During the week covered by this review, we received 6 articles on the following subjects:
Jerusalem / Political Issues
Israeli Attitudes Towards Christianity
Anti-Missionary Attitudes
Christians and the Holocaust
Jerusalem / Political Issues
Yedioth Ahronoth, January 31, 2021
This article reported that despite nearly 40% of Jerusalem residents identifying as either Christian or Muslim, the Municipality of Jerusalem has allotted no funds to constructing or fixing religious buildings belonging to Christians or Muslims. By contrast, about 20 million shekels a year are given to Orthodox Jews in service of their building needs (synagogues, cemeteries, etc.). The article noted that other Jewish streams are also neglected by the Municipality. Nevertheless, between 2016-2020, the Municipality of Jerusalem put 105 million shekels towards religious buildings associated with Jews, and none towards religious buildings associated with Christians or Muslims.
Israeli Attitudes Towards Christianity
Haaretz, February 5, 2021; Haaretz, February 2, 2021
David M. Neuhaus’s piece that appeared in Haaretz last week was re-published in English under the title, “From Indifference to Hatred”. Responding to the original Hebrew article, one person wrote a letter, arguing that Father Neuhaus neglected to mention the reasons Jews may feel enmity towards Christians or Christianity, that is, the cruel persecutions Jews experienced for many generations as a result of Christianity. The author of the letter said that the poor relations between Jews and Catholics shifted with Pope John XXIII, but that even now Jews run into hateful sentiments aimed at them from Christian clergy. The author further argued, against Neuhaus’s contention that “Yeshu” is an acronym in Hebrew for “may his name and memory be blotted out”, that the letter “a” gets dropped at the end of “Yeshua” only because of transliteration.
Anti-Missionary Attitudes
Matzav Ruach, January 29, 2021
This was a general piece about the threat of missionaries and mission work. The author argued that the phenomenon of mission work is not new, and that it has been widespread in Israel for decades. There are daily reports of missionaries proselytizing in central areas, attempting to convert Jews by distributed missionary materials. But the bigger problem, said the author, is proselytization on the internet. Well-funded missionary organizations operate without restriction on social media. While they are forbidden from proselytizing on websites aimed at minors, there are no restrictions on other widely used social media platforms. The author called on Israeli politicians to address this issue.
Christians and the Holocaust
Hadashot Haifa VeHaTzafon, February 2, 2021; Yeted Ne’eman, February 5, 2021
The first article reported that a ceremony was held on International Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Ezer L’Haver, where a representative from the International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem, Yehudit Shatz, addressed those gathered.
The second article was about the French village of Chambon, which during the Second World War, mobilized to save the lives of many Jews. The local Protestant pastor, Andre Trokma, and his wife Magda, convinced hundreds of families in the area to hide Jews in their homes, including many Jewish children who had been separated from their families. Jews in hiding were brought food, drink, clothes, and fake identities and documents over the course of three years. Some were given assistance and escaped to Switzerland. Trukma’s cousin, Daniel, who ran an orphanage, was arrested in 1943 and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp with many of the children he hid, where he died.