 If you're confused about Messianic Judaism, well, good news, because I have Rabbi Michael Scoback of Juice for Judaism here to discuss it with me. Welcome, Michael. Thanks. Great to be here with you, Karen. So most people are not familiar with Messianic Judaism, so can you explain the origin of it? It's a little bit complicated, and there are several stages to what we actually have at this time. It really goes back probably to the late 1800s in Russia and then a little bit in England as well. And what you had were Jewish people who had embraced Christianity. They became Christians, but they were finding that the expectation was that they would totally assimilate into a non-Jewish culture. They would have to give up everything about their Jewish identity. And these were people who did not want to do that. They wanted to somehow feel that even though their faith was in the Christian faith, so to speak, meaning they had embraced Christianity, they did not want to feel that they had to give up their Jewish identity. And so this movement originally became known as Hebrew Christianity. And it was at that point originally not very sophisticated. They may have just simply wanted to proclaim that I'm a Jew. I'm a Jew who believes in Jesus. And it did not become a very organized movement. It was quite small. From Europe it moved over to North America and it had very, very modest beginnings. The movement was never large at all. It was quite small until approximately the 1960s where you had the whole cultural revolution in North America and across the world. And you had something called the Jesus movement with basically young people across the world, often from the hippie movement that were finding religion, finding spirituality. And so you had in the 1960s, many Jewish people were drawn into this search for God and it landed them in Christianity. And so you had now in the 60s a large number of young Jews who were modern and sophisticated, and they as well wanted to somehow maintain a Jewish identity. That's the real, I would say, roots of this movement. You had Jewish people who, even though they had embraced Christian faith, wanted somehow, and it was a struggle to maintain a Jewish identity. What happened though at the same time was that you had simultaneous to this or parallel to this, beginning sort of in the 1950s, the explosion of what we call now evangelical Christianity. In the Protestant world you had in the early 1900s and the late 1800s what you called the fundamentalists. And this was sort of a neo-Christian movement that was looking to being more conservative and they felt more traditional. And they were lampooned in movies like Gone with Inherit the Wind. So the fundamentalists, I'm sorry, basically emerged to a great extent into the evangelical movement in the 1950s and 60s, and it has exploded since then. And this is a movement that is focused, almost primarily focused on evangelism obviously, which means sharing your faith, spreading your faith. And they felt that they needed a way into the Jewish world. They felt that the Jewish people were extremely resistant to conversion. They saw that Christianity was spreading widely throughout the entire world to many different ethnic and cultural groups. And they saw that the Jewish people were seemingly impervious to Christianity. And one of the problems is that these groups are driven by what they call an eschatological vision, meaning they are pretty much convinced that the end times are upon them. They believe that the second coming of Jesus is imminent. And one of the problems is that according to many evangelicals, Jesus will not return until the Jewish people accept him. And so there was this pressing need to find a way to reach the Jewish people effectively. And they had seen that for centuries the Jewish people just simply would not convert. The Jewish people would say, look, I was born a Jew. I'm going to die a Jew. I'm not switching teams. And so they felt that this idea of Hebrew Christianity would be an effective way of reaching Jews. And so what happened was in the 1960s and 70s, different church organizations latched on to this technique as a modality for evangelism. They felt that by presenting the gospel, presenting Christianity in trappings that were Jewish, it would be more palatable to Jewish people. And so that's how the movement basically became quite large because it had now the backing of this massive Christian world behind it. And as they began to convert more and more Jews in the 1960s and 70s, these Jews themselves did not want to assimilate into the Gentile churches. That was the original intention of these church groups. They saw Hebrew Christianity as a way station, as basically a jumping off point to which they could then bring Jews into the church. And the Jews that ended up embracing Christianity did not feel they wanted to give up their identity and join churches. And so beginning really in the 1970s, you saw the emergence of a messianic congregational movement. And so in the early 70s, there may have been a handful of what you would call messianic synagogues. And now there are hundreds of them in North America and hundreds throughout other parts of the world. What would you say are the stated goals of messianic Judaism? Is it to convert Jews to Christianity or is it to extend the evangelical brand? Their websites basically don't tell you? Well, again, because the websites are there for two reasons. They're there to sell their product, in which case it's a different message than speaking in-house to their supporters. So basically, you have to understand the theology of evangelicals. They see the world as divided between those who are saved, those who believe in Jesus and are going to be promised an eternity in heaven, and those who do not believe in Jesus and face an eternity in hell. And what drives them primarily is the sense that they have an obligation. If you want to call it an ethical obligation to share their faith. In the same way, if you saw some person drowning in the ocean, you would probably try to jump in and save them. So they see basically a world that is perishing. They see people that are facing eternal damnation. And so the goal is to save people. This is exactly what evangelical Christianity is all about. The heart of the Christian Bible is a verse which many people have heard from the Gospel of John chapter 3, verse 16, which says that God loved the world so much that he gave his only son that he would basically take upon himself the sins of the world and all who would believe in him would have eternal life and not basically the opposite of that, which is eternal damnation. So the goal is essentially to save people and that is by getting them to embrace Jesus. In this situation, do they baptize people in a mikveh? So normative Christian practice is that once a person has accepted Jesus, they seal the deal with baptism. Baptism itself is not the essential part of it. The essential part is for the person to embrace in their heart faith in Jesus. And as a sign that this is what happened, as a sign that the person has been reborn, all Christian groups practice baptism of various degrees. Some will go entirely into water, which is usually the practice among evangelicals. And so they do basically immerse people in a body of water. It could be in a river, it could be in a lake, it could be in a swimming pool. They generally do not use a mikveh. Although many of the, as we'll probably discuss soon, many of the Messianic groups will refer to it as mikveh because it's a euphemistic term. Again, Jews are not usually looking forward to getting baptized. What is the official Messianic Jewish position on someone like yourself? Because not only are you Jewish, you are a rabbi. Well, it's hard to speak about an official Messianic position. They don't have a pope, and there's not one single voice that speaks for all of them. But basically they would see someone like myself, like any other, what they refer to as an unsaved Jew. As a matter of fact, Jews for Jesus, when they speak about Jewish people, they will fill out reports every day about their activities. So they refer to people like myself as a UJ, unsaved Jew. And they don't really distinguish between rabbis and lay people in general. Now, for someone like myself, they usually will look at a little bit differently because the work that I've been doing since really about 1983 has been to counter groups and to help Jewish people that have been affected by groups like this. So they basically will look at me as a particularly nefarious person. They often will tell their members not to speak to me. They'll often call me the devil or the antichrist or Satan because they see me as not just a regular rabbi that runs a congregation. They see someone like myself as being specifically there to oppose what they're doing. A lot of people have probably never even heard of Jews for Jesus or other messianic groups. Others, like myself, have had encounters with them on the street or have been sent mailers. So can you explain what the recruitment process is like? So it's really important to understand that what you've been describing is really the very tip of the iceberg of recruitment and probably the least significant and least effective side of recruitment. And the truth is that Jews for Jesus specifically were masters at using this approach but for reasons that are hard to actually grasp at first. So let me just step back for a few moments. You see, one of the problems that groups like this faced was that for Jewish people, Christianity is not on the menu. It's simply not on the menu. And they found over the years that if they would be speaking with a Jewish person and they might even be able to get that Jewish person interested in Christianity, interested in Jesus, they found that often Jewish people would say, look, but I'm Jewish. And that sort of dot, dot, dot, look, but I'm Jewish and Jews don't believe in Jesus. It's sort of like an axiom, Jews don't believe in Jesus. And one of the things that these groups wanted to accomplish was to make it very clear that, no, that's not true, that there are Jews who do believe in Jesus. And that was the brilliance of this basically public relations effort by groups like Jews for Jesus specifically to crack that assumption. And so by going to the streets and they did this tactic early on in the 60s and late 60s, early 70s, they were very provocative and they would go right into the heart of Jewish communities. And it was alarming to people and there are people who spoke about it. And what they were hoping for was that pretty soon every Jew would know that there is a group called Jews for Jesus. And I think they accomplished that. I think that, and if you think about that, you know, imagine any company that's trying to sell a product and they have the kind of name brand recognition where everyone knows the name of their product. That's pretty successful. And so what they accomplished by doing this, by getting the Jewish community provoked and upset and aggravated and talking about them and focusing on them, was that now every Jew on the planet knows that there are groups like Jews for Jesus, which means that there are Jews who believe in Jesus. And so if you're a Jew living in the middle of nowhere or even the middle of a large city with many Jewish people and you become interested in Christianity, you won't feel like some strange person who's the only person in the world who's doing this. It feels much more comfortable to know that there are others like yourself. That being said, that was one of the reasons I think that taking to the streets and approaching strangers was an effective idea. The other reason is that these are groups that are all trying to raise money for what they do. And while virtually no Jewish people ever respond positively to Christians that approach them on the street for conversion, many Christians will applaud what they're doing and come over to them and say, really, I love you guys and you guys are great. Can I get on your mailing list? And so what they ended up doing by this was not necessarily reaching a lot of Jews in a positive way, but they were able to build up their support base. So the reality is that there have not been many Jewish people who ever really responded positively to someone who approaches them on the street. People are busy. They're going to where they're going. They're rushing. It's intrusive. These people are strangers. And the whole message for many Jewish people is offensive. And so the recruitment process does not work like this. Jews for Jesus themselves did a study years ago where they surveyed 8,000 Jews who did convert to Christianity. And they asked them, how did you make this transition? Meaning what was the path for you to come to Christianity? And again, virtually no one said because someone gave me a pamphlet on the street or because someone knocked on my door. But almost all of them said it was through the influence of a Christian friend, neighbor, or business associate. Meaning that what happens is Jewish people who don't have a profound spiritual Jewish life, meaning Jewish people who may be successful in many other ways and never really connected with their own faith as a spiritual path often have what we refer to as a whole in the soul. And it could be filled in many ways. They may get involved with yoga. They may get involved with new age spiritual practices. They may get involved with some kind of Western form of Buddhism. But many of them would be open to Christianity if they meet Christians who are sincere and loving and kind and spiritual. And so that's really what often happens. It's a Christian friend or neighbor or business associate who begins to talk to them about their faith and gets the Jewish person interested. Now the role that groups like Jews for Jesus play is very important. And this is not well known. If you look at groups like Jews for Jesus, and by the way, there are probably over a thousand of them in North America alone. They're not the only player here. They have a lot of competition. But what they do primarily is not knocking on the doors of strangers or going out on the street and handing out literature. They do a lot of their work in churches. And they will go to churches and they will do programs basically to encourage lay Christians to share their faith with their Jewish friends and neighbors. To train them how to do it, meaning what should you not say to Jewish people? What should you say? They give them training materials. And they help basically recruit and train a sales force, a massive sales force of people who have relationships with Jews. These are not cold calls. These are people that have Jewish friends and neighbors. And they're the ones that actually get the process rolling. Meaning these are the people that might invite a Jewish person to their church for a Bible study. They may actually just meet during lunch to discuss spiritual things with their Jewish friends. But what happens is they'll often hit this roadblock that I mentioned before that the Jewish person may get very interested in Christianity. But they're going to say to their Christian friend, but I'm Jewish and Jews don't believe in Jesus. And at this point, the Christian person could say, well, I happen to know a Jewish person who believes in Jesus. Would you like to meet with them? And at this point, they will then take out the business card of the Jews for Jesus staff person that came to their church and gave her presentation. And they'll set up a meeting. And so what happens really is that the Jews for Jesus people are not primarily cold calling on the street Jewish people that are strangers to them. But they are going to meetings that are set up by their sales force. And in sales, we call this closing, meaning they're coming to close the sale at the end. Meaning that the Jewish person is already predisposed to Christianity. It's just that they assume that this is not a Jewish option. Jews don't believe in this. And now the Jews for Jesus staff person could say, look, I was just like you. And I've been a believer for the last 30 years and I go to a messianic congregation. And that often is what it takes to close the sale. I've already talked about the websites of these organizations and how they're rather opaque about their motivations. So talk to me about the other kinds of obfuscation that these groups engage in. For instance, using Jewish symbols and using Yiddish and Hebrew names to get people on site. It's essentially a tactic that's used in order to accomplish a goal. As I said before, these are groups that are struggling to overcome what they see as a strong Jewish resistance to conversion. And to a great extent, that's based upon the assumption that many Jewish people have that Jews don't believe in Jesus. It's not a Jewish thing to do. And so what they're trying to accomplish is to create the impression that no belief in Jesus is a Jewish thing to do. They want to give the impression that number one, it's Jewish. And number two, they want to downplay the kind of language and symbols that are provocative to Jewish people. Meaning that they're sort of red flags to tell Jewish people, oh, this is Christianity. So what will happen is that they engage in a tremendous amount of euphemism. So for example, these are groups that will generally not refer to Jesus as Jesus or Jesus Christ. They will refer to him as Yeshua, which they say is the Hebrew name for Jesus. It's not clear that that's the case. But they give him a Hebrew name, Yeshua, and they'll say Yeshua HaMashiach, which is Hebrew for Jesus the Messiah. Now again, when Jewish people hear Jesus Christ, they know exactly what that is. When they hear Yeshua HaMashiach, they just know it sounds different and they don't know what it is. And then the person's able to say, well, that's the Hebrew name of Jesus. Because again, it's interesting that in the world, it wasn't so long ago that if you told people that Jesus was Jewish, it was a shock to them. That happens to be the case. And many Jewish people bought into that as well, that there's nothing Jewish about Christianity, nothing Jewish about Jesus. And so by using that sort of less harsh, less abrasive term, Yeshua HaMashiach, rather than Jesus Christ, they're able to, A, sidestep a term, a name that is turning Jewish people off, and it becomes a point of conversation. They may refer to the New Testament as the Brita Chadasha. They may refer to, as we said before, baptism as the mikveh service. They may refer to someone like the Apostle Paul as Rav Sha'ul, Rabbi Saul. So everything gets a Jewish euphemistic expression term. That's in terms of language. Then in terms of symbolism, in terms of the optics. So for example, at a Jews for Jesus synagogue, at a Messianic synagogue, you won't see crosses. You won't see stained glass window pictures of Jesus. You'll see Jewish stars, Israeli flags. If you walk in, you'll see a holy ark and iron kodesh that has a Torah scroll inside. The rabbi is referred to as the Messianic rabbi, not the pastor or minister or priest. They will be celebrating the Jewish holidays, no Christmas or no Easter. So they'll have Shabbat. They'll have Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Yom Kippur, Chanukah. But what they do is they give all of these Jewish holidays a Christian spin. So for example, they speak about Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, as the day where these are people who believe that their sins are forgiven because they believe in Jesus. Or they'll say that Passover is the holiday of redemption because Jesus redeemed them. And they take over all of the symbolism of the holiday. So as an example, they will have at their services a Passover Seder, which we're going to be celebrating in a few days. So they'll say, sure, there are four cups of wine and the wine represents the blood of Jesus. And there are three matzahs on the Passover table, on the Seder table. They will insist the three matzahs represent the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And they'll say that the matzah, the middle matzah is broken because that's the Son who was killed. The Son is killed and that's why the matzah is broken. And they'll say that the matzah has little holes in it because Jesus was pierced. And they'll say that the matzah that we break is wrapped up in a white cloth because Jesus was buried in a white shroud. And they'll say that that piece of matzah, the Afikoman, is put away until the end of the Seder and then brought back because that's the second coming of Jesus. And so what they basically do is to co-opt everything that Jews do and they give it a Christian interpretation or a Christian spin. The timing of this podcast taping is right before Passover. So can you describe a little bit what these evangelicals see in having Saders and making them Christian? Well, but it's interesting because there is a sort of an ironic twist to all of this. It's almost a delicious irony in that this has been going on now pretty much full force since the 1960s where, again, hundreds and thousands of these groups are trying to reach out to Jews by co-opting Jewish traditions, Jewish symbols, Jewish practices and using them as basically a lever and leverage to convert them to Christianity. The irony is that over the past decades Christians themselves have gotten very interested in the historical Jesus. Who was Jesus? And there are churches now that are waking up to the fact that Jesus was a Jew and not just a Jew but he was a observant Jew. He was someone that preached that people should observe the Torah. And so now you're finding that in many churches they will blow a shofar. Often people will put on a talit. They will have these Passover Saders. Not only because they're trying to reach out to Jews but because they themselves are trying to discover and get in touch with who was Jesus. Who were the original Christians? What were they like? Would the original Jesus movement look like anything that we have in Christianity today? And one of the things that's happened over the past I would say decade now is that as more and more Christians explore the roots of their own faith they're discovering that the roots are in Judaism and the more that they study Judaism the more they become attracted to Judaism. And so one of the strange things that I never anticipated in the work that I'm doing is that up until 7 or 8 years ago my audience was about 100% Jewish. But once we began putting up things on the internet now it's there for everyone to watch. And so we're getting bombarded by people that for decades have been very, very serious spiritual evangelical Christians who are now studying our material and discovering that the Jews have a point and that maybe Jesus is not the Messiah. And so now there is literally an avalanche of people leaving the churches because of this very movement, because of this very focus on the Jewishness of Jesus. So it really, it's a double-edged sword. It's been used as a way of luring Jews into the church but it's become a catalyst for many, many people to leave the church. What has been the Jewish response to not only cultural appropriation but out and out cultural theft by these groups? You know, I think that if we go back to the early days when we were first exposed to this movement, it was outrage. Meaning there was a sense that our precious sacred symbols and practices were being used as a tool to convert us to another faith. And it seemed in its smacked of deception and not just cultural appropriation. I mean it's one thing for people to appropriate symbols for their own desires and their own pleasure but here it was being used as a tool in order to lure Jewish people away from Judaism. So it was seen really as doubly insidious. And that's the basic reaction that the Jewish community has had. But it goes beyond that. Meaning that when you think about it, Christians in general for the past 2,000 years have appropriated the Jewish Bible. Meaning that the message of the church has been essentially that Jewish people don't understand their own Bible and that if we really understood the message of the Hebrew Scriptures, if we really understood the Torah and the prophets, it would lead us to Christianity. And so the church has appropriated the Bible as their own. As a matter of fact they demonstrated this in a very concrete way by gluing the New Testament onto the back of the so-called Old Testament and calling it the Christian Bible. So this has been part of the church's message all along. That they've basically appropriated the Hebrew Scriptures as their own. But what happens with the Messianic movement is they take it one step further. Meaning that not only are they saying that the Jewish people don't understand their own Bible but they are now embracing and appropriating the practices of rabbinic Judaism. Meaning that if you look at the way Messianic Jewish people practice their faith, they're not practicing it according to what the Bible teaches. They're practicing it according to what the Talmud teaches. The rabbinic sources teach. And this is strange because officially Christianity rejects rabbinic Judaism. Meaning they see anything that's not part of the Bible is seen by them as illegitimate. Meaning that one of the doctrines of the evangelical movement is what we call Sola Scriptura. Only the Scriptures. And they don't accept the legitimacy of the Talmud. They don't accept the legitimacy of the rabbinical teachings. But strangely and ironically the Messianic movement really in a very slavish way follows exactly the way rabbinic Jews and Jews that follow in the traditions of rabbinic Judaism practice. Meaning that you won't find Hanukkah as an example in the Bible. And yet all the Jews for Jesus and all the Messianic groups practice Hanukkah. You won't find the idea of a bar mitzvah in the Bible. The idea that at the age of 13 a man becomes a boy becomes a responsible to observe the Torah, a girl at the age of 12. That's not written anywhere in the Bible. That's something which is found in the rabbinic writings in the Talmud. And yet all of these groups practice bar and bat mitzvah. The way they have their wedding ceremonies. The Bible doesn't speak about having a canopy, a chuppah and smashing a glass and the bride going around the groom seven times. There are many ways in which Jews practice their faith and it's according to the teachings of the Talmud that are based upon the oral Torah. These are people that are basically saying that and this is what we call in Hebrew tremendous chutzpah not only are you misunderstanding the Bible you don't even follow in the beliefs of the Talmud because if you really believe the Talmudic teachings you would also embrace Jesus. And here it becomes sort of science fiction because it was specifically the rabbinic establishment that did not accept Jesus or the teachings of Christianity. We could always debate the Bible. We don't have necessarily an easy way of resolving this because Christians have their own interpretations of the Bible and when they claim to it so you could say it's their word against ours but in terms of the teachings of the rabbis this is a tradition that we've preserved and here it becomes sort of bizarre to say that we don't understand the teachings of our own rabbis. So it's really, you could call this cultural appropriation to the nth degree, sort of taking it to absurd levels. Something that most people understand about Judaism is that Jewish people do not proselytize. However, Messianic Judaism has a really strong affinity for proselytization for obvious reasons they're trying to get more people into the fold. How does this reconcile with Jewish people who are then asked to turn around and proselytize for Jesus? So Christians refer to this process as discipleship and once someone accepts Jesus and gets baptized they are mentored. They will go to Bible studies, they will undergo a tremendous amount of studying. The general schedule, if you could call it that, in these movements in their churches and in their congregations is that they have their major prayer services on the Shabbat, the Messianic groups. But they often have a lot of weekday activities as well. Bible studies in the middle of the week and fellowship groups and meetings in people's homes. It's very hands-on. There's usually people that are very much on top of you to tutor you, to train you, to get you firm in the faith, so to speak. And there is an expectation that at some point you will share your faith. There is an expectation that if you've come to faith and you now are saved and if you now know the truth, so how could you not share this with others? And people will usually begin sharing their faith with their friends and family. That's exactly where it begins. So that's often really what happens and what's expected. Now, what's interesting is that the degree of embracing of Judaism varies from group to group, meaning that in the Messianic Jewish world you have a spectrum that goes from extremely traditional in terms of their Jewish practice to what you call Jewish practice very light. And so in some circles they will go to the extent of keeping the dietary laws, observing the laws of Kashrut, having some semblance of Sabbath observance, and all the way down to basically very little Jewish observance at all, other than doing the kind of things like having Passover satyrs or lighting Chanukah candles, which you could say is fairly typical of North American Jews that may not even necessarily be very religious, but as cultural expressions they will do those kind of things. I should say, by the way, just an addition, when people are, use the word recruited, when people basically will join groups like this, when they do embrace Christianity, it really ultimately becomes a total reworking of their life, meaning that usually they begin to lose their friends that they had previously, either because they just don't have as much common with them anymore, or because they're told by their leaders to stay away from your old friends and your family because they will be a negative influence. So there will be usually a radical transformation in people's lives in terms of who they associate with, how they spend their time, what they will read. Really they become usually a radical transformation in people's lives. So one of the reasons that Jews for Judaism exist is because of disconnection between people who have joined Messianic Jewish groups and their friends and their family and people that they grew up with. My understanding is that in situations like this the messages that they're getting from their other congregants is that maybe their old friends aren't real Jews or that you're not going to the same place that they are. I'm not sure they'll be told that they're not real Jews, but it's a natural process where people that have radically transformed their belief system will just simply begin to associate more and more with people that they share that with. They will begin going to Christian programs and reading Christian books, and they will have less and less common with their Jewish friends and Jewish activities, but they will try to maintain many Jewish contacts for the purpose of reaching out, meaning that they become their contact list in terms of who they're going to approach to share their faith. So it both is a detachment from their previous Jewish life, but not totally because they do not want to lose these as people that they can then approach to share their faith with. Tell me what the end game is for these groups. Is it Israel full of Christians? Is it the Second Coming? Well, for groups like Jews for Jesus, they do see Israel as the epicenter for everything, and that's why these are groups that have expanded dramatically their outreach in specifically the land of Israel. And for them, the end game, there's two. One is for the individual. Again, they want to see every person in the world, not just every Jew, but the goal of evangelism is to see every person in the world come to faith in Jesus. And that's why evangelism is not just directed to Jews. There's massive evangelism trying to reach every group in the world. Every group in the world is being targeted. We could say that there's a special emphasis placed upon reaching Jews out of proportion to the number of Jews in the world. But be that as it may, they do have a global plan to ultimately reach the entire world. Now, the end game for them, as I mentioned before, is eschatological, meaning that they see in the near future their belief is that Jesus is going to return and that's going to bring about massive changes in the world. It's a little bit strange for us to discuss now in terms of the Christian belief in Satan and the antichrist and the devil and the rapture and the tribulation. There are many, many different Christian views about what is ultimately going to happen in the end of days. But on the simplest level, they all believe that Jesus is going to return and that's what they look forward to. Something that we're obviously interested here on this podcast is, is this harmful? And if so, what is the harm? It's not a complicated question. You know, one of the things that I think is assumed in the world is that these are groups like what you could describe as cults. And I think that's a misnomer. I think that I would distinguish between groups like this and what we refer to as cults. I think people often will label groups like this as a cult. Because the word cult is often used simply as a pejorative, meaning if I don't like you, you're a cult. I don't think that's an accurate use of the term. Or people use the word cult to describe groups they see as bizarre or strange, meaning that if people have strange religious practices, they must be a cult. Technically speaking, cults are groups that strip away people's critical thinking and their personal autonomy by psychological pressure and manipulation. They're groups that basically destroy people's free will and ability to function as independent people. They become essentially slaves to a group and its leader. I wouldn't say this is characteristic of evangelical groups. I think there are cultic aspects to it. For example, cults will forbid people to question and to think critically. And these are groups, messianic groups, who tend to discourage people from questioning. But it's not as draconian. It's not going to be where they're actually controlled. I think the damage is not so much that they're going to be some kind of automaton that has lost their critical thinking abilities and their personal autonomy. But I think that the problem is more of a theological problem as we would see it. Meaning that these are people that essentially have ended up rejecting almost all the basic tenets of Christianity, of Judaism, and they've embraced the tenets of a foreign religion, of another religion. So it's basically people who have, from a Jewish perspective, embraced teachings that are just simply not true. So for example, it's just not true in Judaism that Jesus was the Messiah. It's not true in Judaism that you need someone to die for your sins. So on one level, the problem is that these are Jewish people, unfortunately, who have embraced ideas that are not true. The second problem is maybe a more serious spiritual problem. It can get very complicated, but Christians don't simply believe that Jesus was the Messiah. And it's interesting that in their sales pitch to Jewish people, that's all they speak about. Their focus is on trying to prove that Jesus was the Messiah. What they don't really reveal often, at least in the beginning, is that they don't simply believe that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. They believe Jesus was God. They believe that Jesus created the world. They pray to Jesus. They worship Jesus. And in Jewish terms, that's a very serious problem. Because in Jewish terms, we're not supposed to worship anything or anyone other than the Creator Himself. And we simply don't believe that Jesus was the Creator of the world. We believe He was a created being. And so it's really, unfortunately, involving Jewish people in what Judaism terms as idolatry. Idolatry is a very serious problem. So I would say the downside to this is, A, that it really brings them into very, very problematic waters spiritually. And B, it often has a tremendously negative impact on their relationship with their families. One of the things that we see in our work here is that this devastates families. It drives a tremendous wedge between family members. So people, unfortunately, that in a very sort of irresponsible way embrace this path, as I mentioned before, without really due diligence, without really carefully researching whether this is really the truth, they do it at the peril of their spiritual life from a Jewish point of view, of their relationship with God and the relationship with their family. And it's tragic that people in a very cavalier fashion, you know, jeopardize all of that simply because they didn't do enough research. They didn't look both ways before the Cross Street. They didn't get a second opinion. You know, people when they buy a house will pay a home inspector $500 to check out the foundation and the roof and the boiler. You know, here we're talking about, you know, a very serious decision with incredibly serious consequences, and people owe it to themselves to do a little bit of research and thinking and investigating and studying. And what we found in our work is that when Jewish people do that, when people open themselves up to trying to understand why is it that for the last 2000 years Jewish people have not embraced these Christian claims, we have found that the vast majority of people will not accept these claims. If we take Messianic Judaism to its logical conclusion, that implies that the 6 million people who died in the Holocaust did not go to heaven because they didn't accept Jesus into their hearts. Well, I mean, I think it's something that Christians struggle with. I mean, if you, you know, I mean, I read Christian magazines and I go to Christian bookstores and I read their books. This is something that troubles, you know, sensitive Christians. You know, how could it be that a loving God would just consign so many people to hell forever? You know, it doesn't seem very loving or fair or kind at all. And so the idea that, not just the victims of the Holocaust, but, you know, any person, you know, could be some First Nations person living, you know, in none of it, or could be, you know, some person living on a desert island somewhere in Fiji, you know, the fact that they don't believe in Jesus means that they're going to burn in hell forever. It's a very, very difficult idea. You know, or even someone who is knowledgeable, someone who, for example, like myself, I've studied the New Testament in Christianity now, you know, for decades, you know, and, you know, I've come to the conclusion it seems very clear to me that it's simply not true. I'm also going to be going to hell forever according to these people because for them, I've rejected God. Even though my entire life is focused on God and serving God, these people insist that, no, you don't believe in God because if you believed in God, you would believe that God is a Trinity. You'd believe that God, you know, is a Father and a Son and a Holy Spirit. So it is troubling to many Christians and they struggle with this. And some of the answers that they give to this question are even more bizarre than the belief itself, meaning that in many of these messianic groups I've seen they'll say something like, well, you don't know whether at the last minute before these people died in the gas chambers, they accepted Jesus on their lips. You know, it's sort of a desperate kind of attempt to relieve themselves of the discomfort of this kind of belief. But yeah, it is the kind of doctrine that evangelicals are stuck with, I guess less fervent Christians. I remember I was once on a panel discussion on a TV show here in Toronto with a messianic leader and before our segment, the host of this show was interviewing the moderator of the United Church of Canada. This is a few years, this is many years ago actually. And this is a person that was the head of a denomination who didn't believe in the divinity of Jesus, didn't believe in the virgin birth, didn't believe that Jesus was resurrected, didn't believe that Jesus is going to come back, and didn't believe that you have to believe in Jesus to go to heaven. So there are many Christians who don't accept this doctrine. You know, there are many, many Christians who don't accept this idea that non-Christians are all going to perish in hell forever. But we're talking about the evangelical world and the messianic groups and the Jews for Jesus groups are all within that framework of the evangelical world who do believe that accepting Jesus is, you know, the entrance fee, if you will. Meaning that without that, a person does not get into heaven, does not have eternal life, and worse, they'll be punished in hell forever. We're living in a time of growing anti-Semitism and rising hate crimes against Jewish people. Is there an extra layer of danger to these groups? So it's a good question because it's really a double-edged sword. On the one hand, evangelicals tend to be, you know, at least in their own language, very loving of Jews and very supportive of Israel, and that tends to be the case. Meaning that in the world today, you don't find many groups at all that are supportive of Israel. Even in the Christian world, you know, the more liberal Christian churches tend to be very hostile to Israel, whereas the evangelical groups tend to be very supportive. So that's on the one hand. On the other hand, it's very interesting that, you know, you've had many evangelical leaders who have actually said this, both in writing and verbally, that, you know, they expect something of the Jewish people, meaning that here they're giving all this support to Israel and, you know, all this love to the Jewish people and, you know, there's an expectation that we're going to respond in kind. You know, we saw this, it's not the first time this has happened. At the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, so Martin Luther was very critical of the Catholic Church. He would say, you know, these are people that brutalized Jews and persecuted Jews, and, you know, he was very, very hostile to the Catholic Church because he felt that the way they behaved towards Jews would drive Jews away from embracing Jesus. And so he began his career by saying, we have to embrace the Jewish people and be kind to them. And his assumption was that by being nice to the Jewish people, they would flock to the Church. And within 20 years, he came to see that that wasn't happening, that the Jews were not responding positively to his overtures, and he then became a rabid Jew-hater, and he published the most disgusting, vile literature about the Jewish people that you can imagine that became the basis of a lot of Nazi propaganda. So there is a danger that when people are being nice to you as a tactic, they're being nice to you because they assume you're going to respond in a certain way, meaning that it's not unconditional love, as they often say that it is. There's often, you know, a hitch. And, you know, so I've seen many evangelical leaders who say, look, you know, if Jews are not going to respond positively, maybe we're going to rethink our support of Israel. So this is an interesting dilemma. You know, during, I don't know how many years ago it was when Mel Gibson came out with his disgusting film, The Passion, you know, it provoked a lot of concern in the Jewish community. There were Jewish people who were very concerned that this film might provoke anti-Semitism. And what's interesting was that there was absolutely zero understanding or, you know, sense of, sense in the Christian world that the Jewish concerns were of substance. There wasn't any attempt to try to understand why a film like this would be so hurtful to Jewish people. You know, there's an old saying in the Jewish world that if you really love someone, you know what hurts them. And the fact that, you know, by and large evangelicals did not really get what was hurtful to the Jewish people about this film really sort of brought to light, you know, a big question mark about, you know, the authenticity of the love that they profess for the Jewish people. So on the one hand, you know, that they do have affection for the Jewish people because, you know, the Bible calls the Jewish people God's chosen people. We're the firstborn son of God. God says, I'll bless those who bless the Jews. I'll curse those who curse the Jews. In Genesis chapter 12. But the problem is that for them, blessing the Jewish people only has one meaning. For them, blessing the Jewish people means getting us to believe in Jesus. They don't really see much of anything else as blessing us other than, you know, again, the support that they show to the rights of the Jewish people in the land of Israel. Some of the work that Jews for Judaism does is to help people get out of groups like Messianic Judaism groups. So can you explain to me a little bit about the thought process that happens to people when they decide to leave and then describe how they leave? You know, most people that have joined Messianic groups or have converted to Christianity are very, very happy where they are. And they don't seek us out. By and large, what happens is it creates a panic in their families. Their families are devastated by this. You know, it was, I guess, it still may be one of the last taboos in the Jewish world, meaning that, you know, Jewish families are tolerant of a lot of different things. But for their child to become a born-again Christian, you know, and to proudly, you know, wear their Christian faith, it's a shock for many Jewish families, at least until now. Maybe it's changing. But what happens is we're usually contacted by the families. And the families themselves usually have been thrown into turmoil by this. Unfortunately, many families do all the wrong things when this first happens. You know, they end up trying to self-medicate so they will, you know, try to argue with their children about their faith. They'll try to print things off the Internet and give it to their children to read. Many parents will insist that their children go to see a psychiatrist. There must be something wrong with them. And what often happens is the relationships break down. You know, they begin to pull away from each other. And we will see the family, usually after a lot of damage has already set in. So in our work, we have to often spend a lot of time trying to spend, trying to put families back together and trying to equip families with the tools to be able to, you know, rebuild a relationship and then be able to effectively advocate for their, you know, loved ones to, you know, make an informed decision. Meaning that, you know, parents cannot insist that their children follow in their spiritual footsteps. Parents cannot insist that their children, you know, practice Judaism. They could try to train their children as they grow up. They could try to influence their children. But, you know, once someone becomes an adult, they're free to believe in whatever they want. So what the parents can do is to encourage their children to make an informed decision. Meaning that, you know, how could I ever really respect your decision if you didn't really fully check it out? And they can encourage them to then meet with us. So that's one way in which we're able to, you know, interact with Jewish people is by having their family or sometimes their friends refer them to us. A second way is that for the past 30 years we've been going to some of their annual conferences. Now, we're not really welcome at the conferences and we're not there to, you know, to really be provocative or to upset anyone. We're not there to protest. All we really do is we basically check into the hotel and we sit in the lobby and people who are interested in talking to us will come over and speak with us. We do not speak to anyone unless they will come over and speak to us. But what we found over the past 30 years is that a lot of them are curious. A lot of them, you know, may not necessarily pick up the phone and give us a call, but if we're there in the lobby of the hotel where they're spending a week at their conference, so we have had a chance to speak with many people at these conferences. And the third way now has been simply over the Internet, which I guess for most people is the easiest thing to do. No one's looking over their shoulder and they could be someone that's a very dedicated and devoted member of a Messianic congregation, but they may get curious. They may be on YouTube and they may be watching their favorite pastor, but then one of our videos pops up on the side. And, you know, we found that surprisingly this has been probably the most effective way in reaching people in these movements is, you know, in a very gentle way where it's the least obtrusive way possible. And we have found that, you know, if people are willing to engage with the teachings of Judaism, if people are willing to really think through why it is that Judaism does not accept the claims that these groups make, we have found that they will generally side with the Jewish point of view. And then what happens with, I would say the majority of people that have been part of the Jews for Jesus movement that leave is that they then embrace their Judaism in a very serious way. You know, we think that what happens is, again, the Jewish people that have converted to Christianity through these kinds of movements generally were not profoundly spiritual in a Jewish way beforehand. What these movements have done, they've gotten people to be very serious about a relationship with God and very serious about the Bible. And so we have found that when they leave Christianity, they will basically turn all of that energy back towards Jewish ways of pursuing a relationship with God and studying. The news is full of discussion about how YouTube radicalizes people, but it sounds like you've had the opposite experience with the work that you do. At the end of the day, it shouldn't be so surprising because when your parents are telling you, go speak to the rabbi, you may go just to get your parents off your back, but you're not going to really pay attention to what the rabbi is saying. But if you are surfing the Internet and you find videos from a Jewish point of view explain why Jesus is not the Messiah, you're going to only watch it because you're interested in watching it. And we have found that this has become an incredibly powerful tool to really affect people. I feel like we could talk about this for the rest of the day, but unfortunately you have no more time because it is two days before Passover when we're recording this. So Rabbi Michael, I want to thank you very much. If people want to get in touch, it's Jews for Judaism. All of the information on how to get in touch with you will be available on the Patreon page Thank you very much, Rabbi Michael. Thank you for having me on.