 Each week we've had the pleasure of interviewing people who are significant to our community, and you are one as well, and through your teaching and your involvement in different areas through the Jewish community. But certainly the one that I was hoping that we can spend the most significant amount of time discussing is your work with Jews for Judaism. And as we know that Jews for Judaism certainly has, if not at central point, a lot of what it does is it deals with the Hebrew Christian missionaries. And I know over the years, we've had, I've had the pleasure of being an acquaintance and a friend, and having interacted with you many times, even if you remember the time that we had the Jews for Judaism over at the plaza at Steele's and Bathurst, and we protested outside for a couple of weeks, and they gave, they ended up giving Jews for Judaism an office right next door. That's nothing like living next door to your enemies. So the, we've had really the opportunity for quite a while to get to know each other, and I've been able to see some of your work with Jews for Judaism. I was wondering if you could just give us a bit of an idea of what Jews for Judaism does on a whole, and then what you might do as well outside of that. There's a little bit of a history of Jews for Judaism, because over the years it has undergone some transformation and development in ways that we didn't originally envision. The organization goes back to the really the early 1980s, mid-80s, and it started in two different cities simultaneously unaware of the, unawares of each other. It was started in Los Angeles and in Baltimore. Matty Berger, who now works for the Echatoros, started it in Baltimore. And the Los Angeles and Baltimore offices did not know about each other. They operated independently with the same name. And then when they found out that they were both doing the same thing with the same name, they joined forces. And all the way back then, in the early days of what we were doing, it really had a single focus, meaning that the Jewish community, since the late 60s, early 70s, had been subjected to, as everyone probably in the room knows, pretty aggressive, proselytizing efforts by Hebrew Christian groups like Jews for Jesus. And it took the whole Jewish community by surprise. We weren't used to that. We were used to people coming with crosses and presenting themselves as Christians and trying to convert us. And that's been an old story. But we didn't have any experience dealing with people coming to us with a Jewish face, meaning claiming to be Jews, claiming to practice Judaism, often wearing a kippah, sometimes wearing tzitzit, telling us that they go to synagogue and that they observed the Torah. It was strange for the Jewish world to encounter this kind of experience. It totally took the Jewish world by surprise. And because of that, we actually, we helped them, meaning that in the very early days, what happened was the Jewish community really just went ballistic. And we became very aggressive as a community. It was just fighting them and painting them in the worst terms imaginable and calling them names. And every rabbi in North America would speak about them. And so we gave them a tremendous amount of attention and of publicity. And the other problem was that because the general tendency was to paint them all as evil and wicked and deceptive and nasty and almost monsters, when typical Jewish people met them, they said, well, these people seem very nice. And so in several ways, we really facilitated their successes, both in terms of making sure that every Jew on the planet knew about them. It's quite amazing when you think about it, that if you're starting up a company and you have name recognition among 100% of the population, because I've asked Jewish people all across the world this question, how many of you have heard of Jews for Jesus? Every breathing Jew on the planet has heard of them. And that's quite an astounding success in terms of their ability to get their name out and their message out, because that was the genius of the movement, of their movement, was to call the Jews for Jesus. The reason they did that and the reason that they took a very in-your-face kind of approach where they would go out on the street and they would buttonhole people and give out literature, they were very visible and they wanted it like that. They wanted to provoke a reaction, but they also wanted this name to get out. They wanted Jews to know there's an organization called Jews for Jesus. Why was that so important to them? Because for the typical Jewish person, there has always been this assumption that Christianity and Jesus are not on the menu for us. If you speak to Jewish people that have converted to Christianity over the past 50, 60 years, they'll all tell you that it was very hard. One of the reasons that it was so hard is that they were the only Jew they knew who came to believe in Jesus. They felt so lonely. They felt so isolated. There was this implicit assumption that Jews don't believe in Jesus. That's just the conventional wisdom. You don't have to know anything. You don't have to know a word of the Bible. You don't have to know any history. This was the conventional wisdom among all Jews. Jews don't believe in Jesus. It's not on the menu for us. It's not an option. Their goal was to make sure that every Jew within earshot would know there is such an organization called Jews for Jesus because they wanted Jewish people to know there are Jews who believe in Jesus. It's on the menu. Initially, our work was directed explicitly and exclusively and directly to counter their activities. That's what we were initially focused on. The work initially was educating the Jewish community, raising awareness because the Jewish community didn't really know who these people were. They didn't understand these people. What is motivating them? What are their tactics? What are their strategies? What is this all about just to understand them? It's also important in terms of warning people about them to just get the word out. A lot of our work initially was building awareness, letting the Jewish community know there was such a problem, why it's a problem. Many Jewish people didn't understand why it's a problem. What difference does it make if a Jew believes in Jesus? They don't understand what's at stake. Many Jewish people don't understand what Christians actually believe about Jesus. It's interesting. One of the things that I teach my classes is that traditional normative Christianity believes that Jesus is God. They always scream back at me, no, they don't believe that. They just believe he's the Son of God, as if Son of God is not God. I have to explain to them, no, for Christians, Son of God is God. They believe in a three-part God, God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When you let Jewish people know that this is one of the things that's at stake here, that you're not just believing that some Jewish fellow from 2000 years ago was the Messiah. When a Jew embraces this, they're worshiping him as God, and that's idolatry. Idolatry is something that most Jewish people have a real adversion to. It's interesting, and we taught this, is that if you read the training manuals of groups like Jews for Jesus, they would train their missionaries that in the initial stages of evangelism don't talk about this idea that Jesus is God. Just talk about him as the Messiah, because that's not so off-putting to Jewish people. That's what our initial focus was, raising awareness, explaining to the Jewish community who these people were, and counseling. We were in touch with numerous families who lost children or other people in their families, sometimes adults. Those were the focus of our work was education. We called it preventative education and counseling and building awareness. But then what happened, you have to remember, this was the early 80s. There was another phenomenon that was taking place back then, which we don't see so much about anymore. It hasn't disappeared, but it was quite prevalent back then in the late 60s, 70s, and even to the 80s, which was the proliferation of various cults in the world. Unfortunately, Jewish people tended to be overly represented beyond our percentage in the population in these groups. They were all kinds of cults. They were psychotherapeutic cults and cults that were from Eastern religions and political cults. You name it. What happened was we didn't really even know about these groups, but because there wasn't anyone else in the Jewish community that was responding to a cries for help from parents who were also losing their family members to these kinds of groups, they ended up in our lap. We had to learn on the job. That became a secondary focus of our work after dealing with the Christian missionaries was dealing with cults. Then I would say around 1995 to 1998, approximately around that time, we had another epiphany. We realized by this time, it took us about 15 years, that Jews for Jesus is not the problem. We finally realized that. They're not the problem. We came to realize that they are simply a symptom of the problem. The real problem is a disconnect between Jews and Judaism. What led us to that realization was seeing not just Jewish people getting caught up in churches and in cults, but seeing that about 25% of North American Buddhists came from a Jewish background. Seeing the tremendous number of Jews involved with the New Age movements and New Age religions. Basically seeing that the disaffection, the falling through the cracks of Jewish people was not just to Christianity and cults. It was to dozens and dozens and dozens of different locations on the spiritual map. We thought about this and we came to realize that it's really all the same problem. The fourth issue that got thrown into this mixture was assimilation and intermarriage. That's what led us to think about what's the common denominator of all of these problems. The problems of Jews converting to Christianity or getting involved with cults or Buddhism or assimilating into marrying. It's basically that they're not strongly connected to their spiritual core. They're not strongly connected to Judaism. When that problem exists, that's the real problem. The same way in medicine, you can have an underlying medical issue, but it can present in different ways. It can present as a pain in your stomach. The same problem in other people can present as a pain in their lower back. Some people could be in their side. The underlying problem we came to realize was not Jews for Jesus. It was Jews that were disconnected from Judaism. We woke up and said, that makes sense. We didn't name our organization Jews Against Jesus. We named it Jews for Judaism. At that point, it took us into a little bit of a different direction. We continued doing all of our work that we were doing, dealing with Christian missionaries and dealing with cults and dealing with the challenges of Eastern religions and dealing with the challenges of Jews assimilating and intermarrying. A bigger component of our work became trying to help Jewish people connect with the spiritual treasures of Judaism. Anyone now, for example, that goes to our YouTube channel, will see that about half of our videos deal with the challenges of Christianity, the claims that Christian missionaries make, what is the Jewish response to Christianity, how do we understand questions like who the Messiah is, and how do you get forgiven for your sins. But about half of our videos deal with Jewish spiritual issues, everything from yoga to meditation to life after death. We have hundreds of videos and what we have found is that for many Jewish people worldwide, this has become, thank God, their entry point back into Judaism. I would say that's pretty much our work at this point. There are a few related issues, and I'll just stop there because I don't want to spend the whole time answering that one question. The related issues are that because we've spent so much time studying these areas, so we become consultants to Jewish communities throughout the world when it comes to their communal responses to these problems. Just as an example, there's a massive movement today in the world of Christian Zionists. These are evangelical Christians who are very deeply supportive of Israel. We are always asked this question, are these people, is this group that wants to do a program at our synagogue, they want to partner with us, they want to go to Israel with us, what have you, are they okay? And so we will do a lot of that kind of investigating, if I can use that word, to help Jewish communities understand who we're dealing with. And it's very interesting. I'll just mention one fascinating story. I had written a column, and I think it was the Jewish press before I moved to Toronto, and I exposed a Christian missionary that was really a stealth missionary. Many Jewish people had no idea this person had any kind of agenda to convert Jews. Everyone thought he was the greatest thing in the world, very loving Israel, loving the Jews, and when I came here, I got a phone call from a reporter from a newspaper in New Jersey who said that they had read my articles, and they remember that I mentioned an organization called Friends of Israel Gospel Ministries. It wasn't the name of the group that I had been writing about, I just mentioned them in passing. And he said that in his town in New Jersey, the Jewish Federation is every year going on trips to Israel with a group called Friends of Israel. And he wanted to know if this group is okay, Friends of Israel. So I sent him a package, a whole package, because I get their magazines and I have done a tremendous amount of research about this group. I told him, look, Friends of Israel is not their real name. The real name is Friends of Israel Gospel Ministries, and they are dedicated aggressively to trying to convert Jews. They have a whole institute, they train missionaries and they do missionary work in Israel itself. And he wrote an article about it, and the President of the Federation went ballistic. It was very upset. And he said, I've been to Israel with these people many times. They never tried to convert me. And I had to speak to this President of the Federation and explain, in your mind, what does it mean that someone's going to try to convert you? Does it mean that they have to whip out a New Testament and get you to read passages from Matthew? I said, that's not how they operate. And again, that's part of what we do is explain to the Jewish community how missionaries operate. Missionaries have something that they call lifestyle evangelism or friendship evangelism. And they realize that if they're going to take out the New Testament and have Jewish people read it, it's going to be a turn off. So they believe that the most effective thing they can do in order to get Jewish people to be more interested in their faith is simply to be loving and to be supportive and to be nice and to be friendly. And so this unfortunately naive person assumed that this organization, Friends of Israel, was totally par of because in his mind, they never tried to convert him. But they didn't realize that every single thing they were doing, everything they were doing was for the ultimate purpose of getting him and his group to ultimately think more positively about Christianity. So that's one thing that we do is we're basically a community liaison. We help provide information for Jewish leaders, teachers, teachers that are teaching this subject matter will call us for recommendations for curriculum. We often go into schools to teach. And then just I'll mention one more thing and I'll stop, which is something that has been totally unexpected. I would say of all the things that we do that we did not plan for, did not think about, did not expect, did not anticipate. It took place when we started our YouTube channel. Prior to the YouTube channel, a hundred percent of our interaction with people was with the Jewish community. We would speak at synagogues. We would teach classes at Jewish organizations. We would publish material that went into the hands of Jewish people. But as soon as we started a YouTube channel, we didn't really anticipate this, but it's sort of a no-brainer about 90% at least of the people that are going to be watching our YouTube videos are not Jewish. And so one of the things that's happened over the years is there's been an impact on the Christian world as a result of the kind of work that we've been doing, meaning that for the first time now, Christians who have never been exposed to Judaism or any Jewish ideas, the only thing that they know about Judaism is what they learn in their churches. And now you have hundreds of thousands, millions, actually. I don't remember the last number of our video views. I think it was like five or six million. A lot of Christians are hearing a rabbi talk for the first time in their life, and they're hearing from the horse's mouth why we don't believe in Christianity. So one of the things that's happened over the years is that I would say maybe seven or eight, nine, 10 years ago, I would get one phone call or one email every few months from a Christian who said, you know, rabbi, I think you guys are right. What do I do now? Now it's about one or two a day. So this is something that was, I would say, collateral damage in a sense. We didn't expect to be dealing with so many people that are coming from a non-Jewish background that are questioning their faith now. In regard to Christianity, there's sort of mainstream Christianity. And would you say that mainstream Christianity buys into the things that the Jews for Jesus and these types of organizations say, or are they openly different and openly perhaps against what they're doing? So it's a good question because, you know, as Jews, we're used to the idea that the Jewish community is not monolithic. You know, most Jews are aware that, you know, you have different denominations in the Jewish community and different groups and we're not all exactly the same. But we tend to think that everyone else, everyone that's Christian is just Christian. We don't appreciate the fact that they are incredibly diverse. There are about 2.2 billion Christians in the world. You know, when you think about 2.2 billion Christians, the 0.2 part of that is 200 million. And we're about 15, 16 million. There are, according to some estimates, about 30,000 Christian denominations. You know, we've all heard of Baptists, for example, but there are about 300 kinds of Baptists. So you're talking about a very, very, very diverse world. And if, you know, people have studied history, they know that Christians in the past went to war and killed each other over their theological differences. You know, for many Christians, religion was a contact sport. So the truth is that what I've been describing is not universally supported in the Christian world. To make our lives easier, you know, you basically have, for the most part, several major groups, let's say, within Christianity. You have the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Christian churches, like the Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox. So let's say there are about a half of the Christian world right there. The Roman Catholic Church is almost a billion people. And let's say everyone else, more or less, is Protestant. That's where you have all these different denominations. Now among Protestants, you have two major, let's say you could divide them into two major groups. You have what we would call liberal Protestants, like, for example, the United Church of Canada is a liberal Protestant group. I'll just tell a very wild story just for a second while I'm on this. Years ago, some of you might remember that there was a funeral that was interrupted. There was one of the leading Jews for Jesus missionaries passed away and was supposed to be buried in the Jewish cemetery here in Toronto. And basically the funeral was called off, I mean they had to bury him in a non-denominational cemetery. But prior to his passing away, I was on a television program with him in Toronto. We were interviewed, I forget the name of the program. But it was a religious show and there were two parts to the program. The first segment, the first 15 minutes, was the new, I forget what he's called now, the offices. But there's the head of the United Church, there's a title that they have. And there was a new one. He came from Calgary. His name was Bill Phipps, I think, William Phipps, Philip Phipps. And it was fascinating interview to hear because this fellow, who was the head of the United Church, did not believe in the virgin birth, did not believe in the resurrection of Jesus, did not believe that you had to believe in Jesus to go to heaven, basically didn't believe in anything that Christianity believed in. And then he had his segment was over and then I went on with this fellow from Jews for Jesus. And the premise of our exchange was he's going to be claiming that what he believes is very Jewish. And I'm going to basically be saying, no, not really. What you're believing is not really Jewish. So we're having our discussion back and forth. And the host of the program at one point turns to this fellow that I'm debating incredulously and says to him, you're Jewish? She said to him, you're more Christian than the head of the United Church. So basically you have a lot of what we would call liberal Protestants. And they have absolutely zero interest in any of these things. They see the evangelical Christians, meaning what I would call the conservative Protestants, the evangelical Protestants, they see them as lunatics. And as people that they can't tolerate, they see them as closed-minded, as bigoted, as hostile to everything that they value and believe. So you don't have this Jews for Jesus kind of proselytizing supported by liberal Protestants. And it's not really supported by the Catholic Church either. So we're talking about, let's say, the flavor of Christians that back this kind of evangelism. We usually refer to them as the evangelical Protestant movement, which is quite large. As we know in the United States, for example, they number about 25 to 40% of Americans identified as evangelical. We know that in the United States, they are a serious voting block. In Canada, it's only about 10%. Only about 10% of Canadians identify as evangelical. But still it's a serious number of people worldwide. And so to answer your question, not all Christians are in support of this kind of evangelism, but a serious number are. And the more important thing to be aware of is not just the numbers. They always talk about when you're driving a car, there's a speed of the car and there's the acceleration. And what's important to understand about these particular Christians that are obsessed with converting Jews, by the way, not just converting Jews, they want to convert the whole world. But Jews are a special target to them. They have a special affinity in their heart to convert Jews. What's different about these Christians, as opposed to others, is the degree of their passion and faith. These are people that are 1,000% sold on their faith. They say that the best salesperson is someone who really believes in their product. It could be a lousy product. But if the salesperson believes in the product, 1,000%, they're going to be successful at selling it. So the thing to remember about these evangelical Protestants is that they are very, very, very gunk-ho and sincere about their faith. I see. So now, you mentioned that one of the biggest issues is really Jewish ignorance, that Jews don't know what they really believe. And then they'll come across these people and be enticed. But it just seems to be funny, because here, if you have a Jew who doesn't seem to be overly interested in religion, who's walking down the street and comes across somebody with a t-shirt that says, Jews for Jesus, and they give them a pamphlet with some picture of some rabbi on it, I don't see what they're going to do to them. How's that going to affect somebody? What is the real draw that gets somebody to go from being a Jew walking down the street whose Jewish experiences are primarily gastronomic to somebody who gets snared in by this? So this is a very important question. And it is important to understand their modus operandi, because you're right, when people go out on the street with t-shirts handing out Jews for Jesus' literature, they know, they're not unaware of the fact that this is not the most effective way of reaching people. In sales, for example, it would be the equivalent of cold-colling. The worst kind of sales to do is cold-colling. So why do they do it? Why are they out on the street with their goofy pamphlets and their t-shirts? So for a few reasons. I mentioned before that they are very, very invested in making sure that they have product recognition. They want every Jew to be aware that there is such a thing as Jews who believe in Jesus, so that it's not off the menu. It's not absurd. And so that's one reason why they're out there. They want to keep their presence in our consciousness. Another reason is, we often don't think about this, there's a lot of competition among groups that are trying to convert Jews. Jews for Jesus, we use that term generically to refer to any such group, but there are hundreds and hundreds of different organizations that are trying to convert Jews. Don't we feel special? There are so many organizations that are trying to convert us. Literally, I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds and they compete for dollars. They compete for support. And so one of the things that Jews for Jesus does, they know that people are busy, people are not interested, the last thing that a Jew wants to do is talk to some Jews for Jesus, be sure to get on the street. But who does go up to them on the street and say, you're doing a great job, we love what you're doing. Christians that believe that it's important to convert Jews. And these Christians that they meet on the street will be happy to get their contact information, to receive their newsletter and to become a supporter. So they have their reasons for why they're out on the street. Now, in terms of how is it that they're able to ultimately reach Jewish people, so I'll share with you a secret. They spend very little time on the street handing out literature. They don't do this a lot because, again, they know that this is not the most effective way of reaching Jews. But one of the things, if you wanted to follow a Jews for Jesus staff person and see what they do all day long, they do a tremendous amount of programming in churches. They give lectures in churches. They have programs like, for example, the Messiah and the Passover where they try to show that the Passover Seder was the last supper and they have a whole bunch of different programs they do in churches. Now, you could ask why in the world are they going to waste their time going to churches? How many Jews are going to be in those churches? Zero. But what they're doing when they go to these churches is, number one, encouraging evangelical lay people, meaning the regular churchgoers, encouraging them to try to influence their Jewish friends and neighbors and business associates. Now, Jews for Jesus did a study. They actually did a survey many years ago of 8,000 Jews who converted to Christianity. And they asked them, what was it that led you to Jesus? And as you can imagine, almost no one said, well, because someone gave me this fascinating pamphlet on the street. But virtually everyone said it was through the influence of a Christian friend, neighbor, or business associate. These are the people that are going to be effective. And you have to realize that the missionary on the street has several strikes against him. Number one, he has no relationship with this Jewish person. He's annoying. It's an annoying thing to be trying to go somewhere in downtown Toronto, and some guy stops you on the street and tries to give you a pamphlet. It's like cold calling. Again, there's no real relationship. Number two, the Jewish person is usually offended by these people. We see them as traitors or as annoying. But there's not a lot of rapport. But the evangelical Christian who goes to church and has a Jewish friend or Jewish neighbor or Jewish business associate, so there it's not cold calling. There's a real relationship. This is the kind of person that may come to borrow some sugar from you. They may want to borrow your lawnmower. They may whatever neighbors do, whatever co-workers do, whatever friends do, could be even a relative. So they don't have that problem of cold calling because there's a relationship already. And you don't have the problem of seeing a Jewish person that's trying to influence you. And we're bothered by that. This is a non-Jew. This is a Christian. They're supposed to believe in Jesus. So we don't have the negative reaction to our Christian friends, neighbors, and business associates. So what Jews for Jesus does, and not just them, the other groups as well, they do a lot of programming in churches to encourage these Christians to try to share their faith with their Jewish friends and neighbors because you have to appreciate your typical Christian layperson is very intimidated by Jews. They think Jews are all Old Testament Bible scholars. It's like when I was growing up, you thought that any kid from Japan must have been a karate expert. So a lot of Christians, they say to themselves, I can't talk to my Jewish neighbor about Jesus. They know the Old Testament by heart. They're going to destroy me. So the Jews for Jesus people tell them, don't worry, the average Jewish person never even read the Bible once. And then what they do is they explain how important it is because a lot of Christian people might feel that it's not sensitive to try to convert Jews. They just went through the Holocaust, leave them alone, and the Jews for Jesus will say, are you kidding? That's the most antisemitic thing you can do in the world is not to tell them about Jesus. Do you want them going straight from the fires of Auschwitz to the fires of hell? Because again, the Christian evangelicals believe that unless you accept Jesus, you will burn in hell forever. So they spend a lot of time trying to encourage Christian laypeople about how important it is to convert Jews and encourage them to, what they use the term, witness or share, share their faith, witness to their Jewish friends, neighbors, and business associates. And then they train them. What are you supposed to say to a Jew? What shouldn't you say? How do you make an inroad? How do you introduce yourself? And they have books and they have CDs and they have websites and they have training and they have pamphlets and they train these Christians how to more effectively reach their Jewish friends and neighbors. Now that's the first stage of what happens. The first stage is basically mobilizing this massive army, massive army of committed, born-again evangelical laypeople to reach out to the Jewish friends and neighbors. I've got to mention the third advantage that you have by doing this. How many people work for Jews for Jesus? They may have only five or six people working in their office but you have, I don't know how many evangelical Protestants living in Toronto, but let's say at least 100,000, probably a lot more than that. So it's just the most effective thing that they can do is to mobilize this army of potential salespeople. And then what happens is this, they tell them, take it slow, don't rush. You may have to first ask a lot of questions about Judaism. You know, there may be a Jewish holiday coming up. Ask your Jewish friend or neighbor, oh, you're having your new year. What's Rosh Hashanah all about? And then build slowly to the point where you can maybe after you gain their trust start maybe talking about other spiritual things about your prayer life. You know, the ones that are smart know to do it subtly and slowly. But they know, and this is the most important piece here, they know that Jewish people have a tremendous resistance to believing in Jesus. And they know that there's a lot of guilt. And so even if they're able to get their Jewish friend or neighbor to be interested in Jesus, to be interested in the gospel, to be interested in Christianity, the Jewish person they know is always going to have this objection. They might say, you know what? I really find Jesus to be compelling. I think your reasons for believing in him are compelling, but Jews don't believe in Jesus. That's the hang up, but Jews don't believe in Jesus. So this is where the Christian who's been going to church and went to the seminar that Jews for Jesus ran is able to say, well, I know someone who's Jewish and believes in Jesus. Would you like to meet them? Who is that person who's Jewish and believes in Jesus? It's the Jews for Jesus staff person that came to their church and gave them their business card. So what the Jews for Jesus staff people do, they're not running around the city cold calling all day long. They know that's a poor use of their time. They are number one, spending some of their time mobilizing a army of salespeople. But then if you're familiar with sales, they come in at the end of the process. I should say process, I'm here in Canada now. They come in at the end when the Jewish person is biting but has the hesitation, but I'm Jewish. Jews don't believe in Jesus. And now the Christian neighbor or friend can say, well, I know someone that's Jewish and believes in Jesus. Would you like to be an introduction to them? And then he gives them the business card or the phone number or connects them with email with the director of Jews for Jesus here. And now what are the Jews for Jesus staff people spend their time doing in Toronto? They're closing sales, they're closers. And so they will meet with someone at a coffee shop. They'll meet with someone in their living room at their breakfast table. And what they're doing is just getting that Jewish person who's interested and who's biting but they're getting them over that final hump because they can say, I'm Jewish, I believe in Jesus. And this is how I live my life. And that's often for Jewish people, the last step that's all that's needed. So the thing I wanted to add is that the conversion the conversion of Jewish people is generally speaking, I would say, not an intellectual process. It's not that the Christian has proven to them intellectually or proven to them through the Bible that they should believe in Jesus. I would say that the two more important pieces are emotional and spiritual. What do I mean by that? By emotionally, what I would say is that they have been successful in fostering a culture where first of all, almost everyone that goes to their congregations is committed to reaching out. It's not the exceptional person. So they have managed, they did this successfully. They've managed to create a culture where the entire church is committed to outreach which means that they are friendly, they're welcoming, they're accepting, they're loving. For Jewish people who have not found that in their Jewish community, this is tantalizing. This is almost irresistible. And I hear this kind of scenario literally all the time that a Jewish person who for whatever reason was not connecting, was lonely, was unhappy, you will find that the vast majority of Jewish people that convert to Christianity or join a cult or whatever, they had some vulnerability, meaning that they had something that rendered them vulnerable to what the missionaries were offering. And usually it is some kind of a pain, a hurt, loneliness, guilt could be tremendous guilt. Christianity is majors in alleviating guilt. That's one of the main selling points. Someone let's say might have tremendous guilt that they had an abortion or that they, I don't know that they did something terrible to someone. Christianity comes along and says that if you believe in Jesus, all your sins are forgiven and you will live in heaven forever, have eternal life. So I would say that one of the things that the vast majority of converts have in common is some kind of emotional vulnerability. The other issue is spiritual, meaning that what you will generally hear, for example, when I speak to Jews who've converted to Christianity, you almost always hear the same story. This is how it goes. Yeah, I was Jewish. I went to Hebrew school. I had a bar about mitzvah. We lit Chanukah candles at home. Family had Passover satyrs. I went to Israel as a teenager, but I never experienced any of it in a spiritual way. I never encountered God. As a matter of fact, they'll say, you know what? No one even ever spoke about God. And you'll find people who generally never had meaningful, satisfying spiritual experiences in the Jewish world. And so those two things make people vulnerable because people have spiritual needs. People have emotional needs. And the Christians are really good. I mean, if you want to see something they do well, they know how to take advantage of these two weaknesses. And I would say that far beyond the intellectual arguments and reasons, I would say those things only come at the end to seal the deal, meaning once someone is already leaning towards Christianity and emotionally wants to accept it, they're very good at giving them the reasons why they should believe in it. And I think that unless the person is predisposed to wanting to believe in it, I don't think their arguments are usually that persuasive. But once the person is already leaning towards Christianity, they're vulnerable and they want to believe in it, I think that the missionaries are really quite capable of making it sound reasonable and compelling. So it would sound to me that if we as a community want to try to safeguard our members, be it people who are refugees that have come over without education or even our own children or our own neighbors, really the most effective thing for us to do besides some education is really making sure that we have communities, we have institutions that care about each other, that it's not institutional, it's personal that you have rabbis that care about our members and members who care about each other and people who go out of their way when somebody is ill or has a death in the family. And as I mentioned to you when we were speaking earlier before this interview, I mentioned about somebody who was a friend of my father's who had suffered a loss in his family and so sitting in an airport, somebody walked over him and said, basically told him, you look lonely and sad and they basically were able to really get into him and to change his outlook on Christianity simply on this type of Christianity simply because they were friendly to him while the average Jew was not. And it's something that I think that our communities are lacking in and that we need to really build on is our ability to look at each other and to see the people in pain and see people in need and to reach out to them and to let them know we're not gonna judge them and that they're welcome and that we're here to help them and we really do care because I believe that any synagogue, any institution that Jewish institution, any organization that you go to, the people care. They're just afraid to show it or they're not organized to show it and you would see that this is the number one way for us to combat the loss of Jews to other religions is to make sure that Jews feel like they're a part of the Jewish community. But would you agree with that? Yeah, I would say that and I would couple that with developing and fostering Jewish communities, especially religious communities like the schools and the synagogues that put a focus on God, put a focus on having a relationship with Hashem with the importance of having a personal relationship with God. When you speak to Christians and you speak to Jews who've embraced Christianity and you ask them, what did you find in Christianity? About 100% of them will tell you, I now have a personal relationship with God. Now, it's interesting that Christianity makes that easier because they offer a God that you can see. You can put the Christian God on your nightstand and look at the picture. And that's powerful. We shouldn't underestimate, we think that idolatry is something that disappeared a long time ago. But the idea that Christians believe Jesus is God and it's much easier to have a relationship with a human being. As a matter of fact, they were very smart. They didn't just make Jesus a human being that you could see. He is the perfect human being. He's gorgeous, he's handsome. He's like an Adonis. And I always joke that if Jesus had actually been a short, fat, bold Jewish guy, they probably wouldn't be two billion Christians in the world today. But it's packaging. And here they have this ideal human being that people can fall in love with and can have fantasies about. But what happens ultimately is they believe that they are building a relationship with God. And so they might pray either to Jesus or they might pray to God through Jesus. But the focus in the evangelical world is on faith. The focus is on a relationship with God. And I would say that in addition to those, I'd say to two pillars would be to cultivate communities that are caring and accepting and welcoming and communities that have a passion that are focused on the spiritual side of Judaism, on prayer that is enthusiastic and passionate, on doing mitzvot mindfully and as a way of connecting to God. And I think that's important. I think that when I speak to Christians, they all grew up in Jewish homes and Jewish Christians, Jews that have converted, they all will tell you that they experience Chanukah and Passover, but they will all say that it was never spiritual. They'll say it was just tradition. It was ethnicity, it was their culture, it was their heritage, it was their identity. But they'll tell you that there was nothing about it that was framed in terms of getting closer to God. And I would say that those two are the most important things. And then I would say to sprinkle on top of that, it wouldn't hurt for Jewish people to know a little bit about the Tanakh and what our belief is about the Mashiach and why we don't believe in Jesus, but that you can do that in a few classes to be able to build communities that are caring and are welcoming and accepting and are spiritual. That requires a lot more work. The intellectual piece I think is actually quite easy and the least important in the sense of keeping people safe. I mean, obviously to be a Jew, it's very important to know and to have understanding, but I don't think it's the top item in terms of what makes people vulnerable. I have not met really many Jewish people probably none who converted to Christianity because they was intellectually proven to them. It plays a very, very small component. Let's see. So we really have our marching orders now, it seems like of how our communities and our individuals and our classes and synagogue should be. So it's something I hope everybody takes to heart and that's something that we can work on. But now that we're down to the last few minutes, I thought I'd ask if you have any project or program that you're presently working on or that is actually happening right now that you'd like to let everybody know about? Well, our main program right now is to get over COVID-19 so that we can get back into the driver's seat and do the kind of programming that we're used to doing. We are still doing the counseling. I just have a long counseling session today with someone and we usually have about a year's worth of YouTube videos that are in queue to be uploaded. I mean, it's quite amazing that our YouTube videos now, it used to be that I would give a lecture and maybe 30 or 40 people would come to the lecture. Now I give a lecture and within a few weeks there are a few thousand people who've seen it and our videos now are getting about 5,000 views every day, I think even more than that. So that part of our work continues and as a result of that way of reaching out into the community and into the world, so people contact us through email, through phone, through Facebook, whatever. We have a pretty active presence on social media but I think that once we can get back into actually doing live programs, I mean, I don't mind Zoom, but whenever I look at a Zoom screen it looks like Hollywood squares to me. So it's not the same as actually being with people and seeing them close up and in person. That's certainly true. But look, this has been an illuminating hour. I'm sure all of the people who are sitting in with us and those who will be watching this later agree with me that it's really been a pleasure to spend an hour with you but also very illuminating and interesting and it has really given me some food for thought and I hope everyone else who's here in order to learn how we can best deal with our Jewish brothers and sisters and to help keep them on the Jewish path and help keep them in a way that is beneficial for them. So on behalf of all of us I would like to thank Rawej Skobak for his time and his creativity and his knowledge. We really appreciate it at the time with you very much. And that may continue. Thank you very much. We hope we'll continue in the future and I wish you and everyone with us a very good night. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Amazing.