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February 20, 2004/Shevat 28 5764, Vol. 56, No. 22
Questioning Boteach's Messianic debate
JACOB BERKMAN
The Jewish Standard
NEW YORK - "Kosher Sex" author and Michael Jackson confidant Rabbi Shmuley Boteach debated Messianic Jewish theologian and author Dr. Michael Brown at the Manhattan Hilton on Feb. 17 about who killed Jesus, confounding some Jewish countermissionaries.
The event was held under the pretext of diffusing anti-Semitic backlash after the upcoming release of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," which reportedly paints Jews as deicides. But Boteach's participation in the event - which drew an estimated 900 people after it was advertised in a half-page ad in The New York Times on Feb. 12 - irked several countermissionaries because it was sponsored by Chosen People Ministries.
"Chosen People Ministries is probably the second largest ministry dedicated to con-verting Jews to Christianity," said Scott Hillman, the executive director of the countermissionary group Jews for Judaism. "It's second to Jews for Jesus."
And said Hillman of Brown, "He has been an apostate Jew since his teens."
Brown, born a Jew in New York, was an admitted heroin addict until he found Jesus at the age of 15. He has since earned a doctorate in Semitic studies from New York University.
The problem, said Hillman, is not in debating who killed Jesus, but that such events are designed as recruiting forums for missionary groups. They attract huge crowds, make guests sign in and give contact information, and later mail them proselytizing literature.
The president of Chosen People Ministries, Mitch Glaser, said that the ultimate goal of the event was twofold: Messianic Jews do not want the image of Jews as Christ-killers to spawn anti-Semitism, and they want to keep Jews' minds open to the idea of Jesus as the messiah.
Asked if Chosen People Ministries does not want Jews to see Jesus as a fountain of anti-Semitism because it would turn harden them to the idea of Jesus as the Messiah, Glaser said, "Yes, that's fair."
"All you have to do is look at the flier," said Jews for Judaism's Hillman, noting that the flier labels Brown a Messianic Jew and does not label Boteach Jewish at all. "It does not say traditional Jew (under Boteach's name). Their point is to rewrite Christians into the community."
Boteach, though, told the Standard that he believes wholeheartedly that Jews should engage in debates with Messianic Jews, and that by engaging in debates he can hopefully open up the minds of those Jews who have accepted Jesus to reassess their decisions.
The debate seemed off-topic from the start, with Brown claiming that it doesn't matter who killed Jesus because he died at God's will because of the sins of all humanity - though the Christian scriptures indicate that is was at the urging of the Jews - while Boteach countered that the accounts that Jews killed Jesus were predicated on the false testimony of admitted liars aimed at exonerating the Romans and criminalizing the Jews.
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