Thanks for the comments. Was just curious. Incidently,  I find it really strange - make that bizarre - that any Christian group would have ever tried to pay someone to convert. 

Plenty of Christian groups pay and coerce people to convert especially in the poorer countries. In India in the North east they use terrorist techniques.In fact the FBI was on one case recently, I think a Baptist group backed by US funding.

www.beliefnet.com/boards/message_list.asp?pageID=3&discussionID=13260&messages_per_page=4

98% of Nagaland is Christian, 90% of whom are regular Baptists. If you are not a Christian, you have no social presence there and you live constantly in fear. I would invite you to go the Northestern Hill University Campus. They have a substantial Naga presence. You cannot belong to the student union there if you are not a Christian. Go to Manipur, and see for yourself how the Christians are terrorising the Hindu Manipuris. Go to Tripura. See how systematically the Christian tribals are killing Hindu Bengalis. Only recently, the beleaguered Hindus have formed vigilante groups there. At this time, the desparate govt is distributing arms to the people to defend themselves.

Just recently (NDTV news), Baptist Nagas vandalized a Buddhist temple in Tripura and proclaimed that no other religion other than Christianity is allowed there. Do you know that these Christian groups regularly come and threaten schoolchildren to not conduct Saraswati puja in their schools ? Do you know that these Christian groups banned viewing Mahabharata in TV?

I am sure, you did not know.

Regards,

Dhruba.

 

Christian Terrorists Kill 44, Wound 118 in Attacks in Northeast India

GUWAHATI, India (AFP)

October 2, 2004

            Some 44 people were killed and 118 wounded in three nearly simultaneous bomb blasts Saturday morning in Dimapur, Nagaland's commercial hub, in what a top official called the "worst ever terrorist strike" in the tiny state's history.

            Gunmen in neighbouring Assam state later killed 15 villagers and injured a dozen more, police said.

            "There were limbs everywhere and blood was splattered all over," said student leader T. Zheviho who was at crowded Dimapur railway station where one bomb exploded as passengers awaited a train.

            Two other bombs went off in the Hong Kong market, which sells Chinese goods, and an adjacent market.

            "I had a miraculous escape," Zheviho told AFP by telephone from Dimapur, 70 kilometers (45 miles) east of Nagaland capital Kohima.

            Police said the plastic explosive RDX appeared to have been used in the railway blast that created a huge crater beside a platform.

            "We found a briefcase with fuse wires... it contained RDX and a timer-device," V. Peseyie, Dimapur additional police chief, said.

            Seventeen more people were killed in a wave of attacks in neighbouring Assam, police said.

            Unidentified attackers raked shoppers with gunfire at a marketplace in Makri Jhora village, 290 kilometres (180 miles) west of Assam's main city of Guwahati, killing 11 and injuring about a dozen, police said.

            The same gunmen later shot dead four more villagers in a nearby forest, police superintendent L. R. Bishnoi told AFP. Two more people were killed and 10 injured in two blasts in the Assamese district of Bongaingaon, 220 kilometres (136 miles) from Guwahati, Bishnoi said.

            One person was killed and seven wounded in an earlier bomb blast in Assam.

            Police also reported two other bombings in a village on the outskirts of Guwahati in which four people were injured.

            There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the day of bloodshed in the insurgency-infested northeast where some 30 guerrilla groups are battling for greater autonomy or independence.

            The attacks occurred as India marked the 135th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi who waged a campaign of non-violence to free the country from British rule.

            "It is distressing such violence broke out on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in the capital New Delhi.

            Nagaland's ill-equipped hospitals battled to treat the wounded.

            "Many have multiple face and abdomen wounds. They're in a state of trauma. We're trying to cope. We've never had such a devastating emergency," said doctor T. Lotha at a private hospital in Dimapur treating blast victims.

            Nagaland Chief Minister Neibhiu Rio said at least 26 people were killed in the Dimapur blasts and another 86 were in hospital. "The death toll may go up as many are in a very critical condition," he said.

            "This is the worst ever terrorist strike in Nagaland. People are still dealing with the shock -- they're not yet thinking about who to blame."

            Mourners crowded churches across Nagaland, which is mostly Christian, to pray for the victims.

            The blasts were the second major burst of violence in the northeast since mid-August. Fifteen people, many of them children, were killed in a rebel attack on an Independence Day parade in Assam August 15 for which the United Liberation Front of Asom claimed responsibility.

            The armed insurgency in Nagaland began soon after much of the local population converted to Christianity. Many militant groups, seeking to secede from India to form an independent Christian state, are funded and armed by the Southern Baptist Church. Some of the groups such as the National Liberation Front of Tripura have been involved in a campaign of “gunpoint conversions” and “ethnic cleansing” of native non-Christians, which has left over 50,000 dead and many more refugees over the past two decades.

Let's lawyer this a bit, willya?
If I get into a theological discussion with you, and you prove so convincing that I take the dip, my G_d-fearing brothers will still have to prove your illegal missionary activity in court, which would be impossible if there had not been a financial transaction complete with paper trail. This is why such a law can hardly be enforced. Burden of proof!

The law has a clear practicality and its necessity is quite self evident in regards to the needs and requirements of a Jewish State.

I find this fascinating.  I at times have difficulty with confusing the genetic "Jewish State of Israel" and the practicing religious "Jewish State". Is Israel designed as a state for genetic Jews or for those practicing Judaism?  Is it in fact a theocracy?  Is a Christian Jew any less Israeli than one practicing Judaism?  The statement above seems to imply that Israel would be threatened by Christianity. Interestingly, I've had a Christian friend of Jewish descent who still felt quite comfortable in his (own) practice of Judaism as well. He still loved joining with those at the Synagogue (I think it was the great social scene - even I enjoyed the times I visited).  His comment was that Christ was a practicing Jew who even preached in the Synagogue.

I'm not trying to make any point here, just gain some insight.

The reality is a few thousand jews of the lost tribes moved from North East India to Israel (yes from that Maoist Christian radical enclave)--quite recently actually. The other relevance being -since Israel is a Jewish state such conversions maybe put to test legally if it found converts, which is not the case yet or likely, but where conversions have polarized society government has stepped in to stop it ie in India u need a legal permission in some states to change religion or at least a legal notification.

Asia/Pacific - India - Judaism

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"'Lost tribe' of Indian Jews migrates to Israel"

by Zarir Hussain (AFP, November 16, 2006)

Guwahati, India - More than 200 Indians have emigrated to Israel after they were officially recognised as Jews, religious leaders said.

Rabbinical leaders announced last March that some 6,000 members of the Bnei Menashe tribe in India's northeast were descendants of ancient Israelites or one of the Biblical 10 lost tribes.

"A total of 105 people left for Israel on Thursday, while another 103 people went Wednesday with the Israeli Prime Ministers office formally inviting them," Israeli rabbi Hannock Avizedek told AFP.

The Jews travelled from India's northeastern Mizoram state to Israel.

The recognition from Israel came after tribe members sent scores of applications seeking to migrate to Israel, or the "Promised Land", saying it was their right to do so.

According to Israeli law, every Jew enjoys the "right of return" - or the right of abode in the country.

After the recognition, a group of rabbis visited Mizoram last September and converted the first batch of 218 Mizo tribal people to Judaism after they took a holy dip at a mikvah or a ritual bath.

"The new converts are practising the religion perfectly. They will undergo a year-long course in Israel to learn other aspects of Judaism at government expense," Avizedek told AFP by phone from Aizwal, shortly before leaving.

The rabbi spent six months in state capital Aizwal to teach Hebrew and impart lessons in Judaism to the tribal people.

"I am so happy today and it is a dream come true as we leave for our Holy Land," said 30-year-old Bana Kholring, whose businessman husband Avior and three teenaged children were also migrating with her.

Some 800 people from Mizoram and neighbouring Manipur state have migrated to Israel since 1994 when a private body, the Amishav Association took up their case. The last batch of 71 left the northeast for Jerusalem in May 2003.

Mizoram is a predominantly Christian state, while most Manipuris follow Hinduism. Most Jews in the two states were Christian by birth.

Apart from names, the converts share many practices in common with traditional Jews -- such as keeping mezuzahs or parchment inscribed with verses of the Torah at the entrance to their homes. The men wear a kippah or headgear during prayers.

"I have no regrets at all to leave my birth place because Israel is our Promised Land," Zimra Hnamte, a 50-year-old widow, said.

The 208 Mizo Jews would be settled in the cities of Nazareth Illit and Karmiel in northern Israel.

Any identity is also defined by what it is not.
Christianity happens to epitomize the very antithesis of Jewish identity. A Jew, be he religious, national, or merely cultural, is first and foremost not a Christian.
What's so hard to understand here? Do we need to dig into the muck of 18 centuries of relentless Christian hostility towards the Jews to make that point, or will you do it on your own?

Then "Christian Jew" is an oxymoron? 

No need to dredge up history. Know it well. Christianity was for centuries even more perverted and violent than Islam today - and not just against the Jews. Did not mean to offend.