So-called Messianics target Russians and others in Germany, and a Rant on other topics
TO start with, let me say that I hate calling them “messianics.” They’re not messianics (at least no more than Judaism is) they’re Christians. But mainstream Christians don’t for the most part, and especially not in Germany, engage in this kind of evil nasty behavior. So what to call them to distinguish them from real Christians and real Jews? I’m up for suggestions.
Anyway, so the point is reported by JTA, that Jews are being targeted in Germany by these folks, and as usual the vulnerable are, well, vulnerable. Russian immigrants, who are lonely and who don’t know much about Judaism are targets because they don’t feel welcomed by the Jewish community, and they don’t see why they shouldn’t join these communities which seem to treat them well.
As the article comments,
“The answer is to be more attractive than the others,” said Anat Bleiberg, head of the Jewish community of Berlin’s social work office. “Look at Chabad: They make themselves attractive and they get lots of members.”
Stephan Kramer, general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, agrees.
“If Jewish communities are not attractive enough to keep people inside the community, neither a law nor any movement will help,” he said in a recent interview. And if the messianic groups are finding lonely people, “Why are they left alone? Why are the Jewish members of the community not helping each other?”
This is a very good question – and not just in Germany. This problem has been cropping up for quite some time in Israel, where Russians feel discriminated against, where many of them are not halachically Jewish, and no one has been able to get the Orthodox hegemony to work successfully with the other movements to create a program to help them.
But this isn’t just an immigrant problem. In fact, it cuts to the heart. Despite the constant navel gazing about losing numbers (not something that I feel all that worried about personally, given that I think quality is more relevant than quantity, and moreover that quality leads to quantity, but it does seem to be the primary concern of many of our institutions), we just can’t seem to get our act together.
There’s whining about birthrates among Jewish women, but we can’t get our institutions to provide maternity leave; heck, many of them don’t even provide a living wage! There’s moaning about few people coming to services, and what do we do? We focus on the content of the services (either by doing nothing , or getting rid of whatever seems inconvenient at the moment) instead of thinking, “well, maybe there’s nothing wrong with the content; maybe it’s the culture?” Chabad actually does pretty well with this (as noted by the article) – they make sure there are friendly faces at every service, they make sure there are meal invitations, and not just once or twice. There’s tons of other things that could be done too…
I have to admit, I feel tired reading this all the time. We have plenty of money to build Holocaust museums ad nauseum, but where is the money for the day schools outside of the Orthodox community? Where is the money for those who can’t afford the unbeliveable costs of schools, camps, shul memberships, what have you?
What else can I throw into this boiling pot? I could go on, but I won’t; I’m sure readers can help out by filling in the other relevant problems, but I will close with this: When I was in high school, I knew two Jews who came from working class families. I don’t mean middle class. I mean working class. They were friends, we lived not far from one another. One of them, is still Jewish-identified, but doesn’t do anything Jewish. He and his mother never felt welcome in any synagogue, and were too proud to go through all the hoops of proving their need to ask for a handout of free membership and the like. So he doesn’t really know anything much about being Jewish, interestingly, lots of his friends were Jewish in high school, but that never became anything deeper.
The other one, was welcomed very strongly and today strongly identifies as Jewish. Her congregation welcomed her and her mother, never asked them for money, helped them out when they needed it, and they have many close friends there. Oh, yeah, did I mention, they believe in Jesus?
Messianic, Christian, and Meshichist are all the same word, just in different languages.
“”We have plenty of money to build Holocaust museums ad nauseum, but where is the money for the day schools outside of the Orthodox community? Where is the money for those who can’t afford the unbeliveable costs of schools, camps, shul memberships, what have you?”
Nowhere — not when Holocaustism is considered a more important religion than Judaism, which it is. The false and fleeting Mashiach of Tolerance leads to the false Messiah of Jesus.
Holocaustians should revel in their gains over Judaism and the Torah. They have done well, and gain ground every year. They are dear allies of the “Messiahnist” community.
Thanks so much for this post! I’ve been reading Jewschool for a few months now, and this is the first thing I’ve read that really hit home. I grew up in a working-class family of heavily assimilated Jews. How can those of us who don’t feel welcome start dealing with this issue? Should we bring it up in our synagogues? What if we’re unaffiliated? Should we start our own groups? I’m interested in hearing what people have to say about this.
“but where is the money for the day schools outside of the Orthodox community?”
I guess where there is a will there is a way (and money).
I grew up in a working-class family of heavily assimilated Jews. How can those of us who don’t feel welcome start dealing with this issue? Should we bring it up in our synagogues? What if we’re unaffiliated? Should we start our own groups?
I think that we shold be talking about this. Certainly we should be discussing it as a community. If you’re in a synagogue, give a dvar, if you’re not, I don’t know that I would recommend starting your own group (or if you do, at least do as a supplement, not instead of) IMO, the institutional community does have education to offer, but it’s hard to access. There are shuls that will support you, but it’s a hell of a grind to find them; more importantly, few of the jews with money and power ever stop to think how humiliating it is to provide documentation of your lack of money so that you can qualify for scholarships, reduced rates, etc.
Most especially, I find myself irritated as heck at synagogues targeting “Young Professionals.” Partially it just shows how incredibly out of touch the synagogues are, especially with the economy being what it is, it’s very likely the population that can afford the kinds of things most synagogues currently take for granted as expenses is going to drop radically. But mostly it irritates me simply because as my mentor pointed out when I was interning with him, not all Jews are professionals, and we need to include those who aren’t – and not in a way that makes them feel like an afterthought, or not good enough. The message is”if you won’t have money, we don’t want you. (Of course, it’s okay to not have money now, but you will in the future, and we want to cultivate you).”
Given how short a time it has been since most of our families came to this country nd scrabbled to make it up the ladder, it’s a bushah (embarrassment) that our community thinks this way.
What can we do? Well, for one, try not to be embarrasseed. Ask for breaks, and refuse to be intimidated. I find that often people are very happy to help out, they just never thought of other Jews as needing that kind of help. It really just doesn’t occur to people.
Second, speak up. Not just in private. Swallow your embarrassment aand tell people that you’re out there, so we can stop with this stupid, “all Jews have money” nonsense.
Third, yeah, okay, forget what I said a above. Start a group, Just make sure that as you start the group, you also provide some way for its memberrs to connect to a community where someone knowledgeable can help those who aren’t to connected to tradition in a deep way. For two reasons: 1. beause it’s good for Jews to be Jewish, and 2. because it’s also a tool. If you go into a shul office and you’re a really knowledgeable Jew who has no money, that’s tool to prove yourself. It’s nasty that one has to do this. but we still have a long row to hoe.
And finally, if you want, you can contact me, and if I know someone in your area who I think will help you out, I’ll send you there.
We should also note that most – practically all – shuls in continental Europe are Orthodox. What does that teach us?
“We should also note that most – practically all – shuls in continental Europe are Orthodox. What does that teach us? ”
Don’t worry, the temples belong to reform.
I live in Jerusalem now, but when I moved to Baltimore, the shteeble I belonged to did not once ask me for money. It was only years after the rabbi there finished my process of geirus (I was raised Reform, and my mother converted after I was born) that I realized that it was outside of the norm that he didn’t charge me. He performed my wedding as well. All of this was at no cost. My wife and I were invited to the expensive fund-raiser shul banquet for free by the shul president. These things were the norm.
The shul didn’t spend obscene amounts of money on a huge building or expensive programming. There was only one Rabbi, and he made a modest living. His wife worked to provide additional income. If anyone needed, they were provided for, and members of the shul who had money provided it whenever it was needed.
Contrasting this chassidishe shteeble with the Reform synagogue I grew up in or the two Conservative synagogues in which I have worked with youth is, well, striking. I won’t go in to details… we all know the phenomenon I’m describing.
This was certainly my experience, leaving the synagogue at 7 years old because my parents couldn’t afford the dues in the area we were living. They began to resent it and moved farther and farter away from their Jewish heritage to the point where they blew out my Hannukah candles when I decided later on to return to the community.
I had to work incredibly hard to get back into the Jewish world after growing up outside of it. I still have a hard time navagating through it and don’t have the same stories of Hebrew school angst to share with the rest of the community. Nobody really reached out to help me through the process, and 3 rabbis even ignored my pleas after meeting with them and asking for help.
Thank Hashem for the Havurah movement or I wouldn’t have stuck through the process . . .
So what *is* the answer? The biggest problem we make is thinking some big answer is going to come. Change is in the every day and it’s each individual’s responsibility – NOT the institution’s.
I used invite my friends over to make Kosher s’mores. Now we meet every week and talk about something Jewishly oriented that relates to our lives. We started as 4 people now we’re up to 28.
DIY Judaism works. The hardest part is beginning.
I think it’s sad the only reason you have a problem with not helping people in our communities is because they might turn to people you don’t agree with, but clearly treat them better.
Let’s be clear about this: it is simply that you don’t agree with them. They think they are Jewish, and you say your friend strongly identifies as Jewish, so instead to treating them as the worst thing since Hitler, why don’t you make your community better at accepting and helping people, or encourage these messianics to embrace halakha more? Isn’t that better than them converting to Christianity, or becoming completely secular?
I think it’s sad the only reason you have a problem with not helping people in our communities is because they might turn to people you don’t agree with, but clearly treat them better.
I suspect you’re a recent reader – just to be clear; I was using this opportunity as an opening for a rant, but the apostasy of these false jews (or the fact that they never were Jews at all in any way) is not the problem I’m addressing – my point is that I think this is a problem in general, and because it’s a problem, another side effect is leaving Jews vulnerable to this sort of thing – but it isn’t because they are turning to this false thing that I am enraged, rather, because the situation exists at all.
It’s ridiculous that one has to fight one’s way upstream to get into a shul; it’s astonishing that in many many shuls, showing up isn’t a trigger for the community to come over and welcome you (partly this is an effect of the fact that in many liberal congregations, people don’t know outside of a core group who else goes to their shul because many people don’t come all that often, and it’s embarrassing to ask someone who has been a member for 20 years if they’re new- and it often invites anger… take it from a rabbi who has done this in a really large shul where she was trying to be welcoming. Oy, what a mess); it’s horrible that in any given shul you can’t simply expect to get an invitation to a meal by walking in the door; and it’s beyond belief that Judaism costs what it does. Between dues (which I understand the many and varied costs that dues go to support: not just salaries -hopefully at a living wage- of janitors, administrators, cantors, rabbis; making sure the lights and heat work, running the mikveh, providing food, and scholarships to people for camp for their kids, and so on) for synagogues, the cost of day school, camp, – let’s say that is just the base, and there’s no big party for the bar or bat mitzvah, we’re still talking a yearly hefty chunk of money per family.
but it seems to me that there’s a lot of money inthe Jewish community being used for ridiculous purposes which could better go to offset some of these costs ( for example, why not have the Federations or what have you, support the seminaries so that rabbis getting out can take smaller salaries. And it would also e a great idea to have us less dedicated to large buildings (which in addition to being white elephants that are hard to get rid of once the community moves away, are also expensive to heat and cool) with lots of memorial plaques.
But the truth is, all of this is secondary to what’s really needed, which is a sense of menschlikheit- why aren’t people in shuls going up to every strange face they see and chatting and giving out invitations? Why should families go home alone after shul ever? Where is the Jewish value of shabbat guests that used to be so primary. This doesn’t cost anything, and yet so few places are doing it. I won’t say none – I myself go to a small Conservative shul that does.
It just seems that we’ve gotten used to throwing money at a problem rather than actually attempting to address what the problem is.
There are so many programs out there attempting to address the slippage, and yet, none of these programs are going to work, because they’re all about spin, instead of about teaching our people the value of human contact. It’s not all that hard, but our leaders should be insisting on this, rather than on yet another “Young Professionals” program.
HOw is it that as Jews, we can’t remember that honoring God means to honor our fellow jew as well? And that that requires some obligation on our part to act?
Thank you for clarifying. I’m actually not a recent reader at all, but I have not been reading as thoroughly of late. I agree with your sentiments above whole-heartedly.
Here you can find some information on efforts to combat Jewish evangelism in German and English:
http://www.solutix.de / http://blog.jewish-dating.de/category/judenmission/
an in english:
http://www.jewsforjudaism.org