The following references come from:
Tovia Singer, Let’s Get Biblical: Why Doesn’t Judaism
Accept the Christian Messiah? 2 vols. (Forest Hills, N.Y.: Outreach
Judaism, 2014)
. . . many Hebrew-Christians will
tell you the first time they considered believing in Jesus was in college.
A university campus is one of the
primary places that young people are invited to fundamentalist Christian
retreats, prayer meetings, and Bible classes. What they will witness there is
like nothing they have ever witnessed in their synagogue. People stand in their
pews, crying to Jesus, Healings take place in the aisles.
Messianic Jews are exceedingly friendly.
Visit a Messianic congregation—if you are a new face, members of the
congregation, with big smiles and friendly words of introduction, will
immediately approach you. They will want to know who you are, what do you do,
and if you have a place to eat.
The elderly are also perilously
vulnerable to Jewish evangelism. It is little coincidence that there are more
Messianic congregations tightly packed into the peninsula of South Florida than
any other similarly-sized region in North America.
Even more than from physical
ailments, the aged suffer from chronic loneliness. The Christian mission’s
volunteers who seek out and witness to the Jewish elderly in nursing homes are
met with little resistance to their aggressive activities by these facilities or
their residents.
A pretty smile and a warm touch
are priceless commodities to those who are waiting to die. With minds that have
slowed down due to the passing of time, and a soul hungry for companionship,
our grandparents are falling prey to the Jesus movement.
It is well known that Russian
Jews are a prime target and easy pretty for evangelical missionaries. Their
upbringing in the former Soviet Union under communism robbed them of any Jewish
education or understanding of their rich heritage.
Few of these new immigrants are
familiar with even the fundamentals of their heritage, such as the Passover
Seder or connecting with the State of Israel. This has proven devasting to the
Russian Jewish community.
As a result, Christian missions have
invested extraordinary resources and manpower in large Russian communities in
Israel and neighborhoods like Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.
It is ironic that although Jews of
the former Soviet Union resisted harsh spiritual conditions under both Czarist
and communist Russia, they rapidly succumbed to Christian missionaries in the
West. (1:29-30)
