Our Most Recent Reports and Conversations
There's Still Christianity in the Public Schools?
Jewish students down South face aggressive proselytizing by their evangelical classmates
and scant protection from their schools, reports Jan Jaben-Eilon.
Some Jewish youth who lack a strong Jewish foundation
have fallen prey to efforts to convert them.
Please click here.
Messianic Jewish Groups Claim Rapid Growth.
Most American Jewish organizations shun these quasi-Christians, even as they embrace Christian Zionists, such as Pastor John Hagee's Christians United for Israel.
Meanwhile, as we report, the messianic groups are increasingly finding acceptance in Israel, where the lines are blurring between them and Christian
Zionist groups.
Please click here.
Victory in Delaware school district religion case.
The Supreme Court's refusal January 19th to hear a case about religion in public schools that JewsOnFirst
has followed for years was a resounding victory for the Jewish "Doe" family in Delaware who brought the case, and
for countless families across the country.
Please click here.
Kentucky's evangelizing Christian theme park.
Avi Milgrom gives us a detailed look at the Ark Encounter, a planned $170 million, 800-acre creationism theme park,
subsidized by state and local government funds. The nearby Creation Museum,
a partner in the Ark Encounter project, hires only Christians.
Please click here.
Christian Zionist leader Hagee and rabbi speak at Colorado event.
Rev. John Hagee and Orthodox Rabbi Selwyn Franklin spoke at a Colorado church's Night to Honor Israel on October 16th. A share of the collection plate was
destined for the Ariel settlement on the West Bank. Our report is from a first-time attendee.
Please click here.
The Response, Our Exclusive Report. Blatant and repeated calls for Jews to accept Jesus punctuated Texas
Governor Rick Perry’s August 6th Response revival meeting.
There were also calls to redeem the United States for Jesus. Our eyewitness report has details.
Please click
here.
Inside Report from CUFI's 2011 Conference. As in past years, JewsOnFirst
is posting a report from inside the Washington DC conference of Christians United
for Israel, the leading Christian Zionist organization. Big eyebrow-lifters this year were Glenn Beck's keynote speech and a CUFI board member's wife
saying that dividing Jerusalem will delay the return of Jesus.
Please click
here.
Doomsday Q & A. When the "Rapture" or "Doomsday" predicted for May 21st by fundamentalist preacher
Harold Camping became national headline news, we thought it would be useful to explore
the underlying dynamics of such events. We turned to John Hubers, a professor of
Religion at Northwestern College in Orange, Iowa, who observed that "doomsday soothsayers"
offer structure and certainty to followers whose ranks swell in times of uncertainty.
Please click here.
Deconstructing the Bush Administration's Faith-based Initiatives. In an interview with JewsOnFirst.org
that will be of particular interest to congregations, Prof. Robert Wineburg, author of Faith-based
Inefficiency: The Follies of Bush's Initiatives, discusses
how Bush officials re-directed social welfare funds from mainline religious agencies to local religious congregations
and inexperienced faith-based agencies. Many of the new recipients were unconcerned about religious discrimination
and ill-equipped to respond to the problems people faced. Please click here.
Video in the Radio Talk Show Studio.
We have posted the first video in our film project, Up North in the Bible Belt,
that will culminate in a full-length documentary about a religious discrimination
case on Delaware's Eastern Shore. This video is an interview and discussion with
Dan Gaffney, host of the local morning talk show, by JewsOnFirst.org Co-Directors
Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak and Jane Hunter. Taped during Gaffney's show, our interview
focuses on the school district's settlement of a lawsuit brought by two Jewish families
over unconstitutional sponsoring of Christian religious activities. We debate with
Gaffney and his listeners about "religious freedom" in the schools, "absolute truth"
and the relevance of Jesus. To watch a preview and get links to the full video segments,
please click here.
Our Most Important Reports and Conversations
Rebutting Obsession. This special section of JewsOnFirst centers on
our major critical analysis of the controversial video Obsession, which was
delivered to millions of homes in support of the 2008 Republican presidential campaign.
Obsession was widely criticized for inflaming anti-Muslim sentiment. Our
analysis demonstrates the falsity of the video's claim of a direct connection between
Hitler's Nazis and what it calls "Radical Islam." The special section also includes
profiles, sidebars and a summary presentation. Please click here.
Jewish Families announcement settlement in case against Delaware school district
that sponsored religion. Following the February 2008 announcement that two
Jewish families had settled part of their lawsuit against the Indian River School
District, we continued our news-breaking coverage of this story with an exclusive
interview with plaintiff "Jane Doe." She told of her family's experiences struggling
to make the school district comply with the Constitution and of her leading role
in formulating new policies that the settlement requires the district, which spreads
over much of southeast Delaware, to implement. The settment also provides compensation
to the two families, whose children suffered religious discrimination. Click here.
An Enduring Passion: Sharon Raphael and Mina Meyer, a JewsOnFirst.org video.
On their 37th anniversary, Mina Meyer and Sharon Raphael married in California.
The political activism that has been a constant of their life together dates back
to the founding of the gay liberation movement. Most recently, they tell Rabbi Haim
Dov Beliak of JewsOnFirst, they have been protesting last year's passage
of Proposition 8 -- and have been gratified to discover themselves protesting alongside
a new generation of LGBT activists. Click here.
Ed Asner Tours with Play about Scopes Monkey Trial.
We talked with Ed Asner in 2007, while he was touring with The Great Tennessee Monkey
Trial, a play based on transcripts of the 1925 Scopes Monkey trial. Asner,
who played William Jennings Bryan in the play about the famous trial over teaching
evolution, spoke of the play's relevance for our time, when the teaching of creationism
is making a comeback. He also recounts the situation that created the Scopes trial
and its aftermath, with laws throughout the Bible belt mandating the teaching of
creationism. Click here.
Southern Baptists rely on deception in effort to convert
Jews. Six million Jews and only 15 Southern Baptist Messianic Churches!
That juxtaposition by a Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) official involved in the
denomination's aggressive evangelizing of Jews prompted JewsOnFirst to ask
the SBC: is its objective to empty Judaism of American Jews and make them all Messianic
Southern Baptists? We also talk with rabbis and Christian clergy about the Southern
Baptists' use of "Jewish-style" Christianity and Christian Zionism in their efforts
to convert Jews. Click here.
A Muslim Community Center? Why Not? Why Should Jews Care? What is at stake
in the fierce debate over Park51, the proposed Muslim community center near Ground
Zero? Who are the players and what do they want? In our new paper, A Muslim Community
Center? Why Not?, we analyze the arguments and counterarguments in the context
of longstanding national conversations about the meaning of religious freedom and
what sort of country we are and want to be. Click here.
Christian Zionists lobby for U.S. attack on Iran. Christian Zionists -- Christian
evangelicals who avow support of Israel based on a belief in Biblical end-times
scenarios -- are whipping their followers into a fervor in favor of an attack on
Iran, we reported in July 2006. Religious right groups typically support aggressive
foreign policies because of their identification with the Republican Party and their
interest in missionizing where the US intervenes. But Christians United For Israel,
a Christian Zionist group led by Rev. John Hagee (left), recently brought 3,500
citizen-lobbyists to Washington to advocate confrontation with Iran based on "cherry-picked"
Biblical interpretations. This report includes a sidebar, What is Christian Zionism?
by Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak. Click here.