Israel ‘Jewish Christians’ Clash With Religious Establishment

There is no sign to identify the occupants of the building at No. 56 Street of the Prophets. The entrance is marked only by a solid, rust-colored metal gate in the stone wall that shields the property from the outside world.

Barely visible over the top of the wall is a small Israeli flag fluttering from the roof of the building, a symbol of the loyalty the residents say they feel to the Jewish state.

But to most other residents of Jerusalem, the occupants of No. 56 are at best unstable malcontents and at worst a traitorous stain on the national purpose, their flag a fraud.

The property is the home of the Messianic Assembly, part of a small and embattled movement pushing at the religious limits of Israeli democracy.

About 24 Congregations

The assembly is one of about two dozen such groups, or congregations, in Israel with a sizable membership of Jews who believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah. Ten of those groups are affiliated with some recognized Christian sect, but the rest, including the Messianic Assembly, are independent of any such ties. They share the same basic belief as “Jews for Jesus” in the United States, but function separately from that organization.

Some members call themselves “Jewish Christians,” which their opponents in Israel and in the United States regard as a contradiction in terms.

Others prefer to be known as “Jewish believers,” or “Messianic Jews,” terms that emphasize both their ethnic Jewish roots and their acceptance of Jesus as the promised biblical savior.

Baruch Maoz, leader of a congregation in Rehovot, southeast of Tel Aviv, expressed the attitude of a dozen Jewish believers interviewed for this report when he said, “I’m not converted, I’m completed.”

Conflict With Establishment

Their insistence that they are a legitimate stream of Judaism despite their religious beliefs is what has thrown these people into conflict with the Israeli establishment, particularly with a militant, anti-missionary movement here that sees them as a threat to the communal integrity of the Jewish state.

Jewish believers have received anonymous death threats and harassing telephone calls. Some have been fired from their jobs because of their beliefs, and their children have been barred from certain state schools. Three years ago, someone tried to burn down the Messianic Assembly building, and there have been arson attacks on other such meeting places. Jewish believers’ personal property has been vandalized and their businesses have been undermined by whisper campaigns.

In one incident, a woman’s faith was used against her in an eight-year custody battle over her only child. The woman, who requested anonymity, finally won her struggle a year ago, but she is under a court order not to try to influence the religious beliefs of her daughter.

Maoz’s congregation is contesting an injunction forbidding it to arrange a regular meeting place. The members move their services weekly, assembling on a recent weekend in a forest.

2 Cases Before Court

Two cases involving Jewish believers are currently before Israel’s Supreme Court. In one, Arye Sarko-Ram, a believer from Ramat HaSharon, north of Tel Aviv, is appealing his dismissal from his army reserve unit for alleged missionary activity.

In the other, Jerry and Shirley Beresford, would-be immigrants from Zimbabwe, have appealed the Israeli Interior Ministry’s refusal to grant them citizenship under the country’s Law of Return.

The ministry contends that the Beresfords’ status as Jewish believers negates their claim under the Law of Return to automatic citizenship for Jews returning to their biblical homeland. The Beresfords say that since they have never formally joined any church, they remain Jews despite their belief in Jesus, and are therefore entitled to citizenship. The high court is scheduled to hear the case this month.

“The larger issue is the issue of freedom of conscience,” said Yosef Ben Menashe, the Israeli attorney representing both Sarko-Ram and the Beresfords. “I’ve been fighting for more than 25 years for separation of church and state in Israel. To a large extent, we are the borderline between a democratic society and an autocratic or even a theocratic one.”

Israeli sensitivity to Christianity in general, and in particular to ethnic Jews who embrace faith in Jesus, is rooted in the long history of Christian persecution and forced conversion of Jews.

Israel was founded as a Jewish refuge, the culmination of centuries of struggle during which stubborn adherence to tradition ensured the survival of the scattered Jewish people as a distinct entity. And for some of those Jews to now challenge this tradition in the name of an historic persecutor, and to do so from within the long-sought Jewish homeland, is considered by even a large number of secular Israelis to border on treason.

Jewish believers are commonly referred to here as meshumadim --literally, “destroyed” Jews. They are often portrayed as an unstable fringe element of society, and “to some extent it’s true,” Maoz said. If they are at the periphery, however, Maoz and others say they have been pushed there by the traditional majority.

Several of the Jewish believers interviewed for this article had histories of spiritual restlessness and personal trauma. One is a former drug user, another a former beach bum; a third experimented with transcendental meditation. Whatever their past, most appear to be stable citizens today. They include the owner of a printing services business, a lawyer, an aircraft maintenance man, a secretary.

There are no official statistics on the number of Jewish believers in Israel, but most estimates range from 2,000 to 3,000.

‘Don’t Wear Signs’

“People don’t wear signs saying ‘I believe in Jesus’ when they enter the country,” said Yehoshua Kahana, deputy director of Israel’s Interior Ministry.

If no one knows of their Christian commitment, these Jews are readily accepted as Israeli citizens under the Law of Return. So far, at least, no one is known, because of religious preference, to have been stripped of his Israeli citizenship once it was granted.

However, the government appears to be stepping up its effort to block Jewish Christians in the face of what Kahana said is a noticeable increase in the number trying to enter Israel in the last year or two. It tries to detect them through the work of overseas representatives who consult with would-be immigrants. That is how the Beresfords were identified.

In addition to new immigrants, the community of Jewish believers is growing naturally as children of earlier immigrants come of age. Also, a relatively small number of native-born Israelis have joined the group. David Stern, an activist Jewish believer from Los Angeles, estimates that fewer than 100 native Israeli Jews join the community each year.

Still, it is their alleged missionary activity here that most upsets the country’s Orthodox religious establishment, which leads the battle against Jewish believers and anyone else suspected of trying to proselytize.

Legal Restrictions

Although proselytizing is not in itself illegal under Israeli law, it is so circumscribed as to make it difficult in practice. A 1977 law forbids the use of material inducements to encourage religious conversion, and anti-littering ordinances have been used against Jewish believers and others trying to distribute missionary literature.

Earlier this year, the ultra-orthodox political party Agudat Israel submitted a bill to the Knesset, or Parliament, that would have required any group engaged in “preachment to another religious community” to register with the government and to include the word mission in its name. The bill, which provides for a prison sentence of up to three years, has not been approved. But it is an indication of widespread sentiment.

In another move early this year, the Education Ministry ordered all state schools, including those of the secular kibbutz movement, to stop using Bibles containing both the Old and New Testaments. Education Minister Yitzhak Navon, representing the predominantly secular Labor Alignment, defended the move in Parliament as consistent with his ministry’s opposition to “missionary activity.”

Missionary activity, or “giving witness,” as they prefer to call it, is also the subject of considerable debate within the community of Jewish believers.

“Many of us believe it must be done,” said Menachem Benhayim, a member of the Messianic Assembly who emigrated from the United States in 1963 and became an Israeli citizen. “This is a basic, biblical mandate, but on how it should be done, we differ.”

Keeping a close eye on the Jewish believers is the anti-missionary group known as Yad L’Ahim--”Helping Hand for the Brothers”--which openly boasts that its techniques include infiltration of the various congregations. In part because of such pressure, the community of Jewish believers is fragmented and often frightened.

Benhayim, who serves as Israel secretary of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance, compares the lot of his fellow believers in the Jewish state to that of a Jew in a small American town dominated by white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

“There is no ongoing danger,” he said, “but there is a certain sense of alienation.”

Theologically, the congregations differ in the extent of their identity with either the Christian or Jewish portion of their dual identity. Generally, however, they prefer the Hebrew name “Yeshua” to “Jesus,” and refer to immersion rather than baptism. Many observe kosher dietary laws and attend synagogue on the most important Jewish holy days, such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. They often relate more to Hanukkah than to Christmas, and prefer Saturday as their day of worship to Sunday.

Stern, the former Los Angeles resident, described the movement as “largely a Diaspora product,” and added: “It doesn’t work very well to import the Diaspora back to the land.”

Anglo-Saxon Influence

For that reason, among others, Stern is preparing a New Testament translation and commentary from a Jewish perspective.

Maoz agreed that “there is an awful lot of Anglo-Saxon influence” in the movement. The reason, he said, is that the United States and other Western countries are more open than Israel to religious pluralism, “so Jewish people have more opportunity to hear and evaluate.” Nine of 25 adults in his congregation have an Anglo-Saxon background; seven are native-born Israelis and the rest come from various East and West European countries, Maoz said.

The founder of the Messianic Assembly was a Tunisian Jew, and at a recent Saturday morning service the overflow congregation included, in addition to American and Israeli-born believers, members from the Soviet Union, Sweden, France and Holland.

The meeting hall resembles a Christian church, with 12 rows of wooden pews and what could be a choir loft. But the service was in Hebrew, and in a niche at the front of the hall was a large menorah, the candelabrum that is the traditional symbol of Judaism.

After the main service, core members of the congregation, which attracts large numbers of tourists, retired to a second, smaller hall for a service they called “the Lord’s Supper.”

‘We’re on Our Guard’

“We’re not an underground movement,” Benhayim said, but he added that “we’re on our guard about people misusing our services.”

“The Lord’s Supper” was similar to Communion in Christian churches. Individual believers gave “witness” to the workings of their faith or sought the congregation’s prayers for a specific cause.

One man prayed that all the people of Jerusalem who on recent weekends have been attending controversial Sabbath film showings instead discover Jesus as the Messiah.

As the service ended, Benhayim gave the traditional Jewish greeting to his fellow worshipers, “Shabbat shalom!”