The Missionary Position

We walk past some youngish believers in stock yellow shirts and stencilled Jews for Jesus fanny packs. On a table by the door are giant supplies of street evangelism's two best friends: hand sanitizer and breath mints. A gaggle of campaigners are coming back from the noon “sortie”, dropping off their tract bags and leaving for lunch. They greet us with curiosity and weak handshakes.

Finally, Linda (not her real name) appears, carrying a leather-bound Bible. She is about 50-years-old and has the energy of an undersexed lesbian gym teacher. Linda has her own printed “testimony booklet,” which notes that she once dabbled in Scientology. She gives me the once-over when I introduce myself, using my mother's very Jewish-sounding maiden name, and takes us around the corner to a sandwich shop to talk. We take our seats, waiting to be saved.

Along with persistent reminders that Jesus was Jewish, the highlight of Linda's sales pitch is a retro-fitting of New Testament verse onto Old Testament prophecy, especially Isaiah 53, which can, admittedly, sound an awful lot like it prophesizes Jesus. "He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth," she has me read from her worn Bible. "He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth."

Linda talks to us about Original Sin and Adam and Eve, a story that she believes without qualification. Although she agrees that some Biblical stories may simply be parables, this, she insists, is not one of them. She asks if I believe the story. Even in my role as pushover Jew, I don't want to look like a monkey, so I bring up Darwin and that crazy evolution thing that someone told me about in seventh grade.

Linda looks at me querulously. "Why do I get the feeling I am being set up?"

"Whowhatmewhateverdoyoumean?" I stammer. I can hear Arielle breathing. She looks pale and clammy, like she is going to puke.

"I feel like you guys have an agenda. Am I wrong?"

Now I can hear myself breathing, but I'm betting that Linda is not the brightest light on the Jews for Jesus Christmas tree. "I don't understand," I say, making a face as she has somehow hurt my feelings. It works, and the next thing I know, we’re onto blood sacrifices and Satan.

Despite the gory underpinnings and charismatic blather about good and evil, it seems like nothing but well-crafted idiocy. The worst of her holy-roller yammering is a revisionist view of the Holocaust as some kind of blood sacrifice for the Jews, so they could atone for their sins. I am left speechless, but no matter: Socratic method or dissent has no place at this table.

Linda hits her peak with a tale about destroying the Devil, an ill-founded metaphor about killing a snake. "You have to crush its head," Linda tells us. "You can't just cut it in half. If you cut it in half, do you know what happens? You get two snakes."

"You do?" asks Arielle, who is no herpetologist but has a hunch there is something specious about this story.

"Yes," says Linda resolutely, "They're just like worms."