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Theology Be Damned
Netty C. Gross
 MISSION TO THE JEWS: Eckstein distributes dolls, sewn by Ethiopian women, at an Afulah nursery school |
Devorah Ganani , in her mid-50s, with a waist-length bleached-blonde ponytail and a cell phone at her ear, is sitting in a taxi speeding toward Israel�s northern border with two checks totaling $100,000 in her pocketbook. Ganani, an ex-Tourism Ministry PR official turned businesswoman with myriad political connections, caught public attention in 1997 when she was briefly held by Egyptian police on charges of spying. Now she runs the new Jerusalem headquarters of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a Chicago-based group founded by Orthodox Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein that raises money � very large amounts of it � from U.S evangelical Christians for humanitarian projects in Israel and indigent Jews in the former Soviet Union.
The money in Ganani�s bag is earmarked for two projects: $25,000 will be presented to local officials to set up a storefront agency in Moshav Goren where the needy will be able to purchase clothing and basics at nominal cost. Another check, for $75,000, will provide the annual budget for a free food distribution center in Karmiel.
Ganani is restless. After Israel�s Lebanon pullout last spring, Eckstein announced that the Fellowship would raise$1 million to aid northern border communities. The money is pouring in and now Ganani has to find worthy causes; she favors grass-roots projects where her organization�s participation will be noticeable. Today�s recipients answered an ad in local newspapers. One firm condition: Beneficiaries had to agree to put up plaques detailing Fellowship contributions. As the taxi speeds through the hills, Ganani offers two insights into the frustrations of giving charity. �It�s hard work, and few people know how to say thank you.�
Some of this has to do with the source of the money. The Fellowship was established in 1983 by Eckstein, a Yeshiva University grad who spent six years working for the Anti-Defamation League in Jewish-Christian dialogue. At the ADL, he�d focused on evangelicals, the fastest-growing sector of Christianity � and the one with the most uneasy relations with Jews. Whereas other Christian groups have softened or dropped the religious imperative to convert Jews, evangelicals haven�t. For them, proselytizing is a central tenet of faith. And large numbers subscribe to the theology known as premillennialism, eagerly looking forward to an End of Days scenario in which Jews gather in Israel, build the Third Temple � and then either convert to Christianity or die.
All this did not deter Eckstein. After setting up the Fellowship, he redoubled his efforts to deepen ties to evangelicals. He believed he�d devised a way for �Christians to fulfill their mandate in a way that�s okay with us Jews,� he told The Jerusalem Report while on a recent visit to Israel. He wouldn�t work with groups that openly targeted Jews for proselytizing, but did �accept and affirm� the right of evangelicals to witness. But Eckstein added a split-hair caveat: In his visit to churches, he would tell evangelicals: �Your job is to share the gospel of Jesus with the world. But only the Holy Spirit can work on the individual. And you can�t force the Holy Spirit.��
Into the early 90s, the Fellowship was a small operation with a Washington, D.C.-based �Center for Jewish and Christian Values� � Sen. Joseph Lieberman served on its board � and a modest income for its interfaith activities. In 1992, annual donations hovered at the half-million-dollar mark.
Since then, the Fellowship has morphed into a high-rolling philanthropic organization. To date, Eckstein says, some 200,000 evangelical supporters have contributed over $30 million to fund his �On Wings of Eagles� project, which assists immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and millions more for poor Jews worldwide. Each day, he says, 1,500 envelopes containing checks and cash pour into his Chicago office. The surge in contributions is the result of Eckstein�s direct appeals on televangelist Pat Robertson�s Christian Broadcasting Network, where Eckstein hosts his own show. During the infomercials, Eckstein, at maximum emotional pitch, describes the acute hardships of Jewish immigrants.
So busy is Eckstein raising money (�that�s how you become influential in the Jewish world�) that, in Chicago, an all-Christian staff of 30 tackles the mailbags. And Eckstein says the Fellowship is going global: Early next year he intends to open a fundraising office in El Salvador, where the per capita GDP is $3,100 and 48 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Though he acknowledges that there may be a �moral problem� in taking money from needy evangelicals for Jews living in Israel, a country with a developed welfare system, high-tech billionaires and a per capita GDP of over $17,000, Eckstein brushes it off. �It�s an issue,� is all he�ll say.
IN THE PAST, JEWISH ORGANIZAtions were nervous about openly taking Fellowship money. The image-conscious Eckstein, who travels around Israel in a rented van with a private film crew, charges that until recently, the United Jewish Communities, and its constituent bodies, the Jewish Federations and the United Jewish Appeal, never �even said thank you� for the millions of dollars the Fellowship gave them. He received similar treatment from the Jewish Agency. Eckstein recalls that in 1997, when he presented then-Agency chair Avraham Burg with a check for $6 million, Burg took the money but declined to be in the photo-op.
Now Eckstein is demanding �acceptance and acknowledgment� from the Jewish world. This year he started playing hardball, bypassing the UJC and the Jewish Agency, and donating money to Israel instead via Keren Hayesod, an Agency affiliate that raises money for Israel everywhere but in the U.S., and the American Joint Distribution Committee. Eckstein was honored by the JDC with an award recognizing the Fellowship�s �unflagging support� in establishing �Isaiah 58,� which contributes money to JDC food programs in the ex-Soviet Union. He was also asked to join the JDC board. In November, he delivered his maiden address at the GA, where he received an award from the UJC.
Israelis are also on the bandwagon. In December, Yossi Kuchik, director general of the Prime Minister�s Office, and Absorption Minister Yuli Tamir presided over a Fellowship-orchestrated giveaway of blankets, heaters and flashlights at the Gilo community center in Jerusalem, which cost the group $150,000. The Jewish Agency was furious that it hadn�t been asked to host the event. (A spokesman for the Agency, who declines to comment on the theology of Eckstein�s evangelical partners, defends working with the rabbi. �The Agency supports any organization that chose goodwill toward fulfilling the Agency�s aims,� he says.)
The ultra-Orthodox, normally phobic about missionary-linked Christians, have also embraced Eckstein. Veteran Agudat Yisrael leader Menachem Porush is a member of the Fellowship�s board. Another leading figure who is close to Eckstein, and accepts his funds, is Rabbi David Grossman, who runs Migdal Or, a large yeshivah and rehabilitation school in Migdal Haemek. Fellowship funds also support Bat Zion, a girl�s boarding school in Jerusalem run by the non-Zionist Karlin-Stolin hasidic sect. Asked whether he thought Christians should be contributing to the education of Jewish girls, director Avraham Shorr told The Report that he didn�t �much know or care� about evangelical theology. �Doesn�t part of Israel�s budget come from Christian U.S. taxpayers?� he asked.
BUT QUESTIONS ABOUT ECKstein and his agenda remain. ADL executive director Abraham Foxman is horrified that Jews are soliciting Christians to support Jews and Jewish causes. �Eckstein is selling the dignity of the Jewish people and the state of Israel by pandering to Christians for money,� he insists. �We have a modern state with extensive social services. And we�re not a poor people. What he�s doing is perverse. And for the Jewish and Israeli leadership to accept his money is also perverse.� Foxman says he walked out of the GA assembly when Eckstein received his award.
Mark Powers, director of Jews for Judaism, which combats Christian missionaries, raises another problem. Despite Eckstein�s assertions that he doesn�t work with missionaries, Powers claims that some Fellowship funds are being used to finance missionary activities. And Powers questions the morality of �cynically manipulating evangelical theology, which essentially calls for the destruction of the Jews� to raise money for Israel and Jews abroad.
Powers played a taped phone conversation for The Report in which a woman identifying herself as �Nancy,� a potential donor, wanted to know whether a donation to aid poor Russian Jews emigrating to Israel would be used to help them �know the Lord.� Fellowship director Bill Van Weingarten tells Nancy that though he himself is an evangelical, the Fellowship itself cannot proselytize in Israel. When pressed, he says the Fellowship has �partnered� in the past with evangelical groups operating in Israel �for those purposes.� Weingarten stresses the importance of Christians performing a good deed for Jews as a first step, �before anything else can happen.�
Foxman agrees that Eckstein has �worked closely� with missionary groups, adding that the relationship has �given them credibility.� Eckstein has persistently denied the charges, noting that last year he broke off relations with the Southern Baptist Convention after it announced its plans to target Jews for conversion in a six-city campaign. Mainstream Jewish groups, however, had criticized the Convention much earlier.
The religious imperative to convert Jews is a powerful part of Christian tradition, says Brenda Brasher, professor of religion at Mount Union College in Ohio and an expert on the evangelicals. And while in recent years, some branches of Christianity appear to be grappling with ways to legitimate Judaism, evangelical dogma precludes this. �The evangelical way of embracing Jews is basically to say they must convert or die,� says Brasher. �For an evangelical, a Jew�s �coming to Christ� is his way of including him.�
The charges outrage Eckstein. He insists that �the notion that evangelicals are extending themselves this way because it�s part of some sinister theology is the biggest lie that Jews believe today. Why can�t we simply accept the fact that these people recognize that God had done a wondrous thing with the birth of Israel and the ingathering of the exiles and allow them to enjoy the fulfillment of prophecy? I have people sending me 10 percent of their social security checks; car washers in Florida writing to me to help the elderly Jews in Kiev buy fuel; a 53-year-old man so touched by my newsletter that he sent me his entire life savings � $11,000 � which we returned.�
ECKSTEIN IS A TALL, ATHLETIC man, whose style reflects both smooth, modulated Midwestern charm and heimish back-slapping. Reaction to Eckstein the man is as mixed as it is to his mission. To Orthodox Union official Nathan Diament, who heads the group�s public policy office in Washington, Eckstein is a �nice guy who�s done good and raised a lot of money for Israel.� Others, however, describe him as driven and power-hungry. �He�s a megalomaniac,� says a Jewish official who�s worked closely with Eckstein in the past and spoke on condition of anonymity. �He�ll come to Israel on some mission to which a dozen leaders are invited, hire photographers and press people and turn it into �his party.��
Eckstein�s position among the Orthodox was challenged as far back as 1992, when members of his Chicago daf yomi class (a Talmud study group) asked him to leave on the grounds that he�d violated the halakhic prohibition against teaching Torah to non-Jews. In his defense, Eckstein says today, �I don�t teach, I just correct wrong impressions.� The issue became a cause c�l�bre in Orthodox circles; a rabbinic court in Brooklyn, representing four leading authorities, heard the case and delivered a split 2-2 decision. Eckstein quit the study group. �It was a very painful period in my life,� he recalls today. �There�s no question that I�ve paid a big price personally for my work. My wife Bonnie doesn�t even agree with me half the time.�
Still, these days, Eckstein seems to be high in the saddle. He seems to have �arrived� both in Christian and Jewish establishment circles. He�s a regular at Christian Coalition events; his book, �What You Should Know About Jews and Judaism,� published by Word Books, a Christian publishing house, is selling well. Despite the chorus of critics, the establishment is, he says affirmingly, beginning to �say thank you.� And he suggests that given the new administration�s popularity with the Christian Right, the evangelicals� rabbi could suddenly become a hot political property.
I bumped into Eckstein, who recently bought an apartment in Jerusalem, on a Friday afternoon as his film crew pulled up outside a felafel stand. He�d just flown in from Odessa, where he filmed hungry Russian Jews, and earlier in the day had been at the Gilo giveaway, another rich photo-op that will be aired on the Christian Broadcasting Network. Apparently one of Eckstein�s Christian companions had a religious outburst and began praising Jesus in Gilo. Cringing, Eckstein asked if I�d spoken to the man. I said I hadn�t. �Thank God,� he muttered, relieved.
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