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By Arlene Bridges Samuels

During Holy Week, we rejoice in the realization that Israel still endures as the only land where the most profound love was expressed to our world. Two thousand years ago God, the Architect of the Universe and Creator of humankind, sent His Son to earth as a Jewish baby, who grew to be the Perfect Lamb and pay our debt of sin on the cross.

Worldwide, nearly 2 billion Christians are drawing near to Palm Sunday celebrations on April 13. Yet Open Doors’ World Watch List estimates that 365 million Christians face much of the persecution from Islamic terrorists, for example in Nigeria, and now Syria.

Israel has now entered the 18th month since the Islamic Hamas massacres of October 7, 2023. Hostages in Gaza, their families, and the entire Jewish nation are suffering a national trauma. Nevertheless, they are brave examples of how to navigate crises and traumas with incredible strength and resilience.

This, the 18th month of Israel’s daily trauma, is a rich time for prayer. Eighteen is a special number in Judaism. In Hebrew, it means “chai,” or life. “Chai” is a favorite in Jewish traditions and culture. Donations and gifts are often given in multiples of 18; the Amidah, also called the Shemoneh Esrei, is a key prayer with 18 blessings in Jewish services. For Holy Week, let us pray our own Amidah version for Israel, for our Jewish friends, and for persecuted Christians worldwide.

Holy Week 2025 is also an ideal time to celebrate what we Christians call Palm Sunday—by adopting an example of ancient Jewish names and symbols, rich with meaning. With worldwide Jew hatred literally exploding in evil deeds and lying words, we will gain a deeper understanding of ancient Jewish customs directly related to Jesus, our Jewish Savior.

Let us not forget that—by using language-based archaeology—digging deeper in the Bible’s 66 books reveals that indeed, God planned for our Christian faith by drawing it directly from Jewish roots. God created the Jews and their culture beginning with Abraham. He included non-Jews but grafted us into the Jewish roots as branches who choose to thrive in Jesus. Thus, Israel is our spiritual homeland.

In Holy Week 2025, we Christians can rescue a rich Jewish context too often lost in the annals of history. Here we go!

Two thousand years ago Jesus rode into Jerusalem, signaling the beginning of Passover week. Riding a wave of popularity, Jesus was adored by Jewish throngs from all over the known world. He loved Jerusalem, yet knew that His interrogation, beatings, betrayals, and death by crucifixion lay ahead.

And herein is the beautiful connection. The Bethlehem shepherds, who annually herded thousands of Passover lambs into Jerusalem, were enacting the ancient Day of Lambs! Lamb Selection Day—a divine cultural context, with awe-inspiring purpose.

The Sadducees—the leaders in charge of Temple sacrifices—also owned the Bethlehem fields and the lambs raised there. They hired shepherds, experts in animal husbandry, regarded as Levitical Priests because when ewes gave birth, their lambs were destined a year later as Temple sacrifices. The historian Josephus estimates that 265,000 lambs could be sacrificed in the Temple for Passover.

Exodus 12:5 instructs, “Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year,” so Sadducees held a lamb “beauty contest.” At the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem, they inspected each one making sure it was perfect. When Jesus rode into the city on a donkey, the priests already regarded Him a threat to their growing corrupt bureaucratic system. Many Jews believed in Jesus but not the political hierarchy. The priests controlled every step of the Temple sacrifices, selling them to Passover pilgrims. This explains why, later the same day, Jesus walked up to the Temple in a display of righteous anger. Using a whip, He overthrew the money changers’ tables and coins, saying as recorded in Matthew 21:12-13, “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers.”

Allow this understanding to dwell deeply in your soul: Jesus, the Perfect Lamb of God, rode into Jerusalem on the Day of Lambs with thousands of scampering Bethlehem lambs parading into the holy city herded by Levitical shepherds from Bethlehem, Jesus’ birthplace. Think of it: If the Sadducees required upwards of 265,000 lambs for Temple sacrifices, Jesus, the perfect Lamb, made one Sacrifice for all time to pay our personal debt of sin! The contrast is a majestic reality of our Savior’s gift!

I wonder. Did some Shepherd priests who beheld Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem live long enough to behold Him once again as He entered Jerusalem among thousands of lambs? In Holy Week 2025, honor Jesus this year in a new and profound way, remembering His one sacrificial act covering every sin past, present, and future.

Our world is filled with chaos and lawlessness; however, it does not diminish or reverse the fact that Father God made a redemption plan through Jesus the Perfect Lamb giving us the kind of peace to overcome the chaos.

We welcome you to our CBN Israel team to pray for our world in John 3:16:

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Prayer Points:

• Pray for traumatized Jews and persecuted Christians worldwide.
• Pray for ways to educate others with Jewish traditions that enrich our Christan faith.
• Pray for Jews in Israel and around the world as they begin Passover this Saturday evening.
• Pray for Christians throughout the Middle East as they enter Holy Week.

Arlene Bridges Samuels is the weekly feature columnist for CBN Israel since 2020. Working on the staff of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as their SE Regional Outreach Director for nine years, International Christian Embassy Jerusalem USA engaged her as the Leadership Outreach Director part-time for their project American Christian Leaders for Israel. Arlene is an author at The Blogs-Times of Israel, is published at AllIsrael.com and The Jerusalem Connection, and has traveled to Israel since 1990. By invitation, she attends Israel’s Government Press Office Christian Media Summits as part of Christian media worldwide. In 2024, Arlene and her husband Paul co-authored Mental Health Meltdown: Illuminating the Voices of Bipolar and Other Mental Illnesses. www.TheMentalHealthMeltdown.com.

By Arlene Bridges Samuels

The United Nations’ 80-year history contains some wretched moments. On October 24, 1945—after World War II ended—51 countries officially launched the United Nations (U.N.). Although the organization was established with dreams of peace and “sovereign equality of all nations,” the majority of today’s 193 member nations are united against the world’s only Jewish nation.

Instead of supporting “sovereign equality” for Israel, the U.N. glorifies Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who still runs his “pay to slay” salary operation that rewards Palestinian terrorists for murdering Jews. Since October 7, 2023, the U.N. has increased its accusations—that humanitarian aid trucks were “violently looted,” for example, and that IDF soldiers used Palestinian children as human shields—as if Israel is the perpetrator of all that has befallen Gaza.

Among dozens of inaccurate criticisms, the U.N. consistently blames Israel for blocking food for Gazans. However, the United Nations seems unconcerned about (or ignores) the fact that many aid trucks sat for weeks not yet unloaded—or that armed Hamas terrorists regularly stole massive quantities of food off the trucks to resell at soaring prices to their population. The truth is, Israel has actually facilitated more than 1.3 million tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza’s civilians by land, sea, and air with help from allies. But that truth continues to go unnoticed.

In its early years, the United Nations attempted to resolve the simmering “whose land is it?” arguments. On November 29, 1947, they devised a resolution titled The Partition Plan. The plan—Resolution 181—proposed two states, one for Arabs (not called Palestinians at the time), the other, a state for Jews. Jewish leaders said yes to the plan. Arab leaders said no. The concept of a two-state solution would never work if surrounding Arab countries never accepted a Jewish state in the biblical land of Israel. Yet, Arab leaders repeatedly deceived most of the world’s well-meaning but gullible leaders, who were desperate for peace at any cost.

Consider this: After Israel miraculously won the Arab-launched Six-Day War in 1967, the Arab League held its fourth summit to emphasize Arabic solidarity in its goal to destroy the State of Israel. On August 29 in Khartoum, Sudan, the Arab League voted for the Khartoum Resolution that described the Palestinian Arab policy as “The Three No’s”—no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel.

Fortunately, President Trump’s visionary leadership enshrined the 2020 Abraham Accords’ agreement normalizing diplomatic relations between Israel, Bahrain, and United Arab Emirates. Offering a historic shift in the Middle East, it lost steam during the Biden administration and the October 7 kidnappings and massacres backed by the Islamic Regime. 

A little history lesson here. Prior to 1917, the Muslim Ottoman Empire ruled Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to the early 20th centuries. After the Ottoman’s centuries-long rule ended in World War 1, the British Mandate went into force in 1917. Both Jews and Arabs were under the military and administrative control of the United Kingdom in the region known as “Palestine” until May 14, 1948, when Jewish leaders aptly named their modern nation “Israel.”  That very night, the armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq invaded Israel. To everyone’s surprise, the outnumbered and outgunned Israelis miraculously defeated their attackers.

The three Arab no’s still dominate the United Nations when it comes to reports, decisions, and resolutions. For example, that embedded hatred and intolerance towards Israel made no exceptions for the October 7 hostages from 29 countries. Every hostage was and is loved by families and communities everywhere.

The United Nations’ disdain for Israel is nowhere more clearly shown than in a current United Nations draft report about vulnerable children in the world’s conflict zones. Set to be released in June, the draft report will assault the senses of Christians and Jews who care deeply about Israel and its people. The report contains a glaring, back door omission that exemplifies almost every part of the United Nations attitude toward Israel.

Extraordinarily, the murders of Israeli baby, Kfir Bibas, and his older brother Ariel were omitted from the draft report. As Amir Tsarfati announced from his Telegram platform, these beautiful red-headed children were forcefully kidnapped from their home in kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023. Their abductors rushed them into Gaza, held in the arms of their terrified mother. But it wasn’t until February 22, 2025, that the world discovered the unspeakable had taken place: In Gaza, terrorists had strangled Shiri and her two sons shortly after the kidnapping. And, after strangling these innocents with their bare hands, the terrorists picked up knives and desecrated their victims’ bodies.

What kind of global institution would omit these vile inhuman acts from a report directed at vulnerable children who live in conflict zones? I assume that, based on their demonic nature, the terrorists forced Shiri to watch them strangle her children. Where is the United Nations’ condemnation for Hamas’s heinous acts? Yet the U.N. finds time to defend Hamas, Iran, and its proxies—almost as if Israeli children aren’t quite human.

Hamas’s brutal acts of strangulation and desecration stain the world with their unmitigated sin. Right now, we should consider the majority of the 193 member nations in the U.N. to be the terrorists’ accomplices in the sins of omission in this report.

Will nations rise and challenge this outrageous omission before the report’s release in June? Will anyone notice? I encourage you to learn more from two organizations that defend Israel at the United Nations with excellent credentials: UNWatch.org and the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).

Our CBN Israel team welcomes you to pray with us this week:

• Pray for Israeli families and children who have been traumatized since October 7 and during the continued multifront war.
• Pray for the final release of all hostages, both the dead and alive.
• Pray for God to give Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wisdom as he leads Israel.
• Pray for the global community to wake up to the truth about what has happened during these past 18 months.

Arlene Bridges Samuels is the weekly feature columnist for CBN Israel since 2020. Working on the staff of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as their SE Regional Outreach Director for nine years, International Christian Embassy Jerusalem USA engaged her as the Leadership Outreach Director part-time for their project American Christian Leaders for Israel. Arlene is an author at The Blogs-Times of Israel, is published at AllIsrael.com and The Jerusalem Connection, and has traveled to Israel since 1990. By invitation, she attends Israel’s Government Press Office Christian Media Summits as part of Christian media worldwide. In 2024, Arlene and her husband Paul co-authored Mental Health Meltdown: Illuminating the Voices of Bipolar and Other Mental Illnesses. www.TheMentalHealthMeltdown.com.

By Arlene Bridges Samuels

Israel is a small nation with a big presence in the modern world. In fact, its significance far outweighs its size and its population. During ancient times, God revealed Himself to His chosen people, the Jews. Israel’s 3,000-year-old capital, Jerusalem, is mentioned 800 times in the Old and New Testaments. In rabbinic literature and in biblical references, Jerusalem is considered the center of the world. Certainly, since October 7, 2023, Israel and the Jewish people are dominant in world news, with both truth and lies fighting for attention.

Amid the backdrop of wartime, why are Jews living in other countries now “making Aliyah”—immigrating to Israel? The Hebrew word aliyah means “ascent” or “going up.” In ancient times, ascent described the Pilgrim Road walk up to the Temple Mount for the annual Jewish festivals. Aliyah remains the word used for Jewish immigration, which now takes place primarily via flights to Israel. These immigrants are enacting Israel’s Law of Return, passed in 1950, that allows Jews, their children, and grandchildren to become citizens in their ancestral homeland.

In Genesis 17:8, God promises Abraham, “The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”

Worldwide, the Jewish population is now nearing 16 million, with 7.3 million living in Israel. To gather more firsthand information, I interviewed Gary Cristofaro, vice president of Ezra International (EI) at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in February. Since 1996, Gary’s organization has made Aliyah possible for 120,000 Jews from Central Asia, Latin America, and the former USSR. During 2024 and into this year, EI has helped upwards of 6,000 Jews make Aliyah.

Explaining their reasons for wanting to make Aliyah, even after October 7, 2023, Gary says, “Many say they want a better life for their children; others want to be with their brothers and sisters in Israel since the attack.” Gary adds that growing antisemitism is widely mentioned as an important factor. In the last two years, due to the war between Russia and Ukraine, an Aliyah surge of Jews from both nations have begun living new lives in Israel. The numbers of French Jewish Aliyah are rising. As Gary mentioned, “We are seeing off-the-charts antisemitism in a Muslim-majority country, which I cannot disclose.”

Israel’s i24NEWS reports that since the October 7 invasion and massacre, 35,000 Jews have immigrated to Israel. They came from 100 different countries and a third of them are between 18 and 35 years old.

Since Ezra International’s founding, Gary told me, the organization has extended help to 30 different nations considered part of the Jewish Diaspora. Currently, they have teams on the ground in 14 nations. In the context of the Greek translation of the Bible, diaspora means “scattering” of the Jewish people outside of Israel, their homeland. In Hebrew the words golah (exile) and t’futzah (dispersion) are used, noting the Babylonian, Roman, and other exiles.

After the Holocaust—and the modern establishment of the world’s only Jewish state on May 14, 1948—Aliyah has grown in waves. No matter where they lived across the world, Jews went about building their lives yet yearned for their ancestral homeland. The phrase “Next Year in Jerusalem” has resounded countless times at Shabbat tables in the Jewish dispersion worldwide.

Christian organizations that help with Aliyah for diaspora Jews are not uncommon. They cooperate with Israel to help sponsor flights. However, Ezra International’s main contribution occurs before flights take off for the Holy Land. 

“Where we shine, and what we do differently, is to help Jews navigate the process prior to flights by focusing on poorer Jewish communities that have limited manpower and limited budgets,” Gary explains. “We work with the indigenous leaders in each of the nations through their Jewish Agency.” Since its establishment in 1996, Ezra International has earned lasting trust through decades of assistance cooperating with The Jewish Agency in Israel and diaspora nations.

On the ground, Gary’s staff emphasizes Israel’s Law of Return with the Jewish communities and sets into motion the research that will provide detailed, accurate documents. These must be presented to Israeli Consul General offices in each nation. Ezra International not only provides research to validate the facts of candidates’ Jewish heritage, but they help them navigate the bureaucracies.

Gary offered an insightful example of the process for a Ukrainian family. After Ezra International researched and gathered the documents for the family, he drove them for five hours on “pothole-filled roads” and put them up at a hotel. The next day, the entire family appeared as required and presented their documents to the Israeli Consulate in Ukraine. Afterward, he drove them back to their home—another five hours. Gary observed, “They can’t afford that type of thing without some help, and that’s where Ezra International comes in.’’

In emergencies like the war between Russia and Ukraine, Ukrainian families can exit their country with the help of teams in Romania or Moldova. “A lot of Russian Jews came out of Russia through neighboring countries,” Gary explains, “because they saw the writing on the wall.”

Gary comments that their research doesn’t look like a miracle. For instance, some of the research requires verifying the Jewish identity of Holocaust survivors whose parents undertook Gentile names for reasons of survival. Yet a miracle it is. “It’s amazing what the folks on the ground are doing. They are not in the limelight, but they are parting the ‘Red Sea’ of essential research and proof of Jewish identity.”

He refers to Romans 15:8, where the Apostle Paul wrote, For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed.

Gary embraces this passage as “a description of the work that our people on the ground are doing.” The teams are coming beside God’s people, humbly serving them. They often hear that they’re “the first Christians ever to show them kindness.”

Ezra International is devoted to doing its part to help fulfill the promises that God has made to the Jewish people for their homeland, Israel. For 2,000 years, it seemed impossible. But now it’s happening, and Scripture also promises that you can be a part of it! Learn more about Ezra, a Christian charity helping impoverished Jewish people who live outside the U.S. to make Aliyah.

Our CBN Israel team welcomes you to pray with us recalling Genesis 12:7: “To your offspring [or seed] I will give this land.”

• Pray for Ezra International’s ongoing ministry to aid Jews making Aliyah.
• Pray for safety in nations that are dangerously enacting Jew hatred.
• Pray with thanks for the love Ezra’s staff is showing to God’s chosen people.
• Pray for IDF members defending their ancestral homeland.

Arlene Bridges Samuels is the weekly feature columnist for CBN Israel since 2020. Working on the staff of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as their SE Regional Outreach Director for nine years, International Christian Embassy Jerusalem USA engaged her as the Leadership Outreach Director part-time for their project American Christian Leaders for Israel. Arlene is an author at The Blogs-Times of Israel, is published at AllIsrael.com and The Jerusalem Connection, and has traveled to Israel since 1990. By invitation, she attends Israel’s Government Press Office Christian Media Summits as part of Christian media worldwide. In 2024, Arlene and her husband Paul co-authored Mental Health Meltdown: Illuminating the Voices of Bipolar and Other Mental Illnesses. www.TheMentalHealthMeltdown.com.