A new Christian Russian-language TV network will be inaugurated next month, in the presence of Israel Our Home party leaders. The heads of the station say they hope to spread their message to over a million new-immigrant homes in Israel.
The inaugural event will take place at the Davidson Center, near the Western Wall plaza. Some 3,000 Christian pilgrims will be on hand for the occasion.
Rabbi Shalom Dov Lifshitz, of the Yad L’Achim anti-assimilation and anti-missionary organization, warns of the grave ramifications of the new TV station: “Not only is the very operation of such a TV station in Israel scandalous in and of itself, but it also contains many programs with Christian content aimed at children. Our legal arm is investigating whether this constitutes a violation of the law forbidding attempts to convert minors to a different religion.”
The name of the new station, Rodnoy, is a Russian word roughly parallel to the word “homeland.” Rodnoy is owned mostly by TBN, one of the largest missionary networks in Russia. With Christian programming in the Russian language, the fear is that Russian Jews, with little or no knowledge of their Jewish heritage following decades of Soviet religious oppression, will easily be convinced to believe in Jesus and adopt a Christian lifestyle.
“Is it not enough that the State of Israel allowed so many Russian non-Jews to immigrate during the huge wave of Aliyah?” asks Rabbi Lifshitz. “Do we also have to allow the Jews among them to become Christians?”
A Yad L’Achim official told IsraelNationalNews that efforts are being made among Knesset Members to alleviate this danger, but that no progress can yet be reported.