Bible bonfires inside Israel

Was there a whiff of brimstone and sulfur when Bibles went up in smoke last week? Certainly, it was not the finest hour for the people of the book...particularly when news of the incident coincided with an American soldier getting disciplined for using a Koran as target practice over in Iraq. Holey holy books create rancour, and the sight and odor of burning texts brings totalitarian stormtroopers and witch hunts to mind.

Messianic 'Jews for Jesus', who are closely linked with Evangelical Christian groups from America and now number up to 15,000 inside Israel, called for an official investigation after orthodox students from a yeshiva in the town of Or Yehuda allegedly dumped and burnt hundreds of copies of the New Testament. These had been distributed to Ethiopian immigrant families in the town.

At first, the action was defended by Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon, of the Shas party, as "purging the evil among us", but he was quick to backtrack. Ultimately, he blamed "three or four" hotheaded students for a "spontaneous act" which led to an international public relations disaster. Aharon apologized by saying "sorry we hurt the feelings of others", but he shrugged off criticism of his anti-missionary zeal. To proselytize is against the law inside the Jewish State, although Christian missionaries often are tolerated when they spread the gospel to Israeli Arabs.

Tensions are on the rise. Two months ago, a parcel bomb left outside a house in Ariel wounded the son of a prominent Messianic Jew. Haredim massed outside messianic Jewish gatherings in Beersheba and Arad, and stirred up violence.

And just before Independence Day, a group of religious Zionist rabbis called for a boycott of this year's International Bible Quiz after discovering that one of the four finalists from Israel, Bat-El Levi, an 11th-grader from Jerusalem's Pisgat Ze'ev neighborhood, was a messianic Jew.

The rise in tensions is partly due...to increased fervor within haredi anti-missionary groups.

...Victor Kalisher, the son of Holocaust survivors, spoke to the Jerusalem Post about his shock and dismay at the burnings. "As Jews we were raised and taught that were books are burned, worse things can happen. That's what I think when I see the pictures of what happened in Or Yehuda. What worries me is that nobody has stood up against this. It seems there is a war against messianic Jews in Israel. Nobody cares about many, what I believe to be cults, in Israel. These cults, which are not based on the Bible, don't pose a threat to the establishment. But God forbid a Jew learns about the messiah from the [Christian] Bible," Kalisher said.

He said he did not know who paid for and distributed the New Testaments that were distributed in Or Yehuda, but that there was demand for the books from many quarters. "The Bibles are not forced on anybody and are not forced into any homes. The book has never harmed anyone, you can choose to read it or choose not to read it. If this happened to Jewish books overseas we would be screaming anti-Semitism. This sort of thing happens in some regimes around us that we don't like," he said.

Blood Libel Redux

Ethiopan Jews joined a dance with Torahs for Jerusalem's Sukkot last month
ShlomoPhoto

Blood was flowing on Jerusalem streets this week, after 11 out of 200 ethnic Ethiopian protesters were badly wounded in clashes with authorities. Ethiopian Jews are incensed that local bloodbanks refuse to store their blood, and staged a large demo. They dismiss the official explanation that their donated blood might be tainted because large numbers of Ethiopians migrated from AIDS-endemic Africa. Community leaders point to blatant racism, and suspect that the real problem is a repugnance patients feel about voluntarily inserting black blood into their veins.

An informal caste system in place across Israel puts pale-skinned Ashkenazy Jews as the elite, followed by swarthier Sephardic Jews. Even non-Jewish Russian immigrants are regarded more highly than the Ethiopians. Most of the cafe security guards, who would take the brunt of a suicide bomber's blast, are either Russian or Ethiopian, presumably because they are expendable. Or at least affordable. Obviously, the blood of the underclass is on the line.

A decade ago, when Ethiopian blood supplies in Jerusalem were tossed out from first aid clinics, similar protest erupted. (British blood, which has a high chance of being infected with Mad Cow disease, is similarly rejected, hospital officials claim.) Yet almost one quarter of the estimated 80,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel were born here, and Ethiopians represent one of the most venerable and vulnerable communities in the Diaspora. Not until 1769 was the West even aware that this isolated community of highland Jewish farmers and tinkers had survived in Africa. (They considered themselves to be Moses' sole surviving tribe.) Contacts between the Jews of Ethiopia and the West were extremely rare until the latter part of the 20th century, but once famine hit, they arrived in huge number in the 1980s. Although they are full-fledged citizens who must serve in the army, many Ethiopians suffer from discrimination . Almost three quarters of them live below Israel's poverty line.