU, although any fair reading of the text refutes this completely. The point we make here is that millions of people were murdered because the Hebrew word ALMO in the passage there was thought by the Christians to be a virgin. Today a new Christian bible is out which clearly translates ALMO as a young lady, not a virgin. It is the 1952 Revised Standard Version which corrects the errors of the earlier Douay-Rheims Version, a late 16th century translation from the Latin Vulgate, and the King James Version, first published in 1611 and translated primarily from the Greek versions. In our age, when the Pope accepts evolution, the one thing the Christians still maintain is the necessity to convert Jews. Let them straighten out their own religion first. Orthodox Jewry is not split into 200 Protestant groups in America and various Catholic beliefs. It is one religion which has not changed for many thousand years. A Jew will be the Messiah and all evil will be banished. Those wicked people who tore God's children from His Chosen people will face the Justice of Eternity.
A Personal Perspective
What do I, personally think about Yeshu? May I share my thoughts with you.
The period prior to the Destruction of the Second Temple was a time of great prosperity for the Jews of Israel. The Jews were part of the Roman empire and were ideally situated for commerce between the thriving ports of Egypt and Carthage in Northern Africa, the flourishing Greek and Turkish trade, the Syrian Empire, and even south west to India and the East. The Jews even managed to defy the Romans and rebuild the Second Temple with pomp and grandeur. The more money the Jews made, the tighter came the mailed fist of Rome to suck out their prosperity and break their spirit. It was thus that daily the rebellion with Rome loomed closer and closer.
The rabbis of Israel, the Pharisees, and their followers, the majority of the Jews, realized that to fight Rome was suicide. It was not that they were cowards, but they knew that the end was coming, and to hasten it was folly. They therefore poured their energies into the study of the Torah, and built fence upon fence to protect the Law. These rigid rabbinic prohibitions rankled some Jews, and indeed, in the Second Temple Period there were Jews who rejected the entire rabbinic authority, and accepted only the Scripture.
The rabbis, who knew that the time was approaching when the Jews would be without anything but the Law, the Law was to be protected with more and more "fences." Other Orthodox Jews felt that Judaism without Israel and independence was unthinkable; it was better to die for freedom than to live in bondage to Rome. This group drew its support from those who although Orthodox were not involved in study of the Torah and did not feel the fire of religion. Their fire was nationalism.
The Orthodox nationalists did not dispute the rabbis that there was no hope of fighting Rome by natural means. They therefore established two programs, one, that death was better than living as slaves to Rome, and that two, the G-d of Israel would reward those willing to die with Redemption, or the Coming of the Messiah.
How was the Second Temple destroyed? The wild ones burned the supplies of food which could have kept the Jews of Jerusalem alive and fighting for years behind their powerful walls. "Go and fight" they said. Why? The program of the "wild ones" is to risk death, and to merit Messiah. They have no use for a program to sit and wait out the Romans. The Temple was burnt and the heroic "wild ones" were sold to brothels.
What does this have to do with Yeshu? Now it all makes more sense. Yeshu lived seventy years before the final Destruction of the Temple. It was then that the tinderbox of rebellion needed but a spark, a dynamic leader. Yeshu rejected the authority of the rabbis on two points. One, he was with the camp which held that too many fences were counterproductive and actually hurt the Torah rather than help it. "Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." He also defied Rome. His followers were not the rabbis, as the rabbis completed rejected Yeshu. The followers of Yeshu were those who rejected the rabbis, and the strongest elements were those who defied Rome, the predecessors of the "wild ones" who believed in death and Messiah.
At the destruction of the Temple the philosophy of the "wild ones" that risking death would bring Messiah was revealed as untrue. Rabbinic Judaism, rebuilding and prospering, often with a kind Roman Emperor assisting, became the only Judaism left after the Destruction. Here and there a community of those who rejected the rabbis straggled on. It was here that the followers of Yeshu were able to snare a soul or two, but ultimately, the triumph of Orthodox rabbinic Judaism forced the followers of Yeshu to go to the pagans. For thirty six generations the Bishops of Jerusalem were circumcized Jews, but eventually, the pagan market succeeded and the Jewish market declined. The conflict between pagan and Jewish input was never completely resolved, and even today Yeshu's followers have rituals which are traced to both sources, Jewish and pagan.
If Yeshu was put to death it was not for religious reasons, as many heretics thrived in the Second Temple period, such as Zadukees, Baysusis etc. who rejected the rabbis with impunity. The Yeshu of nationalistic pride, who believed that Jews should rather risk death than bend to Rome was put to death, so that the Jews would not rebel, but live for another seventy years, until the spark of anger against Rome flamed up and torched the Temple.
To those who believe in risking death to bring the Messiah, death is a part of the program. It is only another step to state that the dead person will awaken, not in the other world, but in this one. From this came the desperate story of Yeshu's body floating out of the grave. His followers ask, if it didn't float out, if it was not Resurrected, how did it get out? The Romans probably took it out, as they used to give the bodies of their victims to stores for dog food as they did to the body of a great rabbi several years later. Secondly, the Romans rightly realized that the body of the rebel would remain a source of inspiration to the many Jews who wanted to finish what Yeshu had started.
So strong is the Jewish instinct for Redemption that any candidate for Messiah will strike a chord here or there. Yeshu, such as Shabbsei Tsvi, began his career as a Jew, but ended it with another religion. This other religion has never forgiven the Jews for rejecting Yeshu. For this they have horribly tortured millions of Jews to death, and have kidnapped children from their parents. Even in the nineteenth century an Italian maid sprinkled some water on a Jewish baby she attended and the Pope ruled that the baby was now a Catholic and could not be returned to his parents. The boy became a prominent Cardinal. He was not the only Jewish Cardinal, and for the same reason. Can we accept a religion which is spread by kidnapping babies, burning at the stake those who refuse it, and has a shaky base enforced by the sword? Today there are hundreds of different and clashing beliefs about Yeshu. But all of them want Jews to convert.
The G-d of Israel and the Torah of Israel are Eternal. Our Torah is firmly rooted in the Revelation at Sinai, where all Jews saw G-d. It is true that world religions elevated the human race from paganim and certainly deserve credit for that. But the Jews are not pagans. Jews await the Messiah who will come, speedily, in our time.
A New Movement of Christians who Embrace the Torah
Today, September 26, AOL featured a new story about Christians who converted to Orthodox Judaism, because they just could not continue to believe in the old way. They saw great confusion about the identity of their earlier deity and decided to become Jewish.
Here at Jewish Outreach Congregation we encourage non-Jews to find out what Judaism has to tell them. You don't have to become an Orthodox Jew, as the people did in the AOL story. You can, however, attach yourself to the "Bnei Noach" movements, they are gentiles who look to the Sinaitic Jewish tradition for guidance, which Moses brought from Sinai, to do the will of God for gentiles who do not want to convert. We invite you to contact us if you are interested.