CHRISTIAN TEEN ENRAGES RABBIS
By Harmony Grant
12 May 08
A 17-year old Jerusalem girl named Bat Levy was almost unable to compete
in Israel’s international youth Bible quiz last week. A chorus
of rabbis and anti-missionary activists sought to throw her out. The
sober-eyed, dark-haired teen girl is a “world-class
Scriptural scholar,” according to the Jewish
Telegraph Agency.
She’s also a believer in Jesus Christ.
Yad L’Achim, the “big daddy” of Israeli anti-missionary
organizations, tried to get her kicked out. Orthodox rabbis run this
organization; its director said Levy could have become the “world
Bible champion” and her faith in Jesus might lead to Jewish conversions.
He said she shouldn’t be considered Jewish herself, or allowed
to participate. Levy didn’t advance beyond the first round
of the quiz, but the controversy about her participation is just
one example of the anti-Christian animus that characterizes Israeli
leadership.
The JTA notes, “Israel has an estimated 8,000 so-called messianic
Jews. In effect they are crypto-Christians, practicing their faith
discreetly for fear of stoking hostility among mainstream Jews. Reprisals
can sometimes be violent.”
Unfortunately, most American evangelicals—ardently pouring
financial and moral support to “God’s Chosen People”—are
unaware that many Orthodox and observant Jews, particularly in Israel,
are deeply hostile to their faith. If they know, they don’t
seem to care that fellow believers in Christ are subject to harassment
and even legal persecution in the “Holy Land.” (See, "Christians
in Israel: an Endangered Species")
"Overt proselytizing" is already illegal in Israel, but
Yad L’Achim wants even stiffer penalties for Christian missionary
activity. It recently sought
to enact a six month mandatory prison sentence for proselytizing.
The organization’s founding chairman was incensed by arguments
for freedom of speech. He retorted that just as Israel forms laws
to protect Israelis’ physical well-being, so:
lawmakers must draft legislation against the enemies of our people,
the missionaries, who want to destroy the remnant and memory of the
Jewish people and convert them to Christianity. There is no doubt that
if the security forces came upon people who incited to violence against
the state, they would use the law to act against them and not be concerned
about impinging on their freedom of expression. In our view, this must
be the attitude [to] missionaries who seek the spiritual destruction
of Jews and thus to harm the soul of the Jewish nation.
Rabbi
Tovia Singer,
a lecturer and anti-missionary activist, said
Christians who evangelize try “to do to the Jews
spiritually what Hamas is trying to do physically.”
This is the attitude of many Israeli and American Jews who are sincerely
convinced of their religion. Jewish advocacy groups like the Anti-Defamation
League of B’nai B’rith seek to silence Christian witnessing
as a threat to world Jewry, likening conversion of Jews to a spiritual
holocaust. They say Christians threaten the “spiritual survival” of
the Jewish people, by trying to persuade them to abandon Jewish rabbinic
legalism or leftist Jewish humanism for salvation through faith in
Jesus Christ.
Many convinced Jews take it as their personal responsibility to resist
Christian missionaries wherever they are—in Israel and in the
USA. Israel already has a law against open proselytizing; American
Jews through the ADL are untiring in efforts to pass a federal “anti-hate” law
in the United States that could be used to silence Christian expressions
of faith here.
Yad L’Achim proudly admits that it “targets every locale
where missionaries are active, organizing demonstrations and trying
to stymie missionaries…”
Their tactics go even farther, to harassment at home and in the workplace.
In 2004, Haaretz wrote about the problem of persecuted Christian
believers in Arad. Yad L’Achim organized harassing demonstrations
outside believers’ private homes. Haaretz quoted
the vitriole of the
town’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi: “You disguise yourselves
as sabras and smile at us, but you're just waiting for the first chance
to grab us and crucify us. Get out of here, hypocrites…You are
the ones whose forefathers burned Jews to death throughout all the
years of history. You are an abomination in Israel, and therefore you
must be spewed out of here."
The Sephardic chief rabbi was also vehement: “Every Jew is obliged
to demonstrate against a phenomenon like this, against those who pass
themselves off as Jews but infiltrate the weak population groups and
start to influence them. And there are people who fall for it.”
These words, spoken by chief rabbis to encourage harassment of Christians,
should be taken seriously. They reflect the Talmudic heart of modern
observant Judaism. The Babylonian Talmud describes Christ in the
foulest, most hateful language—calling him a bastard, a deceiver,
an evil-doer now languishing in hell, and calling his followers “idolaters.” (See
NPN articles
concerning the Talmud)
If modern Judaism is true—as many powerful Jews are convinced—then
Christians are dangerous deceivers; our message of peace and freedom
through Christ very deeply threatens a religion venerating those
who had Christ crucified--the Pharisees.
Harmony Grant writes and edits for National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative
watchdog group.
Let the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith teach you how they
have saddled 45 states with hate laws capable of persecuting Christians: http://www.adl.org/99hatecrime/intro.asp.
Learn how ADL took away free speech in Canada and wants to steal
it now in the U.S. Congress. Watch Rev. Ted Pike's Hate
Laws: Making Criminals of Christians at video.google.com. Purchase
this gripping documentary to show at church. Order online at www.truthtellers.org for
$24.90, DVD or VHS, by calling 503-853-3688, or at the address below.
TALK SHOW HOSTS: Interview Rev. Ted Pike on this
topic. Call (503) 631-3808.
National Prayer Network, P.O. Box 828, Clackamas,
OR 97015
