Zionist interlude again

The magazine of ICEJ (International Christian Embassy Jerusalem). Advocating that Christians should not try to convert Jews. Nice. Good work, boys. You read about these sorts of ‘Christian’ organisations in works that survey the range of Christian interactions with Judaism, or which look at the competing theologies of the synagogue and church or in survey of Christian Zionism (such as Stephen Sizer’s useful, if diffuse work, Christian Zionism: Roadmap to Armageddon? [IVP, 2004]) but when you actually read this stuff with your own eyes then you really know about it.

Three publications by the ICEJ full of codswallop is enough for me. Great – charitable work aimed at Jewish people across the world and in Israel. Love, service and generosity are not bad things. We might argue that there is greater need elsewhere, such as on the doorstep of those Jewish people in the Arab ghettos, but whatever… However, trying to make a theological and sociological case that Jews don’t need the gospel of Christ is just horrible. Sharing the gospel with Jews is not antisemitism (as the Jewish Chronicle of June 20 reports an inflammatory Rabbi as saying in response to recent Jews for Jesus outreach in London) – not sharing the gospel with someone because they’re Jewish is antisemitism!

Zionism - the gloves are off

Now some might say that picking on a teenage girl because of her beliefs (specifically the belief that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah) is in some roundabout way, I don't know, discriminatory...

From Forward, the Jewish Daily newspaper. If it weren't so nasty, what these rabbis are saying would be funny. The remarkable inconsistency in how they define who is a Jew is bursting out from between almost every line of their texts. Buddhists with a Jewish mother - fine. Atheists with a Jewish mother - fine. Someone who dares to interpret the Torah in a different way from the rabbis, even if they have two Jewish parents and were born in Israel - sorry. You're not a 'Jew', certainly not for the purposes of participating in public life and supposedly shared cultural activities. How patriotic an Israeli citizen are you? - who cares?

How these people are not deeply ashamed of themselves is beyond me. Were the followers of Bar-Kochba considered not-Jewish because of their erroneous belief that he was the Messiah? Oh, they're all dead. How convenient. What about the followers of Sabbati Zevi? Were they 'Jews', or what?

Here are some of my embryonic thoughts on the religious definition of Jewishness.

It seems that the Zionist rabbis are very happy to play with a 'blood' definition of Jewishness, a 'cultural' definition and a 'religious' definition and are quite happy to play them off against each other when a young girl offends them by knowing a lot about the Bible and daring to appear in public.

Arab right to return?

Something biased to make you think.

The largest banner ads around the article are for the dating agency www.singlemuslimcom. Is that ironic, or what?