In 2022, where racism is at the top of the list in the litany of societal issues front; where schools, universities, churches, and corporations have initiated directives involving employing “diversity, coordinators, pastors, C-suite executives, professors, administrators, and teachers: the emphasis in the US has been to deal with a black and white issue only – but where is the emphasis been on dealing with how we treat the Jewish People? Frankly, there have not been any.
Recently I attended a talk at a Reformed Temple given by a Major US University Professor who is probably one of the greatest aggregators of Anti-Semitism data from around the world. He exposed the increased fervor and number of recorded acts against Jewish People in the US with empirical facts and statistics. We are witnessing a level in the sheer number of acts against Jewish People worldwide that now has passed the number of violent actions against Jews in the 1930s. You just do not hear about them in the media very much at all. Kanye West – whom many in the conservative pool are championing for his recent “White Lives Matter” outing has made a hard turn as he said he would go “death con 3 on Jewish people” before writing about their “agenda”. I am not in any way using him as an example of leading the way into right thinking as he is in the Hollywood and Music celebrity stream – and so one can take that for what it is worth. His polarizing and wandering on issues does however give spiritual evidence as to the spirit of the age which has been released in this day and time. It is a natural response to a long-held spiritual issue Let’s take a brief look at an overview…
February 14, 2022, marked 126 years since the publication of Theodor Herzl’s book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). Herzl firmly believed the creation of a Jewish homeland would eliminate antisemitism; it was his solution to the Jewish question. He wrote, “I think Jews will always have sufficient enemies, such as every nation but, once in their own land, it will no longer be possible for them to scatter all over the world.”
However, antisemitism has never halted either before or after the rebirth of the Jewish state in 1948. There appeared to be a hiatus on antisemitism for a period following World War II primarily due to a sense of, justifiable, guilt felt by many countries which had closed their gates to Jews seeking refuge from Hitler’s Germany. No longer solely “hidden” under the guise of anti-Zionism, we are witnessing a world where attacks on synagogues and individuals in the US (such as the recent attack in Colleyville, Texas) are becoming more common. Social media, reaching every corner of the world, spouts antisemitism daily to the young, as well as adults of all ages.
In the data presented by my new friend and professor of Jewish Studies, he was able to garner the entirety of comprehensive reports from Twitter and in the estimates by examination of his team, says that there was on average one antisemitic tweet every 10 seconds and one violence laden antisemitic tweet every 17 seconds in 2021. A new UK report by the Woolf Institute, a global leader in interfaith relations, estimates almost half a million explicitly antisemitic tweets per year – between 100 and 1,350 every day.
Great Britain and France lead Europe in this with close numbers stemming from Germany, Austria, and Spain. In the US we are seeing more and more every day against synagogues and churches, as well as Messianic Congregations. The UK’s Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that monitors antisemitism and provides security for the Jewish community in Britain, released last week a comprehensive, detailed, and alarming report on antisemitism in 2021 when 2,255 anti-Jewish hate incidents nationwide were recorded. This figure represents the highest annual total CST that has ever been recorded and is a 34% increase from the 1,684 incidents in 2020. The numbers are particularly disturbing when comparing the Jewish population of the UK, numbering 259,927, with France’s Jewish population of 446,000 where 589 hate crimes against Jews were recorded for the same period.
It states that “Trigger events in the Middle East (meaning Gaza and Israel) impact Diaspora Jewish communities (communities outside of Israel) as the rises in reports of antisemitism in the UK consistently demonstrate.” The report also notes that the sharp rise in antisemitic incidents did not immediately decline as the fighting in the region ended. In 2021, there were 182 anti-Jewish hate incidents involving UK schools, school children, and teachers – more than triple the 54 incidents of 2000.
The United Nations has overwhelmingly voted on resolutions AGAINST Israel more than any one nation on the planet – despite the atrocities of ethnic and religious cleansing in Africa and India. They always seem to garner focus against Israel: The very UN that passed a resolution in 1947 for the partition of Palestine leading to Israel’s rebirth is the very UN whose General Assembly, since 2015, has passed 115 condemnatory resolutions against Israel, with only 45 against the rest of the world.
In the United States, actions against Jewish People are localized and not reported well in national arenas except for Jewish communities where they simply want to be allowed to live their lives peacefully and as a result, the fear of bringing attention to them can backfire into increased acts perpetrated against them is all too real.
Folks, you would not have had a Savior and King come to this earth had God not chosen whom He calls “My Firstborn” in Exodus 4 to be the lineage of our Messiah. We can be silent no more. We cannot keep our heads so involved in other things in life and not address this like we do abortion and other mainstream issues. This needs to become a shout from the Believing Community at large. We serve a Messiah who was Jewish. His name is Yeshua – The Church knows Him as Jesus from the Greek translation. To be silent and attempt to worship Him without standing with Israel and the Jewish People becomes spiritually problematic. It is that simple. Never Again – is the motto of Israel and the evidence at the many Holocaust museums around the world MUST be demonstrated we cannot let this happen again.
To the rest of the world, the Jewish People are an enigma – They possess a racial element and a religious element combined – they cannot be categorized by only one of those two – therefore they are different and create cognitive dissonance to the rest of the world in their held perspectives – add to it that they are blessed by God according to His Word, and jealousy ensues. Add to all of that – false narratives which associate the ENTIRETY of the Jewish People with blame of global problems and now a virulent and violent response to a people group ensues. This kind of thinking goes back to Cain and Abel. Envy and jealousy of status and behavior, community and promise, along with ignorance is only spiritually understood; and most people attempt to understand only through fleshly eyes, minds, and hearts. The Apostle Paul/ Rav Shaul dealt with this very thing in Romans 11.
Stand up today! – Who will stand with me? – I am looking for responses to see where this goes locally and further…
