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"Jews" for "Jesus"
In 1894, a Hungarian "Rabbi", Leopold Cohn, firmly established the roots of Jews for Jesus in an unaffiliated but intimately related movement in America. He founded the American Board of Missions to the Jews, a title later streamlined into the more attractive-sounding "Chosen People's Ministries". Sounds like the "A" League baseball team at a parochial school, does it not? His method was simple: he set up shop in Brooklyn around the turn of the century, and provided "English and citizen classes, sewing lessons, medical assistance and New Testaments in Yiddish." (Jessica Ravitz, Moment, Dec. 2004)
"Jews for Jesus" is a fascinating advertisement campaign. In order to explore, we need to build two labels: "Secular Christianity" and "Community Christianity". The first denotes a default orientation: a Christmas-celebrating, Jingle-Bells-singing setting. The second describes a certain directory of one of many Christian sects, containing individuals of faith who share the faith with their Christian brethren.
None of this explains the coalition on the street corner with the baseball caps and the tee-shirts, handing out subway-litter to every passer-by with a sense of embarrassed politeness. These aren't the sleekly-dressed bicyclers or streetwalkers fulfilling a coming-of-age mission, interested in spreading the Mormon words to everyone, Hear Ye, Jews, and Hear Ye, Christian Seculars and Ye Christian Communities; Hear Ye, one and all. Jews for Jesus wages a campaign for Jews--and Jews only--to join the new Tribe--a select, modern equivalent to head the "welcome home" committee for Jesus.
So who are these Jews for Jesus? We defined two grossly general groups with Christianity, for the purpose of explaining that Jews for Jesus explains a distinct spiritual and metaphysical cosmology. Some evangelicals believe that 144,000 Jews need to convert, must find the Christ before Jesus will return--and this 144,000 figure doesn't bode well for the remaining Jews, who should expect an uncomfortable living condition for all of eternity. Jews for Jesus denotes an apparent paradox, an oxymoron, especially as viewed by Jews . . . sort of similar to a vegetarian ordering a bratwurst with bacon bits at a Milwaukee Brewers game in August.
Jews for Jesus, as a term, depends on two ideas. The first defines Judaism as a race, a people descended from the tribes of Judah and Israel; Jewish tradition agrees with this definition. More: Jewish law requires a Jew to have a Jewish mother. If your mother is Jewish, so are you. The second idea suggested by the unlikely name "Jews for Jesus" demands that no-one is born a Christian. Faith in Jesus is not genetic, not instinctual nor automatic. Faith and faith alone defines a Christian.
Therefore, of course, a community of individuals with the proper credentials might accurately be labeled "Jews for Jesus"--or, to put it another way, a Jew who believes in Jesus would still be a Jew. While this concept is the most offensive and ridiculous for Jews of traditional belief, it is the most essential for Jews for Jesus members. All belief centers around the fact. Not all Jews for Jesus congregants are Jews, though. They collect a mighty army that numbers people of many races and creeds in order to help the Jews evolve.
My dilemma is this: I believe the effort is a waste of debatably valuable energy. To attempt to sway someone from a path that leads to spirituality for the sake of another path that may also lead to spirituality, is to create karmic waves of the worst sort. To believe that one's path is the uniquely correct path to spirituality is the most base, closed-minded tripe on the market. Jews for Jesus as a spiritual marketing device strikes me as a morally bankrupt conception that, if such things exist, will receive just dessert upon the arrival of whatever messianic era or spiritual awakening that may wait for humanity.
Strangely enough, I do see another side. Let me suggest two motivations for the misguided individual on the street corner. Her salvation is in the balance. His faith must be proved. The conditions required to deliver her unto the promised land have not yet been met. As such, I denounce these infidels as selfish, blinded fools who yet sink their souls deeper into the muck.
But what of the individual who has seen? Such individuals exist. They know. A woman feels the touch of god upon her heart when all seems lost. A narrow-minded man, in a sudden, unsought and unexpected epiphany understands a story for the first time. An unprepared woman with an average and easily predicted life finds herself confronted by the spacious infinite and discovers herself to be small, unloved, and irrevocably alone . . . until she remembers a phrase from her disinterested years as a Sunday school student. These people have seen and in fact they have seen the truth, albeit only one, narrow path of truth. These men and women standing nervously upon the street corner are speaking aloud only to fulfill an ethereal, courageous obligation they feel to their messiah. It behooves me to accept that they are not doing it for themselves, nor really are they doing it for me. They are doing it in the name of the truth they have found.
While I may understand (or believe I understand) that the roads to truth are many, and the truth of life is that the path under your feet is the only path you may take, I will take a bow to you, if you are one such individual, though you misunderstand me unto time eternal. Millions of individuals in the world (me included) piss our lives away, and have no firm ground from which we might justly criticize what you have discovered. I feel you moving in my heart.
But you of the first group of preachers, take special note. You cannot accumulate enough spiritual street credit to achieve what your more honest, more sincere sidewalk curb-mates have discovered.
You can't earn a large enough commission on your sales to save yourself from the wasted life you've created for yourself. Take a breath and count to three. Look deeply and honestly into your heart. Your God is looking for you. Taboo's Ezine Navigator: Article Index
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