Renewed Catholic-Jewish relations still with a blemish

It is a good sign we may find some trials of the new pope, Francis I, to bring the monotheist faithgroups Jews Christians and Muslims closer to each other again.

The Jews of Antwerpen (Photo credit: CharlesFred)

Catholic-Jewish relations for sure need some boost now we can see many fundamentalist groups trying to undermine such relations and trying to bring more extreme right-wing thoughts in the forefront. In Western Europe we might see again a growing anti-Semitism and a growing hate against Muslims. That hate is mostly triggered by fundamentalist faith-groups giving their 'religion' a bad name.

The world should always remember that the minority faith where people only wanted to honour Only One God Who created heaven and earth, suffered centuries of persecution. The world was warned already in the old days, many centuries before Jesus was born, that those people were the chosen people of God, but would also have to suffer much because of their choice. Also Jeshua, the Nazarene Jew warned his followers they should know when they would like to follow him, they would be a target of spot and bullying. Followers of Christ would in case they originally did not belong to the People Israel, also be taken up in the Family of God. But that would mean they also as part of the Body of Christ, would be part of God's people and would have to suffer likewise. though they may become protected more than those who did not accept the Messiah.

The Jews would have to live in ghettos and face the horrors of the Holocaust. Christians were persecuted but Jews were more and still are persecuted and shunned.

It is a pity the Jews have one distorted picture of the Christians, because they always see the majority of them being Trinitarians often raging against Jews. It is true when they say Christianity began as an offshoot of Judaism, because Jeshua (Jesus Christ) was a Jew, who never intended to make an other religion. After the church leaders of followers of that Jew made a bond with the men in power they took on the Greek-roman cultur with its many gods and holy days. they made Jeshua part of a three-une god like in the pagan cultures and as one bigger group they formed Christendom that became the main religion across Europe. It was that group which treated the tiny minority that did not follow Jesus as a tri-une god with persecution, exclusion and expulsion. Many Christians and Jews found their death as other people who did not want to confirm to the doctrines of that church.

Archbishop Angelo Roncalliin Worl War II was using his wartime post as Vatican ambassador in Istanbul to run a network of nuns, diplomats and other people to issue forged visas and baptismal and immigration certificates to Jews from the Balkans to get them to Turkey and then to British-mandate Palestine.
Later as Pope John XXIII he modernised the Roman Catholic Church at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), whose landmark document "Nostra Aetate" (In Our Times) repudiated the 2,000-year-old concept of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus.

Rabbi David Rosen, International Director of Inter-religious Affairs of American Jewish Committee, said:

"Nostra Aetate ushered in amazing changes in Catholic-Jewish relations around the world, even if the degree to which it was internalized depended on whether Catholics and Jews lived side by side." 

Today we can see a lesser nice site of that Roman Catholic Church which got several of its members really helping Jews out of love for the children of God. But some of them also could have taken action and used the situation to 'win more souls' for the 'good faith'.

Harold Pollack writes:

A great many individual Catholics, priests, nuns, bishops, and others acted heroically to save Jews and to oppose Hitler. To pick one example among many, Archbishop Jean-Geraud Saliege of Toulouse bluntly declared that ”the Jews are our brothers, like so many others, and no Christian can forget this fact.” The Archbishop said this from the pulpit, in 1942, in the middle of occupied Europe. He was not alone in such heroism.

Unfortunately, as an institution the Catholic Church, particularly Pope Pius XII, spectacularly failed. The Church bears general responsibility and (in many cases) specific guilt both its failure to intervene and for particular actions taken against Jews.

Not many Catholics shamed themselves for certain actions taken by their church against people of other faiths. Several Roman Catholics became right wing fighters against those who did not want to come to the real faith of the god son Jesus. All others where considered blasphemous, and the Jews traitors to God. Many in charge of that Roman Catholic Church did not want to react against the way some of their flock were thinking. For years the West could see what was going on in Germany, but not many reacted against the genocide taking place.

Pope Pius XII called Pastor Angelicus, was the most Marian Pope in Church history. Bäumer, Marienlexikon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As head of the Chruch you would think Popes Pius XI and Pius XII could do something against the Nazi doctrine, but they failed to plainly condemn Nazism and specific genocide against Jews (and others). From historical sources we know that diplomats representing France, Poland, Brazil, the United States, and Britain approached the Vatican more than once with the request that the Pope specifically denounce Nazi crimes against Jews. British diplomat Francis D’Arcy Osborne, wrote:

A policy of silence in regard to such offences against the conscience of the world must necessarily involve a renunciation of moral leadership and a consequent atrophy of the influence and authority of the Vatican…

Terrible was it when after the war the Catholic Church did not enough to bring the Jewish kids back to their family or did not allow them to keep their faith. Instead they tried to keep them away from their faith.

Harold Pollack  in his article The Pope at Yad Vashem writes:

Some misdeeds continued beyond the war. Jewish children were hidden in Catholic homes or religious institutions during the war. When children were baptized, the Church sometimes deliberately obstructed their return to surviving Jewish relatives. As one notorious 1946 memorandum directed:

1) Avoid, as much as possible, responding in writing to Jewish authorities, but rather do it orally.

2) Each time a response is necessary, it is necessary to say that the Church must conduct investigations in order to study each case individually.

3) Children who have been baptized must not be entrusted to institutions that would not be in a position to guarantee their Christian upbringing.

4) For children who no longer have their parents, given the fact that the Church has responsibility for them, it is not acceptable for them to be abandoned by the Church or entrusted to any persons who have no rights over them, at least until they are in a position to choose themselves. This, evidently, is for children who would not have been baptized.

5) If the children have been turned over by their parents, and if the parents reclaim them now, providing that the children have not received baptism they can be given back.

It is to be noted that this decision of the Holy Congregation of the Holy Office has been approved by the Holy Father.

This stain can not be wiped out. It is a blot on the Roman Catholic Church its escutcheon. Trying to keep the children away from their original family and original faith, this intentionally done, is a sin. You may say the Church had a responsibility to those who it could save from the horror of the Nazi's, but it did not give them the right to take away all the grounds to restore their original faith.

To claim those children who lost their family and who were baptised, was not respecting the will of the deceased family members. The parents would have loved to see their children saved in the faith, not given them over to an other religious group to have them unwillingly be reformed in that other faith.

Naturally it would be wrong to take Pope Francis I accountable for what happened in the 1930s -1960s. He bears no personal stain for actions undertaken almost seventy years ago.

Some Christians do not seem to like what he is doing the last few weeks, which shows how there are still too many Christians who do not want to see their connection with the Jews, and how many still consider a whole people guilty for what some of their folks did. It would be the same as the Jews would consider all Christians guilty for killing so many Jews. The same with the Muslims, too many Christian are generalising the Islamic community, equalising them all with those lunatic fundamentalists. You also could say it would be the same if we all would consider the Christians on the same line as some freaky fundamentalist Christians like the Westboro Church a.o.

We should welcome Pope Francis I his efforts to helpfully mediate the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis even at a time when still a debt remains unacknowledged and unpaid.

Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee’s director of international interreligious affairs and former head of the IJCIC, welcomed the Pope’s speech as conciliatory.

“Pope Francis is a very good friend of the Jewish people, and we rejoice in the fact that he will continue to advance the path of his predecessors in deepening the Catholic-Jewish relationship.”

Related articles

• Bishop Williamson still chased by Jewish Lobby (rehmat1.com)
  Earlier this month, under pressure from the powerful Australian Jewish Lobby, Australian government of Tony Abbott banned Britain’s controversial Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson from entering the country.
  In a 2009 interview, Bishop Williamson had denied that Nazis could have killed six million Jews before and during the WW II. He said that though Jews along with Christians and Gypsies were targeted by Nazis, no one died in gas chambers as no gas chamber ever existed. Watch a video below.
  
• The Pope Just Invited Islam Into The Vatican, Christians Aghast (gopthedailydose.com)
  Pope Francis invited representatives of the two faiths – Peres and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – to the prayer summit, which will focus on peace among the often embattled monotheistic religions.
  The leaders will recite applicable passages from their respective holy books.
  Peres confirmed the delegation representing Israel will include influential citizens from the Jewish, Muslim, and Druze communities. Abbas will reportedly likewise include Christians in his delegation.
  Out of respect for Jewish religious culture, the gathering will not be held in a venue dedicated to prayer but in an unadorned garden at the Vatican. Viewers around the world will be able to witness the interfaith event via a live broadcast.
  
• Fearing violence, Jewish authorities ask Catholics to take down welcome sign for Pope Francis (patheos.com)
  The problem of anti-Christian and anti-Muslim vandalism in the Holy Land has been increasing.  In April I reported on an April 1 incident in which a Catholic monastery dedicated to Mary, Queen of Palestine, near Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem, was vandalized.  Anti-Christian graffiti on the monastery walls said “Jesus is a monkey, Mary is a cow.”  At the same time, tires were slashed on five vehicles.
• What's Behind Pelosi's Attack on Archbishop Cordileone? (crisismagazine.com)
  Faithful America is a 501c (3) organization that has been very involved in political activity during the past few years. Most recently, the group spearheaded a petition drive on Facebook and other social media decrying what they see as Archbishop Cordileone’s “lending the church’s authority to their [National Organization for Marriage] vitriol and hatred—and undermining Pope Francis’s call for a more compassionate church.”
• Pope says antisemitism 'not Christian' (thejc.com)
  Pope Francis, who previously served as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, said that during his time in Argentina, Catholics and Jews “enjoyed each other’s company.
  “We were all enriched through encounters and dialogue. We welcomed each other, and this helped all of us grow as people and as believers.”
  
• Doc's Talk: Why the Jews ??? Part 1 Understanding the root of the world&?39;s longest hatred. (docstalk.blogspot.com)
  Prejudice, it seems, is a standard fare of life. In his folksong entitled "National Brotherhood Week," Tom Lehrer sings:
  

  Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics,
  and the Catholics hate the Protestants,
  and the Hindus hate the Muslims
  and everybody hates the Jews.

  In this song, Lehrer expresses the truism that hatred for the Jew is uniquely commonplace. The Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, blood libels, pogroms, countless expulsions and the systematic murder of 6 million.
  The question is: Why? What lies behind these millennium of hatred? Why has the undercurrent of anti-Semitism bubbled and boiled and exploded against Jews everywhere, time and again throughout history?
  In this 8-part seminar, we will examine the root reason for the world's longest hatred.

Jew refering to be religious or to be a people

Not only the Catholic church faces lots of people who do not want to be active in their 'faith' or who perhaps still take part in certain traditional feasts, like child-baptism, first and second communion, but really do not believe in any God or would ever read the Bible.

In Belgium we still do have a very active Jewish community but everywhere in the world we also notice people who call themselves Jew but have no interest in any god whatsoever.

In the United States the number of nonreligious Jews is rising. When you would go around and ask passers by how active they are in their religion, you probably would find many who are not religious at all. According to a new survey of the Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project more than one in five so called Jews, saying they are not affiliated with a religion.

The size of the U.S. Jewish population has been a matter of lively debate among academic experts for more than a decade. Because the Pew Research survey involves a representative sample of Jews, rather than a census of all American Jews, it cannot definitively answer the question. However, data from the survey can be used to derive a rough estimate of the size of the U.S. Jewish population. Perhaps even more valuably, the survey illuminates the many different ways in which Americans self-identify as Jewish or partially Jewish, and it therefore provides a sense of how the size of the population varies depending on one’s definition of who is a Jew.

If Jewish refers only to people whose religion is Jewish (Jews by religion), then the survey indicates that the Jewish population currently stands at about 1.8% of the total U.S. adult population, or 4.2 million people. If one includes secular or cultural Jews – those who say they have no religion but who were raised Jewish or have a Jewish parent and who still consider themselves Jewish aside from religion – then the estimate grows to 2.2% of American adults, or about 5.3 million. For the purposes of the analysis in this report, these two groups make up the “net” Jewish population.

In traditional Jewish law (halakha), Jewish identity is passed down through matrilineal descent, and the survey finds that about 90% of Jews by religion and 64% of Jews of no religion – a total of about 4.4 million U.S. adults – say they have a Jewish mother. Additionally, about 1.3 million people who are not classified as Jews in this report (49% of non-Jews of Jewish background) say they have a Jewish mother.  {Since 1983, the Reform movement formally has embraced a more expansive definition of who is a Jew, accepting children born of either a Jewish father or a Jewish mother if the children are raised Jewish and engage in public acts of Jewish identification, such as acquiring a Hebrew name, studying Torah and having a bar or bat mitzvah. See the Reform movement’s March 15, 1983, Resolution on Patrilineal Descent.}

Jewish leaders say the new survey spotlights several unique obstacles for the future of their faith. You can wonder when even among religious Jews, most of them say it's not necessary to believe in God to be Jewish, and less than one in three say religion is very important to their lives. Like in Catholicism and protestantism in the Western World, the people living in a luxury world are more interested in material wealth than in spiritual richness.

Though Greg Smith, director of religious surveys for the Pew Research Center says:

"The fact that many Jews tell us that religion is not particularly important to them doesn't mean that being Jewish is not important to them."

The long-term decline in the Jewish by religion share of the population results partly from differences in the median age and fertility of Jews compared with the public at large. As early as 1957, Jews by religion were significantly older and had fewer children than the U.S. population as a whole. At that time, the median age of Jews older than age 14 was 44.5 years, compared with 40.4 years among the population as a whole, and Jewish women ages 15-44 had 1.2 children on average, compared with 1.7 children among this age group in the general public. {The 1957 Current Population Survey results were published in Goldstein, S. 1969. “Socioeconomic Differentials Among Religious Groups in the United States.” American Journal of Sociology, volume 74, issue 6, pages 612-631, and Mueller, S. A., and Lane, A. V. 1972. “Tabulations from the 1957 Current Population Survey on Religion: A Contribution to the Demography of American Religion.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, volume 11, issue 1, pages 76-98. Unfortunately, raw data from the 1957 survey were destroyed, so it is not possible to reanalyze them using the various age categories used in the new survey. In the 1957 survey, completed interviews were obtained for roughly 35,000 households.}

Today, Jews by religion still are considerably older than U.S. adults as a whole, although they are similar to the general public in the number of children ever born. (See discussion of median age and fertility in the Age and Fertility sections in Chapter 2.)

Since 2000, the share of American adults who say their religion is Jewish has generally ranged between 1.2% and 2% in national surveys. 
The estimate from the new Pew Research survey that there are approximately 5.3 million “net” Jewish adults and 1 million children who are being raised exclusively as Jewish (or 1.3 million children being raised at least partly Jewish) falls roughly in the middle of these prior estimates – somewhat higher than DellaPergola’s numbers, somewhat lower than the Dashefsky-Sheskin figure and fairly close to the Saxe-Tighe estimates.

The estimate that Jews by religion make up 1.8% of U.S. adults also is consistent with the results of Pew Research surveys over the past five years and close to the findings of other recent national surveys (such as Gallup polls and the General Social Surveys conducted by the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago) that use similar, close-ended questions about religious affiliation. {A close-ended question provides the respondent with a list of possible responses to choose from. Pew Research’s typical wording is: “What is your present religion, if any? Are you Protestant, Roman Catholic, Mormon, Orthodox such as Greek or Russian Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, agnostic, something else or nothing in particular.” Other studies, such as the National Jewish Population Surveys (NJPS) and American Religious Identification Surveys (ARIS) have used open-ended questions about religious affiliation – offering no specific response options – and the results therefore are not directly comparable. Open-ended questions about religious affiliation tend to find smaller numbers of Jews by religion. See, for example, Schulman, M. A., chair. NJPS 2000-2001 Review Committee. 2003. “National Jewish Population Survey 2000-2001: Study Review Memo;” and Tighe, E., Saxe, L., and Livert, D. 2006. “Research synthesis of national survey estimates of the U.S. Jewish population,” presented at the 61st Annual Conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.}


In aggregated Pew Research polling, the Jewish by religion share of the population has ranged in recent years between 1.5% (in 2009) and 1.9% (in 2010). GSS estimates have ranged from 1.5% (in 2012) to 1.7% (in 2008). Combining its own surveys conducted since 2008, Pew Research finds that a weighted average of 1.7% of U.S. adults identify as Jews by religion, while the GSS and Gallup find 1.6% identifying as Jews by religion.

According to the survey, a full 16 percent of Orthodox Jews “attend non-Jewish religious services at least a few times a year.” The proportion is identical for Modern Orthodox Jews and what the survey describes as “ultra-Orthodox Jews” — 15 percent for both sub-groups. Shockingly, that’s slightly higher than the proportions of Reform Jews (15 percent) and non-denominational Jews (12%) who report attending non-Jewish religious services with similar frequency.

Jane Eisner, editor-in-chief of the Jewish Daily Forward, said she is not surprised that the study found relatively low interest in Jewish religious beliefs.
"We are a people very much defined by what we do, rather than what we believe," she said.
But Eisner said she is concerned that millennials are less likely to donate to Jewish charities, care strongly about Israel or belong to Jewish groups.
"It's great that these non-religious Jews feel pride in being Jewish," Eisner said. "What worries me is their tenuous ties to the community."

Related articles

• New Poll Shows That 1 in 3 Young Jewish Americans Are Not Religious
• For Many US Jews, Religion Not Tied to Belief
• Pew Research Center Publishes A Portrait Of Jewish Americans
• For many US Jews, religion not tied to belief
• Report: Jewish American Identity Has Shifted
• Pew poll: 71% of non-Orthodox US Jews intermarry
• What Makes a Jew? It's What You Do.
• Pew survey: U.S. Jewish intermarriage rate rises to 58 percent
• For many US Jews, religion not tied to belief
• Who's a Jew? Few American Jews say it's a matter of belief

History of the acceptance of a three-in-one God

The faithful Jewish people and prophets of the Old Testament never accepted a three-in-one God. It is true that the unfaithful among the Israelites often borrowed pagan gods, pagan customs, and pagan concepts (including Baal and Astarte) and added them to their God-given religion. But there is no record (scriptural or secular) of a trinity concept even among them.

God His People had, like we should have only one God in heaven who was and is the only one Who should be worshipped. The Elohim Hashem is the Creator of everything Who gave His Name to be honoured and showed His works on earth as in heaven.

He has been the Creator of everything and be willing to receive all of His creation as His beloved ones. Every human person should be His child, respecting Him as the Only One God.

Adam and Eve very well knew Who their Creator was but doubted at a certain moment His position. They learned their lesson when it was to late. Their children where brought up with that knowledge and also their grandchildren got to know the reason why they only should believe in that One God.

In time human people grew away from the Creator of all things and later they even started to believe they could create things themselves.

The Hebrews got in their tribes people who were very close to the Creator and who showed them the way to God. God saw their honesty and their belief and promised many things which came in fulfilment except the few things still to happen.

Judaism is monotheistic and personal and from the tribe of king David, a very devote Jew was born, who became a master teacher and got several followers. Those followers, at the beginning mainly Jews believed the words of their rabbi Jeshua, who later became better known as Jesus from Nazareth, being the Christos or Christ Jesus.

English: Jesus Christ - detail from Deesis mosaic, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Also gentiles or non-Jews came to the faith in this young man, who died for the sins of many, and believed that the Father, Jehovah God had resurrected him. Many saw in this wonder and the actions he had done the proof that he was the Messiah. As son of God they respected him and saw him in the work God had done for the earth. This son of man, son of Adam, son of Abraham, son of David and son of Joseph and Miriam (Mary/Maria) attracted more people to come closer to God.

In the Roman Empire there were many gods honoured by the gentiles and it looked very attractive to keep certain attitudes going. But the apostles soon saw false teachings spreading around and warned that people had to be very careful. From the very beginning, of course, Christians not only believed in God in the sense in which the Jews did, but they also believed in Jesus Christ. But they did not believe in him as a 'god son', that idea became only introduced many centuries later.

The first followers of Christ became a Jewish sect called The Way which professed monotheism in the same terms as did the Jews. As the Hellinistic teachings influenced certain Jewish teachings the followers of Christ did not escape of those influences either. In the fourth century the false teachings brought more confusion and with the upheld gentile traditions or pagan rituals looked more attractive to many Christians like the movement became more known.

"Speculative thought began to analyze the divine nature until in the 4th century an elaborate theory of a threefoldness in God appears. In this Nicene or Athanasian form of thought God is said to consist of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all equally eternal, powerful and glorious." - Encyclopedia Americana, 1944, v. 6, p. 619, "Christianity".

During the fourth century Egypt was going to give to the church the Arian heresy, the Athanasian orthodoxy, and the monastic piety of St. Antony and St. Pachomius, which spread with irresistible force over Christendom.

The worst figure for Christianity was Constantine (C., Flavius Valerius Constantinus) who during the decline period of the Roman Realm was the Big Emperor (306–337 C. T.) and tried to merge Christianity with particular pagan customs and doctrines. He undertook the first steps to make this merger religion as the official state religion. Accordingly Greece became a part of Christendom. He moved the capital of the realm of Rome to Byzantium, which he named in honour of himself Constantinople.
It was Constantine who decreed (March 7, 321) dies Solis—day of the sun, “Sunday”—as the Roman day of rest [CJ3.12.2] and that day would be later taken on by a great deal of the Christian community as the new day of rest instead of the Sabbath.

Read more about this in:

1. First Century of Christianity
2. Position and power
3. Raising digression
4. Hellenistic influences
5. Politics and power first priority #1
6. Politics and power first priority #2
7. Politics and power first priority #3 Elevation of Mary and the Holy Spirit
8. The History of the Development of the Trinity Doctrine
9. How did the Trinity Doctrine Develop
10. Altered to fit a Trinity
11. Preexistence in the Divine purpose and Trinity

+++

 

Related articles

• Origins of Christianity (updated)
• Evolution of Christianity
• Judenrein Christianity - Part 4: The Soft Touch
• Acts, Chapter fifteen part two, Go up to Jerusalem.
• Acts, Chapter fifteen part three, James speaks.
• Not all christians are followers of a Greco-Roman culture
• "What does it mean that Christians are not under the law?"
• The deeds of the Nicolaitans
• Christadelphians or Messianic Christians or Messianic Jews
• The Calling of the Gentiles

Festival of Freedom and persecutions

A group cannot be called am [nation] if there is no solidarity says Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Am is indicative of a readiness to share, a sense of compassion. The Jews were taken out of Egypt and were freed not because of their spiritual grandeur, but simply because they were charitable to one another; there was a feeling of solidarity among them, and they were prepared to follow the instructions of the God of Mozes.

Soon the Jews will be celebrating the Festival of Freedom. For us Christians that is also an important occasion to remember.

We have to remember all the wonders God brought unto the earth to show His Greatness. Though even today the Wonders of God on this earth can be seen every day, not many people do want to see them or do not believe in the Hand who is behind all those blessings.

Today we are confronted with a lot of wars going on all over the world. When we hear and see how many earthquakes and natural disasters are coming over the world where children oppose their parents and religions fight against other religions, than we have the free choice to either see the signs God is giving to the universe or to ignore what is happening as a prophesied element in the history of the creation.

The climax of the Exodus story is the construction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem:
If He had brought us into the land of Israel, and had not built for us the Beit Habechirah (Chosen House; the Beit Hamikdash) Dayenu, it would have sufficed us!

The central importance of Holy Temple in the Passover story and in Judaism must never be forgotten:
Thus did Hillel do at the time of the Beit HaMikdash: He would combine Passover — lamb, Matzah and Maror and eat them together, as it said: “They shall eat it with Matzah and bitter herbs.”

The nexus of the City of Jerusalem, the Holy Temple and the Kingdom of Israel in Judaism must never be forgotten:
Have mercy, L-rd, our G-d, upon Israel Your people, upon Jerusalem Your city, upon Zion the abode of Your glory, upon the kingship of the house of David Your anointed, and upon the great and holy House which is called by Your Name.

Jerusalem will be fully rebuilt:
Rebuild Jerusalem the holy city speedily in our days. Blessed are You, L-rd, who in His mercy rebuilds Jerusalem. Amen.

Lots of Europeans recoil the way “Israel” the country is setting up a wall and is discriminating other people. Often they forget that those secular Jews and the fundamentalist Jews are not presenting a proper picture of the active believing Jewish people, the People of God.

In Belgium we are confronted enough with real religious Jews, who act totally different from those we see battling in Israel. Though some Jews over here also may take on an attitude of considering themselves a more important and 'clean' people than the heathen population.Because many cut themselves off from the civil world they often have like many Muslims a wrong idea about Christians and Christendom. They should not forget how it where many Christian believers in the 1930ies and 1940ies saw what was happening in Europe and tried to save those who also believed in the God of Israel.
At the same time it where their own brethren in the New World who perhaps where not so interested in those Jewish brethren of the Old World. If in the 1940s those American Jews had responded to the call for help that came across the ocean from the ghettos in Poland, Lithuania, and the Baltic lands, they might have saved hundreds of thousands of Jews. Rabbi Soloveitchik  also thinks that the Jewish community did not respond to that call. "I thought at the time that the Jewish community was falling apart," he says," that there was no sense of solidarity, of being together, of suffering together." Today he agrees: "It was a terrible crime on our part…and we have not purged ourselves from the great crime we committed, tolerating the destruction of six million Jews."

I bring up this holocaust drama because somehow it was also part of God His Plan and the start of the new Israel. It should also be a lesson for many of us. As Pesach nears, these words should set our consciences aflame. Today, some of the world’s most inspirational Jews suffer continual persecution and brutality. Masked troops destroy their communities under cover of darkness and jail their children without due process, traumatizing families and empowering the enemies of Am Yisrael.

Our world should make a big difference between Zionism and True Israel.

Rabbi Soloveitchik says: "Zionism means defending Jews and building Eretz Yisrael. People who hurt Jews and surrender Israel to Islamist neo-Nazis are not Zionists, no matter how fluent their Hebrew is." But does he not forget that fundamentalist Jews taking over the land of others, though they might think it is given by God, should ask for the land and come to the land to use it as it is instructed by the Most High Elohim Hashem?

All people should be aware that nobody shall be able to hinder God His Plan. Soon we shall be confronted with the reality of the prophesies coming to conclusion.
No matter what happens Israel shall be the Land of the Israelites, Israel God's People.

As on the night the blood of the lambs was brought on the doorposts to give a sign to the messengers of God, we today should give the right sign to God. We should bring the blood of the Lamb on the virtual doorpost of our Faith life. With the Passover the Jews began their unique relationship with God. On Passover God redeemed their but also our ancestors from the slavery of Egypt. And on Passover Jehovah made a commitment to stand by Israel, his chosen people, forever. They should become more aware of that and act to this special position. They should more to seek to fulfil their mission to be “a light unto the nations.”

As God liberated the Judaic slaves from Egypt He will save the slaves of this world, who confine to Him and follow His Instructions. Those that keep to the Law of God shall be saved. They shall be able to look forward to the Greatest Feast of Freedom. The Great Passover.

We should light our candles and be ready to see the light of God and be worthy to welcome the Lamb of God when he, Jeshua (Jesus) returns.

The Seder should be a moment of gathering where all those who know God, love the Most High, are wiling to celebrate the liberation of slavery in Egypt, share the love of God and want to show others that Jehovah is a God of love inviting all to the dish on which Jesus also sat a few hours before his death.

The Seder, like many festive occasions, provides a great opportunity to get others to know the wonders God did, to share family experiences and exchange personal stories of traditions (our own and others) so that it  will help to diminish the fear that comes from difference and misunderstanding which divides this world of people, who are all created in the image of God.

Edgar Bronfman, Sr.  looked at the long book with many different ideas. Jews spend hours discussing its profound teachings. Yet there is one theme that stands out as cardinal concept. 

For not only one has risen up against us, but in every generation they rise up against us to annihilate us, but the Most Holy One, blessed be he, always delivers us out of their hands.

Bronfman  has produced a new Haggadah for himself and other American Jewish critics of how Israel defends itself against it enemies.
Bronfman rewrites the standard, family favorite “Dayenu” song stating

“And if we deliver peace between ourselves, the Palestinians, and our Arab neighbors … that will be enough!”

He concludes with

 “commit ourselves to supporting every idea, every effort, and every carefully crafted plan that seeks to lead Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Arabs—indeed all of the world’s clashing people—out of the dark and narrow straits of fear and violence, out of the strictures of hatred and war, and into the spiritual Jerusalem—the true Promised Land—an open and peaceful place flowing with the milk and honey of justice, compassion, and freedom for all.”

+

Please do find to read:

1. A Jewish Theocracy
2. Observance of a day to Remember
3. Around the feast of Unleavened Bread
4. Observance of a day to Remember 
5. Day of remembrance coming near 
6. Pesach 
7. Korban Pesach
8. 1 -15 Nisan
9. 14 Nisan a day to remember #1 Inception
10. 14 Nisan a day to remember #2 Time of Jesus
11. 14 Nisan a day to remember #3 Before the Passover-feast
12. 14 Nisan a day to remember #4 A Lamb slain
13. Pesach and solidarity 
14. Seven days of Passover

+++

Related articles

• Pesach greetings from Canberra
• Obama's Seder - An Orthodox Jewish Rabbi's Thoughts on Obama's Visit To Israel
• Prepping for Pesach: Embracing Non-Jews
• Passover without wine? For Jewish addicts, sober seders are a life-saver
• The Haggadah for Jews Who Love Our Enemies
• The Haggadah according to the Bronfmans
• Religious Persecution and Safe Havens
• The Christian Left's Peculiar Hatred of Israel
• Five Reasons Women of the Wall Must Stop Now
• Morocco film searches out Jews who left for Israel

Tu B’Shvat, the holiday of the trees

If the did not celebrate it Wednesday evening and Thursday, Jews around the world will celebrate the holiday of u B’Shevat, Tu Bishvat, or Tu B’Shvat (15th of the Hebrew month of Shevat) tonight.And people wondered why we should celebrate the holiday of the tree.

The almond trees in Israel begin to shake blossoms out along their branches.
Across the globe this month Jewish communities are celebrating the holiday of Tu B’Shvat.  Many choose to commemorate the “New Year of The Trees” by planting pine trees in Israel.  Tu B’Shvat is a day that deals directly with the social inequality of our food system.  It’s a holiday that can inspire us to think about the free Gifts Jehovah God provides for humanity and it gives us the chance to think about His blessings and how we should use those blessings. This year you perhaps could also think about building community food security.

Savyon from the land of Israel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When we look around us we can see very beautiful things in nature, though many do not notice them any more.God has created the plants and given the task to the people to name them and to take care of them. God promised that all the plants would be for the good of people and would offer food for men and animal. And normally all of the seed bearing trees would bring forth fruits free for all people. Though people made it that humans had to pay for it.

"And Elohim said, “See, I have given you every plant that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed, to you it is for food." (Beréshith - Genesis - Book of the Beginning 1:29 The Scriptures 1998+)

Also in Europe and North America the inhabitants can look forward to the new time coming soon. In Belgium from tomorrow Saturday the temperatures will rise, but we can notice already the sap in thee shrubs begining once again to flow through it.  The trees are ready to bring out green knobs and to let the Voice of the Most High sound through their branches. If you look carefully around you you will see heralding
the New Year for trees. The melting snow shall provide moisture for the trees and the sap will bring forth fruit in the spring. It is the day to pray for a beautiful esrog. The custom for Jews is to eat fruits in order to be able to say the blessings on the fruits on this day. הדר עץ פרי, a fruit of splendor, is gematria העץ פרי ברא, [Blessed are you Hashem] who created the fruit of the tree (they both equal 659). Have in mind to ask Elohim Hashem Jehovah for a gorgeous esrog when saying this blessing.

In the Mishnah, where Tu B’Shvat is found, the purpose of the holiday is to make a single day in which our produce is taxed and given to the community. It’s based from a single line of Torah: “At the end of three years you shall bring forth all the tithe of your produce in that year, and shall lay it up inside your gates; And the Levite, because he has no part nor inheritance with you, and the stranger, and the orphan, and the widow, who are inside your gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied.“ (Debarim - Deuteronomy 14:28).

The Torah also says that "man is a tree in the field."We should come forth from good seed and bring forth good fruits.When we bring none, not enough or no good fruits we would be of no use.

God has plated the seed in Abraham to make Him a people. And God His Wishes shall always come true. So out of Aḇraham shall come forth the fruit of a blessed people because יהוה {Jehovah}appeared to him  and said, “I am the Elohim of your father Aḇraham. Do not fear, for I am with you, and shall bless you and increase your seed for My servant Aḇraham’s sake.”.(Beréshith - Genesis - Book of the Beginning 26: 23-24)
The Creator told His chosen people how He was to be called and that His Name and Works should be known all over the world. Those Works we can still see every day, because Jehovah God did not end Creating.


In the Land of Israel, several people are already happily celebrating Tu B’Shvat, the holiday of the trees. School children sing songs praising the Land of Israel and thanking Hashem for its fruits. Bus loads of students and families go on field trips throughout the country, and saplings are planted with great joy and spirit. And a festive meal of thanksgiving, highlighted by a cornucopia of fruits of the Land, will grace our tables on Shabbat.

Tzvi Fishman  writes about this special day and looks at Eretz Yisrael. According to him without Israel the Torah is a shrunken, truncated, mini-version of the complete Torah of Eretz Yisrael. Two-thirds of the Mishna deals with laws that can only be performed in Israel. Without Eretz Yisrael, God Himself is reduced to a second-string diety, seemingly not strong enough to keep His Chosen People in the Land He gave them, for there is no greater desecration of the Name of God than when the Jewish People are scattered in exile amongst the goyim (Ezekiel, 36:20). Without Eretz Yisrael, there is no prophecy, no Beit HaMikdash, and the Divine Presence doesn’t appear in the world.

Kaliv Hasidim celebrating Tu B'Shvat in Jerusalem.
Photo Credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

The hunger in our cities resonates because everywhere we can see more poverty. We do not have to go far away form our own dinner-table to see the food crisis which is also a spiritual crisis. On this Tu B’Shvat, let’s reinvigorate the holiday’s original purpose, by doing our part to make hunger relief healthier, more respectful and more in line with our shared values.
Those who are fortunate to have an abundance of produce year-round could perhaps take time to think of those in need and provide for them.
Tu B’Shvat is an opportunity to more closely examine hunger and how to respond most effectively to ensure that hungry people have access to nutritious, healthy foods.

Read:

What’s the Point of Celebrating Tu B’Shvat in Exile?

Celebrate Tu B’Shevat, the New Year of the Trees

 

Fruits and vegetables (Photo credit: nutrilover)

Related articles

• These Tu B'Shvat Cookies are Good for You
• Tu B'Shvat: A Lesson about Roots
• Happy Tu B'Shvat: This coming Shabbat! Sing its good for you!
• Observing Tu B'Shvat through fruit trees and food justice
• Tu B'Shvat is Jewish New Year For The Trees
• Tu B'Shvat: This coming Shabbat
• New Year for Trees
• Four Amazing Trees-From Aish.com-Israel
• Happy New Year, Trees!
• Trees on Tu Bishvat - Carob