During the week covered by this review, we received 11 articles on the following subjects:
Conversion to Christianity
Conversion to Judaism
Archeology
Art
The Bible
Christian Sites
Political Issues
Missionary Activity – Correction
Conversion to Christianity
Yisrael HaYom, October 25, 2013
This two-page article focuses on Omar Molinda and Majid a-Shafi, Muslim converts to Christianity.
Omar Molinda is a Ugandan priest who has been receiving treatment in Israel for the past two years after his face was burned in an acid attack outside his church in Uganda. The reason for the attack was Molinda’s “apostasy” – he was born into a Muslim family (the 52nd of 54 children), but converted to Christianity at the age of 18 when someone presented him with a Christian New Testament. Molinda converted in secret, but it wasn’t long before his Muslim community got wind of his conversion and began persecuting him. His family disowned him, and years of abuse culminated in the acid attack that nearly killed him. The attackers left a note for Molinda, explaining why they want to kill him: “1. Omar converted to Christianity. 2. He promotes love for Israel. 3. He preaches against Islam. 4. He dared to disagree with Shari‘ah law.”
Even after the attack, Molinda was not safe in Uganda – someone tried to inject him with poison as he lay helpless in his hospital bed. He was flown to India, where a large Muslim community threatened to kill him. Some of his Christian and Jewish friends banded together and managed to fly him to Israel for treatment. He arrived here in January 2012. It was in Israel that his life was saved. Says Molinda: “I came to Israel in bad shape. I couldn’t swallow, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move my head and neck. My body was rotting. I lost my nose and my mouth dropped downwards.” The Israeli medical system did wonders for Molinda, and doctors here have restored his face in remarkable ways. “My soul has been spiritually bound to this place for decades,” says Molinda, “and now also my body.”
The second half of this article focuses on Majid a-Shafi, an Egyptian who converted to Christianity from Islam after he began to understand the extent of the injustice practiced against Christians in Egypt. A-Shafi was badly persecuted, and at one point was even imprisoned for his faith and underwent extreme torture. He was sentenced to death by one of the courts, but managed to escape just before he was to be hanged. A-Shafi decided that his only hope for survival was in Israel, so he made his way to Sinai, where he crossed the border illegally in 1998, was picked up by the army, spent 15 months in prison in Beer Sheva, and was eventually granted asylum (with the help of the UN and the Christian Embassy) – the first political refugee to come out of Egypt in 70 years.
Both Molinda and a-Shafi are evangelical Christians working with the Christian Embassy to promote love for Israel. “Muslim extremists preach hate for Israel,” says Molinda, “and they succeed in making non-Muslims hate Israel for reasons that are based on lies that they invent as part of their anti-Israel ideology.” Molinda explains that real Christians must love Israel from a spiritual perspective. Loving Israel is a duty. “Israel is the cradle of Christianity. What we call ‘Christianity’ is actually Jewish history. This is why I am very connected to the Jewish people.” A-Shafi adds that loving Israel is something that must also reach the personal level since Israel is the only democratic country in the Middle East – people of all faiths are able to live here in freedom.
According to a-Shafi, Christians and Jews must unite, must stand together against anti-Semitism, which is growing worldwide. The Jews can’t fight against it on their own, he says. They must recognize that evangelical Christians are their greatest ally. A-Shafi is interested in the rights of minorities all over the world. He explains that the Arab Spring is actually an Arab Winter since it has enabled appalling persecution of minority groups in all the Middle Eastern countries where Islam is the majority religion. “Last year,” he says, “more than 165,000 Christians were tortured for their faith, and between 200,000 and 300,000 Christians around the world are being persecuted, discriminated against, or harassed.” It is his goal to fight against this discrimination, while at the same time promoting love for Israel.
Conversion to Judaism
Yisrael HaYom, October 25, 2013
Ya’acov Levitam interviews Zechariah and Hadassah Shelton, a couple from the United States who have just immigrated to Israel after converting to Judaism some years ago. Both Zechariah and Hadassah were born into Christian families in Michigan, but neither one of them stayed within their religious tradition. Zechariah was an alcoholic when he had his first encounter with God. After that experience he started reading his Bible. “I knew that the New Testament couldn’t be the truth,” says Zechariah, “because there’s an older and wiser book: the Torah. It’s the beginning of all things. … I never felt Jesus was my answer. Christianity is preoccupied with nonsense: the Easter bunny that brings Easter eggs, or Christmas, which has become the shopping mall holiday. When I read the Torah in English, I said to myself: this makes sense. This is how I want to conduct myself. My former life was a lie, not the full story.”
Hadassah, on the other hand, experienced a debilitating physical ailment that put her out of commission for months. “I kept asking why this was happening to me,” says Hadassah. “At church I sang in the choir, and I always sang songs to God. My disease made me realize that I’m not invincible, like I’d always thought. My life wasn’t perfect. … I felt I needed an immediate change.”
Both Zechariah and Hadassah converted to Judaism. They were then married, had a son, and moved to Israel.
Archeology
The Jerusalem Post, October 21, 2013
Controversial filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici was awarded with a Gold Dolphin at the Cannes Corporate Media and TV Awards for his documentary The Resurrection Tomb Mystery. In this documentary, Jacobovici employed “ground-penetrating radar and robotic cameras to explore the contents of a nearly pristine 1st century tomb. Jacobovici said that “it’s especially great to be recognized in the technology and science category. We believe that our robotic cameras pushed the envelope of Jerusalem based archeology and brought back images that will be debated for decades. I think we should start looking at the beginning of Christianity from the perspective of Jewish history and Israeli archeology. It’s a field that’s been dominated for too long by Christian theology.”
Art
HaHayim HaTovim, October 8, 2013
Dr. Adam Ackerman writes about artist Holman Hunt, who lived in the 19th century and is famous for his paintings of the Holy Land. Hunt’s interest in this land was mostly related to the life and work of Jesus, but he was also a Zionist and appreciated Herzl’s endeavors to bring the Jews back to their homeland. Hunt returned to Jerusalem several times, and even bought a piece of land on what is now Prophets Street, where he built himself a home and a painting studio. It is interesting to note that Hunt, as a pre-Raphaelite painter (meaning he combined realism with romanticism), wanted to use models that were true to the topics he was exploring. He therefore hired some Jewish models for one of the temple scenes in the life of Jesus, but these “quit” when they realized that the painting might be displayed in a church. Hunt had to finish the painting in London, using Jews who had converted to Christianity as his replacement models.
The Bible
The Jerusalem Post, October 18; Yisrael HaYom, The Jerusalem Post, October 23; Calcalist, The Jerusalem Post, October 24, 2013
Several snippets reported on the new exhibition of biblical texts which is opening at the Bible Lands Museum later this week (see October 20, 2013, Media Review).
The Jerusalem Post ran a longer article on the subject, interviewing the president of American craft store Hobby Lobby, Steve Green, who flew to Israel for the opening of the exhibit. Says Green: “I think there is a certain desire amongst Christians to visit Israel, and Jerusalem specifically, and hopefully this exhibit will give them the motivation to come and see the land that Jesus walked.”
The paper mentions that Green’s company was recently in the news when one of the chain-store’s employees was quoted as saying that Hobby Lobby doesn’t cater to Jewish people. When asked about the incident, Green remarked that “it certainly [does] not represent his family or his company.” He added: “Whether the comment was ever made, we just don’t know. … We’ve always had an appreciation for the Jewish tradition and the Jewish faith, and feel like we have an affinity as Christians for the Jewish people. I think that people realize the involvement that we’ve had with Israel; they realize that there’s no merit to the story.”
Regarding the Bible Lands Museum exhibition, Green stated that “our message is similar to [theirs], and that is for people to engage, to know the Scriptures, to know what has been given to us through the Jewish tradition.”
Christian Sites
Haaretz, October 25, 2013
During the olive harvest season, Moshe Gilad recommends places worth visiting for their olive trees in the area of Jerusalem. He constructs his article around the theme of the Messiah being anointed with oil when he returns – attempting to guess which of these trees might produce the oil which will be used for the anointing. Gilad’s tour includes the monastery at Dir Rafaf, the Garden of Gethsemane, Ramat Rachel, Neve Sha’anan, the Swedish House on Prophets Street, and the Jerusalem Promenade. Of the Garden of Gethsemane, Gilad writes that it is the place Jesus went to with his disciples “after his last supper. … Here, according to Christian tradition, Judas Iscariot betrayed his teacher, and it is here that the Roman soldiers arrested Jesus.”
Political Issues
Haaretz, October 25, 2013
This two-page article covers the events surrounding Israel’s peace agreement with Egypt in 1977-78. Of interest is a short paragraph that describes President Carter’s shock at hearing Syrian president Assad declare that Jesus was a Syrian. Assad was complaining about the geographical division of Syria into smaller nation-states (Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and Syria), telling the Christian-born Carter that “the holy religions, Christianity and Islam, were born in our backyard. Christian Jesus was himself a Syrian – before the division.”
Missionary Activity – Correction
Last week’s Media Review reported on the coffee shop whose kashrut license was suspended due to missionary activity. Please note that the coffee shop is Forte Cafe, not Porta Cafe.