Rabbi Benjamin Kluger, a member of the Anti-Mission Department at Yad L’Achim, spoke to Arutz Sheva-Israel National News about the missionary activities of Christian families in several communities in Samaria and other places, as was revealed late last week.
Rabbi Kluger started by mentioning an unknown fact, according to which there are currently no fewer than 45,000 known streams of Christianity, including some groups that developed a century ago and believe that Christianity made a mistake when it founded a new religion and Jesus is, in fact, the Messiah of the Jews. For this reason we must return to the source, connect with Judaism and consider Jesus as the Redeemer of the Jewish world. Such missionaries were recently found in various communities in Israel.
This worldview has led these missionaries to operate specifically in religious communities and themselves to be observant of Torah and mitzvot [commandments], in contrast to other groups that focused specifically on new immigrants whose connection to the world of the Torah is lenient.
Rabbi Kluger notes that this has happened on few occasions in communities of immigrants from France, which was not the case in the past. Until now, his organization's members were used to dealing with missionaries from the US, and now they need to communicate similar warnings to communities of French-speaking immigrants.
"They spoke to people who were in the process of returning to their faith, while being observant of Torah, and this was their sole goal. They were careful not to expose themselves in their place of residence, but they sowed the seeds and we have clear testimonies and information about baptisms that were held. So, if we thought this was just an ideological cell, this turns out to be a missionary cell," and they believe that the Messiah has already arrived and now is the time to believe in the New Testament.
"They work through trickery and deceit. They identify the weaker members of religious communities and try to influence them. Sometimes they work with community members, to help them reach the weaker ones," says Rabbi Kluger. "The missionaries expertise is to find the people who lack knowledge; the weak members of the community."
In one community, there was a person who used to teach Torah lessons and read Psalms with the local children. "These are respected and beloved people, and now the members are feeling tricked and betrayed. It was hard for them to believe the truth until we showed the facts and data to the rabbis and the community. This is painstaking work for the staff. We collected evidence and testimonies from those involved, both by recording and sometimes by talking to them in person, and the facts proved to be credible."
Rabbi Kluger notes that, as has happened in the past, in this case too, when the affair explodes, additional evidence is added and they accumulate more and more cases, "One missionary has already fled abroad and now they expect to discover more information and expose the entire network.”
This perception of Christians who believe that they must become Jews in order to follow the spiritual path that Jesus took, says Rabbi Kluger, is a less known around the world, but is very deceptive, because they themselves also believe that they are Jews, making deception even easier. "When they come to the rabbinate and say that they have left Christianity and do not believe in Jesus Christ, from their point of view they are telling the truth because they see Christianity as fake and Jesus as a Jew and not a Christian. This way, they also deceive the rabbis who do not have much knowledge of Christian theology, and that is why we are in contact with conversion courts in France as well."
"This comes as a shock to all these communities. These are people who trusted them, believed in them, and learned that it was all a scam and a fraud. It's not easy. I spoke to a boy who was a friend of one of the children in the missionary families and it was very difficult for him to discover that he was connected to such a family," says Rabbi Kluger. He adds that these parents raised their children in their ways and perceptions, including educating them to hide their missionary goals.
Regarding the way the affair was exposed, Rabbi Kluger says that "it all started with a mistake by one of the girls who was serving in the IDF. She became associated with missionaries in Tel Aviv, and we managed to follow her footsteps, as well as the footsteps of her family and the other families. These are children who were raised in secrecy, they were taught not to reveal anything, so it is clear that this is a real conspiracy and not confusion. Anyone who has secrets, has something to hide, and that means he knows what he is doing."
For anyone who still believes that missionary activities no longer exist, especially not in Israel, Rabbi Kluger says that "the trend has not disappeared and is even much more sophisticated today. It has also changed, because there are so many factions and sects on the fringes of Christianity, that are engaged in missionary activities. A Catholic priest will always present himself as a Catholic and will not say that he is a member of another religion. We have no problem with them as they are not engaged in missionary activities. The problem is with those who disguise themselves, lie to the public and distinguish themselves from Christians, to the extent that they even hate the rest of Christianity."
