During the week covered by this review, we received 9 articles on the following subjects:
Anti-missionary Activities
Jewish/Christian Relations
Christians and the Holocaust
Anti-missionary Activities
Kfar Chabad, June 30, 2022; Hashavua B’Elad, June 30, 2022
As reported in our previous review, Yad L’Achim claimed that they managed to persuade an unidentified “senior Israeli missionary” to abandon the Messianic “cult of liars and cheats” and return to Judaism, after asking him a “very difficult theological question.”
Jewish/Christian relations
Jerusalem Post, July 5, 2022
This was an interview with Larry Huch, a 72-year-old Texan Pastor who visited Israel after thirty years of building churches around the world. He shared how God spoke to him outside the ruins of an ancient synagogue in Capernaum, telling him: “I’m going to teach you to reread the Bible through the eyes of a Jewish Jesus.” Huch then changed his whole approach toward Christianity and Judaism. “I realized that as a Christian, I’ve been lied to, in a lot of things concerning Israel and the Jewish people,” he explained. “So much of what the Jewish people have suffered over the last few thousands of years has been because of what the Church is teaching.” His new mission from that day on, he said, was to “re-educate the Church that the Jewish people and the land of the Jewish people are our brothers and sisters, and our job is to stand with the Jewish people … with the nation of Israel and to speak out wherever and whenever we can to defeat antisemitism.” Larry visited Israel last week to attend an award ceremony in his honor arranged by Keren HaYesod. The organization presented him with the John Henry Patterson Guardian of Zion Award. “We selected Pastor Larry as the recipient of this inaugural award in recognition and deep appreciation for his exemplary leadership and unwavering commitment to Keren HaYesod and the Jewish people,” they said in a statement.
Rega, June 30, 2022
The Jewish community in Norway announced that it will petition the country’s supreme court regarding Norway’s new law about national holidays, which guarantees all employees 12 days off, many of which are Christian holidays. Under this system, Jews and members of other religions who work in the public sector are required to work on some of their holidays. The Jewish community is requesting that observant Jews get more of their holidays recognized in the national calendar system.
Rega, June 30, 2022
This article dealt with the Disputation of Paris in 1240, which began following the request of Nicholas Donin, a Jewish convert to Christianity. Donin sent a letter to the Pope in which he presented evidence that the Talmud preached against Christianity. The Pope responded three years later with a request to hold a formal trial, which took place in Paris. According to the article, the four rabbis who defended the Talmud against Donin’s accusations were limited in their answers, and failed to convince the court. The court ruled that Donin was correct, and ordered all manuscripts of the Talmud to be burned. Following this decree, Talmud manuscripts were burned in many places in Europe, often in a main square to the cheers of the local residents.
Hamodia, July 7, 2022; Yated Ne’eman, July 8, 2022
A Brazilian pastor who was filmed praying for another Holocaust was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Ricardo Sidi, the lawyer who represented the Brazilian Jewish community called it “a historic sentence in the fight against anti-Semitism… the largest penalty applied in Brazil for this type of crime, which will help to inhibit this odious practice.”
Jerusalem Post, July 7, 2022
A group of pro-Israel Pentecostal Christians in New Zealand helped thwart BDS efforts to prevent the screening of an Israeli film at the Doc Edge Festival. The film in question was an Israeli documentary, “Dead Sea Guardians,” that tells the story of three environmental activists – an Israeli, a Palestinian and a Jordanian – who gathered swimmers from around the world to swim in the Dead Sea, in order to raise awareness of its alarming situation. The group came to the screening and held a demonstration in support of Israel, carrying signs and singing HaTikvah. Israeli Ambassador Ran Yaakoby said, “We are proud of our friends who are willing to come from afar to support Israeli creativity and its presentation here.”
Christians and the Holocaust
Haaretz, July 10, 2022
Seventy-five years ago, John Grauel aka “John the Priest,” an American Methodist minister, sailed aboard the Exodus 1947. The boat was carrying 4,500 Holocaust survivors to the British Mandate of Palestine, when British destroyers intercepted it, ramming the ship and boarding it violently. John testified before the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, pleading the cause of Jewish immigration. Golda Meir later said that this was a key factor in bringing about the United Nations Partition Plan of 1947, which created the State of Israel. His full testimony, which was never published, was discovered recently by Prof. Elad Ben-Dror of the Bar-Ilan University. The article described parts of John’s testimony concerning the Exodus and the situation of the Jewish refugees in Europe.