{"id":50550,"date":"2019-03-01T16:00:33","date_gmt":"2019-03-01T14:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=50550"},"modified":"2022-09-23T15:22:03","modified_gmt":"2022-09-23T12:22:03","slug":"answering-the-missionary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/answering-the-missionary\/","title":{"rendered":"Answering The Missionary"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[478,579,384],"acf":{"old_id":"50550","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":33992,"related_cahpter":"166","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Put this passage in your wallet, just for such occasions","content":"

Living today means, for the vast preponderance of Jews, not living in a ghetto. The benefits of that exposure aren\u2019t hard to see\u2014an enlightened understanding of the human condition, an appreciation of the values of democracy, equality, and freedom, and a determination to fight bigotry whenever it rears its ugly head.<\/span><\/p>\n

The difficulty of living in such open proximity to different peoples and cultures is that it often becomes harder to maintain one\u2019s own way of life. How do we remain distinct in a culture that celebrates blending?<\/span><\/p>\n

In much of the world, one of the greatest challenges to our continued faith and faithfulness is the challenge of those Christians who feel that their own faith commitment requires them to persuade us to abandon ours. There was a time when Jews knew the Torah and the Talmud well enough that the slick quotations of zealous missionaries, always out of context and often mistranslated, were easily corrected and rebuffed. <\/span><\/p>\n

Today, however, we are hardly the people of the book.<\/span><\/p>\n

Deuteronomy 13 contains a lengthy passage that every Jew should stick in a wallet or purse and carry around for just such confrontations. To the claim that a Jew should abandon exclusive loyalty to God and to the Torah, this passage gives a direct response:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf there appears among you a prophet or a dream-diviner who gives you a sign or a portent, saying, \u201cLet us follow and worship another god\u201d \u2014 whom you have not experienced \u2014 even if the sign or portent named to you comes true, do not heed the words of that prophet…. For the Lord your God is testing you to see whether you really love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul. Follow none but the Lord your God, and revere none but God; observe God\u2019s commandments alone, and heed only God\u2019s orders; worship none but God, and hold fast to God. That prophet or dream-diviner shall be put to death; for urging disloyalty to the Lord your God \u2014 who freed you from the land of Egypt and who redeemed you from the house of bondage \u2014 to make you stray from the path that the Lord your God commanded you to follow\u201d (13:2-7).<\/span><\/p>\n

This crucial passage makes several points well-worth our attention:<\/span><\/p>\n