Testimony of survivor of Nazi liquidation of Jews in Belarus
On the evening of 14 August 1942, the first day of the Hebrew month of Ellul, a Friday, the SS surrounded the ghetto in the village of Zagrodski, near Pinsk in Belarus (Belorussia), home to five hundred Jewish families. “The commotion and noise on that night”, recalled Rivka Yosselevska, “was not customary, and we felt something in the air.”
On Saturday morning 15 August 1942, the Germans entered the ghetto, ordering the Jews to leave their houses for a roll call. All day, the Jews were kept standing, waiting. Towards sunrise, the children screamed, demanding food and water. But the Germans would allow no one back into their homes.
That evening a truck arrived at the ghetto gates. The Jews were ordered on to it, and drove out of the ghetto. Those for whom there had been no room on the truck were ordered to run after it. “I had my daughter in my arms”, Rivka Yosselevska recalled, “and ran after the truck. There were mothers who had two or three children and held them in their arms – running after the truck. We ran all the way. There were those who fell – we were not allowed to help them rise. They were shot – right there – wherever they fell.”
On reaching the destination, Rivka Yosselevska saw that the people from the truck had already been taken off, and were undressed, “all lined up.” It was some three kilometres from the village, by “a kind of hillock”. At the foot of the hillock was a ditch. The Jews were ordered to stand on the hillock, where four SS men stood “armed to the teeth.”
“We saw naked people lined up”, Rivka Yosselevska recalled, “and we hoped this was only torture. Maybe there is hope – hope of living.”
Her account continued:
“One could not leave the line, but I wished to see – what are they doing on the hillock? I turned my head and saw that some three or four rows were already killed – on the ground.
There were some twelve people amongst the dead. I also want to mention that my child said while we were lined up in the ghetto, she said `Mother, why did you make me wear the Shabbat dress, we are being taken to be shot’-; and when we stood near the dug-out, near the grave, she said, `Mother, why are we waiting, let us run!’
Some of the young people tried to run, but they were caught immediately, and they were shot right there. It was difficult to hold onto the children. We took all children, not ours, and we carried – we were anxious to get it all over- the suffering of the children was difficult- we all trudged along to come nearer to the place and to come nearer to the end of the torture of the children. The children were taking leave of their parents and parents of their elder people.
We were driven; we were already undressed; the clothes were removed and taken away; our father did not want to undress; he wanted to keep his underclothes on. He did not want to stand naked. Then they tore the clothing off the old man and he was shot. I saw it with my own eyes. And then they took my mother, and she said, let us go before her, but they caught my mother and shot her too; and then there was my grandmother, my father’s mother, standing there; she was eighty years old and she had two children in her arms. And then there was my father’s sister. She also had children in her arms and she was shot on the spot with the babies in her arms.
And finally my turn came. There was my younger sister, and she wanted to leave, she pleaded with the German; she asked to run, naked- she went up to the Germans with one of her friends; they were embracing each other; and she asked to be spared, standing there naked. He looked into her eyes and shot the two of them. They fell together in their embrace, the two young girls, my sister and her young friend. Then my second sister was shot and then my turn came.
We turned towards the grave and then he turned around and asked, `Whom shall I shoot first?’ We were already facing the grave. The German asked, `Whom do you want me to shoot first?’ I did not answer. I felt him take the child from my arms. The child cried out and was shot immediately. And then he aimed at me. First he held onto my hair and turned my head around; I stayed standing; I heard a shot, but I continued to stand and then he turned my head again and he aimed the revolver at me, ordered me to watch, and then turned my head around and shot at me. Then I fell to the ground into the pit amongst the bodies – but I felt nothing.
The moment I did feel I felt a sort of heaviness and then I thought may be I am not alive anymore, but I feel something after I died. I thought I was dead, that this was the feeling which comes after death. Then I felt that I was choking; people falling over me. I tried to move and felt that I was alive and that I could rise. I was strangling. I heard the shots and I was praying for another bullet to put an end to my suffering, but I continued to move about.
I felt that I was choking, strangling, but I tried to save myself, to find some air to breathe, and then I felt that I was climbing towards the top of the grave above the bodies. I rose, and I felt bodies pulling at with me with their hands, biting at my legs, pulling me down, down. And yet with my last strength I came up on top of the grave, and when I did I did not know the place, so many bodies were lying all over, dead people; I wanted to see the end of this stretch of dead bodies, but I could not. It was impossible. They were lying, all dying; suffering; not all of them dead, but in their last sufferings; naked; shot, but not dead. Children crying, `Mother, Father’; I could not stand on my feet.
The Germans had gone. There was nobody there, no one standing up. “I was naked, covered with blood, dirty from other bodies, with the excrement from other bodies which was poured on me.” Riivka Yosselevska had been wounded in the head, but she managed to crawl out of the grave, then she recalled;
“I was searching among the dead for my little girl and I cried for her – Merkele was her name – Merkele! There were children crying `Mother! Father!’ – but they were all smeared with blood and one could not recognise the children. I cried for my daughter. From afar I saw two women standing. I went up to them. They did not know me, I did not know them, and then I said who I was, and then they said, `So you survived’. And then there was another woman crying, `Pull me out from amongst the corpses, I am still alive, help!’ We were thinking how could we escape from the place. The cries of the woman, `Help, pull me out from the corpses!’ We pulled her out – her name was Mikla Rosenberg. We removed the corpses and the dying people who held onto her and continued to bite. She asked us to take her out, to free her, but we did not have the strength.
And thus we were there all night, fighting for our lives, listening to the cries and the screams and all of a sudden we saw Germans, mounted Germans. We did not notice them coming in because of the screaming and the shouting from the bodies around us.
The Germans ordered that all the corpses be heaped together into one big heap and with shovels they were heaped together, all the corpses, amongst them many still alive, children running about the place. I saw them. I saw the children. They were running after me, hanging on to me. Then I sat down in the field and remained sitting with the children around me. The children who got up from the heap of corpses.
The Germans came and were going around the place. We were ordered to collect all the children, but they did not approach me, and I sat there watching how they collected the children. They gave a few shots and the children were dead. They did not need many shots. The children were almost dead, and this Rosenberg woman pleaded with the Germans to be spared, but they shot her.
They all left – the Germans and the non-Jews from around the place. They removed the machine guns and they took the trucks. I saw that they all left and the four of us, we went on to the grave, praying to fall into the grave, even alive, envying those who were dead already and thinking what to do now. I was praying for death to come. I was praying for the grave to be opened and to swallow me alive. Blood was spurting from the grave in many places, like a well of water, and whenever I pass a spring now, I remember the blood which spurted from the ground, from that grave.
I was digging with my fingernails, trying to join the dead in that grave. I dug with my fingernails, but the grave would not open. I did not have enough strength. I cried out to my mother, to my father – `Why did they not kill me? What was my sin? I have no one to go to. I saw them all being killed. Why was I spared? Why was I not killed?’
And I remained there – stretched out on the grave, three days and three nights.
I saw no one, I heard no one. Not a farmer passed by. After three days, shepherds drove their herd on to the field, and they began throwing stones at me, but I did not move. At night, the herds were taken back and during the day they threw stones believing that either it was a dead woman or a mad woman. They wanted me to rise, to answer. But I did not move. The shepherds were throwing stones at me until I had to leave the place.
A farmer took pity on Rivka Yosselevska, hid her and fed her. Later, he helped her join a group of Jews hiding in the forest. There she survived until the Soviet army came in the summer of 1944.
Nineteen years after her escape from the execution pit she told her story at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem.
Source:
Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust – The Jewish Tragedy, William Collins Sons & Co. Limited, London, 1986
The Eichmann Trial Transcripts
Gene,
The G-d of Israel saved this Jewish woman from the Christians, and He orchestrated history such that the Christian nation of Germany and its Polish, French and other European Christian supporters of Jewish genocide were stopped in their tracks. He arranged that the two of us were able to be born, and are able to be in contact here and now. What a loving and kind G-d He is.
And I’ll relate to you an unbelievably offensive Christian belief that paints our G-d as dastardly and evil.
Christians actually believe that the Nazis who cut down that town are reveling in heaven right now, since they accepted Jesus as their lord and savior and are therefore not held accountable by G-d for their misdeeds. But the Jews whom they murdered are in hell because they did not become Christian and are therefore not creditable by G-d for their decency.
It’s quite a disgusting little ethic you’re coreligionists have adopted for themselves. I hope you don’t share their vile outlook.
“The G-d of Israel saved this Jewish woman from the Christians”
Growing up, I too thought that if someone was a “goy” he was automatically a “Christian”. Boy am I glad I no longer have such a simplistic outlook on life. Many antisemites project their bad experience with a few Jews to every Jew on the planet. Let’s not do this to Christians, shall we? There were tens of thousands of Christians who were honored as “The Righteous Among The Nations” by Yad Vashem, people who risked or lost their lives to save Jews.
“Christians actually believe that the Nazis who cut down that town are reveling in heaven right now, since they accepted Jesus as their lord and savior and are therefore not held accountable by G-d for their misdeeds. ”
I am sure that there are some sick folks who believe that, although I’ve never met any. May be you have. Then again, there are many Jews who believe that the Jews who perished in the Holocaust actually got what’s coming to them (the reasons given are many: they are reincarnated souls of those who rebelled against Moshe, they were Zionists, they didn’t learn Torah and do mitzvot enough.) Both of types of such thinking is plain sick, but coming from our fellow Jews is worse, don’t you think?
“It’s quite a disgusting little ethic you’re coreligionists have adopted for themselves. I hope you don’t share their vile outlook.”
There’s only one answer I can give you: I hope YOU don’t share any vile outlook either.
While you may believe that you have not met any Christians who believe in the grace of G-d as expressed through the equation that believing in Jesus, rather than good works, is the ticket to entering heaven, the reality is that such is the main point and central belief of all of Christendom throughout its history. We can look into Christianity’s foundational text, the “new testament”, to demonstrate that belief’s core status in Christianity, but that would be missing the point: substantially all Christians believe it. Almost as universally held by Christians has been the notion that anyone who does not accept G-d’s grace by believing Jesus died on the cross for their sins is automatically consigned to burn in hell forever. I don’t know why you would deny these cardinal and nearly universal Christian beliefs are espoused by Christians, but they are anyway.
And, while I do agree with you that not all gentiles are Christians, I don’t see what relevance that observation has to my statement that the gentile persecution of Jews has predominantly been the handiwork of specifically Christians throughout the existence of the Christian religion. That doesn’t mean, as you demonstrated with facts, that all Christians are bad. Far from it! The overwhelming majority of the soldiers who liberated the Nazi death camps were good, decent, heroic Christians. Nonetheless they subscribe to a belief system that libels the Jews as “christ killers”, and, naturally, from time to time throughout its history, that evil faith has erupted into anti-Semitic oppression. The fact that there is a causal relationship between believing the Jews are guilty of deicide and turning to eradicate the Jews is a frequent refrain from religious Christain leaders throughout the course of their history.
And while you’ve been on the one hand unduly generous in forgiving religiously inspired Christian intolerance of Jews, you’ve been equally unfair in characterizing “many” Jews as believing Hitler’s Jewish victims had it coming to them. That’s a terribly unfair mischaracterization of the Jewish community at large, and we find no basis for it in the sources for the Jewish religion. Most importantly, it was the Christians, and not the Jews, who perpetrated the many anti-Semitic oppressions against the Jews on the basis of their faith.
So let’s get real, okay? Christianity, and not Judaism, was the common denominator that linked the crusaders, the inquisitors, the expellers, and the annihilators of the Jews.
“That’s a terribly unfair mischaracterization of the Jewish community at large, and we find no basis for it in the sources for the Jewish religion.”
I am not characterizing “at large” anything, relax. I am part of the Jewish community, and always will be. However, what I am talking about, just as one such example, are statements made by the current Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel. See this Jpost.com article – is that good enough example of such thinking for you? Is he a representative of a section of a Jewish community? So, I ask you: do you repudiate his words or justify them?
“So let’s get real, okay? Christianity, and not Judaism, was the common denominator that linked the crusaders, the inquisitors, the expellers, and the annihilators of the Jews.”
Gross perversion of Yeshua’s (whose love for his fellow Jews is unrivaled- after all, he’s the Messiah) teachings was merely a pretext – Jews were persecuted by every nation and religion they lived among. Babylonians and then Romans who committed their versions of Holocausts were not “Christians”. The genocidal antisemitic Haman the Agagite did not claim Yeshua as his Messiah or used NT as the pretext in his plan to kill every Jew. Egyptians who were murdering Jewish babies were not “Christians” either. Greeks who wanted to eradicate the Jewish faith and killed any Jew who practiced it were pagans. Antisemitism does not need many reasons to hate Jews. Hitler may have inherited his hatred for Jews from historic German and Catholic antisemitism (of which Luther was not the father, but a son), but he certainly didn’t use “deicide” as his justification. He used racist ideology of German master race as his excuse. He killed tens of millions of people you would consider “Christians”. You know that. The atheist Russians and Ukrainians who verbally and physically abused me for being a Jew didn’t use “Christ” as their excuse. G-d, however, will severely punish every single individual and nation that ever laid their hand on His People. You can be sure of that.
Addendum: Are you going to divert every one of my posts into a personal vendetta against Yeshua? Because that just won’t do. I am willing to bet that if I wrote a post about “Martians”, you would be right there asking me “Are Martians going to hell for not believing in Jesus?” It’s become an obsession with you, my friend, but more importantly all this constant flow of negativism I get from you is sapping my energy. Please, I do like conversing with you, but don’t be a “non-Messianic” version of our friend Dan Benzvi.
Pardon me if I interject, being a goy whose opinions means very little in this realm.. :p
@anonymous
“And, while I do agree with you that not all gentiles are Christians…”
There’s a no-brainer. Between China and India alone is 1/3 the population of the earth. Obviously the vast majority aren’t Christian (and they’re even gentiles). I find it odd that you lump all gentiles in one big bag, as if to say the Japanese are the same as the Irish, or the Zulu are the same as the Inuit. This is beyond general stereotyping, it’s more on the level of blatant disregard and disdain for non-Jewish people.
Most everything you reference stems from a very generic understanding of history (or rather a generally uncaring attitude). Knowledge of history is key to understanding modern problems. I’m sure even you would agree on this (considering how much you enjoy referencing historical “facts”).
While I’m not particularly keen on most mainstream Christian doctrine I can’t help defend against some of the blatant lies you project. I’ll just take your quotes.
“Christians actually believe that the Nazis who cut down that town are reveling in heaven right now, since they accepted Jesus as their lord and savior and are therefore not held accountable by G-d for their misdeeds.” -You
“That doesn’t mean, as you demonstrated with facts, that all Christians are bad. Far from it! The overwhelming majority of the soldiers who liberated the Nazi death camps were good, decent, heroic Christians.” -You
Make up your mind. Christians supported Nazis yet they liberated the Jewish people from them? errrr…
Of course not all soldiers were Christians, in fact I would go as far as saying that most Russian soldiers who liberated the Jews in eastern Europe were not religious (by way of communism). It goes without saying that not all American, Canadian, English, Scottish, French and any other soldier of IN ENTIRE WORLD who fought in WW2 was Christian.
“But the Jews whom they murdered are in hell because they did not become Christian and are therefore not creditable by G-d for their decency.”
All Israel will be saved, that’s stated in Isaiah and Paul quotes it in his letter to the Romans.
Gene seems to have a rounded understanding of antisemitism in the world. There’s so much nonsense in the things you say it’s nearly impossible to pick any one thing out without writing a dissertation on all the incorrect projections.
Benicho: I did not read your posting, nor will I. However, if I decide to take an interest in the thinking of gentile Christian missionaries, I will visit a chat room that is appropriate for their input.
Gene: I think that you’re right that I have a tendency to focus on your postings that express the belief that Jesus was a god or a messiah. It is clear from the Jewish tradition that he could have been neither, and that he was in fact neither. But that is NOT negativity! Following G-d’s word, that “G-d is not a man…nor a son of man” and that the messiah will usher in everlasting world peace, the rebuilding of the Temple, the end of death and disease, etc. is the most positive thing possible. Christian ideology, under which evil anti-Semitic mass murderers go unpunished and devout Jews are condemned to eternal damnation by G-d is what I find to be downright depressing. I haven’t yet checked the link you provided, so I will follow up on that. In the meanwhile, though, let me leave you with two points. First, I hope that you were not serious in your comparison of me to Dan. And second, I remain astonished at your assertion that Christianity and the deicide passion of its “new testament” has not set the stage for the unmitigated slaughter specifically of Jews specifically by Christians throughout the tenure of your religion’s existence. Whatever racial superiority nonsense Hitler may have subscribed to, it and its broader acceptance by European Christian Nazis was of course rooted in centuries of the very anti-Semitism hatred espoused as you noted by Luther and the church leaders before him. The Holocaust could never have happened in India or China, even though those giant nations have been home to Jewish communities, because they lack the historical anti-Semitism religion narrative that the Christians, and, to a lesser extent, the Muslims have acted on.
“I think that you’re right that I have a tendency to focus on your postings that express the belief that Jesus was a god or a messiah.”
How did my posting of a testimony of a person who lived through a Holocaust (and lived an hour’s drive from where I lived) in any express my belief in “Jesus was a god or a messiah”? It doesn’t (hence my point about “Martians”). And yet, you still decided to launch an attack. No matter what I write about, I would get an identically themed response from you.
“The Holocaust could never have happened in India or China”
Had Jews lived in the same numbers and length of time as they did in Europe, it could have happened eventually in those countries (again, did you forget Haman and his genocidal plan to ERADICATE ALL JEWS, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Philistines – were any of them “Christians”?) Jewish communities in India and China were numerically and influentially insignificant in proportion to the huge non-Jewish populations of both countries.
“I did not read your posting, nor will I.”
Psht, c’mon, you read it…it would pang you too much not to. :p
Gene,
By “posting”, I meant your blog entries as well as your comments. Of course, I don’t visit here to address the component of what you write that isn’t objectionable. And you write a lot of things that make a lot of sense. There’s little point in my focusing on those things. What’s there to discuss? You said it, and it stands. I’m here to challenge you specifically where you’ve gotten it monumentally wrong. Not to harangue you, but to try to press you to seek intellectual footing, and hopefully to get you to consider more logical alternatives when you find that the footing you seek is simply not available.
On the topic of the ancient idolators of yestermillennia, I think that it’s a bit of a cop-out to attempt to divert attention from consideration of Christianity’s responsibility for Christendom’s role as the chief global perpetrator of Jew oppression throughout almost all of the course of Christian history. Having said that about your conclusion, or analysis of the facts, the facts you recited are indisputable: many idolatrous cultures took great offense to the Jews’ insistence on worshipping their own, lone G-d, and, like Christianity over the past 2,000 years, sought to eradicate strict monotheism by alternatively forcibly assimilating the Jews out of existence, or through violent criminal means ending the existence of those who worship the G-d of Israel. But Christianity is in a league of its own in terms of anti-Semitism. You’re right, at one time or another, the various G-d haters from Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome attempted to stamp out Judaism. But only Christianity spent 2,000 years trying to do it. India and China never even tried. You argue that India and China didn’t turn on the Jews because the Jews were too small a sub-population, but I would respond that the Jews made such good victims in all of the places they were persecuted specifically because of their numerical weakness. My argument is rooted in demonstrable fact, yours in sheer speculation. But the missing ingredient that Christianity had that fueled anti-Semitic persecution through the ages in an unequaled fashion throughout human history is the inclusion in Christianity’s foundational text of a narrative that casts the Jewish people as eternally and willfully responsible for the most awful sin imaginable–it’s really not even imaginable, since slaughtering the sustainer of the universe is not strictly possible or survivable by creation–deicide.
If I’m wrong here, please do set me straight and share with me the underlying facts that I’m missing.
“You argue that India and China didn’t turn on the Jews because the Jews were too small a sub-population, but I would respond that the Jews made such good victims in all of the places they were persecuted specifically because of their numerical weakness.”
“If I’m wrong here, please do set me straight and share with me the underlying facts that I’m missing.”
More than 63% of the world’s population of Jews lived in Europe in 1933.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/jewpop.html
“I’m here to challenge you specifically where you’ve gotten it monumentally wrong. Not to harangue you, but to try to press you to seek intellectual footing, and hopefully to get you to consider more logical alternatives when you find that the footing you seek is simply not available.”
Fair enough.
However, let me ask you this: lets say that I persist in holding on to my belief that Yeshua is the Messiah while living as an observant Jew among Jews who loves his fellow Jews and believes that he worships the G-d of Israel [however "monumentally wrong" I may be in that regard, according to you], what do you think will happen to me? Will G-d punish me for my [mis]-belief in Yeshua as Israel’s Messiah by consigning me to some sort of hell to suffer temporarily or for all eternity along side Hitler and his henchmen? Or, will I just vaporize into nothingness as if I never existed? [and if that scenario is the case, so what?] Would be interesting to hear your thoughts as to what dangers I am actually facing.
Gene,
* “…what do you think will happen to me?”
* “Will G-d punish me…by consigning me to some sort of hell …along side Hitler…?”
* “[W]ill I just vaporize into nothingness…?”
Sheesh, Gene! Wasn’t it you who complained to me about a “constant flow of negativism”?
Instead of wasting precious energy worrying about the consequences for doing that which is wrong, why not focus instead on determining what is right, and doing that? That’s what I thing we ought to be discussing.
“Instead of wasting precious energy worrying about the consequences for doing that which is wrong…”
Cop-out answer:) You don’t have to expend a lot of energy, just a bisel. If I consider Yeshua as Messiah to be that “right” thing [and we can discuss this until Messiah comes], what is my long-term (meaning, after I die) risk? No one can be said to be 100% “right” about everything, right? If in the end it turns out that I am wrong about Yeshua but perhaps right about most other things, what do you think G-d will do to me?
Indulge me with your opinion on the matter. Surely you must have considered this.
I never met anybody who died and reported to me what the afterlife was like, so I’m probably not the best person to fill you in on the matter.
If you do want to contemplate the subject, perhaps you should broaden it to address the worship of all false gods, not just Jesus but also wooden carvings, golden statues, the wind, the moon, etc.? All of these practices would seem to transgress the First Commandment equally. Not that the First Commandment establishes the consequences of its violation to ones afterlife, though…. I guess you can say the Author of the Ten Commandments was copping out like I am, only He actually knows the answer that I’m not giving you.
But while I cannot help you with matters that are not fully and clearly revealed to us, I am happy to research with you those matters that we do have the information about. For instance, both in the written and in the oral tradition from Sinai, we have a clear and emphatic understanding that G-d is not a being that exists within creation, but rather that creation exists within G-d. On the other hand, the religions you’ve adopted places G-d in the form of Jesus as a mortal who exists within creation, and who perished. Shall we discuss the logic of believing at once the Jewish tradition from Sinai that G-d re-creates and sustains the world at every moment, and at the same time that G-d was a mere occupant of creation and then died? Since you accept the tradition from Sinai, how do you explain our continued existence after Jesus’ death (please, don’t bring polytheism into this discussion since that violates the tradition from Sinai)?
“Shall we discuss the logic of believing at once the Jewish tradition from Sinai that G-d re-creates and sustains the world at every moment, and at the same time that G-d was a mere occupant of creation and then died? ”
My understanding is that Yeshua the Messiah, being full of “Divine Essene”, can be likened to the Temple that stood in Jerusalem (in fact, he referred to his body as a “temple” – see Yochanan/John 2:19). We know that G-d’s Presence (Shekhina) descended on the earthly Temple (Mishkan and Beis Hamikdash) and dwelt there (even though the whole universe can’t contain G-d):
“When Moshe first heard that Hashem wants a “home” in this world he was shaken. The whole Earth could not contain G-d, how can I build a building that will contain Him?! G-d answered, “Don’t worry, just build a structure 20 beams by 20 beams by 8 beams and I will fit my Presence into it.” (Yalkut Shimoni Teruma 365) ”
If G-d can fit His Presence into an earthly structure made my human hands, He can certainly fit it inside Messiah. This doesn’t make G-d anymore of a “man” than it makes him a “house”. When we pray every day facing the Temple in Jerusalem, do way pray to the Temple? No, we do not pray to the Temple (that would be idolatry), but rather to the One G-d whose Presence indwells it.
A Temple of G-d can be destroyed (as indeed happened twice already), but it doesn’t mean that G-d’s Shekhina is destroyed along side the earthly physical structure. Same with Yeshua the Messiah – the “Divine Essence” within his “temple” can’t be destroyed because it’s spiritual.
“Since you accept the tradition from Sinai, how do you explain our continued existence after Jesus’ death (please, don’t bring polytheism into this discussion since that violates the tradition from Sinai)?”
Well, what did Messiah himself say:
“For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the L-rd.” (Matityahu 23:29) – meaning Yeshua himself clearly said that the Jewish people will remain until his return. Not only just remain, but will be observant and waiting for Messiah to come.
Shaul confirmed the same: “And so all Yisrael will be saved, as it is written: “The Deliverer will come from Tzion; he will turn godlessness away from Ya’akov.” (Romans 11:26)
Gene,
You wrote “My understanding is that Yeshua the Messiah, being full of ‘Divine Essene’, can be likened to the Temple that stood in Jerusalem…”. Okay. That’s your understanding. Now show your source in the Jewish tradition from Sinai that supports your understanding. And, if you find that you cannot, let’s get around to evaluating whether to keep or jettison your present understanding.
Setting aside for the moment your search for a basis for your understanding in the Sinaitic tradition, let’s consider what it would even buy for you were you able to substantiate the claim there that Jesus as G-d and a man were somehow akin to G-d’s immanent presence in Jerusalem. First of all, the Hebrew scripture never said “G-d is not a shechina”; what it says is “G-d is not a man” (Num. 23:19). Now, it happens to be the case that the tradition from Sinai includes a report that G-d’s immanent presence (Heb.: shechina) could be detected in a specific physical location within creation. How can that be, given my earlier protestation against worshiping a man as G-d since G-d cannot logically be reduced enough to be contained inside that which only exists within Him? The answer, of course, is that G-d Himself was not “in Jerusalem”. Any nursery-aged student knows the song “Hashem is here, Hashem is there, Hashem is truly everywhere. Up! Up! Down! Down!…” You get the idea. The schechina, G-d’s immanent presence, is a perception He can grant to us of His presence. But it is not Him. If the schechina stands 3 feet around, does that mean that G-d has a 3 foot diameter? Certainly not. G-d is not physical, and physical dimensions do not pertain to Him. On the other hand, Christians argue that Jesus was both fully man, fully physical, and fully G-d. They argue that G-d did not manifest His representation on earth, but that He did the logically irrelevant by shrinking to fit into that which can only exist within Him. That’s why the Jewish concept of the shechina cannot be compared, but only contrasted, to the Christian concept of Jesus as a divine man.
On a side note, I don’t think we shed any light on the truth about what falls within the Jewish tradition from Sinai and what falls outside of it by exchanging common Christian expressions for false Hebrew equivalents. Let’s stick to Jesus, Matthew and John, and leave Yeshua, Matityahu and Yochanan for settings where they’re in common currency and properly understood by readers at first blush. Fair enough? Otherwise, people might not fully understand our dialog, and in any event we have no disagreement about the English names for these characters–why should we launch into an unneccessary, tangential dispute over nomenclature at this juncture by attempting to Judaize these characters who are so far from the Jewish tradition? Let’s save that for another day, and for now focus on Jesus and the question of how he could have been G-d if he existed fully as a man on earth.
“First of all, the Hebrew scripture never said “G-d is not a shechina”; what it says is “G-d is not a man” (Num. 23:19).”
OK, G-d is not a house either, even if it doesn’t say so explicitly in the Hebrew scriptures.
“The schechina, G-d’s immanent presence, is a perception He can grant to us of His presence. But it is not Him.”
Well, in Yeshua we have resting of the schechina, “G-d’s immanent presence”.
Yoel Sirkis (posek and halakhist) wrote: “The purpose of The Blessed One was always that one should be involved in Torah in order to bond our souls in the essence and spirituality and holiness of the source of the giver of the Torah…And if one is involved in Torah study with this intention, one becomes a Merkavah and Heichal for the Shekhinah may he be blessed, so that the Shekhinah is literally within them, because they are a Heichal to G-d and within them literally the Shekhinah establishes its dwelling place.”
So, schechina indwelling people is a concept of Judaism. Yeshua’s physical body is not G-d – so you accusing me of idolatry is groundless. However, in Messiah dwells the Presence of G-d [the only G-d - the G-d of Israel] in its fullness – it’s precisely only through that very Presence that we relate to G-d on earth – because it says in scriptures that no one actually seen G-d [Hashem, the Father…) and lived. We only see his schechina.
“Let’s stick to Jesus, Matthew and John, and leave Yeshua, Matityahu and Yochanan for settings where they’re in common currency and properly understood by readers at first blush. Fair enough?”
This blog is by a Jew who writes primarily for Jews not Christians (remember?), and Messianic Jews who read this blog are well familiar with the Jewish names of these persons. Those Jews who are not yet familiar, will no doubt become quickly acquainted with the Jewishness of their Messiah.
Sorry, this is a point that is probably not worth turning our attention to address right now, but since you raised it I’ll say something very brief about it.
You wrote “Well, what did Messiah himself say: ‘For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the L-rd.””
And do you know what else Jesus said about his eventual return? He said that it would be immediate, and not many generations after crucifixion. He said, if the gospels here are true, “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things [all of the messianic prophecies written in the Hebrew scriptures] have happened” (Matt. 24:34, Mark 13:30, and, for good measure, Luke 21:32). Jesus spoke to a generation that passed two millennia ago, and still we have not seen a day without war, death, sickness, continued Jewish diaspora and the existence of many mutually exclusive religions–and what did Jesus tell the suckers in his audience? “Be right back!” So how should we evaluate Jesus as a prophet and really his entire message given his failure to fulfill his BRB forecast? We have instruction to help us with this topic, from G-d, in the Jewish Bible:
“If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the L-rd does not take place or come true, that is a message the L-rd has not spoken” (Deut. 18:22).
For the sake of brevity, I won’t quote it it here, but I think you would find Deut. 13 and Deut. 18 from verse 14 on quite instructive on G-d’s opinion of prophets who ordain that Jews ought to worship men, ghosts or any other beings aside from G-d alone as He revealed Himself to their ancestors at Sinai.
One more thing: apologies for not acheiving my aforementioned aim of brevity! I’m such a blabbermouth. :-(
“Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things [all of the messianic prophecies written in the Hebrew scriptures] have happened” (Matt. 24:34, Mark 13:30, and, for good measure, Luke 21:32). Jesus spoke to a generation that passed two millennia ago.
My understanding is that Yeshua Rabbenu was speaking of the Jewish people in general – meaning the Israel will remain as a people until all is fulfilled (Jeremiah 31:36). The word “generation” (genea) is rooted in another word “ginomai”, which means “race, family”.
“prophets who ordain that Jews ought to worship men, ghosts or any other beings aside from G-d alone as He revealed Himself to their ancestors at Sinai.”
Does this sound like a person who came to draw people away from G-d:
“By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but Him Who sent me. ” (Yochanan / John 5:30)
The schechina resting on people (meaning that they can on some level sense or benefit from His presence) who achieve holiness through the study and practice of Jewish law is a Jewish concept, although I must confess my ignorance as I ‘ve never heard of Yoel Sirkis before. I found the quotation you excerpted from him to be quite uplifting.
And to the extent you have parted company with the effectively universally held doctrine in Christianity that Jesus is “fully man and fully G-d”, I’m following right along with you. And with all of the upstanding Torah scholars in the observant Jewish community who today are resting places for the shechina, I am wondering why you make such a big deal out of Jesus, whom you seem to see as merely one more individual in that pack. Even if we don’t deal with the gross contempt Jesus appeared to heap on G-d’s commandments, and we account Jesus as a true Torah scholar…so, what about it? I am fortunate to know several Torah scholars, and many more aspiring scholars, really students, of the Torah/tradition from Sinai. Like your attitude toward Jesus, I look at them as wonderful people, but not demi-gods. Of course, they don’t run around telling folks that the only way to worship G-d is through them! But really, if you don’t believe that Jesus is G-d all wrapped up in a human being, then why are you involved in worshiping him?
“Yeshua Rabbenu”? “Yochanan / John”? Come on, Gene. Are you really that juvenile?
Cut it out. Really. It’s not cutesy. It’s trickery. You’re better than that.
““Yeshua Rabbenu”? “Yochanan / John”? Come on, Gene. Are you really that juvenile? Cut it out. Really. It’s not cutesy. It’s trickery. You’re better than that.”
Yeshua was called a Rabbi, a Master and a Teacher – by Jews who followed him. The disciples were all devout Jews. It’s a “trickery”? Only your opinion. To me he is the Messiah of Israel (as you will no doubt find out one day) – but you are here to set me straight, right?
Perhaps you want me to stop using my Hebrew name in my shul too, for good measure?
While I do value you as a person and as a Jew, I have to also be mindful of other religiously unschooled Jews who may stumble onto our dialog and assume that because I didn’t object to your trickery that misrepresenting “new testament” figures as Jewish is condoned or accepted by Jews.
I will not be party to a scheme to misportray Christianity as Jewish. I will not take part in a conversation about Jesus in which he is misidentified as Yeshua or Yeshua Rabbenu. You cross a line when you take that step into deception that I cannot accompany you over.
If you will insist on conflating by means of cheap linguistic stunts our ancestral religion with that of the gentiles which you have chosen to adopt, I will have to to regretfully bow out of continuing our conversations. But, if you will simply agree to call Jesus by his “new testament” name, and the same for all of the characters in that work, I will happily continue our relationship and our dialog. I hope that you will not take this rebuke as a personal affront, but I cannot condone deception.
“If you will insist on conflating by means of cheap linguistic stunts our ancestral religion with that of the gentiles which you have chosen to adopt, I will have to to regretfully bow out of continuing our conversations. ”
I was wondering how long you’d last…
You’ve asked me to change the way I talk, to change my essence as a Jew who follows the Jewish Messiah, insisting that I deny my deeply held convictions simply because it offends your own sensibilities and conflicts with your own beliefs. To conform myself to your ideas of how I should think, talk and behave is your precondition for dialog. Well, I have the following quote to leave you with:
“If I am I because you are you and you are you because I am I, then I am not I and you are not you. However, if I am I because I am I, and you are you because you are you, then I am indeed I and you are indeed you” – Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk
May G-d be with you and may you merit to see the coming of His Moschiach.
Great post, Gene, and I enjoyed your little debate with Anon.
Blessings.
Thanks, Judah! I do hope that Anonymous comes back one day (may be if I, by some odd chance, write another disagreeable post?) – I like the guy.
Shalom.
Anonymous (FakeYid), I was grieved to read about the first statement made on Christians. To those who believe this statement I urge you to study you history cause you have been very misled and have judge incorrectly.
It is like saying all germans are Nazis, is that a fair accurate statement to make? Saying that all germans hate jews?
This statement you made:
“Christians actually believe that the Nazis who cut down that town are reveling in heaven right now, since they accepted Jesus as their lord and savior and are therefore not held accountable by G-d for their misdeeds. ”
I suggest again you get the FACTS right before making very inaccuate statements. Nazis were not Christians even though they attempt to be like it at the time. You don’t get save just because you say you are a Christian or say you believe in Jesus or perform rituals. The Demons believe that Jesus is Lord yet they are condemned.
I also suggest you find out what a real Christian is because it certainly is not what you have stated. If you Love Yeshua you would not be doing things that the Nazi did at all. You will have no part in it and you would seriouslly condemn their horrible acts of murdering so many jews. :( How can you believe that this is being a Christian? Treating Jews as if they were nothing more then dust? Surely that statement is not the God of Abarham Isaac and Jacob who delivered Israel from the hands of her enmies.
You know Corrie Ten boom? A Lovely Dutch women who love the Jews so much her family risk everything for them. They got sent to the concentration camp for standing up for the Jews. Her testimony is very powerful! She is a Christian too, for she laid down her life for the Jews. She survived and Praise God for that! So she is a good example of what a Christian is.
Read a little on her
http://www.corrietenboom.com/history.htm
And here is a nother good link about our Messiah – very good resources
http://realmessiah.askdrbrown.org/answers_to_objections