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Fort Wayne resident Paul Schorey trained to be a teacher at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. But, he says, he got quite an education when he spent five weeks in New York in 1998 as a street missionary for Jews for Jesus.
Some people, he recalls, were downright hostile. But the 30-year-old remains firm in the stance he shares with the group – that a person can be both Jewish and a Christian believer.
“As I started learning more about the Bible, the New Testament, I had the desire to connect more to my Jewish side,” he says. “A lot of people say they feel more Jewish when they become Christian.”
It’s a paradoxical spiritual position that will be explained when Jhan Moskowitz, the North American director of the San Francisco-based Jews for Jesus, speaks at 9 and 10:30 a.m. July 12 during services at Lakewood Park Baptist Church in Auburn.
Moskowitz says he views the group’s witnessing about Jesus to Jews as a way for them to extend their religion – not reject it.
“If you believe Jesus is the Messiah and gives eternal life and peace and a sense of purpose, don’t you want Jews to have that?” he says.
Moskowitz says he is coming to the Fort Wayne area not necessarily to engage the Jewish population, which is relatively small, estimated by the Fort Wayne Jewish Federation as about 450 families.
“The bulk of my ministry is dedicated to my Jewish people, but part is educating and encouraging the Christian to pray for and work for Jews coming to know Jesus, and to find out more about what God is doing among his ancient people,” he says.
Clare Jewell, Lakewood’s senior pastor, sees the visit as bolstering his congregants’ appreciation for Judaism and their own Christianity.
“The main thing from my point of view is it helps people see the connection between the Old Testament and the New Testament – how what Christ does in the New Testament really builds on and fulfills what Jews did in the Old Testament,” he says.
He adds: “I think it gives us a better understanding of the Jewish faith and some of their holidays. … It’s not so much (to point out) what’s lacking in the Jewish religion; it’s to help us understand ours more.”
Many in the Jewish community, however, don’t see things that way.
“This (Jews for Jesus) is not a Jewish denomination … but is a Christian group. They actively missionize Jews, with no respect to what Judaism is as its own religion,” wrote Rabbi Mitchell Kornspan of B’nai Jacob, Fort Wayne’s conservative synagogue, in an e-mail detailing his reaction to Jews for Jesus.
“This is quite unlike mainstream denominations of Christianity which have a healthy respect for Judaism and the Jews’ role as G-d’s chosen people. Thus, Jews for Jesus is really a misnomer and misleads people,” wrote Kornspan, choosing to follow a Jewish practice of not writing or saying the name of God.
Rabbi Marla Joy Subeck Spanjer of Achduth Vesholom, Fort Wayne’s Reform movement synagogue, was reportedly on vacation and unavailable for comment.
Doris Fogel, executive director of the Fort Wayne Jewish Federation, declined to comment.
An article at www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org lays out theological and other arguments used by those critical of the group’s message and methods, including that the group requests a form of anti-Semitism by leading Jewish people to think their religion is inferior to Christianity or not enough to please God.
The article points out that the founder of Jews for Jesus, Martin Rosen, a Baptist pastor with a Jewish background, began the group after leaving a conservative evangelical Christian effort that targeted Jews, the American Board of Missions to the Jews. Rosen, according to the article, got the idea of promoting Jesus to Jewish people as the fulfillment of Jewish Messianic prophecy instead of as the “Son of God” to spur conversions.
Some Christian groups who see conversion of the Jews and the restoration of Israel as necessary for the second coming of Jesus to occur welcomed the effort. But, the article says, Jews for Jesus’ belief in a triune God of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, prayer in the name of Jesus and his messianic second coming are Christian beliefs and not supported by Jewish Scripture.
The article also says Jewish groups, including Jews for Judaism and Outreach Judaism, have been formed to counter the evangelical efforts of Jews for Jesus and similar groups.
Looking back, Schorey says, he can understand why some might have objected to his activities. New York has at least 1.4 million Jews, the second-largest Jewish population of all the cities in the world, according to a study by the UJA-Federation of New York.
“I think a big issue with Judaism is intermarriages and the feeling that (Jews) are losing their identity and heritage,” says Schorey, himself a product of a Jewish mother and a non-practicing Protestant Christian father who divorced when he was a child.
He adds that some Jewish people still bear emotional scars about Christians’ behavior during the Holocaust.
“It was eye-opening for me as a Midwestern-type guy,” he says of his leafletting stint. “I didn’t (fore)see as many people being offended by it. Every now and then, someone would spit on you or punch you in the back.”
Moskowitz notes much of the financing of Jews for Jesus comes from conservative evangelical Christians. He says the group does not start congregations – although there are Messianic Jewish congregations that have similar beliefs. Jews for Jesus is also not a membership organization, he says.
People who say they are Jewish believers come out of diverse backgrounds and vary widely in how they practice, depending on the branch of Judaism from which they came and how observant they or their families were, Moskowitz says.
Schorey now attends Central Christian Church in Fort Wayne with his wife, Tamber, who is Christian. He and his mother attended synagogue, he says, but he never had a bar mitzvah, the ceremony marking a 13-year-old boy’s full formal entrance into a Jewish congregation, and was not particularly active.
He says he first considered Christianity as a teenager when he got in trouble and was assigned community service at Powerhouse Youth Center in New Haven, which was co-sponsored by his current church.
Schorey sought out Jews for Jesus, he says, because he did not know anyone else who became Christian from a Jewish background. That led to his studying at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and his missionary stint. He attended a Messianic congregation when he lived in the Chicago area. He has studied Hebrew for the past three years but has not done street outreach for some time.
Today, he says, the hardest thing is finding others in Fort Wayne who believe as he does. “There’s no Messianic congregations, and around here it’s hard enough to find Jewish people, let alone Jewish people who become Christians,” Schorey says with a laugh.
But his hope remains that there will be more, and perhaps some can come through evangelism.
“I think, as a believer, you read the Great Commission in Matthew 25 and you realize you can’t have a complete faith unless you go out and make disciples,” he says. “It’s not just Jews you have to reach, it’s everyone.”
