Caspari Center Media Review – April 17, 2012
During the week covered by this review, we received 9 articles on the following subjects:
Attitudes towards Christianity
Christians in Israel
Christians and the Holocaust
Anti-Semitism
Conversion
This week’s review featured various Christian activities.
Attitudes towards Christianity
Haaretz, April 12, 15, 2012
In his regular column (Haaretz, April 15), Philologos turned his attention this week to “What should Jews call the Christian Bible?”: “As has been pointed out infinitum, there can only be an ‘old testament’ if there is also a new one – and it is precisely the claim that there is a new one that marks Christianity’s break with Judaism. To speak of ‘the Old Testament’ is therefore to make a verbal concession to this claim that Jews who take their Judaism seriously should want to avoid. Ironically, however, the very concept of an ‘old’ and ‘new’ testament is an ‘Old Testament’ one … if b’rit means ‘covenant,’ why doesn’t Christianity call its scriptures ‘The New Covenant’ and the Hebrew Bible ‘the Old Covenant’? … For an answer, one has to turn to the Septuagint … Apparently unaware of the Alexandrian usage, the anonymous translator of the Vetus Latina, who knew no Hebrew and was working solely from the Septuagint, rendered diatheke as testamentum, Latin for ‘last will and testament,’ while counting, so it would seem, on its closeness to testimonium, ‘witness,’ to give it a broader connotation. And although Jerome, who did know Hebrew, changed this to foedus in Jeremiah, he stuck with the Vetus Latina’s testamentum in his translation of Paul’s epistle. He did so because this fit Paul’s understanding of diatheke, which was that of the ‘eternal inheritance’ of redemption bequeathed by Jesus as his legacy to mankind. Should Jews shun the use of ‘New Testament’ as they should that of ‘Old Testament’? Logically, the answer would appear to be yes … And yet as a Jew, my feelings don’t agree with my logic … the New Testament (although there is much that is Jewish about it) is someone else’s [book] and I’m quite willing to call it what they do. For that matter, I don’t much mind non-Jews saying ‘Old Testament,’ either. It’s only from Jews – and especially those who love our Bible – that I would expect greater discrimination.”
Avihu Zakai (Haaretz, April 12) looked at the roots of Erich Auerbach’s classic Mimesis, arguing that it was written in order to “prove that the Hebrew Bible is inextricably linked to the New Testament, or the Christian Scriptures, and thus to destroy the basis of the Aryan-Nazi philological claim that the New Testament must be severed from the Old Testament … The goal of philological exegesis was to ‘show that figures and events in the Old Testament foretell the New Testament and the history of salvation.’ Since this exegesis regards Yeshu as the messiah who fulfils all the Jewish prophecies, not only does it relate to the Jewish Bible ‘as an “old” version of the New Testament’ but it also ‘confirms the historical reality of the Old and New Testaments and the providential link between them.’ In substantiation of his claim, Auerbach quoted Augustine: ‘What is the New Testament if not the Old Testament in its overt form.’”
Christians in Israel
Ma’ariv, April 15; Haaretz, April 11, 15; Jerusalem Post, April 16, 2012
Ma’ariv (April 15) and Haaretz (April 15) both captured pictures of the Easter Holy Fire celebration this week, while Haaretz (April 11) also pictured Catholic visitors praying in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre over the holiday.
According to a report in the Jerusalem Post (April 16), “Every Friday night, Scott and Theresa Johnson host Jewish Shabbat dinners for lone Israeli soldiers. The meal begins after sundown, preceded by the Kiddush blessing over the wine and singing of ‘Shalom Aleichem,’ the traditional Hebrew song greeting the Sabbath. There’s one catch, however, made evident by the Christmas cards hanging in the kitchen: The Johnsons are not Jewish. Why did this American couple leave the comforts of home and family in the small Smokey Mountains town of Seymour, Tenn., to serve young men and women in a faraway foreign army? The Johnsons say it’s because they believe that God has called them to help the Jewish people. Like many evangelical Christians, they say restoring a Jewish state is a prerequisite for what they believe will be the second coming of Jesus. To do their part the Johnsons, who are both in their 50s and now live in Jerusalem, last year served more than 3,000 meals – including 600 pounds of Scott’s spicy chicken wings – to ‘lone soldiers,’ the term applied to young men and women who have immigrated to Israel to serve in the army and have no family there. An estimated 5,000 lone Jewish soldiers are in the Israel Defense Forces … Former IDF tank commander Albert Lima Berman, 24, who hails from Brazil, says the Johnsons’ work is not politically or religiously motivated. ‘They’ve been here for 10 years helping Israel and helping Jews – I’ve never seen them trying to convert anybody,’ he said. ‘The most important thing Scott is doing here is not about international politics or support of Israel. It is giving a home to people that deserve it … because they are putting their lives on the line at a very tender age … For a lone soldier, it’s a little bit different,’ said Berman, who sits on the board of HaMiflaht, the organization founded by the Johnsons to support their efforts. The Johnsons’ U.S.-based nonprofit, Servants to Christ, also supports the couple’s efforts. Christians comprise just 2 percent of Israel’s population – approximately 154,000 people in a land of 7.6 million. Although there is no official count on how many Christians consider themselves evangelical, some like the Johnsons offer social services and financial assistance to Israelis. Evangelical tourism provides the country with an economic boost: About 1.8 million tourists last year were Christian pilgrims, according to the Ministry of Tourism. The Johnsons started HaMiflaht – Hebrew for ‘the refuge’ – in 2005. Scott Johnson, an ordained minister in the Church of God, and his wife had first come to Israel in 2000 to volunteer for the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. He recalled meeting an American lone soldier from Colorado who, with no place to go for Shabbat, had planned to sleep in a park one Friday evening. ‘I was appalled that a man offering his life for the country was going to sleep in a park and not having anything to eat,’ Johnson said. He invited the young man to dinner. Thus a weekly ritual began, with that soldier soon bringing his friends, leading the couple eventually to start HaMiflaht. ‘HaMiflaht’ is sort of like a refuge, but it’s more than a refuge; it is a place that you can run to in a time of danger when you are going to lose your life,’ Johnson said. ‘It’s a place that you can trust.’”
Christians and the Holocaust
Haaretz, April 12, 2012
This lengthy article featured Jews who were saved by Christians during the Holocaust.
Anti-Semitism
Makor Rishon, April 12, 2012
This piece reported the call currently being made by the European Jewish Parliament for the British government to “propose and actively pursue the termination of Catherine Ashton’s term of office with immediate effect” due to the EU foreign affairs chief’s comparison between the massacre of three Jewish children in Toulouse and Syrian, Israeli and Palestinian war victims.
Conversion
Hed HaIr – Merkaz, April 12, 2012
This lengthy article featured Daniel Asor, an Israeli who converted to Christianity and then back to Orthodox Judaism.