During the week covered by this review, we received 10 articles on the following subjects:
Messianic Jews
Israeli Attitudes Concerning Christianity
Conversion to Christianity
Christian/Jewish Spirituality
Christians in Israel
Christian Zionism
Archeology
Messianic Jews
Zman Netanya, September 21, 2012
In this interview, Dr. Erez Soref, president of Israel College of the Bible in Netanya, speaks to the press about ICB’s most recent purchase of property in Netanya as well as the state of Messianic Judaism in Israel today. He explains to journalist Guy Fishkin why ICB tries to keep a low profile: “You have to understand,” says Soref, “that some of the residents of Netanya have a problem with the fact that we believe in Jesus,” to the point where, in recent years, people have begun to burn copies of the New Testament in their synagogues. “It reminds me of the worst of all,” says Soref. “It is amazing that the things our people suffered in the Holocaust are being done to Jews by their own brothers. It is simply incomprehensible.” Soref explains that such behavior stems from the supposition that Jews who choose to believe in Jesus have converted from their faith. “It is really too bad that this is the state of things in Israel, which is the nation that God chose to be a light to world. There are some factions in Israeli society that have made it their mission to persecute Messianic Jews at all costs. It’s sad, but this is the reality on the ground.” The article explains that Messianic Judaism is a religious group that is based on evangelical Christian convictions regarding Jesus as the Messiah of Israel and as the “Son of God” as is described in the New Testament. Members of the Messianic congregations define themselves as Jews, although the Messianic sect is not recognized as such by most other Jewish factions. According to the article, there are some 300,000 Messianic Jews worldwide, 15,000 of them living in Israel. “Messianic Jews who believe in Jesus are not a new phenomenon,” says Soref. “We believe that Jesus is the Messiah whom we are all longing for. In the Bible there are thousands of Messianic prophecies and they are all fulfilled in Jesus.” The article describes how the college recently raised enough money to purchase a building for the expansion of the school. It mentions ICB’s board of directors by name – David Zadok, Daniel Yahav, Victor Kalisher, Herby Gear, Evan Thomas, and Dr. Soref – as it recounts the “step of faith” they took in order to raise such a huge sum of money (NIS 1.3 million). “One can be cynical,” says the writer, but the fact remains that the college was able to buy the building and pay for it in full as a result of the school’s fundraising efforts. When asked about the Messianic community’s attitude to the State of Israel, Soref said, “We are regular citizens in Israel, law abiding, serving in the army – and even in combat units – and generally we behave as exemplary citizens who wish to serve the community. We are Jews in every respect, and that is what counts, at the end of the day.” The article also quotes the CEO of Jews for Jesus, Dan Sered, as saying, “We believe in an intimate and personal relationship with Jesus our Savior. It is what brings joy to our lives.” Responses from the religious Jewish factions in Netanya were less than enthusiastic: “This is a severe blow to Judaism and the Jews in Israel,” one rabbi was quoted as saying. “The man who is called Jesus cancels out all the laws of the Halacha and of the Jewish tradition. It is idol worship and must be avoided. We hear about this congregation from time to time and it brings us great pain. They tempt Jews to come to them by offering material goods.” Another rabbi added his criticism, saying that “as a Holocaust survivor I think the activities of the Jesus-lovers in Israel are worse than the Holocaust. … These organizations want to destroy Judaism. I don’t see a difference between people who want to convert Jews to a belief in Jesus and what the Nazis did.”
Israeli Attitudes Concerning Christianity
Globes, September 25, 2012
In his new book, Professor Gad Yair reflects on Israelis’ relationship to Judaism. This article gives a few examples of what is included in these reflections. Of interest is a snippet that considers the way secular Israelis become more Jewish when they are abroad, and especially when they are in a Christian environment. So, for example, when a completely secular Israeli checks into a hotel abroad, “he opens the table drawer and finds the New Testament, and what happens now? He is afraid of this book. He slams the drawer shut and doesn’t dare open it again until the end of his trip. We have something in us that is Jewish in the sense that it is deeply and irrationally afraid of the Christian, or the Muslim. … To touch that book is almost the same as becoming a Christian.” Yair says this attitude isn’t learned: “I don’t remember any teacher at school saying: ‘Don’t open the New Testament!’ or that my father said anything like that – it somehow passes in this Israeli air of ours, that Christians are always recruiting to Christianity. That if you open this book it will take your soul from you.”
The following five articles are all, in some capacity or another, reflections relating to Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, which was observed this past week.
Conversion to Christianity
Makor Rishon, September 21, 2012
Franz Rosenzweig was a German Jew who nearly converted to Christianity in the mid to late 1800s, but had a change of heart somewhere around the High Holy Days, and Yom Kippur in particular. This article traces Rosenzweig’s journey to and from Christianity and the way Yom Kippur played a crucial role in his decision. From the beginning, writes Ehud Neeman, Rosenzweig was loath to let go of his Judaism, so that even as he considered converting to Christianity, he was only willing to do so as a Jew. “I am still a Jew,” he wrote to his mother, even in the midst of his near-conversion. Becoming a Christian was the easier option for secular Jews living in Germany at the time, especially since the secular Jewish life was so artificial and lacked any kind of conviction. But Rosenzweig always felt himself connected to the tradition of his forefathers – that it was not a burden to be lightly cast off. But nostalgia was not enough to keep him Jewish. He struggled with Judaism’s inability to anchor itself in the world because of its focus on the inner life. Christianity, on the other hand, allowed for a combination of internal and external manifestations of faith. Judaism, it seemed to Rosenzweig, was disconnected from history, while Christianity brought the Word of God right into it. Thus Rosenzweig’s journey back to Judaism was largely one that sought to find a connection between his faith and its relevance to world history. The crucial turning point for Rosenzweig was the understanding that Judaism is situated squarely within history, while Christianity needs a mediator – a conclusion he reached when thinking of Jesus as the Son of God, the only one through whom man can reach God. Judaism, on the other hand, does not require a mediator – the God of history has called his people to himself and they are his, directly. He writes, “What the Gentile achieves only ‘through’ someone, every Jew naturally has by virtue of being a child of the chosen race.” Rosenzweig denounced Christianity, and finally decided to remain a Jew just one day before the Day of Atonement. This, writes Neeman, “is Yom Kippur’s unique quality of being able to return lost sons to their father in Heaven.”
Christian/Jewish Spirituality
Haaretz, September 25 (x3), 2012
The first article follows the discussion through the ages of whether or not Solomon sinned (and repented), and the different ways Christianity and Judaism have dealt with the problems raised by this issue. Of interest is the dilemma relating to Solomon as the son of David and the relationship between this title and the prophecies in the Old Testament regarding the Messiah, the son of David. Christian theologians’ response to Solomon’s unrepentant heart is to name Jesus as the true son of David – the Messiah of whom the prophecies all speak – rather than Solomon, who sinned and did not repent.
The second article covers Christian and Jewish responses to indulgence and asceticism. “All moral systems and all religions limit their adherents’ sphere of pleasure,” writes Aviad Kleinberg. But the Jewish and Christian limitations are vastly different. Kleinberg explains that “Christianity regards the pleasures of this world with suspicion and demands that believers place their trust in the next world,” while Judaism “holds that this world was given to humans to enjoy – as long as they avoid what is forbidden to them.” In Judaism, restraint comes from behavioral practices, while in Christianity, it is through the examination of the soul. Thus Christianity “is actually seen by its great interpreter, St. Paul, as liberation – from the asceticism of Judaism’s commandments. The Christian laity operates in a world where the decision of whether and how to restrain one’s passions is primarily the product of free choice.” Thus perfection “is a free choice, not a universal duty.” However, Christianity is more like Judaism when it is not for the laity (i.e. for the priesthood and the clergy). This is why, “whereas the entire male Jewish community stands together before God, the Christian community stands before him sharply divided between those who live in the ‘secular world,’ where religious demands are minimal, and those who dedicate their life to God, who face very exacting religious and moral demands.” Kleinberg is quick to point out that the lay Christian’s life is not one of ease, and that Christianity demands an adherence to strict moral standards. But the dichotomy between the laity and clergy means that many Christians “are left with much vaguer guidelines” for how to behave than the Jews. Instead, “they must decide whether they find grace in the eyes of the Lord by a complex process of psychological self-examination that always leaves room for existential scruples.”
The third article, by Tali Artman-Partock, looks at the relationship between prostitution and repentance in Christian and Jewish literature in order to demonstrate how each religion offers a very different view of women and penitence. The nun/prostitute dichotomy is not a new one in either Judaism or Christianity. But “it is actually the Christian perception, which ostensibly should be less familiar to the Israeli reader, that has struck roots in the collective consciousness here. In this view, prostitution is a profession,” and the woman is someone who has sold her soul to the devil. As such, she represents “the forces of temptation and darkness … and is capable of diverting [the man] from the straight and narrow path.” In Jewish rabbinic literature, on the other hand, “prostitution is not necessarily a profession; often, it is a situation in which men and women find themselves due to certain circumstances, and which they are able to get themselves out of as easily as they got into it.” Both religions use this connection between prostitution and sin to address the issue of repentance. In Christianity, this even gave rise to a new literary genre in the fourth century that focused on stories of the repentant prostitute. These stories “reinforced a Christian axiom – the spiritual principle holding that there is no one who cannot find God and repent.” In Judaism, on the other hand, “the prostitute is God’s agent and the wise man is the ‘sinner.’” Thus “the harlot does not sin less or more than the man, but it seems as if there is no threat hovering over her soul.” In the Christian stories, it is always the woman who repents, while in the Jewish ones, repentance belongs to the man – prompted, no less, by the woman prostitute. After examining several stories from each religious tradition, Artman-Partock concludes that “Christianity uses its stories about repentant prostitutes to create a separation between holy and profane, between the prostitute and the nun. But the Jewish sages, in the framework of a similar narrative, at times find the holiness within the profane. The harlot serves the Lord even while holding her strange line of work, and through her, He carries out His mission.”
Christians in Israel
Haaretz, September 25, 2012
Nurit Wurgaft interviews Bendato DiBitonto, a young Italian monk living in Jerusalem and completing his Ph.D. in Hebrew literature at Hebrew University. “What,” she asks, “causes a 31-year-old man to become a monk? And in a country where Christian are a minority – almost a persecuted minority?” DiBitonto explains that “I have always been drawn to the person of Jesus. It was not the church lifestyle that drew me, but this man, who speaks eternal words and gives us the opportunity to commit to him in a relationship that very much resembles a marriage, but one that is lived for others.” DiBitonto relates his life story, which is the typical secular Italian story, although he acknowledges that he always had an awareness of God in his life. “From a very young age,” he says, “when I was alone in a room, I talked to Jesus all the time, as though he were my invisible friend.” After high school, DiBitonto decided to study languages at university, including biblical Hebrew, which, he says, “opened a door to a whole new world.” He explains: “I was better able to understand things that Jesus had said to his disciples, since there are things that you cannot understand if you do not know the Jewish background.” After graduating from university, DiBitonto entered seminary and eventually came to Israel to complete his doctoral studies in Hebrew literature. “All at once,” he says, “everything came together and I felt that everything had led me to this place. … Here I found a community that prays in Hebrew, like I do, when I am closed in my room. … There is an immense work that needs to be done in order to translate those prayers, since one of the goals of the community here is to express the Christian faith in Jewish Hebrew.” DiBitonto still has six years of study before he will qualify to become a priest. When asked if he is afraid he might fail, he answers: “Of course I am afraid, but I trust God more than myself. God’s faithfulness is for me the rock upon which I can build my house, because I am unfaithful, I turn my back all the time. … But God always comes looking for me. Apart from that, I have no guarantees.”
Christian Zionism
Yediot Aharonot, September 28, 2012
This article reports on a donation made by Israel-loving Christians of 500 armored backpacks for school children living in Ashkelon. The backpacks are meant to act as bullet-proof “vests” in times of missile attacks, when the children need to lie on the ground. “The backpacks will increase the children’s sense of security,” says the mayor of Ashkelon, Benny Vaaknin.
Archeology
Yom LeYom, September 20; Hadashoti, September 21, 2012
Two articles reported on the water reservoir from the Second Temple period that was recently discovered outside the Western Wall in Jerusalem (see “Archeology” in the September 11, 2012, Media Review).