As the world turns – it always does – things change. There is a room down the hall that has been always been available for the Rabbi and Cantor to use when we’ve had services here at RCC. Over the years it’s been many things: a nurse’s office, a food pantry, the office of someone who works here. This year things have changed. The room has a new function. The sign over the door says “Christian Fellowship.”

That’s fine. But what’s not fine with me is a poster standing against one wall that has a quotation from the Christian scriptures:

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free

There is neither male nor female

For you are all one in Christ Jesus. [Galatians 3:28] 

Did you get that? Nothing and no one counts or even exists outside of those who accept Jesus of Nazareth as their Messiah.

We are under attack!– We Jews in the US have come under attack. The attack is spiritual, not physical. The weapons are Bibles, not bullets. We are hopelessly outnumbered and probably always will be. It’s a war we can’t win, but one we can survive.

The religious world-view of Evangelical Christianity is intruding daily into more and more aspects of American life. The President, the most recent Supreme Court nominee and God knows how many others claim to be born again Christians. The New York Times showed a picture of a couple holding hands with the loan officer at a “Christian” bank, praying together “in the name of Jesus” that their transaction be successful. Would you be comfortable banking there? The wall of separation between church and state that has been crucial to our security as Jews in the US is eroding daily.

Even so, it would seem that in pluralist America things could still be OK. We Jews could have our beliefs, the Christians theirs. We have no trouble with that. One of the things I am proudest of in Jewish tradition is a Talmudic dictum that reads Kol tzidkei umot ha’olam, yesh la’hem chelek b’olam habah. In English it means, “All of the righteous of any religion have a place in Heaven.”

But the Evangelicals are taught that only those who believe in Jesus are worthy of heaven. The rest of us? Well… Even that would be OK. They can believe what they want. But part of evangelical belief, in fact the very meaning of the word, is to get others to believe as you do.

In the Book of Matthew (Did you ever think you’d hear your Rabbi quoting from the Christian scriptures, and on Yom Kippur, yet?) there is a passage that is known among Christians as “The Great Commission”:

18 Jesus came to [the Disciples] and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you…” [Matthew 8:16-20] 

This is serious stuff. If you’re a believer the very source of your belief, your Bible, commands you to get “all nations” -- everyone – to accept Jesus of Nazareth as their savior. It is even more serious when you realize that in the United States and Canada evangelicals make up both the largest and the most active group of Christians (surpassing both Roman Catholics and non-Evangelical Protestant groups).

Their closest allies are the Pentecostals,

… who have become the fastest growing segment of Christianity. “It is growing at a rate of 13 million a year, or 35,000 a day. With nearly a half billion adherents, it is, after Roman Catholicism, the largest Christian tradition.” In addition, the largest church in the world (the Yoi Do Full Gospel Church) is a Pentecostal church in Korea, pastored by David Yonggi Cho, with a weekly worship attendance of 240,000. Two Pentecostal Churches in Buenos Aires attract together 150,000 each week [!] [Christian History, “The Rise of Pentecostalism,” issue no. 58, vol. XVII no. 2, p.3]

As my grandmother would say, “Du herst?” Are you listening? Do you hear those numbers? There are currently, counting generously, about thirteen million Jews in the whole world. That’s as many people as join the Pentecostals in one year! These groups are evangelizing, proselytizing on college campuses, in supermarkets, on radio and television, everywhere. They have missions to everyone, especially us. The Messianic Christian Directory lists 165 missionary organizations targeting Jews!

I’ve been approached, as have many of you, a number of times:

During my first year of Rabbinical school I went for a medical exam to a doctor I’d never used before. In the middle of the exam he said to me: “Why don’t you Jews believe in Jesus?” I think it must have been the Almighty who inspired me to respond: “I never discuss theology unless I’m fully clothed.”

Why don’t we Jews believe in Jesus? Actually, we do. We believe that there was such a man, from the town of Nazareth, fully human, and born of two mortal parents in the same way we all are. We believe that the account of the crucifixion is at least largely true and that it was the Romans, not the Jews, who executed him as a political threat. That’s what one of my professors, Dr. Samuel Sandmel, used to call the Jewish Jesus.

But the virgin birth, the miracles, the resurrection, the Son of God, the Messiah? No. That we don’t believe. We do not believe that he, or anyone, was the Messiah, the anointed one, Mashiach in Hebrew, Kristos in Greek, Christ in Latin and then English. That’s what Dr. Sandmel referred to as the Christian Christ, and that’s the one we Jews don’t believe in at all.

Why don’t we? The period in which Jesus lived was especially horrific. It was so bad that people thought the world was coming to an end. But after Jesus’ death you had only to look around to see that even though the Messiah had supposedly been here, nothing had happened. The pain and suffering continued unchanged.

This might have been the death knell of Christianity. It’s central doctrine discredited, it could have ended right then and there. But almost immediately, the problem was solved with a stroke of genius of which I am in awe. No, the followers of Jesus said, Jesus had come a first time to teach that there was a Messiah and that people should believe in him. When certain conditions had been fulfilled, Jesus would come to earth a second time. At this Second Coming believers would be forgiven all their sins and be transported to eternal bliss in heaven while non-believers would be condemned to eternal damnation and suffering. Absolutely amazing! What could have been Christianity’s greatest liability became its greatest asset, perhaps the greatest example of all time of making lemonade when the world hands you lemons.

We Jews, of course, didn’t believe that Jesus was coming back any more than we believed he’d been here a first time. The Second Coming was not part of Judaism. We parted company with what was starting to be a separate religion going its own way.

That’s the problem we’re facing, the attack, if you will. The Evangelicals believe that Jesus won’t come back until certain conditions are fulfilled. One of the main ones seems to be trying to convert everyone else. Jesus will return when the whole world believes in him as the messiah.

Traditional Judaism taught that the Messiah would come, a first and only time, when God decided he should come. The difference between the two systems is that we don’t think the whole world has to be Jewish for this to happen. We don’t want Christians to be good Jews. We want them to be good Christians.

The Evangelical world-view may be called “triumphalist,” which is the pernicious doctrine that my religion is the only right one, far better than yours which, being totally wrong, shouldn’t really exist. That’s where it gets dangerous for all non-evangelicals, like us. Right after 9/11 that theological genius and ace Evangelical telemarketer Jerry Falwell explained:

“I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, You helped this happen.” [John F. Harris Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, September 14, 2001; Page C03]

The standard disclaimer for this kind of garbage is to say that the remarks were taken out of context. Nonsense. This man and too many like him are bigots, dangerous bigots plain and simple. Millions of people listen to them and send millions of dollars to them and that’s even more dangerous. Let me be very clear. I have the greatest respect for Christianity. What I don’t respect, will not respect and will scream and fight about is any religion that demands that I share its beliefs.

What would you say to a Christian evangelist who asks you why you don’t believe in Jesus? Don’t worry. You won’t convince them. You won’t be able to cite Biblical chapter and verse to refute their citations, and even if you could, it wouldn’t make any difference. You won’t change their mind. You won’t convert them even to an understanding that religions that don’t believe in Jesus are also legitimate.

But when they walk away, what will we say to ourselves? Will we have an answer, any kind of answer? The issue is not what someone who believes in Jesus thinks of us, even someone who feels it is their religious duty to convert us. The issue is what we think – not of them, but of ourselves. Can you come up with an answer as to why you believe in Judaism and not in another religion that satisfies you? Do you know what to tell your children when a classmate tells them they are going to roast in hell because they don’t believe in Jesus?

As we have done so many times throughout our history, we will survive, our Judaism will survive, only if we make a conscious decision to make that happen. Let me suggest a bare minimum. All theology and rhetoric aside, our first answer to ourselves and our children must be that Judaism will not end a four thousand year journey with us. At the very least, our answer must be that we will transmit our heritage, who we are and what we are, at least one more generation. If you can’t do it yourself – and most of us can’t – then you need to belong to and support something, like your Temple, that can.

I’ll leave you with one example of people who did just that: the Jews who fought to be Jewish and to escape what was then the Soviet Union: 

Leon Uris, whose novel Exodus had an extraordinary effect on untold thousands of Soviet Jews, stirring their deepest Jewish feelings…visited the Soviet Union…

It was on Simchat Torah. About twenty thousand people were in the street outside the synagogue, and thousands more sat inside getting ready for prayer.

Uris made his way toward his seat near the bimah…Then someone rushed up to the microphone and announced that Leon Uris was in the synagogue. A gasp of silence… followed by wild cheering. Uris was asked to carry a Torah around the synagogue, but… felt so overwhelmed by the reaction that he declined the offer.

He was at the moment sitting next to [a man named] Joe Smukler and his wife Connie, from Philadelphia.

Connie turned to the author and said, “Leon, just because you didn’t write it, doesn’t mean you can’t carry it.”

Uris agreed, and, holding the Torah, he walked into the crowd. [Lawrence J. Epstein, A Treasury of Jewish Inspirational Stories, Jason Aronson, Inc. (Northvale, NJ, 1993), pp. 195-196.] 

No, we didn’t write the Torah. But it is up to us to carry it, even in the face of triumphalist fanaticism and bigotry, at least one more generation. Do it for the sake of all those who came before us, do it for our own sake, do it for the sake of our children and grandchildren and all those who will come after us.

Here is the most crucial New Year’s resolution we can make: Our four thousand year search for a world of peace and dignity for everyone will not come to an end with us!