Letter#19   Do Jews Proselytize?

 
My dear Mr. Isaacs:
   I am in agreement with you, "Opposition to Judaism will never convince a Jew that he should become a Christian." Especially so, when the opposition is bad-spirited, based, as much opposition is, upon unwarranted charges, such as the "blood ritual," the Protocols of the Elders of Zion etc. It naturally arouses resentment, and closes the Jewish mind to arguments favorable to Christianity, however sound they may be. Jews can no more be brow-beaten into hailing Jesus as their Messiah, than they can be brow-beaten into sincerely Heil-Hitlering Hitler in Nazi controlled territory.
   I do not think your Orthodox friends suggested your declaration, for they know I have not been attacking the Judaism of our forefathers in Israel. While history compelled me to declare that your brand of Judaism came from Germany, instead of Sinai, and therefore is not Jewish in principle, judged from the standpoint of the Old Testament, my pen was not guided by bitterness of spirit, as bitterness towards my fellowman, thanks be to God, is not one of the many weaknesses in my makeup. I am conscious of the fact that "he who hates his brother is in darkness," and therefore lacks the light that love generates, as St. John, the Jew who became the Apostle closest to the heart of the Messiah, said in his first Epistle.
   My contention has been that knowledge and love of Judaism of old are the basis for a sound understanding and appreciation of things Catholic. Surely that is favoring, and not opposing Judaism. No Catholic can rightly hate the Judaism from which his religion originated, any more than he can hate the seed from which he came into being.
   Your comeback to my last letter, I cannot say answer thereto, is so far removed from what I said that it is not even of secondary import. While I will digress from the issue discussed to answer your protest against "trying to convert Jews to Catholicism," and the assertion that "Jews never proselytize," please do not let the points I made in my last letter slip out of your memory. They are, first: that the Mosaic Law calls for a priesthood from the house of Aaron, and the coming of the Messiah from the house of David; Second: that all divisions in Jewry agree that the priesthood of Aaron ceased to function with the destruction of the Temple in the first century after the coming of the Messiah; that the last priest of Jewry was Phineas, who had no Torah right to that office; Third: that there is no possibility of an Aaronic priesthood being reinstituted; nor a Messiah being born in the future, as there are no known houses of Aaron and David in existence from which such personages can come; Fourth: the termination of these houses was no doubt providential, as the Messiah came in the person of Jesus, Who instituted the new, universal, prophesied priesthood.
   Evidently you must have found the data and arguments in my letter too positive, clear, and well authenticated by quotations taken from Jewish sources, to try and refute them. If not, what made you switch to a question entirely foreign to the issue? Jews have been, but are not now, more intense in their effort to circumcise non-Jews than Catholics are to baptize Jews. In fact, judging by the activities of Catholics during the thirty-six years that I have been in the Church, there has been less work done by the Catholic Church to convert Jews than has been done to convert any other group of non-Catholics.
   In the first place, please to bear in mind the fact that only a very small percentage of Jews have any affiliation with synagogues; that three-quarters of them, if not more, do not even utter the Sh'ma - "Hear 0 Israel, the Lord our God is One God." Many of them say, what Walter Lipmann says in the opening words of his "Preface to Morals," that "there is a vacancy in the lives-of those who no longer believe in the religion of their fathers." As for Liberal Judaism, it is so far from Judaism of old, and so near Unitarianism, that Prof. A. A. Roback said, in his "Weekly Survey of People and Ideas," that appeared in the Jewish press of our country, on the last week of January, 1940-

"Shortsighted people (referring to some Jewish leaders) do not realize that many of the grandchildren of the so-called liberal Jews today will become Unitarians or Christian Scientists fifty years hence, for the reason that there is only a hairbreadth's difference between the credo of the 'liberal' Jew and the liberal Christian."

   To win such persons to the Catholic Church is to win them back to the faith of their Mosaic Law-loving fathers of old in Israel, to the Judaism full-blossomed that the prophets they honored foretold. My letters aim to get such Jews, as well as those in synagogues, to see the soundness of Catholic claims, hoping that once they know them as they really are, they will be blest with the courage equal to their understanding, and thus influence the Holy Spirit to bestow upon them the gift of regeneration at the baptismal font of the Church of the Messiah. That is a perfectly legitimate ambition, so long as proper means are used to bring the result desired, your protest to the contrary notwithstanding.
   Surely it is not a virtue to know and enjoy the benefit of truth without regard for your brother who is in error, especially when it involves his spiritual well-being. Knowledge is responsibility. It obligates us to endeavor, by example first, irid'then-'Uy word of mouth or pen, to lead our fellowman from error to truth, from evil to good, from indifference to spiritual insight, from a false to a true means of obeying the will of God, for we are our brother's keeper. That is why the Midrash (study and exegesis of Jewish scripture) says, "He who brings a heathen next to God is as though he had created him anew."
   It was the laudable desire to serve God, and to bring nonJews to the knowledge of the one True God, to obedience to God's Commandments, and to living according to the Mosaic Law, that prompted the faithful Jews of old to proelytize. You, like most of the Jews of our day, seem to lack the knowledge that Judaism was a missionary religion in pre-Christian days, and rightly so, though its methods at times were reprehensible. A study of Jewish histories would cause you to change your assertion that "Jews never proelytize" to read, that "Jews do not do any public proselytizing work today."
   Provisions are made for proselytes in the Shulchan Aruch (code of Jewish law) which guides Orthodox Jews, a special division therein being devoted to the subject. Proselytes of different grades are defined in the Jewish codes. The Gere Tzedek, for instance, are proselytes of righteousness, because "they are sincere,"   that is, they are not prompted to be circumcised by marriage, desire to gain popularity, or fear of persecution. They are given an equal status with persons of Jewish parentage, therefore it is forbidden "to annoy them" by saying, for instance,

"Yesterday you were a worshipper of vanity," or  "Pig's flesh is still between your teeth."

   Evidence of the intense endeavor to convert heathens to Judaism is found in the writings of Cicero, Dio Cassius, Horace, Juvenal, Senaca, Tacitus, Josephus, and the New Testament.
   The ire of the authorities in Alexandria and Rome was aroused by the proselytizing activities of the Jews. Poppaca, the wife of Nero; Aquila of Pontus; Consul Flavius Clemens, nephew of Roman Emperor Vespasion and his wife, Domitilla, the cousin of Titus; King Monobaz of Abiabene, his wife, Helena, and many nobles of his court; King Dhu Nuwas of Yemen, are but a few of the prominent proselytes. Some rabbis claimed that Nero and Marcus Aurelius were converts to Judaism, though other Jews deny that it is so. If Jews did not proselytize, then how account for the black Jews (Falashas) of Ethiopia, who have congregations in our country? It was proselytizing work that encouraged the conversion of the Chazars, the Turkish tribe, and its King Bulan. It is an indisputable fact that converts were made by force on the part of officials of the highest standing in Jewry, especially during the days of the Maccabean warrior kings. These leaders of Jewry gave the Idumeans they subdued, the choice of becoming Jews or getting out of the land in which they lived.
   Josephus, who believed in the worship of God according to the dictates of conscience, condemned Jewish forced circumcision. Writing in his "Life," of men who surrendered in battle, he said:

"When the Jews would force them to be circumcised, if they would stay among them, I would not permit any force put upon them, but said, 'Every one ought to worship according to his own inclination, and not be constrained by force.' "

   The common practice of circumcising slaves, caused legislation to be enacted against Jews owning slaves who were Christians. On the other hand, Jews who became Christians were so severely dealt with, by their former religionists, that one of the first edicts dealing with religion, issued by Constantine the Great (Oct. 18, 315, A.D.) was as follows:

"We wish to make known to Jews and their elders and their patriarchs that if, after the enactment of this law, any one of them dares to attack with stones or some other manifestation of anger another who has fled their dangerous sect and attached himself to the worship of God (referring to Christianity), he must be speedily given to the flames and burnt together with all his accomplices."

   It was "the missionary spirit of the Jews," which the "Encyclopedia of Jewish Knowledge" says, "was often fanatical" (p.358), and the hypocrisy of the leaders of the Jews the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ met in Jerusalem, that brought from His sacred lips one of the severest indictments He uttered:

"Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you traverse sea and land to make one convert; and when he has become one, you make him twofold more a son of Hell than yourselves" (St. Matt. 23:15).

   This letter ought to convince any one, who will read it dispassionately, that Judaism was a proselytizing religion; that it was within its province, aye, it was its duty, to convert non-Jews to belief in and worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to the Mosaic way of life, in the days when Judaism alone was the divinely instituted religion in the world.
   With the coming of the Messiah; with the institution of the Messianic,priesthood and Sacrifice, that took the place of the priesthood and sacrifices of the old covenant the authority to represent God in the world was transferred to the Apostles selected by the Messiah and their successors.
   Their universal commission was given by Jesus in these words:

"All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world" (St. Matt. 28:18-20).

   This was a commission to make converts of all peoples, Jews included. To ask Christians to cease "trying to convert Jews to Catholicism," is equivalent to asking them to stop doing what Jesus Christ did and instituted His Church to continue.


Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G........

 

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