Identity & Faith
Monday, April 05, 2010
From the JPost's most recent interview with Natan Sharansky:
I was speaking just a few days ago to a group of Americans, all religious, who made aliya in the last year. They asked me, how is it that you, who made such a difficult aliya and fought to come for so many years, are now shifting from a focus on aliya to Jewish identity.
I told them, “You know what, you know that the Kadosh baruch hu [God] gave the order – ‘lech lecha [Go].’” If there are Jews who don’t want to hear the voice of God, do you think that they will hear a shaliah [emissary] from the Jewish Agency telling them to make aliya?
It’s impossible to force our emissaries to compete with God and try to shout even louder than Him to make the message heard. You can’t be louder than God.
So what we have to do is help the Jews hear the voice of God. And how do we do that? By strengthening their feeling of Jewish connection, of Jewish pride and tradition, and their connection to Israel. That’s our function. Our function is not to impose on them what God doesn’t succeed in imposing, but to make them hear the voice.
Labels: Israel, Jewish, Jewishness, Judaism, Passover, Sharansky
posted by Shoshana @ 5:33 PM
Confluence of Cultures: Evangelicals Addressing Birthright on Zionism?
Friday, November 06, 2009
Gordon Robertson to Speak at Birthright Alum Event
Last year, Birthright said it wouldn’t permit Messianic Jews to take advantage of its free trips. "There is unanimity in Jewish life that individuals who choose the Messianic path have chosen a path that separates them from the accepted parameters of Jewishness in contemporary Jewish society," Birthright's CEO, Gidi Mark, said at the time. The alumni network says it’s not troubled by that disconnect. "We're not asking him to come and talk about Christianity or Jews trying to get Jews to believe in Christianity. It's not the topic," a Birthright NEXT official told the Jewish Week.I just want to make one thing perfectly clear: The day there is "unanimity in Jewish life" is the day the pigs stop flying and land on our Passover dinner plates.
Labels: Birthright, Christian Zionism, Israel, Jewish Identity, Jewishness, Judaism, Messianic Judaism, Zionism
posted by Shoshana @ 4:53 PM
Who Am I? What Am I Doin' Here?
Friday, October 23, 2009
An interesting post on Messianic Jewish identity and blogger discussions thereof caught my eye. In it, the author writes:
Let me say it again: Messianic Judaism will never be a legitimate form of Judaism as long as Yeshua is Lord.Which leads me to ask a series of questions:
- What is Judaism?
- Who defines Judaism?
- What is the difference between Messianic Judaism and Judaism?
- Does that difference depend on who is the one defining Judaism?
The author argues:
There's a great inferiority complex in Messianic Judaism. Some of its leaders are trying very hard to make it fit in with greater Judaism, even to the point of alienating its own gentile friends and abandoning the New Testament model of joint, equal fellowship of Jews and gentiles.Which leads me to ask why a Messianic Jew is defining a desire to relate to other Jews as a method for destroying relationships with gentiles? In the context of his argument why are the Jewish people still the scapegoat to be blamed for the "problems" of Jewish-Goyim relations?
Even more importantly, in the context of this conversation, why are Messianic Jews pinning one group against the other? And why is a Messianic Jew using Judaism as the fall guy?
One of the bloggers cited by this author writes:
by our own fault, and the simple overwhelming number of non-Jewish followers of Yeshua, the result of Messianic Judaism has largely been reduced to being a Torah revival for Christians.To which I ask, what kind of "Torah revival" encourages gentile believers to continue behaving like gentiles, when the true purpose of Torah is to create a viable, sustainable, holy (a.k.a. "set aside"/"different") culture known as Judaism? If these goyim are truly adhering to Torah, doesn't that render them goyim-no-more? Aren't they, according to Rav Shaul, Jews in the sight of G-d?
Then again, I suppose that argument depends on whose eyes are G-d's, and that itself is dependent upon...who? The masses? The leadership? The blogger publishing a post? This blogger cites that "Nearly 95% of all Messianic congregations' websites state the purpose of a Messianic congregation is 'to be a congregation of Jews and non-Jews worshiping together.'" So, I suppose then that the difference between Jew and goy reside in the methodology that brings the most people in seats and the most money in the collection plates. Nothing much has changed; just ask the Guy who knocked over the merchants' tables for turning His Father's house into a "den of theives."
This particular blogger goes on to say:
It is not faith in Yeshua that is largely the stumbling block keeping us from effectively being a home to Jewish believers and seekers – it is our own hang ups.This is absolutely true. The psychoses of the Messianic world are unmeasureable, unfathomable, and oftentimes so ridiculous and absurd it is a wonder that there is any functioning Messianic world at all, but for the mercy of HaShem Himself. The Messianic world has become a group of glorified navel-gazers, obsessed with seeing demonic forces around every corner and behind every sling and arrow shot our way. In short, they are trying so hard to be holy that they've forgotten how to be human. Didn't our Messiah dwell on earth to do exactly that--to illustrate the marriage between human and divine, to emphasize our inability in order to strengthen our faith in His ability?
Yet another blogger cited in the original complaint argues:
God, as I see it, was moving the hearts of Jews not only to follow Jesus as the long-promised Messiah, but also to identify as Jews and eventually to return to Judaism.Which again, leads me to ask:
- What is Judaism?
- Who defines Judaism?
- What is the difference between Messianic Judaism and Judaism?
- Does that difference depend on who is the one defining Judaism?
And, also:
- When G-d speaks of teshuva, is He speaking of a return to "Judaism" or a return to Torah?
- What is the difference between "Judaism" and "Torah"?
This blogger continues:
Increasingly, however, in the 1980’s and 1990’s, Messianic Judaism became a haven for non-Jews looking to find a restoration of a perceived early church or some alternative to a church that had grown soft on Biblical practice and strong on revivalist tradition.Whether or not that is the reason for increased gentile involvement, I cannot say. But the questions this blogger asks are cheeky, at best, and completely ignorant of prophecy, at worst. Since when did Messianic Judaism become the "He-Jews Goyim-Haters Club"? Perhaps since it has become populated largely by Americanized, gentilized, Christianized people with absolutely no connection, no history, and no truly expressed interest in anything perceptively culturally Jewish outside of tallitot and shofarim that can be sold off to investors who phone in their donations by credit card.
In other words, something God had been doing amongst Jewish people became a predominantly Gentile movement.
We could stop here and ask a lot of questions:
–What are some good reasons for Gentiles to be involved in Messianic Judaism?
–What are some less than helpful reasons for Gentiles to be involved?
–How can Messianic Jewish synagogues encourage the right Gentiles to stay and the wrong ones to move on and form their own movements?
In other words, Messianic Judaism suffers from the same cultural influenza that has been plaguing Diaspora Judaism since its inception in 70 C.E.: It is battling for cultural freedom against an opposition that is larger, stronger, and more overwhelming in nature than any one person or group could ever seemingly consume.
The reason Messianic Judaism is suffering an identity crisis is not because it favors gentiles over Jews or vice-versa. Messianic Judaism is suffering an identity crisis because it is a Biblical faith displaced into a world gone mad. Messianic Judaism is "in the world, but not of the world".
As to Messianic Judaism's relationship to and with Judaism at large, I'll revisit the questions I've been asking since the beginning of this post:
- What is Judaism?
Classically, Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people. It is not to be confused with Jewishness, which is the cultural expression of the Jewish people, although the two are often easily intertwined. - Who defines Judaism?
Here is the short answer: The Word of G-d is the only true, unalterable authority on Judaism.
That being said, Judaism's original definition began with Avraham in the desert, continued with Moshe at Sinai, and has been ruminated upon by thousands of prophets, judges, kings, scholars, and laymen since. What the world considers "mainstream" Judaism today is often called "Rabbinic" Judaism because it is a system born out of the musings of Torah scholars faced with the crisis of Diaspora, one created in response to the destruction of the Temple, the loss of control of Jerusalem and greater Israel, and the forced dispersion of the Jewish people into the gentile world. The Council at Yavneh, whose precepts governed the nascence of today's Rabbinic Judaism, crafted a religion that relied on the loss of sovereignty and the ensuing religious and cultural enslavement as a fact. This leads one to question the relevance of Rabbinic Judaism in a world where the State of Israel exists as a sovereign nation once again. It also leads one to question the relevance of such a religious system in light of the teachings and the salvation of Yeshua the Messiah.
- What is the difference between Messianic Judaism and Judaism?
The short answer: Messianic Jews believe that Yeshua is the promised Messiah, as prophesied about in Isaiah 53, et.al.
The long answer has to do mainly with the Council at Yavneh; along with creating a religion in response to Diaspora, these Pharisees (antecedents of today's Rabbis) developed a liturgy that denied Yeshua and, at points, even the very need for a Messiah. It spiraled out from there. - Does that difference depend on who is the one defining Judaism?
No two Jews can agree on anything, so why should they agree on a definition for "Judaism"?
And, also:
- When G-d speaks of teshuva, is He speaking of a return to "Judaism" or a return to Torah?
Since G-d wrote Torah, since "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with G-d, and the Word was G-d" I'm tending to believe that teshuva has less and less to do with religious practice and more and more to do with developing a relationship with G-d through the study and knowing of His Word, "the light which gives life." - What is the difference between "Judaism" and "Torah"?
See above.
The simple fact of the matter is that as long as Messianics continue to draw lines between Messianic Judaism, Rabbinic/Mainstream Judaism, and the gentile world, they will continue to "other" themselves into an ineffectual corner. It is also true that they cannot survive if they seek to imitate anyone else--Jewish or gentile alike. Messianic Jews must simply spend less time trying to be defined and more time defining themselves--not in light of the way everyone else thinks, but in light of the way G-d has always meant us to be.
Labels: Christian, Hashivenu, identity, Jewish, Judaism, Messianic Judaism, MJAA, Rabbinic Judaism, Torah, UMJC
posted by Shoshana @ 3:35 PM
Hey Dickow- Scarf This!
Sunday, February 01, 2009
TBN- Gregory Dickow, Sunday Feb 1st @ 5:30 pm EST
For a gift of $38 or more, you get an "authentic reproduction" of the "prayer shawl Jesus wore". According to Mr. Dickow, you can "wear it as a scarf" because there is "no power in it" and it "doesn't mean anything" but it will "remind you" of His healing power.
Wear it... as a... scarf???????
It..doesn't...mean...anything?
(Farecht goyim.)
This is not the first time the tallit has been used as a fundraising gimmick by Christian tele-preachers. Yet, I'm not seeing any great outcry of "FOUL" from the Jewish community, so I feel the need to get up on my soapbox and state a few facts.
Misnomer #1: The Style of the Tallit The history of the Talit, from MyTalit.com
In early Judaism, Tzitzit were used for the corners of ordinary everyday clothing; most Jewish people at the time wore clothing which consisted of a sheet-like item wrapped around the body, comparable to the abayah (blanket) worn by the Bedouins for protection from sun and rain, and to the stola/toga of ancient Greece and Rome. As recorded in the Talmud, these were sometimes worn partly doubled, and sometimes with the ends thrown over the shoulders.So, Yeshua didn't wear the tallit that we are familiar with today. Therefore, it is completely incorrect for any Christian tele-preacher to hold up a contemporary tallit and say, "This is what Jesus wore." It is a stylistic fallacy. This could possibly be considered a minor point, I know, but it leads into...
After the 13th century CE, Tzitzit began to be worn on new inner garments, known as Arba Kanfos, rather than the outer garments. This inner garment was a 3ft by 1ft rectangle, with a hole in the center for the head to pass through; the modern Tallit evolved from this medieval item.
Misnomer #2: The Purpose of the Tallit The tallit is not a "scarf" that has "no real meaning". The tallit is a mode of expressing Israeli identity. Biblically speaking, the tallit was not the required garb. The tzitzit, or fringes, are the required fashion statement (Numbers 15:37-41) which had a very real purpose. At the time white fringes with a blue thread were required by G-d to be placed on the four corners of Israelite garments, ALL tribes in the region were using dyed fringes to identify themselves on the battlefield. Israel needed to identify herself, therefore, she needed her own set of fringes. If we are to translate Biblical wardrobe into contemporary prayer shawl, we must understand that the change in fashion did not change the command; on the contrary, by retaining a mode of wardrobe that allowed for the wearing of tzitzit, the Jewish people acknowledged the timelessness of the command to wear tzitzit. The wearing of the tallit is the literal, physical acknowledgment of Jewish identity for the whole world to see. Hence the meaning of the prophecy in Zechariah 8:23.
My challenge to the tallit-selling tele-preachers is this: If you want to sell it, why don't you start wearing it? And if you want to wear it, why don't you start living it, and fighting for it, and dying for it like the rest of us instead of just making money off of it like the same thieves in the Temple whom your Messiah lashed out against in fury?
The truth is, if even one of those Christian pastors had to be embroiled in the constant battle surrounding Jewish existence, they'd pull those Communion Cups out of storage and start selling them in an instant. The same Torah that holds the mitzvot of tzitzit says something about that as well: "Is there a man here who is afraid and fainthearted? He should go back home; otherwise his fear may demoralize his comrades as well." (Deut. 20:8)
These tele-preachers have no clue how offensive they are, let alone what a stumbling block they're being to the very people who gave them the Word of G-d. Do you notice how they spend so much time talking about the talit, but never the tzitzit? They want what the Jews have, but they don't want to have to be... Jewish. They want the G-d, the Messiah, the promises in the Book as their Pastors read it to them, but they don't want to be hated, mocked, reviled by the nations. They don't want to have to give up pork or Christmas. They don't want to stop being the kings of the hill.
Just like the Bible, they take this great Jewish gift, strip it down and re-fashion it to their own liking, then sell it at an overinflated price to desperate people searching for answers to real, devastating problems.
And we're supposed to be the shysters.
Stop re-appropriating my Torah for your pleasure. It's MY book, MY commands, MY covenant-- NOT yours. Sure, you can get in on it, but here's the deal: You have to play by the rules, just like the rest of us. If you can't handle that... GO HOME.
Labels: Dickow, Judaism, mitzvot, Prayer Shawls, Talit, TBN, Torah, tzitzit
posted by Shoshana @ 5:58 PM
Redemption in Obama's "Jesus Story"
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Greek columns. Fanfare. Shouting, jumping, and rolling in the aisles.
I'm not talking about a revival meeting in a megachurch; I'm talking about just an average day on the Obama campaign trail.
Now, in a desperate attempt to woo Christians to the left, a PAC called "The Matthew 25 Network" has cropped up to cast B. Hussein Obama in a holy light. Not like Louis Farrakhan did when he dubbed B. Hussein the Islamic Messiah, oh no. M25N wants to bless Obama in a more, shall we say, Judeo-Christian fashion.
One might be tempted to ask how a Christian PAC go about appropriating Matthew 25, a chapter about unprepared Virgin Brides with no oil for their lamps, paranoid servants making unwise investments, and the Messiah separating the sheep from the goats at the second coming, to endorse Barack Obama.
Sure, the organization performs some quick exegesis, taking from the chapter one verse that comes in handy, in this case, verse 40: "The King will say to them, 'Yes! I tell you that whenever you did these things for one of the least important of these brothers of mine, you did them for me!'," a verse rich in moral teaching when placed in perspective. But, one might inquire as to the relevance of verse 41 that reads: "Then he will also speak to those on his left saying, 'Get away from me, you who are cursed! Go off into the fire prepared for the Adversary and his angels!'"
Somehow, interpreting that verse in light of the current political climate might cause more than one Bible-believing voter to think twice before associating the most left-leaning Senator in this nation's history with Jesus Christ.
And yet, that is exactly the association a Matthew 25 Network representative made this morning on CNN. "Barack Obama's got a Jesus story," were his exact words.
A "Jesus Story"? What exactly is a "Jesus Story" anyway? As far as I know, there is only one Jesus Story because there is only one Jesus. I happen to think of Him as an Israeli carpenter from Judea who fulfilled the prophetic words in Torah (Genesis 22) and the prophets (Isaiah 53) regarding the Messiah who would come to redeem Israel and the nations.
Liberals, however, happen to think of him as an African-American who grew up as a Muslim in Indonesia, purposefully surrounded himself with "radicals" including "Marxist professors" during his college years, and whose ideology fulfills the Marxist axiom, "From each according to his ability to each according to his needs."
Now there's a guy to whom I want to bow.
Hey, they hail him in Germany:
That's always a good sign ...right?
My Jesus had working schlubs-- fishermen, tax collectors, and prostitutes-- for followers. Sure, they gave up their bad habits and all they owned to devote their lives to serving their Messiah and living out the principles He taught them, including humility and servitude towards one another and their neighbor through great personal sacrifice.
The Liberals' messiah has cultured, educated, traveled, professional men and women working for him. Sure, they embrace murder and general acts of terrorism both in America and against American allies abroad, destruction, fraud, racism, anti-Semitism and generalized hatred, but they've given their lives to their causes. In fact, at least one of them still wishes he could do more, insisting that he and his wife "haven't done enough."
My Jesus was sacrificed for world redemption.
The Liberals' messiah would like to sacrifice Americans in order to redeem world opinion.
My Messiah preached personal freedom through an end to slavery.
From Glenn Beck [via Israpundit]:
Gang, this is the final warning. I mean it. This is the final warning. You cannot become — you cannot get any clearer on what is coming. It amazes me day after day after day after day that America just doesn’t seem to care anymore, but you cannot get any clearer. If this is out here and this man is elected, you are going to elect the most arrogant Marxist who will not be stopped because he came into office fully uncovered. Every — do not pretend to be shocked when we begin to see a Marxist and who I believe will become a fascist President. And he will become fascist because he will not understand how you suddenly don’t want to become Marxist.My Messiah identified with and has a strong love for Israel and the Jewish people.
The Liberals' messiah identifies with and has a strong love for the enemies of Israel and the Jewish people.
Barack Obama Accepted Jeremiah Wright’s and Michael Pfleger’s Endorsement
...Sarkozy told Obama at that meeting that if the new American president elected in November changed his country’s policy toward Iran, that would be "very problematic."
Obama Advisor Suggested that the U.S. Attack Israel
MSM Holds Video Of Barack Obama Attending Jew-Bash & Toasting a Former PLO Operative…
Today, a "Jewish American Senior" asked Joe the Plumber, "Am I right in saying that an Obama Presidency would mean Death to Israel?"
Joe the Plumber, an average working-class middle American said, "Yes, I'd have to agree with you on that."
Somehow, when it comes to Jesus, Barack Obama just can't measure up.
And, yet, Americans are being led to believe that, come November 4th, they will crown their Messiah.
So, dear voter, who is your God?
Labels: American elections, Christian, Israel, Jesus, Judaism, Matthew 25 Network, Messiah, Messianic Judaism, Obama, President, Yeshua
posted by Shoshana @ 7:12 PM
Mind Games and Abuses of Power
Sunday, August 17, 2008
I'm taking a break from election commentary, although this discussion is just as pertinent to that topic as well.
Being a believer can be a huge mind game sometimes.
When I first struck out on my own, without the support of a congregation, Rabbi, or believing friends, it didn't take long for me to realize how we are trained and ingrained to be so incredibly reliant upon one another, especially upon leadership.
Christian/Messianic Jewish culture, and even Rabbinic Jewish culture, is a personality-based belief system. Think about it: Think about the way you perceive G-d, Messiah, and His servants. In essence, they're all people in your mind, right? G-d said "Don't make a graven image of Me" and, all of a sudden, the believing world has pictures of blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesuses hanging on every wall.
Depending on the branch of service you're in (a.k.a. denomination) you even have some of His compatriots right up there with Him. Today, the Christian Church idolizes servants like Rav Shaul, Kefa, Miriam, etc. as heroes of the faith-- whether you're Catholic or Protestant or a Rabbinic Jew, you have a panoply of historical figures to call on any time you need a handy quote to back up what you're professing. And, guess what? The Evangelical church and Messianic community are no different. When's the last time you saw Joel Osteen putting a picture of Mt. Sinai on the cover of one of his books? Or T.D. Jakes telling ET to show some stock footage of average church goers instead of doing a feature on his daughter's wedding? Just check out Rabbi Bruce Cohen's letter to the editor in the latest edition of The Messianic Times if you want to find out how much of a personality-bash American Messianic Judaism has become.
How many Catholics pray to Saints? How many Rabbinic Jews quote ancient Rabbis? And why? Why is the Judeo-Christian community so consumed with people-worship? Because the Greco-Roman world decided to believe in Messiah-- on their own terms. Graven images, gods with personalities and all too human foibles, the beauty of the human form-- all of that is the direct influence of Greek culture on the gentile believing world. And that influence continues to seep into the Jewish world--believing and not--in steadily increasing amounts.
Rabbinic Judaism was a direct assimilatory reaction to the rejection of Messiah and the consequent loss of the Temple and Israeli/Jewish national sovereignty. Rabbinic Judaism began in Yavneh with the denial of sacrifice as the pathway to G-d's redemption and morphed into a personality-controlled, personality-fed faith. As a result, you have a growing minority of religious Jews who can quote Talmud backwards and forwards but have absolutely no knowledge of basic scriptural texts. This cultural shift has influenced a growing majority of those born Jewish to wind up living more like secular gentiles than not-- and to be completely justified in doing so!
But, Messianic Judaism is different, right? These are the Jews and gentiles who, having forgone human tradition, turned to the scriptures with open minds and hearts. The Bible is the foundation of their faith. Like the Puritans who sailed to the shores of America for religious freedom, their bedrock and justification is the Living Word of G-d. And, just like the Puritans, the Messianics are subject to the same human faults and fallacies that act as the doormen to disaster.
The letters of the talmidim, just like the words of the prophets, urge their readers and listeners to stop acting small and to think big about the way they act towards one another. Petty jealousies, lying, power-plays and the like plagued the believing community then as they do now. In fact, they are the reason Israel lost sovereignty in the first place: Bad behavior produces bad fruit. We all know that. What we so often neglect is the result of bad fruit in the stomach of the body. Bad fruit makes you sick-- so sick, in fact, that you have to spit it out. It's a pretty standard biological reaction: expel the cause, treat the sickness, so the body can heal.
Can you imagine what G-d would look like to you if you lived in the pre-Constantine era, with no photographs, no film, no Michaelangelo to paint your icons on the stone and brick walls? He wouldn't look like Charleton Heston, or Jim Caviezel, or Joel Osteen, or T.D. Jakes, or John Hagee, or any other "name" you can think of in your own circle. He wouldn't look like your Pastor, Priest, or Rabbi, either. Big shock there.
The thing is: We can think these things, but thinking, and even comprehending them isn't enough. The "personality preachers"--world-famous and not--tend to be the best at condemning the wrong within their own communities. Of course, this condemnation tends to be a very subjective one, but the opinions of the speaker are generally glossed over by the audience that is too busy being enamored with the pomp and circumstance of the performance to worry about what is actually being said, and to whom the condemnation is being directed.
Until the condemnation is directed at them.
Like many, I have been the subject of direct and indirect condemnation in a variety of Judeo-Christian circles and, without fail, my peers in each incident were oblivious to my personal persecution until they, too, came under leadership's scrutinous glare. We're the people who believe in forgiveness and redemption, yet we thrive on creating tsuris and placing the blame.
Rarely, and not until it is too late, do we actually acknowledge the damage that has been done by digesting the bad fruit. In this case, the bad fruit are the mind games produced by gross abuses of power committed by those who forget that their leadership roles are granted to them by the same authority on which they are ultimately dependent: G-d and the move of His Spirit in His people, the body. Sick things happen when leaders get out of control, and their congregants are the ones who pay the price. And, because we're all links in a chain, the entire body pays a heftier price than we could ever imagine-- because we're too busy living small to think big.
Do you know why the top 2 commandments are to "Love the L-rd your G-d with all of your heart, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself"? Because it is EASIER! It is TEN TIMES EASIER to love someone than to hate them, TEN TIMES EASIER to forgive someone than to hold a grudge, TEN TIMES EASIER to put your full heart in G-d and not man, and TEN TIMES EASIER to let the love you have for G-d guide you into loving relationships with one another.
Human beings don't know it all. Bodies are dust. Pictures can be erased, torn up, thrown out. But the spiritual damage of unjust condemnation, ridicule, hatred, those are wounds that can only be healed by G-d, but ones whose scars will never fully fade. Do you know why G-d commanded the Israelites to literally "cut off" members of the community who sinned? Because the act of cutting someone off, of condemning them, was a literal stripping of their identity, their very sense of self. That is not the job of any Rabbi, any Pastor, any Priest, any one. The next time you so much as utter a foul word about someone, think of that-- think of the fact that you are acting to strip that person of their identity. Then question if power and authority like that really belongs in your hands.
We live in destructive times. By our very choice to be a believer in and follower of Messiah we have made ourselves targets for the destroyer. The survivors, and the ones who will be used to ensure the nation's survival, will be the individuals who comprehend and live out the truth that G-d is the sole Creator and Authority over their identity. The individuals who refuse to submit to abuses of power will be the ones who triumph over the petty mind games by flying right past them and achieving the real Goal. And, here's a hint: It's not a front-page writeup, tickets to the "MegaChurch of the Moment" or a front row seat at the next "Famous Man's Revival Hour Broadcast LIVE!"
Keep your eyes and ears open, followers of Messiah. Maintain the integrity G-d has given you in the face of unjust condemnation--from enemies and "friends" alike.
"My sheep listen to my voice, I recognize them, they follow Me, and I give them eternal life. They will absolutely never be destroyed, and no one will snatch them from My hands. My Father, who gave them to Me, is greater than all; and no one can snatch them from the Father's hands. I and the Father are One." (Yochanan 10:27-30)
Labels: Christianity, Judaism, leadership, Messianic Judaism
posted by Shoshana @ 2:42 PM
Yom HaShoah & Israel Independence: Thoughts
Saturday, May 03, 2008
When asked who held the most blame for the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel answered "the American Jews." He's right. Jewish Americans were in places of power and authority within the FDR Administration, and they willingly chose to do nothing despite having full knowledge of what was going on. The Editor-in-Cheif of the NY Times openly made it a point to keep reports about European Jewry in the back pages of the largest newspaper in America--that is, when he chose to cover the story at all. Hollywood Jews did make an effort to draw attention to Hitler's atrocities in Europe in the late 1930s, as well as to help European Jews emigrate to the US, until the US Government sent Joe Kennedy to warn them against their commentary, lest America blame the Jews for being drawn into the war.
Sure, there were average Jewish Americans who did what they could to speak out, to bring family and friends over from Europe, and even to fight. But the Jewish Americans with the greatest power and authority by and large did nothing.
Today, American Jews claim that without Jewish American money, the State of Israel couldn't survive. They're wrong. Don't tell the survivors and descendants of an army that fashioned lipstick cases into bullets that they need greenbacks to function. That's plain bull. I can't help but wonder if the money argument doesn't have a twofold purpose: to ease the guilt of not taking on the burden of responsibility for leaving our European brothers and sisters in the dust, and to justify the lack of willingness to make aliyah. In any case, it's an argument that's got to stop if we are to ever begin healing the rift between American and Israeli Jewry, a great number of whom are of European descent.
Related Links:
NEVER AGAIN: Speech by the IDF Chief of the General Staff for the 'March of the Living' [Israpundit]
Lebanon Palestinians to march on border [JPost]
More than 100,000 Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon are expected to march toward the border with Israel on May 14 in the context of the Palestinian Authority's plan to mark the 60th anniversary of the establishment of Israel, PA officials told The Jerusalem Post Thursday.If you get 'Shalom TV' you'll recall that Israel Update covered this story months ago. Whether it will really happen or not, I don't know. Trying to get those forces to unify has failed more than once in the past. But, trust that if it does, it should be one hell of an Israel Independence Day.
...
The plan calls on the refugees to return to Israel with suitcases and tents so that they can settle down in their former villages. The refuges are requested to carry UN flags upon their return and to be equipped with their UNRWA-issued ID cards.
The plan asks Arab countries hosting the refugees to facilitate their return by opening their borders. The plan specifically refers to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.
Palestinian refugees living in the US, EU, Canada and Latin America have been requested to use their foreign passports to fly to Ben- Gurion Airport, while dozens of ships carrying refugees will converge on Israeli ports.
Labels: American Jewry, Holocaust, Israel, Israel Independence Day, Jewishness, Judaism, Yom HaShoah, Zionism
posted by Shoshana @ 11:48 AM
Freedom's Current Crisis (Or, Messianic Politics 101)
Sunday, March 16, 2008
I grew up with an intense desire to avoid political discussion at all costs. I was raised in a home that functioned on an intense undercurrent of conservative politics. However, certain things were not considered polite dinner table conversation. When I told a visiting professor, who happened to be a Communist non-practicing Jew, that our family did not discuss G-d, sex, or politics publicly, I had to scrape his jaw off the table. But, it was true. My grandfather ruled the larger roost and when it came to topics that could be perceived as divisive, we were quickly told to, "Cut it off." Outside of a few screaming memes from my mother, who anxiously shouted, "Liars! Anti-Semites!" at the occasional CNN reporter, or my father's random disparaging remarks about the Clintons, I was fairly unexposed to political dialogue. I preferred it that way. Politics were ugly and divisive, and besides, as a kid I was part of the disengaged non-electorate, anyway. I had better things to focus on-- like Torah, Judaism, and Israel.
I didn't truly begin to become aware of the tight-knit relationship between real life and politics until my first graduate seminar in the fall of 2002 when, in an introduction to film theory, my professor informed us that, "Everything is political." At first, I didn't believe him, but I came to see quite clearly that this was true: film theorists and academics in general would strive to attach political meaning to the most benign actions imaginable. Films about out of work actors doing summer stage became tomes rife with communist innuendo (at least, according to communist theorists). Suddenly, everything I encountered had a political platform. Everyone was trying to shove some ideology down my throat. And, nine times out of ten, that ideology ran completely against the moral foundation upon which I was raised.
My first year in graduate school was a nightmare. I couldn't make heads nor tails out of what my professors were trying to teach me. Fortunately, there was an "oddball" in my class, the avowed conservative libertarian among a bunch of unaffiliated liberals who had no problem speaking up and speaking sense into classroom discussions. I may not always have been able to follow him to the T, but thanks to his commentary, I could clearly see that the complex, nonsensical theories of my professors were based in dangerous ideological territory and, consequently, had far-reaching, disastrous implications. For that first year, I sat and listened-- a lot. I did what my grandfather had always taught us to do: I kept my eyes and ears open, and my mouth shut.
I still recall that night reality finally hit home. Walking up the steps to my apartment after class, it suddenly dawned on me: I'm not the one that's wrong-- they are. I realized that the moral foundation I was raised with was the right one. I also understood very clearly that, not only was I allowed to have my own opinion, I should be allowed to express it, openly and honestly. But, as I watched my conservative peer catch guff time and time again, I knew that if I wanted to complete my program successfully, it would be better for me to keep my opinions to myself. So, I did. I muddled along and became the only one in my class to graduate on time with honors.
When I arrived home, as exhausted as I was, I knew I had work to do. This time, I set my sights on studying everything I wasn't permitted to research as a student at a public university. I poured over books by conservatives, beginning with Slander by Ann Coulter, and working my way from there, first with media commentaries (authors like Bernard Goldberg) since that was my arena of study in school, and then expanding into government and history. Naturally, I gravitated towards political texts regarding Israel and the Jewish people-- books like The War Against the Jews and The Abandonment of the Jews that my mother had read in her Holocaust history course worked in naturally with books I had read for my thesis, like Hollywood: An Empire of their Own. Eventually, thanks to one of Coulter's references, I picked up Whittaker Chambers's Witness, which led me to John Loftus's The Secret War Against the Jews.
At the same time, I began to follow political news online, reading both mainstream sources as well as independent conservative blogs like Israpundit. Thanks to these blogs, I tuned into authors like Ken Timmerman (Preachers of Hate) and Ben Shapiro (Brainwashed). I also immersed myself in conservative talk radio, taking my summer off to listen to Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and my personal favorite, WABC's Mark Levin. And, I made it a point to listen to Israeli talk radio via Arutz Sheva-- the conservative, religious-Zionist "renegade" station that broadcasted off the shores of the Promised Land.
In short, I became consumed with all I had sought to ignore in the world. In a matter of three months, I had read somewhere between 30 and 40 books and spent countless hours online or next to a radio. I studied what was going on in Israel and America, with a special focus on how the media portrayed conservatives, conservative issues, and everything related to Israel and the Jewish people. In doing so, it became very clear to me that the agenda marketed by the media was the same agenda shoved down my throat in graduate school: anti-Israel, anti-G-d, and anti-everything associated with Him. Comprehending this allowed me to understand one other thing very, very clearly: In possessing these attitudes, the media and the academy, the institutions I had believed I would devote my life's work to, were against me.
And that is when I got angry.
"If the world hates you, understand that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would have loved its own. But, because you do not belong to the world, on the contrary, I have picked you out of the world therefore the world hates you. Remember what I told you, 'A slave is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too; if they kept my word, they will keep yours too. But they will do all this to you on my account, because they don't know the One who sent me." (Yeshua, Yochanan 15:18-21)
I had always known Scripture to be true. But I had never experienced the hatred of this world, so until I did, I could not fully understand the Truth I had been given. I knew that the situation I was confronting-- this battle Ronald Reagan had so easily boiled down to the fight "between good and evil"-- was bigger than me, and had been going on longer than I had been around, longer than my parents or grandparents had been on this earth, for that matter. I wanted to go back down the line, to understand how we had arrived where we were at that point in time.
First, I went back to Chambers's book that detailed the infiltration and influence of communism on the American government in the 1930s. That, I knew, had resulted in the persecution of Jewish Americans in Hollywood, as well as a lack of American response to the Holocaust. Therefore, it was clear to see that communism was an anti-Israel ideology. The next step was to read Marx for myself, as well as to research the existence of Marxism in its various forms around the globe-- Cuba, Russia, China, all anti-Israel in nature. Cuba, in fact, was the first government to establish ties with Yasser Arafat and even open a "Palestinian Embassy" on their soil. Many of the communist terrorist organizations of the 60s and 70s had strong ties to the PFLP, the PLO, and the other muslim Arab terror organizations Israel fights today.
Learning this naturally led me to study the connection between Islam and Marx. Two years before it even started to become public via the blogosphere, I knew and understood that the relationship between communism and Islam went further back than Castro and Arafat, straight to Hitler and the Mufti. Hitler, it seems, wasn't so much about the promotion of the aryan race as he was about the destruction of the Jewish people, and he found an ally in a proponent of the oldest Israel-hating religion on the face of the earth: Islam. One night I found a Koran in an old book shop, and sat there copying verses about killing Jews onto scrap paper I found in my purse. I couldn't bear to buy the book and actually have it in my home, so I scrawled notes and proceeded to bury the text back on the shelf. My research was complete. I knew, then, for sure that the battle I was witnessing had been, and always would be about the existence of Israel.
In October of 2004, five months after I had graduated, I began writing down everything I had learned over the summer. I wanted the text to be brief and basic, but strong enough to substantiate the claims I was making. The original goal was to get down on paper everything I knew to be true for my own self, lest I forget all the wonderful knowledge I had just been given. In the end, however, I realized that my brief could be a great source for people like me-- the average, hard-working, middle class reader, who wanted to understand what was going on in the world, but who lacked the time to read 40 books and sit by a radio for six hours a day.
I completed the work in less than a month. After that, life changed. I entered the working world and set this particular work aside. A few weeks ago, I pulled it out and looked at it. Four years later, it was a dated, but not out-dated piece. So many things have happened since October of 2004. Bush was re-elected on a pro-Israel platform, only to turn around and force Israel to evict 9,000 citizens in the name of "peace." Ariel Sharon, the lion of the settlements, is now comatose while 75% of the residents of Gush Katif still wait for permanent housing.
A month after the eviction, Hurricane Katrina smacked into New Orleans and evangelical preachers proclaimed it a judgement of G-d. John Hagee formed Christians United for Israel, forcing liberals into hissyfits over neocon influence and the "power and control" of the "religious right". Condi Rice and the State Department have morphed into an anti-Israel cabal bent on the division of Jerusalem by the end of '08, something the Israeli government of Olmert and Livni are more than willing to do. Eight students from the ages of 16 to 28 studying Torah at the heart of religious Zionism in Jerusalem were murdered by a muslim terrorist. Now, the disenfranchised religious Zionists are ready to take justice into their own hands.
Jewish people from France are making aliyah in record numbers while conditions for Jews all over Europe continue to worsen. Jewish students at UC Berkeley and Temple University, among other schools, have been physically attacked and pro-Zionist students all over North America are facing growing anti-Israel, pro-muslim bias on campus. At the same time, the Christian Church is dividing into pro- and anti-Israel camps, with evangelicals touting Genesis 12:3 on one hand and various denominations divesting from Israel on the other. In the midst of it all, a growing number of gentile Christians are seeking to understand the history of their own faith and, in doing so, are acknowledging and embracing the fact that their Messiah is and their forefathers were all devout, practicing Jews.
Yes, many events have taken place since October, 2004. But the text of Freedom's Current Crisis still stands as a record of everything that led up to this point in time. Yeshua taught us, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light," and so it is, this truth of our history. What frustrated me so much about academia was that everything they taught as truth was, in reality, confusing, twisted, and non-sensical. Shortly after I returned home, I was given these verses from Proverbs 3:5-6: "Trust in Adonai with all your heart; do not rely on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him; then He will level your paths." The world likes us to believe that truth is a hard thing and knowledge is impossible to achieve. The world likes us to believe that you have to possess a great deal of accredited education and associated wealth to be able to understand how life really works. This is a lie. Truth is free. G-d is free. And you cannot put a dollar value on trust. Anyone can understand, know, and live the truth. They just have to want it badly enough.
I pray that the frustration I was driven to will not be what leads you to seek out the truth for yourself. And I pray that, in its own humble way, Freedom's Current Crisis will pay honor to G-d's promise: "The truth will set you free."
Labels: America, Christianity, Islam, Israel, Judaism, Judeo-Christianity, Marxism, politics, religion
posted by Shoshana @ 12:37 PM
Jewishness: A Badge of Honor (For Everyone Involved!)
Thursday, March 13, 2008
"You did not choose me, I chose you..." -- Yochanan 15:16
One of the questions that plagues many people born into the Tribe is, "Why would anyone want to be Jewish?" A modern Jewish identity carries with it over 2,000 years of oppression, disillusionment, and hatred from the outside world. If you're European, a Jewish identity is enough to get you kidnapped and left for dead. If you're Israeli, a Jewish identity is enough to get you accused of hate crimes by the United Nations. If you're American, a Jewish identity is enough to leave you scarred by Woody Allen-esque neuroses and the threat of being termed a JAP. And, no matter where you live, being Jewish implies that you're constantly failing to hold up your end of the bargain with G-d. Why, oh why, would anyone choose to be a Jew?
Yet, if you've grown up or been immersed in a Messianic circle you tend to view the Jewish identity with a certain amount of admiration, bordering on holy awe-- especially if you're a gentile. If Israel is the promised land, then the Jews are the promised people: They are, therefore, to be respected, revered, and even imitated with reverence.
Now, more than ever, a growing number of gentile believers in Messiah are seeking to look like, act like, and even live like Jews. I've seen footage of various evangelical powerhouses with 7 branched menorahs cut to look like Chanukias, with congregants in talits blasting shofars and doing their best to dance like King David in the 6"x6" space in front of their chairs. Entire ministries have cropped up, devoted to teaching and preaching about the Jewish roots of Christianity; for the first time ever, major bookstores like Barnes & Noble are selling books by Christian authors with titles like Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography.
We live in a world where kids studying Torah in Jerusalem are being murdered by muslim terrorists, and Christians in America are suddenly deciding that they want to be Jewish, too. Having grown out of the Messianic movement, I can understand and appreciate their admiration for my people. Also, having gone through the very literal transition of understanding that I am Jewish-- both genetically and spiritually-- I can relate to their zeal at discovering and embracing their true selves. However, as a somewhat seasoned Messianic Jew who has lived outside of a congregation and in the real world for roughly 8 years now, I can also look at these nascent Messianics and think, "Wow, they really don't know what they're in for."
These people who are discovering themselves in their faith have to not only love the Jewish G-d, the Jewish land, and the Jewish people; they have to love being Jewish. I recall very recently attending a study being led by an ordained Pastor regarding the Hebrew roots of Christianity. Essentially, this pastor was teaching a group of gentiles that, by putting their trust in Messiah Yeshua, they were Biblically considered Jewish. However, he didn't quite put it that bluntly. Privately, he had no problem identifying himself as a Messianic Jew. During the lecture, however, key terms of identity were placed in a grey area. The concentration remained on the Hebrew roots, or history of the Christian faith, rather than the direction in which this knowledge was propelling the movement. The pastor was not someone who minced words, or practiced on the pretext of pleasing his audience; therefore, I found his ambiguity rather odd-- until I took a good look around the room.
Here were a bunch of gentiles, who were in various stages of leaving the organized Christian church, studying about first century believers and how they practiced their faith and lived their lives as Jews... but no one was willing to call themselves "Jewish." They were anxious to study Torah, to read Hebrew, and to observe the High Holidays... but they weren't anxious to call themselves "Jewish." One guy there was so zealous in his studies that he carried with him the works of various Rabbis, but was careful to pad out his comments with, "It isn't important how you practice, as long as you believe in Jesus... I mean, you know, this is all really helpful and important, but it isn't important, you know, what you call yourself, as long as you believe." These people were, for the most part, in a self-imposed Purgatory of Identity. They weren't this, but they weren't that, either. It was as if they'd found themselves in a fantastic bargain basement sale, but couldn't decide whether or not they really wanted to buy.
It was strange, and the cynical, kicked-around-Jew in me felt offended: You want what I have, but you don't want me-- you want what I can give you, but you don't want to work for it. Judaism is a template for you, but somehow, in the end, you still think you can do it better. At the same time, I also reminded myself to approach these newbies with a great deal of grace. It isn't any easier to suddenly be Jewish than it is to suddenly be Chinese or Italian: you don't start whipping up dim sum or planning a move to Sicily on your first night out. Sure, you may be seen in G-d's eyes as a Jew the minute you proclaim faith in Messiah, but that doesn't mean you know how to live a Jewish life. After all, the nascent nation of Israel needed a do-over just to get the Top Ten without having G-d crack it over their collective skull.
In the end, I walked away from that meeting sensing that there was something missing in the believing community-- not on the part of these gentile believers, but on the part of Messianic Jews. After all, aren't we the ones who know what being Jewish is all about? Aren't we the ones who are supposed to be excited about our faith and our identity in Messiah?
Every day I say to myself, "Wow, I love being a Jew." I don't want the world's hatred of the Jewish people and Israel to impact this growing movement of believers hungry to learn about and live out their Jewish identity. I do, however, want to see Messianic Jews get excited about their Jewishness, and pass that excitement along to these newbies to the Tribe. As Yeshua said, "You did not choose Me, I chose you; and I have commissioned you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last; so that whatever you ask from the Father in My Name He may give you. This is what I command you; keep loving each other!" (Yochanan 15:16-17)
Be encouraged: Be encouraged to love being a Jew. There is no greater identity on this earth.
Why?
Because our G-d always wins.
Labels: Hebrew Roots, Jewish Identity, Jewish Roots, Judaism, Messianic Judaism
posted by Shoshana @ 7:56 PM
Jewish Unity... the Stumblingblock
Monday, February 18, 2008
I'm digging around the blogosphere for something to write about, anything that hasn't been trudged over 5,000 times already, when I find this post, titled Pulse of the People from Blogs of Zion, buried in a conglomeration of Friday's listings on Israeli Bloggers in English:
What is the greatest challenge facing the Jewish People?I don't know when it first started, but our self-reflexive trait can be a rather positive one, as long as we demand solutions to the problems we're so willing to expose.
A few of the answers:
* "Hatred between different streams of Judaism."
* "The mis-transmission of what Judaism has to offer, because a watered down Judaism is a stagnant Judaism"
* "Apathy"
* "Freedom: Why be Jewish?"
* "Lack of a perceivable and compelling reason to be Jewish"
* "A tendency to get stuck in old habits and a tendency to forget the lesson of the past."
* "Acceptance in the Middle East"
* "Jewish Unity"
* "Self-Esteem"
Notice, that but for one, these are largely internal challenges–and that's representative of the rest of the answers that were not posted. And no one said Iran.
All of these issues plague Jewish people, whether they're religious or secular, no matter what denomination they subscribe to, no matter where they live. What I don't understand-- perhaps because I'm tired of it-- is the idea that being Jewish is a problematic thing. Everyone has drek in their lives, but isn't being Jewish about having answers to clean up the drek? Isn't being Jewish the solution, not the problem? The issues listed above are issues that arise not within the individual, but within the group-- reading the list reminds me of a line from a favorite TV show: "This is what happens to love when people are in love." We're always participating in a struggle, whether it be between our humanity and our holiness, or between ourselves and our G-d, or between our nation and the world at large, that we wind up transmitting that struggle into our relationships with one another. We don't trust our G-d, we don't trust our individual identity (or, consequently, our ability to carry the responsibility of the identity we've been given), we don't trust the world around us-- so, naturally, we begin to view each other with suspicion.
How derranged and destructive is that?
There are so many Jewish people out there--famous, powerful, rich Jewish people--who have made careers out of reaching out to develop relationships with different groups of gentiles. There are Jews reaching out to Christians, Jews reaching out to Arabs, Jews reaching out to palestinians, Jews reaching out to every possible ethnic and religious group in existence in order to establish friendships and alliances. Where are the Jewish people reaching out to their fellow Jews? I'm not famous, or powerful, or rich, but I if I could reach out to anyone in this world, I would reach out to my fellow Jewish people-- for the sake of establishing friendships and alliances among us all, for the good of us all.
So many people argue over what it means to be created in the image of Adonai, that they forget the most dominant aspect of His character: He is One. Sometimes, I think the reason the Shema was commanded by HaShem wasn't just to remind us that He is One, but that we are one in Him. We won't have success until we stop treating each other like drek. Look at it this way: Nobody can get through life successfully when they keep slapping themselves in the face.
Labels: Israel, Jewish unity, Jewishness, Judaism, Messianic Judaism, Zionism
posted by Shoshana @ 8:07 PM
Israeli Music is Amazing
Monday, February 11, 2008
I picked up 15 new Israeli CDs this weekend.
Yes, fifteen. Hey, I get to this store twice a year at best-- I have to stock up.
Among the albums, I bought Sarit Hadad's "Ashlayot Metukot" ("Sweet Illusions"):
The album contains one of the most powerful songs I've ever heard. Titled, "Shma Elohai (Kshe'Halev Bocheh)" it was written after the "brutal lynching and mutilation" of two IDF reservists, Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami in October of 2000. If you don't recall the incident, perhaps the infamous picture will shake your memory bank:
The palestinian terrorist holds up hands covered in Israeli blood, moments before the bodies of the soldiers are thrown out of the window for the crowd below to pummel and destroy.
Here are the lyrics in English, translation via HebrewSongs.com:
SHMA ELOHAI (KSHE'HALEV BOCHEH)The store owner, who is Israeli, always plays the CDs for me before I buy them. "Listen before you buy! We'll play anything you like-- that way you know you like it before you buy it!" My Hebrew is rough, so I always ask her what the songs are about; inevitably, she replies, "They're all love songs, always love songs." But they're more than that. The crap you listen to on Top 40 constitutes "love songs" to most Americans. Israeli musicians may sing a lot about love, but it isn't always romantic and fun-- sometimes it is hard and painful, like the love lost through senseless murder, and love sought from enemies out of the desire to live in peace.
HEAR MY GOD (WHEN THE HEART CRIES)
When the heart cries
only God hears
The pain rises out of the soul
A man falls down before he sinks down
With a little prayer (he) cuts the silence
Shma (Hear) Israel my God,
you're the omnipotent
You gave me my life,
you gave me everything
In my eyes a tear,
the heart cries quietly
And when the heart is quiet,
the soul screams
Shma (Hear) Israel my God,
now I am alone
Make me strong my God;
make it that I won't be afraid
The pain is big,
and there's no where to run away
End it because I can't take it anymore
(make the end of it because I have no more energy left within me)
When the heart cries,
Time stands still
All of a sudden, the man sees his entire life
He doesn't want to go to the unknown
He cries to his God right before a big fall
Israeli music is powerful. The store owner was amazed at my interest in and knowledge of Israeli pop culture. "American Jewishness doesn't really have much to offer," I explained to her, "Israel is where our culture is."
"Right?! Exactly!" And then she gave me four CDs for free.
Labels: culture, Israel, Jewish American, Jewishness, Judaism, music, Sarit Hadad, Shma Elohai, Zionism
posted by Shoshana @ 9:45 PM
1938 all over again...
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
I am not predicting that American Jewry is immanently in danger from the imposition of the Nurenberg Laws or that the U.S. foreign policy toward Israel is destined to become overtly hostile overnight. We are, however, faced with foreboding winds of change. Let us not blind ourselves to that possible reality. In my opinion American Jewry may be living in a fool's paradise, much like the German Jews before the rise of Hitler.Dr. Irving Kett
I do urgently believe that the Government of Israel should assiduously be investing great capital on planning the future of the Jewish State without U.S. military and diplomatic support. Do I believe that is possible? I absolutely do which is why my children and grandchildren are living in Israel.
Colonel, U.S. Army, Retired
Professor of Civil Engineering
California State University, L. A.
from his essay:
HOW SECURE ARE JEWS IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD?
Baruch haShem. Kett spends a great deal of time in his introduction exploring the destructive power of Jewish self-hatred. He cites Melanie Phillips's The Jewish Enemy Within, which discusses the far-left anti-Zionist Jews, those about whom Kett writes, "To these so-called liberal Israel haters, Jewish victim-hood is the only authentic moral Jewish existence. To them the most spiritually elevated moral Jew is the dead Jew. The real crime of Israel in their eyes is that Israel represents Jewish power."
Kett also cites a book titled Jews and Power by Ruth Wisse, which discusses the ambivalence, and even dislike of power and self-governance exhibited within Jewish culture. This "moral solipsism," as Wisse terms it, has an extremely negative impact on the psyche and survival of the State of Israel, as Bret Stephens notes in his review of the book in Commentary magazine, "Even so, as this salutary book insistently warns, misgivings about the exercise of power in self-defense retain a neurotic and damaging grip on the Jewish imagination."
Kett argues that Israel must become totally and completely self-reliant, and stop nursing at its now (or, at least, soon to be) dead American pacifier. He's right. If the sudden "peace agreement" drawn up by America and France to end the War in Lebanon FOR Israel in 2006 wasn't clue enough, if Annapolis wasn't clue enough, if Bush's declarations of a "palestinian" state by the end of '08 aren't enough... Kett argues that we are in the same place Europe was in 1938. You be the judge.
Israpundit linked up to an article by Israel National Radio correspondent Yehudah HaKohen, The Zionist Revolution. He concludes with:
Instead of downplaying Zionism’s radical essence, we must employ it and direct it towards reigniting the fire that once drove Jewish teenagers to drain malaria-filled swamps, fight wars of liberation and make the desert bloom. The revolutionary spark that stirred our youth to become builders and farmers and fighters in our land can surely lead them to take up the cause of Jewish liberation in our own times. By utilizing the full scope and immeasurable beauty of the Zionist Revolution, we can educate our children to see themselves as participants in the great historic drama unfolding in our days.To me, "the full scope and immeasurable beauty of the Zionist Revolution" is found in Ezekiel 36:24-27
For I will take you from among the nations,And Ezekiel 37:11-14
gather you from all the countries,
and return you to your own soil.
Then, I will sprinkle clean water on you,
and you will be clean;
I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness
and from all your idols.
I will give you a new heart
and put a new spirit inside you;
I will take the stony heart out of your flesh
and give you a heart of flesh.
I will put my Spirit inside you
and cause you to live by my laws,
respect my rulings and obey them.
Then he said to me, "Human being! These bones are the whole House of Israel; and they are saying, 'Our bones have dried up, our hope is gone, and we are completely cut off.' Therefore prophesy; say to them that Adonai Elohim says, 'My people! I will open your graves and make you get up out of your graves, and I will bring you into the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am Adonai-- when I have opened your graves and make you get up out of your graves, my people! I will put my Spirit in you; and you will be alive. Then I will place you in your own land; and you will know that I, Adonai, have spoken and that I have done it,' says Adonai."Back in the 1880s, young Jews from Europe and Russia travelled to Zion to clean out swamps because they had to-- they were being persecuted in pogroms and simply had nowhere else to go. Now, however, the majority of the diaspora population is in America, and as Kett testifies to in his article, American Jews have, by and large, convinced themselves that America is their own promised land. We are not being beaten on the streets; American synagogues are not being burned down like the ones in France. In short, life is good, and because life is good, most Jewish Americans don't see the need for G-d, let alone Israel in their lives. Most American Jews do not even attend synagogue, and if they do, the majority do so for social reasons. Jewish America has buried itself in a spiritual grave.
No, for Zionism to succeed, it must be motivated by more than desperation. It must be motivated by passion-- a passion for and from HaShem. And this spiritual awakening has already been written about! Many correlate the prophesy of the Dry Bones with the horrors of the Shoah--and I don't doubt this to be true. But, I also acknowledge that history is cyclical. If we are, indeed, in the 21st century's own '1938' I pray that, this time, we heed the prophesy of our G-d before yet another six million of us perish.
I dislike people who grandstand before audiences and tell them what to pray for and how to pray for it. I am not the writer of a Siddur. But, I do know that now is the time for us to turn to our G-d and cry out to Him in prayer for the things we lack as a nation: strength; courage; passion; conviction. A nurse once told me that there are 613 bones, muscles, and ligaments within the human body--exactly the number of the mitzvot in Torah. Torah, the document that guarantees forever our tenancy in the land of Israel, is what we need to live by. But, as the prophesy says, to do so we must cry out for the Spirit of G-d, the Ruach haKodesh, to cancel out all of that fear and self-hatred that plague us as Jews.
Zionism began with Torah: Israel began with HaShem. Just as the prophet writes, to live in Zion, we need Torah, and to live Torah, we need HaShem.
Bevakasha, HaShem, hear our cry...
Labels: aliyah, Diaspora, Israel, Jewish, Jewish American, Jewry, Judaism, Messianic Judaism, Torah, United States, Zionism
posted by Shoshana @ 7:04 PM
Apathy: The Silent Killer
Monday, February 04, 2008
Jewish apathy is suicidal.
I just finished watching the classic film Animal House. Whether you agree or not with mass amounts of destruction and general chaos, you have to admit that the film made a great point about the power of empassioned protest. While I'm far from a hippie radical, I have a ringing admiration in my heart for students in films like Animal House and PCU, kids oppressed by the system because they're deemed "outsiders" and "unfit" for the general population for one reason or another. Call it the Jew in me. Watching Animal House just now, I realized that the passion was what I admired the most about these farces and it reminded me of the lack thereof in my own college experiences.
As an undergraduate, I attended an average east coast public university. Out of their entire Jewish population (estimated at 10% of the student body) roughly 3 people showed up to Hillel meetings, and at least 5 of the 15 attendees to the secular Pesach seder were gentile friends of Jewish students. At one point, a friend and I sat in the Student Center handing out fliers protesting the fact that we had nothing to protest. I even wrote an article for the college arts magazine in which I encouraged the students to be passionate about something-- anything at all. Those years were best summarized by one friend's well-quoted proverb, "Just because you poke a dead horse with a stick, and it moves, that doesn't mean the horse is alive."
Then came graduate school at what I suppose you could call an average, mid-western public university. This time, the 10% of Jews on campus were much more active in their Hillel-- "active" meaning they attended events, went to Reform shabbos services once a month on campus, and tended to hang out with one another in their spare time. By then, the climate on American college campuses was changing, and this particular school was no exception in feeling the effects of the wind of change that was blowing. A growing Muslim exchange student population was using the Muslim Student Alliance to promote anti-Israel propaganda, screening films about the now-disproven "massacre" at Jenin, and hosting anti-Israel/pro-Islam speakers on campus. A small number of us Hillel members decided we needed to counter these activities before they got out of hand. Six of us got together (I, the only female among them) and decided to form a grass-roots action coalition. We opted to keep it quiet; however, it was not quiet enough, and soon news travelled to the parents of the Jewish students.
These parents proceeded to use the Parents' Day Hillel open house as a forum to scream at one another and our Hillel director about exactly what Jewish students should be doing with their campus club. "I don't want my kids talking about Israel!" and, "They're here to socialize and have a good time with fellow Jews while they get their education!" were but a few of the empassioned comments made at the event. Needless to say, after that meeting our activties went completely underground. While they were relatively small and few, they still had a profound impact on the campus, as well as the morale of the Hillel membership as a whole.
To my great surprise, unlike my undergraduate east-coast Hillel, this group hosted annual "Israel Day" festivities, a time where we all got together and listened to music, did folk dances, and talked Israel in support of the Zionist state. The event was held outdoors, making it open to the entire campus. Many people attended, including a large number of Christians who were then just beginning to understand the importance of Israel in their own lives as believers. Needless to say, many opportunities for conversation ensued since I was the only Messianic in Hillel, and therefore declared the unofficial "ambassador to the goys."
There was a dark side to being a Zionist on campus, though. During my last year, we had a speaker from Israel come to campus. He did a few smaller presentations for Hillel members and one larger presentation open to the entire university. A row of us sat together towards the back of the crowded hall, intently watching the people around us and waiting for the inevitable reaction from the crowd. We spotted the Muslim Student Alliance plants before the presentation even started, and were therefore far from surprised when a few of them stood up behind us and started shouting out random nonsensical arguments in the middle of the Israeli's speech. Of course, they were promptly escorted from the hall, but for a bunch of average, middle class American Jews, listening to that kind of hatred--seeing it right in front of your eyes--was a rude awakening. Being a Zionist wasn't just about cool conversations on campus courtyards-- it was about countering a sinister, malicious kind of evil, an evil that refused to listen to reason. It was an evil that, as American Jews, we had simply never personally known.
Four years ago I knew that college campuses were becoming dangerous places for Jews. Since then, things have only gotten worse. UT Austin hosted an "exhibit" by the campus Palestine Solidarity Movement that consisted of pairs of shoes meant to represent the number of palestinian "refugees" "murdered" at the hands of Israeli soldiers. In 2005, a Jewish student at Columbia University released Columbia Unbecoming a film about three Arab professors at one of America's preeminent Ivy League universities who, "...stood accused of imposing their politics onto their classroom and of verbally bullying Jewish students who did not tow the pro-Palestinian line." At UC Berkeley, the anti-Israel hatred has reached mind-boggling heights, resulting in large pro-palestinian marches and demonstrations, spates of anti-Jewish graffiti reading "Die Juden" and "F*CK JEWS", as well as acts of vandalism and violence against the Jewish population, all fueled by growing palestinian-solidarity movements populated by muslims and the radical left.
In response to Israel's 60th Anniversary, pro-palestinian movements in Great Britain, South Africa, Arabia, Norway, Australia, Canada, and the United States are hosting "Israel Apartheid Week" events from February 3-19. (They have a website, but I'm not giving them any help by linking it-- if you're that interested, Google-it.) These events will find their main forum on college campuses, where propagandists can pay little to nothing to plant seeds of ignorance, hatred, and evil into fertile, young, naieve minds that have been properly tilled by years of academic backwash. To prepare Jewish students to combat these events, Jewish organizations at the University of Toronto banded together to host a half-day seminar, which Ted Belman of Israpundit attended today.
What he was witness to was frightening.
Unfortunately the students weren’t interested. Less than fifteen showed up.Israel is on the chopping block at universities in the United States, as well as Canada and around the world. As goes Israel, so go the Jews.
The most dangerous speaker was Prof Derek J Penslar who described himself as a leftist Zionist. (What’s that?). He was the opening speaker. He started by saying Israel was a racist state. Later on he said Israel committed atrocities on the Arabs, or something to that effect, in the ‘48 war. He advised that students come to university to become education. He, as a professor, does his best to be objective and to deliver the unvarnished truth.
...And this guy is the Director of the Jewish Studies Program and the one chosen by the Jewish establishment to prepare our kids for the propaganda war.
And most Jewish students aren't doing anything about it. Sure, there are pockets of protest here and there, but for the most part, Jewish students remain largely silent when it comes to countering the growing anti-Israel hatred exhibited on university campuses. Perhaps Gen-Y apathy has taken over, and they just don't care. Perhaps their apathy is linked to the growing rift between young Jewish Americans and the sanctity of their Jewish identity, illustrated, for instance, by two Princeton University students who declared in not-so-nice terms a few years ago that they were sick of talking about the Holocaust and having a Jewish identity defined by death and persecution. Instead, they opted for a Jewish identity earmarked by sarcasm and shtick (which made it radically different from their white, upper-middle class gentile friends' identity how... I don't really know). Or, perhaps, since they are so few in number, many Jewish students are just too afraid to stand up and speak out against this anti-Israel, anti-Jewish anger for fear of retribution.
Now, many years after college, I can proudly say that I am a published writer. My work may not be gracing the pages of the New York Times, but it has managed to work its way into more than one publication; it has also managed to win an award from time to time. Which is why many people (including more than a few former professors) would be shocked to learn that I was given a 'B' in the only Creative Writing class I ever took in college.
One day, the professor of this class proceeded to begin our session by distributing an article about Israeli "agression" against "palestinian refugees." "Read this, just read this!" he said to a group of kids who came to write poetry for 45 minutes before heading off to party with friends. We sat there in silence, and as I read, I looked around the room. "Excuse me," I interrupted the silence, "but this article is extremely prejudiced. It's only presenting one side of the story." He sneered at me and said, "Be quiet! There will be time for discussion later." Five minutes later, he broke the silence by declaring, "I want you to think about that. I want you to think about what it means to be persecuted," before going on a five minute rant and then diving straight into the day's lesson, without giving us a chance to respond. I tried-- I sat with my hand raised, but he ignored me. And that was the only time I received an evaluation indicating that my writing was anything less than excellent.
You want to know the best part of the story? In the long term, his simple little 'B' didn't mean a thing to me or any of my readers.
But, perhaps, now it does.
I don't care if you're on a college campus or not. Now is the time to speak out in favor of Israel-- to counter the lies being taught in classrooms and spouted in public forums. We also must realize that we are already facing a tidal-wave of muslim influence in academia, the military, the federal government, and our economic institutions. For the first time ever in the course of this country's history, we stand the chance of seeing a president elected who has strong, direct ties to the muslim world. Don't just speak up: WAKE UP. Realize where we are at in time, and act before it is too late.
We have a responsibility to our land, our people, and ourselves. We have a responsibility to stand up for what is right. And if we claim to be the children of Israel, the chosen ones of G-d, we have an inherent duty to speak and live the truth, to acknowledge the world situation for what it really is, and to do something about it. And if you can't handle that, then you need to get out of the way.
Now is the time for passion, not apathy; pride, not fear. Now is the time to do what is right in the eyes of our G-d. If we don't, there will be no Israel left to defend and no Israel left to defend us. We will return to the dust with lives un-lived, and if we do that-- what will be the point of us all?
Labels: "Apartheid Week", AntiSemitism, Israel, Judaism, universities, Zionism
posted by Shoshana @ 8:01 PM
Big Brother is Full of It
Thursday, January 03, 2008
I love the way the American media (and international media, for that matter) create this world of thought that they expect the average public to just live within, without question or complaint.
For example, we all spent last Friday watching and listening to endless 24/7 coverage about Benazir Bhutto's asassination in Pakistan. What we didn't hear about was the murder of two off-duty IDF soldiers by a Palestian policeman and a Fatah terrorist. From Israel Matzav:
According to details of the murder of off-duty soldiers and nature enthusiasts David Rubin (21) and Ahikam Amihai (20), the gunmen, Ali Dandis, 24, and Amar Taha, 26, surrendered on the day of the attack to the Palestinian security forces in Hebron out of fear that they would be caught by the IDF. They also handed over the weapons they captured from the hikers.In the eyes of the American and international news mediums, these two innocent Israelis, murdered by muslim arab terrorists while they were taking a walk in the park, don't count. Not because they aren't members of the one sane, logical, functioning democracy in the Middle East, but because they don't wear headscarves, they didn't spend the last decade vacationing in the Arab world's version of Monte Carlo, and they weren't stupid enough to poke their unprotected heads through a sunroof to wave at a crowd of men raised to operate according to sharia law. They were just two young guys in the park. There's no news there-- after all, plenty of people get attacked in parks across the United States every day. Heck, I spent last week watching an entire day of news coverage about a kid who got mauled by a tiger in a park. Somehow, I bet he didn't get mauled because the tiger hated Jews and targeted them specifically because he believed Jews didn't deserve to live. Tell me, do they have anti-Israeli tigers? Have we explored this angle yet? Let's get Geraldo on it, right away.
Dandis worked as a clerk at the Sharia [Muslim religious. CiJ] courts in Hebron. Both are residents of the West Bank city, security officials said. They noted that Friday's attack was not the first time that Palestinian security officials or policemen were involved in terror attacks. Last month, Ido Zoldan was gunned down in the West Bank by Palestinian terrorists that turned out to be members of the PA security forces.
The PA did not report the surrendering of the terrorists, the Shin Bet said. After learning of their surrender, the security agency transferred a request to the PA asking that they transfer to Israel the murder weapons and the weapons of those who were murdered. In response to the demand, PA officials confirmed that the two had surrendered and were being interrogated. [In other words, had Israel not found out, the 'Palestinian Authority' would not have said anything. CiJ]
All of the weapons were transferred to Israel on Saturday.
Security officials said the attack was premeditated and its goal was to kill the hikers and steal their weapons. Security officials said that declarations in the media by Palestinian officials to the effect that the incident was of a criminal nature were in direct contradiction to the findings on the scene, as well as to the confessions of the terrorists themselves.
Today, Olmert confirmed to the Jerusalem Post that this is the year to divide Jerusalem. Happy 60th, Israel. The greatest birthday gift is knowing that your thousands of war heroes and victims of terror have died in vain. Mazel Tov:
Israel needs to internalize that even its supportive friends on the international stage conceive of the country's future on the basis of the 1967 borders and with Jerusalem divided, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has declared to The Jerusalem Post.Okay, yeah, enough of that.
...In an interview at the start of a year that he hopes will yield a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace accord...
In response to President Bush's remarks regarding Jewish settlement expansion: He told Reuters that during his visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories he would talk about Israeli settlement expansion, "about how that is, that can be, you know, an impediment to success.", Tzvi Fishman of Am K'Lavee has created posters that read: Bush, Read Your Bible: G-d Gave Israel to the Jews to be used to greet the President upon his arrival to Israel next week. I think American Zionists should download the image and click "print" and send it off to the White House, Attn: Condi Rice. Then again, maybe we should just fax it to Arafat's tomb. I hear it's a favorite vacation spot for diplomatic spiders.
How many Americans who care about Israel--Jewish Americans, Christians, righteous gentiles--know or understand the fact that our national media doesn't report about Israel because they don't want you to consider the Jewish nation a facet of your existence? These media agencies (and, namely, the corporations and money mongers behind them who call the shots) don't want you to think about Israel because they don't want Israel to matter to you, because if it did, then you might just take a moment to speak up about the radical injustices being done to the nation of G-d by our very own government, academic institutions, and media organizations. What better way to keep people quiet than to keep them totally uninformed? Ignorance is bliss, right? Well, for who? Apparently not David Rubin and Ahikam Amihai, nor Gilad Shalit, nor Ehud Goldwasser, nor Eldad Regev, if you even remember them-- if you even know who they are.
"To whom much has been given, much will be required," as the Biblical saying goes. We were given the Torah. We are expected to know better and act accordingly. Yet, the majority of us still wander around in the darkness of our own making, accepting the world as it is set before us by our media, our professors, our teachers, our Rabbis, our pastors, our priests, our officials. We sit there and we accept what we are told to do, to say, to think. In the meantime, the nation of Israel is dying a slow, painful death, and very few people from the grand sects that claim to care are bothering to do a thing about it. This tells me one thing: Israel-lovers need to start thinking outside their carefully constructed box.
And they'd better do it quick.
Labels: Ahikam Amihai, America, Bush, David Rubin, IDF, Israel, Judaism, news media, Olmert, Zionism
posted by Shoshana @ 9:05 PM
Time is on our side...so we'd better start using it
Sunday, December 16, 2007
The Most Pathetically Un-Jewish Comment of the Week:
When asked about Israel's ability to strike Iran on its own, [Minister of Public Security Avi] Dichter voiced doubt: Israel's status as the world's fourth largest defense exporter notwithstanding, he said, it is not a world power. "It is a state, and it can only be a power for a few hours. The fight against Iran has to be led by a world power."
-Dichter: U.S. Report Could Lead to Regional 'Yom Kippur' [Israel National News]
I make a habit of reading a lot of Israeli news and Israel-focused blogs every week, and I have to say, I'm getting really bored with this whole "point the finger" attitude I'm seeing here. John Bolton says George Bush needs to put Condi Rice in her place. Condi Rice needs to start respecting our friendship with Israel. Blah, blah, blah. When are we going to get off of our tuchuses and start acting on behalf of ourselves, instead of blaming others for not doing the job?
When Ezra and Nehemiah led a remnant of Jews back to Jerusalem, most of the exiled Judeans remained in Babylon, reasoning that the Messiah would eventually come and they'd all be taken care of miraculously, no effort required. Yeshua, on the other hand, informed His people--our people, literally speaking, "us," that He would not come again until we proclaimed, "Baruch haba b'Shem Adonai". Greeks think that time is this mysterious third person, but Jews know better. We know that time, zman is marked and measured by the actions we take, whether it is celebrating the feasts or fighting against our enemies, our time is measured by our choices, and as far as I'm concerned, we need to stop referencing a second-hand watch, lest we weep by the rivers of Babylon for yet another generation.
Somewhere in the peanut gallery, I hear one smartnik shouting, "Well, then, what do you suggest we do about it?" To him, as well as to all of those listening I suggest that you read the Torah and find out.
Labels: activism, Iran, Israel, Judaism, Messianic Judaism, Zionism
posted by Shoshana @ 2:44 PM
Annapolis and... America Has Fallen
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Some good links:
Pajamas Media: Peace Fatigue: Israelis Watch Annapolis and Yawn
"For the first time, it looks like that the leaders attending a Middle East peace conference want – really, really want, truly, truly need this diplomatic process more than their people do," wrote another Yediot commentator, Sima Kadmon. "They certainly believe in it more than the millions of Middle East residents who sat there yesterday skeptically, if not indifferently in front of the television. As far as the Israeli and Palestinians are concerned its another fancy festival for leaders who are happy and relieved to get away from the burning realities in their countries for a couple of days. It's called escapism."Caroline Glick in the JPost: Column One: Apartheid, Not Peace
Evident everywhere, the discrimination against Israel received its starkest expression at the main assembly of the Annapolis conference on Tuesday. There, in accordance with Saudi demands, the Americans prohibited Israeli representatives from entering the hall through the same door as the Arabs.Israpundit: The US is Selling its Soul to the Islamic Devil
At the meeting of foreign ministers on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called her Arab counterparts to task for their discriminatory treatment. "Why doesn't anyone want to shake my hand? Why doesn't anyone want to be seen speaking to me?" she asked pointedly.
...as far as Rice is concerned, the Palestinians are the innocent victims. They are the ones who are discriminated against and humiliated, not Livni, who was forced - by Rice - to enter the conference through the service entrance.
The United Arab Emirates, a tiny enclave of a half million natives and no rule of law has purchased significant chunks of American banks (including Citibank), ports, and airport facilities.Yesterday, it finally hit me: Why I'd been feeling so detached and out of it all week long. Even though I knew this had been coming for a long time, and I had prepared for it in a lot of ways, it was still a shock to my system to be required to let go of any vestige of my American identity. Gone. It's all gone now. Not by my choice, but by the choices of others. I cannot identify with a government or a people who seek to put Jerusalem on the carving table and Israel on the chopping block. Can't. Won't. I am a stranger in a strange land.
Kuwait, the country we saved from Saddam’s clutch, is deploying a war chest of $300 billion as its Neanderthal Parliament strives to reinstate flogging and decapitation and to annul the recently granted right of women to vote.
Qatar, the proprietor of the anti-Semitic, anti-American Al-Jazeera network, is piling up $300 billion, buying stakes in Europe’s third-largest stock market, the London Stock Exchange, and pumping money into Carnegie Mellon, Cornell Medical College, Texas A&M, and Virginia Commonwealth University.
And the mother of Islamofascism, Saudi Arabia, where 200 senior royals of the ruling family are playing with several billion each and buying up stakes in strategic companies such as Disney and Apple, and Citibank, too, and using the rest of the oil bonanza to fund madrassas, militant mosques, and theological institutes across America and Europe.
Is this how it felt to be Jewish in Europe in 1936? Is this what it felt like to read the newspaper and understand that my government leaders were taking glorious trips abroad, only to come back with false declarations of "peace in our time" while my cousins, brothers, and sisters were being shuffled around like sheep being readied for slaughter? Is this what it felt like to wonder, "Will I be next?" knowing that the question was not going to be answered with "yes" or "no" but simply, "when"?
If anything should make us re-think who we are, whether we are Ashkenazis in New York or Mizrahim in Beer Sheva, it is the clear and undeniable truths brought forth by the events of Annapolis. America does not give a whit about Israel, period. Not only do they not care, the government of the United States has made it perfectly clear in both policy and lack of propriety, that Israel (read: "the Jeeeeewwwws") is the slave, not the light of the world. And, like a slave, we are the scapegoats and whipping boys of the so-called masters at hand, a.k.a. the Arab nations who are acquiring control of the western economy at a rapid rate.
Of course, at this point I could dive into the cliches of apocalypse-ready mystics, hell-bent on half-witted exegesis and the preaching of self-important clerics who use the Word of G-d to fatten their own bellies and line their own pockets. What never ceases to amaze me is the Messianic believer's ability to fall long and hard for those Hollywood-esque approaches to daily horror. Perhaps that is why one Israeli documentarian I once saw interviewed cringed at the sound of Israel being called "The Holy Land." It wasn't that he denied the uniqueness of the place as much as he understood how unrealistic such an ethreal title is for a State so visceral that its daily life is nothing less than an expression of the very real battles of this very real world. Believers in America like to think of Israel as a nation whose point and purpose was fulfilled and recorded in the ancient past. Now that they are on the cusp of facing the same daily struggles, perhaps it is time for those who proclaim faith in the Jewish Messiah to do more than pay lip service to the idea that blessing Israel is a "good thing." Maybe it is time for these believers to put their heart, and not just their tongues into the harvest.
And, speaking of hearts, perhaps now would be a good time for Jewish Americans to stop approaching their inherited culture as marketable kitsch. Seinfeld may finally be making Israel laugh but, in this country, we've already had more than our share of the fun. We have to live our identity proudly, not just throw money at it out of guilt, if we want to survive and if we want our nation to survive. "The Word is close to you. It is in your mouth, it is even in your hearts, therefore, you can do it!" Being Jewish isn't about costuming for or pandering to the crowds: Being Jewish is about being who you were made and called out to be.
Sadly, it will take a war of G-dly proportions for us as a people to accept and embrace this fact. Right now, we have no right to petition governments or protest treaties. We have no right to seek any outsider support, because there is none to be found. And we certainly have no right to demand from G-d answers of salvation that our government is ready to negotiate away for promises more vague than thin air.
In six days in 1967, our G-d gave our city back to us. He gave us that contentious mountain, with its offensive domes and concreted gates erected to prevent the happening of an event that the whole world, both Jew and gentile, know to be true: the return and reign of Messiah Yeshua. In six days in 1967, our G-d sent us one magnificent calling card that read, "I'm coming sooner-- sooner than anyone thinks, and I'm telling you about it first, because I want you to be there when I arrive." And what did we do with that calling card? We stuck it in a scrapbook, stuck the scrapbook in the attic, and now we're debating on throwing it out with the spring cleaning.
No, we have no right to do anything but fall on our face in humiliation for what we have done to Him and His promises. We are a horrible, stiff-necked people and we should be filled with shame.
At the same time, we should also understand our responsibility to Him, to make things right. There is nothing we can do to save ourselves now--except, that is, to trust in His salvation. That's it. Because we have disarmed ourselves and we have no one in this world to turn to. It doesn't get anymore Biblical than this. Don't believe me? Just read Psalm 2 or Isaiah 63, or Zechariah 9, or the entirety of Jeremiah for starters.
As for the Messianic Jewish people, we have a responsibility to:
Stand up and speak out against the crimes of Annapolis.
We must demand a unified Jerusalem in the hands of the nation of Israel.
We must demand an Israel that includes the territories of YESHA--Judea and Samaria--as well as the reclamation of Gush Katif, the Sinai penninsula, and the ceded lands of southern Lebanon, along with the retention of the Golan Heights.
We must decry the United States Government's gross attacks against our nation, our people, and our very selves.
And, most importantly of all, we must beg, with our faces to the ground, for the mercy and action of Messiah that we may be saved for the sake of His throne in Jerusalem.
The prophet Amos ends with a promise from HaShem that we would be uprooted no more. In this, the 60th anniversary year of our modern re-establishment I pray for all of my Jewish people: THIS YEAR, AND EVERY YEAR, IN THE UNIFIED JERUSALEM, ISRAEL!
Labels: America, Annapolis, Israel, Jewish, Judaism, Messianic Judaism, Zionism
posted by Shoshana @ 7:38 PM
