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<p>It certainly does, thanks to a lot of hard effort on the part of moderates and progressives (most recently in Kansas, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota). We’re winning this round, but the fight’s not over.</p>
<p><the {fundamentalist=“” takeover}=“” certainly=“” does=“” {have=“” a=“” long=“” way=“” to=“” go}.=“”></the></p>
<p>Well then you can sleep well. I daresay the threat is not imminent, especially with our newly elected Congress and a liberal Democrat as our President in a couple of years.</p>
<p>Allmusic, having fundamental christians support israel is not about being bought. It is about let ting them do things to help us. Let them theink what they wont. If they are helping resettle Israeli refugees up north right now, then fine. Let them help. I am more worried about the Muslim terrorists shooting rockets into Israel which today killed one person, amputated the legs of another, and then severely injured a 17 yr old boy, than i am about Christians giving Israel money and thinking about when we all go to hell. </p>
<p>How can you honestly object to charity. Because thats what it is. Its just charity. Then I wouldnt discount how much genuine care these people have for Israel. Not all of that care stems from the rapture but from biblical text saying Israel is the land of the Jews. These people are just trying to help, and we as Jews should be grateful for it. When they start blowing us up then maybe the conversation should be different.</p>
<p>CGM, just for ****s and giggles you know all about the many medical discoveries were first written down in the bible right?</p>
<p>As I said, Golani, I am not comparing Muslim Extremists and Evangelicals. There is no moral equivalency, and I hope I have made that very clear.</p>
<p>You have made that clear. I am saying that this is not what Jews or Israel should be worrying about, but I think that you really should agree with my previous post about evangelicals and Israel…</p>
<p>Not everyone is as thrilled-</p>
<p>Rabbis Criticize Evangelicals in Israel</p>
<p>Associated Press/May 10, 2004
By Josef Federman</p>
<p>Jerusalem – Prominent Israeli rabbis are for the first time speaking out against Israel’s profitable alliance with evangelical Christians in the United States who have funneled tens of millions of dollars to the Jewish state.</p>
<p>The rabbis fear the Christians’ real intent is to convert Jews, their aides said Monday. Others are concerned about the evangelicals’ support for Israel’s extreme right-wing, opposing any compromise with the Palestinians.</p>
<p>The dispute touches on an increasingly sensitive issue in Israel: the country’s dependence, both economically and politically, on conservative American Christians.</p>
<p>Besides contributing tidy sums to projects in Israel, some evangelical Christians have lobbied in support of the Israeli government in Washington.</p>
<p>Troubling to Israelis is the fact that one influential group of evangelicals believes in a final, apocalyptic battle between good and evil in which Jesus returns and Jews either accept him or perish – a vision that causes obvious discomfort among Jews.</p>
<p>“I’m worried as a Jew,” said Mina Fenton, a Jerusalem City Council member from an Orthodox Jewish party, who has led opposition to the evangelical groups. “I don’t want my people to be assassinated, sacrificed, killed or slaughtered because of their beliefs.”</p>
<p>Concern has been bubbling under the surface for some time, and although leading rabbis had stayed in the background, their worries emerged Monday in the Israeli media.</p>
<p>The focus of the latest criticism has been the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a Chicago-based group that has raised tens of millions of dollars from Christian supporters of Israel.</p>
<p>Two former chief rabbis of Israel, Avraham Shapira and Mordechai Eliahu, recently approved a religious ruling urging followers not to accept money from the group.</p>
<p>The ruling, issued by Shapira in March and later signed by Eliahu, accused the fellowship of accepting money from groups involved in “missionary activity.”</p>
<p>“I don’t see any permission to receive funds that aid in the infiltration of the work of strangers under the false impression of aid to the needy,” the letter said.</p>
<p>Rabbi Simcha Hacohen Kook, another critic of the fellowship, said he fears the donors are trying to exploit Israel’s most vulnerable people. “Those who don’t have money don’t ask questions,” he said.</p>
<p>“They are spending millions of dollars to make people closer to Christianity,” said Kook, chief rabbi of the city of Rehovot and member of a rabbinical dynasty. “The situation is very serious.”</p>
<p>Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, brushed off the criticism as complaints by a tiny minority.</p>
<p>He said the group has raised $100 million, including $20 million last year alone, to assist Israel’s poor, elderly and new immigrants, as well as impoverished Jewish communities in the former Soviet Union. The group sponsors projects in 85 Israeli towns and cities, he said.</p>
<p>Eckstein, an Orthodox rabbi, also noted that he has served as an adviser to Israeli prime ministers and sits on the boards of the Jewish Agency and Joint Distribution Committee, influential groups that serve Jewish communities abroad.</p>
<p>Although many of the thousands of donors to his group may hope to convert Jews, Eckstein said, “we just don’t allow any kind of missionary activity.”</p>
<p>He said his donors are motivated by other factors, including the Jews’ connection to the biblical Land of Israel and feelings of guilt over anti-Semitism.</p>
<p>“Judaism does not focus so much on motivations as much as deeds,” he said. “In Judaism, the actions speak louder than words, and certainly louder than motivations.”</p>
<p>He also claimed that Eliahu has received funding from the fellowship in the past and has signaled in recent days that he would continue to allow his supporters to accept the funds.</p>
<p>People close to Eliahu said the rabbi remains opposed to the group. Eliahu’s spokesman did not return repeated messages left Monday.</p>
<p>Maintaining good relations with American evangelicals is important to Israel’s government. Evangelicals make up a powerful base of support for President Bush and enjoy close ties with the White House.</p>
<p>But many evangelical groups have shown a growing interest in Israeli politics, adopting views considered extreme in Israel.</p>
<p>The groups opposed the U.S.-backed “road map” peace plan when it was launched last year, because it would lead to Israeli concessions, and they opposed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s attempts to uproot Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.</p>
<p>Hundreds of evangelical churches offer regular donations to Jewish settlements for school equipment, playgrounds, medical supplies and bulletproof buses.</p>
<p>Rabbi David Rosen, international director of inter-religious affairs in the American Jewish Committee’s Jerusalem office, said this political activity is a larger concern than charitable work.</p>
<p>“There’s support for some of the most extreme political positions in Israeli society,” Rosen said. “That I find far more disturbing than any suggestion that there could be missionary activity.”</p>
<p>In the Boston area alone, Jews raised $10M for rebuilding efforts in Israel.</p>
<p>We don’t need the evangelicals and their proselitizing.</p>
<p>If the money is in fact used for missionary work, then I would have to say that it is wrong, but there is not real indication of that. As long as it is just charity money I am okay with it. </p>
<p>Also CGM, note this is a smally minority of the Jewish community, and I would like to see what kind of rabbis these “prominent rabbis are”. A reform Rabbi is different from an Orthodox one.</p>
<p>Allmusic that great, but nevertheless the Israeli governet is doing a terrible job of fixing up the north. Just another proof of the bungling beurocracy that government is. Look at Hezbollah and how well it is rebuilding southern lebanon, all with the help of Iranian money ofcourse.</p>
<p>Let me ask you this, about 10 million of one of the charitiable funds has gone to northern Arab villages and cities in Israel and the Israeli territories that were damaged in the war by Hezbollah. Should these Arabs reject Israeli money, after all the ones in the PA regions are “enemies” of Israel. Or how bout this, when Israel offers medical help to Palestinian Arabs, should they reject it. When it sends helicopters to Palestinian Arab towns is it right that their leadership does not allow the Arabs to accept Israeli treatment because they can raise their own money? Charity is charity. Missionary work, however, is different and I have not yet seen much indication of it.</p>
<p>May 10, 2004. Link, please.</p>
<p>“We don’t need the evangelicals and their proselytizing.”</p>
<p>What a charming ecumenical and bridge-building attitude between religious faiths, am. Very nice.</p>
<p>HH, why do evangelicals believe they need to witness? Why can’t they let others live in their own faith? I thought you were a believer in leaving indiviudals to their individual religious beliefs. </p>
<p>So then…why should Jews welcome evangelicals, when their desires are so transparent?</p>
<p>Hey, how’d you like it if someone on this forum said “We don’t need the Jews and their proselytizing.” Unspoken: “We don’t need the Jews.” Very nice.</p>
<p>In answer to your question: If you have to ask it you wouldn’t understand the answer.</p>
<p>Jews don’t witness. No one is asking you to convert, as if your religion isn’t good enough.</p>
<p>Although I think you rather purposefully misunderstood me, what I meant is that Israel doesn’t need the proselitizing of evangelicals, just for their money, not that the world doesn’t need evangelicals. Seems like a duh to me, but I thought I would make that clear, since you are intent on twisting my words.</p>
<p>Time for the winky! ;)</p>
<p>And the case has been made that people trying to help Israel are not asking them to convert, either; a case you have ignored (purposefully?).</p>
<p>And if part of their religion is to proselytize–ignore it, as I’ve said before. I don’t understand the intense dislike and fear of them you seem to have.</p>
<p>I’m not a word-twister, am, as you know from reading my posts; I’ve watched your attitude for months now, which contributed to my statement above.</p>
<p>No winky for me, thanks.</p>
<p>You obviously think there is nothing wrong with proselytizing. I don’t like it. It’s called a difference of opinion, and last I checked, even you were OK with people having different opinions (unless, of course, you feel that they are too liberal, or not pro-religious enough, in which case those opinions are wrong…hmmmmm).</p>
<p>You are welcome to think whatever you want about me, that I am some Christian hater, or what not (you’d be wrong, not that it matters). But in terms of my “attitude”, I’d say you draw some rather far-fetched conclusions, based on your personal views on religion.</p>
<p>No prob. Just don’t read my posts then!</p>
<p>I dont see Evangelicals prostelisizing Jews linked through their charity. I know that when my parents left the Soviet Union, they were vulnerable, in transit camps in Italy, my mom did not know much about Judaism, my dad knew only what he studied in secret, and there were Christians there trying to convert them. They offered my parents food, clothes all of which they politely accepted, they listened to what the Christians had to say and then politely said “no, its not for us” As far as I know thats the kind of missionary work that goes on, but for them to send money to an Israeli school and then prostelize there, i dont really think it happens</p>
<p>I have lived in various parts of the country over the years. I have dealt with proselytizing from both Pentecostal Christians in the South and from Conservative and Orthodox Jews in the Northeast. The proselytizing actually wasn’t so much trying to convert me to their faith as it was just criticizing mine. I haven’t had a Muslim do this to me yet but I figure it’s a matter of time.</p>
<p>Many, many, MANY Christians have not only tried to convert me but have criticized my views. Most of the time, I didn’t even get into a discussion with them at first - they found out something about me and initiated the criticism and the proselytizing.</p>
<p>Actually, come to think of it, the only other person who ever tried to convert me to her religion was a Scientologist.</p>
<p>Motherdear, I am very surprised to hear that Jews have tried to prostelysize you because that is against Jewish values to a certain extent. Can you please describe what you mean by prostelysizing or provide some details of what happened, and if you dont mind me asking are you already Jewish?</p>