Rabbi Riskin meets with Evangelicals
By Israel Drazin - July 29, 2010
Are evangelicals interested in supporting the State of Israel because they are convinced that this support will help them convert more Jews to Christianity?
Orthodox Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Riskin of Israel, the founder of the first orthodox Jewish center in Israel for religious dialogue with Christians in 2008, and Dr. John D. Garr, board chairman and CEO of Hebraic Heritage Christian Center, assembled a total of seventeen Jewish and evangelical scholars in Atlanta, Georgia for a two day colloquium to discuss this question and other interfaith issues. The results were excellent and a follow-up session is planned. I was one of the attendees and the following are my impressions.
Evangelicals are a Protestant Christian faith that began in Great Britain in the 1730s. They have a high regard for biblical authority. The evangelical attendees at the colloquium were top level scholars, many had two doctorates, all spoke Hebrew, they quoted from the Torah using the original Hebrew, the scholar who sat next to me took notes in Hebrew rather than in English, although he is an American. The scholars emphasized that their attachment to Jews and the State of Israel is based on the Bible. They feel that support of Jews and Israel is a biblical requirement. They stressed that they have no desire to convert Jews.
They pointed to many biblical statements that demand this support, including Genesis 12:3 where God says to Abraham, and they understand that the divine words are also being made regarding Abraham’s descendant, "I will bless them that bless you, while he who curses you I will curse; and in you will all the families of the earth be blessed." The evangelicals recognized God to be telling them that the only way that they can be blessed is to support Jews and Israel. They also recognized that the Hebrew root of the word for "curse," k-l-l, means "a little" or "simply." Thus, even if a non-Jew mistreats a Jew or Israel in the smallest way, he and she will be harmed.
Dr. Garr stressed during the colloquium that each religion should respect the other. He wrote: Christians "should engage the Jewish community as co-religionists, sharers in the faith of Abraham. The two communities, to be sure, have different and differing perspectives on the outworking of God’s covenant and its requirements; however, the wide range of diversity in both communities should be mutually celebrated as God works with both in his own way of wisdom to fulfill his sovereign purposes. What both cannot fully comprehend must be left in the hands of the all-wise God whose ways are above human understanding and who, in the end, will achieve his purpose without fail."
These Bible-oriented people told us that they know that there are passages in the New Testament that have been interpreted in ways that divide Jews from Christians and which caused and still causes pain and discord. They said that they repudiate the history of persecutions that flowed from these interpretations and expressed a strong desire to encourage that these passages be understood in ways that do not divide the two religions. They said they will work to assure that these passages be read in ways that bring the two religions to close friendship.
