MESSIANIC UPROAR; RABBIS OPPOSE TEMPLE.

Byline: Deborah Sullivan Daily News Staff Writer

The signature kippah, or Jewish head covering, the long beard, the bookish demeanor, the glow of pride over his new temple - there's no mistaking the role of Rabbi Murray Silberling.

``It will be very nice and, Lord willing, it will be done by Oct. 1 for Rosh Hashana,'' said Silberling, whose temple in Agoura Hills is due to open for the coming Jewish high holidays.

But Silberling is a rabbi with a difference. He leads the Beth Emunah Messianic Synagogue, in which Jesus, or ``Yeshua,'' is worshiped as the Messiah.

Since such beliefs are not recognized as part of Judaism, local rabbis are upset by Silberling's arrival and see him as an evangelical Christian concealed behind the cloak of Judaism.

``What this man is doing is, he's putting on a kippah and a prayer shawl, mumbling some Hebrew and practicing Christianity,'' said Rabbi Shimon Paskow of Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks.

``You can put a kippah and a prayer shawl on a rabbit and it doesn't make it a Jew,'' he said. ``He's either naive, a fool, or a fraud - and he has his choices.''

Silberling's arrival has raised a storm of opposition from synagogues of the Conejo Valley, uniting Jewish denominations that have had their own theological quarrels during calmer times.

Four rabbis, representing Orthodox, Reform and Conservative synagogues, signed an open letter to the Daily News, airing their concerns about the Messianic temple.

``While they may be well-intentioned, leaders of Beth Emunah Messianic Synagogue create such confusion when they mix the rituals of our religion with the belief system of another,'' wrote Paskow, Rabbi Moshe Bryski of Chabad of the Conejo in Agoura Hills, Rabbi Alan Greenbaum of Temple Adat Elohim in Thousand Oaks, and Rabbi Gary Johnson of Temple Beth Haverim in Agoura Hills.

The rabbis also invited Jews for Judaism, a group targeting cults and missionary movements, to lecture on the Messianics. The group's director, Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz, spoke this month at Temple Beth Haverim and will return for a four-week workshop in November and December at Chabad of the Conejo.

``The entire organized Jewish community has all jointly agreed that this movement does not represent itself accurately to say it's Jewish,'' Kravitz said.

``It's amazing that Reform, Conservative and Orthodox - which all have very different viewpoints on a lot of issues - on this issue they are all unanimous,'' he said. ``That's a pretty powerful statement.''

Silberling maintains that despite its worship of Jesus, his Beth Emunah Messianic Synagogue is as Jewish as any other.

His members live a biblical kosher lifestyle, study the Torah and celebrate Passover and Rosh Hashana - not the Christian holidays of Christmas and Easter, Silberling said.

Delighted about moving his congregation from its temporary home in Canoga Park to a permanent site in Agoura, Silberling is dismayed by the controversy greeting his arrival.

``We're not asking them to let us into the club and play tennis,'' he said. ``We're just asking them to respect us as other Jewish people, and respect our lives and our lifestyle.''

Search led to Christ

A San Fernando Valley native, Silberling, 49, was raised by Conservative Jewish parents, with a strong influence from his Orthodox grandfather.

He attended the University of California, Irvine, then served as a Navy radar operator in the Vietnam War.

In his soul-searching 20s, he encountered an old college friend, a young woman who had joined the Messianic movement but who was still, Silberling said, ``the most Jewish person I had ever met.''

``As a Jew, we're raised with a very strong conviction that Christianity is not for us, and here was a Jewish girl who believed in Yeshua, and yes, she was still Jewish,'' he said.

``There was a sense of peace in her life, a sense of joy, a sense of meaning that had evaded all of us,'' he said. ``She had found something, and I was still searching.''

Silberling realized that he had been searching for Yeshua, a Jewish messiah who would allow him to remain within his own religion yet develop a more intimate relationship with God.

``Rather than it being just an impersonal covenant God of the Jewish people, he became a personal God to me,'' Silberling said.

Silberling returned to school, studying religion at Seattle Pacific University and attending seminary school through the International Alliance of Messianic Congregations and Synagogues in Philadelphia in the early 1980s.

He founded two Messianic temples in Seattle, then returned to the San Fernando Valley five years ago to start a third. His office is in Woodland Hills, while his congregation meets in temporary facilities in Canoga Park.

Seeking a site for a permanent temple, he settled on Agoura - listed, along with Calabasas, as the fastest-growing Jewish communities in the Los Angeles area by the Jewish Journal.

In the San Fernando Valley, Silberling said, he encountered nothing like the opposition he's facing in the Conejo Valley.

``Here the synagogues are very large and traditional and have been around awhile, so they're not afraid of Messianic Jews,'' he said of the West Valley. ``But out there, in the Conejo Valley, the congregations are newer and smaller. They are afraid that we will offer people a Judaism that is very meaningful and life-fulfilling and people will resonate to that.''

Semantic differences

The Jewish leaders who object to their new neighbor say what offends them is not the Messianic faith itself, so much as its claim to Judaism.

``You have freedom of religion in America - everybody can do whatever they want,'' Paskow said. ``However, if he wants to call himself a rabbi, but then he says he doesn't believe in Rabbinic Judaism, it's deceptive. Call himself a priest, call himself a pastor.''

The nuances of language are essential to the Messianic debate and have had far-reaching repercussions.

Israel's Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that Messianics are not entitled to automatic Israeli citizenship because their belief in Jesus makes them Christians, not Jews. And Jewish leaders in Fresno demanded in 1993 that Pacific Bell pull a Messianic temple from its listing for synagogues, arguing that it constituted false advertising.

``My concerns are that it has the appearance of being a Jewish synagogue, and it's not,'' said Bryski, rabbi of the Orthodox Chabad of the Conejo. ``The practice of Christianity, the belief in the (Holy) Trinity, the belief in Jesus as the Messiah, is part of the Christian faith.

``It is not and has never been part of the Jewish faith,'' he said.

Not true, said Silberling, who said Jews, in fact, were the first followers of Jesus. On that point at least, some members of the mainstream Jewish community concur.

``The early Christians were Jews,'' said Jonathan Glabman, 32, of Agoura Hills, discussing the controversy after a Torah study class at Chabad of the Conejo. ``They were thrown out of the church for trying to keep their Judaism. You couldn't be both.''

And you still can't, at least not with the blessings of mainstream Jewish leaders, Silberling laments.

``They demand we be either a Christian sitting in a church or sit in their Rabbinic synagogue,'' he said. ``We cannot be Jews believing in Yeshua. The reason why many Jews converted to Christianity is because Judaism cut them off.''

The painful and often bloody history of Jewish-Christian relations underlies the mainstream Jewish community's distrust of Messianics.

``For 2,000 years, there's been the attempt to convert Jews to Christianity, and it hasn't worked,'' Bryski said.

That effort began when the crusaders captured Jerusalem in the year 1096, and continued throughout Europe Tin pogroms and expulsions, culminating in the genocide of Jews during the Holocaust, he said.

``The last 25 years, there's been a new attempt to convert Jews, but this time, through deception,'' Bryski said, ``by making the Jew believe that they retain their Jewish faith while at the same time accepting Christian doctrine.''

Jews for Judaism, in a 1996 newsletter, decried a resolution by the Southern Baptist Convention to evangelize Jews. Participating in that conversion drive are some 30 ``Hebrew-Christian'' congregations associated with the Southern Baptist Church, the newsletter states.

Kravitz estimates that 250,000 Jews have joined the Messianic movement.

But Silberling adamantly states that conversion isn't his goal.

``We don't believe in conversion,'' he said. ``We do not want Jews to convert to evangelical Christianity. We believe that our mission is to be who we are supposed to be as Jews.''

Still, some local Jews view that claim with suspicion.

``History has taught Jews that we need to be concerned about our survival,'' Arnold Bloch, 39, of Westlake Village said after the Torah class at Chabad. ``And anything that dilutes or distorts the beliefs and practices commonly held by all Jews to be essential to Judaism is a threat to Jewish continuity.''

Silberling counters that Messianics, too, know something of intolerance.

``We've had Messianic synagogues that have had their Torahs stolen and their houses of worship vandalized,'' he said. ``We know it was Jewish people because they wrote in Hebrew on the wall, and there's not many skinheads that know Hebrew very well.''

Jeryl Uslan, 36, of Westlake Village sees in the backlash against the Messianics a frightening reflection of the intolerance visited upon Jews by others.

``I don't consider (them) Jewish either,'' she said. ``But if they consider themselves Jewish, who am I to judge? I don't feel that anybody has a right to be intolerant or judge anybody else.''

Silberling declares that despite the doubts of mainstream Jews, Messianics are part of the Jewish family until the end.

``If a Hitler came back today, we'd be going to the ovens with them,'' he said. ``We'd all be going together. We put our lot with the Jewish people. And that's what makes us Jewish.''

THE FACTS

Following is a description of the major expressions of Judaism:

Orthodox Judaism: Consists of the strict observance of Jewish law, including the written Torah and the oral Torah, or Talmud. Orthodox Jews follow kosher dietary rules, including the separation of meat and dairy, do not drive cars or use electric lights on the Sabbath. Men wear head coverings, called kippahs. During religious services, men and women are divided by a partition in the synagogue.

Conservative Judaism: Modifies Orthodox Jewish practice slightly, allowing for certain modern changes. Men still wear head coverings, and kosher dietary laws still hold. However, men and women worship together, microphones are used during religious service and congregants can drive to synagogue on the Sabbath, but are not supposed to use cars for any other purpose that day.

Reform Judaism: Holds that the ritual commandments are subject to individual interpretation. Individuals choose for themselves whether to dress and dine in traditional Jewish fashion. However, the ethical commandments are still binding. Reform Jews are committed to social action, or tikun olam, which means repairing the world. To that end, Reform Jews participate in projects such as food drives, blood drives and homeless shelters.

Messianic Judaism: Is a faction that is traditional in its expression but nontraditional in its belief system because of the faith in Yeshua, or Jesus, as Messiah. There are Orthodox, Conservative and Reform-style congregations within Messianic Judaism.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos, Box

PHOTO (1--color) Rabbi Murray Silberling, who leads the Beth Emunah Messianic Synagogue, stands on the steps of his new temple in Agoura Hills.

Evan Yee/Daily News

(2--color in Conejo edition only) Rabbi Alan Greenbaum of Temple Adat Elohim, left, and Rabbi Moshe Bryski of Chabad oppose the new Messianic temple.

Michael Owen Baker/Daily News

BOX: THE FACTS (see text)