THE
MISSIONARY MENACE
by
Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Laureate
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The
Jewish community is only now becoming aware of a danger lying
in wait for its young people, or, at least, certain elements
among them. It seems that missionaries are displaying zeal as
well as ingenuity in their efforts to attract young Jews in
order to convert them.
As always,
the fashion began in the United States, and it has not yet run
its course. These "Jews for Jesus" are to be found
everywhere, but especially on university campuses. On Long Island,
as in the Middle West, their centers throb with activity. Their
hunters of souls are successful more often than we think. Also
the percentage of Jews joining the "moonies" is very
high. The same applies to other sects. The Jew is their prime
target, their preferred prey.
How
do these missionaries operate? How do they set about enticing
young Jews into their net? First of all, they know where to
go. They make contact with lonely students, bewildered ones,
those starved of love, attention, friendship.
"Come
with us," the soul hunters tell them, "be one of us.
After all, we are Jews like you. Better still, only by becoming
Jewish Christians or Christian Jews will you be truly Jewish."
So it is by offering to teach these students about Judaism that
the missionaries entrap them and do not let go.
They
organize festivals, ceremonies, prayer meetings. Hundreds of
Jewish students take part in their "Havdalah" near
a university campus on Long Island. To begin with, the students
go there for the same reasons they go to an entertainment event
or to a social gathering to spend a pleasant few hours, to escape
boredom, to see and do something different. Some enjoy the evening.
Others go away frightened.
To say
that these methods offend me would not be strong enough. The
Jews have always opposed missionaries who believe that salvation
belongs exclusively and irrevocably to them. When they try to
tear you away from your faith and from your people, they are
doing so out of altruism, they claim.
But
I feel less revulsion for Christian missionaries than for their
Jewish accomplices. The missionaries are at least honest. They
proclaim openly that their aim is to absorb as many Jews as
possible into their church. They aim to kill their victims'
Jewishness by assimilating it. They give each individual Jew
the choice between Judaism and Christianity always doing their
best to influence that choice.
Their
Jewish colleagues, however, the "Jews for Jesus",
are dishonest. They are hypocrites. They do not even have the
courage to declare frankly that they have decided to repudiate
their people and its memories.
In telling
their victim that he can be Jewish and Christian at the same
time as if the history of Christianity did not give them the
lie they are laying a trap of trickery and lies. Even more detestable,
they play on their victim's vulnerabilities. They always exploit
weakness, ignorance, and unhappiness. They offer the victim
a new "family" to replace his own, the "comradeship"
he lacks, and, at the outset, a "no obligation" religious
atmosphere. Later, it is too late to turn back. "Operation
Enticement" has been successful.
I have
met despairing parents, in tears and not knowing how to bring
their children back home. I shall not soon forget one Holocaust
survivor I met, a pious Jew who came originally from Poland.
He could not understand what had happened, asking, "Did
I survive in order to fail precisely where my ancestors triumphed?
To give life to a renegade?" He sobbed, and I was barely
able to console him. Like the other parents, he reproached himself.
The reproaches were always the same: they should have done this,
said that, realized sooner, acted differently.
If the
truth be told, we are all guilty to some extent. In leaving
us, these young people are accusing us of having let them go
or, worse, of not having noticed that they were going.
Perhaps
this is one of the effects of ecumenism, which was welcomed
a little too warmly in too many Jewish circles. Perhaps we have
not done enough to help them, to show them the right direction
in their quest for religion.
If Jewish
boys and girls turn their backs on us and go elsewhere, it means
that we have not done enough to keep them.
Since
religion interests and moves them, why have we been unable to
help them discover the beauty and richness of our own and theirs?
Despite
what their parents think, there is still time.
