As a young teen, I remember having been exposed to evangelical material explaining the implicit scriptural logic for a Jew
to believe in Jesus as Messiah, to become a “fulfilled” Jew. I remember thinking “there’s something wrong here,” without being able to specifically articulate it. Jews For Judaism holds those answers. Using the very texts trumpeted by Evangelicals, it proves that when a Jew decides to accept Christ as Lord and Savoir, he or she is adapting an alternate belief system, not merely a more advanced form of Judaism.
The Jews For Judaism website challenges and shakes the reader - both Jewish and Gentile- about the basic underpinnings of Fundamentalist Christianity. It serves as an alternative to Jews For Jesus: a
site committed to the Evangelizing of Jew. It gives a litany of personal stories from “those who’ve been there,” those who’ve crossed over and been back, lived to tell, so to speak. They argue that God and Jesus are not one in the same, that the God of Israel is not Jesus, that God is a unity and not a trinity. It proactively shows the inner beauty of Judaism, and why it has endured for 3,300 years.
This site spends much, if not most, of its space, on breaking down the citadel of Christian self-justification, that being the messianic predictions in the Jewish Bible, the Christian Old Testament. It explains, Jewishly speaking, everything from the meaning of the blood sacrifices in Leviticus to the central prediction, in the eyes of evangelicals, of Isaiah 53. (The Jewish interpretation of the “Suffering Servant” is not of some individual being tormented for the sins of the
world, but Israel as a whole, suffering in an unjust world.) How can it point to anything else but Jesus? This site gives the rabbinic understanding of the passage. The compelling evidence given on this site should give any would-be enlightener of the Jewish people pause. After all, Paul, the greatest evangelist of them all, after trying so hard to reach his former brethren, finally had to turn to the Gentiles in order to get his word across.
This site puts a large emphasis on Jews who have somehow, through either personal rebellion, or ignorance, seek something outside of the beauty they already have within. In this way, they may indeed serve as a “light to the Gentiles.”
For all its honest discussion, this site goes to great lengths to praise those Christians who do not seek to convert Jews. It points out how The Jews for Jesus approach to evangelizing is scorned by Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Mainstream Protestants, and even some Evangelic groups, such as Jimmy Swaggart Ministries ( contending that to continue Judaic practices after Christ “did it all for you when he died at Calvary” is akin to “works righteousness” and idolatry.) The apostle Paul himself fully expects the Jew who comes to accept Jesus to eventually dispense with his or her Mosaic trappings. In an admittedly overly simplistic analysis of the differences between the two faiths, Judaism puts the emphasis on behavior, the conduct demanded by God in the Torah, while Christianity puts the emphasis on belief: believe in what He did for you at the cross to the exclusion of all else, including any feeble attempts at “behaving your way to righteousness.”
This site is well aware of the mixed blessing, love-hate relationship between Traditional Protestant Christianity and Judaism. (Catholics are another subject altogether, the relationship with Protestant’s often being more contentious than that with Jews. Jewish-Catholic relations are not covered here.) On the one hand Evangelicals find themselves absolutely in love with the people who brought forth the knowledge of One God to the world, while on the other, seeing them as the ultimate enemies of the Gospel, who’s conversion is seen as crucial to the second coming of Jesus. Yet they remain steadfast in their zeal for a strong, sustainable Jewish state. And they must be aware of the irony that , at present, more Christians are converting to Judaism than visa-versa. Yet, in an increasing hostile world, where liberal Christians and Jews are having an increased sympathy for the Palestinian plight (a phenomenon caused mostly by the pilfering, hate-mongering Palestinian politicians) while seeing Israel as the neighborhood bully causing all the misery,
Rabbi Kravitz, director of the organization, insists in the site, that his goal is to keep Jews anchored in Judaism and not to convert those of other faiths into the fold, opting instead for the B’nai Noachide concept that the righteous of all nations have a share in the World to Come. But the arguments presented are so pure, so logical, that there just might be a danger of that very thing.