Blog

By Arlene Bridges Samuels

Seven thousand air miles may separate us, but the United States and Israel are adding another layer of friendship and cooperation to our already robust relationship. As our nations face the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Israeli and American scientists are racing together on a research speedway to track down a cure.   

While fear plagues millions during this unprecedented crisis, the U.S., Israel, and the rest of the world hope for an end to this baffling virus. We in the Christian community occasionally seesaw between fear and faith ourselves. Awaiting a vaccine, we can steady ourselves, our families, friends, and nations with prayer. 

We target our prayers toward Israel in particular. We owe them a debt of profound gratitude. Jewish scribes served as vessels for the legacy of the Scriptures. Our Christian faith was built on the foundation of ancient Judaism. Our historic bond with the Jewish people and the faith of Judaism persists in modern times. This is why so many Christians in the U.S. are deeply devoted to standing with Israel and the Jewish people. 

Recently, the online news magazine ISRAEL21c carried an article mentioning that some Israeli companies have research centers in both Israel and the United States. The Times of Israel reports that a U.S. firm developing a vaccine indicated that Israel could be used as a location for human trials since their COVID-19 infection rate is rising. The CEO of one of 13 Israeli companies researching a variety of cures has stated, “We believe humanity needs a toolbox of different solutions for COVID-19.” Like many Christians, I would not be surprised if Israel discovered the first cure or curb for the virus. It fits into Israel’s established reputation as the “innovation nation.” 

Panic has erupted, however. Thousands of Israelis have been rioting in Tel Aviv. They have been demonstrating near Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Jerusalem residence due to their dissatisfaction with his crisis management. While scientists log untold hours in laboratories, angry voices are bouncing off the ancient and modern walls of Israel in hot debate. Last week, Netanyahu urged the demonstrators, “Don’t drag the state into anarchy, violence, and destruction of property. Don’t drag it into attacks on police; they’re doing their job.” 

Peaceful demonstrators are also demanding answers. Will my children return to school? What about my business? I miss synagogue services! Tourism is gone! We need more money! 

Early this week, Israel’s President Rivlin traveled north to Haifa to meet with medical, business, and civic leaders. His remarks are sobering. “The coronavirus is teaching us all a lesson in humility. … Here we are facing a tiny virus that has shut down, to one extent or another, life as we know it.” With Israeli hospitals already at 100% capacity, he added, “The doctors, nurses … and team members are on the front line. I know that even in normal times, you are overworked. … You have borne an extraordinary burden.” 

Israelis’ challenges and their leaders’ comments sound all too familiar. We walk in their shoes, yet with one colossal exception—Israel not only fights the COVID-19 virus; they are also fighting a decades-long terror virus. On three of Israel’s borders—with Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria—COVID-19 has not stopped terrorists from building their vast arsenal of weapons to destroy the Jewish state. The border has been “hot” for months. A firefight broke out Sunday when Hezbollah terrorists crossed into Israel. In southern Israel, civilians are still suffering post-traumatic stress after more than a decade of terror attacks, invasion tunnels, and rockets from Hamas in Gaza.

With challenges on so many fronts, what prayers can we offer for our Israeli friends? 

Here are some very specific ways you can pray for Israel this week:

• Pray for the nation and people of Israel as they continue to face the serious threat of the coronavirus pandemic. 
• Pray for Israel’s brilliant researchers and innovators to forge breakthroughs that can provide ways to stem the tide of this pandemic. 
• Pray that God will enable all branches of the Israeli military to remain vigilant. Ask God to reveal every plot against the Jewish state from terrorists in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iranian troops based in Syria.
• Pray that the Jewish people will renew their hope and their ancestry, recalling that for centuries God has “redeemed them, summoned them and says, ‘You are mine.’” To this day, God has preserved a Jewish remnant.

Beyond that, we need only open our Bibles to Isaiah 43:1-3 (NLT):

“Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine. When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”

Together, who knows how far the United States, Israel, and the God of all nations can go?

Arlene Bridges Samuels pioneered Christian outreach for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). After she served nine years on AIPAC’s staff, International Christian Embassy Jerusalem USA engaged her as Outreach Director part-time for their project, American Christian Leaders for Israel. Arlene is now an author at The Blogs-Times of Israel and has traveled to Israel 25 times. By invitation, she has attended Israel’s Government Press Office Christian Media Summit twice. She hosts her devotionals on her website at ArleneBridgesSamuels.com.

By Mark Gerson

As discussed in last week’s column, in Numbers 12 we see God’s anger (directed at Aaron and Miriam) when words are used purposelessly to malign another person. In Numbers 13 and 14, we see a similar anger when the Jewish people commit a mass sin of lashon hara—this time against themselves.

This sin is known as the “Sin of the Spies” or the “Sin of the Scouts.” After two years in the desert, the Jewish people are poised to enter the land that God promised them. For reasons that the text leaves tantalizingly open to interpretation, Moses sends scouts to learn about the land.

But why do the people need to scout out the land that God promised them before entering? Why does God tell Moses to send scouts? Why, if God wants Moses to send scouts, does God tell His prophet to send them “if you please”? And why would Moses let the scouts give their report to the entire nation before briefing him privately?

These are among the important, interesting, and deeply instructive questions posed by the story. Our focus here is on the scouts’ return. They come back from their 40-day mission to the land reporting that while it “flows with milk and honey,” it is occupied by powerful people in fortified cities—including the Canaanites, the Amalekites, and others—who will surely prevent them from fulfilling God’s mission.

Moses does not say anything. He seems to suddenly realize that he made a catastrophic mistake in sending the scouts and letting them give their report without first knowing what they would say. And he must have known that the consequences of this mistake would infuriate God and have devastating consequences. He is stunned into silence.

But one man speaks up—Caleb. We know little, at this point, about Caleb. But what we know is deeply instructive. Caleb is the leader of the tribe of Judah and is the “son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite.” The Kenizzites were a Gentile people whom Abraham met back in Genesis. Thus, Caleb was a Gentile who attached himself to the Jewish people, willingly tying his destiny to ours.

Caleb, upon hearing this report, “silenced the people toward Moses.” He is succinct in his reply: “We shall surely ascend and conquer it, for we can surely do it.” This statement, made by a Gentile, would become the first declaration of political Zionism.

The ten scouts with a negative report need a commensurate response. And they have one: “We were like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we were in their eyes.” These scouts were formally addressing those in their immediate vicinity—and, as the Torah is the great guidebook written “for your benefit” (per Deuteronomy 10:13), they were addressing us, as well. Why did the scouts believe that they couldn’t defeat the people they had just defeated, even with the unambiguous blessing of God? Because of their self-perceptions—as grasshoppers. Having conceived of themselves as “grasshoppers,” it is inevitable and perhaps automatic that their adversaries would, as well.  Caleb, they were saying, is wrong. They couldn’t “surely do it” and in the most real sense were right—in seeing themselves as grasshoppers, they would not be able to do anything remotely challenging.

This self-assessment is not only tragic, it is ironic. The Book of Joshua records the successful Jewish entrance into the land 38 years after the Sin of the Scouts and tells the story of a different group of spies—two people dispatched by Moses’ replacement, Joshua. These spies enter the house of a prostitute, Rahab. The King of Jericho finds out that there are spies in the land and traces them to Rahab’s residence. She hides and protects the spies, then tells the Jews that “a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you.” She attributes this fear to the reputation of the Jews—specifically, how God “dried up the water of the Red Sea” when we came out of Egypt and how the Jews “completely destroyed” the kingdoms of Sihon and Og.

The sad irony is that, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out, the Jews knew about their reputation long before the Sin of the Scouts! Immediately after the Exodus, the Jews sing the “Song of the Sea,” which recounts how “the peoples have heard; they tremble.” Four peoples, including the Canaanites, are specifically mentioned then as being afraid of the Jews as a result of the Exodus! Moreover, the Jews had defeated the Amalekites with God’s assistance well before the episode with the scouts. However, the Jews’ negative self-conception—and the fear that accompanied it—ensured that we would lose our courage, forget the most fundamental geopolitical and historical facts, and refuse to carry out our divine mission.

What a lesson for us! When we think that we are small and incapable, when we attribute weakness to ourselves and strength to our adversaries, we lose even our basic capabilities en route to making impossible the fulfillment of our most sacred responsibility: to do and to be what God intends for us.  

 Moses and Aaron respond to the grasshopper remark by falling on their faces in front of the entire congregation. Caleb and Joshua—the Gentile and the Jew—act. They tear their garments and address the congregation together. It is as rare in the Torah as it is in our world for people to say (as distinguished from sing) something together. But this was one of the most important moments in the history of the Jewish nation. Joshua and Caleb announce that the land is “very, very good” and that the Jews should “not fear the people of the land, for they are our bread! … God is with us. Do not fear them!”  

 A great speech, beautiful and true—but Caleb and Joshua get pelted with stones. Yet all is not lost. The Jews will enter the land, albeit decades later and without anyone from that generation—except for Caleb and Joshua. And today, we have a flowering emergence—quite possibly world-historic—of Gentile Zionists who love Jews, Judaism and Israel. As the Torah instructs in Deuteronomy 26, may the heirs of Caleb and the heirs of Joshua walk together without fear in all of God’s ways. 

Mark Gerson, a devoted Jew, is an entrepreneur and philanthropist who (along with his wife, Rabbi Erica Gerson) is perhaps the world’s largest individual supporter of Christian medical missions. He is the co-founder of African Mission Healthcare and the author of a forthcoming book on the Haggadah: The Telling: How Judaism’s Essential Book Reveals the Meaning of Life.  

Website: therabbishusband.com
Twitter: @markgerson
Podcast: The Rabbi’s Husband

By Rabbi Levi Welton

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, it’s time for all minorities to stand up and demand equal treatment, civil rights, and cultural liberty. This includes Native Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, Muslim Americans, and even Chassidic Americans. Actually, especially Chassidic Americans.

Chassidic Americans in New York (and Orthodox Jews in general) are under attack, with more than half of New York City hate crimes in recent years targeting Jews. These attacks are not sui generis (or “unique”) in nature. With our distinctive black-and-white attire and visible religious head coverings, the Orthodox make an easy target for physical violence and societal prejudice. As Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone, social media editor at Chabad.org, puts it, Chassidim—and Ultra-Orthodox Jews in general—“are described as all things except for the one thing we are the most: human beings trying to make it in this town like everyone else.”

But we’re not treated like everyone else. On the contrary, we’re marginalized, vilified, caricatured, and scapegoated. We’re blamed for the outbreak of plagues, like COVID-19 or the measles. We’re objectified and used, non-consensually, for salacious entertainment in a prejudiced plethora of fictitious films like “Unorthodox” and “Holy Rollers.” We’re castigated as illiterate, barbaric outsiders and forced by the media to wear the label of “Ultra-Orthodox,” effectively dehumanizing us as obstinate extremists. We’re even targeted by our very own public officials, like Mayor de Blasio and the New York State Education Department.

All this fans the flames of the “us vs. them” mentality that endangers minority groups like mine. In this regard, implicit bias is a pandemic that swiftly spreads through the bloodstreams of our communities and institutions, unchecked and devastatingly destructive.

I believe these flames of insidious bigotry must be quenched with the soothing waters of public education. Furthermore, that educational training must begin with an evisceration of the social pressure to culturally assimilate. The viral and vile judgmentalism against my brethren obscures the healthy multiculturalism our proud republic was founded upon.

My ancestors, who immigrated to this country pre-Revolution and died fighting to abolish slavery during the Civil War, believed that all their fellow Americans were endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights and liberties. They believed it so much that they fought for it and paid the ultimate price. I believe that it is only due to the sacrifices of the giants of our past, upon whose mighty shoulders we now stand, that the evolution of our democracy can continue to march forward.

And that begins with one salient step: Stop making me feel that I have to apologize for being a Chassidic Jew. I won’t apologize for being who I am. And I won’t tolerate being maligned as ethnographically “insulated” or otherwise “Othered” from the diverse tapestry of American society. My “Ultra-Orthodox” brethren patriotically (and accurately) refer to our nation as a Medina Shel Chessed—a “Country of Kindness”—and for one simple reason: Here we are armed with the freedom to be who we are and to believe what we believe.

For centuries, my ancestors lived under regimes where adherents of the Jewish religion were told what jobs they were allowed to have, which Shtetl they were allowed to live in, and when they were allowed to fight back against the rampant riots of anti-Semitism. And those were the good days.

Today, more than half of the global Jewish population has ended up in the United States because the First Amendment protects our right to freely observe the First Commandment. And it is gratitude for our nation’s values that inspired Irving Berlin, an American Jew, to pen those words during World War I that are now chanted by everyone from sports heroes to politicians: “God bless America.”

I’m an unapologetic Chassidic-American because I believe it is specifically my Chassidic heritage that makes me more American. After all, who is living the American dream of freedom and liberty more: the overtly visible Jew who wears his minority status like a badge of honor or the assimilated Jew who desperately tries to fit in with the Anglo-Saxon, Brady Bunch subliminal expectations of the 1950s? And no, I’m not bashing “white America.” What I’m saying is that America is great because this is the land where liberty rings free in a thousand sounds of individuality.

Black Americans. White Americans. Muslim Americans. Chassidic Americans. America is neither a homogenous “melting pot” nor a heterogenous “salad bowl” of peoples, but rather a cholent (traditional Jewish Sabbath stew) that incorporates distinct cultures fused together by our common pride and fealty to our nation.

This is why it is our responsibility to fight that “Black Lives Matter,” “Native American Lives Matter,” “Jewish Lives Matter,” “Muslim Lives Matter,” “Evangelical Lives Matter,” “Latter-day Saints Lives Matter,” “Hispanic/Latino Lives Matter,” “Asian Lives Matter,” and more. Our individual cultural and historic narratives of prejudice and discrimination each have their own unique, tragic trajectory.

Now is the time for American citizens to rise up against that often-unspoken pressure to fit in to someone else’s monochromatic version of America.

Now is the time for us to be a shining beacon of hope to the world and show that we can have different states of mind and even different states of reference but still be truly united.

As the great first-century sage Hillel taught in the Talmud, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? And if not now, when?”

Rabbi Levi Welton is a pulpit Rabbi, U.S. Air Force Chaplain, and writer who lives in New York City with his beloved wife and son.

Website: rabbiwelton.com

By Mark Gerson

Everyone in the Torah is flawed. In fact, it is often the best people in the Torah who have the greatest flaws. While the Torah says and shows that a good relationship can help repair a personality defect, no Torah character is without his or her flaws.

Personality flaws often weave through the whole of who we are and color most of our words and actions. That is why, given that our most frequent activity is engaging in relationships, even the best relationships in the Torah have flaws.

As we see in Numbers 12, even the best sibling relationship in the Torah—between Miriam, Aaron, and their younger brother Moses—has significant flaws that yield dramatic consequences.

One of Moses’ great flaws is his failure to be a good husband and father. Moses is married to a remarkably courageous and competent woman, Zipporah. They have two children together. Yet he seems to have conducted the Exodus, the greatest and most logistically difficult event in the history of the Jewish people, without them nearby.

Immediately following the Exodus, Moses’ family comes to greet him in the desert. Although Moses “prostrates himself” and “kisses” them, he only asks about the “well-being” of Jethro, his father-in-law. Subsequently, we never see Moses saying anything loving, tender, or supportive of his wife or children. Perhaps consequently, his children (unlike those of his brother Aaron) are never mentioned in Scripture for doing or saying anything distinctive.

Moses may have been the greatest man in the Torah—and, as we Jews believe, in the history of mankind—but he is still a man. And it is not good, as God tells us in early Genesis, for man to be alone. While the term is not used, Moses seems to have divorced Zipporah and married (according to Numbers 12:1) a “Cushite woman.” The Cushites are a people from modern-day Ethiopia/Sudan.

We know only one thing about Moses’ Cushite wife, and it is explained by the discipline called gematria. Every Hebrew letter corresponds with a number, and words that have the same number are considered by the Jewish tradition to be intimately related. The gematria for “Cushite” is 736—as is the gematria for “beautiful of appearance.” This is the term that often describes physical beauty in the Torah—as with Sarah, Rachel, Joseph, and the first set of cows in the Pharaoh’s dream.

Moses, therefore, seems to have left Zipporah (who would have been advanced in years, as this is nearly four decades after the Exodus) for a presumably younger and certainly beautiful woman. Miriam and Aaron are deeply disappointed in their younger brother, and they “spoke against Moses regarding the Cushite woman he had married.”

Yet God is furious with Miriam and Aaron, not Moses. Numbers 12:9 says, “The wrath of the Lord flared up against them.” Miriam is afflicted with a devastating skin disease.

The existence and extent of God’s anger at this moment is, at first glance, puzzling. Certainly, God does not approve of Moses leaving Zipporah for a new and beautiful woman! It would go against everything God had previously taught us about marriage, beginning in Genesis. And God never mentions the Cushite woman or incorporates her in the partnership and plans that He has with her husband.

Does God approve of Aaron and Miriam rebuking their brother? Given the centrality of rebuke in the Jewish moral system—God commands us in Leviticus 19:17 to “Rebuke, rebuke your fellow”—it certainly seems as though their criticism is warranted and perhaps even required.

Then why is God’s fury turned toward Miriam and Aaron?

Because Aaron and Miriam do not actually rebuke their brother over his sin. They never confront Moses about the hurt he’s presumably caused Zipporah and his children, they never tell Moses that he is not exemplifying and modeling the importance of family that had been painstakingly forged in Genesis, they never ask Moses to consider his actions in the context of their parents’ legacy. There is a lot Aaron and Miriam could have said to Moses to get him to see his mistake, but they chose to say nothing.

Instead, they speak behind his back. This is the sin of lashon hara (“idle speech”) that is considered in Judaism to be akin to murder, adultery and idolatry. Importantly, it does not matter that Miriam and Aaron speak the truth about Moses. False speech is almost always prohibited in Judaism, and true speech about another person that serves no productive or elevated purpose is almost always prohibited, as well. 

God, who could have created the world with a proverbial snap of His fingers, instead does so with nine “God saids.” Just as God created the world with His words, we create worlds with our words. This passage in Numbers shows that we need to be as careful with our word creations as God was with His.

Mark Gerson, a devoted Jew, is an entrepreneur and philanthropist who (along with his wife, Rabbi Erica Gerson) is perhaps the world’s largest individual supporter of Christian medical missions. He is the co-founder of African Mission Healthcare and the author of a forthcoming book on the Haggadah: The Telling: How Judaism’s Essential Book Reveals the Meaning of Life.  

Website: therabbishusband.com
Twitter: @markgerson
Podcast: The Rabbi’s Husband