The ‘Messiah’ is Coming Again, this time in Hebrew

 
One of the world’s most popular oratorios, Handel’s Messiah, is going to be performed in Jerusalem in the Bible’s original language—Hebrew—for the first time. It is the brainchild of Messianic Jewish believers who were born in Israel and who, like many Israelis, grew up with a deep connection to the Hebrew Bible.
 
“Three years ago I saw the Messiah performed by the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra,” recalled Efrat Gerlich, a sixth generation sabra (native-born Israeli). “I thought, ‘Wow, this is something we must do in Hebrew.’”
 
Ammikam Tavor, a translator and teacher, had been thinking the same since 1964. “When I heard this musical for the first time I was just infatuated with it,” he told Israel Today. “Some of the music demanded to be translated.”
 
But it wasn’t until two years ago that Irene Levy, a tireless 87-year-old Christian resident of Jerusalem, asked Tavor to officially translate the music so it could be performed in Hebrew, a lifelong vision of hers. “Most of the translation was already in my mind, but to sit down and do it systematically, I didn’t do until this year,” Tavor said.
 
It took him a month to hammer out his first official version—about the same amount of time it took George Frideric Handel to compose the classic. Tavor took the words from the Hebrew Bible. “I tried not to make any changes from the Hebrew Bible unless it was absolutely impossible not to [musically],” he said, although he allowed himself more leeway with the New Testament, which was translated from Greek.
 
Translation in hand, the visionaries needed a conductor and a choir. Arie Bar David, a classically trained musician, conductor and pioneer of Israeli Messianic music, was asked by Levy numerous times over the years to take on such a feat, but he had repeatedly refused. “As a musician it frightened me. I know how important language is to the composer,” he said. “I thought, ‘Impossible! I will have to ruin the Hebrew, or the music or the Bible!’”
 
But a veiled “threat” from Levy finally got Bar David moving: “She told me, ‘In three years I will be 90 years old. Before I pass to the Lord, I want to hear it in Hebrew!’”
 
The first translation had to be adapted to fit the music. Tavor and Bar David smoothed the Hebrew words into the English-written music, while the team suggested solutions for problem parts. The most difficult piece, they said, was the Hallelujah chorus despite the fact that “hallelujah” is a Hebrew word.
 
One of Bar David’s first tasks—while he was still working fulltime as a tour guide—was to transliterate the Hebrew into Latin letters so it would read from left to right with the music.
 
“What was amazing, as I started working with the text, is that it was so easy to adapt,” he said. “And when we sing it as a choir, all the singers say they feel as if it was originally written in Hebrew.”
 
Bar David, Gerlich, Levy and Tavor amassed a 45-voice choir and secured two performances in the capital.
 
Despite its references to Yeshua, the Messiah is extremely popular in Israel as a classical work. Gerlich hopes that its message will be even sharper in Hebrew.
 
“It can touch the hearts of many people in Israel especially because it is already in our Bible,” Gerlich said. ”Now when they hear the New Covenant in Hebrew, they will say, ‘Maybe we have to check this out, maybe we have to read about it.’ They will have to search.”
 
The performances will be during Passover, a fitting tribute, Bar David said, to Yeshua’s resurrection. “Messiah is about the life of Yeshua,” he said, “from the beginning, to His death, to His resurrection, to His reign.”

Gaza Christians Face Growing Persecution

Reports from Gaza indicate that the Hamas-ruled territory is becoming a Taliban-style state with forced conversions to Islam and increasing persecution, forcing many Evangelical Christians to flee to Bethlehem and other Palestinian cities. Christians who have chosen to remain in Gaza or can’t get out are growing beards in order to look Moslem, dressing so as not to be noticed and keeping a low profile, Palestinian Christians told Israel Today, asking that their names not be used.
 
“It has reached a new point,” said Justus Weiner, a Jewish Israeli human rights lawyer who represents Arab Christians persecuted by Moslems. “If I were a Christian in Gaza, I’d be worried.”
 
The behavior of Moslems in the Palestinian territories “shows a lot of audacity,” Weiner said. Extremists are even threatening Western Palestinians. Weiner cited Isa Bajalia, a Palestinian pastor interviewed by Israel Today last month, who was threatened and forced to leave Ramallah. Bajalia, unlike most Palestinians, is also an American citizen and appealed for help to the US Consulate. Most Palestinians have no recourse.
 
“No one expects any justice to be done vis-à-vis Rami’s killers,” Weiner said referring to Rami Ayyad, a Bible Society worker who was kidnapped and shot, leaving behind a pregnant wife and two children (see Israel Today, November).
 
Palestinian security officials arrested a member of the Hamas military wing in connection with the murder, but he was released with a reprimand, according to several members of the Christian community. The word on the street is that the leaders of the Gaza Baptist Church could also be targeted and that their lives are in danger.
 
Sheikh Abu Saqer, leader of the radical Jihadia Salafiya group, has warned that Christians must accept Islamic law, including a ban on alcohol and on women roaming publicly without proper head coverings, if they want to continue living safely in Gaza.
 
Christians number only 2,000 among the more than 1.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
 
“The remaining Christian community is in a panic. They’re keeping their heads very low,” Weiner said. “Christian institutions don’t have anything on the façade that would identify them.”

A Light Dawns in Bethlehem

DEHEISHE REFUGEE CAMP– It’s called a “drop and run.” The van rolls to a stop, an aid worker bursts out, hands a box to a person sitting nearby, jumps back into the van and peels out.
 
But it didn’t quite work out that way this time.
 
Foreigners are such a rare sight in the refugee camps that curiosity begets questions and an instant crowd. Members of Father’s House Bethlehem, the only NGO in the Bethlehem refugee camps, were swarmed by children and curious mothers who had nothing to do but gawk as the van maneuvered through the narrow streets of Deheishe.
 
They are advised to keep rolling, Father’s House Bethlehem director Joanna Watson explained, because a new terrorist group in the camps is ready and waiting to abduct foreigners. Plus, there is a Bible and a DVD of the movie Jesus in Arabic nestled amid the food and clothing in the boxes. Moslem extremists might seek to retaliate. Thus, the drop and run concept.
 
Despite the dangers and increased persecution of Christians at the hands of the Moslem majority, some believers are making their way to the area bringing support and a glimmer of hope to a beleaguered people.
 
“Even Moslems say, ‘You’re not going to the refugee camps! Why?’” Watson told Israel Today. “I tell them we go because ‘no one else goes to the camps and they’re human beings too. Jesus created everyone.’”

Moved by the need of Palestinian refugees in Bethlehem, Lisa Bourland, cofounder of Father’s House International in Kentucky, set up a permanent branch of the ministry here. They work with the Living Bread ministry of Karen Dunham, who heads up outreaches to the refugee camps.
 
In addition to bringing aid to the camps, the team is also establishing the Bethlehem House of Prayer just a five-minute walk from Manger Square. An around-the-clock house of prayer in Jerusalem, Succat Hallel, will lend worship leaders while the “BHOP” gets off the ground.
 
“I believe revival is going to burst out in Bethlehem,” Watson said. “You can see how open it is here.”
 
The team has transformed dingy rooms into offices and meeting space with peaceful yellow walls and wood trim. They painstakingly turned filthy, dilapidated bedrooms into an adequate hostel for volunteers and they are now renovating the prayer room, a large open space that overlooks more of Bethlehem and an Israeli neighborhood over the security barrier.
 
While helping Palestinians, this aid organization is atypically pro-Israel. Generally, ministries in Bethlehem teach replacement theology while antagonism against Israel runs deep due to years of tense relations and closed borders.
 
“We believe in the truths and promises for Israel, but we believe that the Arab people are entitled to the promises of God through Ishmael,” said James Edwards, who works full time for Father’s House Bethlehem. Edwards said people should come over the border to learn and pray, thus breaking down the walls dividing Israelis and Palestinians.
 
Bethlehem, a thriving tourist town until the second intifada (uprising) prompted Israel to seal the borders and cut off work permits for many Palestinians, used to be predominantly Christian. But the Christian population has plunged from an 85 percent majority in 1948 to just 12 percent of the town’s 60,000 residents in 2006.
 
In the past seven years, many restaurants, hotels and souvenir shops have been boarded up. Unemployment runs at 65 percent and higher in the refugee camps. If residents in Bethlehem proper are financially strapped, the camps’ residents are in dire poverty—even fellow Palestinians don’t go there.
 
“We want help—sugar, rice, food to eat,” Aziza Il Masri told us from her home in Deheishe. “The small children need milk. There’s no work here. My husband worked in Israel, but he died. I need medicine, but sometimes there isn’t any.” The United Nations used to help, she said, but for the past six months, no one has been by.
 
Aziza’s neighbor received an aid box, which looked awkwardly small in her two-room apartment where she lives with her son, daughter-in-law and their son. Their belongings are sparse: a stove top of two burners balanced precariously on a rickety table, a refrigerator and a mattress in one corner of the living room.
 
At the top of the hill in Deheishe, Im-Nabil stood outside her small home with her nine-year-old daughter who is handicapped. Hope rarely finds its way to her doorstep. Her husband Taleh is an invalid and can’t work. Sometimes friends or their grown children bring them money, but it’s never enough to get proper healthcare for Taleh.
 
Receiving a box of shoes, clothing and food was a pleasant surprise in the middle of winter. “Thank you,” she said, tears clouding her eyes. “Thank you.”

Palestinian Pastor Flees after Death Threats

With the dirt still fresh over the coffin of a Palestinian martyr in Gaza, an Evangelical pastor in Palestinian-ruled Ramallah fears he may be the next target of persecution against Christians and is taking no chances. Isa Bajalia fled to Jerusalem after receiving several threats against his life and being refused protection by Palestinian officials.

The threats underscore the growing intimidation against Christians, particularly Evangelicals, in the Palestinian areas. In October, a Palestinian Bible Society worker in Gaza, Rami Ayyad, was kidnapped and killed by Islamic militants.

“I was told, ‘The same things that happened to Rami in Gaza will happen to you,’” Bajalia recounted. “They said, ‘We’re going to break your arms and legs. We’re going to shoot you in your knee caps.’”

Two men in Ramallah, one of them a low level Palestinian Authority (PA) official, have been attempting to extort land and money from Bajalia. One is a Moslem and the other a nominal Christian. Bajalia brought these threats before the PA where one official said he didn’t have time for him and a police officer said that for $5,000 he could promise protection. Instead, Bajalia left Ramallah for now. 

“It made me so cautious that I started to always watch around me and behind me,” he told Israel Today. “I am sure Rami was sitting in the same position as I am now not long ago.”

Moslem hatred of Christians in Palestinian territories has intensified since the Iraq War and the terrorist attacks in the US on Sept. 11th, 2001, Bajalia noted.

“There was always some element of hatred toward Christians, hidden perhaps, but now we are seeing acts of persecution, threats and violence,” he said.

Bajalia, who was born in the US and is an American citizen, moved to Ramallah—where both his parents were born—16 years ago. He brings in humanitarian aid, pastors a church and focuses his work on the Moslem community.

“There is openness among Moslems, much more than we’ve ever seen,” but the radical element of Islam is also active, he said.

Bajalia, 47, was the first of his four brothers and parents to get saved growing up in Birmingham, Ala. and later went on to Rhema Bible Training School in Oklahoma for his seminary degree. His parents were shocked when he decided to go back to the Land they left, but he said it was a calling he couldn’t deny. When Balalia arrived in Ramallah in 1991, it was his first trip to his parents’ homeland.

“I was amazed at how historic, how rustic the appearance of the landscape and housing was,” he said. “I had come from a society where things were always moving forward. Here it was like time was frozen.”

The threats began after visiting doctors and nurses from abroad volunteered at Bajalia’s medical clinic and prayed over some patients. Apparently some of the patients were plants who reported that the outreach was attempting to convert Moslems. The two men harassing Bajalia told him to stop evangelizing and also demanded he give them a plot of land his family owns plus $30,000. 

The PA’s lack of response to his case isn’t necessarily because he is a Christian, Bajalia said, but because “I am a nobody on the landscape of society.” He feels the same way about the American consulate which has received his case but has only been in touch with him once with one suggestion: Don’t go back to Ramallah.

Ramallah was once known for its thriving Christian population. Now, of 70,000 residents in the city and its outlying villages, the Christian population has dwindled to just 1 percent. Of that, Bajalia estimates that at most, 400 are Evangelicals.

“You definitely feel like a minority in terms of the numbers,” Bajalia said. “But that’s the type of challenge I like. These are untouched territories in terms of the gospel and it is an opportunity for God’s light to shine through.”

Bajalia has fostered good ties with Messianic pastors in Israel during his time here. He said that his church prays for the nation of Israel and for the Jewish people.

“I believe loyalty to God’s sovereignty is more important than loyalty to a nation,” he said, stressing that he stays out of politics. Bajalia said he sees the suffering on both sides: the struggle with poverty, checkpoints and the security barrier among Palestinians, and Jewish lives torn apart in suicide attacks. 

“We hurt when we see Israelis hurt,” he said. “We want to be a part of the healing process.”

A Bomb or a Bible

American minister sees salvation and transformation in Jericho

JERICHO – This Arab town may look like a rocky, barren desert, but after five years of laboring in obscurity, American Karen Dunham has seen it become an oasis of hope and salvation in the Palestinian territories.

“Now Jericho is given into the hands of the Lord,” Dunham said. “There isn’t anywhere you can’t talk about Jesus.”

While most Palestinian towns—and Israel for that matter—are closed off to evangelism, Jericho has been plied open by Dunham’s ministry. She lived, with her teenage son, in a refugee camp, distributing humanitarian aid, killing scorpions and suffering water shortages and blackouts with the people while some Moslems tried to run her out of town.
 
She runs a church attended by up to 300 Palestinians. No one leaves empty-handed—but no one gets humanitarian aid without also getting a tract and a Bible.
 
Despite enduring two car bombings and fires set at her home and office, Dunham stayed on and organized even more aid programs. Her persistence and humility gained favor with Palestinian officials and Jericho’s elders, and she expanded her ministry. As one Moslem leader told her, “If this whole city goes with your faith then all I can say is, ‘Cheers!’”
 
While Hamas was gaining a foothold in Gaza and Christians in Judea and Samaria (the so-called “West Bank”) were timidly tolerated in their towns, Jericho, a Moslem farming community of 25,000, was becoming a model of transformation. Dunham estimates that about 200 residents have accepted the Lord. Openness among Moslems is high and the gospel is allowed. Dunham said the city council voted, specifically for her, that handing out a tract or a Bible is no longer considered evangelism.
 
The results of Dunham’s outreach stem from a simple yet profound strategy: a Bible or a bomb. She provides the gospel, and hopes the results are that people turn to God instead of violence to meet their needs.
 
Noted Christian speakers and authors Jill Austin of Master Potters Ministry and Cindy Jacobs, who traveled to Israel during the Feast of Tabernacles, joined Dunham for two days of ministry. They spent time on both sides of the border and led a humanitarian outreach in Jericho with Dunham.
 
The Jericho Municipality insisted that its official policy has always been to accept all religions without prejudice and that the city supports Dunham by not requiring her to pay certain city bills. Mayor Hassan Saleh, a moderate Moslem and member of Fatah, said the town welcomes “Christians in Jericho because it is a holy place that joins all religions.”
 
“There is no policy to prevent them from expressing their religious background,” he said. “If you see the people here, how Christians and Moslems relate, they’re free to express what they believe.”
 
Sami Musallam, a former governor of Jericho, said Dunham’s actions speak louder than words. “Her purpose is to extend help to needy people,” he said. “She does some good work and provides support for them.”
 
A wealth of energy and strong faith, Dunham was a pariah among Christian organizations in the Land because her work in the Palestinian camps was seen as anti-Zionist. But her efforts were not lost on a key Zionist group: the Israeli army. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has not only facilitated Dunham’s border crossings but also helped her get NGO (non-governmental organization) status.
 
The army even asked her to continue her work in the 28 other Palestinian refugee camps where it sees a need. Next on the list is southern Hebron where the IDF told her some Arabs live in caves and have no running water. Dunham will raise money and get supplies, and the military will allow her into territories where no Christian organization, no Israeli and not even the United Nations has ventured.
 
An IDF officer, speaking on background, said soldiers at the Israeli civil administration in Jericho were impressed by Dunham and don’t mind her spreading the gospel. “She’s less interested in a political message and doesn’t complain about what the Israeli army is doing,” he said.
 
Her work, he said, has a greater impact on the Palestinians than the bigger organizations because “she has less internal bureaucracy and comes with honesty to the people. Because of Karen’s activities, their lives are improved and they have a more positive attitude toward the IDF because they realize we are supporting her.”
 
Dunham is not intimidated by Christian leaders, Moslem extremists or her lack of knowledge of either Hebrew or Arabic. Her team includes several teenagers who share her fearlessness going into the tough places, like her son Blake.
 
Dunham initially came to Israel simply to pray. She met a Catholic priest who told her, “If you can feed Jericho, you can win the city for Jesus.” The words burned in her heart, and soon after, she moved to a refugee camp there. News of her success began reaching Jerusalem in the last two years. Now volunteers join Dunham every week in Jericho for church services and tour groups from overseas include Jericho among their stops.
 
“Five years ago it wasn’t popular to be here at all,” she said.
 
Jericho was once a destination for Israelis and tourists with some 3,000 Israelis spending their Sabbath at the city’s casino or visiting holy sites—before the second Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000.
 
Somehow Dunham has managed to walk a tightrope, maintaining favor with both Palestinian and Israeli army officials. Kamel Sinokrot, who runs the largest tourist attraction in the city—a cable car up to the Mount of Temptation with a restaurant and lookout point—is a devout Moslem, but he lent his facility to Dunham for her TV broadcast. He welcomes her overtly Christian gatherings, and, of course, the tourism she brings to the desert town.
 
“We’re not opposed to this at all,” Sinokrot said as 140 foreigners participated in a worship service at his restaurant. Even with Moslem women joining in the worship, he didn’t have a problem. “We are very happy,” he said. “We all worship the Lord.”

‘Shaheed’ for the Gospel

Rami Ayyad, a 29-year-old father of two with a pregnant wife, became the first martyr for the gospel in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. His death underscores the mounting danger faced by evangelical Christians in Gaza.

Ayyad’s body was found some 12 hours after he was kidnapped, with two gunshot wounds including one to the back of the head, stab wounds and with a blow to the head.

When Hamas seized control of Gaza in a Palestinian civil war in June, its leaders announced that a new era of Islamic rule had arrived. For Christians, it amounted to an ultimatum: submit to Allah’s dictates or leave.

Some 3,000 Christians or fewer live among 1.5 million Palestinian Muslims in Gaza. Evangelical Christians number in the mere hundreds, and most are wary of speaking to outsiders about their trials for fear of retribution from their Muslim rulers. 

Pastor Hanna Massad of the Gaza Baptist Church spoke of Ayyad’s final hours. Two days prior to his kidnapping and brutal murder, he was followed home from work at Gaza’s only Christian bookstore by a car full of Islamic militants. Ayyad had been threatened by Muslim elements before, and his unwelcome entourage was seen as little more than an act of intimidation. But after closing the Bible Society bookshop on a Saturday afternoon, he was abducted, held for several hours and killed.

Massad said that Ayyad was one of his congregation’s most beloved and passionate members, and a man who fearlessly shared the gospel despite the threats that sought to silence him. “Rami was a very strong believer. He would not compromise with his faith,” said Massad. Even in the face of death threats, Ayyad “loved the Lord and was willing to pay the price for his faith.”

Massad said the dangers facing believers in Gaza are growing. “We never had anything like this,” said the pastor, noting that an increasing number of local Christians “are afraid and some have many questions.”

Nevertheless, most remain dedicated to their faith and  hold up Ayyad as “a shaheed (martyr) for the gospel.” It is an ironic twist because Palestinians use the Islamic (Arabic) word “shaheed” to describe suicide bombers.

Massad said that he has no doubt the Lord will use Ayyad’s death in a powerful way, and while Gaza believers wait for the next step to become clear, they will continue to pray for and encourage one another.

Echoing the propaganda of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, the international media maintains that relations between Christians and Muslims in Gaza are generally good. But it is becoming clear that Christians are merely tolerated, and evangelical Christians even less so. Those who dare to share the gospel in Gaza truly lay their lives on the line.

Sabbatical Year, not so Restful

 
DALTON, northern Israel – It is supposed to be a year of rest for the land in accordance with the biblical command to refrain from working the ground every seventh year: “You shall sow your land for six years and gather in its yield, but on the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the needy of your people may eat; and whatever they leave the beast of the field may eat.” (Exodus 23:10-11)
 
The sabbatical year (shmita in Hebrew) began on Rosh Hashanah (September 12th), but lawyers, rabbis and farmers are doing anything but resting as a war between synagogue and state is brewing.
 
Normally, the sabbatical year has a routine approved by the Chief Rabbinate: Jewish farmers “sell” their land to non-Jews during that year so that produce is considered kosher because it was not grown by Jews. This is known as heter mechira (consent of sale). With this practice, instituted in the late 1800s, the fruit and vegetable market generally stays the same.
 
This year, however, the ultra-Orthodox rabbinical authorities adopted a stricter approach. “From the point of view of the Rabbinate the heter mechira is acceptable,” said Avi Blumenthal, spokesman for Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger. “But the local city rabbi has the right not to accept it.”
 
The decision put a wedge between the rabbinate and farmers, and even Zionist Orthodox Israelis are unhappy about it. The rift deepened when some local rabbis adopted the strict ultra-Orthodox view and warned that they would revoke kosher licenses to shops and restaurants if produce was bought from a farm that was symbolically sold. That means major losses for the nation’s farmers.
 
In the late 1880s, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook came up with the idea of heter mechira so the Land may be cultivated at no loss to farmers. But many ultra-Orthodox Jews see this as a way to avoid religious obligations. During shmita years, they buy their produce from Arab farmers in Israel, the Palestinian territories, or import from abroad.
 
“This is a betrayal of religious Zionism and a betrayal of Jewish farmers,” Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, rabbi of the settlement of Efrat near Bethlehem, said. “Tragically, issues such as this are dividing even observant Jews.”
 
Riskin said his community never buys Arab produce even during a shmita year.
 
Tzohar, a group of younger Zionist rabbis, announced that they will issue heter mechira certificates of their own in cities where the local rabbi will not. “We believe it is important to strengthen Jewish farmers and provide reasonably priced produce to the Jewish nation,” said Tzohar chairman Rabbi Rafi Freuerstein.
 
Agriculture Minister Shalom Simchon accused the ultra-Orthodox, who represent only 5 to 7 per cent of the population, of “religious coercion” and announced that he will ban imports that compete with Israeli farmers. That could affect Palestinian farmers in Judea and Samaria, though produce is not likely to come from Gaza as it did seven years ago. Israel has stopped all exports from Gaza since the Hamas takeover in June.
 
The shmita feud was so bitter that it wound up in the Supreme Court, which responded to an appeal from the Israel Farmers’ Federation and the Plants Council.
 
“This is a clash between religion and state,” said the farmers’ lawyer Shaul Pelles. The court ruled in favor of the petitioners and ordered the Chief Rabbinate to force local rabbis to change their decision or replace them.
 
At the moment, refrigerated fruit and vegetables grown before the Jewish New Year are being sold. But planting will soon begin for winter vegetables such as peppers and lettuce, which take only two to three months to grow.
 
In Upper Galilee, the prestigious Dalton Winery is harvesting grapes and making wine, but producing only one kosher label this year while the rest will be marketed abroad.
 
“If you’re a wine fan, you’ll still have the Dalton label on the shelf,” Assaf Haviv told us. “But most will be sold outside the country. This year we will sell modestly in Israel.”