Chosen People Ministries and its place wtihin the larger context of evangelical missions to the Jews

the Life and Times of Leopold Cohn conference, Dec. 4-6, 2019 We would have probably not paid much attention to the early history of the Chosen People Ministries, and to Leopold Cohen, the founder of the mission, if it were not for the energy and resourcefulness of his son, Joseph Hoffman Cohn. It was Joseph Cohn, who turned his father’s successful neighborhood mission into one of the largest and most influential global enterprises in the history of Jewish evangelisation. Understanding the different roles of Leopold and Joseph Cohn and the contexts in which they operated is important to the understanding of the early history of the mission, and the significance of the different stages in its development

The Faithful in a Time of Trial The Evangelical Understanding of the Holocaust

Abstract The Holocaust occupies an important place in Christian evangelical literature. The murder of millions of Jews in Europe during World War II has been a topic evangelicals have needed to deal with, and books relating to the Holocaust have been popular in evangelical circles since the 1970s. The central issue such books confront is how Christian believers behaved during that unprecedented time of trial. The books have come to reassure evangelical Christians that true Christian believers had nothing to do with the persecution and annihilation of Jews, and that in fact their behavior had been exemplary. Evangelical writers have further pointed to the horrors of the Holocaust, as a proof that human beings are in need of accepting Jesus as their Savior and following in his footsteps. Evangelical Holocaust literature also has come to promote the evangelical opinion on the special role of Jews in history and the need to evangelize that nation

From a Jewish Communist to a Jewish Buddhist: Allen Ginsberg as a Forerunner of a New American Jew

The article examines Allen Ginsberg’s cultural and spiritual journeys, and traces the poet’s paths as foreshadowing those of many American Jews of the last generation. Ginsberg was a unique individual, whose choices were very different other men of his era. However, it was larger developments in American society that allowed him to take steps that were virtually unthinkable during his parents’ generation and were novel and daring in his time as well. In his childhood and adolescence, Ginsberg grew up in a Jewish communist home, which combined socialist outlooks with mild Jewish traditionalism. The poet’s move from communism and his search for spirituality started already at Columbia University of the 1940s, and continued throughout his life. Identifying with many of his parents’ values and aspirations, Ginsberg wished to transcend beyond his parents’ Jewish orbit and actively sought to create an inclusive, tolerant, and permissive society where persons such as himself could live and create at ease. He chose elements from the Christian, Jewish, Native-American, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions, weaving them together into an ever-growing cultural and spiritual quilt. The poet never restricted his choices and freedoms to one all-encompassing system of faith or authority. In Ginsberg’s understanding, Buddhism was a universal, non-theistic religion that meshed well with an individualist outlook, and offered personal solace and mindfulness. He and other Jews, who followed his example, have seen no contradiction between practicing Buddhism and Jewish identity and have not sensed any guilt. Their Buddhism has been Western, American, and individualistic in its goals, meshing with other interests and affiliations. In that, Ginsberg served as a model and forerunner to a new kind of Jew, who takes pride in his heritage, but wished to live his life socially, culturally and spiritually in an open and inclusive environment, exploring and enriching herself beyond the Jewish fold. It has become an almost routine Jewish choice, reflecting the values, and aspirations of many in the Jewish community, including those who chose religious venues within the declared framework of the Jewish community

Interfaith Dialogue and the Golden Age of Christian-Jewish Relations

Since the 1960s, remarkable changes have taken place in the relationship between the Christian and Jewish communities in the West. A movement of interfaith dialogue stood at the center of the developments, serving as a catalyst that helped to bring about reconciliation and improvement in the attitudes of Christians towards Jews. Beginning in the English-speaking world at the turn of the twentieth century, the dialogue between Jews and non-Jews gained more ground in the decades between the two world wars. The movement of interfaith reconciliation advanced considerably in the years after World War II and reached a "golden age" in the late 1960s and 1970s, when an unprecedented momentum for reconciliation and dialogue between the faiths flourished in Europe, America, Israel, and other countries. Despite occasional set-backs and while involving mostly members of liberal or mainstream groups, this movement helped to improve the relationship between Christians and Jews in an unprecedented manner and on a worldwide scale

David Rudolph and Joel Willitts, Eds. Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations

No abstract is available

David B. Ruderman. Missionaries, Converts, and Rabbis: The Evangelical Alexander McCaul and Jewish-Christian Debate in the Nineteenth Century

No abstract is available