Moshe Rosen, the Jewish convert to Christianity who founded the Evangelical missionary group Jews for Jesus, died May 19, 2010, in San Francisco after a prolonged battle with cancer. He was 78. His passing presents an opportunity to reflect on the devastating effect he had on Jewish lives.
Born Martin Rosen in 1932 to immigrant Jewish parents, he was raised with a minimum Jewish education in Denver, Colo. He converted to Christianity in 1953, at the age of 21, and in 1957 was ordained a Baptist minister.
From 1957 to 1972, he worked as a missionary for the American Board of Missions to the Jews. After a falling-out, reportedly over his controversial tactics, Rosen launched the San Francisco-based Jews for Jesus movement in 1973.
He believed “Judaism never saved anybody” and that unless you believe in Jesus, you will burn in hell. This included the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
Rosen aggressively targeted Jews for conversion and is responsible for the loss of many young Jews and the destruction of numerous Jewish families. His most deceptive tactic promoted the notion that a Jew can be Jewish and Christian at the same time. However, he simultaneously condemned Judaism as a “false religion” and once said, “The fact is we are not practicing any form of Judaism. We are practicing Christianity.”
This didn’t stop him from encouraging the use of rabbinic Jewish practices, like lighting Shabbat candles or wearing a yarmulke, in an attempt to masquerade Christianity in the guise of authentic Judaism.
Sadly, as a direct result of Rosen’s pioneering efforts, today there are more than 1,000 missionary groups targeting Jews for conversion worldwide. With an annual budget exceeding $275 million, these groups have succeeded in reaching out to tens of thousands of Jews in recent decades. The 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Study estimated that more than 600,000 American Jews have converted to, or are affiliated with, a religion other than Judaism, the most dominant faith being Christianity.
Both Jewish and mainline Christian clergy condemned Rosen’s aggressive and controversial proselytizing methods. In 1990, the Rev. David Selzer wrote, “Jews for Jesus is another attempt to deny Jewish identity to Jews … as a Christian I oppose the group.”
In her doctoral dissertation on Jews for Jesus, Juliene Lipson describes how she infiltrated the group and discovered a disturbing side to Jews for Jesus and Moshe Rosen. According to Lipson, members agreed that “full submission to the leadership of Moshe Rosen is the will of God.” She also described a meeting where “members were asked to stand, whereupon Moshe struck each one across the face hard enough to knock them over.”
On the Web site UsedForJesus.com, ex-Jews for Jesus staff members testify to the abusive and cultlike atmosphere within Jews for Jesus, including the above-mentioned “pain training” as well as shunning of former members, rigid restrictions to personal life, and raging and intense anger. University of California, Berkeley, professor Margaret Singer, respected as a leading authority on cults and mind control, considered Jews for Jesus a cult. This was echoed by former Jews for Jesus member Ellen Kamensky, who categorized them as a destructive cult and told me they misrepresented New Testament passage Luke 14:26 to convince her to cut off contact with her family.
Misuse of biblical passages to prove Jesus is the messiah is a mainstay of Jews for Jesus. Their proof-texts are either taken out of context or mistranslated. In one of their pamphlets, they quote a nonexistent passage from the Zohar concerning the Shema in a pathetic attempt to prove the trinity is a Jewish concept.
This brings me to what I consider to be Rosen’s second-most deceptive tactic. On page 52 of his book, “Share the New Life With a Jew,” he instructs missionaries to not get “sidetracked with discussion on the deity of Christ.” He continues to explain that, as important as this doctrine may be, “correct theology is not what will save your friend.”
In other words, don’t bring up the most crucial beliefs of Christianity, the trinity or bodily incarnation of God, since they are difficult for Jews to accept because they contradict our fundamental Jewish belief in the absolute unity of God. In a remarkable sign of unity, all denominations of Judaism agree this is the No. 1 reason Jews can’t believe in Jesus.
You won’t see Jews for Jesus missionaries standing on street corners as often as they did in the 1970s and ’80s because they can now reach into our homes via the Internet, which they flood with propaganda.
Today, missionaries claim that more than 50 percent of Jews who have recently converted to Christianity did so as a result of an initial contact with a Christian missionary over the Internet. Jews for Jesus is also very active on college campuses and has harnessed the zealousness of millions of Evangelical Christians who have adapted Rosen’s methodology.
Unfortunately, Rosen’s legacy will be that his deceptive tactics have become the accepted protocol in the Evangelical Christian movement. It is now second nature for church members to tell their Jewish friends, and Christian students to tell their peers, that they can be Jewish and Christian at the same time. In Israel, Jews for Jesus missionaries, along with many Israeli converts, promote Jesus exclusively as being the Jewish messiah while intentionally avoiding mentioning their belief that he is God.
In these ways and more, the threat of Jews for Jesus is more serious than ever, and the Jewish community must redouble its efforts to keep Jews Jewish.
Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz is the founder and executive director of Jews for Judaism International. Celebrating 25 years, Jews for Judaism and its Be-True student initiative are dedicated to promoting critical thinking and responding to cults and missionaries that target the Jewish community.
