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.

Gamaliel among the politically minded

Who would have thought that one of the foremost left-wing political blogs would invite a Messianic Jew to post a guest blog about an incident recorded in the New Testament? But Harry's Place invited Joseph Weissman to do just that.

As was to be expected, the blog attracted a great deal of attention - negative and positive - and I submitted the folowing comment. Go to the blog and have your say:

I once attended a lecture by Hyam Maccoby at which he expressed his scholarly opinion that the Gamliel account in chapter 5 of the New Testament book of Acts was one of the few authentically trustworthy passages in the book.

However, Maccoby didn’t comment on the wisdom of Gamliel’s judgement.

What are the merits of Gamliel’s case? The first thing to say is that Gamliel was either right or he was wrong. But on what basis can we say Gamliel was wrong? A number of movements such as Chassidic Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Scientology, Secular Humanism and the Latter Day Saints have failed to ‘come to nothing’ but they all teach different doctrines, and only a purblind post-modernist would suggest that they are all teaching ‘Truth’. Indeed, while Gamliel spoke, there were a number of sects within Judaism, including the Sadducees, the Essenes and the Zealots. Even within Gamliel’s Phariseeism there were the hard-line Shamaites and the more moderate Hillelites. Were they all ‘of God’? Certainly those within the various groups did not think so.

Nevertheless, the Sanhedrin appeared to think there was merit in Gamliel’s counsel; therefore they followed it.

Let’s be clear about this; within months of the death and reported resurrection of Jesus, the first-century Jews who followed him as Messiah was so great they were the largest sect within Judaism (Josephus says there were just 6,000 Pharisees) and the leaders of the influential Pharisaic and Sadducean parties felt threatened.

The followers of Jesus were not simply another sect of Judaism, they believed the Messiah had come and was present with them. Gamliel names two other messianic leaders, Theudas and Judas (Josephus also mentions them), both of whom came to a sticky end (we might also say the same about Shimon bar Kosiba and Rabbi Akiva).

In every generation since, there have been messianic pretenders who started movements which, in accordance with Gamliel’s wisdom, came to nothing. Even Chabad must inevitably collapse under the weight of its own pretensions. How much longer can Chabadniks claim their Rebbe is going to rise from the dead? Within the first three months of the first century Jesus movement, more than 5,000 Jews in Jerusalem believed Jesus had risen from the dead. The only way you can get a story about a resurrected Saviour to fly, it seems, is if it is true.

Was Gamliel right in his judgement? You betcha.

British Justice

British justice was once the shining symbol of democracy and the justice system. Not any more, it would seem!

Good News from Israel! Posted the following on Sunday 4 July.

Today, thanks to Justice George Bathurst-Norman, British justice is linked to the political bias of a presiding judge.

In at least one recent case, British justice has proved to be blind to truth, blind to facts and evidence, and its scales have tilted in favour of criminals and vandals who act according to a retired judge's political preferences.

In the court of George Bathurst-Norman, breaking the law, it seems, is permitted if the purpose is to cause damage to, or to slander, the State of Israel.

Seven activists who admitted causing £180 worth of damage to company property walked free. They had been accused of deliberately damaging the property of EDO MBM, a company that manufactures and exports military equipment from Britain.

Their defence was that they wanted to slow down and impede the delivery of spare parts to Israel because of its policy in Gaza.

Hove Crown Court in Brighton heard statements video-taped prior to the incident in which the perpetrators admitted that they intended to cause as much damage as they could to the property of EDO MBM. They also saw evidence of the damage. Yet Justice Bathurst-Norman found them NOT GUILTY!

In his summation, Judge Bathurst-Norman said, "You may well think that hell on earth would be an understatement of what the Gazans suffered".

This was the direction that the judge gave to the jury. Irrespective of the true situation in Gaza, this judge directed his jury according to his own political whim, which mirrored that of the activists and anarchists standing in the dock in his courtroom.

This judge effectively directed a jury based on his own political bias with the result that the accused were all acquitted of their crimes.

Judge Bathurst-Norman, who was born in the Arab town of Jaffa in Israel, had been dragged out of retirement to hear the case. That, in itself, is strange.

In a previous case he given a man a three-year jail sentence for lopping off the head of a statue of Margaret Thatcher. This was a statue, not Mrs Thatcher herself, or an expensive work of art.
Yet, damage assessed at almost two hundred thousands pounds Sterling deserved, according to his honour, complete freedom.

In 2001, he gave Abu Bakr Siddiqui a twelve-month suspended sentence for smuggling materials and technology out of Britain to be used for nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea. A police search of his British home found that millions of dollars of equipment had been smuggled out of British to notorious Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan. Usually, this charge carries a prolonged prison sentence.

But for Judge George Bathurst-Norman you can walk free if you commit a crime on behalf of Iran and North Korea, or if you commit a crime against Israel.

Whichever way you look at it, British justice is now politically biased.

Appeasement in our time?

Stephen Sizer posted a blog on 16 June in which he likened Tony Blair's success in persuading the Israeli Prime Minister to ease the blockade on Gaza to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time" deal with Adolph Hitler.

On his web site in March, Rev Sizer, who is not known for his subtlety, featured some photos he had taken of Israeli soldiers in Bethlehem under the caption "Herod's soldiers operating in Bethlehem today".

Back then I emailed him to say:

I just saw your pics of "Herod's soldiers".
Your pictures are, as ever, technically good but in view of the caption and that the Israeli checkpoint you and Colin Chapman passed through reminded you of an "abattoir", are you suggesting that Binyamin Netanyahu is the new Herod and that the Israeli soldiers are murderers of Bethlehem's children?

Stephen replied:

Dear Mike,
I didn’t say that so please don’t put words in my mouth.
Blessings
stephen

I wrote back:

Thank you Stephen.
I didn't put words in your mouth. I asked a question.
The caption must mean something. So if it is not an allusion to Matthew 2:16-18, what does the caption mean?

I received no reply. Today I wrote to him about his latest blog:

I just read your read your “Peace in our time” blog.
It left me wondering: if Tony Blair is Neville Chamberlain, who is Benjamin Netanyahu?
When I wrote to you about “Herod’s soldiers operating in Bethlehem today” you were not prepared to say that Netanyahu was Herod or that his soldiers were killing Palestinian babies (even though the implication was crystal clear).
The implication of your latest blog is that “Tony ‘Neville’ Blair” is appeasing “Benjamin ‘Adolph’ Netanyahu”. Or is this “putting words in your mouth”?
I wonder if you will be blogging about Turkey’s air strikes last week that killed 120 Kurds, including a seven-year-old girl, in retaliation for an attack by Kurdish rebels on a Turkish naval base which killed twelve soldiers.
This incident was the latest flare-up of a 26-year conflict that has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people. For decades Turkey has oppressed its Kurdish minority by forbidding the use of the Kurdish language in state schools and government institutions. Layla Zana was expelled from the Turkish parliament in 1994 and imprisoned a year later for uttering from the parliamentary podium a single sentence in Kurdish .
I shall look forward to seeing you expose the hypocrisy of Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who in the wake of the Mavi Marmara incident accused the Jewish state of crimes against humanity and called for sanctions against Israel.
I see also that you cite Stephen Lendman with approval. I think I drew your attention to him last year so, knowing your aversion to Holocaust denial, I wonder why you were willing to quote at length a man who contributes to the surreally bizarre anti-Semitic website www.rense.com which, amongst other things, denies the Holocaust and defends as authentic The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

I'll let you know what Stephen Sizer says.

I criticise Israel, therefore I am not an anti-Semite

English MP Jeremy Corbyn has objected to an opinion piece by Leon de Winter in The Wall Street Journal. De Winter’s brief article, Anti-Semitism Is Acceptable Again, asked why people and organizations that present themselves as “progressive” team up with reactionary Muslims. The Free Gaza group, said de Winter, is just such a Leftist-Islamist alliance. Israel withdrew from Gaza five years ago, therefore Gaza is already free but that isn't enough for Hamas; it wants a Jew-free Israel too. The Gaza flotilla, he said, was “the perfect execution of a masterful piece of Islamist theatre”. It is acceptable once more to be an anti-Semite.

Corbyn, a political progressive who is not adverse to “teaming up” with radical Muslims, responded by saying that although “race hatred and discrimination of any description is wrong” de Winter should not “conflate criticisms of Israel with hatred of the Jewish people; they are NOT the same.”

I’m not saying Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite but the way Corbyn and other critics of Israel respond to the charge that some criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic almost amounts to saying that being a critic of Israel is proof positive you are not an anti-Semite. Is there, one wonders, any form of condemnation of Israel that Corbyn and other progressives would acknowledge as clearly anti-semitic? For example, do false allegations of war crimes, the use of the term "apartheid" to describe the state of Israel and “Nazis” to describe Israel’s leaders and the denial of the right of the Jewish people to self-determination not qualify as anti-Semitism.

A few weeks ago, in an unprovoked attack, North Korea sunk a South Korean ship killing 47 people. Where was the world's outrage? In Pakistan, hundreds die in terrorist attacks every week and the Pakistani military kill hundreds of insurgents every month. Where are the expression of indignation from the rest of the world? The Turks killed hundreds of Kurds every year but where was the anger of the progressives? These, and many more conflicts around the world, cause far more deaths and injury than the justified Israeli assault on the Mavi Marmara last week. Yet, according to world opinion, Israel is a pariah state, the world’s leading terrorist organisation and the scum of the earth.

Jeremy Corbyn has shared a platforms with Abou JahJah, a Hezbollah supporter and Holocaust denier who founded the Arab European League, which posted racist cartoons aimed at Jews, including a particularly crude and obnoxious scribble of Ann Frank in bed with Adolph Hitler. Corbyn also spoke alongside Hezbollah MP, Hussein el Haj Hassan who objected to Lebanese children being taught about the diary of Ann Frank.

If Jeremy Corbyn really does believe that “race hatred and discrimination of any description is wrong” why did he join these Islamic radicals to protest against Israel? Perhaps in Corbyn’s book even Holocaust denial and crude cartoons that target Jews don’t yet qualify as race hatred.