Showing posts with label David Lazarus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Lazarus. Show all posts

Thursday, February 14, 2019

Who’s the Fairest of Them All? - David Lazarus Israel Today

Who’s the Fairest of Them All?

Thursday, February 14, 2019 |  David Lazarus    Israel Today
For the Prophet Ezekiel, Israel is “the most beautiful of all lands” (Chap. 20:6). Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but Israel’s love of her ancient homeland is not without reason.
For those of us lucky enough to be in Israel during the peak wildflower season of mid-February to late March, right now is the time to take a walk anywhere in the Land and enjoy Israel’s brilliant scenery. For the rest of us, we hope a few pictures might just whet your appetite to come over and see for yourselves!
Israel is home to hundreds of species of wildflowers and the plant life are now awakening as spring approaches. Almond trees are the first to bloom each year, coinciding with the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shvat — the New Year for Trees — which fell already on January 21st this year.
Jesus himself took time to appreciate the unique beauty of the Promised Land and commanded his disciples to do the same.
“Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. (Luke 12:27).

Zachi Evenor / Wiki Commons

Anat Hermony / Flash90

Anat Hermony / Flash90

Nati Shohat / Flash90

Yossi Zamir / Flash90

Nati Shohat / Flash90
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Monday, February 11, 2019

When Jews Were Christians - David Lazarus Israel Today

When Jews Were Christians

Monday, February 11, 2019 |  David Lazarus  Israel Today
How did what clearly started out as a part of Judaism become what we know today as Christianity? When did Christianity as we now know it begin?
A leading scholar on Christianity in its earliest form, Paula Fredriksen, has written much about the Jewish context of Jesus’ original disciples and about early Christian attitudes toward the Jews. In her recent book, When Jews Were Christians (Yale Univ. Press, Oct. 2018), she presents a history and analysis of Christianity when it was still a part of Judaism.
Fredriksen emphasizes the Jewishness of that first generation of Jesus-followers. She reminds readers that Jerusalem was at the heart of their Messianic faith. The disciples of Jesus left Galilee to live in Jerusalem and wait for the risen Jesus to return. Fredriksen argues that the early Jewish believers expected, as the Hebrew scriptures teach, that salvation for the world would go forth from Jerusalem and out of Zion, God’s “holy mountain.”
She contends that the disciples had a positive attitude toward the Temple in Jerusalem and challenges the idea that it was Jesus’ disturbances in the Temple that led to his arrest. “Jesus did not so much condemn the Temple as he did prophecy a new one,” Fredriksen writes.
The disciples’ faith and hopes in Jesus as the promised Messiah were rooted in their unwavering commitment to the Jewish faith. Initially, what we now consider Christianity was really just a form of Judaism, and was not Gentile-inclusive until later.
Even Paul’s avid refusal to require circumcision of Gentiles under pressure from the Jerusalem-based Judaizers was based on Old Testament prophecies that in the last days the Gentile nations would come to the God of Israel (e.g., Zechariah 8:20-23).
How did a group Jewish disciples end up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the Gentile Church? The gathering of Gentiles into the early ecclesia was “unintended”, Fredriksen suggests. It simply came about as Paul and others spread the message to the Jewish people throughout the diaspora. In synagogues throughout Asia Minor at the time, there were Gentiles know as “God-fearers” who were attracted to the God of Israel and Jewish culture, such as Sabbath observance. The early Jesus-followers required these Gentiles to cease from worshipping their ancestral deities. So the Gentiles who accepted Jesus could no longer be considered pagan Gentiles, nor were they any longer God-fearers, nor proselytes to Judaism. Instead, they were understood to be the fulfillment of scripture and the “Coming up of all nations to the Mountain of the Lord.”
The central understanding of what became the Gentile “Christian” identity was the belief that the end of the age and the Kingdom of God were at hand. Here we have a theological position that embraces both the unity and distinctiveness of Jew and Gentile. “In their own eyes, the early disciples were history’s last generation," notes Fredriksen. "It is only in history’s eyes that they would become the first generation of the church.”
Prof. Paula Fredriksen is currently serving as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
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Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Trump Appoints Ambassador on Antisemitism - David Lazarus ISRAEL TODAY

Trump Appoints Ambassador on Antisemitism

Tuesday, February 05, 2019 |  David Lazarus  ISRAEL TODAY
US President Donald Trump is appointing Elan Carr, a prosecutor from Los Angeles, to be the US State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism.
The office “advocates U.S. policy on anti-Semitism both in the United States and internationally, develops and implements policies and projects to support efforts to combat anti-Semitism.”
The announcement comes after protests from lawmakers and leading Jewish groups that the post had been left empty during the first two years of Trump’s administration. President George W. Bush established the watchdog post in 2004 after bipartisan lawmakers decided it was necessary to confront the growing threats to Jewish people and their institutions in the US.
Last month, the US House of Representatives approved a bill elevating the position from Envoy to Ambassador as incidents of antisemitism are increasing worldwide. According to a report put out by the Israeli government’s Diaspora Department last week, 2018 was a record year for the number of victims of antisemitic attacks, especially in the United States and Europe. Antisemitic incidents originating from right-wing extremists are now the most dangerous threat facing Jewish communities. More, even, than Islamic terror, according to the report.
Carr is a US Army veteran who served in Iraq and a former president of the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi, the world's largest Jewish college fraternity, operating chapters on more than 190 campuses in seven countries.
“We eagerly look forward to working with Carr, as his office combats rising antisemitism, generated from the far right, the far left, and Islamist extremists, and abetted by the ubiquitous nature of social media,” David Harris, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, said in a statement.
Ambassador Carr will be heading this week to Slovakia for a symposium on antisemitism planned by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Further meetings are scheduled with the European Union Conference on Antisemitism in Brussels, and then it's back to the US for meetings with former Republican and Democratic administration officials.
PHOTO: Elan Carr during a tour of duty in Iraq in 2004. (SoCalOperator / Creative Commons)
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Monday, February 4, 2019

Jews Complain: The Rabbis are Sounding Like Christians! - David Lazarus ISRAEL TODAY

Jews Complain: The Rabbis are Sounding Like Christians!

Monday, February 04, 2019 |  David Lazarus  ISRAEL TODAY
Rabbis generally do not speak out against abortion, at least not like Christians. But New York's terrible new law allowing abortion up to the moment of birth has stirred at least two of the largest rabbinical councils in the US to come out with public statements on the controversial issue.
“Jewish law opposes abortion, except in cases of danger to the mother,” reads the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) statement. "There is no sanction to permit the abortion of a healthy fetus when the mother’s life is not endangered."
Jewish congregants were surprised by the public condemnation of abortion. Many of the most popular comments on the ruling, which was posted on the RCA website, complained that the rabbis now sounded like the Christians:
"This reads more like evangelical Christianity than Orthodox Judaism."
"Why is the RCA emulating the Catholic Church rather than following the halacha?"
"RCA you may want to brush up on Halacha before latching on to Evangelical Christian ideals."
Rabbi Daniel Korobkin, vice president of the RCA, went so far as to call abortion murder: “The removal of any restriction from abortion access and the redefining of the word ‘homicide’ to exclude abortion, indicate a further erosion of the moral values of our society, where killing babies is no longer construed as immoral in any way.”
The fact that the law was passed in New York, a state heavily populated by Orthodox Jews, moved the rabbinic councils to make a clear ruling. It also seems like the Orthodox Jewish world is moving to the right politically, much along the same lines as conservative Christians.
Traditional Judaism has tended to be more liberal on abortion than Evangelical or Catholic Christianity. Orthodox Jewish groups do not support a full ban on abortion, generally allowing for more consideration of the mother. Reform Judaism prioritizes the life of the expectant mother over that of the unborn child, although abortion as a form of birth control is discouraged. The Reform movement has repeatedly opposed any legislative limits on access to abortions.
Abortion in Israel is common, about 100 to every 1,000 births, but is still only half of that in Europe, while in 2018, New Yorkers aborted 350 babies to every 1,000 births, according to the Guttmacher Institute annual report.
In Israel, Orthodox Jewish political parties have tremendous influence over deciding which coalition can form a government, but they have yet to make any restrictions on abortion a part of their bargaining tactics. Unlike Evangelical churches in the US, rabbinical councils here have not taken a real stand against abortion in the political arena. Orthodox Jewish groups in Israel tend to appeal to the public though massive pro-life advertising, as well as offering services to help pregnant mothers keep their babies.
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Monday, July 16, 2018

A Modern-Day Saul of Tarsus Tells Israelis About Yeshua - David Lazarus Israel Today

A Modern-Day Saul of Tarsus Tells Israelis About Yeshua

Monday, July 16, 2018 |  David Lazarus  Israel Today
Israel Today speaks to the son of a rabbinical family who once persecuted local believers, but who now has a passion to spread the good news of Yeshua to his fellow Israelis.
The full article appears in the July 2018 issue of Israel Today Magazine.
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