The Story of the Jews

This evening, after preaching about why Christians should love the Jewish people, I arrived home just in time to catch the first episode of Simon Schama’s new BBC 2 series The Story of the Jews, based on his book of the same name. It was everything I expected from a collaboration between the finest television company in the world and a sophisticated, urbane, Reform Jewish historian.

Setting aside minor errors such as the ‘Israelites’ becoming ‘Jews’ at the Exodus from Egypt, the programme was sumptuously filmed and packed full of fascinating information. Much of the details about the Jewish community at Elephantine in Upper Egypt, for example, were new to me.

The two major focuses in the programme were Freud and Moses. Starting with Sigmund Freud and surveying the tragic history of the Jews, Simon Schama ended with Freud as he considered how and why the Jewish people have survived while their oppressors have turned to dust. Schama suggested that the answer lies in the fact that Judaism has the written Torah, the purported words of God mediated through Moses.

It was interesting to see Schama as a religious Jew – albeit not Orthodox – worshipping in synagogue and celebrating Passover with family and friends. But while it is true that the written Torah has played a part in Jewish survival, that is only part of the answer to his question.

I vividly recall the first radio broadcast by Jonathan Sacks, who retired today as Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth. On Radio 4’s Thought for the Day spot on the Today programme, Rabbi Sacks asked the same question as Simon Schama asked tonight: What accounts for the survival of the Jews? Jonathan Sacks’ answer was that the Jews have survived because ‘the final chapter has not yet been written.’ He was wrong: the Jewish people have survived and will survive because the last chapter has been written. It was written in eternity, before the universe came into being.

Although Simon Schama’s explanation is closer to the truth, he expressed doubts about the total reliability of the Bible, as did a Jewish archaeologist he interviewed. The archaeologist (whose name escapes me) felt that the historical reliability of Scripture – for example, whether David and Goliath were real personages or whether David defeated the Philistine in battle – were of little concern, it was the metaphorical lessons that were important. But a book of unreliable metaphors, however inspiring, cannot guarantee the survival of a nation and a people.

In the end, the Jewish people survive because ‘He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep’ (Psalm 121:4).  

Pentecost and the Plan of God

At the beginning of this month, I delivered the annual Alfred Edersheim lecture in Melbourne and Sydney. The title of the talk was 'Pentecost and the Plan of God'.  According to Jewish reckoning, Pentecost this year falls today, Wednesday 15 May. According to the Bible, Pentecost or Shavuot, falls exactly fifty days after the Sabbath following Passover, so it is the only festival of the Lord to which no date is assigned. Israel was to count fifty days from Passover, so that in celebrating Pentecost they would never forget the festival of their redemption.

The purpose of the lecture was to explore the relevance of the festival of Shavuot today in an attempt to relate the events that took place on the Day of Pentecost in the year 33AD to the plan and purpose of God for the world he created. What follows is the lecture.

According to Jewish tradition Pentecost, or Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, is Zeman Matan Torateinu: the ‘Season of the giving of our Torah’. In Acts 2, Luke appears to depict the events of the Day of Pentecost as a second ‘Mount Sinai experience’ for Israel. For example, both the Torah and the Spirit were given on mountains: the Law at Sinai and the Spirit on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

In the account of the giving of the Torah in Ex. 19:18-20, fire and the sound of a trumpet accompanied the descent of God on Mount Sinai. In Acts 2:2-3, the descent of the Spirit was accompanied by fire and a sound; a sound ‘like a rushing, mighty wind.’ It is significant that Luke does not say there was a ‘rushing, mighty wind’ but a sound ‘like a rushing, mighty wind.’

According to the rabbis, the world was divided into seventy nations and in tractate Shabbat 88b, the Talmud states, ‘Every single word that went forth from the Omnipotent was split up into seventy languages for the nations of the world.’ In Acts 2:4-5, the disciples of Jesus spoke words in the languages of ‘devout men from every nation under heaven.’

There was, however, a significant contrast between the giving of the Torah and the giving of the Spirit. In Ex. 32, after Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, 3,000 men of Israel died because of the sin of the golden calf. By contrast, in Acts 2:41, when the Holy Spirit was given, 3,000’ received the word’ and were baptised; in other words 3,000 people became spiritually alive in Messiah. This contrast is developed by Paul in 2Cor. 3, where he contrasts the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, the Law and the Gospel, ‘the letter’ and ‘the Spirit.’ The Old Covenant, says Paul, ministered death whereas the New Covenant ministers life. The outpouring of the Spirit of God on that momentous day generated a movement which was to spread through the world, toppling an empire and ministering life to countless millions until ultimately the whole earth will be ‘filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.’

What I propose to do in this lecture is to demonstrate that he events recorded in the second chapter of Acts reveal that Pentecost was the fulfilment of five distinct Old Testament elements: a Promise, a Psalm, a Pattern, a Plan and, finally, Pentecost itself.

1. Pentecost was the fulfilment of a Promise

From the very first page of the Bible God’s Ruach – his ‘Spirit’ or ‘Breath’ or ‘Wind’ – is at work at pivotal points such as Creation, when the Ruach hovered over the unformed and unfilled earth. At the Exodus, the Spirit of God empowered Bezaleel and his helpers to construct the tabernacle and the things pertaining to the worship of God; in Num. 11, the Spirit empowered the seventy elders of Israel, and Eldad and Medad, to prophesy – an event that made Moses wish all God’s people were prophets, a wish that came true at Pentecost. The Ruach was also at work at the establishment of the Hebrew monarchy when he came upon David in power and enabled him to conquer the Philistine giant Goliath. The work of God is never accomplished by human might or power but always by the Ruach of God.

In the New Testament, the Spirit was central in the ministry of Messiah and his apostles. In Lk. 1:35, the Spirit overshadowed Mary causing her to conceive the Messiah; in Mt. 3:16 the Spirit anointed Jesus at the Jordan river, setting him apart as Messiah; in Mt. 12:28, Lk. 11:20 and Acts 10:38 the Spirit empowered Jesus for his messianic ministry; in Heb. 9:14 the Spirit sustained Jesus for his atoning death, and Rom. 8:11 states that the Spirit raised Jesus from the dead. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the Spirit of God was present at the beginning of the God’s mission to the nations. The pouring out of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost was the fulfilment of at least two biblical promises made to Israel, the first being the promise of Joel 2:28-32:

And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit…

However, Joel 2 was not the only prophetic scripture fulfilled at Pentecost. The proclamation of the Word of the Lord to the house of Israel and the Ruach breathing life into 3,000 souls was a fulfilment of Ezek. 37:1-14, in which Israel is pictured as a heap of dry bones. In the vision, God promises to recall his people from exile, following which he will breathe life into them and cause them to become a great army. According to vv 27 - 28, God’s dwelling place will be among resurrected Israel; he will be their God, they will be his people and, when his sanctuary is in their midst forever, the nations will know that he is ‘the LORD who sanctifies Israel.’ Israel’s promised resurrection was to have an effect on the nations.

2. Pentecost was the fulfilment of a Psalm

Commentators on the book of Acts recognise a symbolic significance in the sound like a wind and the tongues of fire, and various interpretations of the symbols have been suggested but few interpreters, if any, link the phenomena to Ps. 104:4, which states that God ‘makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire.’

In the readings for Pentecost, the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer includes verses 25-37 of Ps. 104 but, interestingly, not verse 4! But how fitting that with the coming of the Spirit, God’s messengers and servants should be initiated into their roles by the very elements God uses as his messengers and servants. God had spoken to Elijah 800 years before the events of Acts 2 through a ‘still, small voice’ rather than fire and a howling wind but at Pentecost he spoke with the unrestrained might and power of a spiritual tornado that uprooted three thousand observant Jews and Gentile proselytes from the kingdom of darkness and transferred them into the kingdom of his Son.

3. Pentecost was the fulfilment of a Pattern

One of the most divisive issues within Evangelicalism today is Supersessionism or, as it is more commonly known, ‘Replacement Theology.’ Put simply, ‘Replacement Theology’ is the idea that ‘the Church’ has replaced Israel in the plans and purposes of God and that all the promises and privileges that belonged to the Jewish people prior to the coming of Messiah have been spiritualised and transferred to a new ‘spiritual’ Israel. Some years ago, on Whit Sunday, the churches in a small town on the south coast of England organised a street party, complete with party games and jelly and ice cream, to celebrate ‘the birthday of the Church.’ The idea was to attract locals in the hope (I presume) that they, like the crowd that gathered at Pentecost in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, would want to know how to be saved. Apart from the fact that the Holy Spirit is a hard act to follow, was the Church really born on the Day of Pentecost in 33AD?

Look up the word ‘church’ in an English Dictionary and you will probably read that the word is based on a medieval Greek term kuriakon doma, meaning the ‘Lord’s house’. Ask a Christian what ‘church’ is and the response will more than likely be that ‘Church’ is people not a building.’ Ask a non-Christians what ‘church’ is and the answer will probably be that it is a building. Theologically, the Christian is correct but from the point of view of linguistics, the non-Christian is right.

How would the disciples of Jesus have understood his declaration in Mt. 16:18, ‘I will build my church’? Although Mt. 16:18 is the first occurrence of the word ‘church’ in the Bible, none of the apostles asked what a ‘church’ was. The Greek word ekklesia, translated ‘church’ in Mt. 16, means an ‘assembly,’ or ‘congregation.’ But Jesus, of course, would have been speaking in Hebrew or Aramaic, not in Greek, and the term he would have used was one with which his Jewish disciples would have been very familiar, Qahal.

In the Old Testament, Israel was God’s qahal, his ‘assembly.’ When the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek in the third century BC, the translators of the Septuagint, as the Greek version was known, used ekklesia to translate qahal. ‘Church,’ in that sense, therefore, was a concept with which the disciples of Jesus were very familiar and, according to Stephen in Acts 7:38, God had an ekklesia, a ‘church’ or ‘assembly’ in the wilderness; that assembly being Israel. We must not think, therefore, that the Church was born at Pentecost in 33AD or that the Church has replaced Israel as the people of God. From the time of the Exodus, Israel was God’s ‘church,’ or assembly, and continues to be so.

If that sounds confusing, it might be helpful for us to look at the subject from another perspective.

Jer. 11:16 depicts Israel as ‘a green olive tree, beautiful with good fruit,’ and in Rom. 11:16-22, Paul draws on Jeremiah’s imagery to speak of Israel as an ‘olive tree’ of which Jewish individuals are the branches. Those Jews, or ‘natural branches,’ who refused to embrace their Messiah were broken off but believing Gentiles – like branches from an uncultivated olive tree – were grafted onto the cultivated olive tree of Israel. Whether cultivated or uncultivated, both varieties of branch are joined to the same tree and are nourished by the same sap that comes from the roots of the tree, namely the Patriarchs. At Pentecost, God did not cut down one olive tree and plant a new one, called the Church; he began to call people from all nations, not just from Israel, to be part of his beautiful green olive tree in order they might produce good fruit.

Something new did come into existence at Pentecost, however: a spiritual temple. In the Old Testament, a developing pattern may be discerned in the way God meets with his people. Before the Fall, God met and communed with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. After the expulsion from Eden, Cain and Abel approached God as individuals, each at their own altar. After the call of Abraham, worship began to take place at a family altar and the mark of the faith of the patriarchs (as we observe in Gn. 12:8; 13:12; 26:17, 25; 33:18-20) was that they each pitched their tent, built their altar and called on the name of the Lord

At the Exodus, the family altar was replaced by a national shrine. The people lived in tents and, under the direction of the Lord, a tabernacle was constructed where his people might meet with their God. When the people settled in the land and began to live in permanent dwellings, Solomon erected a temple of stone to serve as the house of God.

Following the destruction of the temple in 586 BC, God foretold in Ezek. 40-48 that a better, bigger and perfect temple would be constructed, out of which would flow a river of healing water (47:1-12). There are biblical interpreters who insist Ezekiel’s vision must be interpreted in a strictly literalistic manner but such an approach raises a number of serious difficulties. According to Ezekiel's measurements, the temple will be so large that both the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives will have to be enlarged and expanded in order to accommodate it. A clue to understanding the true nature of Ezekiel’s vision can be found in Jn. 2:19, where Jesus speaks of his body as the temple. And in Jn. 7:38, on the final day of the feast of Tabernacles, Jesus declares: ‘Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water”.’

‘This,’ says John, Jesus ‘said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.’ The Spirit was ‘given,’ of course, at Pentecost but which ‘Scripture’ foretold the Spirit flowing like a river of living water out of the hearts of those that believe in Messiah? The only Old Testament passage that speaks of ‘living water’ flowing out of anything is Ezek. 47:1-12, in which a river of water flows from the temple of God bringing life to wherever it flows.

A series of New Testament texts, including Mt. 24:1-2; 26:61; Acts 6:14; Eph. 2:19-22; 1 Pet. 2:4-8; Rev. 22:1-5, lead us to conclude that The Body of Messiah, comprised of living stones, is the new temple, a ‘habitation of God in the Spirit’, out of which flows living water for the healing of the nations. At Pentecost, the Spirit began to flow from the followers of Jesus in the temple where multitudes were observing Shavuot, to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and, ultimately, to the uttermost parts of the earth.

In Ex. 40, when the tabernacle was erected, a cloud of glory authenticated it as the dwelling place of God. When Solomon dedicated the temple in 2 Chron. 7, fire fell from heaven and the glory of God filled the place. In Acts 2, God authenticated his new, living temple with a glory even greater than that of the previous temples. At Pentecost, God dedicated and authenticated his living temple that was destined to fill the entire world, not simply the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives. And whereas, in times gone by, God was encountered in particular locations such as Eden, the altar, the tabernacle and the temple, since Pentecost Jews and Gentiles may meet with him not so much in a universal temple but as living stones in that temple.

The temple reminded people of Eden. It was built on a mountain from which flowed the Kidron stream and its architecture included cherubim, palm trees, gourds and other plants and flowers. It was a representation of Eden from which had flowed four rivers. The single river that flowed from Ezekiel’s temple caused trees to grow in the wilderness, the leaves of which brought healing. In John’s parallel vision in the final chapter of the Bible, the river flows from a temple city, the New Jerusalem, and on either side of the river grows the tree of life with twelve kinds of fruit, yielding fruit every month. Even the leaves of the tree bring healing to the nations. Little wonder, then, that the hymn writer Isaac Watts wrote that in Jesus ‘the tribes of Adam boast more blessings than their father lost’!

4. Pentecost was the fulfilment of a Plan

Immediately after the fall of man, in Gn. 3:15, God announced his plan to redeem his fallen creation. The call of Abraham was part of the divine redemptive plan, the end of which was that all the families of the earth would be blessed (Gn. 12:3). Israel’s calling was a missionary calling and the nation is described in Jer. 2:3 as ‘the firstfruits of [the Lord’s] increase’ that is, the firstfruits of God’s harvest from among all nations.

In Jer. 4:1-4, the Lord declared that Israel’s relationship to him would have a beneficial effect on the Gentiles:

‘If you will return, O Israel,’ says the LORD, ‘return to Me; and if you will put away your abominations out of My sight, Then you shall not be moved. And you shall swear, ‘The LORD lives,’ in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness; the nations shall bless themselves in Him, and in Him they shall glory.’

God’s plan of redemption is fundamental to understanding Ps.67:

God be merciful to us and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us. That your way may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise You, O God; let all the peoples praise you. Oh, let the nations be glad and sing for joy! For you shall judge the people righteously, and govern the nations on earth… Then the earth shall yield her increase; God, our own God, shall bless us… and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.

The first two verses of Ps. 67 remind us of the High Priestly benediction of Num. 6:24-26:

The LORD bless you and keep you;

The LORD make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you;

The LORD lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.

They also bring to mind Gn. 12:1-3:

Now the LORD had said to Abram: ‘Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’

God repeated the promise to Isaac in Gn. 26:4: ‘… in your seed all nations of the earth shall be blessed.’ He made the same promise to Jacob in Gn. 28:14: ‘… in you and in your seed all families of earth shall be blessed.’

According to Genesis, before the nations could be blessed, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had to be blessed. At every festival the high priest blessed the people and in Ps. 67 the promise of the blessing of the nations is clarified. The blessing God has in mind for the nations is nothing less than their salvation. Could God have had anything less in mind when he promised to bless Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their descendants? Could he have anything less in mind when he blessed the people through their High Priest?

The psalmist recognised that although God had blessed Israel in many ways, the nation did not possess the blessings invoked by the high priest in their fulness. Moreover, the nations were not saved.

Israel could not enjoy the blessings of Num. 6:24-26 in their fulness, nor could the nations be saved until Messiah, the seed of Abraham came. And Ps. 67 is a prayer that Israel will be blessed fully and that the nations will know God’s salvation, his Yeshua! In the songs recorded in the first two chapters of Luke’s Gospel, it becomes evident that with the birth of Yeshua, the invocations of the Aaronic benediction and the pleas of Ps. 67:1-2 were being answered.

In Ps. 67:1, the Hebrew poet appeals to God to show chanan – grace, or mercy – to Israel. In the Magnificat of Lk. 1:46-55, remembering that Mary spoke Hebrew, she sings:

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour… his mercy [which in Hebrew would have been chanan] is for those who fear him from generation to generation… He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy [chanan], as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.

In Lk 1:67-79, the blessings of Ps. 67, the high priestly blessing and the promise to Abraham all come together in the Song of Zechariah:

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us; to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

According to Ps. 67, as it goes with Israel so it goes with the nations, and the Psalmist appeals to God to bless Israel. Before the nations can be blessed through the knowledge of Yeshua Israel must be blessed and the New Testament constantly emphasises the principle ‘to the Jew first,’ as Peter declares in Acts 3:24-26:

All the prophets… proclaimed these days. You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’ God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness."

There is a pattern in Ps. 67: Israel is blessed; then the nations are saved; then ‘Israel’s God’ blesses Israel. Paul reveals a similar framework of thought in Romans 11: Israel has been blessed but has rejected the blessing; the nations are being saved and are rejoicing in God’s salvation and this will ‘provoke Israel to jealousy’. At the moment, says Paul, only a remnant of Israel believes the gospel but that will not always be the case. There will be a fulness. ‘All Israel will be saved’.

God has called Gentiles to provoke Israel to jealousy. That is our duty.

Although tongues might at first reading appear to be the predominant phenomenon on the day of Pentecost, tongues were not most important feature; the preaching of the gospel was the crucial factor on that day. The gospel was preached to the Jews first but by the time the book of Acts closes the nations are blessing themselves in the Lord and glorying in him. Pentecost was the launch pad for the final stage of God’s plan for world redemption, a plan that has nothing less as its goal than the salvation of the nations and the liberation of the cosmos itself from the effects of the fall of Adam.

5. Pentecost was the fulfilment of Pentecost

Shavuot/Pentecost, like the other festivals of the Lord, was highly symbolic festival. It was the second of the annual pilgrim festivals at which every male Israelite was to appear before the face of God at the house of God in Jerusalem. The ‘place’ in which the 120 believers were when the Spirit fell on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2 was the temple. The temple was the only place in which observant Jews would have been on the morning the Ruach of God came upon the disciples of Jesus. Had the 120 been in an upper room in another part of Jerusalem, those in the temple would have been unaware of the sound of the wind and the tongues of fire, and Peter certainly would not have been able to address thousands of his fellow Jews in the confines of Jerusalem’s narrow streets.

Shavuot was originally a harvest festival but by the first century of our era, as the Jewish people had become scattered among the nations, the festival had lost its primary harvest significance and become ‘the season of the giving of the law’ at Sinai. It is surely significant, then, that at the time when the Torah passage for Shavuot was being read in the temple the Spirit came down on Mount Zion. The Torah reading would have included Ex. 19:18:

Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the LORD had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. The LORD came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain.

Nevertheless, the harvest significance had not disappeared and two wheat loaves made from the firstfruits of the wheat harvest were waved before God in the temple.

At both Passover and Pentecost, firstfruits were presented to God as wave offerings in the temple. The offering presented the day after the Sabbath of Passover week, as specified in Lv. 23:10-14 was the firstfruits of the barley harvest, and barley was considered the poor man’s food. The firstfruits offering at Shavuot was from the wheat harvest, and in Ps. 81:16 wheat is the rich man’s food. In 1 Cor. 15:21-23, when Paul describes Messiah as the ‘firstfruits from the dead’ he is likening Messiah’s resurrection to the Passover firstfruits offering, which was presented to God on the very day Jesus rose from the dead.

The Shavuot firstfruits offering was a different picture. The firstfruits of the wheat harvest was offered in the form of two loaves with leaven. It would seem that this offering is a picture of the believers – Jews and Gentiles – being incorporated into the body of Messiah at Shavuot. And as the poor man’s food signified Messiah and the rich man’s food represented believers in Messiah, we are reminded that, as Paul says in 2 Cor. 8:9, Messiah became poor for our sakes that we might become rich in Him.

There is a further significance to the fact that two loaves were offered. The number two is strongly associated in the Bible with witness. In Dt. 19:15, at least two witnesses were required for an acceptable testimony in a court of Israelite law and the principle finds a variety of applications within the New Covenant as, for example, in Mk. 6:7 when Messiah sent out His disciples by twos in order to preach the Good News. According to 1 Tim. 5:19, congregations are not to receive an accusation against an elder without at least two witnesses and, says Peter in
1 Pet. 3:7, in the marriage partnership there has to be agreement between both spouses for prayer to be accepted by God. Without two witnesses there is only opinion and following Pentecost God had both Jews and Gentiles as his witnesses to the world.

Moreover, the offering of the loaves was accompanied by a number of sacrifices including, as we read in Lv. 23: 19, a peace offering, in Hebrew a ‘shalom’. When the Apostle Paul speaks to Gentile believers at Ephesus, he says in 2:14-18:

For [Messiah] himself is our peace [offering], who has made us both [Jews and Gentiles] one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

The Sages of Israel recognised that the nation’s destiny was to bless the world, and regarded the coming of Ruth the Moabitess into Israel as a foreshadowing of the coming of the Gentiles into the blessings of Israel. That is why the Book of Ruth – which celebrates the coming of a Gentile into the commonwealth of Israel at harvest time – is read in synagogues at Shavuot. Ruth was blessed by becoming a member of Israel and Israel, in turn, was blessed by her becoming the ancestor of King David and the Messiah. At Pentecost in 33AD, there were Gentile proselytes, as well as natural Jews, incorporated into the commonwealth of Israel. According to Rom. 11:11-15 and 25-26, Gentiles have been blessed by Israel and are, in turn, called to be a blessing to the Jews, not least by provoking them to jealousy.

The 3,000 Jews and proselytes who believed Peter’s preaching on the day of Pentecost were the firstfruits of a harvest that would culminate in a world-wide ingathering from all lands. Rev. 7 refers to the Gentile converts as a ‘great multitude which no man could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples and tongues’ (note the many ‘tongues’ of Acts 2). In Rev. 14:4 the 144,000 are identified as ‘firstfruits to God and to the Lamb’ and it is to them, the first generation of Jewish believers, that James addresses his epistle. According to James 1:1), his readers were from ‘the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad’ and, as he says in v.18 ‘a kind of firstfruits of His creatures’. While Peter, James, John and the other apostles continued to reap the firstfruits of God’s harvest within the house of Israel, Paul says in Gal. 2:9 that he and his companions were reaping a harvest from among the nations.

***

What, then, do the events of Pentecost as recorded in Acts say to us? The events of that day bring together a number of threads from the Old Testament scriptures that hints (some more strongly than others) at God’s plan and purpose for his creation. The teaching of Pentecost encourages us to trust that God’s purposes for creation will continue to unfold until at last all Israel is saved, the people of God from all nations are gathered into the kingdom, and ‘the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.’

However difficult the task, however dark the days, the harvest nature of Pentecost encourages us to pursue mission in the knowledge that the firstfruits of God’s harvest which was presented to him on Mount Zion 2,000 years ago, guarantees a full harvest from all nations that no man can number. Therefore, we cannot afford the luxury of pessimism. In all our service, we can be ‘steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord our labour is not in vain.’ The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our God and his Messiah!

Searching the Scroll

There are times when I think Isaiah 53 has been overworked as a messianic proof text. And yet I still meet people who are totally ignorant of it and instinctively recognise it to be about Jesus when confronted with it.

Searching the Scroll is a new site that has  been set up to generate debate about Isaiah 53.

Take a look at it, leave a comment, pass the word around and make the site work by getting involved in the discussions.

Dickens and the Jews

Two hundred years ago today, the man who is arguably the second greatest English author was born. Whether you’ve read the books themselves or only watched the movie or BBC dramatisations, there is at least one story you will be familiar with. Most people, even if they have not read Oliver Twist or seen David Lean’s magnificent film adaptation, will be familiar with Oliver, Lionel Bart’s feel-good musical romp that succeeded in transforming the reptilian ‘Jew’ Fagin into a pantomime villain.

It is sobering to think that England’s two greatest writers – Shakespeare and Dickens – between them succeeded in creating two of the greatest villains in world literature – Shylock and Fagin – both of them Jewish. The only literary bad guys worse than Shylock and Fagin are supernatural baddies such as Sauron, Grendel and the Wicked Witch of the West. In Oliver Twist, even Bill Sykes is overshadowed by ‘the Jew’ Fagin.

In the Jewish Chronicle of 22 December 2011, Jennifer Lipman pointed out that in Dickens’s novel, ‘Fagin is refererred to as “the Jew” more frequently than he is referred to by name – more than 250 times – and as a “hideous old man [who] seemed like some loathsome reptile”.’

Lipman’s article goes on to point out that Dickens later amended his portrayal of Fagin and that in a final reading of the book that he gave in the year before he died, he included no reference to the Fagin’s ethnicity. She reveals also that Dickens also created the rather more flattering Jewish character of Mr Riah in Our Mutual Friend. But Fagin was not unique in Dickens’s oeuvre.

The 1852, Household Words, the weekly periodical Dickens edited, featured a story called 'Old Clothes', in which Dickens appeared to suggest that all Jews were ‘old-clothesmen in disguise’ – essentially, lower-class peddlers. The story became the subject of a long and sarcastic letter to the JC from a reader who signed himself ‘P’.

‘P’ thanked Dickens for bringing to his attention the previously unknown fact that ‘carrying the bag, and crying ‘Ogh clo,’ seemed to be a sort of apprenticeship to which ‘all Hebrews’ were subjected, and speculated that Dickens must be haunted by a spectre from his childhood who caused him to see ‘in every beard a Jew, and in every Jew an old-clothesman, even in countries where no such thing as the ‘Ogh clo’ trade exists’.

‘P’ pointed out sharply that if Jews were dealers of second-hand clothing, it was largely because Dickens’ ancestors had prevented Jews from taking up more ‘ennobling’ pursuits.

A few weeks later, Dickens was offered ‘proof’ that ‘the Jews have minds and ideas above the ‘old clothes bag’, when several University of London graduates sent the JC notice of their examination success in fields including anatomy and physiology. ‘Is Mr Charles Dickens yet disposed to do us justice, and retract his unjust aspersions?’ they asked.

In March 1851, the JC devoted a front page to coverage of Dickens’ article ‘Biography of a bad shilling’, in which ‘a Jew’ was held responsible for the atrocious crime of melting down a respectable zinc door plate.

The JC complained that the author ‘once more seizes on the opportunity of adding to the insults and calumnies he had previously heaped on the Jewish community’.

Noting that Dickens was influential enough to ‘eradicate from the vocabulary the fatal word “prejudice”,’ the JC questioned why so many criminals in Dickens’ work were Jewish when this did not match the ‘criminal calendar of the country’.

The previous year, a debate raged in the JC over The Old Lady in Threadneedle Street, which claimed that the gold of the Bank of England was ‘sweated by Jews’.

Reader ‘L L’ complained that Dickens had ‘held up my creed to scorn and detestation in charging Jews with this dishonest practice’ and suggested that the Jews of whom Dickens was writing must belong to the tribe ‘that has been charged with the murder of Christian infants, to make the Passover-bread with innocent blood’.

Another reader claimed there was ‘no more enthusiastic admirer’, but was saddened that Dickens only alluded to the Hebrews ‘for the purpose of attaching to our nation reproaches of vice, meanness and unworthiness’. He added: ‘Were Dickens a miserable penny-a-liner, his observations would have been unworthy of remark.’

Yet despite complaining of ‘20 years of misrepresentation on the part of the most generally read novelist’, Dickens was still considered worthy of a fulsome editorial on his death in June 1870. The JC mourned the fact that ‘the greatest ornament of the press of England passed away’.

To the Jewish community, a man who was once criticised for libelling a people with his words was, by the time of his death, a hero to be celebrated for years to come.

Lies, Damned Lies and the Khazar Theory

In response to my reply to the Facebook posting of a fake quote from Ariel Sharon, I received the following:

… just a quick response to your posting on my wall. I guess it will be impossible to get at the real truth. Even if he did not utter those words exactly as reported, I am convinced he believes them in [sic] anyway. I want to make clear that I am not talking about a man who is from the seed of Israel and a true Jew but a man who is a rabid Zionist who’s [sic] bloodline can be traced to Eastern Europe and is as Jewish as Obama. There is no doubt in my mind that Zionist Israel have [sic] massive control over the USA.

Although the writer guesses ‘it will be impossible to get at the real truth’, he is ‘convinced’ that he actually does know the 'real truth' i.e. that Ariel Sharon (when he was capable of expressing himself) believed Israel controlled the USA and that every American knew it but that the President of Israel, Shimon Peres, did not know it! The truth is that the claim is totally bogus.

In case you are confused about the reference to the ‘rabid Zionist who’s [sic] bloodline can be traced to Eastern Europe and is as Jewish as Obama’, all will be revealed. Read on.

My correspondent (For personal reasons, I’m not going to reveal his name. I’m trying to be totally objective here) goes on:

I want you to understand though, that I make the clear and unequivocal distinction between the two peoples, the true children of Israel, Semites, and the people from Eastern Europe who chose Judaism and flooded in into Palestine after the war from all parts of the World claiming to be of Israel.

This is a reference to the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism in 749 AD. Bearing in mind that every Khazar male convert would have submitted to the rite of circumcision without anaesthetic, we may assume their conversion was not a matter of political convenience.

So what happens when a non-Jew converts to Judaism? He becomes a Jew. It happened at times in the Old Testament as, for example, when the Moabite Ruth accompanied her widowed mother-in-law to Bethlehem, vowing: ‘Were you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.’

Whether Ruth’s ‘bloodline’ was Jewish is irrelevant. She became an Israelite. She married Boaz and became the ancestor of King David and the Messiah. Irrespective of their ‘bloodline’, the Khazars who converted to Judaism became Jews and, as such, inheritors of all the promises made to Abraham and his children.

The claim that Israeli Zionists (‘rabid’ or non-rabid) are not really Jews lacks any internal logic or consistency. If the Jews of Europe and Israel and Russia and the USA and Africa are not Jews, then where are the Jews? What happened to that people whom God said would not be counted among the nations?

Every Passover Seder ends with the wish: ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’ Prayers are offered in the synagogue for the restoration of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland and the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem. What ethnic group feels indissolubly linked to a land they never inhabited?

Not even the Khazars, after their conversion, appeared to feel the need to migrate to the Holy Land, but there are people around the world who have always felt an attachment to the land.

Prior to 1967, when the Arabs were in full control of the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza, the Palestinians’ appeared to feel no intrinsic link to the land itself and had no interest in establishing an independent Palestinian Arab state. Nor, in those years, did the international community seem to care about a Palestinian state. Everything changed only when those territories fell into the hands of the Jews.

Why, if European Jews today are not really Jews, have they over the centuries made hazardous pilgrimages and dangerous journeys to the Holy Land, risking their lives to live and study there? What explains the unquenchable longing for the land, if not the fact that the Jewish people sense they truly belong to the land God promised to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendants?

Since the time of Joshua there has always been a Jewish presence in the land of Israel. Under foreign occupation, after Israel was conquered by the Islamic armies and by the Turks, and Jews became a minority in their own country, the land languished and reverted to being desert and swamp.

In the 19th Century, ‘Palestine’ was a poor country. It was largely barren and uninhabited. Hundreds of years of abuse by foreigners had turned the country into a treeless waste, with malaria-ridden swamps and a sprinkling of towns and a desert in the south.

Mark Twain observed in The Innocents Abroad, written in 1867:

Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince … It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land … Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies … Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua’s miracle left it more than three thousand years ago … Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village … Capernaum is a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have vanished from the earth … Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land?

The first modern wave of Jewish immigration began in the 1880s and in less than twenty years the Jewish population of Palestine had tripled to over 80,000. But why would any people want to emigrate en masse to one of the most inhospitable and infertile lands in the world with a view to making it their home? Why was the Jewish National Fund willing to pay exorbitant sums of money for barren land when they could have bought rich arable farmland in America for fraction of the price?

Also, why did the ‘fake’ Jews of Europe retain their identity during the Holocaust when they could have denied their identity? Why were they willing to die rather than deny their identity?

There is no internal consistency or logic with the ‘Jews are Khazars’ theory. It raises many more questions than it answers. In fact, it offers no answers at all; only questions. And unanswerable questions at that.

If you have half a mind, that's all you'll need...

Last night I watched TV for the first time in weeks and, boy was it good!

In 9/11: Conspiracy Road Trip, five young confirmed conspiracy theorists were given a free trip to the United States, courtesy of BBC 3, where an attempt was made to introduced them to foreign concepts such as critical thinking, probability and common sense.

Charlotte was a nanny in New York at the time of the attacks and had evidently been traumatised by the experience. Charlie, a former philosophy student, thought the twin towers had been brought down by controlled explosion. Rodney took pride, like so many conspiracy nuts, that he was privy to ‘something that very few people know about.’

Each member of the group was allowed to expound their particular take on the events of 9/11 that persuaded them that the attacks were an inside job. The group was then introduced to experts and witnesses in an effort to resolve the issues that troubled them.

One member of the group doubted that anyone but a trained pilot could have flown a passenger plane into the twin towers. She was given a flying lesson and in less than an hour she flew a plane round Manhattan and successfully landed it, which should have proved that anyone with even rudimentary training could have flown an airliner into the largest building in Manhattan.

A technician and a demolition expert demolished the notion that the collapse of the twin towers was due to a controlled explosion in the building. Charlie, at least, appeared almost astonished to discover there were perfectly reasonable explanations for phenomena he'd previously found baffling. But Charlotte and Rodney were not for turning. The fact that one of the expert witnesses had a commendation from President Bush on his wall was proof positive that he was untrustworthy.

As with most conspiracy theorists, nothing was going to persuade her that Bush and his administration had chosen to kill thousands of American citizens as a pretext for invading Afghanistan.

I was listening closely for when Israel would be brought into the equation and, sure enough, Rodney was of the opinion that Israel was in there.

Well, as we all know, only the Jews are evil enough to pull off such a stunt and we know they are evil because they did it.

The Consolations of Conspiracy Theories

When you arrive at the core of any conspiracy theory, you can be as certain as make no difference that the Jews are behind it, whether it be the two World wars or 9/11.

What explains the extraordinary appeal of conspiracy theories? According to an article in the Budapest Times by Péter Krekó, they provide psychologically comforting explanations for unexpected and shocking events that are otherwise difficult to explain.

Conspiracy theories allow us to believe that the world is essentially just. If people living in Arab countries take the view that the governments of Israel and the United States carried out the September 11 attacks, then they can avoid facing up to the problem of Islamic fundamentalism burdening their own communities.

Conspiracy theories help to explain adverse social events, reconstruct the past and predict future events, call attention to threats to our own group, spur the members of our own group to collective defence, and provide moral justification for cruelty and violence towards external groups.

The villains in conspiracy theories are the Jews. Conspiracy theories about them sprang up in the Middle Ages. They were blamed, for example, for the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in 1009 and the Rome earthquake of 1020. Jews were also held responsible for the famine that struck Europe in the 14th century, leading to repeated pogroms on French soil. Some people even ascribed the Black Death that claimed the lives of almost a third of the population of Europe to a Jewish conspiracy designed to wipe out Christian communities despite the fact that the Jews were also among its victims.

Conspiracy theories are also indispensable ideological and political props for radical groups, as demonstrated by the longevity and persistence of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Hadassa Ben Itto is the author of The Lie That Wouldn’t Die, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. She served for 31 years as a judge at all levels of the Israeli courts, including as an acting justice of the Supreme Court. She has also served as an official representative of Israel in various international forums, including UNESCO and the UN General Assembly, and is currently the honorary president of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists.

In a recent Jerusalem Post article, she points out that in the demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, there were placards of Hosni Mubarak with a Star of David on his face. Lara Logan, an American journalist, was sexually molested in the middle of the square and was called a Jew, although she is not Jewish. She does not have to be Jewish. The word “Jew” has become an accepted insult in the public square. A well known Egyptian preacher stood up and talked not about freedom but about the Jews, about what is going to happen to the Jews when the masses take over. So Israelis are rightfully worried.

Why is The Protocols – a proven lie and forgery – important today? Because it is being published around the world, with new editions in Arabic almost every year, and in Persian and Turkish. These publications are financed by government money and distributed not only in Arabic-speaking countries, but also to Muslim minorities around the world.

New editions are necessary because the introductions are updated every year. The introductions say if you do not believe that the Jews are really planning to take over the world, look at what is happening in your country and region. Everything that is happening is rooted in The Protocols, an implementation of the “Jewish conspiracy.” If there is a financial crisis, an AIDS or a flu epidemic, a terrorist attack, an upheaval or a catastrophe, one can always point to a chapter or page in The Protocols because it is such a devious document that everything is there. There is a whole detailed plan of how to take over the world.

The Protocols is not only a forgery, it is plagiarism. It was actually written in France in the last decade of the 19th century. During the preparation for the Russian Revolution, Bolshevik cells could not operate openly in Russia, so they were active elsewhere in Europe, including France. A special envoy of the Russian Secret Police was sent to France to uncover the Bolshevik cells. The Russian Secret Service and the Black Hundreds, an ultra-nationalist movement in Russia whose slogan was “Beat the Jews and Save Russia,” were trying to convince the czar that the Jews were behind the Bolshevik Revolution. The czar was already convinced, but they needed proof.

The Protocols is not just a libel, it is also a political document describing a Jewish criminal conspiracy to dominate the world, and almost the first leader outside Russia who picked it up was Adolf Hitler. As a strategic step, the Nazis decided to use The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a central part of their ideology, as we know from correspondence between Hitler and Goebbels. A German historian describes in his book how Hitler used The Protocols on the way to the Final Solution, but he had already mentioned it in Mein Kampf. The Nazis were masters of the “Big Lie” and their tactics have been adopted by the Muslim world. The theory is that the bigger the lie, the better success of brainwashing the public.

The Protocols is a central issue in Arab and Muslim propaganda, even in what we call moderate countries, including countries that made peace with Israel. The Protocols is everywhere, at every Arabic book fair, more in Egypt, less in Jordan. It is in public discourse, in newspapers, even in TV soap operas. It describes world history from beginning to end, including the French Revolution, as part of the Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. Until the end of World War II, the problem was the Jews, but after the establishment of the State of Israel, the target has become Israel.

There may be no Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world, but there is certainly an anti-Jewish conspiracy that seeks to demonise the Jewish people and delegitimise the state of Israel.

Dancing in the Dark

Imagine condemned criminals dancing for joy around the courtroom holding up the very documents that seal their fates! That bizarre scenario becomes a reality for the Jewish people every year when they celebrate Simchat Torah: “Joy of the Law”.
Today was “Simchat Torah” and every year on 23 Tishri in the Jewish calendar, Jewish people celebrate the conclusion and restart of their annual Torah-reading cycle with an unbridled joy that surpasses even the joy of Sukkot.

Every year, the books of Moses are read in synagogues, starting with Genesis 1 and concluding, at the end of the year, with Deuteronomy 34. Tishri 23 began last evening and in synagogues tomorrow (Friday 1 October), chapters 33 and 34 of Deuteronomy will conclude the annual cycle of Torah readings. Genesis 1, the first chapter of the new cycle will also be read.

At Simchat Torah, it is customary for every man to take part in the celebration by receiving an aliyah, by “going up” to the bimah in synagogue to read from the books of Moses. Children too receive an aliyah, but the highlight of Simchat Torah is the hakafot, when congregants march and dance with Torah scrolls around the reading table in the synagogue.

On reflection, there is something profoundly sad about Jewish rejoicing in the Torah. At one level, it is wonderful to possess God’s law, or instruction (which is what the Hebrew word Torah means), and we should be grateful for it. But to rejoice with unrestrained joy is another matter altogether, for the Torah is not an unmixed blessing. According to the apostle Paul, the Torah is a curse because it condemns us all, and if Jewish people can read the Torah and rejoice in it, there is only one conclusion to be reached: they simply have not understood it.

Messiah Jesus instructed his Jewish disciples to rejoice that their names were written in heaven (Luke 10:21). Jewish people around the world spent the Jewish New Year, the ten Days of Awe and Yom Kippur seeking to have their names inscribed in heaven, in the Book of Life, but were not able to rejoice. Today, Jewish people rejoiced in the very law that keeps them from being written in the heavenly volume.

On the beach

If you went down to the beach today, you might have seen Orthodox Jews at the water’s edge throwing bread in the water. You would have seen the same thing on the banks of some rivers. In New York, the Brooklyn Bridge would have been crowded with Hasidic Jews casting bread into the Hudson River below. They will not be feeding the ducks but instead will be taking part in the solemn ritual of Tashlich, which in Hebrew means “casting off”. As well as casting bread into the water, some will deposit fluff and other bits of debris from their pockets, while reciting Micah 7:18,19:

Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in mercy. He will again have compassion on us, and will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if sin and guilt could be cast away so easily; if transgressions could be carried away or cast into the sea? The great tragedy of Rosh Hashanah is that the Jewish people could literally know their sins to be cast away and buried, never to be remembered again. That is why CWI exists; to tell Jewish people that they can know the reality of that which Micah foresaw 700 years before Messiah was born.

Wicked Messengers

I arrived later than usual at the spot on the beach where my Hasidic friend usually dips himself and my heart sank. I thought I had missed him. I saw two men bathing about 200 yards further along the beach and one of them looked like my friend but on every other day he had always been alone. Then he waved and I knew it was him.
“We’re going to miss you” he said as I approached him.

I told him I was going to miss him too and told him that over the last nine days I had grown very fond of him and was very sad to learn that he didn’t know about the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31 or the passage about Messiah in Isaiah 53.

I asked if he believed in the coming of Messiah and he replied that he and his Hasidic friends all believe in Moshiach. I asked if he knew when Moshiach would come and he answered typically that no one knew when that would happen.

Had he read the book of Daniel? No.

If my friend read Daniel, he would learn the time of Messiah’s coming because the Talmudic tractate Megillah says that when Jonathan ben Uzziel was about to write a Targum (an interpretive paraphrase) of the book of Daniel, a Bath Kol (a voice from heaven) forbade him to do it because the date of the Messiah is foretold in that book!

Abraham looked surprised. “Yes?”

Chapter 2 verse 44 of Daniel says that in the days of four kingdoms “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed … it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever”. This is the kingdom that Messiah would establish and, according to the great Jewish commentator Rashi, this would happen in the days of the Roman empire.

“Yes?”

Yes. And chapter 9 of Daniel says: “Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks… And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.”

“Yes?”

I told him I would like to give him a gift that would help him to study these things and offered him a CD of the Bible (Old and New Testaments) in a variety of languages, including Hebrew and Yiddish, produced by the Society for Distributing the Hebrew Scriptures (http://www.sdhs.co.uk). Abraham said I was very kind and quickly slipped the disk into his inside coat pocket. But more than that, he asked if he could have my phone number. I told him it was inside the CD packaging.
We said our farewells and it was all I could do to keep from dancing up the promenade!

His rabbi and entourage did not look quite as happy to see me but I had only a few moments in which to say something that might remain with them. As they were about to board their minibus, I asked the rabbi if he had some words of wisdom for me before he went home to Stamford Hill.

“Err… yes…”, he said, “Be well and keep well.”

I wished him the same and asked if I could share a word of wisdom with him.
He agreed that I could.

“This is a word of wisdom from the Tanakh (the Old Testament) which is precious to me, Rabbi: ‘All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and Adonai has laid on Him the iniquity of us all’.”

He thanked me.

“You know where that’s from?” I asked.

“Yes…”

If he did know, he wasn’t going to tell me so I told him it was from Yeshayahu chapter 53.

Last of all today, I saw Gershon, a pale, gentle red-bearded Hasid. We had spoken a few times during the week and, as usual, he was hurrying to pray after bathing himself. As we walked to his car I asked about the time of Messiah’s coming.

Gershon had read Daniel and he knew about chapter 9 but, he said, the time of Messiah’s coming was a “thorny issue”; it wasn’t as simple as it seemed from chapter 9.

But Rashi said Messiah had to come in the days of the Roman empire.

Gershon was aware of that but, he said, the issue was very complex.

Gershon reminded me of an Orthodox Jew I met some years ago in Golders Green. That man told me that the difference between the Christian understanding of Daniel 9:25,26 and the Jewish one was that Christians take the prophecy at face value whereas the Jewish sages had turned the passage on its head but without doing violence to the meaning!

Gershon reminded me that the difference in the Christian understanding of the Messiah and the Jewish one had been the source of much trouble for the Jewish people. Yet the Christians who persecuted and killed the Jewish people were messengers of God, sent to punish the Jews for their sins.

I told him that I dissociated myself totally from those who persecuted the Jews in the name of Jesus. The New Testament that taught me about Messiah taught me to love Messiah’s people. We wished each other well and he drove off to go and daven.
Please pray for all these people.

Tomorrow I expect to see new faces on the sea front. Pray that I might be wise as I seek to share Messiah with them.

Of whom does the prophet speak?

A Hasidic Jew I’ve spoken to every day this week was down at the sea later than usual this morning. He’s usually emerging from the water by 6.15 but today I walked the length of the town’s promenade three times before I saw him. He waved to me and I went down to the water’s edge where he was drying his toes.

I asked if he had had a good Shabbos. It had been good.

I asked how he spent Shabbos afternoon. Did he study?

He and his family had a meal that lasted till about three o’clock, then they all went to bed and slept for a couple of hours.

I joked that all the davening in the morning must have worn him out.

Yes, Abraham said, davening is hard work.

I told him that after synagogue I had read a wonderful passage of Scripture and that I’d been meditating on it this morning. Abraham asked what it was and I recited the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. I asked if he knew the passage. He didn’t.

Did he know where it was from? He didn’t and asked me to tell him. I told him and shared a thought that had come to me as I’d been thinking on the passage this morning. God’s Servant in the passage acts as Cohen Hagadol (the High Priest) because he makes intercession for transgressors but he is also the corban, the sacrificial offering. Who could this amazing person be?

My friend didn’t know and asked who I thought the Servant was. I told him that Jesus was the only person who fitted the description of God’s Servant and that in Jesus I had found atonement for my sins. This was why I was so grateful to the Jewish people because I had discovered this truth in their Scriptures. Through Jesus the Jewish Messiah I was enjoying the blessings of the Brit Hadashah (the New Covenant). Did my friend know about the New Covenant?

He had never heard of it; where was it? In Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) 31. I explained that, as a gentile, I was once far from the commonwealth of Israel, a stranger to God’s covenants of promise, without hope and without Hashem but through Jesus I had been brought into Israel’s Brit Hadashah and knew Hashem because he no longer remembered my sins and iniquities. Did he know the blessings of the Brit Hadashah?

No, he said, but he was planning to study them with his friends one day. Then make it soon, I said.

“Yes?”

“Yes, make it soon and also study Yeshayahu 53.”

As he got into his car and wished me a good day, my heart went out to him. He is so devout and yet in so much darkness.

As I had driven into town this morning and saw the mist lying in some of the valleys, I knew that as the sun rose that mist would evaporate and I prayed that God’s Word, as I shared it with his ancient people this morning, would be like the rising sun and dissolve the mist in which their hearts are enshrouded.

I will have one last meeting with my friend tomorrow and I want to offer him a copy of the New Testament.

Davening with the best of them

This week I have been meeting each day with a group of Hasidic Jews.

In our brief discussions I have asked questions such about the greatest of God’s commandments and how we escape the curse promised to those who do not confirm the commandments by keeping them (Deuteronomy 27:26).

During the week I was asked if I would join them at synagogue today, the Jewish Sabbath and I happily agreed. The community the men belong to is on holiday so synagogue is a makeshift affair in a tent. It was good I had a yarmulke (skullcap) with me otherwise I doubt that I would have been allowed to take part.

This was the first time I had visited a Hasidic shul and everyone, especially the kids, were looking at me in wonderment. What’s a Goy doing here? The couple of men who talked to me wished me “Good Shabbos” and although I was not quite sure what to expect, if I had been thinking of a Psalm/Prayer sandwich service with a sermon at the end I would have been totally confused. The tent was filled with trestle tables at each of which were men poring over copies of Talmud and Prayer Books while at the same time others were intoning prayers.

I saw the man who had invited me here and I waved to him. He looked genuinely pleased to see me and led me to a table where a man in a shtreimel (a large fur hat worn by some Hasidic married men) and a tallit (prayer shawl) sat hunched over a book. This, Abraham informed me, was the rabbi and I could ask him questions. Without introducing us, he told me to sit down and promptly left me on my own. With the rabbi!

Maybe it’s just me but at the moment my head was not exactly filled with burning questions I wanted to ask. After a few moments the rabbi looked up. He was the leader of one of the groups I had been speaking to during the week! He looked at me and I wished him “Good Shabbos”, after which he returned to his book.

Abraham returned. “Did you ask the rabbi your questions?”

I told him I had asked him some questions during the week.

“We will say Kaddish and then you can go home,” he announced.

The Kaddish is a prayer for the magnification and sanctification of the name of God, the opening words of which are inspired by Ezekiel 38:23: “Thus I will magnify Myself and sanctify Myself, and I will be known in the eyes of many nations. Then they shall know that I am the LORD”. The central line of the Kaddish is the congregation's response: “May His great name be blessed for ever, and to all eternity”, to which I was very happy to add my Amen.

“OK”, said Abraham. “It’s time for you to go.”

As we walked to the door I told him it had been an honour to be there.

“Of course it’s an honour”, he replied.

Don’t expect false modesty from Hasidic Jews!

It had been an honour to be invited to share in their service and it was fascinated to watch what went on. But I came out of that tent depressed and in need of some strong coffee. Thankfully, in the town where I’m staying there is no shortage of establishments willing and able to cater to that need.

Tomorrow morning I plan to talk to my friend about Messiah. I’ll let you know how I get on.

The Differences between Jews and Muslims

I was recently sent this.

Muslims want to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth. What a difference that would make!

The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000. One billion two hundred million or 20% of the world's population. And they have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1988. Najib Mahfooz

Peace:
1978. Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1990. Elias James Corey
1994. Yaser Arafat:
1999. Ahmed Zewai

Economics: (zero)

Physics: (zero)

Medicine:
1960. Peter Brian Medawar
1998. Ferid Mourad
TOTAL: 7

The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000, approximately 0.02% of the world's population. They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1910. Paul Heyse
1927. Henri Bergson
1958. Boris Pasternak
1966. Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966. Nelly Sachs
1976. Saul Bellow
1978. Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981. Elias Canetti
1987. Joseph Brodsky
1991. Nadine Gordimer World

Peace:
1911. Alfred Fried
1911. Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968. Rene Cassin
1973. Henry Kissinger
1978. Menachem Begin
1986. Elie Wiesel
1994. Shimon Peres
1994. Yitzhak Rabin

Physics:
1905. Adolph Von Baeyer
1906. Henri Moissan
1907. Albert Abraham Michelson
1908. Gabriel Lippmann
1910. Otto Wallach
1915. Richard Willstaetter
1918. Fritz Haber
1921. Albert Einstein
1922. Niels Bohr
1925. James Franck
1925. Gustav Hertz
1943. Gustav Stern
1943. George Charles de Hevesy
1944. Isidor Issac Rabi
1952. Felix Bloch
1954. Max Born
1958. Igor Tamm
1959. Emilio Segre
1960. Donald A. Glaser
1961. Robert Hofstadter
1961. Melvin Calvin
1962. Lev Davidovich Landau
1962. Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965. Richard Phillips Feynman
1965. Julian Schwinger
1969. Murray Gell-Mann
1971. Dennis Gabor
1972. William Howard Stein
1973. Brian David Josephson
1975. Benjamin Mottleson
1976. Burton Richter
1977. Ilya Prigogine
1978. Arno Allan Penzias
1978. Peter L Kapitza
1979. Stephen Weinberg
1979. Sheldon Glashow
1979. Herbert Charles Brown
1980. Paul Berg
1980. Walter Gilbert
1981. Roald Hoffmann
1982. Aaron Klug
1985. Albert A. Hauptman
1985. Jerome Karle
1986. Dudley R. Herschbach
1988. Robert Huber
1988. Leon Lederman
1988. Melvin Schwartz
1988. Jack Steinberger
1989. Sidney Altman
1990. Jerome Friedman
1992. Rudolph Marcus
1995. Martin Perl
2000. Alan J. Heeger

Economics:
1970. Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971. Simon Kuznets
1972. Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975. Leonid Kantorovich
1976. Milton Friedman
1978. Herbert A. Simon
1980. Lawrence Robert Klein
1985. Franco Modigliani
1987. Robert M. Solow
1990. Harry Markowitz
1990. Merton Miller
1992. Gary Becker
1993. Robert Fogel

Medicine:
1908. Elie Metchnikoff
1908. Paul Erlich
1914. Robert Barany
1922. Otto Meyerhof
1930. Karl Landsteiner
1931. Otto Warburg
1936. Otto Loewi
1944. Joseph Erlanger
1944. Herb ert Spencer Gasser
1945. Ernst Boris Chain
1946. Hermann Joseph Muller
1950. Tadeus Reichstein
1952. Selman Abraham Waksman
1953. Hans Krebs
1953. Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958. Joshua Lederberg
1959. Arthur Kornberg
1964. Konrad Bloch
1965. Francois Jacob
1965. Andre Lwoff
1967. George Wald
1968. Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969. Salvador Luria
1970. Julius Axelrod
1970. Sir Bernard Katz
1972. Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975. Howard Martin Temin
1976. Baruch S. Blumberg
1977. Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978. Daniel Nathans
1980. Baruj Benacerraf
1984. Cesar Milstein
1985. Michael Stuart Brown
1985. Joseph L. Goldstein
1986. Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988. Gertrude Elion
1989. Harold Varmus
1991. Erwin Neher
1991. Bert Sakmann
1993. Richard J. Roberts
1993. Phillip Sharp
1994. Alfred Gilman
1995. Edward B. Lewis
TOTAL: 129!

Jews do not brainwash their children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths non-Muslims!

Jews don't hijack planes, kill athletes at the Olympics or blow themselves up in German restaurants. There is not a single Jew who has destroyed a mosque or church. Jews don't traffic slaves or call for Holy War and death to all the Infidels.

Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.

Muslims must ask what they can do for humankind before demanding that the rest of humankind respects them!

Regardless of one’s feelings about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbours, even if one believes Israel is more culpable, the following quote from Binyamin Netanyahu says it all: 'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.’

Personal Jesus

I'm writing this during a coffee break at the final sessions of the World Reformed Fellowship General Assembly in Edinburgh, after listening to three excellent reports on the churches in Brazil, India and China. I just spoke to the Indian delegate about something in his report that set my alarm bells ringing.

According to his paper, Christianity is perceived in India as a Western and colonial religion, and a major concern of Indian Christians is to 'focus on the Asian identity of Jesus Christ'. The Chinese report flagged up a similar issue. In China, believers are seeking to make Christianity a 'genuinely Chinese religion'.

I have just shared my concerns over a cup ofcoffee with the Indian delegate. Though I understand the concern of my Indian brothers and sisters to demonstrate that Christianity is not a Western religion, Jesus is not 'Asian'; he is Jewish. Ia am concerned that our Indian and Chinese brothers are going to repeat the mistake of the English church. Christianity was (and still is by some) regarded as English, and missionaries often converted the nations not only to Christianity but also to Englishness.

Jesus is in a very real sense the universal man but he can never be identified with any particular nation other than Israel. He can never be Palestinian, English, Chinese or Indian. Nor can Christianity ever be anything other than Jewish. While we seek to contextualise the gospel, Christianity can never be an English or Chinese religion.

If Chinese missionaries take a 'Chinese' gospel to the nations, although they may experience some success, they will be making the same mistake as the Western colonialist missionaries of a former age.

Indian Christians, if they insist that Jesus is Asian, risk alienating and antagonising Muslims. I understand that concern but substituting one error for another is less than wise.

The inevitable result of any nation claiming Jesus is 'one of us' will be the dejudaising of Jesus. If Jesus is no longer Jewish the Jewish people are marginalised and Replacement Theology is strengthened. Replacement Theology tends to diminish concern for Jewish mission and the diminishing of outreach to the Jewish people delays the glorious day when 'all Israel shall be saved' (Rom 11:26), an event which will be 'life from the dead' for the nations (Rom 11:15).

Smoke and Mirrors

Did you see Panorama last Monday evening? As I watched Sarah Corbin’s documentary, I was disturbed and shocked as I saw what appeared to be Israeli brutality and inhumanity towards Arab residents in East Jerusalem. But I have learned over the years that more often than not, there is another side to the story and, sure enough, Honest Reporting issued a damning rebuttal of Corbin’s report.

The BBC's flagship documentary, says Honest Reporting, distorts Jewish history and Jewish rights to Jerusalem while promoting a one-sided and biased agenda.

Any pretence at balance was thrown out of the window as reporter Jane Corbin made it clear that, under the BBC's own interpretation of international law, anything Israel does in East Jerusalem is illegal. Israelis were presented as usurpers of Palestinian rights and property in eastern Jerusalem in a one-sided piece of agitprop.

Analyst Robin Shepherd commented:

Rarely will you get a clearer insight into the flagrant institutional bias inside the world's most powerful media outlet than this. The slipperiness of the tactics employed, the unabashed censorship of vital historical context, and the blatant pursuit of a political agenda constituted a lesson in the techniques of modern day propaganda. It was something to behold.

Honest Reporting examines some of the assumptions, claims and biases that underpinned Monday’s Panorama.

Denying Jewish Rights to Jerusalem

The BBC's institutional anti-Israel bias often manifests itself not in what is broadcast but what is left out. It reports events as though Jewish history in Jerusalem began in 1948, omitting to mention that the only time East Jerusalem was exclusively Arab was between 1949 and 1967, and that was because Jordan occupied the area and forcibly expelled all the Jews.

Before 1865, the entire population of Jerusalem lived in what is now East Jerusalem Later, the city began to expand beyond the walls because of population growth and both Jews and Arabs began to build in new areas of the city.

By the time of partition, a thriving Jewish community lived in the eastern part of Jerusalem, an area that included the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. This area of the Jerusalem contains many sites of importance to the Jewish religion, including the City of David, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. In addition, major institutions such as the Hebrew University and the original Hadassah Hospital are on Mount Scopus in East Jerusalem.

Palestinian House Demolitions

The programme gave the distinct impression that house demolitions by Israel are almost a daily occurrence. Jane Corbin disingenuously pulled a supposed list of dozens more demolitions scheduled to take place and we were treated to emotive scenes and Palestinian claims that such demolitions are driven by "racism" and "ethnic cleansing".

We were not told that illegal constructions by Jews typically take the form of additions to existing legal structures, such as closing a balcony or hollowing out an extra room under an existing building. In the Arab sector, however, illegal constructions often takes the form of multi-floor buildings with 4 to 25 living units, built with the financial assistance of the Palestinian Authority on land that is not owned by the builder.

The Hanoun Family Eviction

It was distressing to see the Hanoun family camped in the street outside their previous home. Their eviction has become something of a cause celebre and Jane Corbin did her best to portray the Hanouns as victims of Israeli malice.
The Hanoun family case, it turns out, is not quite as simple as the BBC would have us believe. After 1948, the neighbourhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Shimon HaTzadik came under Jordanian control and in the mid-1950s Jordan settled Arabs there who took over the homes of the Jews and paid rent to the Jordanian Custodian.

After the 1967 Six Day War, after Israel gained control of East Jerusalem in a defensive war, the Jewish-owned property that had been seized by Arabs was liberated and transferred back to Israel. In 1998, Jews entered deserted houses while at the same time, a slow process of evicting Arab families who apparently refused to pay rent to the two Jewish organizations began. The Hanouns were evicted because they had refused to pay rent for years.

Shooting in Silwan

Panorama made much of the fact that some Jews living in eastern Jerusalem are armed. As if to illustrate the apparent threat this poses to the Arab residents of the area, she interviewed the victim of a shooting incident that took place in September 2009. We were treated to scenes of crying children and a story of suffering. There was no interview with any Israeli spokespeople regarding the incident. While it is not in dispute that the Palestinian was shot, the BBC relied solely on his testimony without any Israeli response.

Israel’s Police Foreign Press Spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld says that following the incident, the Israeli police immediately detained a Jewish suspect for questioning who told them he had been surrounded by six Arabs inside the neighbourhood and was attacked by them. After being surrounded, he used his weapon in an act of self defence. This was an isolated incident that could have taken place in any of the neighbourhoods in Jerusalem.

In fact, Jewish residents of Jerusalem have far more to fear from their Arab neighbours. While the incident described above is remarkably rare, not so rare were the suicide bombings, stabbings and even bulldozer attacks that have been carried out by Palestinian terrorists residing in eastern Jerusalem. The armed guards and security in the area is necessary to protect not only Jews but also Jewish holy sites from potential Arab extremists.

Read the full HR report here.