Great, I'm a Missionary, and the history of Christianity

OK Tuesday, that means more fun with my lab partners. This week I was talking with my remaining lab parter (one was absent and the other was, well, lets just say indisposed as I wrote a few weeks ago), and the topic got to politics, religion, and other fun stuff.

One of the things we were discussing was our former lab partner who took his anger out by going downtown to hang out with the crack heads. I mentioned to him what I'd written, that without a good relationship with your parents or teachers, you really don't have anywhere to turn to for support.

Here we go with some history, when the Romans entered Israel 2000 years ago, one of the things they were shocked to find in the Jewish community was that everyone was literate, there was a welfare system set up for the poor, and the entire community provided for the orphans.
The Rambam says that it is an absolute requirement to educate your children, period. The Gemara in Kiddusin (I think 29b, but I might be wrong, it's around there though) says that educating your son (teaching Torah and a trade) are one of the things that a father is required to do (I don't remember off the top of my head what it says about the girls, but the Gemara in Ketubot 52b says that a father has to adorn his daughter with pearls so the men would be attracted to her).
And as all good Jews know and do (right?) that you have to give 10% of your pre-tax earnings to charity.

So my lab partner found all of this stuff fascinating, and said to me, "That's awesome, man, I want to become Jewish!"

Of course I probably could have mentioned Brit Milah to him, and I think he would have changed his mind. (What I could have done was tell him baout the 7 Noahide laws. Oh well, next time)

So this leads to the next thing I want to talk about.

Christians.

I had said that there were three things I had to defend from three different sets of people.
I had to defend the Land of Israel from the Arabs and Leftists (why they go together I still don't know)
I had to defend the Torah from the Christians.
And I had to defend G-d tom the non-religious Jews and Aliyah from the religious.

So regarding point #2, some more history, regarding our favorite people. . .the Romans.

I'm listening right now to a phenomenal audio series from Rabbi Ken Spiro, I highly recommend it. (you can download it here)

Anyways, one of the things he talks about is how the Roman conquering worked.

I guess the Romans liked to collect things, and whenever they'd conquer a new city, province or country, they'd all of the local gods to their own collection.

Then they found the Jews.

The idea of one G-d was entirely new and very cool to them, a single, invisible, all powerful G-d, what a concept.

They also liked all of the cool things that those crazy Jews did, like Shabbos, and eating kosher, but we'll get back to that, now for some history of the J-man.

At the time the Romans entered Israel the Jewish people were a wreck. The Kehuna (High Priests) was corrupt, the people were divided on every issue, no one followed the Oral Torah, which led to false messiahs popping up all over the place.

Mr. J was not unique in any way, there were hundreds if not thousands of these false prophets coming out of the woodworks, each preaching his own, corrupt version of the Torah. Anyways JC never said anything about atoning for sin, or the perfection of man, that can a few decades later when Paul came on the scene.

Now remember how the Romans were really fascinated with Judaism? Well there were a few things hindering them from becoming Jewish, namely, laws.

A big turn off for them was the fact that they would have to get circumcised, a big no-no to them because they saw the human body as something sacred, and not to be "desecrated."

So what did Paul do?

He saw a market.

Take away the "bad stuff" about Judaism, and bing bang boom, you're in business.

So think about this, Christianity, one of the worlds major religions, has its entire basis, created solely on a really good marketing strategy.

So let me ask you this. This man, was supposed to atone for all of our sins, was perfect right? Not to much mention in the Christian text on JC's mess ups right? Why does the Torah mention Moshe's and Avrahams and Aharon's mistakes?

To show that they're human, and humans by definition are fallible. They way we can learn from them. How do the Christians learn?

Lets say that a man kills 100 people. He gets to go to Heaven for being "saved" while the little Jew in Israel, is sent to Hell?

Logic, man.

Anyways, not to knock Christians out there, there are some great Christians who are friends to the Jewish people and to Israel, but the point is don't try to missionize us. We're happy to accept your support, but with no strings attached. My mom's family is Christians, some of them are in this group of friends, while the other is in the group of, "We need to be saved." (I have noticed that these conversations start after I leave the room, but...

Anyways, next I want to write about how frum Jews don't use the name of G-d in their daily speech like the Christians do. But that's for a different post.

Ann Coulter off her Rocker!

Now she's done it! Made her feelings come out. Ann Coulter thinks that Jews should convert to Christianity! Look bimbo, this "Fast-track program" religion left out some very important things. Like for instance G-d, many times, says that the Jewish people are an eternal nation who he will never break his covenant with.
Anyways, its late, fast foward to 1:20, that's when it really starts to get good!

Please Remove Me from your email list

Whew! I didn't even realize it, we've past post #100!

I wrote about a month ago on this guy in my shul who didn't like the Good Shabbos messages I sent out in my email notifying that the shul newsletter for the week had been posted online. I decided to not respond to his email and the next week I sent an email specifically with him in mind, with a Bracha that we should notice the blessings that we get every single day.

He then sent me an email asking for me to remove him from the shul mailing list. I very politely sent him an email telling how to do it himself.

My question is why didn't he just go to the shul website and unsibscribe from the mailing list himself? Well it's quite simple really, he wanted to me to know how much he was upset by this. In reality I don't care. He has an issue (this has not been the first time he and I haven't seen eye to eye on certain issues) and he has to work on it, I asked a Rabbi if there was anything else I could of done, and I can't see any.

But I'm not here to talk about that, I'm here to talk about Pastor Joel Hunter and Jeremy Gimpel.
For those of you who don't know, one of the people I really look up to is Jeremy Gimpel. He is doing something for the Jewish people that, as far as I know, no one else in the Jewish world is doing, he's reaching out to the Christians.
Most of use Jews when we hear the word 'Christian,' we immediately go on the defensive, because of our experience with missionaries. Jeremy is reaching out to all of the other Christians and he sees them not as enemies, but as allies in the war against radical Islam.

Anyways, Pastor Joel Hunter is a pastor in a Church in Orlando FL, and he has Jeremy and his partner Ari Abramowitz, up in arms.
Why?
Pastor Hunter is an advocate for a Palestinian State.

Read previous posts on my blog to see my stance on that, but what's really shocking is that he's doing it in a rather cowardly way. He didn't tell anyone in his congregation about it, he wouldn't go on Ari & Jeremy's show, and . . . Well that's a whole other paragraph.

Mr. Hunter finally agreed to do a debate with Jeremy, on his own terms. . .on NPR.
NPR wasn't able to host the debate, so Hunter then chose the BBC.

Now both of the above radio stations have a bias against Israel, and it showed when the debate between Hunter and Jeremy took place.

I'll admit that I have not heard the debate, and that's because the BBC didn't release it. They didn't even release it to Jeremy like they promised. Instead they aired a condensed version of it which consisted of Hunter talking for 4 minutes, and Jeremy getting in about 15 words before the cut him off in the editing.

Fine, balanced journalism.

Anyways, what does this have to do with the above story?

I found a blog called Tzemach, on which they had an interview with Jeremy. It is a Christian website, and when scrolling down to look at the comments, this is the first one I found:

Shmuel

The cornerstone is Jesus, not the Tanak, not the Torah. Old Covenant Israel rejected the Messiah. Your are advocating a dispensational understanding of Israel, which is nonsense. The modern state of Israel was created by Zionists, and Zionism has nothing in common with Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God.

Please remove me from your email list.

Ahh, the magical "Please remove me from your email list."

Anyways these are Christians, so I don't follow anything that they hold religiously, but it is because of the Christians and the United States that we have a State of Israel today (well obviously it's the hand of G-d, but he's using them as his tool), and I can't knock them for that, even it some of them feel that the Jews are 'occupiers,' and 'settlers.'

Rabbi Ken Spiro said the reason that the beginning of the Torah talks about Abraham and the initial dwelling of the Jews in Israel, and not at the first Mitzvah, is for this very reason. To show that we were there first.

So United Nations, Jimmy Carter, Pastor Hunter, and Shmuel. We've got G-d on out side while you have the power of man, and history shows that all men who try to destroy the Jewish people and therefore try to destroy G-d, in the end get destroyed themselves. I encourage you to choose the right side before it's too late.

Shalom

Anti-Israel Rally in Washington

Some insights on today's rally in Washington D.C:

The protesters had amassed themselves right in front on the Capitol, in the large grassy field the started the "mall" towards the Washington Monument.
We started walking past them in search of the pro-Israel group and saw a large stage set up with music playing and a LOT of people.
As we approached we realized that this unfortunately was NOT our group (it was a gay pride rally). We eventually wandered over to the right group.
At first I was kind of disappointed at the turn out for the pro-Israel counter rally. There couldn't have been more then 100 people there, compared to the 300 or 400 on the Capitol lawn.
But then I thought back to the Pro-Israel rally that took place back in 2002 and there, we had close to 10,000 people! I don't think that there is any doubt as to what the majority of America thinks about Israel.

One thing that I did notice was the difference in the signs of both sides. The pro-Israel rally had very straight forward posters like this:

And the Anti-Israel people were holding posters like this:

No offense, but to an outsider the 'Free Palestine" poster doesn't really mean anything. You can say that America should cut off it's support to Israel, but you have to explain why.
Stand With Us the organization that put the Stand with Israel rally together, did a much better job at getting the message across with their posters. A male Arab with the green Hamas bandanna (diaper) on his head, a gun in on hand, and a matching baby in the other hand, I think sends a stronger message, mainly because people already are familiar with the image of Arab terrorists.

Another interesting aspect of the rally that was pointed out to me was the types of people who were leading each one. The Pro-Israel rally was led and run by Christians, and unfortunately not many Jews were there. In fact I'd have to guess that about 60-70% of them were Christians. With numbers like that the "I can do more for Israel in the US, so I can't make Aliyah" argument is bogus. These people aren't turning up the to Israel rallies, so they might as well move to Israel and let the Christians take care of it.
On the other side I would occasionally hear the announcer introduce "So-and-so is a Jew and is against the Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria (OK they said 'occupation,' but I have an issue with that word)
Here a few pictures of the poor Jews who have been brainwashed into hating the country of their forefathers:


There's one picture of the Neturei Karta. The infamous Rabbi Weiss, marching in support of killing Jews.
We actually ran into a member of this (I can't think of strong enough word to describe these masters of the Chillul Hashem, so I'm leaving it blank) group on our way back sitting in front of the Capitol learning Mesechta Beitzah. Sitting in front of the Capitol building learning Gemara, supporting the killing of Jews, what a disgrace to G-d.
This led to a very interesting conversation with this poor hopeless Yid. He just sat there, spewing his propaganda and whenever we raised an issue that he couldn't answer he would tell us that he doesn't speak English very well, only the native tongue of the Jews. Hebrew? No, Yiddish.
He then went on to tell us that Rav Kook was an apikores and that we are part of a small minority of Jews who support the "Tzionim" and Zionist Occupation.
I didn't want to be the one to tell him that he was the one in the minority. He told us that he lives in Williamsburg, and there's a good chance he rarely gets to exit the little world that he's sheltered in.

This picture on the right has an interesting story behind it. Immediately after I took it, an Arab approached me and asked if I'd taken a picture of that sign. I asked why I shouldn't have. Then he said "well take a picture of this," and proceeded to make a very rude hand gesture. There was so much more hate coming from the anti people than the pro people.

The truth is I didn't think that either rally was very effective. The pro-Israel one was very isolated and the only people there were pro-Israel to begin with. The Anti-Israel rally I felt just made noise, and caused some people to shout at each other. A group of people standing around trying to get another group of people to think the way they did.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion (and I was glad to see that the opinion was not as a whole, anti-Israel), but the point of these demonstrations is not to convince the other side to change to your way of thinking. The goal is to educate the "salvageable's," the people who are indifferent to the situation and don't have an opinion either way.
The most successful activism will take Israel's problem and say that this is the prospects problem, or he will be presented with a reason to support Israel because it's "cool." To have one side yelling at the other side will only cause these people to want nothing to do with either side.