Talk:Proselytization and counter-proselytization of Jews

Starting the page

I thought it would be a good idea to start this pageUser:Yoshiah_ap

There is so much history sorrounding this that could go on for pages and pages, why is there not even one sentence ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.145.207.234 (talk) 16:41, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

I am going to give the benefit of the doubt on this one and challenge you to substantiate the claim rather than list this page on wikipedia:VFD. GrazingshipIV 05:18, Apr 15, 2004 (UTC)

If you are reffering to the remark that organizations such as Jews for Jesus started the Hebrew Christianity movement, I changed to mention that they are involved in it instead.User:Yoshiah_ap--Yoshiah ap 06:56, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Just what is wrong with this page? It is completely factual: most traditional Jewish communities will resist campaigns by Jews for J. It might be more than slightly POV to mention their budget, but:

• There is ongoing missionary activity towards Jews worldwide
• Hebrew Christianity is not considered Judaism by virtually all Jews who are not associated with that movement
• No argument exists to have this page VfD'd

JFW | T@lk 22:37, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Since GrazingshipIV is no longer active in this page, and has not listed what his objection is, I will remove the "disputed" status of it. --Yoshiah ap 01:21, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Why remove the Netzarim site? Have a look at these [1] [2] [3] pages The point about [netzarim.co.il the netzarim site] is that they are orthodox Jews they are torah observant no torah-observant orthodox rabbi has called them apostate and they are totally anti-missionary in a big way. I will not say anything bad about them because I do not want to be accused of leshon ha-ra do you? The site is as relevant to anti-missionary work as any anti-missionary Chabadnik site and for obvious reasons MUCH more so. I know you have had a difficult time defending Karaites as Jews Yoshiah, so one would think you would be very careful to hide them away and forget about them. All the best Zestauferov 17:51, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

P.S. they do not preach him as the messiah they preach him as the diametrically opposed 666 anti-chrst. How did you miss that?Zestauferov 17:57, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Hi Zestauferov, I'm not saying if (or if not) they are Jews. I'm saying that they wouldn't be appropriate as an anti-missionary link. 2 of those links you gave me only confirmed what I thought, because they denounce anti-missionaries and incompetant failures. However, wouldn't have a problem if we made categories for extrenal links. One for anti-missionary sites, one for responses to anti-missionary sites, and if you don't feel the netzarim site would be appropriate for the 2nd one, a category for sites that are 'in-between' the two positions.--Josiah 02:20, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Why not appropriate? I forced myself to have another read. They are not denouncing anti-missionary work per se, they just believe that they have a better style of anti-missionary approach. Also they are legitimate orthodox Jews until the Sanhedrein is reformed to make a ruling about them.Zestauferov 10:08, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Only with their methods?! They blame anti-missionaries for "Alienating 90% of the Jewish community from Orthodox Judaism, More than half of Jewish children marrying non-Jews and assimilating, and The statistical prediction that the American Jewish community will complete its determined self-destruction within a generation or two." Again, I have never said whether they are, or are not, Jews. But they cannot be categorized as anti-missionaries, and I believe they would agree.--Josiah 02:15, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Ok, the article is literally anti-missionary in name only because it is about Jewish attemtpts to counter christian missions targeting Jews. If the article was broader then of course literally the netzarim are missionary in that it seems they want to make the whole world Jewish. But in the sense that the article is currently presented, the netzarim cannot be called missionary becasue first and formost they do not target heterodox Judaism, and they like all the groups being discussed are very active in Jewish retrieval. They do not care whether the Jew being retrieved becomes orthodox under another beth din or whether they decide to join the netzarim beth din because their main point is arresting the attempts of christian missionary work targeted at Jews and to encourage Jews back into the folds of orthodox rabbinical tradition. I am just wondering if there is some other reason for wanting to exclude them. Since you are not accusing them of being non-orthodox Jews how can we say their attempts at bringing Jews away from christianity and back into the fold of Judaism are not anti-missionary? Thankyou for taking tome to debate this with me.Zestauferov 05:42, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• I don't think they would classify themselves as anti-missionary, that's why I suggested making 3 categories of external links - one for anti-misssionary organizations, one for counter-anti-missionary organizations, and one for those somewhere in between.--Josiah 03:26, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Well I suppose the best solution would be to write to them and ask them. But be warned that they are not really a very friendly bunch from what I have heard. More like Beth Shammai than Beth Hillel.Zestauferov 08:19, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• I know a person affiliated with the them. I could ask him, if you wanted.--Josiah 14:21, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This page should be moved to Counter-Missionary

The Counter-Missionary groups call themselves that, not Anti-Missionary; it is the groups they oppose which typically call them "Anti-Missionary". The reason is that the Counter-Missionaries view themselves as countering missionary activities and materials, not "anti" the missionaries themselves. Jayjg 21:14, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Semantics, if you ask me, but i'll change it. In San Diego, the local counter/anti-missionary groups that I've had experienced identify themselves as 'anti-missionaries' on their posters. The anti-missionary Yahoo group has nearly 400 members, whereas the counter-missionary group only has 30.--Josiah 04:11, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ideas for expansion

Since I added the {stub} tag, here are some questions it might be good for the article to address.

• When was the "Faith Strengthened" tract written, and when was it translated into Latin?
• Do counter-missionaries have a formal organization, or is it more of a grass-roots movement?
• Are there any estimates of how many active counter-missionaries there are? In comparison with active Jews for Jesus (and members of similar groups)?
• How much do counter-missionaries spend on their activities? (To compare with the $1 billion spent by "Hebrew Christians" trying to convert the Jews.)
• Any estimates of how many or few Jews are converting to Christianity? Of how many Christians are converting to Judaism?

These are just some ideas. I'm sure there are other interesting things to know about them as well. Wesley 16:02, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Polemic or Apologetic?

Is Counter-Missionary literature generally polemic, apologetic, or both? —Charles P. (Mirv) 22:11, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Hmm. More polemic than apologetic, I would say, but you do get both. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:19, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

It depends on the audience being addressed. If it is (directly or indirectly) being adressed to missionaries, it is more likely to be a polemic. But if it is designed to strengthen the convinctions of Jews, then it's more likely to be apologetic. When I work on Counter-Missionary material (such as on my Counter-Missionary Blog) I try to keep it mostly apologetic because it's better to build than it is to destroy.--Josiah 07:01, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the illuminating answers. What about controversialist literature written against classical paganism (e.g. Against Apion) and Islam (e.g. Simon Duran's Keshet u-Magen)? Is this also called "Counter-Missionary"? —Charles P. (Mirv) 16:30, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I haven't read either of them, so I couldn't say. If the views being refuted were ones attempting to convince Jews that they were correct (i.e. proselyting) then yes, they could be classified as Counter-Missionary (though in today's context "Counter-Missionary" almost exclusively refers to Jewish rebuttals of Christian theology)--Josiah 00:55, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

Against Apion is certainly not considered Counter-Missionary, though it's an apologetic work. I've never heard of Keshet u-Magen; I suspect it is too obscure to be called Counter-Missionary. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:05, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

'Against Apion' is a Christian work written to combat a famous pagan, Apion who wrote a counter-missionary work for pagans against Christianity. The work by Apion disappeared long ago, but 'Against Apion' has remained since it was "pro-Christian." To its credit, many of Apion's pagan arguments were included in the response. . . Early counter missionary efforts include the [Disputation at Barcelona a famous debate in the 13th century between RamBan (Nachmanides)and an apostate Jew in front of the King of Spain and the Karaite work Faith Strengthened written by Isaac Ben Abraham of Troki in the 16th century. User:Sophiee1

"Kiruv Rechokim"

"Kiruv rechokim" means "to make those who are distant close", and not "Jewish Outreach". Desdendelle (talk) 15:50, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Counter-missionary

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Counter-missionary's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "RELTOL":

• From Messianic Judaism: Opposition to Messianic Judaism from the Jewish community by Robinson, B. (Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance)
• From Jews for Jesus: Robinson, B. Messianic Judaism. Jews for Jesus, Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, October 29, 2001.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 23:43, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Reference to Mesiah Truth counter missionary organization removed improperly Counter-missionary

References to Messiah Truth, a major counter missionary resource, were removed from this article. The reason given was that Sophiee1 is affiliated with the site. The reference should be in the article as Messiah Truth is one of the most active counter missionary resources on the internet. It is more actively monitored than "Outreach Judaism" and run by Rabbis and Yeshiva (Jewish school) instructors. Since I am affiliated with the site as a non-paid moderator, will someone else please edit the article to insert both the website and forum links?

http://www.messiahtruth.com

http://www.messiahtruth.yuku.com

Kosher Judaism, on the other hand, is a less known resource and I have no problems with it being eliminated from the article as a resource. I am the administrator at Kosher Judaism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sophiee1 (talk • contribs) 17:40, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Article quality/NPOV

This article needs a lot of work. Counter-missionary organizations are certainly notable and deserve coverage in Wikipedia, but the coverage needs to follow Wikipedia principles.

The primary problem is Neutral Point of View. The current article assumes that conversion of Jews to other religions is a bad thing and conversely that opposing conversion is a good thing. It assumes that people with Jewish family backgrounds (ethnic Jews) should be encouraged to practice Judaism. All that is pure opinion and a violation of NPOV. Of course, it is important to report that various Jewish organizations espouse these beliefs: that is an objective fact.

Parts of the article read like marketing materials of the groups being covered, e.g. "Outreach Judaism provides full-time, multi-level informational resources." Simply rephrasing primary sources in this way constitutes Original Research. The article suffers from being almost entirely sourced from counter-missionary organizations' Web sites -- surely there is some good third-party research on this phenomenon?

Let's try to get better sources for this article and make it reflect a Neutral Point of View. --Macrakis (talk) 02:44, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I think a lot of the NPOV problems arise from the title: "Jewish views on missionaries and counter-missionaries" -- it inherently limits the views to the Jewish perspective -- which will generally be "that conversion of Jews to other religions is a bad thing and conversely that opposing conversion is a good thing." 'Proselytization and counter-proselytization of Jews' might be a more neutral title. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 18:56, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Still seems to be a problem. Phrases like "attempts to recruit, or 'missionize' Jews to abandon Judaism," " targeting Jews for conversion to Christianity," and "Muslims have also targeted Jews for conversion" have an undeniably hostile tone towards proselytization. The "Jewish Population" section might better be called "Jewish Population Decline" since it mainly seems to opine that American Jews are straying from the faith and intermarrying (a trend to which the text seems aggressively opposed). There is a "Jewish Response" section, which seems redundant, since the entire article seems to be a Jewish response to proselytization. Where are the sections outlining the motives and responses of the proselytizers, instead of only giving space to the counter-proselytization response? Why do all of the External Links direct to Jewish pages addressing the "problem" of proselytization? I am aware that this is a controversial topic, so there is all the more need to address the topic fairly and without bias. If there ever was an NPOV tag, it needs to be back up. If there was never a tag, I am astounded. I am placing the tag on this page.--Icetitan17 (talk) 05:26, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Brewcrewer's concern

Brewcrewer requested an elaboration why I made a distinction between 'Judaism' and 'mainstream Judaism.' In short, the CounterMissionary [POV] is that their minority opinion is the only Orthodox, Conservative and (sometimes) Reform are valid expression of Judaism. By example, they do not acknowledge JuBu as authentic Judaism. CM have also made special effort to counter Messianic Judaism as not being 'mainstream'. My clarification was more accurate. --DeknMike (talk) 02:03, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Lack of third party sources

This article appears entirely, or almost entirely, sourced to websites of Jewish counter-missionary organisations and/or religious organisations targeting Jews for conversion -- i.e. WP:PRIMARY sources (and quite likely in many instances WP:SPS). This is an insufficient basis for a Wikipedia article. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 10:48, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

16 May page move

I hadn't noticed this page move: (cur | prev) 08:10, 16 May 2011 Hrafn (talk | contribs) m (16,978 bytes) (moved Jewish views on missionaries and counter-missionaries to Proselytization and counter-proselytization of Jews: More NPOV title, per talk) (undo)

That effectively now makes Christian mission to Jews, which I started in a casual moment, (but isn't a page that I count as a favourite child or keep track on and I don't have a dog in this), was linked to the old page title as Jewish responses Main article: Jewish views on missionaries and counter-missionaries a potential POVfork. Though it wasn't intended as a POVfork, it was intended to fill a hole as a stub-umbrella to chronologically index relevant articles. (cur | prev) 00:28, 27 April 2011 In ictu oculi (talk | contribs) (1,950 bytes) (effectively a stub-tree on which links to other pages can be hung, surprising that this page didn't exist.) ....I don't have an enormously fixed opinion on this subject, as my main interest is history what I had intended was a page where the previous "Jewish views.." could be indexed along with a chronological stub tree into which. my edit for today, e.g. Hasdai Crescas and others could slotted. Strikes me however that "proselytize," ...although it's perfectly healthy in Jewish Greek texts when Hellenistic Jews were "proselytizing" Greeks..., in English the word has a sort of stab-you-in-the-eyeball-with-a-fork feel about it, IMHO, it doesn't sound enormously neutral, but then neither does "mission." .........maybe Jewish apologetics per Christian apologetics, not a strong suggestion...........In ictu oculi (talk) 11:00, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Given that your article concentrates mainly on the past, and this article mainly on the present, why not rename yours to 'History of..." -- though I'm not sure if 'Christian mission to Jews' is the best title even so, as many of the conversions were coerced (post-Reconquista Spain immediately comes to mind). Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 11:27, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

That sounds like a good suggestion, it would preserve the function of the article as a stub-tree and index, which already lead to here for the modern view. If we get no further comment on either page within the next week that's may be the way to go. Certainly in Spain "mission" is hardly an adequate term for "convert or get out" but it's only a tree, and the article already mentions Spain, per Marranos; but I'll add conversos. The only problem with "history of" is it might implies it's about sources about the history, I'm not sure. In ictu oculi (talk) 06:22, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

btw - I just looked at the Proselytization and it says the word has negative connotations. In ictu oculi (talk)

And the fact that a number of Jews feel the need to actively "counter" it demonstrates that the activities in question are viewed at-least-somewhat 'negatively' in this context -- so the title is hardly misleading. I tend to value accuracy and avoidance of confusion or misunderstanding over anybody's hurt feelings. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 07:18, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

But the title should still be WP:NPOV, proselytization is a fundamental belief of Christianity - it is not directed at Jews. And the Muslim missionaries section does not have a single WP:RS - please add some or I will template it. I am considering nominating it for deletion for the POV title, but I will review the article sources more carefully first and see if this page can be made WP:NPOV by including Christian viewpoint as well. Seraphim System ^(talk) 00:17, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

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Proselytization of Jews...by orthodox Jews

Should this article include intra-proselytization of Jews? As I understand it, Jews from the different main denominations often try to get Jews from other denominations to "repent" and join their denomination. E.g., an Orthodox Jew might try to convert a Reform Jew. Psiĥedelisto (talk) 13:07, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

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