Israel's Christian/Messianic Jews Under Attack
Pastor Dale Morgan
Israel's Christian/Messianic Jews Under Attack*
By Tim McGirk/Jerusalem
Time Magazine
The flyers appeared everywhere inside the Jewish settlement of Ariel, on
car windshields, telephone poles, and in bus shelters. "Beware," it
read, "these are the members of the Jewish Missionary Cult. They are
baptizing Jews into Christianity." Included was a photo of Pastor David
Ortiz and his address.
Ortiz didn't give it a thought. His Jewish neighbors liked him, and so
did Ariel's mayor, who found Ortiz, originally from Brooklyn, useful in
recruiting funds and political support from American and German
Evangelicals for this stone-clad settlement on a breezy hilltop inside
Palestinian territory.
But somebody disliked Ortiz and his beliefs enough to try to kill him
and his family. By chance, Ortiz and his wife Leah were gone on March
20th when an unknown person dropped off a bomb disguised as a holiday
gift package loaded with candy and chocolates. When Ortiz's 15 year-old
son Ami plucked off a chocolate, it detonated a bomb powerful enough to
blow out all the apartment's windows apartment and to be heard a mile
away. The bomb was packed with nails, screws and needles. Doctors found
over 100 piece of metal embedded in the boy's body by the blast, which
sheared off the skin and muscle on his legs and chest. The teenager
survived, but still faces six more operations of skin grafts and the
removal of shrapnel from his eyes. Whoever did it, says Ortiz, knew
"that we adults wouldn't open up the Purim package — it would be the kids."
Messianic Jews, as these Jews who believe in Jesus are called, number
just a few in Israel — anywhere between 6,000 and 15,000 — but they
provoke hatred all out of proportion to their meager numbers. Many
orthodox Jews view them as traitors for joining the Christian faith,
which for centuries has persecuted Jews. One Messianic Jew, Tzvi Sadan,
a teacher and editor, recalls telling his father, a Holocaust survivor,
that he had accepted Jesus as his savior. "My Dad flipped out. He said
that the SS guards in the camp had 'God is With Us' written on their
belts. He told me, 'You've joined the enemy.' But he calmed down a bit
when he saw my prayer shawl."
Some rabbis also view the Messianic Jews' conversion as part of a grand
Evangelical scheme to fulfill Biblical prophecy (which requires the
conversion of the Jews) and hasten the Messiah's arrival. Messianic Jews
observe Judaism's rites, holidays and customs but believe in Jesus as
the Messiah.
But lately, the outrage among extremist orthodox Jews has spilled into
violence. Even after the Ariel bombing it has continued. Last month,
when the deputy mayor of Or Yehuda, a town near Tel Aviv, found out that
Messianic Jews had been passing out copies of the New Testament to a
community of poor Ethiopian Jews, he ordered the books to be collected
and they were set alight in a bonfire. He later apologized and said the
Bibles had been burned accidentally. "If somebody had done that in
Europe to Jewish Torahs, you can image what sort of a reaction that
would provoke here," says Ortiz. To be fair, commentators and officials
in Israel were quick to condemn the act, comparing it to the infamous
book burning by Nazis.
Messianic Jews living in the Negev Desert also say they are routinely
harassed and attacked by yeshiva students, some inspired by Yad L'achem,
a religious organization dedicated to stamping out Christian missionary
activities in Israel. Random acts of anti-Christian violence have also
occurred: last October in Jerusalem, a church was fire-bombed, and
several days after Christmas, a German pilgrim who was returning from
Bethlehem carrying a large wooden cross was attacked by a gang of
ultra-orthodox youths who smashed the cross into splinters. These are
isolated attacks, and Christians living in Israel say that as long as
they refrain from missionary work — prohibited by the Israeli government
— they are left free to worship.
Israel finds itself in a predicament: it wants to welcome Christian
pilgrims to the Holy Land out of goodwill and for tourism revenue, but
it also wants to keep exuberant missionaries from trying to convert
Jews. At the same time, news of these attacks — especially the Ariel
bombing and the Bible-burning — has circulated widely among Christian
churches around the world. "I'm getting calls from Norway," says Leah
Ortiz, "asking if Christians are being persecuted in Israel, and I say
'No, of course not.' What happened to our son, this isn't religion. It's
insanity."
So far, police have failed to make any arrests in the Ortiz bombing. But
whoever assembled the bomb knew what he was doing and had access to
plastic explosives, probably stolen from the Israeli military. "We're
afraid that whoever did this," says Ortiz, " might try it again. With
us, they crossed the line, and we're afraid of it happening to someone
else."
Given the hardship Messianic Jews face in Israel and his son's multiple
injuries, would the Ortiz move his family back to Brooklyn? "No way"
Ortiz replies. "Jesus wasn't born in Brooklyn. He was born here. We're
staying."
With reporting by Aaron J. Klein/Jerusalem