They’re back

It seems that the stark red-and-white billboards enigmatically blaring “jews.com” were not enough.

Now there are new ones. One has been spotted on Route 22, and there are others on Route 4. These billboards — apparently most of them are electronic — include more words. They say “What if there’s more to the story?” and proclaim that they’re paid for by “Hear Oh Israel.” (Yeah right.)

But that’s not all. Most startlingly, they include a picture of Jesus dying on a cross.

Jews.com is a slick, highly produced website fronted by Kirt Schneider, who calls himself “rabbi” although he’s quoted as saying that he has not been ordained. “I realize the Orthodox wouldn’t understand me as a rabbi,” the Forward’s Mira Fox quotes him as saying in a September 1 story about him. (Neither would Conservative or Reform Jews; this is perhaps a way to unite the Jewish streams.)

As we wrote in August, when the first signs appeared, the website to which they lead is almost cozily written; it’s meant to be unthreatening as it tells readers about what “we” always have believed, and how understandably but unfortunately wrong “we” have been. “What do we as Jews believe?” it asks, telling us gently that what “we” believe is wrong.

The right answer, it tells us, is offered by a Jew. The messiah. Jesus. But of course.

Oh, and remember that Jesus was Jewish, the website stresses. Did we say that Jesus was Jewish? it asks. And right! Jesus! A Jew! it insists.

It is folksy, disingenuous, and not a little creepy.

As we did in August, we turned to Rabbi Noam Marans of Teaneck, the American Jewish Committee’s director of interreligious affairs, for some insight.

Ironically, we reached him in Assisi, where he was at the International Meetings for Peace; he was one of many religious leaders representing the world’s great religions. He went to Assisi from Rome, where he was in meetings with Pope Leo XIV. On Sunday, he spoke on a panel exploring “Humanity in the age of technology.” (We will write more on the conference in a later issue of this paper.)

The billboard with the URL and the pictures of the crucifix and the body of Jesus presents both good news and bad news, Rabbi Marans said.

“The bad news is that it is disturbing, ghoulish, and disrespectful to both faiths, Judaism and Christianity,” he said. “The good news is that the billboards now cannot be confused with any legitimate Jewish initiative.” The purpose now is entirely overt. Convert the Jews. No one will look at that billboard and wonder what it’s advertising. No one will go to the website because the message is cryptic. The strategy seems to have changed.

But, Rabbi Marans added, “as offensive as this is, it remains a relatively unimportant concern for the Jewish people, especially now, when we have many real threats.

“As much as we respect Jesus on the cross as an important symbol for Christianity, and of course we affirm Jesus’ Jewishness, Jesus on the cross surely is not a Jewish symbol,” he said.

“Moreover, in this context, it is too reminiscent of Jewish pain associated with that symbol throughout the ages.”