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].

This article was originally published by The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry.

It wasn’t a large toad: maybe two, two-and-a-half inches long. I was in the yard with my grandma when we found him hopping alongside the house.

We caught him, put him in a Mason jar with holes in the lid, and dropped some grass inside for comfort. 

The next day, I took him with me to preschool for show-and-tell. This promised to be the best thing my fellow 4-year-olds had ever seen! 

As I waited with my mom in the small foyer outside the classroom door before class started, I slid the jar underneath my jacket, so no one could catch a glimpse before the great reveal. I stood there, proud of what I had found and so excited I could hardly wait. As it turned out, I wouldn’t have to wait long.

Just as the door to the classroom opened, I lost my grip on the jar. It went crashing to the floor, shattering into several pieces. I’m sure my eyes were the size of saucers as I realized what had just happened. My toad friend went hopping crazily around as parents and children alike screamed and made quick jumps around the small foyer to avoid stepping on him. It was pandemonium.

Eventually, my toad friend—shaken, but unscathed, after his fall—-was recaptured in a paper cup, and I showed him to the class. They loved him.

I laugh about it now, but that memory is clear to me, because it was traumatic. One slip of my hand broke the jar and resulted in momentary chaos.

It’s similar to what happened to our world and to the human race in the Garden of Eden. Things were good when Adam and Eve were created—very good. But when Adam sinned, it ushered sin and death into the world (Rom. 5:12). Poverty. Homelessness. Broken families. Confusion about gender and sexuality. Abortion. Economic tumult. Pollution of the creation. Greed. There is chaos and brokenness everywhere we look in our world today. 

What do we do about this?

Many in the Jewish community seek to remedy these and other problems according to the rabbinic teaching called Tikkun Olam. Literally meaning “world repair,” at its root, Tikkun Olam assumes the world is broken.

On a practical level, synagogues, religious and non-profit groups, and Jewish individuals regularly take part in hands-on activities that seek to carry out Tikkun Olam. They want to make the world a better place by taking part in humanitarian work that benefits their neighbors and the world.

The Jewish community is not alone in this desire to bring healing to the broken world, though. Christians, too, are exhorted to alleviate suffering (Jas. 2:16), to care for the disadvantaged (Jas. 1:27), and to speak up for those without a voice (Prov. 31:8). Throughout history, the Lord has used believers to minister to the physical needs of others, believers such as William Wilberforce, Amy Carmichael, and modern evangelicals who lead the fight against sex trafficking and the abortion industry.

As good as it is to seek to alleviate suffering, we must never forget that the Scriptures teach there is only One who will bring lasting healing to the world, and that is Jesus the Messiah.

John, the beloved apostle, records the vision he saw of the day ultimate Tikkun Olam becomes a reality, when the new heaven and new earth are here:

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts” (Rev. 21:4-6).

Seeking to make the world a better place and to alleviate suffering are noble and good things to pursue. But ultimately Tikkun Olam—world repair—will come when God Himself makes all things new. 

Like the jar my toad called home, this world and all its suffering will be disposed of, the chaos will be over, and the world will be permanently and wholly repaired. In order to take part in this, though, each person must drink of the fountain of the water of life by trusting in the finished work of redemption Jesus accomplished on the cross. 

So, what about you? Will you experience lasting Tikkun Olam?

This article was originally published by RebelFolio, a publication of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas's Hank Greenspun School of Journalism & Media Studies.

​It’s a warm summer day in Las Vegas, but the heat in the house is set at 80. Clad in light blue button-down pajamas, a gold Torah scroll on a chain hanging from his neck, 90-year-old Marton Ackerman sits back on his deep, black leather sofa.

On the coffee table in front of him is a glass of Coke, a landline phone, cell phone, medications, and a calendar marked with dates with doctors. He carefully lifts the Coke from the table and takes a sip through his bendy straw. He prepares to go back in time.

“We were very poor, and luckily I had a loving family,” he says. “We never went to bed without getting a kiss from my mother. And that’s what I remember from early days.”

Ackerman was born in Mexico to Hungarian Jewish parents in 1929. His parents split up when he was very young, his father staying in Mexico while his mother took the three children and went back to Hungary. 

When Hitler invaded Hungary in March 1944, Marton was 14 years old, living on Kiraly Street 6 with his mother, older brother, younger sister, maternal grandmother, and two aunts.

“The place was a huge building with apartments in it,” he says. “We were on the second floor. On the first floor was the temple, a Jewish shul. We lived in 3-bedroom house, 3-½, I think. … It was a tenement. My mother and all of my aunts worked for a textile factory repairing the bad parts of the whole sheet of material. They would bring it to us, and I remember that the living room was almost up in the ceiling with textiles, and we kids used to go up on a top and—” 

Marton makes a sliding sound with his mouth, as he demonstrates with his hand how they would slide down the stack of cloth. He stares down at the coffee table in front of him, looking through it to a distant time and place.

 “I had a happy childhood for a while,” he says with a smile that doesn’t quite make it from one side of his mouth to the other.

Indeed, Marton’s childhood years were marbled with moments of beauty and tragedy. He played in the streets of Pest, the poorer half of Budapest. He sang in a choir at the synagogue with his boyhood friend, Tibi. He fished from the banks of the Danube River and brought his catches home for his mother to fry. 

“The non-Jewish friends that I had way back, I never went to school with them, but we gathered together in the park and we played together ... football or climbing the hills of Buda,” he tells me, smiling as he talks. “And they were okay with me, you know. But when this started, I think it was...well, antisemitism always was there, but it got worse.”

For Marton, rumblings of the persecution Hungarian Jewry would eventually experience began years before the Nazis occupied his homeland. In the 1930s, the Arrow Cross Party, which shared the anti-Semitic and nationalistic ideologies of their German counterparts, formed in Hungary. The hatred they spewed permeated Hungarian culture, including that of young people.

“[Young people] were trying to spying on us when we were getting out of our school,” he says. “I remember the stores in Budapest had metal curtains they would pull down over the windows. The only reason I remember them is because the … young people would shove me into them and my head would hit the metal.”

Marton endured these beatings, while the young people, students of a local Catholic school, threw racial and religious slurs at him, calling him “dirty Jew” and other names. 

Although Marton cannot remember the exact year when these things happened, he does know that it was shortly after these beatings that he dropped out of the 8th grade, due to the family’s financial difficulties. 

“I went as an apprentice to a furrier, where they made fur coats and all that,” he says. “It was at that time that they started to deport the older Jews. They sent them to work camps and some of them to concentration camps. But my family, we were okay for another year.”

On April 5, 1944, the decree was made that all Hungarian Jews were to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing. Marton remembers that time. 

“We had to wear yellow stars,” he says. “We were restricted on what time we could go out and when we couldn’t. But in the building there were quite a few Jewish kids, and—stupid us—we decided to take off our yellow stars and go to the movies. We sneaked in, because no one had money. But there were always ways for kids to get into the movies.”

Life for the Ackerman family changed drastically in the fall of 1944. On November 29, the Royal Hungarian Government ordered all Jews to leave their homes and to move into the newly formed ghetto.

“Well, they just came in, you know,” he tells me of the morning Nazi officials came to his family’s apartment. He stares at the fireplace across the room from where he is sitting. “They didn’t ask us permission. And not just our [apartment], but everybody who was Jewish there. And evidently they knew who was [Jewish], because there were other people [living there], too; not just Jews.” 

Before moving into the ghetto, the Ackerman family was first taken to a horse-racing track, where the men and women were divided into two groups. 

“My brother and I went to one side and the other part of my family went on the other side,” he says. “This was the first time I was away from my mother.”

At the race track, 15-year-old Marton encountered the complexities of human nature and of the war, in particular. After being ordered to hand over his wallet by a member of the Arrow Cross Party, something strange happened.

“I gave him my wallet that had only my Mexican birth certificate and a picture of the Belzy Rebbe that my grandmother gave me,” Marton tells me. “I told him it was my grandfather. He gave me back my wallet with the birth certificate and the picture. Surprisingly, this man gave me 100 pengő. It was a big sum at that time for me, at least. I never seen a 100 pengő. He said, ‘Good health. Good luck.' To this day, I do not know why he did that, but it helped me survive the war. I later used it to buy apples and potatoes from the farmers.”

Marton and his brother, Gene, along with many of the other Jewish males, were moved from the race track to a brick yard, and then eventually from the brickyard to the ghetto. In the ghetto, they were put to work doing hard manual labor.

“Incredibly, we were once out working on a house, demolishing it, getting the dangerous things off of the top,” he says as he lifts his glass of Coke off of the coffee table and takes a drink. “When we finished that work, we came down and we could hear the sirens, meaning it was an air raid. You won’t believe this, a bomb fell down just a short distance from where I was.”

When the bomb hit the ground, he saw it bounce into the air. When it came back down, it detonated upon impact with the cobblestone street, sending his brother flying through the air and through the display window of a nearby store. 

The explosion forced Marton violently to the ground. Metal shrapnel hurtled through the dust-laden air, one piece embedding itself into the back of his scalp, another piece lodged in his earlobe, where it remains to this day.

“It was chaos,” he says. “I don’t know where the guard was, but ... lots of people died there, and when I woke up from the blast, first thing I saw was a man’s leg away from his body. And the guy pleading, ‘Everybody, please help me!’”

Miraculously, Gene was unharmed by his crash through the display window, but Marton was injured by the shrapnel.

“A young Nazi grabbed me and took me someplace where they couldn’t see us,” he says. “And he had a satchel on, I don’t know what you call it, and he took out a bottle of liquor. And gave me a shot. He felt sorry for me, I guess.”

Surprised by the kindness of the Nazi, Marton and his brother began searching the streets for someone to help stop the bleeding from Marton’s head.

“So we went to the Red Cross,” he says, “and believe it or not, the Red Cross refused to tend to me because I was Jewish. The Red Cross center was supposed to be an international place, but they would not accept this Jewish kid.” He slowly shakes his head. “They never did apologize for not taking in the Jews during the war.” (The International Committee of the Red Cross has made belated statements acknowledging and regretting its broad wartime failure to assist Jews and other persecuted peoples.) 

With the Red Cross refusing to help Marton, the brothers began their search for someone who would.  “[We] walked the streets until we found another doctor who accepted me,” he says. “I was bleeding profusely. He cleaned me up and put a clamp on my skull. He said, ‘I’m going to make you a turban. You don’t need it, but maybe it’ll save you from going to work up on the buildings, and maybe they’ll start treating you right.’”

News of the advancing Russian Army motivated the Arrow Cross to march their prisoners to Germany, where they would be used as forced labor to help the rapidly declining war effort for the Nazis.

“We walked and walked,” Marton tells me. “And if you couldn’t walk anymore, you were shot. I saw it with my own eyes. They shot an old man. He didn't fall down. He just slumped to his knees. He was dead. I don’t know how many they killed that time, but the march went on.”

This “death march”, as it was called, continued its bloody and merciless journey, until one day a motorcycle pulled up alongside the ragged band of marching prisoners.

“A messenger on a motorcycle stopped the column,” Marton says. “Then he asked if there was any foreign-born in the column, or something to that effect.”

Marton and Gene, as Mexican citizens, made the decision to step forward. 

“We were in shock, and we didn’t know if they picked us to kill us right there,” he says. “But the situation was bad, and many times you wanted to die. We didn’t know what was going to happen, but as I told you, it didn’t make any sense to live like that.”

It turned out that the Ackerman brothers’ decision to step forward probably saved their lives from almost certain death, either on the march or in Germany. Those who had foreign passports were sent back to the ghetto, where they were put to work again.

Unbeknownst to Marton and Gene, while they were working in the ghetto, Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg was working to establish more than 30 safe houses in the ghetto for Jews with certificates of protection from neutral nations.

“In December,” Marton tells me, “somebody came to the ghetto and told me that my Aunt Lenke was taken to Auschwitz, and my Aunt Malvin, Grandmother, Mother, and sister Piroska were living in a safe house. If I wanted, he would help me and my brother to escape from the ghetto and take us to the safe house.” 

The brothers readily agreed.

Living in the ghetto was a young man—Marton refers to him as “this smart kid”—who advised the brothers that an escape from the ghetto would require them to clean themselves up, so as not to appear like prisoners.

“That day,” he says, “my brother, this guy, and I walked straight, like we knew what we were doing. We just went ‘Heil Hitler!’, while looking stern, and they let us out.”

Marton and Gene were reunited with their family at the safe house, where they lived for the duration of the war. Budapest was liberated by the Soviets on February 13, 1945.

Although the traumatic events of the Holocaust Marton endured are nearly eight decades in the past, the memories of those days are fresh in his mind. 

“I still have nightmares about it. I wake up screaming,” he says. He adjusts his position on the couch and looks at me. He sighs. “So I don’t know. It was bad times, and I don’t like to think about it, you know. It hurts, even after so many years.”

Despite these haunting memories, Marton carries with him an indomitable happiness. “Always smile,” he says. “I survived the Holocaust, and yet I smile.”

​

This article was originally published by The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry.

During one of my trips to Israel, as I was looking around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, I noticed a peculiar mural on one of the walls. Though dimly lit, I could just make out the ancient image of Jesus stretched out on the cross, the man who crucified him sitting by His head.

The scene itself was not unusual, considering its location. What was shocking to me was that the man with hammer and spike in hand was not a Roman soldier, as the Scriptures record, but a Jewish man.

Such a depiction in such a place serves as a stark reminder of the often subtle, yet strong animosity that has pervaded the church’s history and its theology throughout the ages, the present-day included.

When talking to those who hold to Replacement Theology, however, we are often accused of creating a strawman, a false argument set up to be defeated. We are told that Replacement Theology is not anti-Semitic and that the term Replacement Theology is a misnomer that does not accurately represent their views. Fulfillment Theology or Supersessionism are more accurate terms, we are told.

While it should be admitted that many of those who hold to Replacement Theology today are not anti-Semites, history proves that anti-Semitism was indeed a major motivation in the formation of Replacement Theology as a system of thought.

Many of the early Gentile church fathers, such as Dionysius, thought that the literal understanding of Scripture, especially concerning the Messianic Kingdom, was “too Jewish,” so they began interpreting Scripture allegorically, denying the traditional literal interpretation that Old Testament Jewish believers and the early church had held to for centuries.

For example, Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, in his Testimonies Against the Jews, wrote that he “endeavored to show that the Jews, according to what had before been foretold, had departed from God, and had lost God’s favour, which had been given them in past time, and had been promised them for the future; while the Christians had succeeded to their place, deserving well of the Lord by faith, and coming out of all nations and from the whole world” (emphasis mine).

Armed with this new way of interpreting Scripture and the deep-seated anti-Semitism many of its leaders held to, the church soon began pushing the nation of Israel off of is divinely-ordained “seat,” and started viewing itself as the “True Israel,” which took the place of “ethnic Israel” of the Old Testament, the majority of whom had rejected Jesus as their Messiah.

In his work, Dialogue of Justin, Philosopher & Martyr, with Trypho, the early church father Justin Martyr wrote “We, who have been quarried out from the bowels of Christ, are the true Israelitic race.”

While many such men contributed to the unseating of Jacob, it can be argued that personal and theological views of no single person caused so much destruction for the Jewish people as did those of Martin Luther.

​Luther originally looked upon the Jewish people kindly. In 1523, he penned That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, a tract in which he criticizes some within the Roman Catholic Church for their anti-Semitic views and for trying to force Jewish people to convert to Christianity. “If I had been a Jew,” he wrote, “and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian.”

His views devolved, however, after unsuccessful attempts to gently share the gospel with the Jewish people over a 20-year period. By 1543, his rather benevolent attitude toward Israel had turned downright anti-Semitic. In his pamphlet, The Jews and Their Lies, Luther made caustic remarks about the Chosen People of God:

“What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews?” he wrote. “First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them.”

Luther went on to advocate the destruction of Jewish homes and of Talmuds, forbidding their rabbis to teach anymore, limiting their travel, and forcing them into hard labor.

Such scathing remarks sound eerily similar to those of another German anti-Semite of a more recent age. Indeed, Adolf Hitler frequently quoted the revered Luther’s comments on the Jewish people, paving the haunting road to Holocaust.

With the sun setting on the last remaining survivors of Hitler’s so-called “Final Solution,” and as another generation of Jewish people is facing the rising tide of anti-Semitism throughout the world, may the phrase “Never Again” be the declaration not only of opposition to another Jewish genocide, but also of the church’s resolve never again to turn on those the Messiah calls His “brethren.”

This article was originally published by The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry.

He sat across from me, his steel blue eyes examining my own. Those eyes had seen many things during their 80+ years—the forced expulsion from home, death marches, ghettos. They were witness to the Holocaust, one of the most horrific events of the 20th century, an experience that shaped his life. And here they were, looking into my own eyes, searching.

“You know,” he began in his thick Hungarian accent, “you are the first Christian I have ever met who loved Israel and the Jews. I thought Christians hated us.”

I was stunned. This man, a survivor of the Holocaust, in his nearly nine decades, had never before met a follower of Jesus who loved his people and their nation. How could this be?

Unfortunately, the words of my elderly friend are not unique, nor are they entirely misinformed. Down through the ages, the Jewish people have been persecuted, maligned, and killed in the name of “That Man,” the title many substitute for the name they dare not utter—Jesus Christ.

How is it that the church became associated with Jew-hatred? Besides the fact that all human beings have wicked hearts capable of such prejudice, I believe history proves the root of much of this animosity within the church stems from the theological scourge known as Replacement Theology, a system of thought that, in its various forms, pushes Israel from its rightful “seat” in God’s plan.

As Christians, we sometimes forget, as do many of our Jewish friends, that Christianity is not a Gentile religion. On the contrary, the Bible is a Jewish book, with Jewish themes, penned by Jewish men, all pointing to the Jewish Messiah, Jesus.

It was through the Jewish prophets that God made some very specific promises to the nation of Israel, among them a land, a nation, and the promise of both receiving blessing and being God’s conduit through which He would bless the world (Genesis 12:1–3). He also promised that the kingdom of David would be established forever (2 Samuel 7:16), a Kingdom that would be ruled by the Messiah (Isaiah 9:6–7).

​Because the early church was predominantly Jewish in its membership, its expectation was that God would literally fulfill these promises to Israel. They believed that the land of Israel was the Jewish homeland promised to Abraham and his descendants forever. They would have understood that the days would come when, although God had scattered Israel throughout the nations for their disobedience, He would restore the Jewish people to the land He gave to them one day. They also were yearning for the day when the Messiah would return to Earth to set up His promised Kingdom (Acts 1:6).
Additionally, the missions program of the early church was to take the gospel to the Jew first and then to the Gentile nations, as Jesus commanded (Acts 1:8) and as Paul later reaffirmed (Romans 1:16). As the gospel went out, however, the makeup of the church changed due to the astounding number of Gentiles coming to faith in the Messiah. The church became a beautiful, ethnically diverse body of people from all over the world. But this change in makeup eventually led to a tragic transformation in the way people viewed both the Scriptures and the “People of the Book,” now a minority in the church—a transformation that would affect both the church and the Jewish people for centuries to come.

As I looked back into the eyes of my elderly friend, I could not help seeing him as a link to an ancient story, a Jewish story. It was this man’s ancestors with whom God identified Himself. It was to them that He committed the Scriptures. It was to them that He promised the Messiah and His Kingdom. It was to them that He gave the gospel first. May the church throughout the world never forget either Jacob or the chair God has given him in His plan for history.