This article was originally published by The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry on January 31, 2020

The curtain falls as the tragic scene ends. Moments later, as it rises for the next scene, we find that the set has been rearranged and everything—from the characters to their clothing and language—is different.
Such is the case with the closing of the Old Testament curtain and the opening of the New Testament. Although the testaments are two scenes of the same “play,” the set, over a 400-year period, changed dramatically.

During this period, two new groups of characters appeared: the Sadducees and the Pharisees. While the Gospel writers describe Jesus’ interactions with both of these groups, most Christians know little about them. The more we know about these groups and their origin, the better we can understand Jesus’ discussions with them. But in order to understand where these groups came from and who they were, we need some historical background on what took place in the 400 years between the testaments.

A CHANGING WORLD
When Malachi wrote the last of the Old Testament books, the Persians were the globe’s superpower. But in 333 BC, they were defeated by Alexander the Great, ushering in a period of Greek (Hellenistic) dominance. Tutored by Aristotle, Alexander believed fiercely in Greek thought and culture and sought to spread it to the lands he conquered, including Judea. Although Hellenism, with its pagan deities and immodest cultural practices, is incongruous with biblical teachings, Alexander is portrayed positively in Jewish traditions.1

Hellenism, however, soon became the arch enemy of many pious Jews. When Alexander died in 323 BC, his kingdom was divided by four of his generals—Cassander, Antigonus, Seleucusy, and Ptolemy, the latter of whom took control of Judea.2 In 200 BC, the southern part of the Jewish homeland was won from the Ptolemaic dynasty by the Seleucid ruler Antiochus III. After Antiochus III’s death, the throne was ascended by Seleucus IV, who was assassinated 12 years later. It was then that the infamous Antiochus IV “Epiphanes” (God manifest) rose to power.

Though he considered himself to be divine, the king was referred to by the Jews as Antiochus “Epimamese” (The Madman),3 and for good reason. He began an aggressive and violent campaign of compulsory Hellenization of the Jewish people. When his efforts met opposition, he persecuted the Jewish people, throwing circumcised infants and their mothers from Jerusalem’s walls4, murdering 40,000 Jews, and enslaving another 40,000 over a three-day period.5 He also forbade the Jewish people from keeping the Sabbath or observing the feasts of Israel,6 and he sacrificed a pig in the Temple, desecrating it.7

While many Jews were captivated by the Hellenistic frenzy, changing their names to Greek ones and adopting Greek practices, one group refused to adapt. The Maccabees, later known as the Hasmoneans, a priestly family zealous for the Law of God, with other Jewish rebels, launched guerilla warfare against Antiochus’ powerful forces, eventually wresting back control of Jerusalem in 164 BC.8 This victory and the subsequent purification of the Temple in 165 BC is remembered each year by the Jewish people in the festival of Hanukkah.

THE SADDUCEES
Culturally Liberal, Religiously Conservative
Although the nation rededicated their Temple to the God of Israel, many among the Jewish people had already imbibed Hellenism. Chief among these “Hellenizers” were the Sadducees. 
The Sadducees (a name probably derived from the Hebrew word for “righteous”) were aristocrats, members of the high priesthood whose interests revolved almost exclusively around the Temple. They were members, together with the Pharisees, of the Great Sanhedrin, “a kind of Jewish Supreme Court made up of 71 members whose responsibility was to interpret civil and religious laws.”9 

While liberal in their tolerance for and acceptance of Hellenism, the Sadducees were strangely conservative when it came to the interpretation of the Law. They held to a strict, literal interpretation of the Torah (the five books of Moses) and accepted only the authority of the Torah, even to the exclusion of the Writings and the Prophets. This position resulted in their denial of certain doctrines, such as the existence of spirits and angels and of the resurrection, since they saw no reference to such teachings in the Torah.10 Viewed as elitist, aloof, and corrupt, the Sadducees were not popular with the common people. While the Temple and the service of God were their official concerns, in truth they were highly political, a fact that did not sit well with commoners.

Jesus and the Sadducees
Jesus regularly interacted with the Sadducees during His earthly ministry. One of the most famous incidents occurred when they came to Him with a question concerning marriage and the resurrection. Of course, their question was a ruse, because the Sadducees denied that a resurrection would ever happen. Knowing their hearts, Jesus answered their question by telling them that they were ignorant of the Scriptures and God’s power, and by affirming that the resurrection will indeed take place (Mt. 22:30).

Although Jesus’ response shut the mouths of the Sadducees, it didn’t keep them from persecuting the followers of Jesus. Later, they put Peter and John in jail for their proclamation of the gospel and the resurrection (Acts 4:1-3). 

In AD 70, following a Jewish revolt, the Romans destroyed the Temple and took control of Jerusalem, leading “to the total loss of Jewish political authority in Israel until 1948.”11 For the Sadducees and Pharisees, this was a watershed moment. With the Temple went the Sadducees’ position and purpose as the priestly aristocratic class, and they quickly disappeared from the pages of Jewish history.12 

The theological positions of the Sadducees went with them into extinction. Judaism today upholds many of the doctrines the Sadducees denied, including the resurrection, angels, and spirits. Modern Judaism, then, takes its theological cues not from the Sadducees, but from their opponents, the Pharisees.

THE PHARISEES
The People’s Scholars
Christians meet the Pharisees on the pages of the New Testament, usually as the antagonists of the Gospel narratives. The apostle Paul was a Pharisee before he became a believer in Jesus. But who were these men?

The Pharisees stood in stark contrast to their aloof, Temple-focused Sadducean counterparts. Whereas Sadducees were aristocratic and removed from the people, the Pharisees were the common man’s scholars. While the Sadducees were Hellenistic, the Pharisees were staunchly opposed to Greek influence. In fact, the term Pharisee is derived from the Hebrew word parush, meaning “separated,” or “isolated,”13 because they sought separation from the worldly influences of Hellenism and separation unto God and His Law.14 

While the ideological predecessors of the Pharisees (the Hasideans) originally joined the Maccabees in their efforts to rid Judea of Hellenistic influence, the Pharisees, a generation later, separated from this group for a couple of reasons. First, from the events of Hanukkah emerged the Hasmonean dynasty. This was a succession of rulers over Judea who combined the offices of king and high priest, a violation of the Hebrew Scriptures.15 

Second, contrary to the original aims of the Maccabean Revolt to rid Judea of Hellenism, the Hasmonean Dynasty “declined into worldly pomp and Grecian ways,”16 corrupting Judaism and Jewish culture.
Theologically, the Pharisees believed in spirits, angels, the resurrection, and the coming Messiah and His kingdom on Earth, which put them in opposition to the Sadducees.17 Additionally, in contrast to the Sadducees, their evident love of the Torah, disciplined lives, and the passion with which they taught their fellow Jews the precepts of the Word of God in the synagogue earned them the respect and admiration of their fellow Jews.18

As students of the Law, particularly the commands surrounding tithing and purification rites, the Pharisees debated how to apply various passages of Scripture in a rapidly changing world. The traditional interpretations and applications of ancient sages, then, became increasingly important to the Pharisees, and, “beginning with Scripture itself, the Pharisees quoted the ‘case decisions’ of famous rabbis who had been consulted concerning the application of Scripture to individual problems.”19 Their charge soon became, “make a fence round the Torah” in order to keep the people from transgressing the Law of God.

The Pharisees’ desire to keep Israel separate from the corrupting influences of Hellenism was good. But whenever man adds to the Word of God, problems ensue, and such was the case with the Pharisees.

Inevitably, the Jewish people would ask why they should follow the teachings of mere men, no matter how outwardly religious they were. In response, the Pharisees taught that God not only gave Moses the Torah (the Written Law) at Mt. Sinai, He also gave him “a divine commentary on the written code.”20 Later, this “Oral Law” was written down and given equality with, and even supremacy over, the Scriptures. In fact, the Mishnah (the first written form of the Oral Law) says, “There is greater stringency in respect to the teachings of the scribes than in respect to the torah.”21 In their quest to keep Israel from violating God’s Law, they had become a law unto themselves.

Jesus and the Pharisees
Jesus had numerous interactions with the Pharisees, most of them centered on the disparity between their Oral Law and God’s Word. He charged them with taking “Moses’ seat” (Mt. 23:2), granting themselves authority as God’s spokesmen, though God never gave it to them.

The Lord denounced them numerous times as hypocrites, who bound “heavy burdens” on the people, used their self-imposed position to get “the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues,” took advantage of widows for their own financial gain, and paid inordinate attention to the minutiae of the Law and its interpretations while neglecting “justice and mercy and faith” (vv. 4-30).
Jesus’ message largely fell on deaf ears among the Pharisees, but there were some who placed their trust in Him. Besides Paul, one of the most notable examples of a Pharisee who believed in Jesus is Nicodemus, who came secretly to Jesus by night and asked how a man could be born again (Jn. 3). He, together with Joseph of Arimathea, a fellow member of the Sanhedrin, took Jesus’ body to the tomb following His death (Jn. 19:38-39).

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
When the Temple was destroyed in AD 70, the world of the Sadducees and Pharisees was greatly shaken. But the Pharisees fared far better than their Sadducean counterparts. Whereas the Sadducees went extinct soon after the Temple’s destruction, the Pharisees thrived. One of the reasons for their success was that their teachings were not centered on the Temple, but on the Oral Law, which was not limited to the land of Israel.

Additionally, the Pharisees were more in touch with the needs of the common people. Therefore, their focus was on holy living for all Israel, not just the few, which meant the further development of Judaism without the Temple. 

This new Judaism was one of replacements. Whereas the Temple was once the center of holiness, the Pharisees taught that the people of Israel were the dwelling place of God. Instead of a high priest, the sage or rabbi was the spiritual leader of the community; and the blood sacrifices of the Temple were replaced by fulfilling commandments (mitzvot) and doing good works (maasim tovim).22

This new religious system became known as Rabbinic Judaism, because it was rooted in the Oral Law, the ancient sages’ teachings on the Torah. Since it revolved around the Oral Law, not the Temple, Rabbinic Judaism was mobile, going with the Jewish people wherever they were forced to settle throughout the Diaspora. Today, synagogues can be found all over the world, including surprising locations, like China, South Korea, and India, due in large part to the work of the Pharisees 2,000 years ago.

Endnotes
1 Charles F. Pfeiffer, Between the Testaments, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985), 69.
2 Joshua J. Mark, “Alexander the Great,” https://www.ancient.eu/Alexander_the_Great/, (November 14, 2013).
3 Rabbi Paul Steinberg, “Antiochus the Madman: An in-depth view of the Greco-Syrian emperor in the story of Hanukkah,” myjewishlearning.com/article/antiochus-the-madman/.
4 Simon Schama, The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000 BC–1492 AD, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2013), 88.
5 Ibid., 113.
6 2 Macc. 6:1, 6.
7 Jewish Virtual Library, “The Maccabees/Hasmoneans: History & Overview (166 – 129 BCE),” jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overview-of-the-maccabees. 
8 Ibid.
9 Jewish Virtual Library, “Ancient Jewish History: Pharisees, Sadducees & Essenes,” jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pharisees-sadducees-and-essenes. 
10 Charles F. Pfeiffer, Between the Testaments, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985), 115.
11 Jewish Virtual Library, “Ancient Jewish History: The Great Revolt (66 – 70 CE),” jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-great-revolt-66-70-ce. 
12 H.H. Ben-Sasson, A History of the Jewish People, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 325.
13 W.D. Davies, Introduction to Pharisaism, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967), 6.   
14 Ibid., 9.
15 Simon Schama, The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000 BC–1492 AD, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2013), 115.
16 Alfred Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life, (Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), 206.
17 Charles Guignebert, The Jewish World in the time of Jesus, (Hyde Park: University Books, 1965), 167.
18Charles F. Pfeiffer, Between the Testaments, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985), 58.
19 Ibid., 113.
20 Louis Finkelstein, The Pharisees: The Sociological Background of their Faith, (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1962), 266.
21 Mishnah Sanhedrin 11:3.
22 Jacob Neusner, A Short History of Judaism: Three Meals, Three Epochs, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1992), 53.

This article was originally published by The Friends of Israel.

"Ty, I have a question,” he said. “When did Jesus stop being Jewish?”

Jacob and I have had many great conversations over the past few years about the Bible, Jewish history, and Israel in God’s plan. But his question took me aback. My dear friend, who was once severely persecuted by “Christian” anti-Semites, essentially wanted to know when Jesus betrayed His people.

So, let’s consider the question. When did Jesus stop being Jewish? 

JESUS WAS BORN A JEW.
Every December, the thoughts of Christians turn to the night of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. When we study the Christmas narrative, however, we usually brush across the account of what took place after Jesus’ birth, after the shepherds and the gifts and the angels in the highest. What happened after the Christmas story tells us a lot about the Jewishness of Jesus and His earthly family.

The Gospel of Luke records that eight days after He was born, Jesus’ parents had Him circumcised and named Him Jesus, in Hebrew Yeshua (Lk. 2:21). The circumcision and naming ceremony is called the brit milah (literally, “covenant of circumcision”). It is a rite given to Israel in the Mosaic Law that binds the male child to the people of Israel, the Law, and God (Lev. 12:3). 

In addition to the brit milah, the Torah teaches that a Jewish woman who gives birth to a baby boy is considered unclean for a total of 40 days (Lev. 12:2,4). Following this time of purification, she and her husband are to take their son to the priest in Jerusalem, where they are to bring a lamb as a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a turtledove as a sin offering (Lev. 12:6). 

Jesus was born to observant Jewish parents, who loved God and knew the Tanakh by heart (Lk. 1:46-55). After the 40 days of her purification, Joseph and Mary traveled from Nazareth to Jerusalem and did exactly as the Law commanded (Lk. 2:22-24). 

From His first day on Earth, Jesus, under the direction of His observant parents, was obedient to the Law. He was born a Jew.

JESUS LIVED AS A JEW.
We do not have many details about Jesus’ life prior to His ministry; but we do know that He was raised in a distinctly Jewish home. 

For example, Jesus’ parents, in accordance with the Law, annually took their family to Jerusalem for Passover (Dt. 16:16; Lk. 2:41). In fact, it was after the family observed Passover in Jerusalem and began their return trip to Nazareth that 12-year-old Jesus went missing. When Joseph and Mary backtracked to Jerusalem, they eventually found him sitting in the temple, listening to the teachers of the Sanhedrims (Sanh. 88b) and asking them questions that astonished those who heard Him (Lk. 2:46).

In addition to Passover, Jesus, as the Son of God and an observant Jew, celebrated the other feasts proscribed in the Law, as well as the non-biblical Feast of Dedication, or Hanukkah (Jn. 10:22).

Additionally, when Jesus was 13, He would have had His bar mitzvah. The term bar mitzvah literally means “son of the law.” Rabbinic tradition dictates that a boy becomes a bar mitzvah at the age of 13, meaning that he is responsible to keep the Law of Moses from then on. Observant as He and His family were, Jesus undoubtedly had a bar mitzvah.

We also know that Jesus attended synagogue. He was a regular participant in the life of the synagogue (Lk. 4:16) and taught in synagogues throughout Israel (v. 15).

Jesus kept the Torah, observed the festivals, participated in Jewish traditions, and was active in His local synagogue. For all of His 33 years on Earth, Jesus lived a Jewish life.

JESUS DIED A JEW.
Not only was Jesus born a Jew and lived a Jewish life, He was a Jew when He died, too. 

Throughout His life, Jesus never distanced Himself from the Jewish people or disavowed them. True, He called out the Jewish leadership for their hypocrisy (Matt. 23) and pronounced judgment on them (v. 36); but so did the prophets throughout Israel’s history. Jesus rebuked His people, cared for His people, taught His people, healed His people, and forgave the sin of His people.

At no point in His life or ministry was Jesus anti-Jewish. He was born a Jew, lived a Jewish life, and died a Jew.

JESUS WILL RETURN TO EARTH A JEW.
For the Jewish people, the thought of living in a world void of anti-Semitism is unfathomable. Persecution and attempts to annihilate them have become a part of the fabric of the Jewish experience. The Bible teaches, however, that there is coming a time when anti-Semitism will be dealt with once and for all by the King of the Jews, Jesus.

When Jesus returns to Earth, He will do so as the world’s Jewish judge and king (Matt. 25:31; cf. Is. 9:7). He will gather all the people of the world to Israel, where He will judge them. This judgment is hinged on one factor: How did these Gentiles treat their Jewish neighbors in their time of distress (Joel 3:2; Matt. 25:31–46)? In accordance with God’s promise to Abraham, Jesus will bless those who cared for the Jewish people, and He will curse those who did not care for them.

After crushing anti-Semitism, the King of the Jews will become “King over all the earth” (Zech. 14:9). But even then, Jesus and the character of His kingdom will be Jewish.

Each year, the nations of the world will convene in Jerusalem, where they will worship the God of Israel and keep Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles (Zech. 14:16). On their way to Jerusalem, when they see a Jewish person, they will grab his sleeve “saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you’” (Zech. 8:23).

Throughout their existence, the Jewish people have perpetually had their sleeves grasped by the Gentiles, almost always to throw them to the ground, oppress them, or even to throw them into concentration camps. Under the rule of the King of the Jews, however, the world will be rid of anti-Semitism, and Gentiles will honor the Jewish people in their role as God’s Chosen People.

CONCLUSION
So, When did Jesus stop being Jewish? He never did. From His birth and brit milah, to His life on Earth, to His imminent return and reign as King, Jesus has never stopped being Jewish. Both Jews and Gentiles would do well to remember this. 

Gentiles should never assume God has divorced His Chosen People. Jewish people should not cast Jesus off as a traitor to His people. He never denied the Jewish people, and His message of salvation by grace through faith is for all people, the Jew first and also the Gentile (Rom. 1:16).

This article was originally published in Israel My Glory magazine in the January/February 2020 issue.

The air was cool, a hint of dampness pervading it. I stood huddled with my Jewish friends. In front of us lay a massive mound of gray ash. Fragments of human bone protruded from it. As I gazed at the mound, my friends recited the “Mourner’s Kaddish,” a Hebrew prayer praising God and expressing a longing for the establishment of His Kingdom on Earth.1

We were at Majdanek, a concentration camp the Germans built outside Lublin, Poland, where they systematically exterminated an estimated 78,000 Jewish people during World War II. We stood at the memorial to the victims; the mound of ash was all that remained of them.

My friends’ low and tearful prayers pulsated in my ears, as I silently offered up my own anguished prayer. Oh, Lord . . .

Nothing else would come out. What could I possibly say, or even think, that would express the grief I felt?

The ash represented so much: Lives cut short. Human dignity, the very image of God, reduced to refuse. Six million Jewish men, women, and children murdered due to the hatred of one demented German whose degeneracy was sustained by an acquiescent citizenry.

The metered sounds of the “Kaddish,” the cement memorial to the victims, the awful heap of ashes—I knew they had all come to symbolize the story of the Jewish people in a Gentile world, a mournful history in a minor key.

The Diaspora
Jewish people outside Israel live in what they call the Diaspora. The word comes from two Greek words meaning “to scatter across,” and it aptly describes Jewish history. In Deuteronomy 28, Moses told Israel that obedience to His Word would bring blessing, and disobedience would bring cursing.

Blessing meant fertile fields, healthy children, and security. Cursing meant dispersion around the globe—the Diaspora. The Jewish people would be plucked from their land, scattered to the four winds, and persecuted.

The first dispersion occurred in 722 BC, when Assyria conquered the 10 northern tribes of Israel and scattered them throughout the Middle East, where many of them remained for centuries. But the biggest dispersion took place between AD 66 and 135. After the Roman Empire crushed the great rebellion of AD 66, it destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in AD 70 and began driving God’s people into other parts of the world. Ancient historian Josephus said a million Jews perished and thousands were sold into slavery.

Over the centuries, the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob settled on nearly every continent, initially living in close-knit communities separated from their Gentile neighbors. Later, especially in Europe, they sought to integrate into the broader societies in which they lived. Sometimes they were successful, but persecution followed them no matter how embedded they became.

Religious Persecution
Tragically, much Jewish persecution came at the hands of professing Christians who claimed to believe in the Scriptures and to follow the Jewish Messiah, Jesus. Many saw the Temple’s destruction as a sign that God was finished with the Jews and had replaced them with the church, the “new Israel.”

Early Christian theologian Tertullian (c. AD 160–220) claimed Jacob and Esau were allegories of the church and Israel. “Beyond doubt,” he wrote, “through the edict of the divine utterance, the prior and ‘greater’ people—that is, the Jewish—must necessarily serve the ‘less’; and the ‘less’ people—that is, the Christian—overcome the ‘greater.’”2

Tertullian’s terribly flawed theology took root in the Gentile world, and Christendom’s message became clear: The Christians must subjugate the Jews. This anti-Semitic dogma motivated the infamous Crusades.

Literally meaning “the war for the cross,” the Crusades were a response to the Muslim occupation of Israel, then called Palestine. In 1095, Pope Urban II called for a holy war against the Muslims “to recapture the Holy Land and ensure safety for Christian pilgrims visiting sacred sites.”3

Muslims were not the only people the bloodthirsty crusaders targeted. According to the dominant theology of the day, the Jewish people were also enemies of Christ and, therefore, fair game.

“Christian” armies massacred Jews throughout Europe. For example, Count Emicho, a German nobleman and crusader, led his marauders to attack Jewish communities throughout the Rhineland in 1096. They went from town to town with the message of convert or die.

At one point, Emicho and his henchmen exhumed the corpse of a Gentile man who had been buried for a month and claimed the Jews “took a gentile and boiled him in water. They then poured the water into our wells in order to kill us.” Angry mobs gathered “to avenge him who was crucified, whom their ancestors slew. . . . Let not a remnant or a residue escape; even an infant . . . in the cradle.”4 The crusaders killed nearly every Jewish person in the town.

Sadly, the Crusades were not isolated movements. Throughout the past 2,000 years, people who claim to follow Christ have been among the most virulent persecutors of the Jewish people in the Diaspora. During the Spanish Inquisition, for example, the Roman Catholic Church hunted down and tortured Jews who converted to Christianity, claiming it was ferreting out infidelity.

Today, anti-Semitism is growing. In April 2019, 19-year-old John Earnest, a member of an Orthodox Presbyterian church, entered a Chabad synagogue in Poway, California, and opened fire, killing one person and injuring three others, including the synagogue’s rabbi.

In an eight-page manifesto, Earnest based his hatred of Jewish people partially on his flawed understanding of Scripture. Referring to Jews as “one of the most ugly, sinful, deceitful, cursed, and corrupt” races, he gave 15 “reasons” for his action, including,

For their persecution of Christians of old (including the prophets of ancient Israel—Jeremiah, Isaiah, etc.), members of the early church (Stephen—whose death at the hands of the Jews was both heart-wrenching and rage-inducing), Christians of modern-day Syria and Palestine, and Christians in White nations.5

The Muslim world, too, has been cruel to the Jews. Abdelmohsen Abouhatab, a Philadelphia imam who live-streams anti-Semitic sermons on YouTube, delivered a sermon in 2019 in which he called Jews “the vilest people” and “enemies of Allah.” He also accused the late prime minister Menachem Begin “of slitting the stomach of a pregnant woman as part of a ‘bet,’” timesofisrael.com reported.6

Abouhatab also spouts lies about so-called Jewish money and power, a tactic people have always used to justify anti-Semitism.

The Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, is among Israel’s greatest enemies. Its charter declares its intent to fight the “warmongering Jews” and states, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.”7 Hamas’s efforts to annihilate Israel constitute a primary source of terrorism in the Middle East today.

Political Persecution
Not all persecution is religiously motivated. Jewish people also have been targeted for political reasons.

One of the most emblematic manifestations of political anti-Semitism is the work The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, published in 1905 and proven to be a hoax in the 1920s. It purported to be the secret minutes of meetings of Jewish leaders, the Elders of Zion, and their plans for world domination.

The Black Hundreds, an ultranationalist Russian organization, blamed the Jewish community for the Russian Revolution of 19058 and used the Protocols to justify their hatred, which eventually resulted in a vicious pogrom in Odessa that year in which more than 300 Jews were killed and thousands injured.9

As bad as the persecutions were, nothing equaled the politically motivated persecution led by a disgruntled painter named Adolf Hitler. His ultranationalism and Germany’s defeat in World War I fueled his hatred. Despite Jewish patriotism (more than 100,000 Jewish men fought for Germany during World War I),10 Hitler and many other Germans felt the Jewish people had cost them the war.

Hitler’s “Final Solution” for dealing with European Jewry resulted in the deaths of millions. In 1918, Europe’s Jewish population was about 9.5 million. By the end of World War II, it was only 3.5 million.11

Today college campuses are hotbeds of anti-Semitism, and mainstream society isn’t far behind. The Anti-Defamation League recorded 1,879 anti-Semitic incidents in the United States in 2018 alone. Of these attacks, 39 of them were physical assaults, a 105 percent increase over 2017.12 One, called “the deadliest attack on Jews in the history of the U.S.,”13 was conducted by a white supremacist at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and left 11 people dead.

The Hope to Come
Despite their tragic history, God has not abandoned His ancient people, whom He has loved “with an everlasting love” (Jer. 31:3). I thought of His love for my friends as they concluded the “Mourner’s Kaddish” at the Majdanek death camp. Then we sang “Hatikvah” (“The Hope”), a 19th-century poem that is now the national anthem of the State of Israel:

As long as in the heart within,
The Jewish soul yearns,
And toward the eastern edges, onward,
An eye gazes toward Zion.
Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope that is two thousand years old,
To be a free nation in our land,
The Land of Zion, Jerusalem.14

Scripture exhorts us not to forget the hope—Hatikvah—that remains for the Jewish people because of the Lord who loves them:

I will make a covenant of peace with them. . . . They shall be safe in their land; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I have broken the bands of their yoke and delivered them from the hand of those who enslaved them. And they shall no longer be a prey for the nations, nor shall beasts of the land devour them; but they shall dwell safely, and no one shall make them afraid (Ezek. 34:25, 27–28).

When that future day comes, Israel’s story will be in a minor key no more.

ENDNOTES
“Jewish Prayers: Mourners Kaddish,” jewishvirtuallibrary.org [jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-mourners-kaddish].
Tertullian, “An Answer to the Jews,” newadvent.org [newadvent.org/fathers/0308.htm].
Joshua Levy, “How the Crusades Affected Medieval Jews in Europe and Palestine,” myjewishlearning.com[myjewishlearning.com/article/the-crusades].
Cited in Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism (Brookline, MA: Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, 2012), 67.
Michael Davis, “The Anti-Jewish Manifesto Of John T. Earnest, The San Diego Synagogue Shooter,” The Middle East Media Research Institute, Memri.org, May 15, 2019 [tinyurl.com/y2cpfufm].
“Philadelphia imam calls Jews ‘vilest people,’” timesofisrael.com, March 9, 2019 [tinyurl.com/yy54p7zt].
“Hamas Covenant 1988,” Yale Law School, avalon.yale.law.edu [tinyurl.com/y4qkper5].
“Anti-Semitism: History of the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’” jewishvirtuallibrary.org [tinyurl.com/y66tcxw4].
“Odessa” [jewishvirtuallibrary.org/Odessa].
Goldstein, 260.
Ibid.
“Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents: Year in Review 2018” [adl.org/audit2018].
Ibid.
“Hatikvah—National Anthem of the State of Israel,” Knesset.gov.il [tinyurl.com/y6xoqv9p].