Missionaries,
who attempt to convert Jews to Christianity, have recently stepped up their
efforts in Arad, a city in the southeast Negev, with a large immigrant
population of Jews from Russia and other former Soviet
republics. These immigrants, and others lacking in Jewish education, are
considered susceptible targets for missionary activity.
Under Jewish law, converting to Christianity is virtually synonymous with
destroying a person’s soul. According to Israeli law, offering material
benefits as an inducement to convert to Christianity,
is a criminal offense.
Hareidi-Torah Jews, who have attempted to protest
missionary activity in Arad, were denied permits to
demonstrate by the police department.
While the Hareidi protestors have appealed to the
High Court to overturn the police decision, a missionary publication in
Hebrew says missionaries have been lobbying government ministers and senior
police officials to ensure that demonstrations against their activity do not
take place.
The publication, called “Kivun” (or “Direction” in
English), says that the missionaries have been enlisting Christian supporters
of Israel in the United States to pressure the Israeli
government to stop the demonstrations.
The extent of the missionaries’ activities in Israel and their attempts to influence
the Israeli government, can be learned from an
article published in a recent edition of Kivun.
The magazine writes: “The demonstrations, threats, shouts,
and scheming against Messianic Jews [“Jews for Jesus”] in Arad have been continuing on and off
for more than a year and a half already. All this began when the Yad L’Achim
organization [a Jewish anti-missionary organization] became aware that a
youth, a local resident, was baptized.
“At the same time, we opened a chess club that distributed messianic
[Christian] material. These two events enraged Yad L’ Achim
activists, and they started inciting Gur Hasidim
which have a large yeshiva in the city.”
The magazine goes on to explain that the missionaries “began writing to their
friends abroad” about the problems in Arad. “They began to apply pressure on
the [Israeli] government” to stop what they termed “religious persecution.”
“They wrote to government ministries, the Prime Minister’s office, the
Internal Security Ministry, the Interior Ministry the police…[saying] that that if the offices get inundated with
letters from Christians around the world, who are demanding safety for
believers in the Messiah [Jesus] in Arad, the offices will not be able to
claim later that they did not know” about the situation, writes Kivun.
“Write to
your Senators,” the magazine exhorted, “about how this situation is such a
great injustice, and that they who persecute us are absolutely evil and
primitive.”
The magazine reports that in a letter to Chief of Police Moshe Karadi, the missionaries demanded that he act
aggressively against the Haredi-Jewish community in
Arad.
Rabbi Shalom Dov Lifshitz
of Yad L’Achim said, in response to the quotes from the missionary magazine,
that “the words of the missionaries and their activities speak for themselves.”
He said his organization was waiting for the High Court to decide on their
right to demonstrate against the missionaries in Arad.
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