Our Most Recent Reports and Conversations
A Muslim Community Center? Why Not? Why Should Jews Care? What is at stake in the
fierce debate over Park51, the proposed Muslim community center near Ground Zero?
Who are the players and what do they want? In our new paper, A Muslim Community
Center? Why Not?, we analyze the arguments and counterarguments in the context of
longstanding national conversations about the meaning of religious freedom and what
sort of country we are and want to be. Click here.
Video in the Radio Talk Show Studio.
We have posted the first video in our film project, Religion, Schools and the First Amendment,
that will culminate in a full-length documentary about a religious discrimination case on Delaware's Eastern Shore.
This video is an interview and discussion with Dan Gaffney, host of the local morning talk show, by JewsOnFirst.org
Co-Directors Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak and Jane Hunter. Taped during Gaffney's show, our interview focuses on the school district's settlement of a lawsuit brought by two Jewish families
over unconstitutional sponsoring of Christian religious activities. We debate with Gaffney and his listeners about
"religious freedom" in the schools, "absolute truth" and the relevance of Jesus. To watch a preview and
get links to the full video segments, please click here.
Judge rules National Day of Prayer Unconstitutional;
we've posted case documents. A federal judge in Wisconsin ruled April 15th that the congressionally mandated National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional because it involves a
government endorsement of religion. Ruling on a lawsuit against President Barack Obama and the National Day of Prayer Task Force, U.S. District Court
Judge Barbara B. Crabb wrote that the law establishing the first Thursday in May as the National Day of Prayer "does not use prayer to further a secular
purpose; it endorses prayer for its own sake." Among the documents we have posted is the deposition of Shirley Dobson (pictured here), who heads the Task Force and
is the wife of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. Please click here.
JewsOnFirst.org is proud to announce a new educational video on a challenging topic: how some on the Christian right read "the Jews" into the New Testament.
Why this matters to Jews and to Israel becomes clear in the first few minutes of our new video The Christian Zionist's Bible: A Jewish Perspective
featuring Dr. Michael J. Cook of Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati in conversation with Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak of JewsOnFirst.org.
Have you ever wondered if the New Testament really is anti-Jewish? Have you wanted to understand the theology of Christians who believe that it is
their religious duty to be active Zionists and what that has to do with the belief in the Millennium? Do all such people believe the same things?
Of course, the answer is "no," and as the conversation with Dr. Cook progresses, terms such as "rapture," "tribulation," "dispensation," and "Armageddon war" are defined systematically and respectfully by a modern rabbi who wishes to engage his Christian neighbors in honest and caring dialogue.
To preview the video and learn more, please click here
A Conversation With Max Blumenthal about his book,
Republican Gomorrah. The Christian right has grown by attracting people who were seeking to transcend their
personal sense of sin through its authoritarian structure. Now that authoritarian religious movement controls the Republican Party,
says author Blumenthal in conversation with Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak of JewsOnFirst.org.
Blumenthal emphasizes the influence of the theocratic Christian Reconstructionist movement on the Christian right and
tells how the late Rev. Jerry Falwell and his contemporaries appropriated the abortion issue from Reconstructionist founder Francis
Schaeffer. Click here.
An Enduring Passion: Sharon Raphael and Mina Meyer, a JewsOnFirst.org video. On their 37th anniversary,
Mina Meyer and Sharon Raphael married in California. The political activism that has been a constant of their life together dates back to the
founding of the gay liberation movement. Most recently, they tell Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak of JewsOnFirst, they have been protesting
last year's passage of Proposition 8 -- and have been gratified to discover themselves protesting alongside a new
generation of LGBT activists. Click here.
Interview about Proposition 8 with Community Leader Michael Weinstein. After we spoke with three rabbis (see below)
about the damage wreaked by Prop. 8, which overturned the right of same-sex couples to marry in California,
we recorded a conversation with Michael Weinstein, founding director of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
Said Weinstein: "It doesn't matter if you like gay and lesbian couples or approve of them.
The majority in a democracy doesn't get to deprive the minority of rights." Click
here.
Our Most Important Reports and Conversations
Rebutting Obsession. This special section of JewsOnFirst centers on our major critical analysis of the controversial video
Obsession, which was delivered to millions of homes in support of the 2008 Republican presidential campaign. Obsession was widely criticized for
inflaming anti-Muslim sentiment. Our analysis
demonstrates the falsity of the video's claim of a direct connection between Hitler's Nazis and what it calls "Radical Islam."
The special section also includes profiles, sidebars and a summary presentation. Please click here.
Jewish Families announcement settlement in case against Delaware school district that sponsored religion. Following the February 2008
announcement that two Jewish families had settled part of their lawsuit against the Indian River School District, we continued our
news-breaking coverage of this story with an exclusive interview with plaintiff "Jane Doe." She told of her family's experiences struggling to make
the school district comply with the Constitution and of her leading role in formulating new policies that the settlement requires the district, which
spreads over much of southeast Delaware, to implement. The settment also provides compensation to the two families, whose children suffered religious discrimination.
Click here.
Ed Asner Tours with Play about Scopes Monkey Trial.
We talked with Ed Asner in 2007, while he was touring with The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial, a play based on transcripts of the
1925 Scopes Monkey trial. Asner, who played William Jennings Bryan in the play about the famous trial over teaching evolution,
spoke of the play's relevance for our time, when the teaching of creationism is making a comeback. He also recounts the situation
that created the Scopes trial and its aftermath, with laws throughout the Bible belt mandating the teaching of creationism.
Click here.
Southern Baptists rely on deception in effort to convert Jews.
Six million Jews and only 15 Southern Baptist Messianic Churches!
That juxtaposition by a Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) official involved in the denomination's aggressive
evangelizing of Jews prompted JewsOnFirst to ask the SBC: is its objective to empty Judaism of American Jews and make
them all Messianic Southern Baptists? We also talk with rabbis and Christian clergy about the
Southern Baptists' use of "Jewish-style" Christianity and Christian Zionism in their efforts to convert Jews.
Click here.
Christian Zionists lobby for U.S. attack on Iran.
Christian Zionists -- Christian evangelicals who avow support of Israel based on a belief in Biblical end-times scenarios --
are whipping their followers into a fervor in favor of an attack on Iran, we reported in July 2006. Religious right groups typically support aggressive
foreign policies because of their identification with the Republican Party and their interest in missionizing where the US intervenes.
But Christians United For Israel, a Christian Zionist group led by Rev. John Hagee (left), recently brought 3,500 citizen-lobbyists to Washington to advocate confrontation
with Iran based on "cherry-picked" Biblical interpretations. This report includes a sidebar,
What is Christian Zionism? by Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak. Click here.