Amen !
Posted on 04/21/2008 3:41:26 PM PDT by Between the Lines
JERUSALEM (BP)--The Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that Messianic Jews have the same rights regarding automatic citizenship as Jews who do not believe in Jesus as the Messiah.
The case was brought by 12 applicants who had been denied citizenship primarily because they were Jewish believers in Jesus. Most of them had received letters saying they would not receive citizenship because they "commit missionary activity," according to an e-mail circulated by Calev Myers, founder and chief counsel of The Jerusalem Institute of Justice.
A clerk at the Ministry of Interior reportedly had told one of the applicants that because she was committing missionary activity, she was acting against the interests of the state of Israel and the Jewish people.
Israel's Supreme Court ended the two-and-a-half-year legal battle April 16 by ruling that Messianics should receive equal treatment under the Israeli law of return, which says that anyone who is born Jewish can immigrate from anywhere in the world to Israel and be granted citizenship automatically.
"This is yet another battle won in our war to establish equality in Israel for the Messianic Jewish community just like every other legitimate stream of faith within the Jewish world," Myers wrote.
Jim Sibley, a professor at Criswell College in Dallas and a former missionary to Israel, told Baptist Press that Jewish believers had been excluded from the law of return by previous court rulings, including one in the 1980s declaring that if a Jew believed in Jesus as the Messiah, he was not to be considered Jewish.
Traditional rabbinic Judaism teaches that Jewishness is determined by the mother's bloodline, Sibley explained. Biblically, though, it is traced through the father.
"Apparently at least one of these 12 who were being denied citizenship had a Gentile mother and a Jewish father," Sibley, director of the Pasche Institute of Jewish Studies at Criswell, said. "Even in a situation like that, it's usually enough to be granted citizenship. All this [court decision] does is to basically say the same rules that apply to any other Jewish people would apply to Jewish believers in Jesus."
With the ruling, Sibley said, Messianic Jews may seek citizenship in Israel without religious discrimination.
"It's really a huge ruling because the court apparently further ordered the Israeli Ministry of Interior to stop persecuting Jewish believers,” Sibley said. “Some of the very Orthodox Jewish sectors of society had taken positions in the Ministry of Interior and had been using their positions to revoke believers' citizenship, deny visas and generally harass not only Jewish believers in Jesus but also Christian workers in Israel."
The Supreme Court's decision should alleviate some of the pressure that Jewish believers and foreign Christian workers have felt in Israel, Sibley said, adding that he "can't help but believe" the ruling is related to a terrorist attack on the Messianic community that occurred in March.
In that incident, 15-year-old Ami Ortiz, whose parents are noted Messianic congregational leaders in Ariel, opened a bomb disguised as a gift delivered to his home. He suffered extensive damage to his body but is expected to recover after at least a year of treatment. Though a police investigation is ongoing, anti-missionary Orthodox Jews were among those originally suspected as perpetrators.
Sibley said Orthodox Jews should reconsider their view of Messianic believers and stop persecuting them.
"With the multitude of Jewish people simply walking away from their Jewish identity and assimilating through secularism and intermarriage, Israelis don't need to fear Messianic Jews," Sibley said. "As they themselves should know, Jewish believers in Jesus not only affirm their Jewishness, they insist on it. And furthermore, those who are citizens of Israel are patriotic. They serve in the military and they pay their taxes."
That’s a relief.
Excellent News!
Amen !
Joshua
YHvH is my salvation.
Yes He is. And the only one.
Shema.
Is this perhaps a sign of Joshua’s soon return?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
We can only hope to see the L-rd this Shavuot !
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua
Shema.
Baruch HaShem
Shavuot!!
Yes!!
Am I correct that the correct date is June 8-10 NOT the Christian Pentecost date of May 11?
This is indeed very interesting. Surprising to say the least.
In communications with Israeli bloggers in the last couple of years I have been surprised to learn a couple of things.
Many if not most Israeli Jews wholly discount the argument that the only difference between a torah believing Jew who also believes Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah is one of timing of the Messiah’s visitation to mankind. Once a Jew accepts Jesus as Messiah he has wholly left the religion of Judaism to their way of thinking.
The other even more shocking discovery I made is how much many Jews deeply hate any Christian evangelism or proslytising. I have been told it is an extension of the genocide of the Jews. Indeed that it is in fact genocide.
Yes!!
Am I correct that the correct date is June 8-10 NOT the Christian Pentecost date of May 11?
Beginning the evening of June 8th
b'SHEM Yah'shua
Yeah, it is a tough situation, the lines were drawn a looong time ago unfortunately, I can see both sides of the matter though, the Messianics no doubt feel they are still Jewish, the serious Jews think they have left the Religion and that lessens Israel as a whole.
ehh, what can anyone do but love G#d and their neighbors?
Sivan 6.....every year!
All the more reason for me to move to Israel faster.
(I have two Jewish parents, married an Israeli citizen with one Jewish father -— mother a reform “covert”) — remain observant, but accept Christ.)
I always knew I could just lie, but that was terribly offensive to me.
For practical reasons, this is a good time to move near her parents -— getting old —— and a great time to sell an oil-based business.
BTW, chag sameach.
“Messianic Jews” are a cult of former Lubavitch Hasidim who believe that the late Rebbe is the Messiah.
The “Messianics” referenced in this article are Christian. They may be Jews by ethnic origin, who converted to Christianity.
If an ethnically Jewish person converts to Islam, can they also claim Israeli citizenship according to the “Law of Return”?
Israel has already accepted over a million non-Jewish Russians from the former Soviet Union, who are not Jews ethnically nor by conversion.
The Supreme Court of Israel also REJECTED poor Jews from India and Peru, because they are Orthodox converts.
Not familiar with that story.
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