Apparently not, since as far as I can tell no money is chnaging hands here on SP.  I did not realize the definition included this bribery element.  I don't think I've ever heard of trying to buy someone into "converting."  Such an idea would be laughable if it weren't so lame and misguided.  Thankfully, it appears from the discussion so far that there are no Israeli laws against witnessing to Israelis as long as no payola is involved.

______________________________________________- Fair enough-though what is meant by "bribery". Is it just handing out tracts at a soup kitchen with no hint that the soup will be withheld if the tract is refused? Or does anyone actually go up to people and say "sixty dollars if you get baptized"(in which case the idiot probably went off and got drunk, and the "proslytizer" may have done you folk a favor by unintentional quality control so to speak). Or is it somewhere in between?

This thread surprises me by its success!

Now I understand and acknowledge that proselytizing  (in DJ's words, "witnessing") is for you guys as much a mitzvath 'asseh (a positive religious obligation) as the Shabbat, charity, or having kids and circumcising them whenever they happen to be males, are for Jews.
Knowing this, I'm willing to let you proselytize all you want, and I'm not going to commit the grave sin of "whitening your face in public", or that of gratuitous maliciousness, by deriding you and denying you the respect you're owed as fellow Humans, or by ratting you to the Israeli police (which would probably advise me to look for whomever would give me a good shake if I tried).

In return, you will have to be forgiving and tactful to any religious Jew that refuses to sit at your unkosher table and invite him for beer instead! Then you'll have to endure patiently the hard time he will give you with his more mature, much older and VERY complex theology  (try our friend Ezekiel for practice if you wish).
If you have to do it, bring it on, but do not expect too much success, except for a not uncertain gain in popularity with people that love nothing more than a good argument...

__________________________________________________________ Fair's, fair-but how do you tell if a table is unkosher? Sometime in it's history a gentile must have eaten a ham and cheese sandwich while sitting there drinking a latte.

"Now I understand and acknowledge that proselytizing (in DJ's words, "witnessing") is for you guys as much a mitzvath 'asseh (a positive religious obligation) as the Shabbat, charity, or having kids and circumcising them whenever they happen to be males, are for Jews. Knowing this, I'm willing to let you proselytize all you want, and I'm not going to commit the grave sin of "whitening your face in public", or that of gratuitous maliciousness, by deriding you and denying you the respect you're owed as fellow Humans, or by ratting you to the Israeli police (which would probably advise me to look for whomever would give me a good shake if I tried)." __________________________________________ Actually it's a command to the church as a whole and it is encouraged of individual members as a form of charity: work it out from the premise-it is logically charitable given that someone must be saved by Jesus(which does not necessarily imply exclusivism by the way-it just excludes pluralism and means a Christian has presumably a better chance-the fate of unbelivers is a subject for debate among Christians and yes it bugs me too). It is also part of our way of being a light unto the nations-a logo so to speak, like Hasidic's Russian clothes. Which is why even Calvinists do this though it seems rather odd if everyones fate was predetermined. In any case it does not mean every single Christian must personally engage in ad-hoc missionary activity. Otherwise that hypothetical quaint little villiage in Switzerland that hasn't seen more then one or two outsiders in five hundred years isn't pulling it's weight. A minor point but presumably some here have an intellectual interest in this sort of thing.

"Then you'll have to endure patiently the hard time he will give you with his more mature, much older and VERY complex theology (try our friend Ezekiel for practice if you wish)." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Nice try. Last time I checked the Torah and the Prophets were in my Bible too which makes it the same age. And I am unaware of why complexity as such is something to brag about. Complexity simply is. And in any case you might try endureing OUR very complex theology...

The blurring of the definition of proselytize is starting to get confusing.

Proselytize: To induce someone to convert to one's own religious faith.

The laws in Israel against proselytizing is again missionary activity. It is not targeting speech, but organized ideological missions that is subversive to the functioning of the Jewish state. It does not prosecute the crime on the basis of the speech itself but in the process and intent within the specific encounter. If a man offer 10$ to come around the corner to hear someone speak this ceases to be merely a question of free speech, in this encounter their is clear and obvious manipulation. It is naive to think that inducing an individual through material benefit is no longer a discussion but quite clearly a transaction.

Don't get me wrong... I do not believe israel is the paragon of free speech. The targeting and outlawing of jewish nationalist political groups is rampant within Israel. The courts usage of administrative detention exercised on its own citizen's is far from democratic norms....But as far as missionary activities that use unethical means to accomplish its goals is rightly illegal in a Jewish state, that has experienced the full effect christian missionariasm for two millenia.

Putting it in perspective....
In Europe before the emancipation it was a common occurance that on any  sunday the jews in a given city were forced to attend mass and then be exposed to a haranging of their apparent spiritual lowliness by the pastor and then given a good dose of christian gospel.