Anti-Semitism and its Cure

Recent polls have reported that, because of anti-Semitic violence, 25% of the Jews of the UK are thinking of leaving. In France, the percentage is 75%.

The horrid reality of anti-Semitism is even growing in the USA at an alarming rate. Attorney Jay Sekulow reported:

• It’s being called a “new anti-Semitism.” Radical professors are punishing Jewish students for making pro-Israel statements. Christian students who support Israel are being intimidated. Radical Hamas supporters are issuing fake eviction notices to Jewish students. And it’s happening on college campuses all across America. The threats of violence, intimidation, and discrimination against Jewish students and anyone who supports Israel...

His observations are supported by FBI 2012 Hate Crime Statistics:

• Approximately two-thirds of religious hate crimes are anti-Jewish. The FBI reported that of the 1,340 religious hate crimes, 62 percent were victims of an offender’s anti-Jewish bias. The number two targeted group victimized on a religious bias were Muslims, as only 12 percent were victims of an anti-Islamic bias.

After the Holocaust, my Jewish people vowed, “Never again!” However, many of the most influential Jews remain silent in the face of growing anti-Semitism. One NYC Jewish history organization, while never ceasing to look back at the Holocaust, refuses to introduce any programming about the present threats to the Jewish people. They are not oblivious to this present threat. You cannot enter into their building without passing through security and a metal detector. However, they seem to be in denial regarding the coming Holocaust.

On several occasions, I have asked the staff why their programming remains silent on this critical issue. They blandly responded that this simply isn’t their focus. Meanwhile, it doesn’t seem to be the focus of the media, universities, or the U.S. government. All remain silent, smiling at the coming Holocaust.

The Prophets of Israel saw it coming. Jeremiah cried:

• Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people? (Jeremiah 8:21-22)

But there was little Jeremiah could do. The problem was deep, and his countrymen were loath to examine it, let alone to correct it:

• Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people. Oh, that I had in the desert a lodging place for travelers, so that I might leave my people and go away from them; for they are all adulterers, a crowd of unfaithful people. "They make ready their tongue like a bow, to shoot lies; it is not by truth that they triumph in the land. They go from one sin to another; they do not acknowledge me," declares the LORD. "Beware of your friends; do not trust your brothers. For every brother is a deceiver, and every friend a slanderer. Friend deceives friend, and no one speaks the truth. They have taught their tongues to lie; they weary themselves with sinning. You live in the midst of deception; in their deceit they refuse to acknowledge me," declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 9:1-6)

I do not wish to blame the victim. However, this is just what the Prophets of Israel did at the bequest of their Master. Even Moses warned his people:

• He [God] shielded [Israel] him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye, like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions. The LORD alone led him; no foreign god was with him. He made him ride on the heights of the land and fed him with the fruit of the fields. He nourished him with honey from the rock, and with oil from the flinty crag, with curds and milk from herd and flock and with fattened lambs and goats, with choice rams of Bashan and the finest kernels of wheat. You drank the foaming blood of the grape… He abandoned the God who made him and rejected the Rock his Savior. They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols. They sacrificed to demons, which are not God-- gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your fathers did not fear. You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth. The LORD saw this and rejected them because he was angered by his sons and daughters. "I will hide my face from them," he said, "and see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful.” (Deuteronomy 32:10-20) 

Instead of returning and placing their trust in the God who had fathered and shepherded them for millennium, Israel has placed its trust in themselves, the very thing that Moses had warned them against:

• You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me." But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today. If you ever forget the LORD your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. Like the nations the LORD destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the LORD your God. (Deuteronomy 8:17-20) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q4XL4oRIRE

Throughout their history, my people Israel have suffered these promised woes. Even the Orthodox Jews have turned away in their heart. Instead of acknowledging God, they are filled with a sense of racial superiority.

In Why the Jews Rejected Jesus, Orthodox Jewish writer David Klinghoffer concludes that Jewish rejection of Jesus is founded in “the mystic uniqueness of the Jewish essence or nature. There was something distinct about the Jewish soul…The Jewish soul feels the worlds, in a remarkably visceral way, as unredeemed.”

He bases this opinion upon Judah Loeb’s famous interpretation of the Talmudic tractate, Avodah Zarah, which stated that God had offered the Torah to all the other nations first, “to see if they possessed a predisposition to the Torah, and did not find it in them,” in contrast to the holy disposition God found in the Jews (pgs. 215-217).

This understanding, of course, is not at all reflective of the Hebrew Bible but instead, of much of the Talmud and is an affront to God.

I cry for my foolish people. Jeremiah’s lament has become mine. What to do? Continue in prayer to point them back to their sins and the promised hope of repentance before their rejected Messiah.

What is my consolation? It is found only in our Savior Jesus. Through Paul, He promised:

• I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: "The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.  And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins." As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable. (Romans 11:25-29) 

To Him be the glory!