Hamechadesh is reporting on a series of interesting piskei halacha regarding the discovery of undercover missionaries posing as Haredi Jews in the French Hill neighborhood of Jerusalem a short while ago.

For years, ever since the Internet bans have become a thing with conferences and rallies and asifas and whatnot, we have all been joking about using an "Internet Goy" for your Internet needs. I have personally even been the "internet goy" for the occasional neighbor or school teacher who needed some Internet usage but did not have their own access...

Pedophiles and missionaries. Whenever they are exposed but not taken down they just move to another community and try to restart their work in the new community.

Since yesterday's post about the Haredi family in Jerusalem that were really missionaries, much more information has come out and been made public. I posted some links in the comments section of yesterday's post, and you can check those links out for more details and information.

What I wanted to add here, after being in touch with people who knew the family personally and were even involved along the way with the discovery of the family's real identity, is that the entire story seems less dramatic than it initially sounded or as the news made it out to be.

First, Mr Fraud, Michael Elkohen, was learning in a kabbalist yeshiva and claimed to be a cousin of Baba Sali. That is pretty funny. I wonder if he was aiming to turn himself into a Baba like the rest of the family and make millions off the family name.

The anti-missionary organizations knew about them for a while and were not overly concerned. Maybe because they were not actively missionizing. I do not fully understand because even without the missionary work they were non-Jews posing as Jews and should have been outed. Perhaps they served treif food to friends and to community members (ie guests for Shabbos, shalach manos, meal train participation, etc). While it might not be the worst prohibition in the Torah, at minimum anyone who ate their food was eating bishul akum even if the food was not actual treif. So the organizations seem to have known but were not overly concerned.

It seems he was sofer but never wrote a torah and the mezuzas and tefillin he wrote were not sold publicly but were written for his messianic community. Also he was not a public mohel but only circumcised his children. I am not sure all this information is 100% true - if a friend asked him to do a bris, would he always have said no? If a friend asked for tefillin or a mezuza would he always have said no? If we knew he was writing for messianics all along, how was he not exposed earlier? It sounds strange but it also sounds like his influence, in the sense of being a messianic and missionary, was very minimal.

The worst of it seems to be the deception on a personal and communal level. They made friendships, they used that to raise money from friends, all based on a false persona created by deception. That hurts people who were their friends.

   

Have you heard the old story of of the goy who bought the community's chametz for Pesach and then turned out to be a Jew?

This morning we received in our mailbox a little pamphlet put there by missionaries. I dont know if they are some group of Christians or Jews for Jesus or whoever, but someone is busy passing out little pamphlets promoting Jesus to the Jews.

I am not sure why they think their stupid little pamphlet that was poorly designed with just a few words on every little page would convince me to switch faiths and religious systems. As a matter of fact, I can't even understand how they thought anybody would even give these a second glance and read them - they look like trash that nobody put any real investment into. In today's age of flashy screens and bright lights and glossy materials, I cannot believe they thought they are going to turn anyone with this little trashy pamphlet. And calling it "pamphlet" is being generous.

I normally would have just tossed it in the garbage without even looking at it - it just looks like little papers of junk. I likely would have assumed it was an ad for someone offering tutoring services or car wash or lice checking or selling some homeopathic concoction that is supposed to cure all illnesses. The only reason I looked at it curiously is because I had already received 20 messages from various whatsapp groups warning me about the pamphlets, so I was curious. It was so poorly designed and printed that I couldn't even read what they wanted from me and just tore it up and threw it out.

They even somehow tried to use Rav Kaduri in their campaign as if he supports Jesus as the Messiah. I am not quite sure how because I can't read or understand what Rav Kaduri wrote (if he even wrote it), but somehow I doubt this is what he meant.

If this is the best they can do to try to attract me to their religion, I feel bad for them. Missionaries used to be so much more dangerous and wily. Yeridas Hadoros.

I guess if everyone is warning everyone else about them, so should I, though I don't know how necessary it actually is. If you get this, just toss it into the bin for the trash it is.

I have not paid too much attention to this story, so I do not know all the details, but people are very upset about some new Christian television station that was just given permission to broadcast in Israel. I think it is on the HOT cable tv system.

The name of the show is God TV, or Shelanu TV, and it seems to be evangelical with a bent on trying to persuade Jews to convert to Christianity or at least to accept Yoshka as the Messiah.

Initially they were accused of proselytizing and people were reporting them to the government and police and trying to pressure the government to revoke their license. In response the CEO of God TV issued a statement that they are not proselytizing and trying to convert Jews but only to get Jews to accept Jesus as Messiah. (you can see the youtube clip of his statement, which I will not embed here. Here is a TOI article about it as well.)

I hope their proselytizing gets shut down. That is not allowed here and should not be allowed here.

What I do want to say is that this, in my opinion, is the direct result of the Jews in Israel and the Jewish organizations in Israel, that in recent years have sprouted like mushrooms, who target Evangelical Christians and try to get them more connected to Israel and the Jews, teaching them Torah, persuading them to come visit and spend money here, persuading them to support Israel and support charities and organizations.

Even if much of that is just a business and attempt to tap a market that has a lot of money to send to Israelis, the result of getting people more involved is that they want to be even more involved. You fire up a passion in people, and they want to do even more than what you wanted them to do.

You want to teach them Torah and bring them to Israel and get them involved in organizations and supporting both morally and financially, don't be surprised, and especially outraged, when they turn around and step up their own activities in Israel.

I would not tell anyone to stop doing something that is good PR for Israel and brings parnassah to so many Jews. It is not my business what they do. Just don't act so surprised when the target audience then takes it further than was originally intended.

I think of it similarly to female Jewish education, lehavdil. It used to be there was no Jewish education for girls. Then Jewish education began, out of a perceived necessity (and a very real one). Then over the years that education was expanded to higher and higher levels of Torah education and learning for women. The result of all that was that women loved learning Torah and some wanted to do it much more than was originally intended by Sara Schnirer and others. Some eventually try to become rabbis and teachers and community leaders. It is just natural. If you work hard to evoke passion in a subject on many people, some of those people will develop the passion and go much further than you intended.

caveat: I am not saying female education is a bad thing - just the opposite, I think education is the greatest thing possible for everybody. I am comparing it in the sense that when you involve people and teach and try to get them involved and passionate about something, it cane easily go further than you intended. That is what is happening with these Christian missionaries, but in this situation it is a bad thing for Israel.

A brief scuffle ensued when some avreichim in Neve Yaakov neighborhood of Jerusalem discovered the identity of a person distributing missionary materials on car windshields across the neighborhood, including in the Haredi section.

When the police arrived to break up the argument and separate them, one of the officers responded to the avreichim by saying that the missionaries are no different than the Haredim who go out looking to be "machzir btshuva" secular people. Obviously the avreichim were very upset and offended by this.
source: Kikar

I have heard this before, and I have no idea how to respond to it. It sounds like it has some truth to it. Even though it is within the same religion while classic missionaries are trying to draw people from other religions to the religion they are representing, from the perspective of someone secular, how is a Chabadnik trying to put tefillin on people or someone at the Kotel snagging people for home cooked Shabbos meals, or baal tshuva yeshiva reps who target them or their kids in an attempt to turn them religious really any different?

I don't have a good handle on how to differentiate between them. And if there is no difference, why is missionizing not ok but having tefillin booths and people handing cds of machzirei btshuva rabbis ok - is it just because Orthodox Judaism is right?

Some postal workers in Ramat Gan encountered an unusual situation when they went to work the other day. They found, among the packages of mail they were scheduled to deliver, pamphlets of the New Testament mailed out by Christian missionaries.

It happens to be illegal to distribute missionary material in Israel. On the other hand, the Postal Authority is in a bind, as, they say, they are legally obligated to distribute whatever they receive, and they have no right to differentiate or discern what should or should not be delivered.. I wonder how that would apply if someone mailed packages of cocaine or marijuana through the mail. Would they be supportive of delivering that mail or would they call the police?

The mailmen who encountered the pamphlets refused to take them for delivery. They said it goes against their beliefs, some said it is prohibited, and some said it was illegal. The mailmen who refused were able to get out of doing it, and their supervisor chose not to force the issue at that time. They did say that similar materials found in other post offices were delivered. (source: Ynet)

I commend them for standing strong, though I don't know how this might play out in the future. Can a mailman, or should a mailman, be allowed to decide what he will deliver and what not? if someone is receiving an item that the mailman does not approve of, let's say for moral reasons, does the mailman have the right to say he will not deliver? It seems almost like anarchy to me. In this situation they might have it easier because missionary material is illegal for distribution in Israel, and for the general revulsion among the general public for such materials. They might not have it so easy in other situations.

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There is a discussion going on over at The Muqata about the Messianic girl who has qualified to participate in the annual Bible Quiz that takes place on Yom Ha'atzmaut (end of next week).

Yad L'Achim has protested her participation because of her Messianic beliefs. They are threatening to call for a ban on the Chidon, if she is allowed to continue as a contestant.

It seems like a no brainer. This is a quiz for religious kids, with a seat saved for a secular candidate (as they generally fail to qualify on knowledge, a seat is saved for them so they can be part of it). She is Messianic, and is a danger, and is part of a dangerous community, that try to use their knowledge to missionize among the Jews, and she should be thrown off the contest.

The problem is that the rules seem to have only one criteria mentioned for qualification in the chidon. That is that the contestant be Jewish. While many Messianics are not Jewish (some have converted but would not be considered Jewish by law or halacha), it just so happens to be that this girl trying to compete is Jewish. Her family just happens to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, even though they are really Jewish. So how do you disqualify her if she qualifies under the one rule for participation?

Yad L'Achim arranging a ban, while understandable on the face of it because of their great work against missionaries in Israel, is a questionable step. I see it as being problematic for 2 reasons:

1. The Haredim generally completely ignore the Chidon Tanach. It is a Zionistic venture, in honor of Yom Ha'Atzmaut (a holiday most Haredim ignore). The Haredim generally ignore the whole thing. They do not send kids to participate in the contest, they do not report who won or anything about it. Heck, the Haredi press did not even write today about this whole issue that has arisen! So banning it, seems like it will be pretty ineffective. It will just give this organization (the Messianics) a lot of interviews and press time, with no real gain for Yad L'achim, even if they do successfully get her knocked off the contest.
2. Disqualifying her from participating is problematic, since she qualifies under the rules. If we start saying that some Jews cannot participate because of their beliefs, that opens a whole can of worms. People will start appealing other candidates participation, based on what they claim to be (whether they are or are not would always be debatable) beliefs that are beyond the pale.
   If a Reform student wished to participate, would he be banned? If a Chabad Meshichist student wished to participate, would he be protested? I am not comparing beliefs and saying some people are better than others, who is within the pale and who is beyond the pale, but if we come along and start saying that about this one girl, who is to stop anyone from coming in the future and protesting other candidates, that might be more acceptable, but still questionable.
   

I can foresee, if this protest takes on legs and becomes a real fight, this destroying the whole chidon.
1. differentiating between beliefs
2. haredim ignore the chidon tanach anyway, and do not care if this brings down the whole thing.