April 4 – 2021

During the week covered by this review, we received 3 articles on the following subjects:

 

Anti-Missionary Attitudes

Anti-Missionary Attitudes / Messianic Judaism

Christian Zionism / Film

 

 

Anti-Missionary Attitudes

 

Matzav Ruach, March 26, 2021

 

The first article reported again that Or L’Achim published a 70-page document accusing the State Attorney’s Office of supporting missionaries in Israel by reversing a decision made by the Finance Committee to bar two missionary organizations from tax-exempt status. The State Attorney’s Office said the organizations’ primary work was not evangelism but public service.

 

 

Anti-Missionary Attitudes / Messianic Judaism

 

Kfar Chabad, March 25, 2021

 

The second article argued that Jews should not try to argue with missionaries about theology. Instead, the best strategy is to tell new converts that they have been duped, because what is called “Messianic Judaism” is actually just missionary Christianity. The article said that Israelis, especially, do not like feeling like they have been tricked, and that Messianic Judaism is the “biggest trick of all”. The article cited a number of people who claim to have joined, and then exited, the Messianic Jewish movement. One such man, Eyal Hirshfeld, said that Jews who are looking for truth find their way into Messianic Judaism, not because they want to convert, but because they truly think it is Jewish.

 

 

Christian Zionism / Film

 

The Jerusalem Post, April 1, 2021

 

Israeli filmmaker Maya Zinshtein’s documentary, Till Kingdom Come, which explores the relationship between American Evangelicals and Israel, was supposed to air on PBS but has been postponed. The pro-Israeli group CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, submitted a complaint that the documentary spliced together two separate clips of a speech made by then-president Donald Trump in a misleading way. The premier has been postponed and the edit is being corrected.