SAVING JEWS? Good article, that I think DOES apply to missionaries of all colors - except the ""killing us"" part, which refers specifically to the murderous religions.

 

WINSTON MID EAST ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY February 8, 2008  Email: gwinston@interaccess.com Please disseminate & re-post - with attribution. If you publish, send us a copy. Many of our articles appear on Websites at http://www.gamla.org.il/english &

freeman.org Outgoing mail is virus-checked. To be removed from this list, please send your Email address

SAVING JEWS?

by Emanuel A. Winston, a Middle East Analyst & Commentator

Perhaps it's time for Jews to respond frontally to the concept the Vatican offers to Jews that we will be saved IF we accept Jesus as our savior, messiah. (Find attached below the New York Times of February 6 "Pope Rewrite of Latin Prayer Draws Criticism from 2 Sides" by Ian Fisher).

This article is not addressed to our Christian Zionists who have proudly supported the Jewish State of Israel and the Jewish people. We gratefully accept their friendship as righteous allies in an ongoing war against Global Evil. However.....

Jews, as a persecuted minority to this day, are generally loath to confront Christian beliefs about Jesus lest the well-known latent anti-Semitism starts to burn hot.

As Jews we have little interest in contesting the views of Christians with respect to believing in more than one G-d. While our history speaks of Prophets like Abraham and Moses who could speak with and hear G-d, nevertheless, we never thought of them as demi-gods. Even the anticipated Moshiach (Messiah) when he arrives will be nothing more than a holy man...not a G-d.

Jews all call G-d, "Father" and we consider ourselves His children. However, even with this honoraria of speech, we do not view ourselves as anything more than G-d's servants on earth. We know we are here to deliver the message of Torah Law given by G-d to Moses (Moshe) through the Jewish people for eternity. In doing so, we are obligated to be an example or, as otherwise known, a "Light Unto The Nations".

In brief, we don't believe we have to be saved (as the Pope proposes) since Christianity evolved, by creative variations, as extensions of our own Judaic religion. Because an apostate Jew (Saul who became Paul) suffered severe fits of epilepsy, according to the Church and (as detailed by Representative Father Robert Drinan) had visions long after the death of Jesus, why should Jews accept new laws?

We Jews were explicitly instructed by G-d through Torah Law which G-d gave us that we are not allowed to change one jot or tittle, not one word or letter of the Torah. Do you believe that G-d could have made a mistake and had no vision into the future when He made His Covenant with the Jewish people?

Are we now to accept the creative ideas of men who tell us they have found a new path to G-d? We have already accepted the path to G-d through the Covenant G-d made with the Jewish people at Mt. Sinai - in perpetuity. We had already accepted this path, irrevocably, despite being urged by spokesmen for Christianity or spokesmen for Islam to join them and follow their ways. Strangely, those who claim to follow Jesus as their lord seem to reject his way of life as a Jew.

Jesus was born a Jew, practiced all the rituals mandated for a Jew and then died alongside all the thousands of Jews who defied Rome. Like other charismatic roaming Jewish preachers of the time who railed against pagan Rome, these Jews who preached the Word of G-d were considered rabble rousers by Rome and were hung on a Roman torture instrument now venerated as the symbol of Christians, namely, the cross.

To Jews, merely seeing this symbol of Christianity brings up visions of torture, forced conversion, kidnaping of Jewish children, blood libels of the vilest sort, rape, expulsion, genocide, etc. Is this what you want Jews to believe in and follow as their new banner? Granted, Jew were not the only people who endured the lash of forced conversion, although we Jews undoubtedly suffered the most. Our population numbers would have been at least 160 million if we had not been murdered in every generation. Now we are about 14 million world-wide. We have been decimated and annihilated in every generation.

The question hangs in the air that, if Jesus practiced the Jewish faith and observed Torah Law, why do those who adopted him as their lord not follow the same things he did in obedience to the Laws mandated by G-d who you call his Father?

Why is there a New Testament when Torah given by G-d precedes this document written by men by thousands of years?

Why have Christians not adopted the original 613 of G-d's Laws given to the Jews, in addition to the 10 Commandments?

Why not stop all work (as commanded by G-d) on Friday when the sun goes down and refrain from work all the following day, Shabbat/Sabbath (Saturday) until the sun sets again?

Was it not stated plainly that G-d worked six days to create the world and rested on the seventh day, Sabbath (Saturday)?

Why, with deliberate separation of mind, do Christians accept Sunday instead?

Torah Laws have even been adopted by America's founding fathers as a basis for secular Law, if it's to be supplanted by new Laws evolved by men.

I strongly recommend that all Christians read a translation of Torah Law in their own language to see if it is in any way inaccurate, inappropriate or unachievable as a guide for how humans should conduct their lives and teach their children.

Jews are not on a mission to convert others to Judaism, nor to bring them into the Covenant G-d made for eternity with the Jewish people at Mt. Sinai. Should a gentile wish to join the Covenant, he must go through a rigorous process of learning from a Rabbi who himself knows and practices the laws of the Torah. Jewish people are not out looking for converts.  The Jews' mission on earth is only to be a messenger and bring the Torah Laws to the attention of mankind. We are specifically instructed NOT to adopt the ways or gods of others, lest we leave Torah Laws.

Since Christians have adopted a Jew as a guiding light in their lives, then perhaps they are unknowingly on the first rung of a ladder ascending eventually to Torah Law as practiced by the Jew whom they wish to emulate.

When the Pope initiates a Latin prayer which he intends is to "save" the Jewish people, perhaps it would be better to advise Christian followers to adopt Torah Law to save themselves. All of the above, of course, also applies to Islam and their ideas of a pagan moon god once called Zin and who they now call "Allah". They too offered the Jews conversion at the point of a sword and such delicacies as being able to eat the non-kosher animal, the camel, among other fantasies benefitting Muslims.

If you are satisfied being a Christian, why not enjoy your status and the beliefs offered to you. We Jews do not need your concern that we are on the wrong path and need to be saved. Do not trouble yourselves with our after-life. Just be friendly and cease killing us or bonding with Islamists to kill us. Islamists are taught by their Mullahs that killing a Jew is their guarantee to Warriors' Heaven in Allah's courtyards. Do Christians believe they too will be well received at the Gates of Heaven by the Jew they call lord if or because they persecuted G-d's messengers?

If you think you need us to join you in order to confirm or authenticate your choice of worship, then perhaps you do not believe in what you accepted as that narrow bridge leading to G-d. In case you haven't noticed, we Jews are here to serve mankind and not be an adversary. Consider how mankind was served by Abraham, Moses, the Prophets, the Jew Jesus, Einstein, Freud and the myriad of Jews like Jonas Salk who brought medical benefits to save you and your children. Think of the hours of pleasure you can derive listening to the music of Isaac Stern, Yitzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zuckerman, Shlomo Mintz, Joshua Bell, Artur Rubinstein and so many more great musicians.

G-d does not make mistakes. He did not make a mistake in choosing the Jewish people as His messengers. We are here to serve and want nothing from you except the nobility of which you are most capable. Mankind is able to grow and prosper when they cease killing each other or forcing others to follow their ways.

We are not your responsibility except that you should treat us fairly and not have self-anointed missions to save us or persecute us if we cannot accept your offer. Regrettably, each time we are offered the privilege of being saved by you, which we cannot accept, you kill us.

Do you really believe that the Jew Jesus will be pleased with what you have done to millions of Jews (his family) and will bless you for it? I think not!

If you can, please forward this to the Pope, either in German or Latin.

###

Pope's Rewrite of Latin Prayer Draws Criticism From 2 Sides

By IAN FISHER NEW YORK TIMES February 6, 2008

ROME — Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday issued a replacement for a contentious Good Friday prayer in Latin, removing language that many Jewish groups found offensive but still calling for the Jews' conversion.

However, representatives of Jewish groups as well as traditionalist Catholics quickly condemned the new prayer, though for different reasons. Jewish groups said it was still offensive, and traditionalists said they preferred the version that was replaced.

"It's disappointing,"

said Rabbi David Rosen, director of inter-religious affairs for the American Jewish Committee, who for 20 years has worked on Jewish-Catholic relations with Benedict as pope and, earlier, when he was a cardinal.

The prayer was a focus of dispute last year when Benedict allowed for greater use of a traditional version of the Latin Mass, called the Tridentine rite. That decree improved ties with Catholic traditionalists, who oppose the sweeping changes to church liturgy made from 1962 through 1965 during the Second Vatican Council.

The prayer is not part of the standard service used by most of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics, who celebrate Mass in their local languages.

The new prayer, published only in Latin on Tuesday in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, deletes a reference to Jews' "blindness" and a call that God "may lift the veil from their hearts."

An unofficial translation of the new prayer reads: "Let us pray for the Jews. May the Lord Our God enlighten their hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men." "Almighty and everlasting God," it continues, "you who want all men to be saved and to reach the awareness of the truth, graciously grant that, with the fullness of peoples entering into your church, all Israel may be saved."

Rabbi Rosen, while saying he was pleased that language he found offensive was removed, objected to the new prayer because it specified that Jews should find redemption specifically in Christ. He noted that the standard Mass, issued after the liberalizations of the Second Vatican Council, also contained a prayer for the Jews' "redemption" but did not specifically invoke Christ, stressing rather God's original covenant with Jews.

"Pope Benedict XVI really does care about positive Catholic-Jewish relations — that I know for a fact,"

Rabbi Rosen said.

"It is therefore particularly disappointing,"

he said, "that this text doesn't seem to show any sensitivity as to how this new text will be read within Jewish circles."

On the other side of the debate, Kenneth J. Wolfe, a columnist for the traditionalist Catholic newspaper The Remnant, said traditionalists would have preferred no change at all.

Mr. Wolfe said that the change "rattles the cage of traditionalists" and that it would probably make more difficult any rapprochement with traditionalist groups like the Society of St. Pius X, which rejects the Second Vatican Council and has appointed its own bishops.

The full prayer also contains calls for the conversion of other groups, including Protestants, the Orthodox and pagans.

In discussing changes to the prayer, Vatican officials have said in the past that it is the church's right, believing in the truth of Catholicism, to pray for the salvation of all those who do not believe.

The Vatican said the new version of the prayer should be used by the traditionalist minority starting this Good Friday, March 21.

******************************************************************************************************************************************************