Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, who leads the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, and who has written recently about the Presbyterian Church’s decision to divest from companies doing business with Israel, has a letter in The Jewish Week on this issue:
If our true friends are those who help us live another day and who declare am yisrael chai, then we Jews should be aggressively building bridges of cooperation with Evangelicals — something the Jewish community even today is barely doing.
I wish success to my colleagues from the ADL, American Jewish Committee et al. . . . as they pursue dialogue with the very mainline Protestant groups whose attacks threaten Israel’s survival.
I only wish that Jewish leadership would invest even half as much time, energy and resources cultivating relationships with our Evangelical friends.
Rabbi Eckstein’s March 1 article on "The Growing Church Calls for Divestment from Israel" is a good summary of the issues:
Evangelicals support Israel for a variety of reasons — historical, humanitarian, political and, first and foremost, biblical. The most commonly cited reason for supporting Israel is that they are acting in obedience to God’s promise to Abraham in the 12th chapter of the book of Genesis: "I will bless those that bless you."
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Yossi Klein Halevi, a Jewish writer who for years has encouraged Jews to view Christianity more positively, rightly referred to the flowering of Jewish-Christian dialogue in the last century as one of "the great movements of reconciliation of our time." It is not only regrettable, but ultimately tragic, that this movement toward mutual understanding has been aborted in many mainline denominations.
In contrast, we can be grateful that cooperation and greater understanding between Jews and bible-believing evangelical Christians is taking on new life.
The article, which includes links to related articles by Elliott Abrams, Dennis Prager and John Leo, is worth reading in its entirety.