Matthew M. Hausman is a trial attorney and writer who lives and works in Connecticut. A former journalist, Mr. Hausman continues to write on a variety of topics, including science, health and medicine, Jewish issues and foreign affairs, and has been a legal affairs columnist for a number of publications.
Since the start of the war with Hamas on October 7th, evangelical Christians have been vocal in professing their love for the Jewish state. But this love may come at a price as some covertly seek to corrupt the Jewish spirit. Surreptitious missionaries are exploiting Israel’s growing isolation to infiltrate Jewish life, ingratiate themselves to agencies and institutions, and pledge their enduring friendship – all while harboring a conversionary agenda aimed at divorcing Jews from the faith of their ancestors. To this end, many are volunteering on farms where they furtively seek to “witness” to Israelis, or befriending IDF soldiers in the hope of exposing them to Christian scripture.
And they often target those who are lonely or poorly versed in Torah.
The sad fact is that many secular Israelis, like their nonobservant American cousins, do not know their own scripture well enough to parry missionary propaganda. Still others understand the incongruity between Christian and Jewish beliefs but feel they must accept assistance from any source in a world that increasingly despises Jews and Israel and at a time when support from secular and nontraditional Jewish sources is compromised by partisan division.
Israel’s global isolation combined with critical educational deficiencies outside the Orthodox world have created an opening for missionaries to lob spiritual missiles from within the Jewish state while Hamas and Hezbollah shoot ballistic missiles from without. They are also targeting Jews outside Israel by pledging solidarity against the rising tide of antisemitism, often masking conversionary intentions.
Though there are many fine Christians who support Israel without ulterior motives (e.g., those unafraid to learn Tanakh and acknowledge their own scriptural fallibility), they can be difficult to distinguish from those offering friendship merely to gain access. Given Christendom’s history of antisemitic persecution and conversionary excess, it is reasonable to question the motivations of those who profess love for Jews and Israel. And because the Christian past evokes memories of forced baptisms, ghettos, crusades, inquisitions, and genocide – and with today’s evangelical churches spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually to missionize Jews directly or through “messianic Judaism” – Christians bear the burden to prove their sincerity.
Jews need not become experts in Christian scripture to recognize missionary deception, but they should be aware of the template set forth by Paul in the Book of Corinthians regarding evangelism through dissimulation:
“To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law…so as to win those not having the law…To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some…” (1 Corinthians 9:20-23.)
In fact, dissimulation is the foundation of friendship evangelism, whereby missionaries ingratiate themselves by proclaiming affinity with Jews, though fundamental Christian beliefs (e.g., that a divine messiah died to expiate the sins of man, G-d is divisible, and Torah law is obsolete) are found nowhere in Tanakh and are antithetical to it. Nonetheless, evangelical subterfuge can be effective against nonobservant Jews unfamiliar with their own scripture when presented as “Judeo-Christian” tradition and not only to imply common core values.
Beyond some similar moral principles, however, there is little if any doctrinal commonality.
Christians and Jews may share a commitment to assisting the poor, for example, but their foundational values and beliefs are disparate. Those who claim a shared heritage must ignore fundamental inconsistencies between Judaism and Christianity when declaring that we all believe in the same bible (we do not) or that Christians differ only in their belief that the messiah has already come. Such platitudes are false and serve only to highlight our differences.
When Christians use the word “messiah,” for example, their meaning differs from Tanakh. They believe the messiah is divine and his function is to die as a sacrifice to redeem mankind from sin. This belief may be consistent with pagan concepts like the apotheosis of man, vicarious atonement, and human sacrifice, but it conflicts with Tanakh’s definition of Mashiach as a mortal, national savior of the Jewish people.
According to Tanakh, he will reign during the ingathering of exiles in an era of peace when the Temple will be rebuilt, idolatry will be abolished, and all nations will recognize Hashem. His coming will be preceded by repentance (regarding which only G-d can grant atonement) and he will reestablish the Davidic dynasty as a descendant of King David through Shlomo his son. As king, he must come from the tribe of Yehudah – and because tribal affiliation passes down patrilineally according to Torah law, claims of “virgin birth” would preclude eligibility.
Nor do we believe in the same canon. The Hebrew Bible consists of the Torah, Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). It does not include Christian scripture; and while Christians embrace the “Old Testament” (a term implying supersessionism), they have mistranslated and manipulated it so profoundly that it does not truly reflect Tanakh – though they paradoxically concede the divinity of the Hebrew original. Moreover, in altering original text through ignorance, artifice, or malice, the Gospel writers violated G-d’s commandment against changing His words: “Do not add to the word which I command you, nor diminish from it, to observe the commandments of the Lord your G-d which I command you.” (Devarim (Deuteronomy), 4:2.)
Jews need not have a thorough grasp of Christian scripture to understand this, but they must learn their own to recognize missionary hype. They should also realize that not all Christians have conversionary goals; many are well-meaning but simply ignorant of Hebrew scripture.
Regardless of intentions, however, many persist in preaching commonality through shared “Judeo-Christian” values, as illustrated by Christian efforts to enlist American Jewish support to enshrine the Ten Commandments in public buildings. The Jewish response tends to be ambivalent.
Indeed, the question many Jews ask when solicited is, “whose Ten Commandments?” The version in the Christian “Old Testament” differs from that found in Torah, which Jews refer to as the “Aseret Ha-Diberot” (ten utterances) or “Aseret Ha-Devarim” (ten statements) as it contains or references more than ten individual obligations. Remembering the “sabbath day” and “making it holy,” for example, are distinct obligations within the same (fourth) statement. Moreover, the phrase “zachor et yom ha-shabbat” (“remember the Sabbath day”), refers specifically to the seventh day of the week, not Sunday (yom rishon), Friday (yom shishi), or some nonspecific “Lord’s day.”
And the first statement (“I am the Lord your G-d Who brought you out of Egypt...”) is not a commandment at all, but rather a charge to the Jewish people directly, begging the question of whether the statements that follow are insular, universal, or a combination.
There are other differences that give Jews pause, for example, those regarding the sixth commandment, which prohibits murder, not killing; and the eighth, which refers to the theft of people (i.e., kidnapping), not petty larceny.
Perhaps most problematic for Christians is the second statement, which states: “lo yihyeh lecha elokim acheirim al-panai…” (“You shall not have the gods [or divinities] of others upon My presence”). The significance here is that Hashem cannot be divided into multiple entities, personalities, or manifestations, which makes the concept of a trinity highly problematic. Further, it renders idolatrous the concept of a duality wherein G-d rules Heaven and Satan rules earth. Such ideas are antithetical to Torah and found nowhere in Tanakh.
Observant Jews are ambivalent about the Christian obsession with the Ten Commandments because it misconstrues Hebrew text and implies similitude between faith traditions that are incompatible. Furthermore, educated Jews balk at enshrining passages from the Christian “Old Testament” that do not comport with the Hebrew original. Though some Jews may embrace a symbol they consider cross-cultural, it cannot be divorced from its meaning in Hebrew scripture.
Unfortunately, however, not all observant Jews are immune from missionary cajolery. I have a friend who was learning in Kollel and teaching in yeshiva, who nevertheless accepted a free trip to Israel from a Christian group that proved to be missionary. He took the trip regardless, confident in his ability to debate if necessary – even though the underlying purpose in hosting observant Jews was to project a disarming image to secular Jews whom the organization was actually targeting for evangelization.
He should have known better.
Though many Christians are sincere, there are wolves in sheep’s clothing who justify our suspicion and warrant intervention by the government in Israel and institutional establishment in Diaspora. The problem is spiritually existential, and ignoring it constitutes an abdication of communal responsibility.