The following year, Eckstein capitalized on his successes by forming the Center for Christian and Jewish Values in Washington. Co-chaired by Orthodox Jewish Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and evangelical Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., the now-defunct center, according to Eckstein, "brought together disparate groups to find common ground on issues of shared concern." While Eckstein did bring people of different faiths under one roof, their ideological leanings were mostly uniform. The center was made up almost entirely of right-wing evangelicals like then Family Research Council director Bauer, Southern Baptist Convention executive director Richard Land and the dean of Robertson's Regent University's school of government, Kay James. (James is now director of the Office of Personnel Management under Bush.) Also involved were neoconservatives such as Abrams, William Kristol and William Bennett. The center was essentially a command post for the culture war.

Despite its pantheon of influential conservatives, however, the center produced little more than a flurry of symbolic resolutions calling for religious freedom in the Third World, more education for what Eckstein termed "non-abortion" and a moment of silence as an alternative to school prayer. The center also served as the platform for Lieberman, Bennett and Brownback's censorship crusade, which ultimately amounted to a few blustery editorials blasting Hollywood's "mental poison" and a failed bill in 1997 that would have mandated that TV manufacturers install "V-chips" allowing parents to block offensive programming.

While the center's culture warriors soldiered on, Eckstein shifted his focus to filling the IFCJ's coffers. By 1999, he had settled in Israel and was cruising the Holy Land in a van with his own film crew to produce a line of fundraising videos custom-tailored to evangelical tastes. In one of the videos, "Guardians of Israel," Eckstein appears amid scenes of heart-wrenching poverty, staring directly into the camera like Mister Rogers' long-lost brother, his hand on the shoulder of one destitute Israeli or another, pleading for Christian money. "If you don't hear this woman's tears, you're not human," Eckstein says in "Guardians of Israel," while standing above a sobbing woman in Nazareth. In another of Ekstein's videos, "On Wings of Eagles," a narrator, soliciting money for his immigration program for Russian Jews, informs viewers, "Just $350 can save one Jew."

After viewing one of these videos in 2000, the ADL's Foxman accused Ekstein of "schnorring from non-Jews to help Jews." However, what may seem like shameless pandering to Eckstein's critics is, in fact, effective salesmanship to those familiar with the insular evangelical culture. When Eckstein looks into the camera with tears welling in his eyes and declares, "I couldn't face God if I didn't open up to you, Christians" -- a phrase few Jews could imagine themselves uttering -- he is appealing to the confessional tradition that stresses God's transformative power. It is the same tradition that prompts President Bush to say, "There is only one reason I am in the Oval Office and not in a bar. I found faith."

Eckstein's uncanny ability to penetrate evangelical culture has fed a perception among his detractors that he is really a "Jew for Jesus." One of Eckstein's most strident critics, Jerusalem City Councilor Mina Fenton, has enlisted a group of high-profile rabbis in a campaign to in effect excommunicate him. Fenton points as proof of Eckstein's crypto-Christianity to his fictional novel, "The Journey Home," loosely based on his friendship with evangelical pastor Jamie Buckingham. In the book, Eckstein writes, "While I still don't believe in Jesus as the Christ as Jamie does, and view him instead as a Jew who brought salvation to the gentiles, in some respects, that is exactly what I have become -- a Jew for Jesus."

In an interview with the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, Fenton accused Eckstein's IFCJ of trying to "create a situation of dependency [of Israel on evangelical funding], so that they can control us. They pour money galore into welfare, absorption, aliyah [Jewish immigration to Israel], and education and find our weak points." Fenton also believes that by pumping so much evangelical money into Israel, Eckstein is helping to further evangelicals' apocalyptic "end times" agenda.

That charge has dogged Eckstein throughout his career in spite of his best efforts to defuse it. In 2003, he commissioned the Tarrance Group to conduct a poll of evangelicals' attitudes on Israel. While a majority of respondents cited a literal belief in Genesis 12:3 -- "he who blesses Israel shall be blessed" -- as their primary reason for supporting Israel, a minority, albeit a large one at 28 percent, cited "reasons related to the End Times." Even though the Tarrance Group is run by veteran GOP operative Ed Goeas, who has collaborated with Reed on numerous campaigns, Eckstein feels vindicated by the poll.

"The media portrays [evangelicals] as premillennialists who do this [support Israel] to get all the Jews to Israel, ... [so] those who don't accept Jesus will be killed. It's just hogwash. If anything, it's about Genesis 12:3," said Eckstein.

Eckstein's close associate Bauer echoed his opinion. "Among Christians, there's just a fundamental religious idea that the Jews are God's people and the land of Israel is covenant land that God granted them. Beyond that, what drives Christian support for Israel is that Christians tend to see U.S. foreign policy in very moral terms," Bauer told me. "We believe Israel and the U.S. are facing the same types of totalitarian forces, and we as two countries that share the same values should stand against that."

Away from the media's critical eye, however, Eckstein has struck an altogether different tone. In "On Wings of Eagles," as montages of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat shaking hands in Oslo in 1994 and the crumbling Twin Towers flash across the screen to an ominous soundtrack, a narrator intones, "The mosaic of events we see happening today is like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle with the pieces beginning to form the exact picture foretold by the prophets." Next Eckstein appears standing on a mountaintop somewhere in Israel, and, before launching into a pitch for donations, says, "You can see the pieces of the puzzle that are coming together." Is he insinuating that with so many "end times" prophecies in the headlines, evangelical support for Israel is all the more urgent? It's unclear what else he could mean.

However controversial Eckstein's fundraising techniques may be, they are working. His videos enjoy widespread viewership on Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network and through paid spots on local networks across America's heartland. Eckstein has even organized aggressive fundraising campaigns in countries like Mexico and El Salvador, where nearly half of the population lives below the poverty line. With nearly 350,000 donors, the IFCJ was able to dole out a whopping $20 million to 250 social welfare projects in Israel last year, including an armored, mobile dental clinic that provides services to Jewish settlers in the occupied territories. Today, the IFCJ is the second largest nongovernmental donor to Israel, next only to the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency for Israel.

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