Former President George W. Bush will speak next week at a fundraiser for a Dallas-based religious group that aims to persuade Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah.
The Messianic Jewish Bible Institute’s annual banquet is Thursday at the Irving Convention Center. Ticket packages for the event, first reported by Mother Jones, range from $100 to $100,000.
A Bush spokesman confirmed that the former president is speaking at the event but declined to comment further, even to say whether Bush will be paid.
A person close to Bush noted that the former president speaks each year to many groups — secular and religious, Christian and non-Christian. Last month, Bush addressed the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
“So he can talk to all these other groups, but not this one?” the person said.
The idea of converting Jews to Jesus, though hardly new, is a contentious subject. Judaism does not regard Jesus as divine.
While top North Texas Jewish leaders remained mum on Friday, some others across the country voiced their ire at Bush’s plans.
“This is infuriating,” Rabbi David Wolpe of Los Angeles’ Sinai Temple said in a Twitter message.
Jonathan S. Tobin, writing for the website of Commentary, an opinion journal founded by the American Jewish Committee, said Bush’s decision to speak to the messianic group was “troubling.” He said, however, that Bush, like many evangelical Christians, has been a strong and reliable supporter of Israel.
“While the former president has done his best to avoid entangling himself in political controversies of any kind since he left the White House,” Tobin wrote, “by involving himself with this organization he has stepped into one with both feet.
“As for Bush, whatever you may think of his politics, he is no enemy of the Jews, not while he was president and not today. His record on Israel, and indeed his friendship for the American Jewish community, is a matter of record.”
Over the years, Bush has talked extensively about the role his Christian faith has played in his life. Among the items displayed at the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum is a Bible given to him in the 1980s by longtime friend Don Evans.
In his paid speeches, Bush often reflects on his personal experiences, sometimes talking about his faith and about freedom of religious expression. That doesn’t mean Bush endorses the tenets of groups he appears before, said the person close to him.
But the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute isn’t quite the same as, say, the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. (The renowned Houston cancer hospital got a big boost last month when Bush spoke at a fundraiser in Dallas.)
The Bible Institute says part of its mission is to help “educate Christians in their role to provoke the Jewish people to jealousy and thus save some of them.” Its keynote speaker last year was the polarizing media personality Glenn Beck.
Simply seeking Jewish converts does not make this group unusual. But so-called Messianic Jews believe that they can believe in Jesus as their messiah and still be considered Jewish. That idea is rejected by all other groups that identify themselves as Jewish.
And the use by Messianics of symbols and rituals of Jewish tradition infuriates many Jews who see that as deceptive marketing. That’s why some Jewish leaders so oppose what they see as the former president’s granting the group credibility.
The flurry of attention over Bush’s speaking engagement appears to have had an impact. By Friday afternoon, the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute had removed all references to Bush from its website — there is only a vague mention of the “high profile level” of the banquet’s featured speaker.
A spokeswoman for the institute did not return a call seeking comment.
Staff writer Jeffrey Weiss contributed to this report.
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