Ralph & the Rabbi: a thinner Reed?

[rodeodance]

------- Original Message --------
Subject: BERKOWITZ-Ralph (Reed) & the Rabbi (Eckstein): a thinner Reed?
Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 14:37:15 -0400 (EDT)
From: [e-mail]
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Ralph & the Rabbi: a thinner Reed?

International Fellowship of Christians and Jews scrubbed co-founder Ralph Reed's name from its website after giving Reed's Century Strategies more than $800,000 in contracts

Bill Berkowitz
May 22, 2007

http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=194

While Rabbi Daniel Lapin's involvement with Jack Abramoff hasn't exactly cost him many friends in the conservative Christian evangelical community, it has caused him to lower his profile a bit over the past several months. Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, who, in addition to his ground-breaking work raising huge amounts of money for Israel from evangelical Christians thru his International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, and being a strong ally of U.S. Christian Zionists, has picked up the slack.

At a recent conference at the Center for Jewish Studies at Queens College in New York City on the state of world Jewry titled "Is it 1938 again?",Yechiel Eckstein, as shown in IFCJ infomercial. Rabbi Eckstein answered the question with an "emphatic yes," the Florida Jewish News reported. "Eckstein called for a strategic alliance with evangelical Christians as 'our best friends and closest allies,' the newspaper pointed out. "He brushed off concerns about their supposed ulterior motives -- converting Jews and advancing Armageddon -- as a 'figment of, if I can say it, this liberal, Jewish and journalistic imagination.'"

Over the years, Eckstein, the founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) has raised millions of dollars from conservative Christian evangelicals for his organization's various projects. He is often credited as being one of the first Jewish religious leaders to advocate building relationships with conservative Christian evangelicals.

However, on the road to raising tens of millions of dollars, it appears that he has diverted a fair portion of the money to a half dozen media relations, direct mail and telemarketing companies, including Century Strategies, run by Ralph Reed, the Bigham Agency and Krieger Associates.

Founded in 1997, the Atlanta, Georgia-based Century Strategies LLC (website) is Ralph Reed's post-Christian Coalition high-powered GOP-oriented political consulting firm. According to a July 2004 profile in the National Journal, Century Strategies, which also has offices in Washington, D.C., "has raked in millions of dollars by mounting grassroots lobbying drives and other campaigns -- as well as doing some inside-the-Beltway advocacy -- for two dozen or so Fortune 100 companies and lesser-known enterprises."

http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=194

[acmavm]

1. Ralph Reed is like a super-virus. There is no cure strong or effective

enough to make that bastard go away.

[sharp_stick]

2. Fire and lots of it

Burn everything that little prick has ever touched, it's our only hope.