Neese
Interview with Jim Barfield about The Copper Scroll Project
Jan 27th
By Shelley Neese
Israel’s ancient mystery deciphered
Jim Barfield, a retired fire marshal from Oklahoma, believes he has cracked the code on The Copper Scroll. Applying his arson investigation skills to the world’s most intriguing antiquities, he has achieved something that for four decades has eluded all other archeological and paleographical experts. Barfield has shown his research to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and they have given him a permit to conduct an expedition this winter.
I met Barfield—or Jimmy B as his friends call him—at a pro-Israel conference in Dallas. Amazed by the possibility of his locating the sites of ancient temple tithes, I have been following his story for three months and have had the chance to conduct several interviews with him and his family. Whether or not Barfield has solved this ancient mystery is yet to be proven, but after hearing his story you can’t help but think the same God who chose a young shepherd-boy to be King of Israel and an exiled Jewish girl to be Queen of Persia, would also hand-pick an Oakie fireman to restore to Israel the sacred temple treasures.
NEESE: What exactly is the Copper Scroll?
BARFIELD: The Copper Scroll, found near the Dead Sea in Israel in 1952, is literally a copper metal document approximately seven feet long listing about sixt locations of very large amounts of gold, silver, and gems from the time of Moses and from the time of King Solomon. I don’t like to call it a treasure map because these items are holy but essentially it’s a map listing buried treasure.
How did you get interested in the Copper Scroll?
I have been working on a biblical timeline since 1993 and that’s how I got started studying the Dead Sea Scrolls. The first time I read the Copper Scroll I was totally bored by it. In the Dead Sea Scrolls there are a lot of fascinating things but the Copper Scroll seemed like just a list of kosher metals.
I was introduced to Vendyl Jones in 2006 and spent a weekend at his house in Texas. We had a wonderful time discussing the Copper Scroll and hearing about his fifty years of research. I woke up one morning soon after and decided to take another look at the Copper Scroll. Glad I did.
How did you get access to the Copper Scroll?
It wasn’t very difficult. It’s called the internet. Anyone can go online and get a facsimile of the Copper Scroll.
There are several different translations of The Copper Scroll. Which translation did you use for your research?
I used the Martinez translation as a guideline but then I did my own word for word rendering of the text using a Strong’s Concordance. Not too fancy but this allowed me to simply read the text for what it was: a verbal map. I know probably people could debate my qualifications for doing this and they are more than justified. But if the sites prove to be right then no one is going to care about how I translated it.
Do you believe the Copper Scroll is pointing to first or second temple items?
I believe the scroll is from the first Temple period. These things were hidden when the Babylonians were knocking at the door of Jerusalem. The Second Book of Maccabees and a seventeenth century book called Emeq HaMelekh (“Valley of the King”) tell the story of the prophet Jeremiah who with the help of five Temple guardians carefully hid the holy objects of the Temple to protect them from the Babylonians. One was named Shimur Halevi and two of the others you’ve probably heard of: the prophet Zechariah and Haggai. Emeq HaMelekh says after the items were hid the locations were written on a copper plate. It is very easy to detect four different handwritings in the scroll. The first guy hid fourteen items. The second guy hid twenty three; he worked his bottom off. The third hid eighteen. The fourth guy hid only five items but he did something so cool to direct you to the last site that is just over the top.
The places mentioned in the Copper Scroll seem to be very specific, speaking of people and locations that are unknown to us today. How do you know where these random wells, pools, and cisterns are located?
It was far simpler than that. That’s the reason why others have not been able to locate these items. They apply too much knowledge and try to make the Copper Scroll fit their preconceived theories. I simply took what the scroll said and began to narrow things down by a process of elimination. Just like in an arson investigation, I try to eliminate all the fringe factors by trying to prove whether or not someone is innocent. In the case of the Copper Scroll I took the descriptions of the sites and matched them up with the data on the ground. I matched up the fingerprints.
The Copper Scroll is a detailed list of at least sixty locations. Have you identified all sixty of those locations?
Fifty-six of the sites I am almost positive on and four of them I am a bit shaky on.
There are several people who have spent their lives trying to understand the Copper Scroll. In locating the sites was there anyone whose previous research laid the groundwork for you?
Vendyl Jones has done wonderful research on the history of the scroll and I agree with him completely on the history. On the translation and locations though we don’t quite see eye to eye.
How many times have you been to Israel?
I have been there four times in the last two years. I had never been before my Copper Scroll research. After I identified the first twenty sites in the scroll, my wife and I got on a plane and went to Israel by ourselves to check the sites and make sure that I wasn’t just going crazy. When I got there I checked all the measurements, came back with the data, and figured out the rest of the locations within six months. By June 22, 2007 I had completed my report and went back to Israel. I met with the right people and things went fantastic after that.
The last time I went to Israel was in September. We met with the Israeli archeologist who will be leading the dig and actually went out to the sites. He asked me where I wanted to start and I said I want to start at the buried cave, the last place mentioned in the scroll and the most important. There is another scroll inside of that cave—“the Silver Scroll”—that will complement the directions in the Copper Scroll. When we find that one we’ll get another fireman to come and figure out the Silver Scroll!
How did you get a meeting with the Israeli Antiquities Authority to show them your research?
I was teaching a class at Comanche College and met a sweet lady named Juanita. She just so happened to have sponsored in the 1970s an Israeli named Shuka Dorfman who was doing some training at Fort Sill. They kept in touch and he became the director of the IAA. She called him up and said “Shuka, I have someone you need to meet.” I went to Israel in December 2007 and met with him at the Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem. At first he thought I was a nut but I hadn’t shown him the first five locations before he was on the phone with his top archeologist saying “you’ve got to see this.” He set up the meeting for me to meet with the archeologists at the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem.
Was it difficult getting the permit?
The archeologist from the IAA who has agreed to do the dig is the guy who grants permits. There is normally a stack of paperwork you have to do to even apply for a permit but I did zero.
Did the Israeli experts question your credentials?
I’m sure they did at first. But once the experts see the research they just thump their heads and move me to the head of the class.
Who else is working on the Copper Scroll Project with you?
My buddy Chris Knight is my number two man in command. I had to have someone I trusted and Chris is that guy. Chris is dedicated to our Father in heaven and has a heart for Israel.
My wife Laurie could give this interview for me. She’s heard it all so many times.
Has anyone dug where you are pointing to before?
Not exactly. None of the locations have actually been dug to the level that would require a discovery. They have come awful close though. It would be silly for me to say though that in the last 2,000 plus years these things haven’t been looted.
Is there a finder’s fee if these things are located?
I’m not a treasure hunter and I have no thoughts for wealth. I just want to do what God wants us to do. If this is right then God gave this to a guy that just doesn’t give a darn about wealth. My grandchildren love God and I want it to stay that way. What matters most to me is what my children and grandchildren will say about me when they are gathered around…
Have you been hard to live with since you first cracked the code? I imagine it’s taken a lot of patience to wait out the expedition date.
In the beginning I stayed awake at night thinking about everything. There were times that my wife just wanted to give me a shovel and tell me to go dig. But now that we are getting closer I have been sleeping soundly. A lot of prayer and fasting though.
How long do you expect the first expedition to take?
I’m thinking for the first site, if we dig slow, would only take a couple of days. This won’t be a normal expedition. We are not talking about brushing off broken pottery shards with paint brushes. These are holy vessels and billions of dollars worth of gold and silver.
What do you think could happen if the contents of the scroll are found?
I better be wearing depends that day!
But seriously if these things are found it could change the world. I just want to be there when the sites are opened. What Israel does with the items after that is up to them.
Shelley Neese is managing editor for the The Jerusalem Connection Report.
Who’s Who in the History of Sephardim
Nov 17th
By Shelley Neese, The Jerusalem Connection
Hisdai Ibn Shaprut (915-970 CE) was the first powerful Jewish politician to serve under the Umayyad caliphs in Spain. Hisdai’s career began as the physician for caliph Abd al-Rachman III. Known for his strong command of Latin and Arabic, Hisdai was commissioned to translate a famous medical text from Latin to Arabic that had been given to the caliph as a gift from the Byzantine Empire. After receiving significant recognition for this accomplishment, he was appointed inspector-general of customs and diplomatic advisor to the caliphate in Cordova. Hisdai’s diplomatic skills as a statesman proved extremely successful in negotiations between the Muslim and Christian empires. He even used his position to try, unsuccessfully, to persuade Empress Helena to offer religious liberty to the Jews of the Byzantium. Appointed leader of the Jewish community of Spain, Hisdai was a patron of Jewish learning and devoted much of his influence and finances to supporting Jewish poetry, Hebrew writing, and Talmudic study. He is credited for the revival of Jewish scholarship in Spain and establishing its independence from Babylonia. Hisdai’s deep curiosity about world Jewry prompted him to write to King Joseph of Khazar in search of an explanation of the kingdom’s mass conversion to Judaism two centuries before. His famous correspondence with the King has survived and is the only proof authenticating Khazar’s fascinating story.
Samuel HaLevi (993- 1056), later known as Samuel HaNagid (“the prince”), was the political head of the Jews of Granada in the 11th Century. Before he held the highest position of power of any Jewish notable in medieval Muslim Spain, HaLevi was a petty merchant. He was discovered for his wisdom by the vizier of King Habbus, after being asked by a maidservant to write letters on the vizier’s behalf. He was taken from his merchant job and quickly rose through the notable ranks to the position of vizier and councilor to the King. The King believed that if he did whatever HaLevi advised, God’s blessing would be upon it. When King Habbus died, he was replaced by his son King Badis who also favored HaLevi. In addition to his position as vizier, HaLevi was appointed commander of the King’s armies. Samuel and his son, Joseph, are the only two Jews to ever be given command over a Muslim army. HaLevi lead his army in eighteen years of constant warfare against the Muslim army of Seville. He was killed on the battlefield. In addition to his political and military achievements, HaLevi was a poet and scholar. He used his power to the benefit of Granada’s Jews, giving money to Torah study and the distribution of copies of the Talmud and Mishnah.
Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon (1135-1204), also known as Rambam and Maimonides, is the most famous Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages and one of today’s most widely studied Jewish scholars. He was born in Cordova, Spain but at age thirteen his family was forced to escape to Morocco after the Almohads, a fanatical Muslim sect, conquered Cordova. In Morocco, Maimonides completed his first years of academic training before his family had to once again escape the persecution of Muslim rule. The family went first to Jerusalem and then decided it was not habitable and settled in Egypt. There, Maimonides established an excellent reputation through his medical career. He was appointed personal physician for the Grand Vizier of Egypt and Sultan Saladin. At the same time, he was also widely respected for his Torah knowledge and became the Chief Rabbi of Cairo. Maimonides wrote several hugely important texts in the field of Jewish law and Talmudic study. His most famous works are his commentary on the Mishnah (first commentary of its kind); Mishnah Torah (first systematic written code of Jewish Law); and Sefer HaMitzvot (Book of Commandments). He also wrote a well-known philosophical and theological study, The Guide for the Perplexed. Because of Maimonides’s Aristotelian world-view and emphasis on rationalism and science, he was a controversial figure, both loved and hated by his Jewish contemporaries. Only centuries after his death were his contributions to Jewish scholarship fully appreciated and standardized in Orthodox Judaism.
Moses ben Shem-Tov de Leon (1240-1305) was a Jewish writer in Muslim Spain who first published the Zohar and is most likely the author of the largest portion of the Zohar. The Zohar is a collection of literature offering a mystic’s commentary on the Torah and is considered to be the most important Kabalistic text. Moses claimed the Zohar was written in the second century by the famous Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai and other sages. However, the validity of this claim is highly contested by scholars for three main reasons: the text refers to events that happened after Rabbi ben Yohai’s time; the Zohar is never referenced in the Talmud; and the author of the Zohar shows no knowledge of the land of Israel. Legend also has it that after Moses died, a rich man offered to buy the original Zohar from Moses’ widow but she confessed there was no original because her husband was the author. Little is known of Moses’ personal life except for his love of philosophy and years devoted to the study of Kabala with the mystics of Castile, Spain. Though there were many critics and skeptics of the Zohar initially, within fifty years most of the orthodox Jewish community and Kabalists fully accepted Moses’ claims and glorified the Zohar’s sacredness.
Luis de Santangel (?-1498) was vital to the success of Columbus’s first expedition. Santangel, the son of Jewish converts and treasurer of the Kingdom of Aragon, was very wealthy and had many connections among Spanish notables. He used his influence to arrange for Columbus to have an audience with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. When the King was not forthcoming, Santangel arranged for additional meetings and helped Columbus make his case. After three meetings, Columbus’s proposal was accepted. Part of the agreement was that Santangel would personally sponsor a portion of the first trip and the royal funds would supply the rest. Two other Anusim, Gabriel Sanchez and Isaac Abrabanel, also provided finances for the voyage. Columbus did not forget Santangel’s role and felt personally indebted to him. Columbus’s most famous correspondence reporting his discoveries of the New World was written directly to Santangel. This letter was reprinted and given to the Spanish royalty who were so encouraged to hear of Columbus’s discoveries that they were eager to sponsor subsequent expeditions. One suspected reason for Santangel’s keenness and urgency in sponsoring Columbus and providing him with additional boats is because he wanted to assist his fellow Jews in fleeing Spain.
Benvenida Abrabanel (1490-1560) is memorialized as a woman of valor for the life she dedicated to helping oppressed Jews and giving to Jewish causes. Benvenida and her family fled the Spanish Inquisition in 1492 and moved to Naples. She married her first cousin, Samuel Abrabanel, and together they had six children. Samuel was the head of the Jewish community in Naples and a wealthy businessman. Benvenida was a private tutor for the Spanish viceroy’s daughter, Leonora. Leonora married the Duke of Tuscany but even as a Duchess she maintained her close friendship with Benvenida. Despite this relationship and Leonora’s efforts, Samuel and Benvenida were not immune to the decree in 1541 for the expulsion of all Jews from southern Italy and they were forced to move to Northern Italy. After Samuel’s death, Benvenida took over his large business. Through her connections in Tuscany, she was granted special privileges for commercial use of Tuscany’s port. Under her direction, the business did extremely well. Benvenida used her money to help poor and oppressed Jews and also sponsor Jewish education and scholarship. Benvenida is credited for single handedly buying the freedom of more than a thousand Jews imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition.
Beatrice Mendes (1510-1569), also known by her Jewish name Gracia Nasi, was a remarkable business woman and the most famous Jewish woman of her time. Though Gracia’s family was forcefully converted to Christianity by the Portuguese King, they remained very devoted to Judaism. At age eighteen, she married a very wealthy Spanish Jewish banker, Francisco Mendes, but after only eight years of marriage, she was widowed. Along with her brother-n-law, Gracia inherited the Mendes family fortune and took over her late husband’s large enterprise. At enormous risk to herself, she used her fortune and connections to help Jews escaping the Inquisition. She was identified by the Inquisition and labeled as a heretic and Judaizer. Imprisoned three times, she and her family escaped to Europe but the Inquisition followed them, eager to convict Gracia and confiscate her wealth. In 1553, Gracia finally reached Turkey where she was no longer persecuted. In Constantinople, Gracia began running a secret underground railroad to help Jews trying to escape from Portugal and Spain. She also secured the approval of the Ottoman sultan to buy the city of Tiberias for Jewish resettlement, but for various diplomatic reasons the deal fell through. In 1555, after Pope Paul IV determined to violently rid all the papal states of Judaizing Christians, Gracia used her power to try and organize all Jewish merchants to boycott the port of Ancona, Italy. After gaining approval from the sultan, the plan was opposed by prominent rabbis who feared taking dramatic actions that would upset the Papacy and Christian kings. Gracia’s belief in the power of Jewish solidarity in fighting oppression was ahead of her time.
Sara Copio Sullam (1588-1641) was an intellectual icon in 17th century Venice, famous for her poems and literary and theological essays. In Sara’s lifetime, all Jews in Venice were required to live in segregated living areas, ghettos. Although they were bound by curfew, the ghettos had a vibrant cultural and social life significantly enhanced by the regular gatherings Sara hosted in her salon. Daughter to wealthy Sephardic parents, Sara was fluent in Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Latin and she was a talented musician, singer, and song writer. She was well-studied in Greek philosophy and Jewish texts and theology. Referred to as “La Bella Ebrea”—the Hebrew Beauty—Sara is rumored to have had many proposals by Christian men trying to convert her. One such man was the Catholic poet Ansaldo Seba who she had intense correspondence with for four years. Despite her high regard for Ansaldo, Sara remained dedicated to her Jewish faith. At some point, the Catholic clergy Bonifaccio accused Sara in an open letter of not believing in the immortality of the human soul. In response, Sara wrote her famous Manifesto which is a very articulate and intellectual rebuttal of his accusations and proof of her belief in immortality. After the wide distribution of her Manifesto, no one dared to make any religious accusations against her again.
Francisca Nunez de Carvajal (1540-1596) and her children are the most well known victims of the Mexican Inquisition. Francisca was born in Spain and at age twelve she married Francisco Rodriguez de Matos. She had nine children, all born in Spain, and was the sister of the famous conquistador and Governor of the New Kingdom of Leon, Luis de Carvajal. When Luis received a land contract for colonization in the New World, the Rodriguez family was invited to join him. Under Carvajal’s governorship, the majority of colonists in the New Kingdom of Leon were Anusim. The Spanish government had tried to prohibit Anusim from entering the New World but Luis de Carvajal was able to hide the identity of most of them in their registration. Once they were settled in Leon and somewhat distanced from the Inquisition, they began practicing Judaism as a community. Francisca and her children were bold in their encouragement of Anusim to remain faithful to Judaism and observe the Law of Moses. The Rodriguez family wrote Hebrew prayers, held Jewish services in their home, studied the Hebrew bible, circumcised family members, and celebrated the Jewish holidays. Eventually their network was discovered by the Mexican Inquisition and many were arrested and tried in auto-da-fes. Francisca and her children were subjected to regular torture but they remained courageous. Once enough evidence was put before the Inquisition, they were determined guilty of Judaizing. However, all the family members refused to deny their Jewish faith, preferring to die as martyrs. Francisca was burned at the stake in Mexico City along with three of her daughters—Isabel, Leonor, and Catalina—and one of her sons—Luis. Francisca’s husband had died prior to the auto-da-fes and two of her other children—Miguel and Marianna—were burned at the stake a few years after Francisca’s death. In just five years, the Inquisition had nearly wiped out the entire family.
Don Juan de Onate (1550-1626), remembered as the “Last Conquistador,” was the founder of the city of Santa Fe and the first Governor and Captain-General of the new province of New Mexico. Onate was born in Mexico to a very wealthy and prominent family and married the granddaughter of Spanish Conquistador Hernando Cortes. Studies of Onate’s maternal ancestry have shown that he was a descendant of Sephardim from Spain who had converted to Catholicism. In 1595, he was granted permission from King Philip II of Spain to lead a colonization and exploration expedition in the northern Rio Grande Valley and El Nuevo Mexico (New Mexico). Part of his mission was to find a shorter route to New Mexico, which became known as the Camino Real, but this made the journey very long and difficult. A caravan of 400 men, half of whom brought their families, and 7,000 livestock went with him. It is suspected that many of the colonists who joined the caravans were not on the official audits because they were Anusim escaping the Inquisition. After eight months of traveling in difficult conditions with little food and water, Onate officially established the province of New Mexico.
Manasseh Ben Israel (1604-1657) is known as the founder of the modern Jewish community of England. His parents were Portuguese Anusim. While Manasseh was still an infant, his father was accused by an auto-da-fe and the family fled to Amsterdam. After receiving years of rabbinical training, Manasseh became rabbi to the congregation of Neveh Shalom in Amsterdam where he developed a widespread reputation as a grand orator. To supplement his family’s income, he started Holland’s first Hebrew press. He wrote several books directed to Christian audiences to help them understand Judaism. His master work, El Conciliador, deals with the difficult passages of the Old Testament and explains the Jewish method of addressing the apparent inconsistencies. Protestant theologians were particularly interested in Manasseh’s messianic views. Manasseh believed that before Jews could restore Jerusalem, they had to occupy every part of the world. With this line of thinking, he labored to attain permission for Jews to be readmitted into England, where they had been barred from living since 1290. English lawmakers recognized that there was nothing in English law preventing Jewish resettlement but Manasseh died before receiving formal permission. However, in his lifetime he was in close communication with Oliver Cromwell who gave informal permission for Jews to return and a large grant for financial assistance.
Rabbi Isaac Aboab de Fonseca (1605-1693) was the first congregational rabbi in the New World. Born in Portugal, he fled as a child with his family to France and then to Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, he received his rabbinical training and became an important spiritual leader. In 1642, Aboab left Amsterdam and moved to Recife, Brazil at the request of Recife’s newly organized 5,000 member Jewish community. Aboab was asked to serve as rabbi for Kahal Kodesh Zur Israel, the first public synagogue in the New World. Under Dutch rule in Recife, Jews were allowed to practice their faith openly and free from persecution. However, in 1646, the Portuguese besieged northeastern Brazil, trying to reconquer the land from the Dutch and destroy the protection Jews enjoyed there. For nine years, the Jews joined their Dutch comrades in fighting off the Portuguese. Risking his own life by staying, Aboab bravely led his community during this time of terrible suffering. In 1654, the Dutch were forced to surrender and all Jews had to leave. With many other Jews from Recife, Aboab returned to Amsterdam. He continued serving as a rabbi in Amsterdam for fifty more years.
Gershom Mendes Seixas (1745-1816) was the first native-born Jewish clergy in the United States. Seixas was born in New York after his father, a Portuguese Jewish convert, was accused of Judaizing and forced to flee. At age twenty-three, Seixas became the spiritual leader for New York City’s synagogue, Congregation Shearith Israel. At the time, there were no available rabbis in North America so Seixas fulfilled his community’s needs by performing all the same functions of an official rabbi even though he was not ordained. During the American Revolution, Seixas was a strong advocate for American Independence and opponent of British occupation. He called upon his congregants to pray for the country’s leaders and bless the revolution. While the British occupied New York, he closed down his synagogue as a sign of protest to British rule and to protect his congregants who had become outspoken in their opposition to the Crown. Seixas had good relationships with Protestant leaders and was well-respected for his charity and patriotism by the entire New York community. He was the only non-Protestant member of Colombia University’s board of trustees and he was honored as one of the twelve clergymen present at George Washington’s inauguration.
Francis Salvador (1747-1776) was the first Jew to be killed in the American Revolution. He was born in England and grew up in London’s Sephardic community. While he enjoyed a wealthy lifestyle in his early adult years, the family fortune was lost after several large investments collapsed. Salvador immigrated to America in 1773 to try and relieve his family’s financial burden. He acquired a large amount of land from his uncle and established himself as a planter. Just a year after his arrival in South Carolina, the tension between England and the American colonies reached a climax. Salvador, already a true patriot, became wholly involved in America’s struggle with the British. As an elected representative for the South Carolina General Assembly, Salvador was the only Jew to serve in a colonial legislature. Also a delegate for South Carolina’s Provincial Congress, he actively opposed the royal government and played an important role in uniting the colonists’ fight for independence. While the British were readying to attack the South Carolina colonies, local British authorities induced the Cherokees to attack the border settlements in order to create a diversion. Salvador was the first to learn of the planned massacre and rode on horseback twenty-eight miles to report the news to Major Williamson. He then joined the militia’s defense of the settlements but before the Cherokees could be defeated, Salvador was shot, scalped, and killed.
Moses Montefiore (1784- 1885) was a famous Jewish philanthropist and statesmen who made it his life’s work to protect the world’s oppressed Jews and relieve their suffering. Born into an Orthodox Sephardic family in England, Montefiore’s first career was in the London Stock Exchange. He made enough money as a broker for the Rothschilds that he was able to retire at age forty and begin his charitable and communal work. Montefiore was given many civil honors, such as his appointment as “sheriff” of London and his being “knighted” by Queen Victoria. A devoutly religious Jew, he was also appointed trustee and community leader of the Sephardic congregations in London. Among his many accomplishments, he convinced his friend, the Sultan of Egypt, to secure the release of Jews in Damascus who had been falsely accused of blood libel. He also persuaded two Turkish sultans to establish a decree which protected the rights of Jews in the Ottoman Empire and offered Jews certain privileges. Although his work extended globally to all parts of Europe and the Middle East, his primary efforts were with the poor and devastated Jewish communities of Jerusalem under Ottoman rule. In his seven trips to the land of Israel, he set up hospitals, schools, water systems, and synagogues and built apartments and farms. He commissioned a census of Jerusalem and he relieved the Old City’s overpopulation by founding the first Jewish neighborhood outside the Old City walls. Montefiore died at the ripe age of 101, leaving a lasting legacy as one of the world’s most beloved Jews.
Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870-1938) served as a Supreme Court Justice for the United States for eight years. Born in New York, Cardozo’s ancestry traced back to the early Sephardic immigrants of the 18th century. His father had been a New York Supreme Court Justice but was forced to resign after being presented with various charges of corruption. After his father’s death, Cardozo attended Columbia University Law School and went on to practice law and became a distinguished New York jurist. He served on the New York Supreme Court for just a few months before being appointed by the Governor to the New York Court of Appeals. A prolific writer, he authored four volumes on the philosophy of law. Cardozo was nominated by President Hoover in 1932 to fill the seat of Oliver Wendell Holmes in the United States Supreme Court. His nomination was unanimously approved by the Senate. Immediately after Cardozo took the bench, Franklin D. Roosevelt began ushering in his new deal, much of which was subject to constitutional challenge and brought heated controversies to the court. Cardozo’s judicial style was seen as progressive and creative. However, his advocacy for judicial lawmaking was limited because he believed that in a democratic government, the court should defer social change to the legislative and executive branches.
Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) is one of the first well-known Jewish American authors. She was a patriotic poet, a defender of immigrant rights, a voice against anti-Semitism, and an early Zionist. Lazarus was one of seven children in a wealthy New York family that traced its roots back to the first Spanish and Portuguese settlers in North America. She connected her poetry to her Sephardic heritage and often wrote about early Spanish Jewry. Although Lazarus considered herself a secular Jew, she was by her own words “an enthusiast for the rights of Jews and their civil equality.” Horrified by the pogroms in Russia, she was an advocate for the establishment of a Jewish nation in Eretz Israel years before Theodore Herzl even began speaking of Zionism. For Lazarus, immigration to Israel of all Jews in Eastern Europe was the only solution for persecuted Jews to find true freedom. Lazarus believed Jews in America enjoyed special privileges but that they were still vulnerable to cycles of anti-Semitism. Little is known about Lazarus’s private life other than the fact she never married and developed a friendship and mentor relationship with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Her later years of poetry were marked by a stronger display of Jewish themes. One of her most famous poems, “The New Colossus,” is engraved on a plaque in the Statue of Liberty with her famous lines “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free.”
Alice Davis Menken (1870-1936) dedicated her life to helping less fortunate Jewish women and youth in New York. She mobilized the Sephardic women of Congregation Shearith Israel to form the Shearith Israel Sisterhood in 1896. Menken was the president of the Sisterhood for over thirty years. Under her leadership, the Sisterhood developed a program to help New York’s poor Jewish immigrants in the Lower East Side. The women made sure the immigrants could access healthcare and had enough food, heat, and clothing. In the early 1900s, the majority of these new immigrants were from Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Having a strong connection to her own Sephardic faith and practices, Menken took measures to encourage the survival of their Sephardic culture and use of Ladino. She taught classes in Sephardic ritual and gave them print materials on American history that had been translated into Ladino. Menken also founded the Jewish Board of Guardians to help Jewish women and youth on parole or probation. Many of these delinquents were Jewish immigrants who were homeless or had engaged in prostitution and substance abuse. Menken’s work through the Jewish Board of Guardians provided counseling, finances, and shelter to assist in their recovery and rehabilitation after being released from prison. In her years of social activism, Menken had a permanent presence in New York courts and reformatory institutions. Menken’s tireless efforts to better the plight of suffering Jewish women and youth are attributed to her unrelenting optimism, belief in humanity, and strong Jewish faith.
Arthur Barros Basto (1887-1961) was a captain in the Portuguese army and descendant of Anusim. After learning of his Jewish ancestry from his grandfather, he enthusiastically returned to normative Judaism and began organizing the Jewish community of Portugal. In this process, many Anusim revealed to him their secret identities and Jewish practices. Inspired by this revelation, Basto traveled throughout Northern Portugal discovering thirty-four hidden communities of Anusim. Basto considered it his “work of redemption” to bring all the Anusim back into the fold of Judaism. As a soldier of the Portuguese revolution, he believed Portuguese Jews had new religious freedom in the country to openly express their Hebraic heritage. He established schools, a Jewish newsletter, and a synagogue to offer Jewish education and Hebrew instruction. His optimism proved to be premature, however, as anti-Semitism rose throughout Europe. Portuguese dictator Salazar and his regime did not appreciate Basto’s attempts to spark a Jewish revival. False and unspecified accusations of moral depravity were brought against him and he was stripped of his rank and dismissed from the army. Known as the “Portuguese Dreyfus,” Basto died without his name being cleared.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (1920) is the former Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel and the current spiritual leader of the Shas political party, the orthodox Sephardic party in Israel. Born in Baghdad in 1920, Rabbi Yosef moved to Jerusalem with his family at the age of four. After years of service on Israeli rabbinical courts and before becoming Israel’s Chief Sephardic Rabbi in 1973, he served as the Deputy Chief Rabbi of Egypt and the Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Known for his expertise in Talmudic scholarship, he has written prolifically since the age of eighteen on questions pertaining to Jewish Law (halakha). Due to the genius of his scholarship and heavy political influence, Yosef is revered as one of the current most important figures for religious Sephardim.
Moshe Katsav (1945) is the current President of Israel. Born in Iran in 1945, he and his family immigrated to Israel in 1951. Katsav’s early years were spent in the difficult conditions of a transitional camp set up by the state of Israel in the 1950s to absorb the large influx of poor Sephardim. The camp later became a development town known as Kiryat Malachi. At age 24, Katsav was elected mayor of Kiryat Malachi, becoming Israel’s youngest mayor. A Likud party member, he was elected as Member of Knesset in 1977. In Katsav’s long Knesset career, he held various important Ministerial positions before being appointed as Deputy Prime Minister in the government of Benjamin Netanyahu from 1996-1999. In the election for President of Israel, he defeated Shimon Peres by six Knesset votes. Israel’s eight president, he is the first President of Israel from the Likud party and the first to serve a seven year term.
Shelley Neese is Managing Editor of The Jerusalem Connection.
Defining Moments in 3,000 Years of Sephardic History
Nov 17th
By Shelley Neese, The Jerusalem Connection
Each year on the Ninth of Av, Jews fast and mourn in remembrance of the many tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people. Reciting the Lamentations of Jeremiah, Jews weep for the loss of the first and second temple, destroyed on the same day of the Hebrew calendar, the Ninth of Av, over six hundred years apart. Jews on this day lament the death and destruction suffered by the Diaspora in their years of separation from Jerusalem. Central to the horrors remembered is the forced expulsion of all Jews from Spain in 1492 on the Ninth of Av. The sustained memory of the Spanish Inquisition and the grief it has engendered through the centuries reflects the enormity of this event in all of Jewish history.
In Spain’s Golden Age, Sephardic Jewry, the world’s largest Jewish community, was a beacon of progress and prosperity. However, racism, religious bigotry, and a thirst for power paved the way for the genocidal course Spain eventually chose. But just as the Western Wall defiantly stands today as a last vestige of the Holy Temple, the survival of Sephardic Jewry, after centuries of persecution, bears testimony to the indestructibility of the Jewish people.
Early Jewish pioneers and settlers in Spain971 BC: With the succession of King Solomon, the united kingdoms of Judah and Israel experience enormous growth in power and riches. King Solomon extends his business ventures across the Mediterranean Sea to Tarshish, the west coast of modern day Spain. According to the scriptures (I Kings 10:22 and II Chronicles 9:21), every three years King Solomon and Phoenician King Hiram bring ships in from Tarshish “carrying gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks.” Due to this expanded trade relationship, many historians assume Jewish merchants began arriving to Tarshish on King Solomon’s boats or with Phoenician merchants from Sidon and Tyre. This being the case, Jews are likely the first pioneers and settlers in Spain during the area’s earliest period of civilization.
722 BC: Shortly after Assyria conquers the ten northern tribes of the kingdom of Israel and takes them away into captivity, records tell of a large influx of people who move to the Iberian Peninsula. According to legends, these people have Hebrew-like names and are of Hebrew descent.
586– 549 BC: Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar sacks Jerusalem and forces the remaining two southern tribes into exile in Babylon. Many Jews flee to Tarshish during the time of the Babylonian exile but historians debate the exact point the escape to Tarshish took place. The Hebrew exiles could have escaped during the deportation from Jerusalem to Babylon, during the oppressive Babylonian exile, or once the Babylonian exile was over. Most likely, the largest Jewish migration across the Mediteranean happens at the end of Babylonian exile in 549 BC, after the united Media and Persian empires conquer Babylon. The new King Cyrus gives permission for Jews in Babylon to return to Jerusalem. At the time of the mass return to Jerusalem, it is expected some Jewish exiles opted for Tarshish instead of Jerusalem to join the Jewish community and traders already believed to be living there.
135- 409 AD: After the Romans suppress the Jewish revolt in Jerusalem, many Jews flee across the Mediterranean to Spain. For three hundred years the Jewish community in the Roman province of Hispania (Spain) enjoys a period of prosperity in trade and prominence in the sciences and arts.
306 AD: The Council of Elvira, the first Christian council held in Spain, passes an edict prohibiting Christians from marrying or socializing with Jews and from Jews blessing the crops of Christians.
325 AD: Roman Emperor Constantine presides over the Council of Nicea, convened to address theological issues dividing the Christian Church on the nature of the Trinity and Christ’s divinity. After much heated debate, the truth revealed in the scriptures of Jesus’s eternal nature and true divinity is confirmed, Arianism is declared heresy, and the Nicene Creed is formulated. While this is a positive product of the Council, the Council also passes several civil legislations that are at their core anti-Jewish and aimed at completely separating the Christian Church from Judaism.
Differentiating Christian and Jewish holidays and observances is priority. While Christians at this time are still celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus on the Jewish Passover, the Council changes the date of the Gentile Passover to the first day of spring to ensure it will never coincide with the Jewish Passover. Christians have, until this point, observed the Sabbath on the seventh day, Saturday. The Council changes the Christian Sabbath to Sunday. These measures are an intentional blow to Judaism and they are stepping stones for future anti-Jewish legislation and theological conclusions in subsequent councils. Replacement theology and anti-Semitism are created from the birth of the institutional church and persecution of Jews will forever be justified on these evil premises.
Arian Visigoths rule Spain, 409 – 711 AD
409 AD: After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Visigoths—Arian Christians from what is now Western Germany—take over the Iberian Peninsula. In the first two-hundred years of their three-hundred year rule, the Visigoth nobility is tolerant of Jews, primarily because the Jewish population significantly outnumbers the Arian population.
586- 589 AD: Visigoth King Reccared converts from Arianism to Trinitarian Catholicism and declares Christianity as the legalized religion of the state. Reccared tries to fuse the religious doctrines of the Visigoth nobility and Catholic population to produce a more unified Spanish Christian nation. As the Church gains power behind the throne, Reccared is the first Visigoth king to take up an operational anti-Jewish policy.
The Visigoths are known for their obsessive use of legal codes to govern economic, political, and religious life. This affinity for legislation is especially evident in the dozens of detailed anti-Semitic cannons passed at various important councils during Visigoth rule. The laws relating to Jews and Jewish-Christian relations are often overlapping and inconsistent, which suggests the Visigoths were not as effective enforcing the laws as they were creating them.
The first of the cannons against the Jews are a product of the Third Council of Toledo. In an attempt to conserve religious orthodoxy, Jews are forbidden to marry Christian women, hold public office, and own Christian slaves.
612 AD: King Sesbut outlaws Judaism after many of his edicts against the Jews are not enforced. All Jews in the Visigoth kingdom must be baptized within the year or be forcefully exiled. All Jewish children over seven are to be taken from their parents. The majority of Jews refuse to convert and some escape to North Africa. Many who fled choose to return to Spain after King Chintila succeeds Sesbut.
633 AD: At the Fourth Council of Toledo, forced conversions are disapproved. However, Jews who already converted to Christianity—hereafter referred to as Anusim—but have backslidden are given very harsh punishments. Canons pass to take circumcised children from heretical Jewish families and put them in monasteries. If Anusim make contact with unconverted Jews, both parties are punished. Canons prohibit Jews and Anusim from holding public office or owning Christian slaves.
638 AD: At the Sixth Council of Toledo, Spain is declared a Catholic land and therefore only loyal Catholics are allowed to live in Spain. King Chintila ratifies a decision requiring all Anusim to swear an oath—a “Declaration of Faith”—that they will be loyal Christians, rid themselves of all Jewish practices and customs, marry Christians, abstain from kosher foods, and destroy all Jewish materials. All unconverted Jews are to be banished from Spain.
653– 656 AD: At the Eighth Council of Toledo, King Recceswinth issues a new code requiring all unconverted Jews to leave Spain or be baptized. All Anusim must practice standard Catholicism at the risk of severe public punishment. Violators are put on trial and if accused of any misdemeanor, they are to be stoned, burned, or beheaded. At the Ninth Council of Toledo, King Recceswinth elaborates on the ways in which Anusim are to be closely guarded to ensure their abandonment of Jewish customs. For example, all Anusim must be in the presence of a Catholic bishop when celebrating Christian festivals.
Thus far, all anti-Jewish decrees have been enforced with limited success so the aim of the Tenth Council of Toledo is to clamp down on Church leaders who have not been helpful in enforcing the restrictions and monitoring the practices of Anusim.
680– 687 AD: King Erwig abolishes the death penalty for disloyal Anusim but reinforces the laws against “judaizing”—practicing Judaism in secret—by making punishments more severe and frequent. All Jews who have not yet converted are given the option of baptism or exile, but those who choose exile are to be publicly flogged. Also during this time, further restrictions are placed on Anusim to supervise their Christianity. Restrictions are placed on the travel of Anusim and before they are allowed to make a business transaction with a Christian, they must say the Lord’s Prayer and eat pork to prove their sincerity. The Twelfth Council of Toledo decrees the burning of all Jewish books.
693– 694 AD: King Egica at the Sixteenth Council of Toledo passes heavy economic policies to punish Jews. Jewish wealth is confiscated and properties previously owned by Christians must be surrendered by their current Jewish owners. Anusim are required to pay high taxes while un-baptized Jews are prohibited from commerce all-together.
At the Seventeenth Council of Toledo, Egica charges Jews with planning to “exterminate the Christian people and their homeland.” Jews are believed to be plotting with the Moors to undermine the Church and defeat the Visigoth Kingdom. Accordingly, the Jewish religion is completely outlawed. All Jews are reduced to the status of slaves. All Jewish property is confiscated and Jewish children are taken from their homes and given to Christian families or monasteries.
Moorish Rule of Spain, 711 – 1212 AD
711- 719 AD: Tariq Ibn Ziyad—commander of a 12,000 member Moorish Muslim army—invades Spain and defeats King Rodrigo and his Visigoth army of 60,000. Many North African Jews who had fled persecution from Visigoth rule return to Spain to fight under the command of Ziyad. While the Moors go from city to city in their military conquest of Spain, they utilize their Jewish allies to garrison conquered areas. After eight years of fighting, all the Iberian Peninsula—except for small areas in Northern Spain—falls under the rule of the Caliphate and Islamic Sharia. The harsh rule of the Visigoths is officially over and replaced by a more tolerant, although unpredictable, Moorish rule.
Despite their military power, the Muslims are a minority in this newly conquered land. It is critical for their survival to maintain and solicit Jewish support. Jews are allowed to practice their religion freely and govern themselves, but they are required to pay a special tax, wear identifying clothing, and live in separate communities.
711- 1066 AD: Under Moorish rule, particularly with the Umayyad dynasty, Spain experiences it’s “Golden Age” as a prominent social and cultural capital of the world. Under this new leadership and flourishing environment, many formerly exiled Jews return to Spain and Jews fleeing persecution in Europe come as refugees. Sephardim flourish intellectually, socially, and economically. In trade, Spanish Jews become major importers and exporters of precious goods. In the arts and sciences, Jewish intellectuals study and translate Greek philosophers’ original writings and develop new philosophies incorporating Jewish theology. Hebrew language and grammar are revived. Jewish scholars invent algebra and develop trigonometric theories. Jews also rise to the highest ranks in the public sector, serving and advising the Caliph and Spanish courts.
1066 AD: As Muslim leaders begin to feel threatened by the growing Christian kingdom in Northern Spain, instances of Jewish persecution become more frequent. In Granada, particularly, Muslims are suspicious and jealous of the prominence and power of the Jewish community. On 30 December, Joseph Ha-Nagid—the Jewish commander of the Army of Granada and son of the well-known vizier Samuel Ha-Nagid—is assassinated by Muslim fanatics. In the ensuing riots, the Jewish quarter of Granada is razed and 4,000 of Granada’s Jews are massacred. Many Jews manage to flee to Christian Spain in the North.
1098 AD: While the armies of the First Crusade are conquering Jerusalem, Christian armies in Spain launch their own crusade and reconquer Toledo. Jews in Toledo prosper under Christian rule, while Jews in Muslim Spain suffer from limited freedom and an increasingly volatile environment. By this time period, more Jews live in Spain than all the other European countries combined.
1146- 1156 AD: A fanatical Muslim political party from North Africa—known as the Almohads—conquers Morocco and many Southern cities in Spain. The Almohads impose the fullest restrictions on non-Muslims. Jewish properties are confiscated, wives and children are sold into slavery, and Yeshivas and synagogues are burned down. In Almohad Spain all Jews are forced to convert to Islam or sent into exile.
From the Christian Reconquest of Spain to the Spanish Inquisition, 1212 – 1492 AD
1212 AD: The Pope declares the reconquest of Spain a crusade. King Alfonso VIII of Castile recruits the help of all the Spanish kingdoms and leads a coalition of Christian armies in the great battle of Las Nevas de Tolosa. This decisive victory over the Almohad sultan shatters Almohad power in Spain. The Almohads, already weakened from years of internal discord, begin their retreat. Rapidly, the Christian armies reconquer the rest of central Spain. Granada is the only place on the Iberian Peninsula Muslims continue to rule until 1492.
Though taxes under Christian rule are heavy, the Jews are happy to see an end to the oppressive Almohad dynasty. Spanish Jewry prospers and lives in peace with its Christians neighbors. Jews enjoy a period of religious freedom and protection by the state.
In the 13th century, there are two major contributions to Jewish biblical study. First, Sephardic scholars translate the bible into Spanish. Then, Rabbi Moses de Leon writes and compiles the Zohar, the Book of Splendor. The sacred book of the Zohar is the basis of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, and its teachings spread throughout Spain in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, gaining significant popularity.
1233-1235 AD: The Papacy, now with restored power through the Catholic monarchies in Spain, is concerned about the centuries of fraternizing between Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Pope Gregory IX believes the Spanish monarchs and clergy are not dealing harshly enough with the Jewish and Muslim populations. French troops are thus commissioned to Spain to assist the Spanish reconquest and more severely deal with what are seen as the heretical religious minorities. The Pope also commissions the Archbishop of Tarragona to appoint inquisitors. One of the first decrees to be enforced is the “Jew badge,” a yellow linen patch to be worn by all Jews to distinguish them from Christians.
1265 AD: King Alfonso X of Castile compiles Las Siete Partidas, a code of law which is anti-Jewish in its nature but does establish certain protective measures for Jews, their religion, and property. The laws—which do not technically go into effect until 1348—provide that Jews maintain their religious freedom and are allowed to build synagogues as long as they are limited in size and number. However, the law also stipulates that Jews are not allowed to marry or live with Christians, own Christian slaves, or be in any position of authority over Christians. Christians who convert to Judaism are to be put to death.
1267 AD: Pope Clement IV establishes the Inquisition in Rome, giving permission to Franciscan and Dominican inquisitors to investigate the lives of Anusim and reaffirming the use of torture as part of the investigation.
1348- 1354 AD: The “Black Death” rages in Europe, killing nearly half of the total population. Rumors spread that conspiring Jews from Spain poisoned the wells of Christians to cause the plague. This myth prompts angry mobs all over Europe to massacre thousands of Jews. Spanish Jewry suffers less than Jews in Germany and France but in Toledo 12,000 Jews are killed by angry mobs.
1391 AD: While the peasantry in Spain is overtaxed and overburdened, Jews prove to be an easier scapegoat than the monarchy. Ferrant Martinez, Archdeacon of Ecija, capitalizes on these feelings by roaming the country, stirring up riots, and preaching fiery anti-Semitic sermons, claiming Jews represent the devil among them. Martinez commands clergy of various towns to tear down synagogues and confiscate Jewish property. Looting and terrorizing leads to massacres. In Seville alone, 4,000 Jews are killed. In June and August, a total of 50,000 Jews are killed from seventy communities. It is estimated that after a year of violence, over 100,000 Jews are killed and over 100,000 are baptized by the Church quickly enough to avoid execution. Jews who avoid execution and conversion flee from Spain and establish Sephardic communities throughout Southern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Smaller groups go to Western Europe and Holland.
1413-1415 AD: In an effort to compel the remaining Jews in Spain to convert to Christianity, there are forced religious debates to determine whether Jesus was the true Messiah. The debates—known as the Disputation of Tortosa—are held between Jews and a converted Jew and aid to the Pope Boniface XIII, Jeronimo de la Santa Fe. As a result of these debates and increased persecution, thousands of Jews convert to Christianity. Most Jews in the government, justice system, and financial administration are primarily secular and therefore quick to be baptized so they can maintain their appointed prestigious positions. In addition to the conversions, there are also many interfaith marriages during this period between wealthy Anusim and Christian nobility. The marriages are convenient since Anusim are in need of social status while the Christians lacked the wealth they need to match their social positions.
1449 AD: With thousands of new Jewish converts in Spain, tensions arise between old and new Christians. Part of this animosity towards Anusim derives from the fact that many are known to still be practicing Judaism in secret. There is also significant jealousy towards the Anusim because they are now able to use their status as Christians to move up the ranks in Spanish society. Discrimination of Anusim officially takes on racial tones when the City Council of Toledo passes the “purity of blood” statutes. These statues use family histories to try and distinguish Christians of “pure stock” from Christians with Jewish ancestry. The statutes prohibit impure Christians from holding any public or private office where they may “exercise power over old Christians.”
1479 AD: The marriage of Ferdinand V of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile unite the two Spanish kingdoms. As Queen Isabella establishes order and centralizes authority in a relatively short period of time, the united Spanish kingdom becomes one of the more powerful states in Europe. Maintaining royal political power and unity is a priority to the monarchy but the threat of a popular uprising looms large. Given the large scale animosity felt towards Anusim, establishing an inquisition is one option for satisfying the masses.
1481- 1492 AD: The Queen becomes convinced by her confessor, Friar Thomas de Torquemada, that heretical Jews pose a threat to the kingdom’s unity. As a result, the Queen orders a papal inquisition in Seville and appoints Torquemada as the Inquisitor-General. As Torquemada displays a ruthless determination in rooting out the heretics, the Inquisition quickly spreads throughout Spain. The inquisitors seek out, investigate, torture, and often kill Anusim who are found guilty of practicing Judaism in secret. While the Inquisition initially investigates the piety of only those accused of heresy, it quickly becomes a racial exercise, targeting all Anusim just for being of Jewish descent. Even Jewish converts of nobility or social stature are not immune to the Inquisition. The Inquisition relies on informers and their suspicions. Once a heretic is identified, torture is used to procure confessions, even forced and false ones. Heretics are then given a public trial of humiliation, auto-da-fe, to determine their sentence. 13,000 are found guilty of judaizing—2,000 of whom are burned at the stake while the rest are whipped, imprisoned, or enslaved. The wealth and property of the Anusim is confiscated and divided between the Inquisition, the Church, and the Queen. After a long and expensive war to recapture Granada from the Muslims, the monarchy’s coffers are in bad need of this increase in their funds.
1492 AD: On 31 March, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella sign a certificate of expulsion, the Alhambra Decree, which orders all Jews left in Spain to either convert to Christianity or leave the country within four months. While tens of thousands of Jews are quickly baptized, around 100,000 flee to Portugal, and another 100,000 flee to modern-day Italy, Holland, North Africa, Turkey, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, the Balkans and the new colonies. They are forced to leave behind all of their valuable possessions.
1492- 1497 AD: Around half of the Jews escaping Spain flee to Portugal. The Portuguese King John II allows the entry of these Jewish refugees on the condition that they will pay a heavy tax and if they do not leave within a year they will become slaves to the King. After the year deadline passes, very few Jews have the means to leave Portugal and are forced into slavery.
This arrangement does not last long before King Manuel comes to power and cancels the slavery status of Jews. Instead, Manuel decides to capitalize on the Jews’ skills and wealth as free people. While Jews must continue to abide by certain discriminatory legislations, they use their relative freedom to flourish economically and attain high positions as counselors and ministers.
However, Manuel soon bows to the pressure of the Catholic Kings and his future wife, Princess Isabel, to rid Portugal of Jews. He issues an edict for the forceful conversion of all Sephardim in Portugal and the placement of all Jewish children in the custody of the Church. In response, thousands of Sephardim try to leave Portugal, but Manuel outlaws emigration because he does not want to lose the assets Jews have afforded his kingdom. In one specific incident, he tricks thousands of Sephardim to go to the port of Lisbon with the promise that ships are arriving to take them to their chosen destinations. While they are waiting for embarkation, they are caught by surprise and 20,000 are carried off to churches to be forcibly baptized. After burning Hebrew books and destroying synagogues, the King decrees that for twenty years there are to be no inquiries or investigations of the practices of these new converts. With this understanding, clandestine Judaism thrives in Portugal for the next three decades.
Sephardim in the New World
1492- 1502 AD: Two days before the deadline for the Spanish expulsion, Columbus sails to the New World. Columbus’s four voyages are funded by three wealthy Anusim: Sanchez, Santangel, and Abranbanel. Many historians believe there is sufficient evidence Columbus was of Jewish descent and the sense of urgency in his voyages was because many of Columbus’s passengers were fleeing Jews. The total number of Anusim who sail to the New World in these voyages is unknown but estimates are high and continue to grow. Hoping to start a new life and live in freedom and autonomy, many Jews flee to the New World because an inquisition in the colonies has not yet been established and many parts of Europe are closed to Jews. Technically, several decrees barred the entry of Jews into the colonies but through bribery, secrecy, and forged documents, thousands manage to secure a place on the boats. Sephardim settle in colonies that are now modern day Cuba, Mexico, the Caribbean, South America, and the Southwestern part of the U.S.
1506 AD: During Passover, anti-Semitic riots break out in Lisbon, Portugal. Over three thousand Anusim are massacred. At this time, Anusim are still protected by law in Portugal and their persecution or murder is illegal. Upon hearing the news of the Lisbon massacre, King Manual is furious and orders the execution of forty-five of the ringleaders, including two monks. For the next twenty years, Portuguese Anusim live free from routine persecutions or local hostilities but they are more careful in hiding their Jewish practices.
1531- 1540 AD: Pope Clement VII authorizes an inquisition tribunal in Portugal. The Anusim of Portugal knew for three years about the coming Inquisition but King John III prohibited their emigration. The first auto-da-fe in Portugal took place in Lisbon in 1540. Thereafter, thousands of Anusim convicted of heresy are robbed, imprisoned, tortured, or burned at the stake. Many Anusim manage to flee Portugal, escaping to Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the New World—all places where there are existing Sephardic communities.
1571 AD: After the Inquisitions, Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal move in large numbers to cities in Mexico such as Oaxaca, Vera Cruz, Guadalajara, and Mexico City. According to chronicles from the period, the combination of Jews and Anusim far outnumber true Catholics. Free from the Inquisition, many of these Anusim circumcise their children, eat kosher, and even build synagogues.
By 1531, Catholic Franciscans in Mexico are fed up and write to the Spanish Monarch complaining the Anusim are taking over the lands of the New World. Though local Franciscan inquisitors have already been conducting auto-da-fes in Mexico for forty years, in 1571, Pope Philip II orders the establishment of a formal inquisition tribunal in Mexico and Peru—the first tribunals in the New World.
During the entire colonial period of Mexico, approximately 1,500 Anusim are convicted of heresy. Punishments include confiscation of property, lashes or public beatings, a lifetime of wearing a “holy sac,” or execution. Inquisition records show that out of those Anusim found guilty of heresy, approximately 110 were executed. Although these numbers do not include those victims who died in prison or from torture, they are very small in comparison to the thousands massacred and burned at the stake by the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions.
1579- 1596 AD: Spain grants Luis de Carvajal, a Spanish Conquistador and son of Jewish converts, a very large land tract which covers a major portion of northern Mexico, South Texas, and New Mexico. This is the only land grant given by Spain where the recipient does not have to prove a pure Christian blood line. Carvajal and two hundred Sephardic families settle the land and establish villages in Northern Mexico, which are today the sites of Monterrey and Monclova. When the Inquisition indicts the Carvajal family and friends for practicing Judaism, Luis de Carvajal refuses to denounce them. Five of the Carvajal family members are tortured and burned at the stake in Mexico City’s main plaza. Luis de Carvajal is put in prison and dies within the year.
1580 AD: La Santa Catalina, a ship sailing from Portugal, drops off many Sephardim at the Island of Ocoa—today the Island of Santa Domingo.
1600s AD: In Amsterdam, a protestant country immune from the Inquisition, Sephardim thrive and grow in number and influence.
1602 AD: Don Juan de Onate leads a group, largely of Jewish descent, across the Rio Grande River and through El Paso, Texas. In order to escape detection from the Mexican Inquisition, these Anusim settle the interior of the New World, including present day Texas, Colorado, Arizona, and California. Under Onate’s governorship, they become the founders of the modern state of New Mexico and the city of Santa Fe.
1625 AD: Over a hundred years since its establishment and after decades of inactivity, the Inquisition in the Canary Islands remobilizes. Denunciations by informants reveal a large and rich, although secretive, Jewish community dating back to the Spanish Inquisition. By and large, the Inquisition in the Canaries during the 17th and 18th centuries is unsuccessful in finding and convicting Anusim because the general public is not very supportive and ignored the Inquisition’s edicts.
1630 AD: For the last two hundred years, thousands of Anusim have settled in the Spanish-Portuguese colony of Brazil. In those first two centuries, Anusim suffered socially from the Inquisition but prospered economically from sugar plantations and exporting wood to Europe. In 1630, the Dutch defeat the Portuguese and take over northeastern Brazil. In Dutch Brazil, the Jewish community thrives, practicing Judaism openly and building synagogues. More Jews from Holland migrate to Brazil, making the Jewish population the largest group of European colonists.
After a nine year siege, in 1654, the Portuguese armies overtake all of Brazil. As a condition for surrender, the Dutch governor of Brazil insists that the Portuguese not slaughter the Jews. Instead, they are forced to leave along with their Dutch comrades. While some Anusim stay, most move to Holland, the Rio Grande, and the Caribbean Islands.
1642 AD: The discovery of a secret synagogue in Mexico City reignites the Mexican Inquisition. Thomas de Trevino de Sobremonte, a practicing Jew and highly respected leader of the Jewish community, refuses to convert and is burned at the stake.
1655 AD: With the Portuguese takeover of Brazil, two dozen Jews leave Recife, Brazil and migrate to New Amsterdam (New York). There, they establish the first organized Jewish congregation in the United States. While they were always free to practice their faith privately, it takes thirty years before they receive official permission to publicly and officially practice Judaism. This accomplishment is owed to their unrelenting struggle to establish religious freedom for themselves in their new land. In 1730, the congregation consecrates the first synagogue in the United States, Congregation Shearith Israel.
1658 AD: Sephardim escaping the Inquisition in the Caribbean Islands move to Newport, Rhode Island. Over the next century, until the American Revolution, their population swells as they develop a practicing Jewish community of the Sephardic tradition. In 1763, they dedicate the Touro Synagogue, the oldest surviving synagogue in the United States.
End of Inquisition in Europe and the Americas and the Rise of Anti-Semitism in Muslim Lands
1670 AD: Jews in Morocco suffer greatly under the tyranny of Moulay Rashid. Intent on terrorizing the Jews, Rashid publicly burns Jewish officials, expels others, imposes outrageous non-Muslim taxes, and destroys synagogues.
1773 AD: Portugal’s King Joseph I establishes a royal decree abolishing discrimination between old and new Christians based on “purity of blood.”
1790 AD: After the accession to the Moroccan throne of Jew-hater Moulay Yazid, a terrible pogrom breaks out in Tetouan and spreads to several other Moroccan cities. Jewish men, women, and children are stripped in public, dragged through the streets by horses, beaten, thrown in prison, and often killed. Those that survive the massacres either convert to Islam or pay enormous bribes to the monarchy.
1807 AD: Under the leadership of Napoleon, France invades Portugal. 20,000 Portuguese identify themselves to the French as Jews.
1821 AD: The Mexican Inquisition is abolished with the independence of Mexico. Fifty years later, an edict of religious tolerance is issued allowing Jews to become Mexican citizens.
1822 AD: Brazil gains independence from Portugal. Escaping persecution and economic hardship, many Moroccan Jews migrate to Brazil and settle along the Amazon River.
1834 AD: Inquisition tribunals of Spain finally disappear completely.
1839 AD: Mobs attack the Jewish community in Mashhad, Iran and burn down synagogues. The remaining Iranian Jewish community converts to save their lives but continues practicing Judaism in secret.
1870 AD: After forty years of French colonization in Algeria, Algeria’s Jews are granted French citizenship and largely adapt the French language and culture. A significant Jewish presence in Algeria dates back to the Roman period. Many Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition went to Algeria to join the already established Jewish community. In Ottoman Algiers, Jews lived with a relative degree of social autonomy, prospered economically, and were able to maintain their religious orthodoxy.
1917 AD: Samuel Schwartz, a Jewish engineer in Portugal on business, discovers a community of Anusim in Belmonte. Traveling throughout Northern Portugal, Schwartz identifies around 15,000 Anusim, in addition to those in Belmonte, who have maintained secret Jewish practices throughout the centuries. These Portuguese Jewish communities believe they are the only remaining Jews.
Sephardim in the Holocaust and the Birth of Israel
1939- 1945 AD: Sephardic Jewry in Europe suffers the same fate of their Ashkenazi counterparts. While Sephardim live in all parts of Europe, the largest Sephardic communities are in Greece, Holland, Yugoslavia, and Italy. More than 90% of the Jewish community in Greece is wiped out by the Holocaust. Hitler’s goal to eliminate world Jewry is not confined to central Europe. The spread of Nazi ideology has a devastating affect on the Jewish communities of Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia.
1941 AD: For two days in June, Iraqi Jews suffer their own Kristallnacht, known as the “Farhud,” meaning “violent dispossession.” Incited by pro-Nazi radio messages from the Zionist enemy Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, Iraqi mobs rampage several Baghdad districts killing any Jew in site, including women and children, and destroying all Jewish property. The army and Iraqi police do nothing to stop it and in many instances participate. The massacre continues for 48 hours until they are forcefully stopped by British forces reentering Baghdad. This is the beginning of the end for Iraq’s Jewish community.
1948 AD: With the establishment of the State of Israel, Sephardim living in Islamic countries are persecuted and threatened. Over the next twenty years, 600,000 Jews from Muslim states flee to Israel independently or are brought over on special Israeli military operations. Over 200,000 come from Morocco and 100,000 from Iraq. In most cases, Muslim authorities in all Arab states confiscate the Jews’ possessions and property and force them to relinquish their citizenship. Resultantly, the majority of Sephardim arrive to Israel poor and empty-handed. Overwhelmed by the enormous numbers and with no help from the United Nations, the Government of Israel places the Sephardic immigrants in transit camps in the less populated areas of Israel, primarily the Negev. The difficult conditions of these camps do not create an ideal beginning for these communities, putting them at a disadvantage compared to the wealthier and more educated Ashkenazi community. Today, Sephardim still make up a much larger percentage of the working and under class in Israel than Ashkenazim but with time this social and economic gap is closing.
1956 AD: Tunisia gains its independence from France and a number of anti-Jewish policies are put into place while many Jews are targeted for attack and the Jewish ghettos are razed to the ground. Tunisia’s 100,000 Jews emigrate to France or Israel.
1962 AD: Algeria gains its independence from France. In the face of mounting hostility toward Jews, nearly the entire Algerian Jewish community migrates to France or Israel.
1968 AD: On 14 December, the Jewish community in Spain receives official recognition as a practicing religious body. On the same day and in the same document, the edict of expulsion of 31 March 1492 is abrogated.
1999 AD: In Israel, the Sephardic political party, Shas, wins 17 out of 120 seats in the Knesset. This marks a great achievement by the Israeli Sephardim in achieving political influence.
Conclusion
For centuries, thousands of Anusim and their descendants maintained their Jewish beliefs and practices in secret for fear of persecution or judgment. Over time, some Sephardim were able to pass the family secret down from generation to generation; others continued Jewish practices without knowing their source; and many lost the knowledge of their Jewish ancestry but never lost their sense of otherness.
It is suspected that thousands—if not millions—of Bnai Anusim, descendants of forced converts from Spain, are residing today in Mexico, South America, Spain, Portugal, and southwestern United States. Only a fraction of these “lost Jews” are aware of their Jewish identity. Recently, however, there has been a revival occurring among Bnai Anusim who are either discovering their Jewishness for the first time or finally shedding the secrecy of their identity. Particularly, in the last twenty years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of Bnai Anusim who have publicly identified themselves as Jews and begun to explore the roots of their Hebraic heritage.
According to testimonies, some Bnai Anusim families carefully preserved and protected Jewish practices and therefore were always very conscious of their Jewish identity. Others, after centuries of forced assimilation, miraculously awakened to their sense of connection to Judaism and independently acted on their desire to return to their ancestral faith. Restoring their Jewish identity is a powerful process in reclaiming what had been forcefully stolen from their ancestors.
Assimilation and complicated family histories have made the task of identifying sources of Jewish ancestry difficult, although not at all impossible. Part of the discovery process is recognizing the Jewish practices Bnai Anusim have kept over the centuries, often without even knowing their source or purpose. Keeping Kosher, observing the Sabbath, using Ladino (Spanish Hebrew) words and phrases, and celebrating Jewish holidays are just some of the traditions these Sephardim have maintained. The survival of less known rabbinic practices such as putting pebbles on graves and sweeping floors a certain way, which could not have been learned from just reading the Torah, is particularly convincing proof of their direct Jewish heritage. For many returning Jews, their given names and family names are historic links to their Jewish genealogy. Dell Sanchez, in his books The Last Exodus and Aliya!!!, gives an extensive list of Sephardic surnames, noting that many historians believe the letters “ez”—short for Erez Israel—were attached to names by Sephardic Jews as a way of saying “I am of my land, Israel.” In addition to genealogical and historical proof, there are growing numbers of Sephardim who have chosen DNA testing as a scientific tool for unlocking the truth of their ethnic origin.
As Sephardic Jews come to terms with their identity, whole communities are coming forth publicly and professing their desires to return to normative Judaism. Synagogues are being built and rabbis are sent to even the most remote communities of Bnai Anusim to offer them religious teaching in mainstream Judaism and reconnect them to World Jewry. Before these lost brethren fully return to orthodoxy, a conversion process is usually necessary. However, rabbis usually more sensitive to the context of the conversion, emphasizing it as a cautionary measure and ceremony of return, not meant to deny their Jewishness but to protect it.
In the wake of the return of the Bnai Anusim to Judaism, we can also expect to see a massive aliya to Israel. To be sure, many of these Bnai Anusim have expressed their feelings of not belonging in the land of their birth, preferring to return to the home of their ancestors. They feel an unexplainable love for Israel and a longing to be part of the Jewish state. As the Spirit of God moves in their hearts, they are encouraged by the prophecies and feel commanded to return to Israel. Some have even testified of angelic visits and divine appointments in which this message was revealed. In the coming days of the Lord we will witness the full fulfillment of the prophecies in the final exodus. The hearts of the lost Jews will be restored to their fathers (Malachi 4:5) and they will gather and reunite with their brethren to possess the land promised to them (Obadiah 19-21).
Shelley Neese is managing editor of The Jerusalem Connection.
The Copper Scroll Project
Oct 27th
By Shelley Neese
“Shelley, I want you to meet the guy who has cracked the code on the Copper Scroll.”
With that intriguing introduction, I shook hands with Jim Barfield. We stood among the kiosks of Israeli goods during a lunch break at a Christian Zionist conference in Forth Worth, Texas.
“Congratulations,” I replied, “but what’s the Copper Scroll?”
“A treasure map from the prophet Jeremiah,” Barfield answered. I gave Barfield and his companion a quick once over, trying to determine whether they were the well-intentioned kind of crazy or scary crazy. A small-town Oklahoma man with impressive posture, Barfield sported long (really long) grey hair and a full goatee. His partner in “The Copper Scroll Project” is Chris Knight. Knight, another long-haired fellow, speaks softly and possesses a gentle demeanor, but has the same look of confidence and conviction that Barfield exudes as they brief me on the Scroll.
I took in the story with a bit of skepticism at first, but the longer we talked the more I thought that these guys may actually be onto something. The first thing I did after the conference was jump on my laptop and Wikipedia “Copper Scroll.” I also watched a documentary from the History Channel on the mysteries that enshroud the Scroll. I confess there was a gaping hole in my knowledge base since I had never heard of the world’s most intriguing archaeological find.
The Copper Scroll was discovered in 1952 in one of the Qumran caves along the Dead Sea. Though an anomaly among the more than nine-hundred ancient manuscripts, it is part of the official Dead Sea Scrolls Collection. The Copper Scroll differs from the others in that it is written entirely on thin sheets of alloyed copper rather than papyrus or leather. While most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found by Bedouins and sold on the black market to antiquities dealers, the Copper Scroll was found by an archaeological team exactly where it had been waiting to be discovered at the back of a cave for over two thousand years. Unlike the rest of the Dead Sea Scrolls Collection, the Copper Scroll is not religious in nature. Instead, it is a detailed list of approximately sixty locations where vast amounts of gold, silver, coins, vessels, and other religious artifacts are hidden.
When the Scroll was found it was rolled in two parts and badly oxidized. Fearing it would crumble, experts debated for five years the best way to open the brittle Scroll. Finally it was sent to a lab in Manchester, England where they cut the Scroll into twenty-three strips with a high-speed saw. Photographs of the strips were taken and eventually published. The Scroll itself was sent to the Archaeological Museum in Jordan since it had been found during an expedition sponsored by the Jordan Department of Antiquities.
There are several theories as to where the treasure listed in the scroll came from and to whom it belonged. There are those who think it is just an ancient hoax. It seems odd that the Essenes, not known for their sense of humor, would create a fake inventory on expensive copper and bury it in a cave for a joke. The most popular theory is that the list details treasure from the Second Temple. In this scenario the Temple items were hidden just before Titus and the Roman army surrounded the walls of Jerusalem. The theory to which Barfield ascribes—and most Dead Sea scholars reject—is that the Scroll is from the First Temple period. Barfield looks to the Second Book of Maccabees and a lesser known seventeenth century book called Emeq HaMelekh (“Valley of the King”). Together these tell the story of the prophet Jeremiah who with the help of five Temple guardians, one named Shimur Halevi, carefully hid the holy objects of the Temple to protect them from the Babylonians and documented those locations on a scroll made from copper.
The Copper Scroll is a very difficult text to understand, written in an uncommon style of Hebrew. Many of the words used in the Scroll were unfamiliar to scholars because they do not appear in any other biblical or rabbinical texts. Adding to the puzzle, next to seven of the locations listed on the Scroll, there are two or three random Greek letters. Worst of all, most of the locations the Scroll lists are obscure references too narrow in their specificity to be known outside of that time period. The list speaks of tombs, dry wells, caves, and pools belonging to unknown people and places. For example, the Scroll writes “Sixty five bars of gold lie on the third terrace in the cave of the old Washers House” and “Seventy talents of silver are enclosed in a wooden vessel in the cistern of a burial chamber in Matia’s courtyard.” I asked Barfield if somehow he had discovered the identity of the old Washer or if he found a secret code associated with the Greek letters. He said cracking the code was more direct than that. “Others have applied too much knowledge or too much significance to these details in their search for the locations and just get lost in it.”
Barfield is the first to admit he lacks the Indiana Jones background one would expect. He has no prior knowledge of the language, archaeology, or geography of the region. Instead he is a retired Oklahoma criminal investigator. Arson was his specialty and he was recognized as one of the Sooner State’s best. His spiritual hobby was studying biblical chronology, which is why he got interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Barfield says he woke up one morning in December 2006, after having a conversation with Vendyl Jones—a man who has spent his lifetime in search of the Copper Scroll treasures and was rumored to be the inspiration for Spielberg’s Indiana Jones—and decided to take a look at the translations of the Copper Scroll. He had read it once before in his work with biblical chronology and said, “I was totally bored by it. It was just a list of kosher metals.” But that morning was different. Barfield treated the Copper Scroll the same as he would an arson investigation. He used a process of elimination. When doing an investigation he tries to prove everyone innocent and thereby eliminates the fringe factors. With the Copper Scroll, he eliminated the fringe and came to a realization. After looking at the Scroll for five minutes he understood the first location and twenty minutes later he identified the next four locations. He and his wife took their first trip to Israel to confirm whether the sites and places that he had identified actually existed. “I wanted to make sure I wasn’t just imagining things,” Barfield said. It took six months for Barfield to crack the code for the rest of the locations.
For his research on the Scroll he prepared an investigative report no different in style than anything he would have done for an arson case in Oklahoma, except, of course, for the ancient Hebrew and Israeli maps. He got on a plane and took his report to the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) in Jerusalem. Knowing the IAA must confront treasure hunters every day, I asked if they treated him skeptically at first, especially given his background and faith, but he said laughing, “Once they saw my report they just moved me to the head of the class.” He says that all of the archaeologists, rabbis, and historians he has presented his research to have been convinced: “It is so simple. They just all thump their heads.”
He has been to Israel four times subsequently, meeting with a top level archaeologist from the IAA who has committed himself to the expedition. Usually there is no shortage of red tape when it comes to conducting an expedition in the most religiously sensitive and politically fragile climate in the world. However, Barfield got the permit and will be going to Israel this winter on an expedition to one of the Scroll’s priority locations. The Copper Scroll Project says they are ninety-nine percent certain that they have found fifty-six of the sixty locations of the Copper Scroll; the other four they are just a bit shaky on. They readily admit though that they can not be sure the sites have not already been found and looted over the last 2,600 years.
The quantities of precious metals that potentially lurk under the Judean hills and Negev sands are conservatively estimated to be worth over one billion US dollars today. Other estimates put the value at twice that, calculating between one hundred sixty and two hundred tons of gold and silver. However, the worth of the archaeological discoveries would be far greater than any monetary value.
Both Barfield and Knight describe themselves as “Torah observant Christians” with a sincere love for Israel and the Jewish people. Their central desire in getting involved with the Copper Scroll was to return the treasure of the Scroll to its rightful owners: the nation of Israel. In a phone interview with Barfield we discussed the magnitude of it all, how it could shake the faith of all unbelievers and potentially complete preparations for the refurnishing of the Third Temple. I also noted that the finder’s fee for such an achievement would be significant. “If God has selected me to do this,” Barfield replied, “He gave it to a guy that just doesn’t give a darn about wealth. My children and grandchildren love God and I just want it to stay that way. I want to return these items to Israel and what they do from that point is up to them.”
Whether or not Barfield has solved this ancient mystery is yet to be proven, but after hearing his story I can’t help but wish he is indeed “the guy who cracked the code on the Copper Scroll.”
Shelley Neese is managing editor for the The Jerusalem Connection Report.
Iran Divestment Campaign
Sep 27th
By Shelley Neese
The European Union and United Nations’ attempts to stop Iran’s nuclear program have amounted to little more than wrist-slapping. After five years of negotiations – alternating carrots with sticks – the terrorist regime remains unpersuaded. Iran’s long-range-missile test and announcement that it possesses 6,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges were this summer’s demonstrations of the regime’s nuclear intentions. In reaction to the international paralysis, on the American domestic scene, harsher economic sanctions against Iran are being pursued on a number of fronts simultaneously. Calls to ratchet up the pressure on Iran are coming from the campaign trail, the U.S. Congress and state legislatures.
There are few issues the two U.S. presidential candidates agree on this election year, but the need for keeping nukes out of Ahmadinejad’s hands has been cited by each campaign as top priority. While Sen. McCain says the military option should not be taken off the table, he has called for a worldwide divestment campaign to get “people, businesses, pension funds, and financial institutions across the world [to] divest from companies doing business with Iran.” Sen. Obama, often criticized for his willingness to hold direct negotiations with rogue states, has hardened his stance on Iran, calling for an international divestment effort modeled after the 1980s campaign against apartheid in South Africa.
In July, the Senate Banking Committee passed a bipartisan bill to expand economic and trade sanctions against Iran, authorizing divestment from companies conducting business with Iran’s oil sector. According to Sen. Chris Dodd, chairman of the panel, the bill also “helps to prevent the illegal diversion of sensitive U.S. technologies to Iran.” The legislation encourages state and local governments to divest from companies investing more than $20 million in Iran’s energy sector. Companies affected by such divestments include Royal Dutch Shell, Spain’s Repsol, Italy’s ENI, and France’s Alcatel and Total.
In the last year, there has been a flurry of activity in U.S. state legislatures requiring states to divest from companies that actively work with terrorist countries as designated by the U.S. State Department (Iran, Sudan, Syria and Cuba). Of these countries, Iran has the largest GDP and stands the most to lose. Thus far, 11 state legislatures have voted to divest their public-pension and retirement funds from Iran. For states like California, this means withdrawing an estimated $2 billion in funds tied up with Iran. Michigan was the most recent state to pass a comprehensive divestment plan that included timetables. Twenty more states are considering similar divestment proposals to supplement federal and international sanctions.
Varying degrees of sanctions have been imposed on Iran since 1979, but the new wave of U.S. divestment and talk of “world divestment” seeks to totally isolate Iran economically. The tightening of sanctions by the U.S. Senate and the expansion of sanctions by states are encouraging to be sure. Divestment, however, can also be implemented on an individual and congregational level. No matter the size of your portfolio or pension, we should all make our investments “Iran-Free” and “Terror-Free.” Send a letter to your investment manager about divesting your personal investments from Iran. Contact The Jerusalem Connection (info@tjci.org) if you would like a sample letter to send to your investment manager or if you would like to see a list of all the international companies known to invest in Iran’s Oil and Natural Gas sector.
Shelley Neese is managing editor for the The Jerusalem Connection Report.
Defining moments in American Black-Jewish relations
Feb 27th
By Shelley Neese
Jews and Blacks came together naturally out of shared experiences of persecution and perseverance. Like any complex relationship there were periods of cooperation and of conflict. The 1950s and early 1960s are known as the Golden Years when Black and Jewish communities joined hands to take the lead in improving national race relations. But Jews played a major role in the development of civil rights organizations decades before. With the end of the long costly years of fighting racial discrimination in the courts and on the streets, the two communities experienced a marked break down in their relationship. With the rise of Black Power, race riots, and Israel’s wars, Blacks and Jews saw less mutual concerns and both turned inward. This timeline is not a comprehensive narrative of Afro-American history, American Jewish history, or the Civil Rights Movement. It is simply a retelling of the moments in history when Blacks and Jews crossed paths in meaningful ways that shaped their relationship and individual destinies.
1619 and 1654 (Entry to America)
The first black Africans arrive in the American colonies in 1619; the first professing Jews in 1654. Africans are forcefully shipped over as indentured servants; Jews are fleeing from persecution in their home countries and seeking a better life. A conservative estimate of the number of Africans who perish during the centuries of the slave trade is 15 million.
Note: Though the first official Jewish immigrants to America came in the 17th century, groups of Marranos (Jews who were forcefully converted to Christianity during the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions) fled to the New World two hundred years earlier.
1619-1865 (Imagery of the Exodus)
Racial slavery is legalized within the boundaries of the United States soon after the founding of the first colonies in Virginia. Between 1619 and 1807 approximately 645,000 Africans are shipped to what is now the U.S. By the Civil War, the slave population grows to 4 million.
The bondage of slaves is maintained by slave masters’ violent punishments. If slaves slow in their labor or try to escape they are brutalized and beaten or even murdered. As family members are sold at will, slaves live under the constant threat of families being torn apart. Under these terrorizing conditions, slaves look to the Bible for hope of salvation. Slaves, exposed to biblical teaching in the Protestant South, cling to the story of the Exodus. The imagery of God rescuing his people out of bondage in Egypt provides inspiration for slaves seeking freedom. Black slaves await their Moses and dream of a Promised Land.
Evidence of slaves’ affinity for stories of the Children of Israel is found in the many Gospel spirituals and freedom songs. For example, by 1790 slaves are singing, “Go Down Moses, Way down in Egypt’s land. Tell ole Pharaoh, Let my people go.” Another example of Afro-Americans early feeling of connection to the Holy Land is the use of “Zion” in the names of Black churches from the earliest times (i.e. Mount Zion, Zion Baptist Church).
1619-1865 (Early Jewish positions on slavery)
Like their Christian neighbors, the majority of the Jewish community in the South support slavery, or at least do not speak out against it. The percentage of Jews in the South involved in the slave trade (buying, owning, or selling) is comparable to the percentage of other whites (5-7%).
The Jewish population of the South by 1860 is estimated at 15,000. Given this miniscule number their influence on the slave system is insignificant. Jews play no big part in pro-slavery or anti-slavery movements. Jewish slave owners, like white Christians, willfully ignore their spiritual traditions that had long stressed the obligation to help the oppressed “because you were once strangers in the land of Egypt.”
Before the Civil War there are only a few examples of Jewish antislavery activities. Moses Elias Levy, a Jewish sugar planter in Florida, published in 1828 “A Plan for the Abolition of Slavery.” Levy was one of the few elite Southerners to propose emancipation.
1780-1860 (Abolition Movement)
After the American Revolution, support grows for the emancipation of slaves and abolition of slavery. As the Abolition Movement gains momentum, emancipation acts pass in every Northern state, New Jersey being the last to pass in 1804. Southerners, however, still rely greatly on slave labor and are very resistant to see it end.
Many of the Jewish revolutionaries and intellectuals fleeing Germany for America in 1848 join ranks with American Abolitionists. The most known of these immigrant Jewish abolitionists are August Bondi, Theodore Weiner, and Jacob Benjamin. The three men respond to a New York Tribune editorial in 1855 urging Americans to “hurry out to Kansas to help save the state from the curse of slavery.” Based on the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1954, the residents of both new states are to decide whether they will expand or end slavery, which then determines if they enter the Union as a free or slave state.
Bondi, Weiner, and Benjamin move to Kansas to help support the anti-slavery forces. All three men join ranks with the Kansas Regulars under the leadership of John Brown—an active abolitionist. On 2 June, 1856 the Kansas Regulars clash violently with pro-slavery forces in the battle of Black Jack Creek. Shortly after the battle, Kansas abolishes slavery and enters the Union as a free state. This battle is a contributing event leading up to the American Civil War
1861-1865 (Civil War)
Jews, like the nation as a whole, are divided on the slavery debate. The majority of Jews in the North favor emancipation and the majority of Jews in the South—tied to the plantation economy—side with the Confederacy. Leading Rabbis participate in the antislavery debate. From the pulpit, they preach the social evils of slavery. When the war starts, many Northern rabbis urge Jews to volunteer in the army and support the Union.
Lincoln’s call for troops is met with an enthusiastic response from the Jewish community. More than 9,000—a high proportion of them volunteers—fight in the Union ranks, an extremely large number considering the fact that less than 150,000 Jews resided in the U.S. at that time. 2,000 Jews fight on the Confederate side.
Seven Jews are awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for their bravery in fighting with the Union army. Lieutenant Abraham Cohn of the 6th New Hampshire Volunteers who fought in eleven major battles and was twice wounded is awarded this hallowed distinction.
1860-1890 (Jews and African Americans as second class citizens)
With the end of slavery comes a new system of injustice. Former slaves are “free” but they face segregation, disenfranchisement, and discrimination in housing, employment, and education. In the Black Press, Jews alone among American whites are seen as sharing the status of second-class citizenship. In 1867, The Christian Recorder, official organ of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, condemns the persecution of Jews by Gentile whites: “How cruel, how unjust the spirit that mocks this unfortunate people [Jews], a people of your own color.” The Recorder goes on to call upon white America to put an end to this “narrow-minded prejudice against an honorable people.” In 1889, The New York Age, a leading Afro-American weekly, says flatly: “There is a similarity between the Jews and the Negro. One is despised almost as much as the other.”
1881 (Tuskegee University)
Tuskegee Institute is founded in 1881 during the Reconstruction period following the Civil War. In Alabama, like the rest of the South, former slaves are illiterate with few employable job skills. The Tuskegee school provides freed slaves with an education so they can support themselves. The 25-year old Booker T. Washington is selected as the first principal at Tuskegee. Washington is an aggressive fund raiser for the school and he attracts many Jewish supporters.
In 1904, Paul Warburg, a Jewish investment banker, joins Tuskegee’s board of trustees at Washington’s behest. Julius Rosenwald, son of Jewish immigrants who rose to the presidency of Sears, joins the board in 1909 after being impressed with Washington’s autobiography.
Rosenwald is a creative philanthropist who enlists the help of other distinguished and wealthy friends, many of them also Jewish. Between 1911 and 1948, Rosenwald gives $22 million to support Afro-American education. Washington and Rosenwald develop a matching program for developing new schools in counties where white school authorities refuse to provide school facilities for Afro-Americans. They eventually establish and operate over 5,000 small community schools on the Tuskegee Institute model. This work is a major part of Dr. Washington’s (and Rosenwald’s) legacy.
1896 (Plessy v. Ferguson)
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of racial segregation, even in public accommodations, under the doctrine “separate but equal.” This is a landmark decision upheld by Southern states and many local governments outside the south until 1954.
Jews in America concerned for the safety of their co-religionist in Russia do not ignore the parallels between the plight of Afro-Americans in the South and persecution of Jews in Russia. Jewish newspapers on more than one occasion refer to lynchings and anti-Black riots as “pogroms.”
1909 (Founding of NAACP and National Urban League)
Racial violence is rampant, segregation is institutionalized, and Afro-Americans are disenfranchised. In this setting, The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded out of necessity. The NAACP acts as a civil rights organization to eliminate race prejudice and ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of minority groups in the U.S. The NAACP is started by a diverse group of Black, White, and Jewish Americans. Among the founders are thirty-two Afro-Americans, including W.E.B Du Bois and Ida Wells-Barnett. Early Jewish co-founders are Henry Moskowitz, Julius Rosenthal, Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, and Lillian Wald.
By 1920 the NAACP is heavily reliant on Jewish financial and staff support. Many prominent Jews also assume leadership positions in the NAACP. Joel E. Spingarn, a Jewish professor, serves as NAACP board chairman. Spingarn recruits other Jewish board members such as Jacob Schiff, Rabbi Stephen Wise, Jacob Billikopf, and Arthur Sachs.
In its early years, the NAACP uses the courtroom to overturn Jim Crow statutes and other social injustices. In 1913, the NAACP fights President Woodrow Wilson’s introduction of segregation into the Federal Government policy. The NAACP also devotes much of its time bringing public attention to the problem of lynchings.
One year after the founding of NAACP, prominent Jewish and Afro-American leaders create the National Urban League. The League is a community-based movement devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream. In 1911, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) is created to combat anti-Semitism.
1913-1915 (Lynching of Leo Frank)
On 26 April 1913 the bloodied body of Mary Phagan, a 13-year old white female, is found in the basement of the pencil factory in Atlanta, Georgia where Phagan worked. The Atlanta police force has few suspects. Leo Frank, the manager of a pencil factory in Atlanta and an active member of Georgia’s Jewish community, is charged with Phagan’s murder based on shaky evidence. Days after Frank’s arrest, Jim Conley, the pencil factory’s Afro-American janitor, is caught washing blood out of a shirt. When confronted, Conley comes forth with an elaborate story of how he had been paid by Frank to help move Phagan’s dead body. This is the first instance in the postbellum South that the testimony of an Afro-American man is used to convict a white man.
The Leo Frank trial becomes a national obsession as newspapers have a field day reporting on the criminal proceeding. The Atlanta newspapers compete in circulation wars as they sensationalize every detail of the murder trial in largely racist terms. The Frank case is the first incident of intense national interest in which the needs of Afro-Americans and Jews seem in direct conflict. Afro-Americans believe Frank is guilty and Jews want to see Conley stand trial. Despite the gross inconsistencies in Conley’s story, on 24 May, a grand jury finds Frank guilty after deliberating for only four hours. Crowds outside the courthouse chant “Hang the Jews.”
After two years of failed appeals and legal haggling, the Georgia Governor reduces Frank’s death sentence to life imprisonment based on inconclusive evidence and additional testimony. Outraged, one night an angry mob calling itself “The Knights of Mary Phagan” decide to take justice in their own hands, kidnapping Frank from prison and publicly hanging him.
The Jewish community is traumatized by Frank’s lynching. Half of Georgia’s Jewish community leaves the state. The Frank case also generates the founding of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.
1920s (Rise of KKK)The new Klan differs from the original in that its influence grows all over the country and is not just concentrated in the South. At its peak in the 1920s, Klan membership exceeds 4 million. The reorganized Klan now extends its hateful agenda to include Jews, Catholics, Communists, and immigrants as victims.
A wave of anti-Semitism, racism, and nativism breaks out in the U.S. Racial violence mushrooms. This is largely engineered by the Klan and fueled by Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent, a sensationalist newspaper that publishes the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. With this turn for the worse, Jewish involvement with Afro-Americans greatly intensifies and they form an alliance of resistance to bring down the racist and anti-Semitic activities of the Klan.
1920 (In the Courtroom)
The NAACP’s civil rights strategy is to use litigation, law suits, and lobbying to challenge the U.S. to live up to its democratic values. One problem the NAACP faces, however, is a lack of Afro-American lawyers. Given the limited opportunities Afro-Americans have been given, there are only eleven hundred Afro-American lawyers in the entire country. Most of them had little experience. Jewish lawyers volunteer to fill the void. Jews on the NAACP legal counsel in these early years include Louis Marshall, James Marshall, Nathan Margold, Charles Studin, and Arthur B. Spingarn. Together they win a string of significant courtroom battles.
1933 (Rise of the Third Reich)
On 30 January, 1933 Adolph Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany. While the European nations and the U.S. hesitate in denouncing the Third Reich, Jews in the U.S. look for any possible ally. Afro-Americans are among the first to denounce Nazism outright. Black-Jewish relations enter a new era of closeness as they coordinate their opposition to Fascism.
For Jews, the danger of Nazi ideology is clear. Jews in Germany are stripped of their citizenship, removed from their jobs, and forced to live in ghettos. This is just one step in Hitler’s plan to ultimately remove Jews from German society. Afro-Americans sympathize with the severe oppression of European Jews, but Nazi ideology with its theories of white supremacy has racist implications that threaten them as well.
The outrage white Americans feel towards Nazis provides an opportunity to highlight similarities between the treatment of Jews in Europe and Blacks in America. Both groups are disenfranchised. Both are excluded from parks, playgrounds, and beaches. Both endure restrictions on their travel, education, and employment. Afro-Americans support U.S. intervention in Europe, but they question how long they must continue to suffer in America.
1941 (Fair Employment Practices Act)
On the eve of World War II there are ample work opportunities for Americans looking to lift themselves out of the Great Depression. U.S. defense plants are resistant to hiring Blacks. Jews, as well, face serious employment discrimination.
On 25 June, 1941 President Roosevelt signs Executive Order No. 8802—The Fair Employment Practices Act. The Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) is created to oversee enforcement. The Act prohibits discrimination in government offices and all companies doing war-related work based on “race, creed, color, or national origin.” It is the first presidential action to prevent employment discrimination. This is a significant breakthrough for Afro-Americans, Jews, and women on the job front.
Enforcing and expanding the order brings Afro-American and Jewish agencies into frequent collaboration. They work together to push states to enforce their own Fair Employment laws. When Congress threatens to dissolve the FEPC at the war’s end, Blacks and Jews together form the National Council for a Permanent FEPC. This is the beginning of the organized Jewish community’s full involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
1943 (Detroit race riots)
From 1933-1943, the number of Afro-Americans in Detroit doubles from 100,000 to 200,000. The influx of newcomers puts a strain on housing and public facilities making racial tensions run thick.
On 20 June, 1943 rumors spread about interracial fighting at Belle Isle. One story is that white police on Belle Isle threw an Afro-American woman and her baby off a bridge. Another is that a white woman was raped and murdered by Blacks. These rumors quickly ignite anger and fear among Detroit residents. Black and White gangs swarm the streets of Detroit and virtual guerrilla warfare begins. People are beaten getting off street cars. Angry youth run down Hastings Street, where most stores are Jewish owned, breaking windows, assaulting merchants, and looting stores. The 36 hours of rioting claims 34 lives, 25 of them Afro-American. More than 1,800 are arrested for looting and other incidents.
The Hastings Street Riot ironically serves to bring Afro-American and Jewish agencies together. Blacks and Jews participate in ‘unity committees’ established by the city and state in response to the riots to examine the status of race relations and find ways to come together. Jewish shopkeepers form the East Side Merchants Association to become more involved in the Black community. The Association draws praise from Detroit’s Black leaders for its work with needy families and its support of Afro-American defense workers in their quest to secure public housing—something Blacks have heretofore been excluded from.
1945-1948 (Fight against Restrictive Housing Covenants)
In 1945, an Afro-American couple is imprisoned for violating a restrictive covenant on their small home in Los Angeles. Restrictive covenants are pledges made by property owners not to sell housing to certain racial or religious groups. Both Afro-Americans and Jews are prohibited from renting or buying real estate in areas whose residents have signed a restrictive covenant. With a severe postwar housing shortage making the few houses on the market off limits leaves working-class minorities homeless.
The NAACP brings three cases to the Supreme Court to bring awareness to these racist and anti-Semitic housing laws. ADL, AJC, and the American Jewish Congress boost the campaign by giving the NAACP advice and briefs based on their own experience with fighting restrictive covenants. In 1948, the Supreme Court decides restricted covenants are in violation of the 14th amendment. The fight for better housing has a direct benefit for both Afro-Americans and Jews. Since mutual action proves effective in an issue of shared concern, both groups are encouraged to continue cooperating on other issues.
May 1948 (Creation of the State of Israel)
Afro-Americans are sympathetic to the Jews’ quest for a nation since they too have known the pain of dispersion and longing for a homeland. In Israel’s strive for independence, the majority of Afro-Americans staunchly support Jewish rights to the Holy Land. Many Afro-American leaders play an active role in their support. Most notably is Walter White, the Afro-American head of the NAACP. White helps lobby the Liberian and Haitian delegations to the UN to vote in favor of the partition.
1950 (Leadership Conference on Civil Rights)
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) is founded by three leaders in the American Civil Rights Movement: NAACP executive secretary Roy Wilkins, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters founder A. Philip Randolph, and National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council leader Arnold Aaronson. The LCCR is based on the belief that social justice can best be achieved through coalition. The coalition focuses on promoting civil rights legislation at the Congressional level, testifying before Congressional committees on hundreds of bills protecting civil rights and civil liberties. LCCR is instrumental in lobbying for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
1951- 1954 (Brown v. Board of Education)The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund work overtime preparing briefs, recruiting plaintiffs, and writing and pleading cases. On every level of the legal work Afro-Americans and Jews work together. The team is made up of notable Afro-American and Jewish lawyers, including Thurgood Marshall (Black) and Jack Greenberg (Jewish). Jewish organizations involved with the Brown Case file supporting briefs, as they do in every other significant civil rights case.
On 17 May, the U.S. Supreme Court decides unanimously that “separate education facilities are inherently unequal.” The court orders steps be taken to destroy unequal education in 21 states with segregated classrooms. This is a major victory paving the way to full integration and a landmark of what the Black-Jewish alliance can achieve.
1955 (Montgomery Bus Boycott)
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a public bus after being told by the bus driver to move for a white passenger. Parks action starts the Montgomery bus boycott. The civil rights struggle switches battlefields from the courts to the street. The masses are mobilized for direct action: bus boycotts, sit-ins, freedom rides, and other acts of civil disobedience. Martin Luther King becomes the voice of the movement and his method of nonviolent resistance the strategy.
1956 (Suez Crisis)
During Israel’s 1956 war with Egypt, Martin Luther King Jr. offers his support to Israel. He delivers a sermon in New York comparing the experience of the Israelites in Egypt to that of Blacks in America. King says “there is something in the very nature of the universe which is on the side of Israel in its struggle with every Egypt.”
1958 (Synagogue Bombings)
As the Civil Rights Movement gains momentum and Jews’ activity in the movement becomes more known, there are a rash of synagogue bombings all over the South. Ten percent of the bombings by white supremacists from 1954-1959 have Jewish targets. The bombings are meant to send a warning to Rabbis active in the Civil Rights Movement. One such incident happens in October 1958. White supremacists dynamite Atlanta’s oldest Jewish synagogue because the Rabbi, Jacob Rothschild, is an outspoken advocate for integration and equality.
1960-1961 (Sit-ins and Freedom Rides)
The Civil Rights Movement gains national attention with the start of “sit-ins” across the South. The sit-in technique is a form of nonviolent protest where student demonstrators sit quietly at segregated lunch counters. They are often violently removed and arrested. Demonstrators are forced to endure terrible conditions but refuse to post bail, sticking their jailers with the burden of prison space. The activists form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to take these tactics of nonviolent confrontation further.
Some activists go on to participate in Freedom Rides to protest the segregation of public transportation despite a Supreme Court ban. There are around 440 Freedom Riders total, half of which are white and half of these being Jewish. Also more than half the civil rights lawyers that come south to make their services available to arrested demonstrators are Jewish. This is remarkable considering that just 2% of the entire population in the U.S. is Jewish.
On 4 May, 1961 the first group of thirteen Freedom Riders leaves Washington, D.C. for New Orleans. They are met by violent white mobs as are all the subsequent Freedom Riders. The Freedom Riders gain national sympathy and support, forcing President Kennedy to order the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to issue a desegregation order and ensure compliance.
1961 (Interfaith Clergy Freedom Ride)
Rabbi Martin Freedman organizes the Interfaith Clergy Freedom Ride which brings together four rabbis and fourteen ministers. In June, the clergy board a bus in Washington D.C. and head toward Tallahasse, Florida with the aim of integrating facilities along the way. At the Tallahasse airport restaurant on their way home the clergy are denied service because they refuse to serve Afro-Americans. The clergy refuse to leave until they are served. They sit and wait for two days without eating before the local police arrest them for unlawful assembly. Jailed for four days, the group refuses to post bail.
1962 (Prayer Pilgrimage to Albany)
Dr. King requests clergy to join him in Albany, Georgia for a ‘prayer pilgrimage’ with the goal of ending segregation. 75 rabbis and ministers meet outside Albany’s city hall, praying, singing hymns, and reading scripture. In a short time the clergy are placed under arrest to the cheers of angry crowds. It is the largest incarceration of clergy at once in American History.
1963 (March on Washington)
Plans are made for a March on Washington to demand President Kennedy and Congress to support legislation granting Blacks full rights. Jews like Rabbi Joachim Prinz are important to the march’s behind-the-scenes preparation. The AJC endorses the march and encourages all its members to attend. Despite external pressure to call the march off, on 28 August, 250,000 white and black Americans from all over the nation gather on the mall. The march is credited as a major factor leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the National Voting Rights Act of 1965.
1964 (Defense of Soviet Jewry)
Under Premier Nikita Khrushchev, the situation for Jews in the Soviet Union is worsening as they are singled out for extraordinary punishments. In April, the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry is formed to highlight the Soviet mistreatment of Jews and spearhead a national campaign on behalf of Soviet Jewry. Many Afro-American leaders take time out of their busy schedules for their own movement to participate in the conference and voice their solidarity (e.g. Dr. King, Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph). Roy Wilkins, the executive director of the NAACP, notes parallels between Blacks’ struggle in the U.S. and Jews’ struggle in the Soviet Union. Dr. King commands Blacks to not be silent on the issue: “I cannot stand idly by even though I live in the United States and even though I happen to be an American Negro, and fail to be concerned about what happens to my brothers and sisters that happen to be Jews in Soviet Russia. For what happens to them, happens to me—and to you, and we must be concerned.”
1964 (March in St. Augustine, Florida)
In the summer of 1964 civil rights leaders rally to St. Augustine, Florida, a town known for overtly ignoring integration laws. Each night, for several months, protestors meet at a local church and march peacefully to the old slave market. They gain national sympathy as the world watches chain-wielding Klansmen beat the marchers who refuse to strike back. At the time of the St. Augustine marches, the Central Conference of American Rabbis is in a meeting. They receive a telegram from Dr. King asking rabbis to join him. Sixteen leave the conference for St. Augustine to march in solidarity with their Black brothers. They are promptly arrested and taken to jail with Dr. King. In July, President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, outlawing segregation in any public accommodations. The law is a direct result of the civil rights protests and demonstrations in the South.
1965 (Selma to Montgomery)
1966 (Emergence of Black Power)
1967 (Jews turn inward)
In reaction to Israel’s Six-day war the Black-Jewish alliance breaks down further. Now it is Jews who are turning inward and changing their agenda to focus on self-preservation. Threatened with extinction by Arab armies on all sides, American Jews fear the worst only to rejoice in the dramatic victory of Israel as she dramatically beats back her aggressors. The victory reenergizes Jewish pride and support for Israel.
Senior civil rights leaders like Dr. King and Randolph rush to Israel’s defense, denouncing the Arab attack and issuing declarations of support for Israel’s independence and freedom. The Black Nationalist leaders however articulate the opposite since they more easily identify with dark-skinned Arabs than the white Israelis. The SNCC, under Carmichael’s leadership, jumps on the opportunity to denounce Zionism and assume a pro-Palestinian position. a
1968 (Ocean Hill – Brownsville School Controversy)
In the Ocean Hill-Brownsville section of Brooklyn the schools are made up of all Afro-American or Puerto Rican students and mostly white teachers. In an effort to decentralize control of the area’s public schools, community leaders are placed in charge of their own school district. The new school administration promptly fires 18 white teachers in violation of their union contract. The United Federation of Teachers calls for citywide strikes and for 55 days, 900 schools are closed and over 1 million pupils are without teachers. The strike severely divides the city. Black parents are against the Jewish teachers and union leaders because they feel they are not willing to share control of the schools. Because most of the fired teachers are Jewish, the Jewish community feels the incident is evidence of black anti-Semitism. The controversy pushes Afro-Americans and Jews into full retreat.
1968 (Assassination of Martin Luther King)
1975 (BASIC)
1978 (Afro-American support of PLO)
American Ambassador to the UN Andrew Young has an unauthorized meeting with a representative from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). President Carter forces Young to resign from his post because the Ambassador broke with U.S. policy. As the highest ranking Black man in the U.S. and a hero in the Afro-American community, Young’s forced resignation angers Blacks. Young’s supporters believe Jewish organizations pressured Carter into firing him even though Young assures them they did not. Jews believe the Black community sold out Israel by supporting the PLO even though none of the major civil rights groups did anything openly hostile towards Israel. Dangerous generalizations further weaken the once fruitful Black-Jewish relationship.
1984 (“Hymietown”)
In an interview with a friend at the Washington Post Rev. Jesse Jackson refers to Jews as “Hymies” and to New York City as “Hymietown.” When the racial slurs are made public the Jewish community is deeply hurt. Jackson later apologizes for the remark but the damage is already done. Many in the Jewish community remain deeply suspicious of Jackson and withdraw their support for his presidential bid.
1985 (Rebuilding the alliance)
On 6 February, twenty-four Black and Jewish Congressional leaders meet on Capitol Hill in a closed conference. The purpose of the meeting is to hold a frank dialogue on the state of Black-Jewish relations.
1985-1990 (Apartheid)
American Jews are prominent in the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa.
1991 (Crown Heights Riots)
In the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, an orthodox Jewish man looses control of the wheel and hits two Afro-American children, killing one and injuring the other. Mistaking the accidental killing as purposeful, Afro-American onlookers pull the man out of his car and beat him. For three days, angry Black mobs shouting “Get the Jews!” roam the streets attacking Jewish residents, setting fire to cars, and looting stores. One group of angry teens stabs to death an Orthodox Rabbinical student. The police are finally able to calm the situation. Though the riots are not replicated elsewhere and seem to be unique to Crown Heights, the event is burned into the memories of Black and Jewish communities.
2006 (FIBA)
Glenn Plummer Ministries allies with The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews to form Project FIBA (Fellowship of Israel and Black America). FIBA’s purpose is to nurture, develop, expand, and call the Afro-American community into its natural friendship and alliance with Israel and American Jews and vice-versa.
To the dismay of pro-Israel Christians and Jews, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice compares the Palestinian cause to that of Blacks in the segregated South. Rice says as a Black child who grew up in Alabama, “I know what it is like to hear that you cannot go on a road or through a checkpoint because you are Palestinian … I understand the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness.” Rice also compares Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to Reverend Martin Luther King as a man committed to peace for his people.
Conclusion
Afro-Americans and Jewish Americans have analyzed the status of their relationship for the past three decades, trying to determine the ultimate source of its deterioration. Claims of an irreconcilable split are over exaggerated. Nonetheless, there is no doubt the condition of Black-Jewish relations now is but a remnant of the former alliance. For a new coalition to be rebuilt two things must happen. Younger Afro-Americans and Jews who were not around during the Golden Age must hear of the genuine partnership the two communities once had. For those who remember all to well the bitter incidents that drove the communities apart, it is time to heal the wounds and reopen dialogue. There is still plenty of cooperation Blacks and Jews can rally around, one of them being Israel. If the two groups come together to stand for Israel, they do not have to look far in their own history for a productive model of collaboration.
Shelley Neese is the Managing Editor of The Jerusalem Connection Report which published a Special Issue on The Black-Israel Nexus.
Symbols of Covenant: The Stateless Jew and the Jewish State
Oct 27th
By Shelley Neese
“The Wandering Jew”— a popular figure in medieval Christian folklore—walks the earth alone until Judgment Day, cursed for offending Jesus on his way to the cross. In some variants of the story, he is a Jewish shoemaker named Cartaphilus, who, when Jesus stopped to rest on the road to Calvary, taunted him with “Go on quicker, Jesus! Go on quicker!” To which Jesus answered, “I shall stand and rest, but thou shalt go till the last day.” An earlier account says the Wandering Jew is a Roman gate-keeper named Cartaphilus who struck Jesus as he went out the door and mocked, “Go quicker, Jesus; why do you loiter?” Jesus looked back on him with a “severe countenance” saying, “I am going, and you shall wait forever till I return.”
The Wandering Jew caught the imaginations of Christians for centuries as the ultimate symbol of God’s rejection of the Jewish people. Condemned to homelessness and humiliation, he personified the Jewish nation, thought responsible for the Crucifixion. As the Wandering Jew lost hope of rest in death, early Christian theologians similarly taught that descendants of Abraham lost all rights to the covenants and blessings for having denied Jesus. St. Augustine, an early church father, wrote, “The Jew can never understand the Scriptures and forever will bear the guilt for the death of Jesus.” According to this model, the destruction of the second temple and the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt seemed only to confirm divine retribution for Jewish misdeeds.
The Nazis modernized the Wandering Jew image into a propaganda tool. Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda, released a film in 1940 titled Der ewige Jude (“Eternal Jew”). The film, done in documentary style, aimed to portray Jews as wandering parasites, a disgusting and inferior race. The opening scene shows a rat pack coming up from a sewer juxtaposed with a crowd of Jews on a busy Polish street.
Fast forward to the twentieth century, to the founding of the State of Israel. With its creation came a new symbol of Jewish existence. The Wandering Jew, supposedly condemned to eternal exile, came back to the very land of his covenant.
The State of Israel posed an urgent dilemma to the anti-Semitic impulse of some Christian thinking. According to the rejection theory of Jewish exile, the land rights and promises to the Hebrew people were no longer applicable to the Jews. But, how does one explain the miraculous rebirth of the Jewish state?
By the 1800s, many Christians had broken free from the shackles of anti-Semitic thinking. With the rise of Evangelicalism, many reappraised the Church’s mistaken theology towards Jews. Evangelicals began reading Scripture literally, rather than spiritualizing the Hebraic promises and prophecies. With this theological shift, a new understanding of covenant has dawned.
The culture of hate and the gross misunderstanding of Scripture, represented by the tale of Jewish rejection, almost destroyed the Christian Church. The horrors of the Holocaust allowed Christians to see the fruit of a theology that deemed Jews irrelevant at best. Now the survival of the Jewish people after nearly 2,000 years of exile could be appreciated as a true miracle—not something offensive to Christianity but rather a miracle that reaffirms our faith in God.
While the stateless Jew (i.e. the Wandering Jew) bore testimony to God’s supposed rejection, the creation of the Jewish state gave proof of God’s ultimate faithfulness—two symbols based on two very different forms of Christian insight. One served to divorce Judaism from Christianity, and the other brings Jews and Christians together on a common platform. One served as a springboard to foster hate and murder by those Christians with misguided motives or carnal hearts (an estimated six million Jews died from Christian persecution in the Middle Ages). The other allied Christians with their Jewish brothers in defense of an embattled Israel. For all who believe in the God of Abraham, the miracle of Israel should be a source of inspiration. And the homecoming of the proverbial “Wandering Jew” is cause for celebration.
Shelley Neese is managing editor for the The Jerusalem Connection Report.
Who will Speak for Gaza’s Christians?
Sep 27th
By Shelley Neese
On 14 June 2007, masked gunmen torched and looted the Rosary Sisters School and Latin Church in Gaza City. After bombing the entrance with grenades, the gunmen destroyed every Holy Relic they could find, crushing a statue of the Virgin Mary, burning Bibles, and destroying all Crosses and pictures of Jesus. They stole equipment, copy machines, and the church’s computers before setting the buildings ablaze. Father Manual Musalam, leader of the Latin community, estimated damages at more than $500,000. After five days of bloody infighting Hamas declared victory over its Fatah rivals, announcing on Palestinian Television the “end of secularism and heresy in the Gaza Strip.”
Just a few days after the establishment of “Hamastan,” over 130 clerics and academics representing the World Council of Churches (WCC) convened in Amman, Jordan. The meeting was held while 110 Palestinians lay dead, Fatah licked its wounds, and smoke hovered over Gaza’s Latin Church. Given the timing, one would expect a council representing Christendom to condemn the litany of human rights abuses in Gaza; deride the establishment of the world’s first Islamic terrorist state; and defend the rights of Gaza’s Christians from unprovoked attacks. Instead, the WCC pointed the finger at Israel and said nothing about the attack on the church and school.
The Geneva-based WCC is the world’s largest church organization. It claims to represent 348 Protestant Churches and 550 million Christians. WCC aspires to break down denominational boundaries and bring together a global community of non-Catholic churches united by one faith. Critics of the council say it has fallen far short of that goal, accusing the WCC’s leftist-dominated leadership of having an anti-Semitic impulse. Indeed, the WCC almost always frames Israel as the aggressor when violence flares in the Middle East. Its Palestinian bias became glaringly obvious last summer when the council accused Israel of starting the war with Hezbollah. This summer the WCC bordered on delusional as it grasped for grounds to hold Israel responsible for the Hamas coup.
In response to the horrific images from Gaza of Palestinians throwing fellow Palestinians off roofs and executing each other in front of wives and children, the WCC General Secretary Samuel Kobia said, “The worst thing that can happen is Palestinians killing Palestinians. But one can understand their situation after years of being caged and suffering.” The WCC put out a statement demanding an end not to Hamas’s Islamic rule in Gaza but to Israel’s “occupation” of Judea and Samaria. They made no mention of the attack on the Gaza Church and expressed no sympathy to the plight of Gaza’s besieged Christians. Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and an ardent Palestinian nationalist, excused Hamas for its actions. Speaking from the WCC conference, Sabbah said, “Time does not work for peace. It works for extremism. The more time we give to (Israeli) occupation, the more time we give to extremism and terrorism.” The council’s knee-jerk reaction to blame the crisis in Gaza on Israeli “occupation” seemed misplaced since Israel evacuated Gaza two years ago.
The WCC has mastered the art of flipping reality so that every Palestinian problem can be attributed to the “occupation.” Therefore, it was no surprise when the WCC leaders in Amman launched a new global advocacy initiative called the Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum. According to the WCC statement, the initiative calls on “all churches to work seriously for putting an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian and Arab lands.” They will “catalyze and coordinate new and existing church advocacy for peace, aimed at ending the illegal occupation in accordance with UN resolutions.” Putting all its energy into this end-the-occupation campaign, the WCC had no time to discuss the safety and protection of Gaza’s Christians under the new Hamas overlords.
If the WCC won’t highlight the plight of Gaza’s Christians, a Christian for whom the WCC does not speak will. What happened in Gaza on June 14 brought the suffering of Gaza’s Christians to the forefront, but it was not an isolated incident.
The Christian community in the Gaza Strip numbers about 3,000—including Catholic, Orthodox, and a small number of Baptist Christians. Out of a population of more than 1.4 million in Gaza, Christians make up less than 1 percent. Since Hamas’ landslide victory at the polls in January 2006, Gaza’s Christians have endured Hamas’ increasingly Taliban-style rule. Over 50 attacks have occurred on Internet cafes, barber shops, music stores, pharmacies, and other “symbols of immorality.” Last April an Islamic extremist group bombed the Gaza Bible Society, a bookstore run by evangelicals, leaving a threatening note for the landlord not to deal with “infidels.” In May, gunmen attacked a U.N. run school because girls and boys had a combined sports day. One person was killed. The same group threatened to cut the throats of female news anchors on Palestinian Television if they did not cover their heads. Last year in reaction to the comments made by Pope Benedict XVI about Islam, a group calling itself the Huda [Guidance] Army Organization threatened to target all Christians living in the Gaza Strip until the Pope apologized.
Now that Hamas has taken over Gaza, many Christians fear that Hamas will impose hard-line Sharia Law. Everything that offends Islam will be destroyed and every non-Muslim harassed. Christians of Muslim background especially fear that they will be targeted. Sheik Abu Saqer, an Islamic leader in Gaza, hardly allayed these fears. In an interview with World Net Daily, Abu Saqer said: “I expect our Christian neighbors to understand the new Hamas rule means real changes. They must be ready for Islamic rule if they want to live in peace in Gaza.” Abu Saqer accused Gaza Christians of “proselytizing and trying to convert Muslims with funding from American evangelicals.” He then added a warning, “This missionary activity is endangering the entire Christian community in Gaza.”
For Gaza’s tiny population of Christians, believers must speak out. Christians should not follow the WCC example. They must publicly condemn the suffering of their brothers and sisters under Islamic onslaught. Believers in Christ cannot be silent when churches and Christian schools are attacked. Hamas needs to understand that not all Christians will sit idly by in the face of Christian persecution. Above all, Christians of the world need to be in prayer for the safe-keeping of believers in Gaza as they seek the Lord’s wisdom and guidance. Pray for the preservation of the Church as a source of encouragement and light in Gaza’s darkness.
“Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.” (Colossians 4:2-3)
Shelley Neese is managing editor for the The Jerusalem Connection Report.
The Rise of CUFI
Jul 27th
By Shelley Neese
“It’s a new day in America. The sleeping giant of Christian Zionism has awakened!” Pastor John Hagee announced in his booming voice to thunderous applause at the AIPAC Annual Policy Conference last March. What Hagee humbly omitted is that Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a group he formed just over a year ago, deserves much of the credit for arousing the sleepy 50-million-man giant.
To be sure, Zionist Christians are no recent phenomena. Neither is their communal work on behalf of Israel. For the last century, there have been Christian groups supporting Israel through their pocketbooks, prayer, and political power. What changed with CUFI is the visibility and consolidation of the Christian Zionist network. CUFI’s stated purpose is to “provide a national association through which every pro-Israel church, para-church organization, ministry or individual in America can speak and act with one voice in support of Israel in matters related to Biblical issues.”
CUFI, in a short period of time, has become one of the most important Christian grassroots organizations in America. Hesitant to call itself a lobby, preferring the term ‘national association,’ CUFI is often described as a Christian parallel to the Jewish lobbying-giant American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
With the goal of educating and mobilizing Christian support for Israel, CUFI’s signature event is the annual Washington Israel Summit in July. At last year’s Summit, 3,500 Christians convened on Washington to lobby their senators and congressmen on pro-Israel legislation. For this year’s Summit, taking place 17 July, Hagee hopes for twice as many.
For those who can’t make it to DC, CUFI’s volunteer regional directors organize Nights to Honor Israel which are held year-round all over the country. CUFI’s goal is for “Nights to Honor Israel” to be held in every major U.S. city. Thus far there have been over fifty well-attended “Nights to Honor Israel” which have raised over $10 million for charitable causes in Israel.
In forming CUFI, Pastor Hagee envisioned a united evangelical-Jewish alliance standing in defense of Israel. In his words, Congress must know “that the matter of Israel is no longer just a Jewish issue; it is a Christian-Jewish issue.” For an interfaith alliance to take hold there must be enough Jews who are willing to take CUFI’s hand in friendship. While Christian love of Israel may be unconditional, an alliance must be mutual.
The response to Pastor Hagee and the rise of CUFI among Jews has been mixed, predictably divided along liberal/conservative lines. Rabbis and Jewish community leaders who see CUFI as a negative development are generally more liberal in their domestic and foreign policy agendas. Those Jewish voices to the right are extremely optimistic about the surge in Christian support.
CUFI’s greatest moment of acceptance by the Jewish community was Pastor Hagee’s invitation to speak at AIPAC’s national convention. AIPAC broke policy by having Hagee come for a primetime slot. His impassioned speech brought standing ovations and ended with Hagee leading the crowd in a chorus of “Israel Lives!” The speech was widely covered in the press and repeatedly downloaded via the internet. It brought an enthusiastic response from Jews and Israelis that extended far beyond the walls of AIPAC. Bloggers in Israel sat by their computers crying as they heard Hagee’s words. They realized Israelis actually did have friends in the world. Jews in the U.S. said they needed more leaders in their own communities with half the ardor of Hagee and his Christian Zionists.
Not all those in the Jewish community, however, have seen Hagee’s newfound popularity as a good thing. Rabbi James Rudin from the American Jewish Committee criticized AIPAC for “being so focused on the tactical support [Hagee] offers” and ignoring his apocalyptic claims. Daniel Sokatch with the Progressive Jewish Alliance warned, “To get in bed with the hard Christian right on Israel is a dangerous path.”
Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism wrote a critical article for the Jewish Daily Forward entitled “When we Let John Hagee Speak For Us.” Yoffie claims the closer the organized Jewish community becomes to Christian Zionists, the further away they push younger, more liberal, Jews. The acceptance of right-wing Christian leaders like Hagee might alienate those Jews who are more moderate on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Yoffie says Jewish organizations should rethink their embrace of Hagee and the supportive role they play in CUFI’s “Nights to Honor Israel.”
For most Jewish critics of CUFI there is a deep-seated fear that accepting Christian support for Israel means condoning evangelicals’ opposing religious and political beliefs. CUFI executive director David Brog, himself Jewish, claims that CUFI is a one-issue organization. For Jews and Christians to be partners in the coalition they need only agree on the point of collaboration—Israel.
While debate rages in liberal Jewish circles, there is a notable absence of discussion in the Christian Zionist community. A knee-jerk reaction would be for pastoral circles to ask whether it is in Christian interest to forge an alliance with Jews who have divergent beliefs and agendas. But such a question is irrelevant. Christian Zionists are following a biblical command to love and support the Jewish people and the state of Israel. That love is unconditional.
The new beginning for Jewish-Christian relations is still burdened by 2,000 years of baggage. Rabbi Irving Greenburg in his book For the Sake of Heaven and Earth said “the rearticulation of Christian attitudes toward Judaism and the determination to end the teaching of contempt toward the Jewish religion already constitute one of the great moral cleansing revolutions of all time—in any religion.” Christianity underwent great pains to make things right, breaking with so much history and tradition to purify itself from the evils of anti-Semitism.
If some Jews remain uncomfortable with robust Christianity it is understandable. Christian Zionists must be patient, bearing out consistent genuineness and unconditional love until the wounds are healed. The Christian hand of friendship must remain outstretched to God’s chosen as long as some, or even one, grab hold.
Shelley Neese is the managing editor for The Jerusalem Connection Report.
Palestinian Liberation Theology
Mar 27th
By Shelley Neese
Replacement Theology—the belief that the Christian Church replaced Israel in God’s plan—has found a new home in the work of the Sabeel Center—the Jerusalem-based ecumenical organization for Palestinian Christians. After experiencing decades of decline and total rejection by many denominations, Replacement Theology has resurfaced in the form of Palestinian Liberation Theology (PLT)—a theological movement pushed by Sabeel. PLT rejects the eternalness of God’s promises to the Jewish people based on a dangerous manipulation of scripture. PLT’s goal is to radically reinterpret the Bible to make it more relevant to Palestinians and less partial to Jews.
PLT grew out of the Liberation Theology movement popularized in Latin America in the 1970s and 80s, a faddy form of Christian socialism where Replacement Theology met Marxism. They emphasized oppression of the poor and encouraged political activism to abolish perpetual class struggle. The rich were against God by way of their wealth, and the poor were privileged by way of their poverty. The Bible was reduced to nothing more than stories about the poor and the persecuted.
The heyday of Liberation Theology was its inception. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the failure of Marxist revolutionary movements in Latin America, Liberation Theology lost most of its justification and influence. The premise did appeal to Palestinians, because of its favor for the underdog and its potential to de-Zionize the Old Testament.
It’s no secret that Israel’s founding ignited a theological crisis in the Palestinian Christian community. The Abrahamic covenants and Old Testament prophecies justified Israel’s national rebirth. According to Naim Ateek, founder of the Sabeel Center, the Torah was seen as a “Zionist text” and became “repugnant” to Palestinians. Palestinian Christians needed a new theology that would in Ateek’s words “liberate God from the Old Testament.”
Ateek revived Liberation Theology and related it to the Israeli-Palestinian situation. He switched focus from liberating the economically poor to the politically oppressed. As stated by Sabeel, the purpose of PLT was to theologically “address the day to day reality of Palestinians who have been living under an occupation that destroyed homes, confiscated lands, killed and jailed children, and closed institutions.” The Sabeel Center has been used to develop and implement this theology.
A central tenet of PLT is that the Bible cannot be taken literally. It needs continuous interpretation to ensure every passage matches PLT’s notion of God. Anything considered violent, racist, chauvinistic, or unjust is discarded. This means most of the Torah, including Joshua, Judges, I and II Samuel, and I and II Kings are thrown out. In fact, according to Ateek, only the prophetic books of the Old Testament are accepted as Scripture for they alone present a “truly mature vision of God.”
Replacement Theology teaches that the Church superseded Jews as the benefactor of God’s covenants. PLT goes one step further saying that the Jews never had a place of favor in the first place. In some cases, they erase Israel from the Bible altogether. Many Palestinian Churches that teach PLT have changed the Psalms by removing every reference to “Israel” and “Zion.”
Palestinians are also inserted into Biblical narratives in the place of Israel. The narratives are read metaphorically where Israel assumes the role of oppressor. For example, in the story of David and Goliath, the powerless and humble David represents the Palestinians who bring down the bloodthirsty Goliath, represented by Israel. The centerpiece of PLT is the story of Exodus, where Palestinians are the Hebrew Egyptians bound in slavery, and Israel is the obstinate Pharaoh who refuses to grant them freedom and a state of their own. “If the Exodus is the story of any people,” writes Mitri Raheb (one of the most vocal PLT theologians), “it is actually the story of us Palestinians.”
PLT’s agenda is to nullify the whole concept of chosenness, thereby voiding all land promises that justify Israel’s rebirth. According to Raheb, God did kind acts for many peoples so Jews were not exceptional. Raheb points to Amos 9:7 [“True, I brought Israel up from the land of Egypt, but also the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir.”] to argue the Jews were not the only people to whom God showed kindness. As for God’s promise to “plant them in this land [Israel] with all my heart and soul,” Ateek says Jewish and Christian Zionists need to move beyond their primitive notion of a nationalistic God to a more universal God. Indeed, Israel’s right to exist is something Ateek has never accepted. During a Jerusalem interfaith dialogue with Jewish leaders in 2005, Ateek said that if Israel had the right to exist it should have been created somewhere else.
From Ateek’s perspective, the Israeli occupation is the root of all evil. He makes no apology for Palestinian terrorism or its contribution toward the plight of Palestinian Christians. There is no recognition that Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist government, is a far greater threat to Palestinian Christians than Zionism.
Ateek presents PLT as a theology based on justice, but he redefines Godly justice to fit a sociopolitical context. The result is more narrow than ever before, as God is only on the side of Palestinians. Sabeel says “Christ is not in the tanks and jet fighters, fighting on the side of the oppressors… God is in the city of Gaza, in the Jenin camp and in the old city of Nablus, Ramallah, and Bethlehem.”
Sabeel enjoys the active support of many of the mainline liberal denominations (i.e. PC (USA) and the United Church of Christ). These church groups ignore the danger of Sabeel’s theology. But PLT is not just an ill-informed misguided teaching. It is a dangerous propaganda tool cleverly wielded by Sabeel to undermine Israel’s right to the land. All the while, this anti-Semitic politically-driven theology void of the Gospel hides behind a façade of peace, justice, and love. As Jesus Christ warned his followers, “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”
Shelley Neese is managing editor for the The Jerusalem Connection Report.