Caspari Center Media Review – April 10, 2012
During the week covered by this review, we received 5 articles on the following subjects:
Messianic Jews
Christian Zionism
Christians in Israel
Christian sites
This week’s review included a lengthy feature on Yad HaShemona.
Messianic Jews
The Marker, April 6, 2012
Under the headline “Finland, 15 minutes from Jerusalem,” The Marker (April 6) looked at Yad HaShemona, “the first Finnish kibbutz, which is fighting to remain loyal to its values – modesty, persistence, diligence, and Zionist.” The article was replete with pictures of the founding group, the Oren family (apparently an error for Ronen), the Kapusta family, and Anya Suemala.
Christian Zionism
Jerusalem Post, April 4, 2012
According to this report, “National Union MK Arye Eldad called for the annexation of Judea and Samaria in a speech to a large group of Christian Zionists who came to the Knesset on Tuesday for the fourth Jerusalem Assembly. In cooperation with the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus, the assembly brought together 115 pastors and lay leaders from around the world who represent tens of thousands of churches and hundreds of millions of Christians. Over two days, they heard many lectures from MKS, academics and pastors about the Middle East conflict and the biblical attachment of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, but Eldad’s speech especially enthralled them … Eldad said the help of Christian Zionists was more important than ever, because there are too many Jews in Israel for whom Israel has become mere real estate and not a homeland. The group was also addressed by MK David Rotem (Israel Beiteinu), who heads the caucus.”
Christians in Israel
Jerusalem Post, April 9, 2012
The capture under this picture read: “Ethiopian Christians sing outside the Deir Al-Sultan monastery on the root of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City yesterday. The group holds palm leaves as it takes part in the traditional Palm Sunday procession …”
Christian Sites
HaIr Kol HaIr, April 5, 2012
This report gave readers a tour of Nazareth – “Tour, church, tradition, and archaeology alongside the flavors of the place.”
Book Review
Haaretz, April 6, 2012
Benjamin Balint reviewed The Jewish Annotated New Testament edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford University Press, 2012): “If one wishes to take it on its own terms, then, one can read the New Testament as a Jewish text precisely until the point where the Jews are superseded – until Paul, measuring himself against Moses, sought to legitimate a new people of God. If Israel’s self-definition rested on law and ethnicity (the difference between Jew and Gentile), Paul sought to transcend both by means of a kind of coerced universalism. This is the point at which internal critique shades into a rejection that – despite the editors’ best intentions – cannot be explained away. That caveat aside, ‘The Annotated Jewish New Testament’ admirably succeeds in charting how biblical poetry made its way into ecclesiastical dogma, and how the teachings of Jesus were nourished by the soil of Judaism. More deeply, it reveals how the Christian Scriptures were made possible by the inner imperative of the Torah itself, a text which demands to be ever reread anew in the light of contemporary experiences, and which teaches that everything has somehow been foreseen.”