Blog

When Hamas invaded southern Israel last October, thousands of residents were forced to evacuate their homes and farms—leaving behind unharvested crops and triggering a chain reaction of food scarcity and price hikes. 

Many throughout the country feared that a dire situation was on the horizon for needy Israelis.

But thanks to compassionate friends like you, CBN Israel linked arms with Leket Israel, the nation’s top food bank, and sponsored two trucks (and drivers) that delivered 1.6 million pounds of rescued fresh fruit and vegetables along with 30,000 hot meals to people suffering from food insecurity during this time of war.

CBN Israel shares Leket’s mission: to rescue nutritious produce and collect hot meals that would otherwise be discarded—and redistribute them to those in need. Partnering with some 200 nonprofits, this helps ensure that thousands of people receive healthy food daily.

One nonprofit organization that receives hot meals each weekday thanks to the support of caring CBN Israel donors is Ort Beit Haarva. This vocational school in Jerusalem trains students from low-income families.

“For most of our students, the lunch they receive is the only hot meal they eat that day,” said Ilanit, the school’s social services coordinator. “Their parents aren’t able to provide for them … and that’s why it’s so important for them to receive it here at school.”

Odelle, one of the students, said she is encouraged knowing a meal is waiting for her. “I’m able to focus better on my studies because food is something that nourishes you and helps you keep going,” she said.

Thanks to kindhearted donors, other meals are distributed to a soup kitchen, a high school, and a home for the elderly.

Your gifts to CBN Israel can give hope and aid to so many in need who feel alone. You can offer them food, housing, financial help, and more.

Please consider a special gift today to bless those in need throughout the Holy Land!

GIVE TODAY

By Julie Stahl

God commanded the Jewish people to come up to Jerusalem three times a year. One of those occasions is for Shavuot.

“Three times a year all your males shall appear before the LORD your God in the place which He chooses: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, at the Feast of Weeks, and at the Feast of Tabernacles; and they shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed” (Deuteronomy 16:16).

And in Exodus 34:22 we read, “You shall observe the Feast of Weeks, the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year’s end.”

The New Testament records that Jews were gathered in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit was poured out on Pentecost.

“When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:1-4).

What’s the connection between God giving the Law to Moses and pouring out His Holy Spirit? Both are celebrated on the biblical Feast of Weeks or Shavuot, known in the New Testament as Pentecost. 

This year, the two holidays are celebrated a month apart. About seven times every 19 years, a second lunar month of Adar is added to the Jewish calendar to keep the year more or less in sync with the solar calendar—much the same way a day is added to February every four years. That’s why this year, Pentecost was in May and Shavuot is in June.

Fifty days (about seven weeks) after Passover, the Jewish people celebrate Shavuot (“weeks” in Hebrew), also known as the Feast or Festival of Weeks. In the same way, Christians celebrate Pentecost (“50 days” in Greek).

Many Jewish people stay up all night on Shavuot to study the Scriptures. Before dawn, those in Jerusalem head to the Western Wall on foot where they pray and bless God. The Ten Commandments are read, and in many communities, the book of Ruth is also read.

According to Jewish tradition, it was on Shavuot that God called Moses up to Mount Sinai and gave him the Law—the two tablets on which the Ten Commandments were written, as well as the entire Torah.

“There are so many beautiful parallels that take place for Shavuot,” said Boaz Michael, founder of First Fruits of Zion. “Imagine Mount Sinai with the mountains above it, the covenant given to the people of Israel. This reminds us of a chuppah (canopy) over a bride and a groom. It tells us that God is making a covenant with His bride, Israel. There’s a marriage that takes place.”

Michael told CBN News: “Shavuot is a celebration of the giving of the commandments, but more than that—we’ve been redeemed from Egypt. We’ve wandered through the wilderness. We’ve come to Mount Sinai, and we enter into an intimate relationship with God through the giving of His commandments and then the covenant that He gives to us, the Torah, at Mount Sinai.”

He further explained, “That links us to Acts 1:8, where tells His disciples to take His message to Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria and to all the ends of the earth.”

Julie Stahl is a correspondent for CBN News in the Middle East. A Hebrew speaker, she has been covering news in Israel full-time for more than 20 years. Julie’s life as a journalist has been intertwined with CBN—first as a graduate student in Journalism at Regent University; then as a journalist with Middle East Television (METV) when it was owned by CBN from 1989-91; and now with the Middle East Bureau of CBN News in Jerusalem since 2009. She is also an integral part of CBN News’ award-winning show, Jerusalem Dateline, a weekly news program providing a biblical and prophetic perspective to what is happening in Israel and the Middle East.

“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field when you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning from your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger: I am the LORD your God” (Leviticus 23:22 NKJV).

Farming in the ancient world was incredibly difficult. A farmer had to plow his field—most often with oxen—then sow the seed into the broken-up earth. He then prayed for rain, because if the rains didn’t come within about a week, the seed he had sowed would be useless and would not produce a crop. After the rains he waited, letting his crop grow.

Then came the time to harvest. Having toiled in his field under the scorching sun, sowing seed in the hope of a growing crop, he received the reward for his hard labor, prayers, and patience. And then he was told to leave the edges of his fields unharvested and not to pick up whatever fell during the harvest. These—the edges of his field and the gleanings—belonged to the poor and foreigners. Doesn’t seem fair, does it?

The field belonged to him, and so did its crops. Yet God required that Israelite farmers leave the edges and the gleanings for the poor and foreigners.

We know that ancient Israelite farmers did exactly as God commanded. The story of Ruth and Naomi demonstrates this. Naomi instructed Ruth to gather the gleanings, which she was permitted to do and did.

Biblical spirituality assumes that we care about the well-being of those around us. One of the fascinating things about the law God gave Israel was that in very practical, everyday activities, God called upon the Israelites to demonstrate their obedience to Him.

He concludes the law of the gleanings with the statement: “I am the Lord your God.” You mean we demonstrate God’s lordship in how we care for the poor and the foreigner in our midst? Yes!

We show our relationship to God in how we treat others, especially those who are less fortunate and are outcast within our society. God blessed the work of the farmer by sending rain in its season so the crops would grow. In response, the farmer left portions of his field and harvest to those who had no claim to it.  

Do we look at those in our culture who have no claim to what is ours and say, “God has blessed me, so what I have I share with you?” We proclaim God’s lordship in our generosity to others, especially the poor and foreigners.

PRAYER

Father, today I choose to follow, obey, and pursue You, the source of all life. Please bring the freshness and newness of Your life-giving water into the dry places of my heart for Your glory. Amen.

By Julie Stahl

“I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they shall never hold their peace day or night. You who make mention of the LORD, do not keep silent, and give Him no rest till He establishes and till He makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth” (Isaiah 62:6-7 NKJV).

For centuries, the Jewish people had been in exile. For a generation, they had been without access to their ancestral city. Yet for six unforgettable days in early June 1967, surrounded by enemies, Israel stood alone and changed history forever.

By 1967, Israel had already fought two major wars, and in May of that year, Arab nations joined together with a stated goal to wipe Israel off the map. Less than 20 years after the birth of the modern Jewish nation, Israel was on the verge of extinction.

Israel, along with Jewish people around the world, thought they were facing another Holocaust. In Tel Aviv and Haifa, they had turned parks into potential graveyards and dug mass graves. But God had other plans.

After only six days (June 5-10, 1967), Israel had tripled in size—beating the combined armies of Syria, Egypt, and Jordan to win the Golan Heights, the Sinai Desert, and biblical Judea and Samaria. Perhaps the pinnacle of their success was reuniting the city of Jerusalem under Israeli-Jewish sovereignty for the first time in nearly 2,000 years.

It was on the third day of the war that Moshe Kempenski, an Orthodox Jewish author and Jerusalem shop owner, said he realized that he wasn’t just reading and studying the Bible, but he had actually experienced the fulfillment of prophecy. A Canadian teenager at the time, Kempenski said he knew on that day he would one day become a Jerusalemite.

“When I fully began to realize the significance of being here and my child playing in a Jerusalem park 30 years later, I recall wondering if my son, Yoni, was one of the children that Zechariah saw in his vision,” says Kempenski.

Kempenski is referencing the passage in Zechariah where God promises, “Once again old men and women will walk Jerusalem’s streets with their canes and will sit together in the city squares. And the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls at play” (Zechariah 8:4-5 NLT).

During all those years of exile, the Jewish people always ended their holiday prayers with “Next Year in Jerusalem!” The Holy City, though far away and unattainable to most for all those years, was still in their hearts and minds.

So, when Commander Motta Gur uttered those famous words, “the Temple Mount is in our hands” (Har HaBayit B’Yadeinu), Jewish people around the world knew something miraculous had happened.

But despite Israel’s clear win in a war it hadn’t asked for, the international community never recognized Israeli sovereignty over united Jerusalem. After the war, Israel returned religious authority over the beloved Temple Mount to Jordan, who still manages it.

To this day, only Muslims are permitted to pray on the site where two Jewish Temples once stood in biblical times.

In 1980, the Israeli Knesset (parliament) passed the Jerusalem Law, which stated that all of Jerusalem (including the eastern part) was Israel’s united capital. Thirteen countries removed their diplomatic missions from Jerusalem after the UN passed a resolution declaring Israel’s law null and void. (Costa Rica and El Salvador moved their embassies back to Jerusalem in 1984 and then returned to Tel Aviv in 2006.)

In December 2017, in a historic move, U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and on May 14, 2018—70 years after U.S. President Harry Truman recognized the State of Israel—Trump moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. Guatemala moved its Embassy to Jerusalem shortly thereafter.

Jerusalem Day is celebrated in the city with a giant parade of Israeli flags that winds through downtown Jerusalem and ends at the Western Wall.

Julie Stahl is a correspondent for CBN News in the Middle East. A Hebrew speaker, she has been covering news in Israel full-time for more than 20 years. Julie’s life as a journalist has been intertwined with CBN—first as a graduate student in Journalism at Regent University; then as a journalist with Middle East Television (METV) when it was owned by CBN from 1989-91; and now with the Middle East Bureau of CBN News in Jerusalem since 2009. She is also an integral part of CBN News’ award-winning show, Jerusalem Dateline, a weekly news program providing a biblical and prophetic perspective to what is happening in Israel and the Middle East.

Marina found herself nearly paralyzed by fear. She and her son lived in Ashkelon, Israel, just 14 miles from the border with Gaza, when terrorists infiltrated their community on October 7.

In her 45 years, Marina had never experienced that level of trauma—the constant trembling and being sick to her stomach. “You don’t understand what’s happening to you,” she said. “I was drowning emotionally.” Feeling she had nowhere to turn, she cried out in desperation, “God, please help me!”

Then friends like you helped answer her prayer through CBN Israel! Caring donors evacuated Marina and her son to safety at a hotel in Eilat, far from the war zone. They provided nutritious meals, clothing, essentials, and trauma counseling for her and other evacuees—giving them the much-needed assurance that they are not alone.

Marina was effusive in expressing her gratitude. “God works through people, and those people were sent to me.” She continued, “To everyone who helped me and my son—and vulnerable people like us—thank you so much for your kindness, your support, and your help. … You took those people by the hand and guided us to safety.”

And your gifts to CBN Israel can bring hope and healing to others who are hurting—including Holocaust survivors, single mothers, and refugees.

As the war rages on, your generous support can provide groceries, housing, financial aid, and essentials to those struggling to survive in the Holy Land—while broadcasting in-depth news reports from Jerusalem.

Please join us in blessing Israel’s people at this crucial time!

GIVE TODAY

By Marc Turnage

The discovery at Qumran of the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 required a suitable place to house them. The American Jewish architects Armand Bartos and Frederic Kiesler were tasked with designing a home for the scrolls at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. On April 20, 1965, the Shrine of the Book was dedicated. 

This landmark of modern architecture incorporated elements of the story of the scrolls as well as the community responsible for them to create a special building that symbolized a sanctuary. The architecture of the building seeks to convey the spiritual meanings of light and darkness and rebirth. The Shrine of the Book sits on the campus of the Israel Museum, which is next to Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, key government offices, and the Jewish National Library at the Hebrew University’s Giv’at Ram campus. Its location among institutions of government, history, art, and learning, give it a national importance. Moreover, it acknowledges the Bible and ancient Judaism and their importance to the State of Israel. 

The buildings architecture incorporates several features that seek to tell the story of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The unique white dome of the Shrine of the Book embodies the lid of the jars in which the first scrolls were found. Opposite the whited dome, under which is housed the Dead Sea Scrolls, stands a black wall. The contrast, white and black, symbolize light and darkness two themes that play prominently within the sectarian scrolls of the Dead Sea Scrolls. 

One must walk through the black wall to make your way to where the scrolls are housed under the white dome, passing through a tunnel that looks like a cave, but also symbolizes a birthing canal. The idea being that one passes from darkness to light in an act of rebirth. Cases line the walls of this tunnel with scroll fragments and other artifacts discovered at the site of Qumran, which sits on the northwest corner of the Dead Sea. This display seeks to convey daily life at Qumran. 

Passing through the tunnel, one enters underneath the white dome. At the center of the hall, in a case built to represent the handle of the rod used for rolling and unrolling a Torah scroll while one reads, sits a facsimile of the Isaiah Scroll. This scroll, found in Cave 1 at Qumran, contains the complete book of Isaiah. The manuscript of this scroll was written around 100 B.C. In cases around the room are portions of actual Dead Sea Scrolls, the Community Rule, Thanksgiving Hymns, Habakkuk Commentary, and Isaiah from Cave 1, and the Temple Scroll from Cave 11. 

Below the display of the Isaiah Scroll is a lower level that houses a display of the Aleppo Codex. The Aleppo Codex was originally written in Tiberias, Israel in the 10^th century A.D. The Aleppo Codex is the Old Testament-Hebrew Bible in book form. Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it provided the earliest Hebrew text of the Old Testament. Its text contains traditions of pronunciation, spelling, punctuation, and cantillation handed down within the Jewish community and formalized in the codex by scholars known as “Masoretes.” The Aleppo Codex traveled from Tiberias to Egypt, and then later to Aleppo, Syria. It was smuggled into Israel in the 1950s. 

The Dead Sea Scrolls provide the single most important archaeological discovery of the 20^th century. They offer an unparalleled window into the world of ancient Judaism, as well as the history and transmission of the Hebrew Bible-Old Testament.

Marc Turnage is President/CEO of Biblical Expeditions. He is an authority on ancient Judaism and Christian origins. He has published widely for both academic and popular audiences. His most recent book, Windows into the Bible, was named by Outreach Magazine as one of its top 100 Christian living resources. Marc is a widely sought-after speaker and a gifted teacher. He has been guiding groups to the lands of the Bible—Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and Italy—for over twenty years.

Website: WITBUniversity.com
Facebook: @witbuniversity
Podcast: Windows into the Bible Podcast

“Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but one who has a hasty temper exalts folly” (Proverbs 14:29 NRSV).

We live in a world full of tempers. On our streets, in our homes, and on our social media, people tend to express their temper often and loudly. Anger seems to simmer under the surface of our society, and it’s destructive.

The admonition of Proverbs has a timeless relevance: “A hasty temper exalts folly,” yet the one who is slow to anger shows understanding. Proverbs does not say, don’t have a temper or don’t ever get angry. Rather, it instructs us not to have a hasty temper.

As humans, we get angry. God even gets angry in the Bible. We have tempers. Our response in the moment of emotion causes us to move from understanding to folly.

Paul notes in Galatians that self-control is one of the fruits of the Spirit (5:23). One who is slow to anger controls him or herself. Such a person stands out increasingly in the volatile and emotionally driven world in which we live.

Emotions tend to focus us on the passion of the moment; but self-control takes a long-term view of a situation. Our freedom of expression, especially in moments of anger, rarely brings about anything constructive. In fact, it often causes more harm than good.

But when we exercise self-control and are slow to anger, we find opportunity to build instead of tear down; we display understanding and wisdom instead of foolishness.

And, ultimately, we show that God’s Spirit works in us, by the fruit our lives produce. In other words, we testify to God before a watching world.

A world full of tempers cares little for our Gospel proclamations when we show our tempers just as hasty and volatile as its own. A person with great understanding is a rare commodity in our world, and such a one enables people to glimpse God.

PRAYER

Father, may Your Spirit bear fruit in my life, enabling me to exercise self-control at being slow to anger. Amen.

By Nicole Jansezian

Though routine has returned to some cities and communities in Israel, residents of other cities such as Ashkelon are living in a warped sense of reality where rockets are still launched in their direction and the sounds of war in Gaza pulsate through the city on a daily basis.

“The city is far from experiencing any sense of normalcy. Seven months into the war, they are still the target of unrelenting rocket attacks from Gaza,” said Alice Mizrahi, head of CBN Israel’s Victims of Terror department. “Plus, they hear all the bombings in Gaza as well.” 

More than 1,000 rockets were fired at the city of Ashkelon on and immediately following October 7, with over 180 direct hits.

The city was partially evacuated after October 7, but since then, most residents who initially fled have returned despite the ongoing threats. The seaside city is a few miles north of the Gaza Strip and was the most fired upon place in Israel on and since October 7.

“In Sderot (which had traditionally been the most attacked city in the south and is closer to Gaza), they added bomb shelters, but the people in Ashkelon are living without them so people had nowhere to go but to hide in their stairwell and pray for a miracle,” explained Alice.

Of its approximately 130,000 residents, many are immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia, and many are elderly who are living in poverty and struggling with food insecurity.

That’s why CBN Israel linked arms with local partners to help make sure families could put food on the table during this difficult and uncertain time. CBN Israel and its ministry partners delivered food packages and grocery vouchers to hundreds of families who live below the poverty line. 

“These vulnerable and needy families in Ashkelon are incredibly grateful for the kindness and support from CBN Israel donors. Thanks to caring friends like you, they have nutritious food to feed their children and families,” Alice said.

Please continue to pray for the nation and people of Israel during this challenging time of war. Let’s pray for an end to the conflict, for the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza, and for the opportunity to rebuild the cities and communities devastated by the October 7 attacks.

Nicole Jansezian is the media coordinator for CBN Israel. A long-time journalist, Nicole was previously the news editor of All Israel News and All Arab News and a journalist at The Associated Press. On her YouTube channel, Nicole gives a platform to the minority communities in Jerusalem and highlights stories of fascinating people in this intense city. Born and raised in Queens, N.Y., she lives in Jerusalem with her husband, Tony, and their three children.