Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg BA U Chicago-Valedictory orator Ordained JTS- Outstanding Student 1974 USA High School National Debate Champion National Merit scholar www.esynagogue.org www.rabbireflects.blogspot.com email rabbi@ehnt.org

Video Transcription

Shalom, the Jews need to be perfected. Ann Coulter who is a very prominent conservative thinker and writer and radio and TV personality recently on a talk show, mentioned that the Jews needed to be perfected. And this created a storm of outrage among Jews, so what does this really mean? First of all, what does perfection mean? The Jews need to accept Jesus she says and that is based on a New Testament quote from their book of Hebrews which talks about how … the text reads, “And having been perfected once they accept Jesus.” Now, to understand this more in depth, I suggest to you to watch a couple of other videos of mine—one is Jesus and the Jews, and then a three part series Jews, Not for Jesus—I, II and III. The reason is because there, I demonstrated why she is completely wrong. The Jews are perfectly fine without Jesus. We do not believe in Jesus as a Messiah or God. We think that that is simply an incorrect belief. People who want to believe that, that is just fine. You might also want to watch my video o the Seven Laws of Noah where I showed that basic Jewish belief is that non-Jews, as long as they are behaving themselves decently, can achieve salvation too. There are many arguments lodged here for example the Anti-Defamation League immediately reacted by saying, that what she said was a throwback to the centuries old teaching of contemporary Jews and Judaism. And many of the mainstream denominations have law repudiated this notion of the Jews needed to be perfected. Basically, saying that Judaism is a valid path to God on their way, too. Some people say, if you are in Chicago and you want to go downtown, you can either go on the expressway or you can take the other drive—there is a lot paths. So, mainstream Christianity is saying “Judaism is valid.” However, amongst many Christians, they believe the only path is through Jesus. It is usually not said as directly that she said it but certainly that is a deeply held belief. Now, do Jews believe that at the end of time everyone will recognize that Judaism is correct? Well, there are a lot of texts that suggest that, that the end Zechariah and the End of Days, we used this at the end of Aleinu prayer, every prayer service we have—“bayom hahu yihiyeh Adonai echad, u'shemo echad,” at the end of time everyone will recognize without knowing—is the true and one God. And one of these suggests that at the end of time all people will recognize the truth of Judaism. Okay but in the meantime, we do not pray for the conversion of other people if you want to convert to Judaism, great. We are happy to help you. We have a long-distance conversion program, we convert people here. Rabbis are around the country to convert people. There may be with some resistance among the Orthodox but in general correct conversion is recognized but you do not need to. We do not go out and say “You should be Jewish,” the way that some Evangelical Christians do. It is an interesting argument made too, and in fact, the enemies of the Jews do not care if we convert. They want to kill us. So the fact that these Evangelicals want us to convert, it is a good sign. They liked us. They loved us. They want us to be what they are. It seems a funny argument but it is kind of true. Because of what she said and because of what the views of the Evangelicals that they all want to do this, which is not true, they all do not want to do this. They do not want all to convert us, although many do. Many Jews shy away from the evangelicals. The problem now is that the best friends of the state of Israel and the best friends of the Jews in many ways are these conservative Christians. In fact, John Heigi and people liked him had started on huge groups to support Israel and among the liberal denominations that do not say things like this—they try to boycott Israel and all kinds of nefarious activities supporting the people that throw bombs at Israel all the time, some of them, not all of course And so, you have to be careful in analyzing what she said. It does not bother me if she thinks that I should be Christian, I think, she should be Jewish. She does not need to be but if she wants to be, it is a great religion. In fact, I think the original truth but I am okay with her saying what she said. I know that is what she believes. It does not bother me. I am strongly Jewish as I can be and I am never going to think about another religion because I believed that this is for me the best thing and I think the world it would be if everybody was Jewish. However, I support her support for the state of Israel and the Jewish people and so I am not as hysterical about it but I do wished that they would rethink this view, I doubt they will not, because it does lead the ultimately to Anti-Semitism. Jews had been killed for thousands of years because of that idea that we are not good enough the way we are. And that is really the nuts and bolts of this thing. That idea has been repudiated by mainstream Christian groups just enlarge this up to because they recognize ultimately it leads to the holocaust. They have to be very careful about saying that Jews need to be different because it is that difference that has lead to horrible Anti-Semitism. Thank you.