Christian prayer service in Jerusalem (file)
Christian prayer service in Jerusalem (file)Flash 90

Following a large-scale baptism ceremony in Raanana this past Sabbath, missionaries are now set to hold a major event in Jerusalem on the upcoming Feast of Weeks (Shavuot) holiday.

The event will be a four-day extravaganza in the newly-built Orna Hall in the Malha complex in southern Jerusalem. The giant hall seats 11,600 spectators, and the convention will be open to the public, free of charge.

The theme of the event: How to improve the dissemination of the missionary message among Jews. So reports the anti-assimilation group Yad L'Achim.

Just last week, thousands of citizens in Raanana felt they had been dealt a stinging defeat when a District Court overturned a lower-court ruling and allowed a baptism ceremony to take place in a municipal hall on the Sabbath day. Thousands of Jewish worshipers held prayer services outside the building in protest of the event.

Yad L'Achim expresses deep concern that the "appetite" of the missionaries appears now to know no bounds, in light of the developments in Raanana. Two websites have been established in honor of the four-day Malcha affair, and the organizers have already ordered hundreds of Jerusalem hotel rooms for the Shavuot holiday and the days preceding it.

Among the prominent missionary leaders scheduled to take part, according to Yad L'Achim, are Avi Mizrachi of a missionary congregation in Tel Aviv, Avner Bursky, Shira Sorko Ram of Tiferet Yeshua and Maoz Israel, Koby Ferguson, and others.

A letter has been sent to the directors of Orna Hall, warning that the event scheduled there will be used to enhance and improve missionary efforts among Israeli Jews. Knesset Members and others have already begun efforts to have the event canceled.

"If, Heaven forbid, our legitimate efforts to cancel the event will fail," Yad L'Achim announced, "we do not negate the option of organizing public protests against the Orna complex, with all that the entails on the public level."