Messianic Jewish Impact in Israel
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
While the American Messianic Jewish community continues to spin on its heels, debating over such poignant issues as the incorporation of Talmud study and requiring gentiles to undergo official conversion ceremonies, the Messianic community in Israel is making some serious in-roads into being recognized as a legitimate, culturally and ethnically Jewish sect. While all of the credit goes to HaShem, the work of Calev Myers of the Jerusalem Institute of Justice deserves a serious round of applause. This guy is basically THE spokesperson for Israeli Messianics. Some clips:
Orthodox youth burn New Testaments [JPost May 20, '08]
Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament in a religious Israeli town.Court applies Law of Return to Messianic Jews because of fathers [JPost April 22, '08]
Or Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon said missionaries recently entered a neighborhood in the predominantly religious town of 34,000 in central Israel, distributing hundreds of New Testaments and missionary material.
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Calev Myers, an attorney who represents Messianic Jews, or Jews who accept Jesus as their savior, demanded in an interview with Army Radio that all those involved be put on trial. He estimated there were 10,000 Messianic Jews, who are also known as Jews for Jesus, in Israel.
Messianic Jews are entitled to Israeli citizenship according to the Law of Return if their father is Jewish, according to a precedent-setting ruling handed down last week by the High Court of Justice.What is truly amazing is the story surrounding the participation of a Messianic Jewish girl in Israel's annual Bible quiz:
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These petitioners, represented by attorneys Yehuda Raveh and Calev Myers, argued that they were eligible for new immigrant status and citizenship because they were the offsprings of fathers who were Jewish, not because they themselves were Jewish according to the definition of "Who is a Jew" in the Law of Return.
Organizers of Bible Quiz in Israel Get Question of Their Own: 'Who is a Jew?' [Jewish Daily Forward May 6, '08]
The organizers of Israel's annual state-run Bible Quiz are used to asking tough questions. But as this year's contest approached, the tables were turned as they were forced to answer one: Who is a Jew?Pushing our legitimate identity as Jews from a legal angle, Myers is bringing the crux of the "Who is a Jew" argument to the forefront of the Israeli legal landscape. By doing so, he is laying the groundwork to secure a future for Messianic Jews to live as Jews in Israel. Baruch HaShem!
The Bible Quiz is a popular highlight of the country's yearly Independence Day celebrations, introduced by the prime minister and broadcast live on national television. Thousands of Israelis tune in to see teenagers battle to determine who knows the most about the Good Book.
Contestants come from Israel and the Diaspora. The only prerequisite for entry is that you have to be Jewish.
There are no records of contestants who had been excluded because their Jewishness was contested at any point in the quiz's 45-year history. In mid-April, however, a furious controversy erupted following the disclosure that Bat-El Levy, one of the four Israeli finalists this year, comes from a West Bank family of so-called messianic Jews who believe in Jesus as the messiah.
Rabbis and anti-missionary activists, already shaken by a recent Supreme Court decision permitting 12 messianics to immigrate under the Law of Return, demanded that the 17-year-old be disqualified. Opponents charged that her participation would help her community advance what critics call creeping legitimacy as a variant of Judaism.
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"The reaction to this contestant shines a light on a phobia that exists toward messianic Jews in Israel," said attorney Calev Myers, de facto spokesman for Israel's 100 messianic congregations.
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Among the quiz organizers, “nobody was happy” upon learning of the contestant’s faith, said Shlomo Ben-Tzura, who is in charge of Israeli entries.
"We talked with lawyers, but couldn't do anything," he said. "Everybody wanted to say she isn't a Jew, but nobody could do anything." He said that as the daughter of a Jewish woman, she meets the standard criteria to be considered a Jew under Halacha, or traditional rabbinic law. Legally, he added, there was no room to challenge her status, since she is listed as Jewish in her state papers — which do not always follow halachic definitions.
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"Messianic Jews are widely despised because they claim to be Jewish while declaring a belief in 'Yeshua,'" explained Dan Cohn Sherbok, a Reform rabbi who is a theology professor at the University of Wales in Britain and has written widely on messianic Judaism. "However, what is accepted as the Jewish community is so diverse and pluralistic, even including groups like humanists who are actually nontheists, that anybody will have a hard time excluding messianics and justifying doing so."
The cultural implications of these legal decisions are radical. Not only do they legitimize our Jewish identity in the eyes of our fellow Jews; they establish our inherent Jewishness in the eyes of our gentile counterparts. This will have a massive effect on the way Messianic Judaism is practiced by future generations.
However, by arguing that Messianic Jews are Jewish on the basis of genetics, i.e.; the Messianic Jews with patrilineal Jewish blood are deemed to be ethnic Jews, may be an argument that winds up setting us back in certain ways. As long as Jewishness is viewed as any kind of genetically-bestowed identity (whether it is termed a "race" or an "ethnicity" if it's blood-dependent, you're either born into it or you're not) we run the risk of contradicting Torah principles. Remember: the foreigner was accepted into the tribe as long as they accepted the cultural norms (Torah practice) of the Hebrew people. We cannot ignore the lessons of Ruth and Romans 9-11, among other scriptures, if we are to truly understand who we are as a people.
I would also warn against portraying the Messianic population in Israel as a "persecuted minority." Jews the world-over are a persecuted minority; the major world powers persecute Israel on a daily basis. It is absurd to begin crying foul when your own brother picks on you if you're both under the knife. We'll never establish any kind of true unity if we enter into a race with the Orthodox sect to see who is the most persecuted Jew. That's ridiculous. We should simply state the facts of our case and rest on the truth, because it is the truth--not whining--that will set us free.
Exciting things are happening in the land of Israel. Baruch haShem for the servants of Adonai!
Labels: Calev Myers, Israel, Jerusalem Institute of Justice, Jewish Identity, Jewishness, Messianic Judaism
posted by Shoshana @ 6:58 PM
