Opinion & Comment
American Jews Upset at a Mainstream American Christian Group

The Presbyterian Church (USA) took the unprecedented step of launching a new congregation -- for Jews.

The house of worship, in a suburb of Philadelphia, mixes Torah readings and Jewish symbols with what one might delicately call Christian content.

Its first services were held on the Yomim Nora'im.

While blatantly proselytizing groups like "Jews for J" have long operated on the fringes of the Christian community, the new effort in Philadelphia is the first "Jewish-Christian" congregation to be founded under the auspices of a respected mainstream church.

It is funded by the local presbyter, the Pennsylvania Synod and the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

The group's Jewish-born spiritual leader, Andrew Sparks, insists that "we're not engaged in conversionary tactics or proselytization."

That may well be the case, but the very raison d'etre of a "messianic" congregation is to provide a place where Jews can feel comfortable embracing Christianity's essence while cuddling some trappings of their ancestral faith.

In fact, to help maintain that comfort, the new church's baptismal font (which might remind some more educated worshippers of the forced conversions of Jews throughout Christian history) is concealed during services, and crosses are pointedly not displayed.

All in the service of the proposition that Judaism and Christianity can somehow be happily married.

They, however, cannot.

The concept of a moshiach, a herald of an era when all the world's nations will live in peace and recognition of Hakodosh Boruch Hu and His chosen nation, is of course quintessentially Jewish. But the Jewish moshiach is decidedly mortal, and he has not yet arrived (even once).

Nor, in Judaism's worldview, is it conceivable that the moshiach, when he does reveal himself, will abrogate the laws of the Torah -- even in an effort to "fulfill" them.

The Presbyterian-funded Jewish-Christian congregation demands Jews' attention.

Because it might well prove a harbinger of more such "Jewish options" to come, and because there is simply no effective way, in a free country like ours, to prevent the phenomenon's spread.

What American Jews do have, though, is the ability to inoculate themselves and their children against it.

The vaccine is Jewish knowledge:

Knowledge of what moshiach is and what he is not, knowledge of what mitzvos mean and what they do not, knowledge of the Torah's immutability, and of much, much else.

At a time when it is all too common even in the Jewish world for the Torah's laws to be "reinterpreted" to suit the Zeitgeist -- when hallowed prayers are bowdlerized, Shabbos observance is radically redefined and acts the Torah condemns in no uncertain terms are embraced as mere "alternate lifestyles" -- it might discomfit some American Jews to confront the fact that what makes Judaism different is its unwavering belief that Hashem does not change His mind, and that His laws for the people He freed from bondage are eternal and unchanging.

That, though, is precisely the essence of the Jewish faith, and the reason why Christianity at its advent was rejected by the Jewish religious leaders of the time, and why, although it began as a Jewish movement itself, the Christian faith soon enough was drawing its support and adherents from the pagan, not the Jewish, world.

American Jews should realize, moreover, that Jewish knowledge is the vaccine against intermarriage too.

The recent National Jewish Population Survey 2000, which reported the current intermarriage rate as 47% (even higher, if a broader definition of "Jew" is used), analyzed the relevant statistics and concluded: "Marriage to a non-Jew is rare among those who attended a Jewish day school or yeshiva... In short, the more intensive the Jewish schooling, the lower the rate of intermarriage."

Part of the reason for that fact may well lie in the sort of families that opt for intensive Jewish education in the first place.

But there can be little doubt that the education itself is a major factor.

It's a simple and time-honored truism: Jewish knowledge is a powerful preservative of Jewish identity, Jewish pride, Jewish expression and Jewish belief.

Rare indeed (if one exists at all) is the Jewish man or woman schooled in Jewish beliefs, texts and tradition who will adopt Christian religious customs, or intermarry, or join a Jewish Christian congregation.

And so while American Jews who are anguished by those tragic signs of assimilation prepare to take their yearly flu shots, they might well ponder a different vaccine, the vital Jewish one, and just how they might obtain it and make it more widely available to others.

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