Subways and Religions
Over winter break, I spent a weekend carousing around New York City with some friends. One day, while wandering the depths of Port Authority looking for a subway to Greenwich, we were stopped by a man with peyos, the curls that religious Jews wear next to their ears. However, this man, oddly enough, was sporting a teal t-shirt with a black inscription: “Jews for Jesus.”
“Take this.” He shoved a color-coordinated teal pamphlet into my hand. My friends started laughing and pulled me away. This was the last I was concerned about the incident for the remainder of the trip.
It wasn’t until the other day that the pamphlet floated out of my bag onto my dorm room floor. That’s when I started wondering. I’ve always been taught, from my dad to Hebrew school teachers, that there’s no difference between Jews and Christians except for a belief or lack of belief in Jesus as the Messiah. So, what in the world could a Jew for Jesus be? I decided to do some research.
Wikipedia.org tells us that Jews for Jesus is a controversial US-based Evangelical Protestant organization founded in 1973 by Martin Rosen, an ordained Baptist minister, with a goal of converting Jews to Christianity. It sites some extremely critical viewpoints, pointing out that the group is rejected not only by Jewish organizations as clearly “un-Jewish” in its lack of observance of the Torah, but also by many Protestant organizations which accuse the group of overstepping bounds and distorting truth. However, JewsforJesus.org takes an entirely different stance. Rather than summarizing a mission statement into one clear sentence, the group allows the user to explore various links on evidence of Jesus’ divinity and stresses the idea that his messiahship is an important fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy.
And so, there are two sides to every story. My search has not led me to answer, but more questions. Why is it that people refuse to recognize the commons roots between Judaism and Christianity? Do these common roots stretch as far as Jesus’ divinity? Is this organization merely a ruse to attract Jews to Christianity? Is there any merit here? Does it matter?
“Take this.” He shoved a color-coordinated teal pamphlet into my hand. My friends started laughing and pulled me away. This was the last I was concerned about the incident for the remainder of the trip.
It wasn’t until the other day that the pamphlet floated out of my bag onto my dorm room floor. That’s when I started wondering. I’ve always been taught, from my dad to Hebrew school teachers, that there’s no difference between Jews and Christians except for a belief or lack of belief in Jesus as the Messiah. So, what in the world could a Jew for Jesus be? I decided to do some research.
Wikipedia.org tells us that Jews for Jesus is a controversial US-based Evangelical Protestant organization founded in 1973 by Martin Rosen, an ordained Baptist minister, with a goal of converting Jews to Christianity. It sites some extremely critical viewpoints, pointing out that the group is rejected not only by Jewish organizations as clearly “un-Jewish” in its lack of observance of the Torah, but also by many Protestant organizations which accuse the group of overstepping bounds and distorting truth. However, JewsforJesus.org takes an entirely different stance. Rather than summarizing a mission statement into one clear sentence, the group allows the user to explore various links on evidence of Jesus’ divinity and stresses the idea that his messiahship is an important fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy.
And so, there are two sides to every story. My search has not led me to answer, but more questions. Why is it that people refuse to recognize the commons roots between Judaism and Christianity? Do these common roots stretch as far as Jesus’ divinity? Is this organization merely a ruse to attract Jews to Christianity? Is there any merit here? Does it matter?
1 Comments:
Just wanted to let you know I did some minor edits, spaced the paragraphs for better readability, and put links to the Jews for Jesus page and the Wikipedia entry on Jews for Jesus and removed the references at the end (since they are referenced through the link now).
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