Fight the New Anti-Semitism

September 19, 2022 By Olivier Melnick 43 Comments

Has the Red Heifer been found, and if so, what’s next?

To say that we are living in exciting times is an understatement. World events are converging at such a high rate of speed that it is hard to keep up. For Bible students like myself, it is both exhilarating and concerning to see the whole planet moving towards a one-world government so quickly. I have been a believer for 39 years and since then, I have firmly believed in what the Bible says about the end times, the one-world government and a cashless society, but I always thought that it wouldn’t be in my lifetime, and yet, here we are.

The next event on God’s timetable is the Rapture of the believers from planet earth. This is a “signless event”, meaning that it doesn’t require anything before it takes place. I also believe that after the Rapture, those left behind will go through increasingly perilous times known as “The Time of Jacob’s Trouble”, or as most of us know it, “The Great Tribulation”. This will be a period lasting seven years before the triumphal return of Yeshua the Messiah at the end of those seven years. This is when the Messianic or millennial kingdom will finally be inaugurated.

Incredibly, during the Great Tribulation, or more precisely at the midpoint, after 3.5 years, the Temple will be desecrated, but which Temple? Not counting the wilderness Tabernacle after the Exodus, there are four Temples described in the Bible. First, we read about Solomon’s Temple, which is the one that David wanted to build, in (1 Kings chapters 5-9) and 2 Chronicles (chapters 2-7). Then, after suffering some heavy damage at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, that Temple was rebuilt by Zerubbabel between 520-515 BCE and became known as Herod’s Temple. Roman general Titus destroys the Herodian Temple in 70 CE.

Israel currently doesn’t have a Temple in Jerusalem. Are things about to change? The Bible speaks of a third and a fourth Temple or Millennial Temple (Ezekiel 40-46). The third Temple is a project that has been at the heart of the Temple Institute in Jerusalem for decades. A section of religious Jews is convinced that they will be rebuilding their Temple and once again resume the sacrificial system in Israel. Towards that end, they have painstakingly recreated all the implements necessary for the resumption of Temple life. Everything has been ready for a while now, even the priests from the tribe of Levi (remember that the tribe of Levi is the only one that can be identified since its identity was preserved in the name of its members such as Levy and Cohen and other derivatives). But the proverbial buck stops here because, to resume Temple duties, a red heifer is needed. It is important to note that the third Temple, while simply called the third Temple by its Jewish proponents, is also known by Yeshua’s followers as the Tribulation Temple.

The search for the red heifer has been going on for decades. The criteria for the selection of the ultimate red heifer are quite specific. The reason why a red heifer is needed is that Jewish people at the Temple must present themselves in a state of ritual purity before they perform their duties. We get this from the Passover celebration in the wilderness in Numbers 9:5-7, “They observed the Passover in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight, in the wilderness of Sinai; according to all that the LORD had commanded Moses, so the sons of Israel did. But there were some men who were unclean because of the dead person, so that they could not observe Passover on that day.”

According to Judaism, there isn’t one Jewish man alive who can claim that level of purity and since the Temple no longer exists and the ashes of the red heifer are gone, it cannot yet be attained. Ritual purification continues to be mandatory for anyone within Judaism who has had contact with a dead body. The 113th commandment of the 613 found in the Torah stipulates that “the ashes of a red heifer are to be used in the process of ritual purification.” Numbers 19:1-22 explains the process, “Then the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, “This is the statute of the law which the LORD has commanded, saying, ‘Speak to the sons of Israel that they bring you an unblemished red heifer in which is no defect and on which a yoke has never been placed. You shall give it to Eleazar the priest, and it shall be brought outside the camp and be slaughtered in his presence. Next Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle some of its blood toward the front of the tent of meeting seven times. Then the heifer shall be burned in his sight; its hide and its flesh and its blood, with its refuse, shall be burned….Now a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place, and the congregation of the sons of Israel shall keep it as water to remove impurity; it is purification from sin.

So, the only way to be cleansed from impurity is to be washed with water mixed with the ashes of a red heifer, but not any red heifer would do! The parah adumah or “red cow” must be a young (less than three-years-old) red heifer with no defect, on which no yoke was ever placed. Only nine red heifers were ever found in the entire history of Israel, so it goes without saying that they are extremely rare and valuable. Much mystery surrounds the reason for using the ashes of a red heifer. Why ashes? Why a cow of a specific color? Why a sacrifice outside the Temple compound? Why mixed with water? Jewish tradition records that even the very wise king Solomon didn’t understand it. The Red Heifer is also mentioned in the New Testament in Hebrews 9:13-14 as an example of Yeshua’s spotless, sinless sacrifice being greater than the ashes of the animal.

Recently, five spotless, young red heifers were flown to Israel from Texas. If they continue to grow spotless, without defect and without even one black or white hair, they will qualify for the special sacrifice and gathering of their ashes. Time will tell, but these five are bringing a lot of hope to the Temple people patiently awaiting the qualified candidate. So, what does this all mean to us?

If indeed a kosher Red Heifer has been located and selected, this represents the last piece of the puzzle for the next Temple. Since all the implements have been recreated and the priests selected and trained, the Temple can be rebuilt, and the Levitical team can be purified. This validates the veracity of the Bible even further as if we needed more validation to believe that it is the infallible, inerrant word of God!

Unfortunately, if this is all happening in front of our eyes, and as great news as it may be for us followers of Yeshua the Messiah, it also means that the third Temple is ready to be rebuilt. This is the Temple that believers know as the “Tribulation Temple”. It is the very edifice that the coming antichrist will desecrate as he calls himself god and forces people to worship him. This means that the Tribulation is near and that great casualties will be seen in the world.

Christians can rejoice about the Red Heifer from a biblical standpoint, but from the perspective of the eternal order, only those who have trusted Yeshua will be in God’s presence, and this is no reason to rejoice when we think of all those around us who have not believed yet that Yeshua is the Messiah.

The Red Heifer, if qualified, will bring us one step closer to the last moments of the end times, which means that the Rapture is even closer than we think and that the need to share the Good News is truly now more important than ever!

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September 2, 2022 By Olivier Melnick 2 Comments

You say “ZIONISM” like it’s a bad word!

For most people, Zionism is either a word they can hardly explain or has become akin to a cuss word, but what is Zionism? In light of the recent 2022 125th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress, it is essential to understand the term and its implications. Depending on our understanding of the term Zionism, our understanding of Israel’s right to exist will vary. We can look at the definition from the Jewish Virtual Library for Zionism as: “The national movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. ” Yet, even with a definition, we must go back in history to track the progress made by Jewish people that lead to the birth of Zionism.

In the late 1700s, there was a movement in Europe known as the Haskalah (enlightenment) which ended in the 1880s. Its leaders promoted a movement based on liberalism and freedom of choice in the hope of seeing the beginning of the emancipation of European Jews as well as their equality wherever they lived…It failed! Then in the late 1800s, came the pogroms (government-sponsored riots) against Eastern European Jews. Leo Pinsker, one of the leaders of the haskalah, got very discouraged. In his 1882 book “Auto-Emancipation” he wrote, “Indeed, what a pitiful figure we cut! We are not counted among the nations, neither have we a voice in their councils, even when the affairs concern us. Our fatherland–the other man’s country; our unity-dispersion; our solidarity – the battle against us; our weapon – humility; our defense – flight; our individuality – adaptability; our future – the next day. What a miserable role for a nation which descends from the Maccabees! … Happily, matters stand somewhat differently now. The events of the last few years in enlightened Germany, in Romania, in Hungary, and especially in Russia have effected what the far bloodiest persecutions of the Middle Ages could not. The national consciousness which until then had lain dormant in sterile martyrdom awoke the masses of the Russian and Romanian Jews and took form in an irresistible movement toward Palestine.”

Within 15 years came the Dreyfus Affair of 1894. French Captain Alfred Dreyfus was falsely accused of treason, stripped of his rank, was imprisoned on Devil’s Island, but eventually vindicated and reinstated. The Jewish journalist from Austria, Theodor Herzl covered the trial in Paris and became rapidly convinced that Dreyfus had been framed and that Jews had no future in Europe. Two years later he published “Der Judenstaadt” (The Jewish State) in which he wrote, “The idea I have developed in this pamphlet is an ancient one: It is the restoration of the Jewish State. . . The decisive factor is our propelling force. And what is that force? The plight of the Jews. . . I am profoundly convinced that I am right, though I doubt whether I shall live to see myself proved so. Those who today inaugurate this movement are unlikely to live to see its glorious culmination. But the very inauguration is enough to inspire in them a high pride and the joy of an inner liberation of their existence.”

In 1897, the First Jewish Congress was convened in Basel, Switzerland. Theodore Herzl expressed something that some have called prophetic. He said, “At Basel, I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universal laughter. Perhaps in five years, certainly in fifty, everyone will know it.” Fifty years after the First Zionist Congress was November 29, 1947, when the UN General Assembly voted in favor of partitioning Palestine, putting in motion the re-birth of the modern state of Israel that took place on May 14, 1948. In the decade following Herzl’s death, the Zionist influx continued in the Holy Land, and about 100,000 pioneers lived there. Times were hard, workdays were long, and poverty was rampant, but the spirit of hope kept Zionism alive. On the eve of World War One, Zionism had become a reality, a fragile one, but a reality, nonetheless.

Then, in 1917, the Balfour declaration was another milestone in the process of the re-birth of Israel, followed by one of the best-kept secrets in the history of the Jewish people, the San Remo Conference of 1920, when a legal precedent was made and the rights to Palestine were given to the Jewish people. It also gave the rights to the rest of the Middle East to the Arabs. It established an international legal precedent that superseded any later declaration, even the United Nations didn’t have the right to change it in 1947 had they wanted to. Eventually, on May 14, 1948, Israel was reborn as a modern nation. Even with all this, there is a growing faction of people seeing Zionism as colonialism which according to the dictionary is, “domination of a people or area by a foreign state or nation: the practice of extending and maintaining a nation’s political and economic control over another people or area.” There are several reasons why Zionism is not colonialism or occupation historically speaking:

• The Land of Palestine is the land of Israel with a different name: It is time for people to accept the fact that the word Palestine was simply a name change forced on Israel by Roman emperor Hadrian to further humiliate them after the failed Bar Kochba revolt of A.D. 135. IT IS NOT STOLEN LAND! The stamps, coins, newspapers, passports and other things that said “Palestine” prior to 1948 all had the initials of the two Hebrew words “Eretz” (land) and “Yisrael” (Israel) stamped on them. Nobody argued about Palestine being another name for the geographical area of Israel until Yasir Arafat came onto the political scene and created displaced people with stolen land. Please people, do your homework!

• Israel is not committing ethnic cleansing: Ethnic cleansing or genocide is intentional organized mass murder to eradicate a people group. The Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust qualify as ethnic cleansing. In 1947 there were about 1.2 MM Arabs in British Mandate Palestine. Today, there are more than 6 MM Arabs in the whole land, including about 2 MM in Israel alone. There are more Arabs in Israel today than before 1947. This is the opposite of ethnic cleansing. On the other hand, there are still fewer Jewish people in 2022 than there were prior to the Holocaust.

• Israel is not an apartheid state: Apartheid was South Africa’s way of keeping blacks and whites separated, and as such, it forbade blacks to eat in white restaurants or cafes, attend white schools or universities, be treated in white hospitals, live in white neighborhoods and serve in the white government. Israeli Arabs are full citizens who do not experience any of the restrictions that were known to South Africa. The only difference is with citizens of Gaza and the West Bank, but THEY do not want to be Israeli citizens.

There are also several reasons why Zionism is not colonialism or occupation biblically speaking:
• The land ultimately belongs to God: “The land, moreover, shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are but aliens and sojourners with Me. (LEVITICUS 25:23)

• God gave the land to the Jewish people with very specific boundaries not to be abused: “You have circled this mountain long enough. Now turn north, and command the people, saying, “You will pass through the territory of your brothers the sons of Esau who live in Seir; and they will be afraid of you. So be very careful; do not provoke them, for I will not give you any of their land, even as little as a footstep because I have given Mount Seir to Esau as a possession.” (Deuteronomy 2:3-5; 16-19).

• God Covenanted with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob for the land: “Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die, but God will surely take care of you and bring you up from this land to the land which He promised on oath to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob.” (Genesis 12:1-3; 15:18-21; 26:2-4; 28:13)

• God told Israel to conquer the land: “Know therefore today that it is the Lord your God who is crossing over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and He will subdue them before you, so that you may drive them out and destroy them quickly, just as the Lord has spoken to you. “Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them out before you, ‘Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you. It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” (Deuteronomy 9:3-5)

Under Zionism, Arabs who live in Israel are treated equally and with respect, so to be a Zionist doesn’t require being anti-Palestinian, or anti-Arab to be more precise since the Palestinian people are all Arabs dressed in a false “Palestinian” cloak of oppressed victims. Israel welcomes Arabs in all sectors of society, from public servants to doctors to Knesset members. Why won’t Palestinians do likewise? Zionism is not a dirty word; it is the essence of Jewish resilience in light of centuries of persecution. As for me, I would rather be on God’s side and since God was the first Zionist, so will I be, so pick your side and accept the consequences!

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August 25, 2022 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

Please, Do Not Buy Into American Christian Nationalism!

Words don’t always mean what they say, especially in a post-modern world. That is why it is always critical to define our words. We do not have to agree with one another as long as we understand what we mean. In other words, we must seek clarity over unity. Obviously, if we can also achieve unity, we are definitely ahead of the game! On that note, I am very concerned about a move–I am not sure that I am ready to call it a movement–in America that labels itself the New American Christian Nationalism. Those words are not necessarily bad individually but hide a different meaning when combined. There is no need to define “New” or “American”, although I am pretty sure that this is no longer the America I emigrated to in 1985, but I digress!

The word Christian can be tricky depending on who you ask. Because of the root of the word, there is an expectation that a Christian is “related” or “connected” to Christ. Christ is just another word for Messiah or Mashiach, which really means “anointed”. This being said, many people call themselves Christians and say that they were born that way, or simply are cultural Christians. If the Bible is correct, to be a follower of Christ requires regeneration (not reincarnation). Yeshua (Jesus) made it clear to Rabbi Nicodemus who came to Him and thought for sure that he was “part of the club”, but Yeshua quickly told him in John 3:5-8, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

So, a Christian is a believer and follower of Yeshua who has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit as a free gift of God (Ephesians 2:8-9). When one is regenerated, one becomes a new creature redeemed by God for a new life. This new life should be lived with new habits and behaviors. This is exactly what being “born again” is supposed to mean. Christians are supposed to love their neighbors as they love themselves (Galatians 5:14) and even pray for their enemies (Matthew 5:44). This is a daily struggle that most of us who follow Yeshua have to be faced with, but honest Christians try their best at making a difference for the kingdom of God.

Now, if we add the word “Nationalism”, the whole definition takes a political turn. Nationalism usually carries the stigma of elitism and racism. The ultimate example of that was the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) which most people today remember as the Nazi Party. It is interesting to note that what most people today would define as an alt-right political party had the word “Socialist” in its name.

Nationalism can be a good thing if it simply means patriotism. If one is proud of their country and ready to defend it, its values and heritage, that is patriotic and that is beautiful. When Patriotism becomes nationalism, it becomes elitist and it is always at the expense of other people for “the greater good of the nationalists”. Christian Nationalism is racism hiding behind religion, and racism is always bad no matter how you present it.

Some today are promoting this New American Christian Nationalism and they are targeting the Jewish people in the process. The social network Gab was borne out of the freedom of speech restrictions on the internet in the past few years. It claims that it is a platform where ideas can be exchanged without censorship or penalties. They say that they are, “A social network that champions free speech, individual liberty and the free flow of information online.” In theory, this sounds very good; but in reality, the platform attracts all kinds of people who are racist, elitist and antisemitic. To be sure, not all Gab users are racist, elitist or antisemitic; but many of these kinds of individuals are on Gab (and other platforms as well).

This political move known as Christian Nationalism is really neither Christian by biblical standards nor Nationalist by patriotic definition, and they are not new either. They are eerily reminiscent of the 1930s, and it doesn’t help that they target Jews. They believe that our government should be exclusively “Christian” and exclude all “non-Christians” and Jews from the equation. People like Gab’s CEO Andrew Torba who promote themselves as conservatives do not care about other conservatives if they are Jewish, like Ben Shapiro. Mr. Torba doesn’t share the same Judeo-Christian values that today’s true Christians and their Jewish friends share. He and other Christian nationalists adhere to all the lies about the Jews that have been disseminated for centuries and that led to the Holocaust. If they were to write a manifesto–and maybe they have already–it would probably look a lot like the “NEW” Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was a 1904 hoax written by Russian antisemite Sergei Nilus. It pretended to be the minutes of a Jewish cabal preparing to take over the entire world, and it gave antisemites the world around, a reason to hate the Jews even more. The Protocols are still in print and used in many countries.

Mr. Torba was quoted saying, “The only groups of people that are chosen are those that believe in Jesus Christ and call Him king. They are the chosen seed of Israel.” That is the textbook definition of Replacement Theology where some Christians claim that God has replaced Israel with the Church and has transferred all the promises for Israel to Christians. This is NOT biblical!

He was also quoted saying: “Ben Shapiro is not welcome in the movement unless he repents and accepts Jesus Christ as his Lord and savior.” This is a medieval, twisted view known as forced conversion that led to the death of tens of thousands of Jews.

American Christian Nationalism gives true Christians a bad rep, something that many Christians already have because of 2,000 years of antisemitism from the church and many Christians. To my Jewish friends, please don’t think for a minute that a biblical Christian, modern day disciple of the Jewish Messiah would condone any of the hatred spewed by Christian nationalists! It also gives people who are true patriots a bad rep, making them look like bigoted, narrow-minded people. I am very proud to be an American, I am a true nationalist in the patriotic sense of the word, but more than anything, I am so blessed to be a Christian because I know that no matter what the future holds, I know who holds the future. His name is Yeshua Ha Mashiach or Jesus Christ, He died for me, rose again on the third day, ascended to heaven to be at the right hand of the Father and will return soon to grab His children…His true children, who are Jews and Gentiles who have placed their trust in Him.

Mr. Torba, Jesus is a Jew and He is the founder of true Christianity, but by your standards, He might not be accepted by your kind, and yet…He still loved you enough to die for you!

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August 18, 2022 By Olivier Melnick 5 Comments

So, The Jews Didn’t Kill Christ After All! Really?

One of the oldest lies used against the Jewish people is that of deicide. We have been collectively accused of killing Christ pretty much from His death forward. This accusation is probably the number one reason for Jewish persecution, expulsion and murder across the centuries. It can be traced back to early Christian apologist Justin Martyr (A.D. 103-165) and Melito of Sardis (Died A.D. 180). They were two of the pioneers of the accusation of deicide and they paved the way for many more Church Fathers, theologians, Christian apologists and others to reinforce the idea that not only the Jews were “Christ killers”, but that the accusation was universal, corporate and eternal. In other words, the stigma of deicide is apparently here to stay.

Many of these Church Fathers became members of the Roman Catholic Church theology and doctrine “Hall of Fame” and helped one of the oldest tropes get very deeply rooted in the Catholic faith. So much so, that it wasn’t until 1965 that Pope Paul VI declared in Nostra Aetaete that the Jews were no longer responsible for the killing of Christ. So, were we collectively responsible for His death until 1965? Did the Pope wake up one morning and decide that the accusation wasn’t valid anymore? Could it be that the Bible was completely taken out of context to arrive at such a gross accusation?

Yeshua (Jesus) gives us a very clear answer in the Gospel of John in the parable of the good shepherd. It appears that His death was planned as part of God’s plan from eternity past. Yeshua says in John 10:17-18: “For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.” So, the facts are in, Yeshua gave His own life as a sacrifice for all people; Jews and Gentiles. It was a voluntary sacrifice of the innocent for the guilty. We all killed Him, but the myth of deicide has been so persistent and pervasive that to this day, it is a hard one to fight, but there is hope against all odds.

I found hope in a recent turn of events that took place in Germany in the little town of Oberammergau in Bavaria, the southern part of Germany. But first, a little background history. That little town has been hosting a Passion play for almost 400 years now. It was first performed in 1634 after the villagers vowed to perform the play every ten years into perpetuity if God spared them from the bubonic plague. Legend has it that a man came to the village with the plague and died from it, but miraculously, all the villagers survived and never got the plague. The promise had to be kept, so every ten years, a massive Passion Play is organized that utilizes only villagers (up to 2,000 of them) for staging, lighting, decor, directing, music and performing. People come from all over the world to view the famous Oberammergau Passion Play which lasts for about six months.

Unfortunately, the play has been laced with antisemitism pretty much from its inception. It has continually portrayed the Jewish people very negatively, feeding the age-old canard of deicide without any apparent remorse. It went on pretty much uninterrupted. But, In 1966, a group of personalities from the entertainment industry along with some intellectuals and academics complained about the anti-Jewish sentiment displayed all throughout the play. One of the personalities, Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel stated, “The artist cannot be silent when the arts are used to exalt hatred. If the people of Oberammergau feel that they cannot faithfully represent their vision except through an explicitly anti-Semitic text, then others have no choice but to denounce that vision and urge that all who share our view join with us in condemning the performance.” The battle continued well into the twenty-first century. The latest performance year was supposed to be 2020, but because of the pandemic, it was pushed to 2022. This is where I become hopeful.

The current director of the Passion Play is Christian Stückl, and he has worked closely with Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee to eradicate the antisemitic overtones that the play has been pushing since the 17th century. As Christian Stückl took on the direction of the play, he said that his number one concern was ” to eliminate its anti-Judaism.” This is a very commendable task going against the flow of almost 400 years of antisemitism intertwined with biblical teaching about the death and resurrection of the Messiah.

Even before the play would start, Stückl organized a trip to Israel for the main characters in the play to help sensitize them to the truth of the Bible in its Jewish context and to the fact that Yeshua was not killed by Jews at all. He wanted his actors to try to put themselves in the shoes of a Jewish audience. He also invited Jewish people to help him in assessing his changes. I am not sure that the play would ever attract a substantial Jewish audience, but just the fact that they are becoming sensitive to the Jewish community speaks very highly of Christian Stückl’s desire to right a wrong of 400 years.

Will this end all antisemitism? Certainly not, but when we see the bully in the schoolyard, we should do all we can to stop him, even though we know he most likely will return soon after. Antisemitism comes from so many sources and has been the longest hatred. Considering that many people hate the Jews even though they have never met anybody Jewish in their lifetime says it all! Christian Stückl is a great example of one person making a difference. His decision has actually affected a lot of people in the 2020 play. Not only has he helped reshape the preconceived ideas that some of the inhabitants of Oberammergau had for decades if not centuries, but his new adaptation of the Passion Play will help much since the average attendance from around the world is about 500,000 over the whole season.

One voice can count. May God honor Oberammergau’s Passion Play director for his courage and desire to set the record straight against the flow of accepted Jew-hatred around the world.

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August 5, 2022 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

The Ninth of Av: Can anything good come out of a tragedy?

The Ninth of Av or Tish b’Av is the ninth day of the month of Av on the Jewish calendar (August 6, 2002). It is not part of the significant Levitical feasts listed in Leviticus 23, but it is an important date for Jewish people worldwide. It is important because it happens to be the date when several tragedies took place in the long history of the Jewish people. Jewish people fast, pray and mourn on this day. The book of Lamentations is usually read in the synagogue as the Jewish people remember the destruction of the first Temple from Solomon’s era in 586 BC by neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar and the destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70 by the Roman empire.

Tish b’Av has become a day of remembrance for many other Jewish calamities such as various European expulsions, the Crusades and the Holocaust, as they all are connected to a day in the month of Av. So, there doesn’t seem to be anything good related to the month of Av. This leads to the question: “Can anything good come out of a tragedy?”

In the book of Genesis, the story of Joseph is one of lies, deceit and abuse. Joseph’s brothers are jealous of his relationship with their father and decide to get rid of him by selling him to a passing caravan on its way to Egypt. Then, they tell their father that he was killed by a beast as they bring back his coat covered with blood. In the meantime, Joseph arrives in Egypt, is sold into slavery, and eventually lands in prison, but not for long. God had other plans for Joseph that would affect his whole family and eventually the Jewish people as a whole. Joseph ends up becoming Pharaoh’s second in command. This puts him in an unusual position of power that will play a very important part towards the end of the book of Genesis.

As a great famine comes into the land, the Jewish people are forced to go to Egypt and ask for help. Joseph recognizes his brothers and after playing a couple of tricks on them, he reveals his identity in one of the most poignant family reunions in the whole Bible. As the story ends in chapter 50, Joseph leaves us with this very powerful statement in Genesis 50:20, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.” The rest is history…Literally!

If it were not for God’s intervention in the life of Joseph, the 70 people who came to Egypt would have never come and Israel, as we know her, might have never existed. Joseph’s family remained in Egypt. Eventually, the Pharaoh who knew Joseph passed away and another one took his place; but that one was not so friendly and the Jewish people ended up in slavery for 400 years until Moses came to the rescue. Even in slavery, the Jewish people were preserved and a number much greater than 70 left Egypt for the Promised Land. Sometimes when God closes a door, it is to keep us inside His protection. So, the Joseph story…God really meant it for good!

But the story doesn’t end there. It gets much better, and that is because of another much greater calamity. That calamity is connected to the Temple in Jerusalem, a few decades before its second destruction. It occurred a little over 2000 years ago when the Jewish people anticipated the coming of the Jewish Messiah to establish His messianic kingdom on earth. The Jewish people are still waiting for the Messiah because there is this expectation that He will conquer and reign out of Jerusalem. They are also expecting the Temple to be rebuilt, and that will actually happen, but it will be desecrated one more time before the Temple of Ezekiel 40-48 can finally be erected. I, along with other Jewish people and many Gentiles are not waiting for the Messiah to come but to return. Messiah Ben Joseph came the first time to suffer, be humiliated and die for the Jewish people and the rest of the world. Messiah Ben David will return to conquer, subdue and reign forever. Judaism has often been referring to two messiahs. What if it was only one Messiah coming twice? Did the Jewish Messiah die, rise again and ascend to Heaven to return at a later date? If this is true, His name is Yeshua of Nazareth and He died for Jews and Gentiles alike fulfilling the Feast of Passover as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

How does that relate to Tish b’Av though? Where is the calamity? Well, I believe that the greatest tragedy in the history of mankind is the death of Yeshua of Nazareth. That would be the greatest tragedy if the story ended at His death. But His death was only the beginning, and His resurrection is the only hope for all mankind. When Yeshua died, the curtain keeping the Holy of Holies separated was torn from top to bottom. Yeshua gave us access to God through His atoning sacrifice. The greatest tragedy of mankind became the best news for us all. God knew all along how good this was because He loves us so much and doesn’t wish for anyone to perish.

Tish b’Av reminds us of many Jewish calamities. It is important to commemorate the destruction of both temples and other tragedies. Yet, something really good came out of the greatest tragedy 2000 years ago. Yeshua might not have given His life on The 9th of Av, but out of his sacrificial death and resurrection came hope for all mankind. So, if you still wonder if something good can come out of a tragedy, wonder no more, and believe in Him!

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