 pleasure to be here tonight and just to make a slight correction, actually first I was Jewish, then I was a Jew for Jesus, and I'm back to Jesus for Judaism. So some people sometimes wonder if I was born Jewish. My parents are survivors of the Holocaust. My father lost everyone in the Holocaust. My mother lost everyone but a sister and we were raised in a very traditional family and so many Holocaust survivors like my parents had a traditional perspective on Judaism but we're not really very religious in the type of Judaism that was brought up. What I want to do tonight is talk to you about the problem of evangelical Christian missionaries that are targeting Jews for conversion. We might call it the battle for the Jewish soul, the evangelical Christian threat to our Jewish community. And as I share with you tonight my overview of this problem and it's a growing problem. I want you to appreciate that my perspective is not from somebody who has made it his hobby to study these issues. I didn't go to university to study the topic. I would say that in much the same way as my parents were the victim of physical persecution in the Holocaust. Maybe you could say that I was the victim of spiritual persecution. And so as a survivor of my experience I want to share with you what I've been through and to try and share with you the scope and the danger that we as a Jewish community face. I want to discuss a few issues tonight. Number one I'm going to be making the mention of missionaries many times tonight. Who are the missionaries? We use the term very loosely. I want to describe who the missionaries are. Address the issue of the obsession to convert Jews. Is there an obsession to get Jews to convert to Christianity? And to show how the past techniques have changed and the techniques that missionaries are using today to achieve incredible results in converting Jews to the Christian faith. When the program is overall, after I've said what I've had to say, I have a video that we could show a few minutes of to give you a visual demonstration. You know they say a picture is worth a thousand words. When you see some of these images in video, you go, wow, this is really something that we have to deal with. But before I start, I would like to put everything in context. So I'll tell a little story of Mr. Feldman. The context in terms of how we as a Jewish community, how we as a Jewish people feel about the issue of Christianity, Jesus, etc. So there's this Mr. Feldman. Mr. Feldman is an old man, lives in Brooklyn, probably 87, 88 years old. He's had a very nice life, but he decides he wants to have a holiday of a lifetime. As he gets older he's getting frail and it's difficult for him to move around. He wants to have a holiday he's always wanted. You know they came up with a movie a number of years ago called The Bucket List. It's a movie about what you want to do before you kick the bucket. So for Mr. Feldman he wants to go on a skiing holiday before he kicks the bucket. So he books into a kosher ski result in Grudewald, Switzerland and takes some ski lessons and spends the week going down the mountains and the shushing and the mobiles and the parallel ski. Whatever he did he had a beautiful time. Then it comes, it's Friday afternoon, he's going down the hill and then he realizes oh my gosh, Shabbos is coming. He sees the sun setting down, setting in the distance and he realizes he has to rush. So he's skiing down the hills really quick because he has to get back to the chalet before Shabbos and he falls. It's terrible. They check them into the local Catholic hospital where all the nurses are nuns and there he recovers over the weekend. Comes on Sunday, he's on crutches and he's hobbling out of the hospital, barely able to walk but he's got to be cast. But before he can leave the hospital the chief nurse, Sister Frances says to a Mr. Feldman, you know you can't leave so quickly. We have to clear up the accounting. You must pay your bill. At this Mr. Feldman says, well I'm terribly sorry. I haven't got any money. I spent all my money to come on this wonderful holiday and I can't pay your bill. At this Sister Frances says, very surely you must have a relative somewhere who could pay the bill. He said, well my only relative is my sister but she's an old maid who converted to Catholicism. It became a nun like you. At this Sister Frances says, Mr. Feldman, I'll have you know that we nuns are not old maids. We are married to Jesus Christ. At this Mr. Feldman says, well if that's the case, send the bill to my brother-in-law. It puts it in perspective. He knows the bill will never get paid. Anyways, a little, a little, the truth of the matter is the topic we're speaking about tonight is so serious and so bleak that it's very rare that we find opportunities that will laugh. That might be the only time. But let's get into business here. It has been said in the media that more Jews have converted to Christianity in the last 20 years than in the last 20 centuries. It is an incredibly large statistic. How could this be? What has happened? Traditionally, when we talk about who missionaries are, it was the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church was the game in town for 1500 years and whether it was through the inquisitions, crusades, pogroms, what have you, it was the Catholic Church that was the predominant game in town when it came to promoting Christianity until the invention of the printing press in the 1500s when Gutenberg's first major production was printing the Bible. And when he printed the Bible, there was an interesting protest that happened amongst many Christians. The protest was that, hey, wait a minute, the Bible that the Roman Catholic Church has been preaching for these last 1500 years doesn't say what we read and they protested against the Roman Catholic Church and thus the Protestant movement was born. And within the Protestant movement, a different approach to promoting Christianity developed. And so what we have now in the world are two major Christian churches, the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church. And it is within the Protestant Church that we are going to find that source of interest in converting Jews to Christianity. Within the Protestant Church, there really are two sides. There's the more liberal church that we could use, the example here in Canada, the United Church of Canada. In this particular case, these churches may not take the Bible too literally. They may not be that devout in their spirituality and their belief in God. They may have more liberal approaches towards gay marriage and abortion, etc. But on the right side of the Protestant world is the evangelical, born to gain fundamentalist Christian church. These are Christians that believe in God 100%. They read their Bible every day. They go to church many times a week, at least on Sunday, once or twice. They sometimes go for Bible studies. They pray fervently. They believe in supporting traditional roles in marriage. They are anti-abortion, etc. And one of the things they believe in also is because the Bible teaches that God gave the nation of Israel to the Jewish people. Many of them are very supportive of Israel, very pro-Israel. We know that today when we pay attention to the media, Israel can claim that probably its only true friends are those nations that are being led by evangelical, fundamentalist Christians. Today we know that Canada probably shares the pinnacle of appreciation from Israel. It's probably the most friendly country to Israel and it's probably got something to do with Stephen Harper's evangelical Christian faith. What we have are evangelical Christians who also are very, very much seriously committed to promoting their religion and fulfilling their New Testament scriptural mandate, which comes from the book of John chapter 3 verse 16 where it says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever should believe in him should not perish but have eternal life. What am I saying? I'm saying that the New Testament as a passage that says if you believe in Jesus, you go to hell. If you believe in Jesus, you go to heaven. And if you don't believe in Jesus, you go to hell. That's basically it. And evangelical Christians make a serious effort to try and do what they can to try and share their faith. And we're not talking about a small little minority. In America, statistics indicate that a third of Americans identify as evangelical Christians, a third of Americans read your Bible every day and are committed to sharing their faith in some sort of way. This is a large number of individuals who share the belief that it's important that all individuals believe in Jesus. My personal opinion is that any individual Christian who takes their religion seriously, who believes that they have to share their faith with me and let me tell me that I have to believe in Jesus or I'm going to go to hell, that person is a missionary. And so my perspective is loosely this one third of America can be considered as a missionary threat to the Jewish community. But I'll be a little bit more strict on that. Let's focus a little bit more on the formal missionaries, those people who actually make it their job to convert Jews to Christianity. There are a lot of missionary organizations that do that. But the question we have to ask ourselves is, why target the Jews? Why us? You know, a lot of times when people find out about the work that we do with Jews for Judaism, which is predominantly countering the missionary threat, they say, Why don't they just pick on somebody else for a change? Why don't they go target the non Jews? Why pick on the Jews? And so in order for you to appreciate why Jews are a specific target in the sites of these evangelical missionaries, you have to take a moment to appreciate the roots of their faith. You know, we've probably never heard of groups called Buddhists for Jesus, or Hindus for Jesus, or Northern Iraq, Northern Ontario, Iraq, or Indian for Jesus. But there probably isn't a Jewish person alive today who hasn't heard of the group Jews for Jesus. Everyone's heard of this group. Who are they? They are a missionary organization dedicated to the conversion of the Jews to the Protestant evangelical Christian faith. Why? Why specifically target us? You have to appreciate the essence of their faith lies in the root word of the word Christianity. The root word is Christ. Many people mistakenly think that Christ is Jesus last name, like Jesus, Jesus Schwartz or Jesus Rosenberg. Christ is a title. The word Christ comes from the Greek word Christos, which is a Greek translation from the Hebrew word Messiah. Now we're getting a little bit warm. No, no, it comes from the word Messiah. Christos is the Greek translation of Messiah. And of this whole questions to the end, by the way, so this way I won't get distracted. The Hebrew word Messiah, many people want to ask what does it mean? Most people say Messiah, but that's not what Messiah means. The Hebrew word Messiah means an anointed one. And it comes from the Hebrew word Limshoah, to give you a little bit of context of what it means. In the Jewish Bible, there are a number of individuals who are anointed with oil. And when these individuals are anointed with oil, the adjective Messiah can be used to be applied to that individual. For instance, the coin in the high priest, the coin of the priest in the temple, when they were inaugurated into the service of the Almighty would have oral oil poured on their head. And this individual could be called a Messiah. The prophets also had oil poured on their heads. They could be referred to as Messiah. The kings of Israel, a king, when the king was initiated into the service of the Almighty, would have oil poured on his head. And we could refer to that king as a Messiah, that was the Messiah, God's anointed. And in fact, there are times in the Jewish Bible when the kings are referred to as God's anointed as a Messiah. One thing is clear, though, is that the concept of the Messiah going 2000 years ago was uniquely and solely a Jewish concept. No other people on earth had the concept of the Messiah. No other place on earth could you go to and talk about a Messiah and they would know what you were talking with went to China, you went to Africa, you went to South America, it said the Messiah has come. Nobody would know what you were talking about. It is only the Jews who had the concept of the Messiah. It's only the Jews who prayed three times a day for the coming of the Messiah. The Jews had the prayers of the Messiah in our b'chota mazon, in our prayers at the end of our meal. And at the time of the Roman persecution, we were probably more ready for a Messiah than at any time in our history because of the incredible persecution that we suffered under the hands of the Romans. So, if all these missionaries are actively trying to convert Jews to Christianity, one of the things that they often want us to believe is that they have something that we need. In much the same way as if somebody found the cure to cancer, they would probably rush to tell the authorities that they have found the cure to solve the problem, missionaries feel that for the Jewish people they have found the cure for our spiritual demise and that is in Jesus. They believe that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. They believe that Jews should have no problem in embracing Jesus in the Messiah because according to them, he fulfilled everything that the Messiah was supposed to do. Let's stop for a minute and just ask ourselves if that's the case, what was the Messiah? What is the Messiah supposed to accomplish in simple terms? And did Jesus accomplish this? First of all, we know the Messiah must be Jewish. He must be from the tribe of Judah and the descent of King David and King Solomon. That when the Messiah comes, all the Jews in the world will be living back in the land of Israel and will be keeping Torah. When the Messiah comes, the entire world will believe in our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The temple will be rebuilt and the world will experience peace like we've never known before. There will be a permanent end to war. We know that when all these things have happened and there is an individual sitting on a throne in Jerusalem, it won't be something that we'll have to say we believe in. It will be front page news. It will be on the front page of the National Post, the New York Times, Jerusalem Post. It won't be a matter of something that has to, that somebody has to have an article of faith to testify they believe that such and such an individual is the Messiah. You have to be crazy not to know it. That's a different issue. But please let's keep the questions to the end. The question is, in appreciating the Christian perspective on their obsession to convert the Jews, their focus is that they thoroughly believe that Jesus is the Messiah. So much so that the New Testament makes no bones about it. In the New Testament, there's a passage in the book of Romans chapter one verse 16, where the apostle Paul, who was the author of the New Testament says that I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ because it's the power of salvation to all who believe to the Jew first, and then to the Gentile. And this pecking order, this priority that is placed on converting Jews in the New Testament is something that is repeated many times in the New Testament. And when the New Testament has a precedent placed that Jews have to come first. We have a dilemma for that 80 million American evangelical Christians who want to be good Christians, who want to do what they can to fulfill God's will in being the best Christian possible. So what do they do in terms of fulfilling this mandate that is brought out in the New Testament to bring the gospel to the Jew first? Sadly, maybe it's good thing, many of them don't know any Jews, so they can't do anything about it. But they have missionary groups that come and say that vicariously they can come on their behalf. And if these evangelical Christians will support these missionary groups, they can do the work for them. I'm going to get back to these missionary groups momentarily to show you how effective they are in trying to mobilize these 80 million American Christians, this one third of the American Christian American population. The New Testament, as I mentioned, has a way of pressing the individual Christian motivating them to convert Jews to Christianity, but we have another dilemma in Christianity. The dilemma is that Jesus fulfilled nothing that the Messiah was supposed to accomplish. Nothing. And we're not ashamed to say that. That's why we as a Jewish people don't believe in it, because he wasn't the Messiah. I just outlined four major criteria by which we would identify who the Messiah is. We saw that all the Jews would be living back in the land of Israel, and it is true that lately in the last few decades, many, many Jews have moved to Israel, but all the Jews don't live in the land of Israel. We are still living in the exile. We are told that the entire world will believe and this is just not tradition. These are based on many, many Bible passages that are in our scriptures. We have pamphlets here tonight that you could take home with you to verify some of these passages and for those people who are watching this lecture on YouTube, you can go to our YouTube channel and see many of our videos that go through step by step all the criteria by which we will recognize Messiah and the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible clearly expands on all those issues. But all the Jews are not living in the land of Israel. All the world does not believe in our God. The temple has not been rebuilt. In fact, the temple was standing in the time of Jesus was destroyed 38 years after his execution. And there's no world peace. There hasn't been world peace since the death of Jesus. And the reality is you could attribute many of the wars that were fought historically since the time of Jesus were fought in his name. So for Christian missionaries try to implore that Jesus is the Messiah, Jews have no problem saying, I'm sorry, but you're wrong. The Christians aren't too troubled by that. They say, actually, you Jews are wrong. Because Jesus came already as a Messiah for a different reason to die for our sins, to atone for our sins. And you will see that when he comes the second time, then everything you expect the Messiah to accomplish will be accomplished and then you'll see. It's a very nice theory, the second coming, but has no foundation in Judaism. And it's just that a theory on the part of Christian missionaries to try and account for the dismal failure of Jesus accomplishing nothing that the Messiah was supposed to accomplish. But to that end, in the hope of Jesus second coming, evangelical Christian missionaries awake his return because you see, they're shortchanged at this stage of the game. They don't have all the benefits of their faith that they are guaranteed with Jesus' return. And the New Testament talks about his return in a number of ways. In one particular case, in the Greek Testament, Jesus is asked, when are you going to come back? And Jesus says to the people who are asking him, I will only come back. It says here, you will not see me until you say, and see what he says to you, he's referring to the Jewish people, you will not see me until you, the Jews say, blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord, or until you recognize me as the Messiah. And this is a motivational passage for many of these missionaries to try and hasten the second coming of Jesus, to breed it on as quickly as possible so that that way when the Jewish people are converted to Christianity, then they can be assured that Jesus' imminent second coming will be at hand. You have to appreciate. I mentioned earlier on that we are, as a Jewish people, in terms of Israel, very appreciative of the support that we get from nations that have strong evangelical reasons for supporting Israel, that being the Bible. They believe in our Bible, the Jewish Bible, the Tanakh, that Bible says that the land of Israel does belong to the Jews. And these evangelical Christians who are extremely devout and fervent and in their belief that the Bible is the Word of God use that as their strength and their reason and their conviction to stand behind Israel. But it is those same evangelical Christians who believe that the New Testament says that you have to bring the gospel to the Jew first. And so, as a result, those very same Christians, I believe most of them that support the nation of Israel are also supporting evangelical missionary groups that are trying to target Jews to conversion. In addition to this passage I mentioned here, there's another passage that says that in the end times, there will be 144,000 Jews who will become, I use the word Latter-day Billy Grahams. There will be 144,000 they call prophets or missionaries to the Jews in Israel and they go far, so far as to say it will be 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes trying to convert us to Christianity. There's another passage in the New Testament that they cite as one that motivates them to try and see and hasten Jews converting to Christianity. Clearly we have a theological obsession that is based on passages in the New Testament. There's also a psychological obsession on the part of these Christians. See, if you can appreciate the dilemma that many sincere, strong believing Christians are in in terms of their conviction that Jesus has to be the Messiah, they are faced with a terrible dilemma when it comes to the Jews. We were the world's authority on who the Messiah, we are the world's authority on who the Messiah is and should be. 2,000 years ago that authority was no different. Yet 2,000 years ago when Jesus came without batting an eyelash the Jews said, no he's not the Messiah and we did not accept him. For Christians this really creates an awful dilemma for them because if Jews were the world's authority on the Messiah, if Jews don't pray three times a day for the Messiah, if so much of part of Jewish culture and belief is in the coming of the Messiah, then why did the Jews not accept him? And so the one question that comes up is maybe the Jews were right. The Jews were right and Jesus is not the Messiah. That's horrible. How could that be? But you see the Jewish people are such a smart people that maybe they can't be right. You know we have as a Jewish people so many attributes that have been applied to us over the years. Some accusing us of being diabolical when we take a look at for instance the the black plague, the bubonic plague in Europe. They blamed on the Jews that we somehow had this ability to mastermind the black plague. The protocols of the Elders of Zion, a book that was a fable written as a fiction but has become to be accepted as the truth that the Jews have a plot to overtake the world, that we are so insidiously brilliant that we are able to mastermind and take over of the world. We are told that we are very intelligent. Most people who are aware of Jewish individuals appreciate that many Jewish people are intelligent. We're doctors. We're lawyers. We are very well represented in the list of Nobel Peace Prize winners. We have this reputation being extremely smart. And so if we are so smart then why didn't we accept Jesus unless maybe we were right? And so this really motivates I feel Christians to try and convert a Jew to accept Jesus. If they can convert one Jew and get that individual to to come to their Baptist Church in Buttonville then maybe it'll that's it'll be a a confirmation for them that ah we have a Jew who's converted to Christianity, Jesus must be the Jewish Messiah. But they have failed dismally over the last 2000 years in trying to convert us. Try as they may. They never really succeeded in converting any large numbers. And if you take a look at the response that we as a Jewish people would have had to the presentation of Christianity you would understand and appreciate first of all how we had no problem rejecting it but in presenting these three obstacles to Christianity that missionaries couldn't overcome I want to suggest how missionaries today have changed the playing field. If I can present to you three obstacles that missionaries couldn't overcome I say obstacle number one is that we as a Jewish people always had a strong sense of our Jewish identity. We always had a very positive feeling of who we were as a people. We liked who we were. We liked maybe living in our towns in our Jewish shtetl. Maybe we liked living near our Jewish cultural center. If we were religious we liked living near the synagogue. We liked the realities because of so much anti-Semitism and persecution we had no choice but to live among Jewish people. Maybe we just liked our Barbara Streisand records. Whatever the reason was we liked being Jewish and when a missionary tried to convert a Jew to Christianity the reality was the perception was that to become a Christian would mean that we would have to leave our Jewish community go to this Gentile world where we would be associated with non-Jews going to a Christian church that met on Sundays with a big cross. We'd be eating food that wasn't Jewish. Everything about the new life that we would supposedly embrace if we got involved Christianity would be totally devoid of anything Jewish and the reality is there were customs among some in the Jewish world that when somebody did convert to Christianity sometimes people sat Shiva for these individuals and considered them dead. The issue of Jewish identity is one that missionaries couldn't overcome and for no other reason other than Jews like being Jewish missionaries could not conquer that particular obstacle. Obstacle number two was the Jewish Bible. We have been known for 2,000 years to be the people of the book. The book is the Jewish Bible, the Tanakh. We knew our Bible inside and out backwards and forwards in the original Hebrew language and in many cases in the languages the peoples in which we lived. For a missionary to try and suggest to a Jewish person that the Bible had prophecies that proved that Jesus was the Messiah was preposterous and most Jewish people knew their Bible. Knew enough that missionaries had a dismal dismal rate of success at trying to convert Jews by using our Bible and so the Bible really was not something that they could use to try and convince us. And lastly was our sense of Jewish spirituality. Our love of Judaism, of Jewish life, of our personal relationship with the Almighty. When a missionary tried to impose on a Jewish person the suggestion that they did not have a personal relationship with God and that to have it they had to accept Jesus in their heart and as their eternal sacrifice, Jews would say that's Peshigar. That makes no sense to me. I already have a relationship with God. I pray every day it's part of my life. I have Jewish holidays. I have Jewish spirituality and our personal relationship with God was something that was part and parcel of Jewish life since the inception of Christianity and since the giving of the Torah. So the missionaries could not overcome that. They've developed a technology today that one takes advantage of a very, very serious problem that we are having with the Jewish community of Jews assimilating and being disenfranchised with Judaism of Jews being disassociated with anything spiritual. They are taking advantage of a situation where Jewish people don't know why they should even be Jewish. But they feel guilty about converting to another religion. There's this guilt. They feel, you know, I'm Jewish. I was born into, I'm going to die. Just feel guilty about accepting something else. And so what has happened is missionaries are taking advantage of repackaging. You know they call rebranding. Sometimes you take an old product and just rebrand it and all of a sudden bingo. It's new again. When it comes to Jewish identity there is, you know, I'm going to stop. I'll tell my story. My story basically describes what they're doing. And I will take those three obstacles and show how the missionaries overcame my resistance to becoming a Christian. I mentioned it earlier on. I had a traditional upbringing brought up by Holocaust survivors and my parents because they had very, very limited understanding of Yiddish guide of Judaism sent me to a hater to an afternoon school. I would go to school from 9 till 3.30, get on the streetcar and go to my hater from 4 till 6. Did this five days a week, Monday through Thursday and on Sunday mornings. Did that for six years, had my bar mitzvah and as with many of my peers once the bar mitzvah was finished, we're finished with Hebrew school. We don't have to bother with that anymore. And we didn't. My experience in going to synagogue was primarily as a child and preparing for bar mitzvah. But at time the bar mitzvah was finished as with many of my peers. There was no involvement whatsoever with synagogue life. And as a teenager, although I did affiliate somewhat with Jewish teens by the time I got to college, I went to here in Toronto to the Ontario College of Art and Design. And by the time I got there, there were very, very few Jewish individuals that I was associating with. My world was basically that of non-Jews. And it was in the context of being at the Ontario College of Art that my life changed. The program there is four years and the last of the four years upon graduation, I was very successful as a student there. They had then, what they still have now, a weekend where they put on display the best work of the students in that school. And I had a large wall with a lot of my artwork on display. Do I have a sample here actually, right? Well, I'll show it later on. I had a large sample of my art work, large display of samples of my artwork on display for people to come and take a look and see what I'm doing in hopes of maybe being discovered by an art director or maybe a publishing company. My strength was illustration and graphic design. But I didn't have a lot of success over that weekend. I was stood by my display Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The display was closing up at six o'clock, five o'clock that afternoon on the Sunday along comes Mary Beth. Mary Beth was the beauty queen of the school. She was extremely, extremely attractive. Tall, pretty, funny, talkative, anything a guy could dream of possibly having as a girlfriend, that was it. My problem is I was not what you'd call a very experienced individual dating and I was not that attractive, maybe 150 pounds skinnier than I am now. A lot of acne on my face, big black glasses. Anyways, I never said a word to her for the entire four years because I was very shy and I wouldn't know why I would say such a beautiful girl. But she came up to my display and started talking to me and right away my palms broke out into a sweat, my tongue got dry, I couldn't say anything. But eventually she, being the friendly individual she was, started asking me questions about my artwork and boy that hour went really quickly and by the time it was over the college was saying well Julie, she got to wrap up now and I had to take down my display. I said but I was having a very nice conversation with her, I said would you like to go out? I can't believe I did that. She said yes, can't believe she said that. So we had a date, packed up my display. Next Saturday night we went on our date and it was wonderful. I couldn't believe the girl of my dreams. I just, without going into details, I thought this is fantastic. So much so that at the end of that first date I quickly said can we go again next Saturday night? She said sure. Well I did on the second date what I would not recommend guys do on a second date. Once we get together we can't remember where we went, what we were doing, but I didn't hesitate to tell her that I loved her. You don't do that on a second date. But she said to me, Julius, who are your jets? I'm in love with somebody else. How can you love with somebody else? You're going out with me and you're in love with somebody else? Who is this guy? I'll scratch his eyes out. I was so upset. Here you just feel like you're finally finding the love of your life and she's got another boyfriend. How could you do this? Who is he? And she said Jesus Christ. And I went, thank God. I thought you had a serious boyfriend. But she was serious. What happened was this was an evangelical Christian girl who for whatever reason was not feeling too committed to her faith at that time and one of the things evangelical Christians are supposed to do is only go out with other evangelical Christians, other believers and not to go out with somebody who was not a believer. So she thought she would put God first on this date and strain up the mess she made. She had backslidden and so she thought she would tell me about Jesus and put that on the front of the agenda so that she would know that he came first. And I thought this is not a problem. I can handle it. But in no short time I was going to her church. She was taking me to her Bible studies. I was going to her Christian socials, meeting all her friends. And quite honestly I was enjoying them and having a very nice time. It was interesting learning about the Bible, the New Testament. I felt a little bit guilty but she would be giving me pamphlets about believing in Jesus. Many of these pamphlets written by other Jews who had converted to Christianity. And in time I was beginning to like be one over. But one Sunday afternoon I went to her church and the minister in that church said some things that really rubbed me the wrong way, almost smacked of anti-Semitism. And it just didn't make me feel good about being there at all. And I remember after I walked out to her from her church I said to her, you know, Mary Beth, that said, I can't come back here anymore. I was born a Jew. I'm going to die a Jew. This is not Jewish. You know, this is Christianity and I just, I just can't, I just can't continue. There's something not right here. So it was a terrible thing because with our relationship was this whole spiritual struggle and it was not a good thing that this was beginning to fall apart. So in her attempt to try and find some way for me to hear her Christian gospel message, she found out about a new congregation that started up here in Toronto, a Messianic synagogue and told me about it, said they meet on Friday night and gave me the phone number of the contact there to speak to to get the information as to where to go and maybe I'd be interested in going. So I went to this congregation. They have, it was at that time they were renting space in a public library and when I, but they had it well outfitted. When I went in there it was called Congregation of the King of Israel. When I went there on a Friday night I walked in and they had a lot of people, it must have been about 40 people in the auditorium at that time. It was a small room but with this size. Up front was an Arna Kodesh, two Israeli flags. Oh, sorry, one Israeli flag, one Canadian flag. Arna Kodesh, a big mug and dove that said Yeshua in the middle of it. Pictures of Hasidim dancing all around, the pictures from the hotel all around on the walls, was a lot of music going on in the congregation. There was some guitars, clarinets, tambourine, violin, beautiful music and they were, the music was traditional Jewish melodies, and it felt, it felt like amazing that this didn't feel like church at all. I knew that this was a congregation of Jews I believe in Jesus but it seemed like like a synagogue and as I mentioned the men were wearing, if I didn't mention men were keepers and prayer shawls and it felt like I was in a little synagogue and I was enjoying it. I was not familiar with the melodies but I clapped along. At some point the music got really up tempo and some of the congregants got around started dancing the Hora and after about 20-30 minutes of this music things died down and one of the ladies from the congregation came up to the front of the congregation where they had a little lectern like this with some Shabbat candles and she was about to light the Shabbat candles but they dimmed the lights, made it nice and low, then everybody held hands and together the entire congregation started singing. May the Lord protect and defend you, may he always shield you from shame, may you come to be in Israel a shining name, yadadadada, may God bless you and grant you long lives. Where's that song from? And what scene is that from? Lighting the Shabbat candles. And who doesn't cry when you watch that scene in the movie? I've seen that movie 10 times, I saw it on Broadway once, I saw it in England once, a live on stage and it breaks down everything inside you because there's Tevye with his daughters, a poor downtrodden man relishing in the beauty of Shabbats with his family. It just now makes him choke up, but who doesn't get choked up about this beautiful shtekal from Fiddler on the roof? And here they create it in the middle of a church. May God bless you and it was just tingling up the spine. They all sing the song, she finally lights the Shabbat candles. In the name of Jesus Christ. So the messianic rabbi comes forward. You're laughing, but this is real. The messianic rabbi comes forward and he has his becher, his wine cup. In the name of Jesus Christ. Then they take the two chalaz, the one who comes from the land. In the name of Jesus Christ. Okay, you know, I didn't quite get what was going on because it was so Hebrew, it sounded pretty good, but you know what, it felt nice. Then the messianic rabbi went ahead with his sermon and in the sermon, no Christian terminology. The New Testament is called the Britahadasha. He refers to the Old Testament as the Tanakh. Jesus is Yeshua HaMashiach. Mary is Miriam. Joseph is Joseph. You know, in terms of some of the new speak in these messianic groups, baptism was called the mikva service. What I learned when I got involved, I started going to this congregation frequently on Friday nights. It was really an interesting ritual. I go to my parents house for Shabbat dinner and quickly get out of there by 730 so I get to my messianic meeting for 8 o'clock. They asked me, where was I going? I said, I'm going to Shul. They were so happy. I didn't have the heart to tell them what I was doing. I was going to Shul. And so I would go to these services on Friday and I had to go to my parents house for Shabbat dinner and eventually started going to the Bible studies and after that to some of their retreats and their conferences and over the course of a year I basically was indoctrinated with a lot of their Christian theology. What was I a victim of? In addition to what I just described to you, in my particular case, you know, I just described the little messianic synagogue experience, but these groups are using only Jewish symbols, Jewish terminology, their pamphlets, only display pictures of Torah scrolls, pictures of the Kotel in Yushalim, stars of David. Nothing about their presentation has anything to do with Christianity. You know, in times past a missionary might be named Father McGillicuddy. He would be wearing a black shirt, a white collar, handing you a pamphlet with a figure on a cross with blood dripping down his hands. You knew what you were getting into, but here now it's a messianic rabbi with a kippah, a face as Jewish as the map of Israel, a nose as big as the beak of a bald eagle, and he's wearing a big mug and a high necklace and handing you a picture of a pamphlet that has a Torah scroll on it. Like, it really is a bit of a transformation here and it breaks down the resistance because what you think of as an assimilated Jew is you're walking into something that really, really smells and feels Jewish. I must add that the people in the congregation, not all of them, but many of them, were Jewish. Very friendly, very warm, very kind, very caring and very sincere and very friendly. Makes a big difference. I mean, how many of people have walked into Shul and have ever experienced warmth and friendship and kindness and caring? Maybe here it might be one of the few exceptions in the world, but usually there's a joke that one of the few things people will say to you go to Shul is, excuse me, you're sitting in my seat. People don't get experience that kind of warmth and kindness. You know, I'm talking about what happened to me 30 years ago, but today the deception and the penetration of these missionary groups is phenomenal now on the Internet. Now on the Internet it is impossible not to be bombarded by these missionary groups. You go to the Internet and Google any Jewish term and you will get many results from these missionary groups. Whether you type in the words Shabbat, Kosher, Torah, you name it, I won't say 50%, 80%, 30%, you will get a lot of results come up from these missionary groups. Picture, if you will, a university student coming from a secular Jewish background. He's at University of Toronto or York University and he's studying for the first time because he's got a little bit of interested in religion, comparative religions, and he's deciding to do a project on Judaism and he's at his computer doing research and he's ending up on all these messianic sites being bombarded with misinformation that basically leads him to a messianic synagogue where he gets to meet with a messianic rabbi and he asks that messianic rabbi all kinds of questions which ultimately lead to his conversion to Christianity what all he wanted to do was learn about Judaism and it's happening all over. When I got involved with the Hebrew Christian movement, the messianic Jewish movement, the Jews for Jesus movement, whatever you want to call it, back then they boasted that there were 25,000 Jews worldwide involved. We're talking 1976. Today the numbers are bursting. I'd say conservatively somewhere between four and 500,000, minimum. They came out with various Jewish population studies in recent years. I'm just going to give you a perspective from the United States alone. In 1990, they came out with the Jewish population study. In that study in 1990, they came out with a number of 720,000 Jews in America that he had either converted to or affiliated with a religion other than Judaism. 720,000. Now it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that the predominant religion in America is Christianity. Go forward 10 years to the year 2000. The year 2000, the Jewish population study came up with a similar study. They came up with results that doubled. And then the figure was 1.4 million American Jews had either converted to or affiliated with a religion other than Judaism. I called up a recent demographer. I won't name the name because it was a confidential discussion. And I called him just prior to the recent Pew report that was released. Does anybody familiar with the recent Pew report? I have an article in our newsletter over there that features George Bush, by the way. Oh, a newsletter we have a picture of George Bush. The reason he's on the cover of our newsletter because he was the keynote speaker in November at one of the largest Messianic Jewish organizations in America. He was at a fundraising dinner, helping raise money for the evangelical Christians who he is a member of. In that newsletter when you read it, the Pew report cites many horrific statistics in terms of assimilation and into marriage. I'll just give you two little details. 34% of American Jews have a Christmas tree in their home. And the same number, 34% of American Jews have no problem with Jews believing in Jesus. That's pretty scary. Now, the demographer that I called up told me they did not publish a study this year similar to the previous one because the statistics were so horrific they didn't want to publish them. But the reality is if we take 1990 and we saw it was 720,000 and then the year 2000 it was 1,400,000 Jews who were converted to or affiliated with a religion other than Christianity, where do we see these numbers going? And the missionaries are taking advantage of this to a great extent. I want to discuss two other obstacles that have been taken over by these missionaries. I mentioned to you the Jewish identity clearly they've been able to overcome. When it comes to using the Jewish Bible, Jewish people, sadly, don't know the Bible. Many of them, very few of them are getting a Hebrew or Jewish education. And even if they do, they are not getting a strong foundation in the Tanakh. And so as a result, and I hate to say this, very few of them, even though their name's in Hebrew, I cannot tell you how often it happens when I speak to somebody that is coming from an assimilated background, they do not know what their Hebrew name is. And a good challenge that is interesting to do is when you find out a person, if you're in a position to do so, ask the person to write their Hebrew name and see how paralyzed their hands become. They can't write their name in Hebrew. So we have a situation where most Jews don't understand Hebrew. And so what happens is when a missionary approaches a Jewish individual and suggests to that person that your Jewish Bible prophesies that the Messiah is going to be X, Y, and Z, they present that Jewish person with a Bible that has a Christian translation. It is not a Jewish translation. And I'm going to give you two examples of Bible verses that I was presented with in some of the Bible studies that I went to in which I was made to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. These are very simple ones and things get very complicated because we have 15 hours worth of lectures online refuting all the different passages. I'm just going to take a few moments right now to just talk about two of them. There's a passage in Psalm 22 that missionaries use and it's very powerful. It was presented to me in one of our Bible studies to say, you know, the Bible teaches, the Jewish Bible teaches that the Messiah would be crucified. And I went, really? I never heard of such a thing. Oh, no, really? The Jewish Bible shows that the Messiah would be crucified. And I'm shown a passage in Book of Psalms, to Hillem chapter 22. In that particular passage, the Psalmist, King David, talks about the incredible torment that he is experiencing through his enemies, the suffering. He makes references to his enemies with the analogy of as animals, etc. And it comes to a climax in the particular passage. And this happened to me in a Bible study where the Messianic Rabbi read the following and then said this to me. And he says, here is a passage that prophesies that the Messiah would be crucified. For dog, this comes from chapter 22 of Psalms, verse 17. For dogs have encompassed me. Evil doers have surrounded me. They pierced my hands and my feet. Who does that sound like the Bible's speaking about? How many people are notoriously famous for having their hands and feet pierced? It sounds like Jesus. They pierced my hands and my feet. With a passage like that, without going into a lot of details, you see that. Wow, that's amazing. In a further Bible study, there was a passage where the Messianic Rabbi was teaching a class on the book of Isaiah, the virgin birth. The dominant belief in Christianity is that Jesus was born without a father. He was born with the Ruachakodesh, as they would say, with the Holy Spirit and a woman. No father. Where do they get this? They have a passage in the book of Isaiah, chapter 7, verse 14, in all paraphrase. For behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and call his name Emmanuel. Okay, wow, a virgin shall bear a son. It sounds a lot like Jesus. How many people are, again, world famous for being born of a virgin? And so these are two passages. Without going into a game, we could spend a whole hour doing these, but I'm just trying to give you a little taste of what happens in the hand of a missionary and a gullible, vulnerable Jew. These passages can be very, very powerful. When you have passages like this that seem to prove that Jesus is the Messiah, all of a sudden the Jewish Bible is pointing in the direction that you never thought it would. Then comes the kicker. You know, I mentioned you, we as the Jewish people have a personal relationship with God, but sadly, those of us who have grown up assimilated without that deep and appreciative understanding of the spirituality and the beauty of Judaism, we're alien to that. We need to be introduced. These missionaries come and offer this personal relationship with God, but they say, first, you have to get right with God and you're not right with God. Why am I not right with God? Because you've sinned and God doesn't like sin. And then they'll cite some passages from the Bible, from their New Testament, where they'll say, almost all things are by law purged with blood, because without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. Let's say you cannot be forgiven for your sin without a blood sacrifice. And they said, you need to have a blood sacrifice. They'll take you to the temple, talk about the temple, and then the temple, they'll show you that they'll explain that the sacrifices were offered up on the altar, and when the temple was standing, Jews had a way of getting forgiven for their sins, but there's no temple. How are you going to be forgiven for your sins? But they'll pull the rabbit out of their hat and they'll say, God in His infinite mercy has provided a sacrifice to end all sacrifice. And that is the Messiah. He provided him. After the temple was destroyed, there's no way to be having your sacrifices for forgiveness of sins. You do. All you got to do is believe that Jesus died for your sins. You're going to have your sins forgiven. You're going to go to hell and have eternal life. What did I say? Go to hell. You know what? I guess it's all subliminal. I mean, boo-boo. Should I rewind to take it over a minute? I think I should. So they're going to say that all you got to do is believe that Jesus died for your sins. All you got to do is believe in that. You'll be forgiven for your sins and you go to heaven and have eternal life. The bottom line is you had these three obstacles. Number one, Jewish identity missionaries are able to make a Jew feel that they can be more Jewish by believing in Jesus. In fact, the Jews for Jesus organization had a billboard out there that actually said just that. Be more Jewish. Believe in Jesus. There was a billboard in New York that had a picture of the Rebbe, Lubavitcher Rebbe. And on that billboard it said, right idea, wrong guy. Trying to basically get people to. Pretty powerful. They are overcoming the whole Jewish obstacle business. They get a Jewish person to feel that the Jewish Bible is now having Bible references and Bible prophecies that prove Jesus is Messiah. And lastly, they're told you don't believe in this. You're going to go to Helen Bird forever. You're believing it. You're going to go to heaven. It's very, very powerful stuff. And sadly, when you got the motivation of a beautiful Christian girl for a lonely Jewish guy, you know, all of a sudden the chemistry also has part to do with it as well. It took me a year, but I got involved. And for the four remaining years, we've talked about five years all together, I committed myself very strongly to this Messianic movement. I was involved as an illustrator doing illustrations for their graphics, for their album covers. I was involved in radio, in TV, doing a lot of public speaking for these groups. In the group that I was involved in, we put together a choir. And with that choir, we would go around and present songs in different Christian churches to try and motivate Christians to better evangelize Jews. We had a lot of outreach programs within the city, trying to invite Jewish people to come to our programming. Sadly, when we did this kind of outreach work in the city, my name was often mentioned in these newspaper articles because I had become the Public Relations Director for this congregation. Fortunately, the Jewish community had a counter-missionary activist here in Toronto whose name also appeared in many of these articles and set the record straight for the Jewish community. That was Rabbi Emmanuel Shochet. Rabbi Shochet was at the time he had been for many, many years very, very well known worldwide for his ability to counter-missionary claims and was extremely eloquent in presenting the correct Jewish opinion on the shenanigans that missionaries like our organization and others were doing in Toronto to try and get for a Jewish Christianity. One of the things I did in my particular group was also teach. I had a program that I was teaching my group called Sharing Israel's Messiah with the Jewish People. It was a program where we would get together and have a class with about 15, 20 people and we'd go step by step through a variety of different proof texts to try and help our members convince Jews to believe in Jesus. And it was an interesting program but although maybe some of the participants in that program may have gotten some information from me that they may not have gotten otherwise, something happened to me. You know, there's an expression that one of the best ways to learn is to teach. I was given this responsibility to start teaching these classes and at around this time a relative gave me a Sancino Tanach in Hebrew and English, 14 volumes, a Jewish Bible with a correct translation. And as I started preparing my classes unbeknownst to the spiritual leadership of the group that I was involved I started making references to the Jewish Bible just to double-check and see how the translations were comparing the Christian Bibles that I was working with and the original Jewish texts. And if anybody here has ever locked into a mortgage only to have the mortgage rates drop the next day you will appreciate the sick feeling you get in the stomach that I had when I started seeing some of these Bible passages that were totally contradicting what I was studying in Christianity. Passage by passage verse by verse I started seeing that there were some uncomfortable discrepancies between what the Christian Bible was saying and what the Jewish Bible was saying. You know I gave an example a few moments ago about two Bible passages that the missionaries used to try and convert Jews to Christianity one that proves that the Messiah had to be crucified and the other one that the Messiah would be born of a virgin. So in my studies I saw in fact that the Bible didn't say what the Christian Bible said. In a kosher translation of the Jewish Bible in the first example that I told you about where the missionary says that that passage says that the Messiah would be crucified what I learned was that first of all there was nothing in that passage that made any reference to a Messiah. The Messiah was not the context of that passage and so what we see as the missionaries employed one technique where they take a passage out of context. But number two another technique they use is mistranslation. In their particular passage the Hebrew word that they translated as pierced was ka-ari like a lion. And in the correct Hebrew translation their verse should have translated properly into the English for dogs have encompassed me evil doers have surrounded me they are at my hands and feet like a lion. That's a lot different than they pierced my hands and my feet and it's consistent with the passage where King David talks about his enemies being like animals attacking him. When I saw this big mistranslation I had I started saying wait a minute I had been indoctrinated by the Christian teaching that I had been learning for five years that the New Testament and the Old Testament were the inerrant word of God. There were no mistakes, no boo-boos, no there were just no inconsistencies but when I found some inconsistencies all of a sudden like the proverbial house of cards you remove one of those cards everything starts tumbling down I started having a very shaky foundation of my faith but I thought you know maybe there was a reason for this so I'll keep pursuing but when I started studying more I saw more of these inconsistencies inconsistencies for instance in that passage I just cited before in terms of the virgin birth what I discovered in the Jewish translation is that the Christian translation is a gross mistranslation the Christian translation of the word Ha'al Ma they translate as a virgin but the correct translation is should be the young woman also in their translation they say a virgin shall conceive the Jewish translation actually says the young woman is with child she's already pregnant in the passage and what I learned was that there was a huge huge mistranslation problem here the rule of thumb is with all these biblical proof texts that the missionary cite are there are always problems that can be resolved either through mistranslation context or circular reasoning in some cases for instance there's actually verses that they cite that don't even exist once I started getting a lot of doubts and I started seeing that there were some big questions here one of the things that really was a difficult thing to shake was the devil when I converted to Christianity one of the first things I was told after accepting the belief in Christianity was that the devil would try to get me the doubt and if I had any doubts I should not listen to those doubts because those doubts could not be from God God in his infinite mercy had showed me that Yeshua was the Messiah so if I'm having doubts that Yeshua is the Messiah God wouldn't be giving me those doubts those doubts have to be coming from Satan and so as a result many Christians might concur with this is that often one's commitment to Christianity is not out of conviction for the belief in Jesus but possibly out of their fear of going to hell in my particular case I had to deal with this indoctrination of this concept of Satan being the author of my doubts and I eventually had to say devil be damned I've got to listen to my intellect my Yiddish a cup my Tejo was telling me that I was making a big boo boo and I had to try and listen to some reason I had a friend that when I got involved in Christianity she got involved with Judaism actually she started learning downtown at Hillow with Rabbi David Trochat we're talking back in the 70s when he was teaching down at U of T and I got involved in my messianic adventure and one of the unique things about Chaya was that she remained a friend in spite of what I was doing she eventually married a Rabbi and left town living sometime in the United States sometime in Israel but she would come back to Toronto every now and then and visit and start asking questions well I just realized I missed a very important part I mentioned that I was discovering some of these inconsistencies with my presenting of these classes and around this time it's about the fifth year of my involvement with Jews for Jesus the I'm sorry with the human Christians messianic Jews the organization Jews for Jesus moved to Toronto about that time and I started volunteering for them and I was in the office of the leader of Jews for Jesus one Sunday afternoon I can't remember exactly what I was helping him out with but we were talking in his office and I was looking at his bookshelf and I saw a title of a book on his shelf that caught my eye it was called faith strengthened and I pulled the book off the shelf and as I was pulling the book off the shelf he grabs my hand and pushes it back this is the director of Jews for Jesus of Toronto and I said what are you doing and he says you don't want to read that book and I said why and he says it's just the kind of book that the devil would love to use for you to doubt Jesus you don't want to read that book okay so we pushed it back on the shelf this was on a Sunday the next day Monday I went to negative bookstore on Bathurst Street and spoke to the proprietor there and I said you have a book called faith strengthened I said sure I have it on right here on the shelf so I came down there and on the shelf was the book faith strengthened right beside it was another book by Aria Kaplan called The Real Messiah and I bought that as well took these books home and started reading them voraciously because what I started discovering is many of the doubts that I have been experiencing in my quest were being articulated by these writers Aria Kaplan, Isaac Trochee were talking about it and also introducing to me many other issues that I never even thought of that brought into question the validity of Christianity at all the combination of these questions and the proofs as a hups of cards starting to come down started to make me realize that I had made a huge mistake but still maybe maybe maybe there's an answer and I thought that I would you know like to speak to a rabbi and but I didn't Chaya called me and after being a friend for five years as I mentioned she would come to visit Toronto and call me for a Shabbat meal or just come for a glass of tea or just for a phone call and every time she would talk to me I would start trying to convert it to Christianity telling her about Yeshua this and Jesus that this particular time after my five years of involvement and after this recent period of having a lot of questions and doubts she said to me you know what's the matter Julius and I said what do you mean what's the matter and she said we've been on the phone for 10 minutes you haven't told me anything about your Messiah what's the matter she was a bit of a psychologist so she knew how to play the cards and I said well I'm having some doubts and she goes really what kind of doubts and I tried to explain to her and she says well have you spoken to a rabbi about it and I said to her the only rabbi that I could speak to is is Rabbi Emmanuel Shalkett but I don't think he would believe me because then I explained to her how my name was in the press and I was the bad guy and he was the good guy he wouldn't believe me if I called him and she said well he'll believe me because I'm a good friend of his and she arranged an appointment for me and we'll meet with Rabbi Shalkett that night and that was the beginning of the end we had an intense four-hour discussion and at the end of those four hours I said to Rabbi Shalkett that I feel really guilty for what I've done and he said and again it was a lot of shenanigans for five years he said you should feel guilty you've done a bad thing I said so how do I fix it and he explained to me the whole concept of chuva of repentance and Judaism and that in Judaism the ideal repentance is if you've done something of particular nature you want to do something that'll counter that as your chuva and he said in my particular case if I've spent so much effort to try and convert chuva to Christianity I should do what I can to try and undo that and stop chuva from becoming Christians and possibly even rescue them from Christianity and when he told me that it resonated very strongly in my in my heart and I had no problem in saying you know that's something that I think I might be interested in now I didn't jump into it right away but shortly after that I was encouraged to go to a place called Asia Torah where I started learning about Judaism and meeting individuals that weren't afraid about talking about God I mean please appreciate that coming from a secular Jewish background if you talked about having a personal relation to God or anything like that if you consider the religious fanatic but here you know and meeting up with individuals who were not afraid to talk about God in a spiritual way it was encouraging for me and through them I got involved with learning and coming to programs at Orsameach at Lubavitch and eventually I was able to realize I made a horrible mistake and made a commitment from that point on to do what I can to try and counter that it started off in 1982 as just a little bit of activism but in 1989 I formally took on the responsibility of running Jews for Judaism here in Canada and so it's been 24 years since that happened and as they say the rest is history I have a few more thoughts that I'd like to share but I thought what we'd do is put on the video and then I'll just share a few more thoughts in terms and then we'll wrap up with some questions okay? Sorry the video was a little bit dated my apologies for that but what you should have seen in this video are a couple things that this is not just a young people's problem we see children we see boobies in the 80s and there is no limit to the type of individual that is susceptible to the effort to these missionaries the only common denominator that all these Jews have is a shallow and limited Jewish upbringing in terms of what Judaism is all about for them and so what we see from this and again the problem is much worse if you go on I don't want you to go online but online exists so much more video footage but really we have a project to just put together some of the clips from some of these missionary groups to see the extent to which they're going that so many of them now are far beyond this they have a lot of the leaders in this group the rabbis were a black hat and a capote you would think they were a Lubavitcher rabbi and their synagogues are huge with thousands and thousands of members some of them it is getting very very big what I'd like to do is take a few of your questions I have a few more points that I'd like to close with but I thought maybe your questions might be exactly the very points that I want to talk about yes I have a question when you say rabbis what's a messianic rabbi are these actual the date they didn't have the regular Smykhon they have Smykhon like what I'm saying like do they have Smykhon so what is the the good question is what is a messianic rabbi or what when you say like you're saying that they're calling themselves they're calling themselves these are they're not let's call a spade turn the other way let's call a spade a spade messianic rabbis again the the word I probably didn't use in this whole discussion was deception deception is used in they don't think it's deception but it's deception they are altering every possible turn to make you feel that what you are encountering is legitimately Jewish so when I was involved in this movement back from 1976 to 81 then they referred to their spiritual leaders as messianic rabbis today today they've dropped the term messianic and they just call them rabbis they don't feel they have to apologize to nobody the reality is when they put in the word messianic it was synonymous with Christian their ordination comes from institutions that have their roots in evangelical protest in Christianity there is absolutely nothing Jewish about any of them all their ordinations come and it can be traced to evangelical protest in Christian organizations or Bible colleges are these then Jewish? most of the individuals today who were involved are Jewish in the early days when I got involved many were not so for instance there were people on screen who I know from my personal experience according to the halach definition of Jewish being do they have a Jewish mother I know that individuals in the movement do not have Jewish mothers therefore they're not Jewish you shouldn't be shocked because we have to give you an idea the scope that we're dealing with I mentioned to you when I joined the movement there was 25,000 now today we see that without batting an eyelash the numbers of Jews who were involved in Christianity far exceed half a million when I was in the movement there were 11 messianic synagogues in North America now there are 600 messianic synagogues in North America about 100 in the former Soviet Union 150 in Israel and other places around the world the movement is definitely growing once you recognize obviously that you were heading in the wrong direction and you pretty well came to the understanding and the Judaism is that how did you came about to your fellow colleague or church member if you would say and what was the reaction so when I met with Rabbi Shachad Rabbi Shachad gave me some advice and one piece of advice that was he said was extremely important that I follow religiously if you want to use that term was that I should have no emotional contact whatsoever with these people he said because any contact whatsoever because they will be able to depending he doesn't know how strong I was and how firm I was in my convictions and on an emotional level these people could pull you back so he was of the opinion that I should not have any contact with them whatsoever so I had limited contact what I did do when I came out I started getting and some of the people who I was involved with as an illustrator I just wanted to mention to you as an illustrator when I finally came out I started using my I was a famous illustrator in Canada doing work for magazines like McLean's Toronto Life Canadian business when I finally came out of Christianity I started doing work for kosher organizations some of you may have seen this if anybody is familiar with anybody so I did that illustration I did a lot of illustrators at one point they called me the Jewish Norman Rockwell I have my own website julieassist.com if you want to take a look at some more of my other stuff but my point is that it was very difficult for me to I don't know how to get sidetracked on that oh yeah I got calls from many of the individuals that I had worked for in North America I must have worked for at least 10 different well-known evangelical missionary organizations including Jews for Jesus and famous evangelical Iraq Mill Friedland Jewish voice and different groups helping them in various aspects local design illustration graphic design and many of the leaders within the movement had also been friends with me and so when I they heard that I dropped out I started getting calls from these individuals to come meet with them and and and heeding Rabbi Schrockett's advice I said no and my attitude was no because I'd given them five years of my life it's enough oh another another challenge that Rabbi Schrockett gave me he said you know you've just wasted five years of your life embracing Christianity trying to convince Jews to become part of it and now you yourself are realizing you made a mistake why don't you give yourself five months of your life and start learning about Judaism at least check it out find out what it is that you didn't know get a taste for it after you know once you made a serious attempt trying to learn something about Judaism you know I can't stop you from being a Christian but at least you'll have an idea of what it is that you're you're saying is the fulfillment of Judaism but you know nothing about it and he was right I wasn't know you're engaging bringing Jews into Christianity would you see the need to bring those Jews at your association? oh so that's your question so yes yes so I did make an attempt to try and speak to some of them and many of them would not speak to me I did have one successful encounter with one of these people bringing them back and got the woman to it got to the point where she was agreed to throw out all her books and everything but most of them would not speak to me because you have to understand from a theological perspective in Christianity if you're for God I'm sorry if you believe in God and God shows you that Jesus is a Messiah this is very primitive when you take a look how this is perceived but if you believe in Jesus that he's a Messiah then you believe in God if something comes to show you that Jesus is not the Messiah that's not from God and therefore I overnight became an agent of Satan so to talk to Julius was to talk to the devil we actually had somebody speak on December 24th if you can just turn to the back of that newsletter there you see the flames there Ira Michelsen came to Toronto speaking was a messianic leader a messianic rabbi of his own congregation for 20 years he was eventually able to understand and realize the mistake of what he had made and through slow work it's not going to happen overnight it's not like just showing somebody on the dotted line a little boo boo you know when people have their own convictions on the line their own egos on the line that they've they've put their entire lives on the line they're married into the industry they've got kids in the business they have a congregation it's not so easy to just convince somebody overnight this fellow Ira Michelsen came to the conclusion after 20 years that he made a big boo boo and he was able to come up to be shocked we are shocked like I I knew it existed but I didn't know what capacity the numbers that you mentioned this is catastrophe this is this is hopeless we have 20,000 it's a small number it is or 20,000 so what are the orthodox leaders the influence of big big rabbis in the world are planning to do about it so that's a great question I'm going to answer your question with a story okay I had the exact same question happened a few years ago I was speaking in London London, Ontario and spoke to a group there and a woman in the audience came up stood up and she says this was the answer she says what is this it's just terrible this is a catastrophe what are the rabbis doing about this and what is federation doing about this and what is Canadian Jewish Congress doing about this and what are the Jewish state schools doing about this and what and and on no no no no no no and I said to her I said lady you have to understand they can't do anything about this the only way we're going to do anything about this is if you understand and appreciate why and how the missionaries are effective the missionaries are effective ultimately not because of organizations like Jews for Jesus and city of David and Mount Israel they're not successful because of they are successful because of the individual people who embrace this faith and take it upon themselves to reach out to other people on a one-on-one basis and share and show the love and care and they invite the people to the service and they invite the people to their home and they invite the people to their events if we have I hate to say this we have to actually back up a little and follow their example because the rabbis are busy running synagogues to doing their programs to doing their education the rabbis brought me in here to do this to alert you of this spiritual holocaust that's happening but the remedy the remedy to this problem can be understood in terms of the name our organization we did not name our organization Jews against missionaries or Jews against Jesus we named our organization Jews for Judaism so if I could just take a little break here oh I have it right here I have a flyer there in my back panel there but you know when we're dealing with the whole issue of how do we fight this problem we've produced a little ad that we publish once in a while to try and be soft sell in terms of what we could do to remedy this problem is that you can see this little flyer here we have it on the back missionaries are trying to convert Jews to Christianity and you're asking what we can do about fighting it so the answer is to fight the missionaries is not to take account of missionary course is not to go study all these verses it's not to go at although we could appreciate the donations for Jews for Judaism don't get me wrong the answer is say yes to Judaism that is the answer if every Jew said yes to Judaism every Jews who is committed to Judaism takes it just a little bit more seriously we can wipe the missionary problem off the face of the earth what do we say here this weekend every week make your Jewish practice stronger and more meaningful study Torah and learn more about Judaism light Shabbat candles and I'm speaking to a secular crowd I mean you're obviously here you are affiliated you're committed to a certain extent I'm speaking to people who are not so committed light Shabbat candles and bless your children have a Shabbat meal enjoy it with family and friends gift Sadaka generously help those in need do tikkun olam try your best to make the world a better place pray to the God of all humanity and connect with a synagogue and for every step you take invite somebody to join you we want to share we want to get involved we want to do you know we we we I don't know about you but my experience coming back into Judaism I felt like a Nazi coming into a Jewish environment I was the public enemy number one you have no idea what it is like to be hated by the Jewish community that's I was I was hated by the Jewish community I remember the first time I walked into into a school to try and um start domining on Shabbat as people were pointing their fingers at me that's that's him that's him and I can't blame them because I was notorious I wasn't shy while I was a missionary my pictures were in the paper and I was taking interviews but I was an enemy you know I one student group here there was a Jewish student group I was sitting at a Pesach Seder a Pesach Seder table two years after I came out of Christianity and I was feeling really comfortable with this group around the table at the table I can't name the names of the people or the organization I just want to keep it confidential but these were student activists and I said something at the table about how great it is to be with you guys that you finally accepted me and one of the leaders of the activist organization said what makes you think we accept you we don't trust you and one of them admitted that they had that they that they were discussing ways to kill me that's a terrible thing to say they said should we kill CIS for what I was doing a terrible thing but you know what when you have that but I've said so I'm coming into the Jewish community I was a very very very much hated individual and the acceptance I received and the warmth and the kindness and the and the openness from the different rabbis and the division was amazing even though some members pointed the fingers you know I it took a little bit of guts but it was the love and the care and the concern of individuals that made my experience and my reintegration into the Jewish community something that was very meaningful and one of the things that was really helpful was coming to somebody's home for Shabbat to be at a Shabbat table and to be able to just learn about some of the customs of Shabbat and the halachas and to get a Dvar Torah from the host or the rabbi amazing we have to start doing that the missionaries do not hesitate one bit to reach out and invite everybody they can we have to stop being so insular and even if it's just a little bit let's say you know I'm not saying that every moment of every day you have to go and try the doing outreach once a week once a month do something to say this week once a month we're going to make a Shabbat table and we're going to invite guests to our house for Shabbat and we're going to make a Dvar Torah and have a nice discussion we're going to sing a couple's mirrors and make Shabbat a meaningful experience not only for us but for our guests that's a big challenge but you know what it's something that would help you and help your friends as well that's a long answer to a short question more questions yes as a second generation from Holocaust survivors how did your family do that? good question number one and the second how do we because it's so open how do we protect our children so it's a difficult thing number one how did my when my father found out about what I was doing it was after I had had a huge event here in Toronto that was the catalyst for one of the biggest Jewish protests for a missionary organization in Toronto's history this was 1980 it was at Northview Heights Secondary School and this singing group that you saw singing in Saint Petersburg I had brought them to Toronto to sing at Northview Heights Secondary School I had put posters all over the city of them with Hasidic dancers I had made such a deceptive advertising campaign we had was a huge huge audience but there were a lot of protests out there and when I when I had experienced the passion and the fervor of all these members of the Jewish community that were so convinced that we were wrong it did something to my kishkas something inside me snapped and I went wait a minute is it possible that maybe I could be wrong maybe that they know something I don't know where are they getting all their passion to make a statement and it was I making that as an aside because the influence of individuals I'm forgetting your two questions the first question was how did your family okay so after that incident after that incident it was in the newspapers and it was a Toronto Star the Globe and Mail Canadian Jewish News everywhere and I mentioned to you that I was a very very well known illustrator it was not unusual for me to have a cover of McLean's magazine one week Toronto Life next week Canadian Business Magazine next week Toronto Star and I was all over the place in terms of my illustrations of my father who worked on Spadina on a sewing machine he would come to the office and whenever he would have a picture to show but he would bring it to the office and show all his colleagues he was my son look what he did so this Monday he comes he comes to work but Monday yeah and not knowing what I had been involved in because I never told my parents what I was doing his friends that are all Holocaust survivors showed him the newspaper with your son sis the missionary Toronto Sun Globe and Mail and sadly that night you're supposed to have a birthday party from my father at the house at his home so I never told him anything about the newspaper articles and I just assumed he never saw it when I came to the house we came for the birthday party I brought the cake from Hermes coming in through the front door and he said to me you leave you're not my son anymore what do you do they're with the birthday cake but my father meant I mean I was he was of the old school there was no middle ground here I crossed the line you are not my son anymore and and I had kept it a secret but by the because I just didn't know how to deal with it but once the count was out of the bag we had some very tense and difficult family discussions that's basically ostracized me for a great extent to a great extent in my family and the opposite was the case when I finally came back and started doing my chuva the doors were wide open your second question was how do we protect our children because we even the society you know universities, colleges exactly you know what the remedy is you know you cannot you cannot be following your children where they go I have an 18 year old daughter she'll be 18 in two months I'm faced with the same at the moment I'm sending her to a day school she goes to Ferris-Baseyakov she goes to a Jewish school for girls but I see what happens it's there's no guarantees but you have to do the best you can number one to raise your children with the best Jewish values that you can one of the things I have learned though is that there is a misconception I feel is my opinion I'm not going to say this is the rabbi's opinion it's my opinion there's a misconception that Judaism is something that we can just pass on to our children like a football give you an analogy of what I mean with the following when you go on an airplane and they start with the announcements before you use it when you're doing the seat belts and they tell you in an emergency with the oxygen mask they say first you put the oxygen on yourself then you put it on your child so it is with Judaism we cannot expect to save our child if we don't save ourselves first so as much as much as you want to protect your children and do what you can until you embrace the Judaism you want them to have a commitment to they're just going to think it's hypocrisy they're not going to take it seriously they got to see that mommy and daddy really love or booby and zady are really committed to Judaism before they take it seriously they're not going to take it seriously it's it's I know that it was my dilemma when I went to Haider here I went to Haider we were learning about Shabbat and Kashrut when we came home didn't exist you know it's a double standard when we go to we would go to we go to restaurants and they weren't kosher I mean like what's going on here so I'm not telling you what you should do but I am answering the question how do we ensure that our children will be able to survive what's coming up in terms of what they're faced with as they enter adults I'll give you another story you had Rabbi Skovec speaking here for Shabbat I don't know if he told the story but we have a book that he wrote there called Intermarriage and in his book on intermarriage he writes about an encounter he had at the University of Windsor a number of years ago with a group of law students he was brought in there to teach a class on the missionary problem and about 15 minutes into the missionary problem the university's one of the students said I have a question and so the question she had was he said oh it's just you know we're really not interested to hear you talk any more about missionaries we want you to talk about why we can't marry a Gentile that was the question yes we're not answering it why can't I marry a Gentile and so the Rabbi you'll have to read how he writes about it in the book he says you know what he says I appreciate you all I don't want me here you don't want me to hear about be talking about the missionary problem I'm very happy to abandon that talk about any valid question you have but I don't think you're asking me a valid question and the student says what is not a valid question why isn't it a valid question why shouldn't I marry a Gentile because it's the wrong question I'll answer the right question and she said what's the right question she says the question you should be asking is why should I be Jewish why should I be Jewish if you're a Jew and that is the question Jews today don't know why they should be Jewish and if you can inculcate into that individual the importance of being Jewish that it's not just a hobby it's not just the flavor of the month we have a legacy of a Torah that we received at Mount Sinai we're just reading about it in the partial this week we just read about the splitting of the Red Sea is that a wives tale is that a myth or does that really happen and if these things really happen that we have a big problem because most of our children don't know about it or don't believe it we have to have a Jewish we have to have Jewish children and grandchildren that know why we're Jewish they could be able to articulate to somebody who challenges them why should I be Jewish and people don't know it's a big issue but they imitate Jewishness they were the keepers they were the they call themselves the rabbi they who's they who's they your children no no no no forget about what we saw on the screen your question is about your children we're talking about your children you're asking how do we protect our children and I just here's the thing I'll give you another story from Rabbi Skobak okay Rabbi Skobak gives a story about how they train people in the I forget the department that is called the United States where they where they where they track counterfeit money okay and the United States government they have a special agency tracking counterfeit money and so you would think that the way that they would train the officials who are involved in counterfeit money was to show them all the different ways they can make counterfeit money and all the different angles and this is no they don't do that the way they train they use real money they get people to train and the real production of money and they know how to make the plates they know how to make the gratings and when people know the real thing you can spot a counterfeit a mile away when Jews know what true Judaism is they'll smell a rat no problem but as long as Jews are not connected Jewish League they're going to be victim they're going to be vulnerable they're going to be susceptible it's it's we I'm not saying we don't do our best when we're speaking at a university group and I'm speaking to the very people you're talking about those 18, 19, 20 year olds who are in their first, second year university and they're asking the same question I'm not telling them the answer I'm telling you I'm telling them in different ways I gotta let them know we have to appreciate what is true and what is not this is deception how do we understand what is real Judaism what is a real rabbi here they are using these titles to fool you to deceive you to mislead you to lure you to trap you to make you think that it's safe when it's not to make you think that it's Jewish when it's Christian to make you think that it's good when it's not we have to give that explanation to these but I'm speaking to you as a booby or a parent a booby too and by the way I got a booby rule you are not exempt from teaching your grandchildren you know the Torah teaches we should teach our children and our children's children you can't stop being a booby you know you're a parent for your children but you have a benefit and an incredible influence on your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren so I had and I've seen this you know the rabbi I must see this all the time we have a phenomenal an amazing phenomenon that is happening in the Jewish world in the last 20 years called the Baal-Chuva movement and most people think that it's a movement amongst young Jews who are coming back Yiddish guide but what they don't realize it's not true it's a movement of Jews coming back to Yiddish guide we have young Jews and we have old Jews boobies and Zadies and we see that those boobies and Zadies when they grasp the beauty and the depth and the spirituality of Judaism there's no holding back the influence they can have on their peers on their children and on their grandchildren they don't have to try because people are drawn to it as Jews but so the whole idea of of having an influence is something it gets back to that little poster I just showed you missionaries are successful because they are each personal emissaries and with your question it was your question about what are the rabbis doing the rabbis are trying their best and some of them better than others but what are we doing and that's that is the problem we can't the buck stops here if you're not capable if you're not capable if you're not willing to do just a little bit more it's a hard thing it's a very hard thing because we get comfortable we get very rabbi you must experience this all the time but you have to be sensitive because you're dealing with you know situations where you maybe have to be a little bit more firm and your advice but the reality is I'm a guest I can say whatever I want you can't but I'm telling it like it is that if you really want to have an impact on individuals you're going to have to try a little harder reach out a little bit more and actually admit you know you have to take an inventory of your own Jewish life and say what can I improve almost like a New Year's resolution list but a little bit different the chubah list you know we're not all perfect and I'm going to give you another of these little stories and once gave a little lecture on Rosh Hashanah at an alternative high holiday service and at this particular alternative high holiday service one of the individuals talking about you know my message was ultimately we got to try and make a stronger commitment to Judaism and he stood up you know with attitudes as well Julius you know I can't keep Shabbos and I said why is this because I work on Saturday and I just I can't quit my job I said so you're trying to tell me because you work on Saturday you can't keep Shabbos yeah someone am I supposed to and I said do you work on Friday night said no I said so why can't you keep Shabbos Friday night and he said you mean I can do that it's just like a whole light bulb went off I'm not saying work on Shabbos on Saturday but I'm saying do the best you can if you could keep Shabbos Friday nights that's something if you could say a Kiddish on Friday night and show your kids what a Kiddish is and at a Devartorah and come to Shul and I'm not crazy but you're going to work on Saturday Friday night and story a year later he's not working on Saturday anymore because he found out about the beauty of Shabbos and he realized what priorities are work was not that important he could give it up one day a week but you know what I couldn't tell him but the bell the light went off when he realized it's not all or nothing Judaism is little increments here and there you do what you can you know what when I started keeping kosher I switched from a Hungarian restaurant was serving pork and I went to a the vegetarian restaurant it was a transition very slow I'm not saying that's the way to do it but for me I stopped eating in the pork restaurant and I went to a vegetarian restaurant is it perfect okay but that was my step and it was an increment then I started going I said going to a kosher rest what as a singer was a bachelor then but it's an increment you know somebody else that they're trying to they're trying to learn it reminds me of the first time I learned to do do the beer hat the most on after a meal I don't know about some of you but it's torture if you've never done it you don't know how to do it oh my god just like breaking your teeth but you know I remember once I was sitting at a conference with two other rabbis at the table and we were having breakfast and we're about to come to beer hat the most on and the only way I knew how to do it was to sing it because I didn't you know how I just couldn't do the benching without the melody so the two rabbis were there we had a bazoom in we're going to bench the bazoom in and I said but you know the only way I know how to do it is sing it do you mind if we sing it and I said I'm sort of pretty busy we've got time to sing it they weren't a hurry and I had to slowly sit there by myself after we did the initial benediction to do it by myself breaking my teeth and learning how to do the doping you should want to ask Ray oh my gosh is it sorry but you know once you finally just overcome that little leap just to take on a little extra an accomplishment you feel like you've gone someplace nobody gets there overnight and everything is is going to be in a little increment but we can do whatever we can do to be a Jew for Judaism that gives us the opportunity to do what we can to help change the Jewish world