It is very rare for the [Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council] to take a channel [Shelanu] off the air, and it is the first time a Christian channel broadcast in Israel is being shut down. God TV was told by the council that it was welcome to submit a new license application that provided a more honest depiction of the nature of its programming....The words in boldface may seem absurd, but I think they're the argument that the channel was not dishonest in the way it presented itself to the authorities. In Israel, it is "against the law to proselytize to individuals under age 18 without the consent of their parents."
“A channel that wishes to spread the gospel of Jesus among the Jewish nation sitting in Israel had never been broadcast on [Israeli cable television provider] Hot, and the heads of the channel knew that, as was clarified in the hearing we held,” [wrote Council Chairman Asher Biton]. Biton noted that Christian programming aimed at Jews is a “complicated and sensitive matter” and, therefore, the broadcasters should have been more upfront about the nature of the new channel....
The announcement came after a fundraising video surfaced in which God TV CEO Ward Simpson said: “God has supernaturally opened the door for us to take the gospel of Jesus into the homes and lives and hearts of his Jewish people.”
Overnight, the video message that had caused the storm was taken down and God TV issued a clarification: The network had no intention of trying to convert Jews to Christianity, Simpson said in a new video message; it merely wanted them to accept Jesus as their messiah....
June 28, 2020
"Israel Pulls Plug on God TV, Evangelical Channel 'Spreading Gospel of Jesus' to Jews."
Haaretz reports.
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They sure sound absurd to me.
Does it surprise anyone that a country with an official state religion will push back on other religions?
I hope God TV develops into challenger/competitor for Al Jazeera -
banning by Israel could encourage or challenge banning by other countries in the region?
There's Jewish Messiahnism that makes more sense of Christianity than Christianity does
"We have just seen that the Messiah is the just man who suffers, who has taken on the suffering of others. Who finally takes on the suffering of others, if not the being who says 'Me'?
"The fact of not evading the burden imposed by the suffering of others defines ipseity itself. All persons are the Messiah.
"The Self as Self, taking upon itself the whole suffering of the world, is designated solely by this role. To be thus designated, not to evade to the point of responding before the call resounds - this is precisely what it means to be Me. The Self is the one who has promised itself that it will carry the whole responsibility of the world, ... one who invests himself with responsibility. And this is why he can take upon himself the whole suffering of everyone: he can say 'Me' only to the extent that he has already taken up this suffering."
Levinas "Messianic Texts" _Diffcult Freedom: Essays on Judaism_ p.89-90
Christianity overdogmatizes this and makes itself inintelligible, causing guys to leave Sunday School as soon as parents allow it, as making no sense.
I am an evangelical, and I see the distinction they are making. While it doesn't hold up under historical scrutiny - Jesus as Messiah has generally meant conversion - it is not logically impossible, and I have known Messianic Jews who would say exactly that about themselves. I have read of many others, who do not choose to worship with Christian churches but gravitate toward each other. Others connect with small idiosyncratic house churches where there is a variety of Christian belief.
I have read of those who attempted to continue attending synagogue even after deciding that Jesus does actually fit the bill as Messiah, but the accounts I read all ended in them leaving off attendance. Whether they continued home practice, and whether there are those who have managed this juggling act long-term is not something I know. But it is not necessarily a dishonest position that GodTV is taking. I don't know a thing about them and they may be lying through their teeth, but that's not automatic.
A couple of things to note on this.
1) "In Israel, it is "against the law to proselytize to individuals under age 18 without the consent of their parents."
I wish we had such a law in our country for those in K-12 schooling. Perhaps we would not have had 3 decades of anti-American teachings in our classrooms.
2) "The network had no intention of trying to convert Jews to Christianity, Simpson said in a new video message; it merely wanted them to accept Jesus as their messiah...."
It is obviously one and the same. It IS the basis for the anti-Semitism over the eons, that Jews would not accept Jesus as their Messiah. So yes, this is a sensitive area. Millions of Jews have been murdered because of this. People tend to get sensitive when you've been avoiding being wiped out over centuries. Israel is a unique country, being perhaps the only place on earth where Jews can be who they are, and feel safe. (while millions with guns who want to eliminate them are on all sides.) They accept all faiths there, but they don't want to be preached at.
But they are not alone in that region. I wonder how that type of broadcast would go over in any of the Middle Eastern countries? Say Saudi Arabia. Syria. Jordan. Egypt. Perhaps it would be acceptable in Lebanon? I would need experts to tell me. That said, I would expect that this would get remedied. The relationship between Israel and Christians is strong, and needs to remain that way.
"in its application for a license for the new channel, Hot said that the target audience was the Christian community in Israel, when in fact it was Jews."
Israel may not be a full-blown apartheid state like the old Republic of South Africa, but it is in no way a democracy with equal rights for all its residents. I say residents because not all of them have full citizenship rights, viz. any Arab.
don't seem absurd to Me!
I (personally) feel that Jesus was the King of the Jews
I (personally) believe that Jesus was GOD'S Anointed one (the Christ)
I (personally) do NOT believe in the Pauline Heresy of the Trinity
(your mileage may differ)
The Jews let us into the that Church Peter preached the crowd into joining it on Pentecost. It’s only fair Christians let them back in now. But the stumbling stone is the Jews fear that joining with us equals giving up their Jewish identity. Actually that is not a problem. They are becoming more Jewish, or as the great lawyer Jay Sekulo says , completed Jew. The gentiles are the ones giving up their pagan identity to join a Jewish Tradition of which Jesus was and remains the King of the Jews under the David’s Covenant.
Early Jews who accepted Christ—like Paul—did not view it as conversion at all. Conversion suggests, “I used to believe something, and I have cast it aside in favor of something else.” Paul saw it as consistent with—and even foretold by—the Old Testament.
I used to enjoy the Jews for Jesus broadcast Passover Seder here in NYC when I was little, but I know it used to irritate my more observant relatives that such an organization even existed.
As a lapsed old fashioned Latin Mass Roman Catholic in the late 1970s, I attended a small southern liberal arts college aligned with the Southern Baptists. Whenever I was proselytized upon by an evangelical classmate, I simply told them that as a Roman Catholic, I was very sorry they were heretics damned to Hell, and I invited them to rejoin the One True Faith.
Use your strengths in deterring your opposition's assaults.
sikes.1 said: "Israel may not be a full-blown apartheid state like the old Republic of South Africa, but it is in no way a democracy with equal rights for all its residents. I say residents because not all of them have full citizenship rights, viz. any Arab."
Drop the apartheid mindset. It is nothing of the sort.
(from Jewish virtual library): Roughly 21% of Israel’s more than nine million citizens are Arabs. The vast majority of the Israeli Arabs - roughly 83% - are Muslims. Arabs in Israel have equal voting rights; in fact, it is one of the few places in the Middle East where Arab women may vote. Arabs currently hold ten seats in the Knesset. Israeli Arabs have also held various government posts.
Arabic, like Hebrew, was an official language in Israel until 2018. That year the Knesset adopted the Nation State Law, which downgraded the status of the Arabic language from an official state language to one holding a more ambiguous ‘special status.’
The sole legal distinction between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel is that the latter are not required to serve in the Israeli army. This was to spare Arab citizens the need to take up arms against their brethren. Nevertheless, many Arabs have volunteered for military duty and the Druze and Circassian communities are subject to the draft.
There is more, but this is not the same planet as South Africa. To say so is intellectually lazy. And much would be different if those surrounding Israel would stop trying to push them into the sea. Much different.
anti-goyim
AM 1080 KSCO Santa Cruz (owned by the Jewish Zwerling Family) had a Sunday afternoon program in the late 90's-early 00's by the local Jews for Jesus group called "My Messiah". The young woman host was very excited and happy to spread the good news, but always said she remained forever a Jewess. As far as religious radio shows, it was not bad.
Jews have no better friends in this world than evangelical Christians.
Cromwell invited the Jews back to England. He believed that the conversion of the Jews--not all Jews, just the ones in England--would be a necessary first step towards the Day of Judgment. It also didn't hurt that he was advised that the Sephardic Jews in Amsterdam--they were the ones he invited-- had knowledge of the dates and routes of the Spanish treasure ships. For their part, the Jews who accepted his invitation had a Messianic belief that when Jews were dispersed to all lands then the Messiah would appear. It was also a fine business opportunity for them... Cromwell got a completely unwarranted reputation for tolerance for his part in inviting the Jews back to England. Freud named his son after him, but Cromwell was a dick whose statue is worthy of topplement.....There's some realpolitiking that goes on with this Messiah business. There are some real pluses for the Israelis and the evangelicals in staying on the good side of each other. The dispute will be settled amicably, at least in this generation
Accepting JC as The Messiah is by definition a repudiation of Judaism. It specifically says in the Torah that if someone speaks to the people, claiming to be a prophet, and they say, you don't have to keep one commandment, they are a false prophet, don't listen to them. JC said that multiple commandments do not have to be kept. Ipso facto, following a false prophet is a repudiation of Judaism.
If you want to proselytize to children, you have to couch it in secular ways, like the US education system does it.
Q: what is the etymology of "Mass" as term to denote a religious performative act?
I am not able to find anything in dictionaries.
this is an appeal to etymologist aka Emeritus Professora
Jewish baby boys are born atheist like every other, but the Jewish State apparently gives parents 18 years to mutilate their genitals and corrupt their brains with G-d nonsense, all the while blocking any free education from getting through to them. Of course, Muslims do the same or worse, as have Roman Catholics for 2000 years, except for the compulsory genital mutilation. And the worst part is that we non-breeders are heavily taxed to support this pro-natalistic religious waste of human and material resources.
@Narayan,
Q: what is the etymology of "Mass" as term to denote a religious performative act?
I've heard, and it may be bushwah, but have heard that the English word "Mass" comes of course, from the Latin "Missa". The Latin "Missa" as the "performative act" comes from the "Ite, missa est" last line of the liturgy. Commonly translated as "Go, the Mass is ended" it means more exactly in Latin "Go, it has been sent". So, the "missa" is the "sent".
The state of Israel has always been strange around the topic of religion. David Ben-Gurion gave the Orthodox far too much say over what passed as Judaism in order to bring them aboard in the founding of Israel, an endeavor of which the Orthodox were (and still are) deeply suspicious. For example, one cannot have a Reform wedding in Israel. Well, one can, but you won't count as legally married on the other side, which is good tourism business for Cyprus.
Why did Ben-Gurion, a non-believer himself, do this? Because he thought that the "New Zionist Man" would make Orthodoxy obsolete & that all those people would be gone and dead in a generation or two. He was quite wrong about that.
I think Israel should have complete freedom of religious observance, including proselytizing. But, then, most Americans would think that, wouldn't we? They get enough money & support from American evangelicals that they should at least let them "preach their Jesus".
Many American Jews have the same disregard for 1A rights. That’s why they’re mostly Democrats.
YoungHegelian,
I think in Israel's case, anything that weakens the religious bonds of the citizenry is a kind of death sentence for the country. No country other than Israel is surrounded by people who would literally put them all to death if given the opportunity.
Meh, moderate Jews tend to be pretty cosmopolitan and unlikely to get too wroth about a Christian television station. I’m guessing this is down to the Haredim who, like blacks in America, can form a fairly monolithic margin-of-victory voting bloc and so have an outsized influence on policy.
Temujin: "2) "The network had no intention of trying to convert Jews to Christianity, Simpson said in a new video message; it merely wanted them to accept Jesus as their messiah...."
It is obviously one and the same. It IS the basis for the anti-Semitism over the eons, that Jews would not accept Jesus as their Messiah. So yes, this is a sensitive area."
Well said.
It is indeed for Christians; but, not for Jews. This is perhaps the biggest stumbling block for interfaith dialog, which I dis in Israel for several years and in the states as a chaplain. "Messiah" derives from King and the Jews have had several. Bar Kokhba led a four year rebellion against Rome, 132-6 CE, declaring Palestine an independent country (four years) and was declared a MOSHIACH.
We can do Historical; Enlightened; a Reformer; some might add Prophet; but Our Savior we cannot do. Too many in my family have died because of this barrier to civil dialog. Jew-hatred (let's call it what it is) is still virulent in the EU and in the States. I have been refused service at Missions in WA state and employment in Catholic hospitals (as a chaplain) because I will accept Jesus as my Savior.
So, if Israel wants to give its people, Muslim and Jewish, a break from media onslaught on their faith in God according to the Quran or the Torah, good for Israel.
Yeah, Levinas is really intelligible, and if my father the Christmas and Easter churchgoer (of more-or-less Lutheran extraction) and my mother the intellectually inert widow (Wesleyan? what's that mean?) had just stopped overdogmatizing simple things like that, who knows how many could have been saved? Sorry, Saved.
Who is a Jew? Who wants to know, and why? Who is a Christian, ditto? I wash my hands.
Thousands of years of this stuff, and even deadlier mutant versions like Islam; I have little doubt that political leaders guided and motivated by these sorts of ideologies will provide us all with a final solution eventually.
Narr
I walked away at first, now I RUN
The words in boldface may seem absurd
No, they're not. Apparently you have never heard of Messianic Jews.
"Many adherents of Messianic Judaism are ethnically Jewish[18] and argue that the movement is a sect of Judaism.[19] Many refer to themselves in Hebrew as maaminim (believers), not converts, and yehudim (Jews), not notzrim (Christians).[20] Jewish organizations and the Supreme Court of Israel have rejected this claim in cases related to the Law of Return, and instead consider Messianic Judaism to be a form of Christianity.[14][21]"
"As with many religious faiths, the exact tenets held vary from congregation to congregation.[61] In general, essential doctrines of Messianic Judaism include views on:
God: that he is omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal, outside creation, infinitely significant and benevolent; viewpoints vary on the Trinity
Jesus: that he is the Jewish Messiah; views on his divinity vary
written Torah: Messianic Jews believe, with a few exceptions, that Jesus taught and reaffirmed the Torah and that it remains fully in force
Israel: the Children of Israel are central to God's plan; replacement theology is opposed
the Bible: the Tanakh and the New Testament are usually considered the divinely inspired Scripture, though Messianic Judaism is more open to criticism of the New Testament canon than is Christianity
eschatology: similar to many Protestant views
oral law: observance varies, but most deem these traditions subservient to the written Torah"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messianic_Judaism
And the worst part is that we non-breeders are heavily taxed to support this pro-natalistic religious waste of human and material resources.
Why do you care? The future belongs to whoever shows up for it.
Orthodox Jews are very emphatic about the coming of the Moshiach, the messiah. Basically that's the final solution, the get out of jail card for humanity, the end of the endless wheel of karma, all wrapped into one. The world is transformed into a heaven on earth with that one devine act. Global peace, end of death and war, and universal worship of God. Orthodox Jews talk about hoping for the Messiah all the time. The required proof that the person is the messiah: bring all the Jews back to Israel and rebuild the Temple.
Christians are free to believe what they want but they have to realize that to suggest that Jesus is that Messiah is a repudiation of centuries of Jewish tradition and belief -- so no, for the Orthodox, who represent the gold standard of Jewish observance, you can not believe in Jesus and also be a Jew. Christian groups don't define the terms of what Jews believe. Messianic Jews who accept Jesus as their savior are not considered Jews.
Kind of like saying satan worshippers could be a Christian sect.
@Yancey Ward,
I think in Israel's case, anything that weakens the religious bonds of the citizenry is a kind of death sentence for the country.
But Israel wasn't founded & doesn't exist on the idea of the Jews as a "religious" nation. Indeed, most Israeli Jews aren't very observant at all. Zionism was founded on taking the Jews from all nations & from all the various stripes of Judaism and making them into citizens of the Jewish State. They hearken back the Davidic Kingdom & to the Maccabees as their exemplars, even seeing events like the Bar Kokbha Revolt as expressions of national will, rather than as ill-considered political disasters which is how the rabbinic tradition views it. Zionism hoped to make that identity as citizen of Israel the normative for what it meant to be a Jew. It hasn't happened yet, but they're working on it.
Israel was & still is culturally hostile to the remembrance or, worse still, the living out of the traditions derived from diaspora Askhenazi or Sephardic Judaism, for example, performances from the long tradition of Yiddish theater. Labor Zionism really was trying to create a "New Zionist Man" along the lines of "The New Soviet Man". While the Labor Party may be dead, the mythos it spawned to create the Zionist state still survives despite many transformations.
Part of the year, I share a house with some family members who are Messianic Jews. One of them is an ordained Rabbi. They have a Fri night Shabbat meal every week, celebrate all Jewish holidays, and generally down play overtly Christian ones.
They attend a regular Conservative Synagogue because there is no Messianic synagogue near by. They are not allowed to officially join the congregation because of their messianic beliefs. There are several Messianic Jewish denominations. They all accept Jesus as the Messiah, but some of them do not accept him as the Son of God. Accepting Jesus as the Messiah does not mean that they stopped being Jews. Understandably,they generally keep a low profile.
Temujin said...
sikes.1 said: "Israel may not be a full-blown apartheid state like the old Republic of South Africa, but it is in no way a democracy with equal rights for all its residents. I say residents because not all of them have full citizenship rights, viz. any Arab."
Drop the apartheid mindset. It is nothing of the sort
Temujin, sykes, known on Disqus as Bob Sykes, or, as I like to call him, Comrade Bobka Sykesovich, is a known Russian plantbot or disinformationist sower of agitprop. Just letting you know.
Temujin said...
A couple of things to note on this.
1) "In Israel, it is "against the law to proselytize to individuals under age 18 without the consent of their parents."
I wish we had such a law in our country for those in K-12 schooling. Perhaps we would not have had 3 decades of anti-American teachings in our classrooms.
Not just American. Reading Solzhenitsyn's August 1914 now...here's a quote:
...for vacations Ksenia was horrified by the unrelieved uncouthness of her father’s household. On one occasion she took Sonya Arkhangorodskaya home, and was consumed with shame when she saw still more painfully through her friend’s eyes how primitive it all was. If the agricultural course had not come her way she would have gone off to study no matter what, just so long as she could associate with civilized people.
No longer did she kneel night and morning to pray devoutly: her prayers at home were perfunctory, and she went to church only when she could not avoid it, with the whole family, standing through the service with her mind elsewhere, crossing herself awkwardly.
Too late, it dawned on Tomchak that he had forgotten to ask the headmistress one little thing: whether or not she believed in God.
@Rosalyn,
...for the Orthodox, who represent the gold standard of Jewish observance
The Reform & Conservatives might want to have a word with you about that. While I tend to agree with you theologically on that point, I also understand why the others would vociferously disagree.
Messianic Jews who accept Jesus as their savior are not considered Jews.
Yes, but the problem with that judgement is that Jews consider Jews who believe all sorts of stuff to still be Jews. Jews who are atheists are still Jews. Jews who supported left-wing regimes that did their best to destroy Judaism root & branch are still Jews. Jews who believe in Buddhism or Hinduism are still Jews. Jews who support the Palestinians who want to destroy Israel are still Jews. And on & on, expect for this Jesus business. That'll get you sent away from the shabbos table fer shure. I'm sorry, this isn't rationality. This is one of modern Judaism's bugaboos, and I'm not the only person who's noticed.
And on & on, expect for this Jesus business. That'll get you sent away from the shabbos table fer shure. I'm sorry, this isn't rationality.
It is to the Catholic Church, which seems rational enough to recognize the much greater damage it did in proclaiming and spreading its own, much more consistent claim of absolute supremacy over the ancestral people to their faith than any of those much fainter imitations did. You'd have to lack a great deal of respect for the church's interest in any accurate understanding of its own history to deny that.
@ YoungHegelian:
I think Conservative and Reform Jews choose to be less tradition bound and would readily admit that and recognize that Orthodox are more observant of the traditions. Many Orthodox don't consider Reform Jews to be Jews, but that's another matter. For the Orthodox if you believe you have to observe, for Conservative and Reform you can believe and not be so observant.
The biggest problem with the Messianic Jews and why they are excluded is that Judaism is emphatic on one God (the Shema declares this) and Messianic Jews have essentially accepted Christianity and worship God and Jesus as God. "They acknowledge the New Testament as part of their holy Scriptures, for example, and they believe that salvation comes by grace through faith in Jesus Christ as the promised Savior sent from God." https://www.learnreligions.com/beliefs-and-practices-of-messianic-jews-700971 That pushes them into the Christian camp.
Just as a matter of history, Alessandro Barbaro reminds us in "Charlemagne: Father of a Continent," that the Pope transferred the title "Chosen People" and all the rights, privileges, and appurtenances thereto, to the Franks (ahem) back in the 8th C.
Narr
So there.
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