Menachem Mendel

There have been a number of interesting postings on Jewish-Gentile relations, conversion, etc. First Iyov points us to an article in which a writer describes their eventual conversion to Judaism. The article is worth the read. A few comments about the article. First, an article like this can be used as anecdotal proof by those who say that intermarriage doesn’t have to be so bad for the Jewish community, look at how it has the potential for adding committed Jews to the world. Second, just as many Jews can admire this person’s decision to adopt Judaism as their religion, there are also Jews who have decided upon the reverse, leaving Judaism for another religion. They are not doing this in order to find acceptance in the larger society, but rather because they find meaning, community, etc., in another religion. No matter how tragic an event I may see this as, in the free market of religion and ideas, movement in both directions is going to happen. See the recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Another interesting post is by John F. Hobbins at Ancient Hebrew Poetry, on Evangelizing the Jews. I think that this is one of the areas in which Jews will always feel uncomfortable about Christianity and Christians, for many of the latter, Jews in the end should still accept Christ. Whether one says that this should be done through peaceful, non-judgemental, or however you want to describe it, means, it doesn’t deny the fact that Jews living as Jews somehow isn’t good enough in their eyes. There clearly have been missionizing streams of thought in Jewish history, but I think that it is safe to say that today, there are hardly any Jews who are contemplating how to get non-Jews to convert to Judaism. Personally, I do feel great pride when I meet a convert to Judaism who has really made that leap and become part of Judaism and the Jewish people, but I don’t really think about how to increase that number (the case of intermarriage being the exception). Lastly, for those who hasn’t already found enough reasons to dislike Jimmy Carter, IsraellyCool has posted about a series of talks on the Bible in which Jimmy Carter says a few pearls of widsom such as the following,

. . . the religious leaders of that day, primarily the Pharisees and others because Christ’s new description of God was so absolutely and diametrically contrary to the approach to religion espoused by the religious leaders of that time. They had degenerated in their description of a covenant between God and the Chosen People into a dry analysis of individual scripture verses, and they had developed more than 600 little detailed orders and commands and rules and regulations that a good person should have to follow in order to be reconciled with or compatible with God Almighty and that was the totality of their faith.

You can see more quotes here. While years ago I was never one to put much faith in what was written in the Jewish Press, maybe the days of the Messiah are around the corner.

Posted on March 3rd, 2008 under Jewish-Gentile Relations • RSS 2.0 feed • You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed