Do unto your neighbor

Do unto your neighbor

By Sara Leibovich-Dar





Two weeks ago last Friday, P. and her children looked out the window of their home in Arad and saw, to their astonishment, several hundred Haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) in the parking area across from the house. They were carrying signs that read "The mission in our town, a calamity now and for all time," and "Missionaries - hunters of souls - get out of our town." P. recalls that she felt like she was in a circus - "only, where's the elephant?"



P. is a Jew who believes that Jesus Christ was the messiah. In the past few weeks, the Haredim in Arad have been harassing the 15 Messianic Jewish families in the Negev town. Hardly anyone has come to their aid. The police gave the Haredim a permit to hold demonstrations opposite the homes of the Messianic Jews, the mayor is ignoring the harassment, and the members of the municipal council, including those who are secular, support the Haredim, who have representatives in the local governing coalition.

"My home is like a prison," says P. of the demonstration by the hundreds of militant Haredim. "The police surrounded the house with barricades and the well-dressed Haredim started to make speeches. They said that there's a Christian woman here who kills and who steals children and that the Christians were the ones who started the Holocaust. It was a weird feeling."

P. is a blue-eyed widow who was born in California. She is trying to remain optimistic and to cast the situation in a comic light. A local weekly sent a reporter to cover the demonstration and quoted the following remarks made by the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Arad during the event: "You disguise yourselves as sabras and smile at us, but you're just waiting for the first chance to grab us and crucify us. Get out of here, hypocrites. At least if you wore robes and large crucifixes, we would be able to be careful of you. You are the ones whose forefathers burned Jews to death throughout all the years of history. You are an abomination in Israel, and therefore you must be spewed out of here."

E. and another 10 Messianic Jews were in P.'s house during the demonstration. "We just sat there, singing and praying," E. says. "We didn't want to turn this into a dispute. We waited for them to leave." P. takes solace in the fact that the demonstrators didn't try to break into the house or destroy the small garden that surrounds it. "They obeyed the law and didn't touch property, but we didn't know what to expect from them."

Four days later a few Haredim returned with signs. P. thinks that was the seventh demonstration outside her house. "My children sat on the balcony and watched them. I think the demonstrators were embarrassed. They didn't look at us, they covered their faces with their hands. I would have felt embarrassed in their place, too. There are so many terrible things in the world - and they have to come to demonstrate outside the home of a woman who loves to read the Bible?"

They suspect that you're not so innocent. What do you say to their contention that you persuaded an underage girl to join you and that missionary meetings are held in your house?

"They are mistaken. Not all our gatherings take place here - maybe half of them - and even that is no longer the case. And the young person who joined us did so of her own free will, after she turned 18. I understand that there are a lot of things that they don't like, and I understand that they needed some shows during the holidays, but if they don't come here they'll go to demonstrate next to some other house, so let them come here. I'm strong, and my children aren't so afraid anymore."

P. joined the community of Messianic Jews in Israel 15 years ago, after her husband's death. They lived in Tiberias. He was killed in a road accident when she was pregnant with their third child. "People from the Messianic community really helped me, I mean physical help," she says. "I had three infants and had been in the country only six years, and I had no husband. I wanted to go back home to California, but it's not so easy to pack up three infants and go. Many people came to pay their condolences and then disappeared, but members of the Messianic community gave me true help. That made an impression on me. I told myself that the Lord looks good. I started to trust him, I read the Bible and the New Testament, and my life started to change. I started to read good things and suddenly I had hope."

Dark incitement

Four years ago P. moved to Arad and joined the small local community of Messianic Jews there. The first members of the community came to Arad seven years ago, liked what they saw, and stayed. The others followed. The anti-missionary Haredi organization Yad L'Achim says there are some 12,000 Messianic Jews in Israel, but members of the community say their numbers are far smaller, no more than a few thousand.

The Messianic Jews believe in Jesus - whom they call Yeshua, a Hebrew word with the root meaning "salvation," and the Christian savior's actual name - and celebrate the Jewish holidays with a Christian tone. For example, they hold a Seder at Pesach but cite Christian history in it. They hold bar mitzvah ceremonies for their children, in which the boys declare their love for Jesus. Most of the community's members live in Be'er Sheva, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Tiberias and Nazareth. P. moved to Arad to open a foster home for children of the community who for various reasons are unable to live with their parents. She also assists unmarried young women who become pregnant and want to have the child.

P. has three sons; the two younger ones attend military academies and the eldest is already serving in the Israel Defense Forces. "It doesn't bother anyone that they are Messianic," she says. "One of my sons even showed around visitors from the United States who came to see the academy. They were very enthusiastic about the tour."

Last week a girl who gave birth out of wedlock was staying with P., as were four children who had been removed from the home of their alcoholic father. Between making lunch for the children and taking care of the beautiful baby, P. tried to understand why the Haredim chose her as the object of their demonstrations. "I never hid my faith. The welfare office in Arad knows I'm a Messianic. After the demonstration, the social worker called to ask whether it was my house in the photograph in the local paper. Yes, they demonstrated outside my house, I told her."

Until the demonstrations started, she says, her presence in Arad and her work didn't bother anyone. "I never tried to get anyone to change his religion, but a year ago one of the girls who grew up in my home and who is today a soldier, became friends with a girl from Arad and brought her here. She was interested in what we believe in - she was studying for her high-school matriculation exam in Bible at the time - and I read a few chapters of the Bible with her. She showed up when we had youth activities. We didn't throw her out, even though she was under 18. She wasn't baptized until after she turned 18. Afterward she became friends via chat forums with a religious boy. He came here, took down my name and address, and brought the demonstrators."

The demonstrations outside P.'s house began a few weeks ago. At first they were small in scale. "About 20 demonstrators with signs came. I put a film on for the children, so they wouldn't be afraid. The demonstrators left after a few hours, but came back the next day. We weren't afraid. As it happens, I admire the religious people. They stand behind their belief - you can't love the Lord and hide. I don't hide my faith, either."

P.'s neighbors tried to help. In one of the first demonstrations, Zohar Galant, a Dead Sea Works pensioner, who lives across the way, photographed the participants. They were not deterred. In the latest demonstration he tried to argue with them. "There wasn't a great deal I could do. I was shocked," he says. Last week, in the early afternoon of a boiling hot day, a few days after the demonstration, he waited in front of his house for P. to come out on her way to pick up the children from school. Galant crossed the large parking lot that separates their houses, and told her she could come to him if she was attacked.

"Most of the demonstrators aren't even from Arad," he says. "They brought in busloads of Haredim. It was terrible. They incited against them the way Jews were incited against in the darkest periods in history. These people are not missionaries. I have lived across from them for four years now, and I didn't even know they were Messianic Jews. My daughter is in the same class as one of the children who grew up in that house and he has never talked about it. I felt awful, depressed. How can people speak against other people like that? After all, they serve in the army, but the Haredim don't. The Haredim said in the demonstration that Arad was built because of its good air and that the Messianic Jews are polluting the air. But not one Haredi helped build Arad."

Another neighbor, too, Yael Keren, had no idea she was living next to Messianic Jews. "My dog ran off and entered their house, and I didn't see any sign of anything like that there. Until the demonstration no one knew anything about it, so where is the missionary activity? Sometimes on Shabbat I hear prayers coming from the house, but that doesn't bother me. It's not the Messianic Jews who frighten me. It was frightening to see such a large group of Haredim demonstrating here. I don't understand how they were allowed to hold a demonstration here."

Don't take our children

Yakim Figueras, the leader of the small community, says he was surprised that a demonstration of this kind - "which made us fair game" - was held under police auspices. "They said we are worse than [slain Hamas leader Sheikh] Ahmed Yassin, that we are like the Nazis. I'm surprised that they received a permit to demonstrate opposite a private home in the heart of a residential neighborhood."

Superintendent Moshe Ivgy, chief of the Arad police, promises that it won't happen again. "The next demonstrations will be held somewhere else. The neighbors complained, and I don't want provocations with the neighbors. It wasn't right next to the house, it was 50 meters from the house, and it wasn't a demonstration, it was a protest rally, it was all very orderly."

What about the fact that the rabbis incited against the Messianic Jews in a very orderly way, too, and that your forces did nothing?

"If a complaint about incitement is submitted, we will deal with it. I am in contact with the two sides. We will deal with whoever has to be dealt with. The religious people only prayed and left. The neighbors hurled imprecations against the Haredim and irked them."

Rabbi Ben Zion Lipsker, the Ashkenazi rabbi of Arad, says he doesn't regret one word of what he said. "I say clearly and unequivocally: I love every person, I live in harmony with everyone, but they acted against the law and caused two people in Arad to convert."

Then why don't you file a complaint with the police?

"That wouldn't help. As a rabbi, I have to cry out when I know they are burning souls. I have to say what I think. Go to Africa, where there are ignorant people, and try to turn them into believers. Don't take our children."

A similar view is taken by Rabbi Yosef Elbo, the Sephardi chief rabbi of Arad, who also spoke at the demonstration. "Every Jew is obliged to demonstrate against a phenomenon like this, against those who pass themselves off as Jews but infiltrate the weak population groups and start to influence them. And there are people who fall for it."

Who fell for it in Arad?

"I can't give you the exact names. But it's known."

Yet even their neighbors didn't know they are Messianic Jews.

"That just proves the point. Do you see how hidden and covered it all is? They train in how to speak, and they even have a Haredi exterior, with prayer shawls and fringes."

What do you say about the fact that one of the sons of the woman you demonstrated against is serving in the army?

"What does that have to do with anything? Druze serve in the army, too. This is a case of camouflaged influence and it is against the law."

There is no such law.

"I don't know. Yad L'Achim knows all about these matters in depth."

Alex Hartovsky, from the Yad L'Achim branch in Bnei Brak, was one of the organizers of the big demonstration. (Yad L'Achim is a Jerusalem-based organization with branches in the United States, Canada and Australia. A 1997 English-language newsletter of the organization - www.anshe.org/YadLAchim/yad1 - states: "Eretz Yisroel [the Land of Israel] is under ever growing influence of several missionary groups, whose goal is converting the Jewish people. The most powerful of these groups are `Messianic Jews' and `The Witnesses'" - presumably referring to the Jehovah's Witnesses. (More information on the Jewish Messianic movement can be found at www.jewishmessianic.net and other Web sites.) "They portray themselves as being persecuted, but they are the persecutors," Hartovsky says. "We have an emergency telephone line, like the sexual harassment line - everyone protects his business, like a person protects stray animals, because it pains him. People call us, relatives of those who joined the cults, and we also have people from inside the cult. You can call them informers, but in my eyes they are heroes who are working for a sacred cause. You have to understand the inner essence of these people. They want to take over the world, they can't restrain themselves, they have to spread the tidings. I was at the demonstration in Arad, and by the way I enjoyed myself very much. I didn't think the public in Arad found it so painful."

Do you intend to continue?

"We will do a great deal, yet. We will reach every family. We will speak to them. We are not violent. There was one time when missionaries from Switzerland were beaten, but that wasn't us."

A marked woman

A demonstration was held outside Yakim Figueras' house, too, though on a smaller scale. He is a second-generation believer; his parents became Messianic Jews, though they were not born to Jewish families. His mother is Dutch, his father Spanish. Figueras, a social worker, grew up in Omer, an affluent Be'er Sheva suburb, served in the army - where he was wounded in an accident - and still does reserve duty. He came to Arad five years ago after friends moved there. "I was surprised that all this happened in Arad," he says. "We try to be law-abiding citizens. The problem with these attacks is that today it's against me and tomorrow it's against someone else. This is a matter of freedom of conscience and freedom of belief."

His wife, Debbie, an English teacher, grew up in Nahariya. Her parents are Jews from England. Debbie's mother is a well-known Messianic Jew in Nahariya. "The Haredim persecuted them for years," she says. "They stuck posters with her name all over the city and wrote that she had to be expelled from Nahariya because she is a dangerous missionary. The population in Arad seemed to us to be quiet and non-militant. We never go into their areas."

Before Arad they lived in nearby Be'er Sheva. In 1998, Haredim assaulted the Messianic community in the city several times, and the Figuerases decided to look for another place to live. "The air in Be'er Sheva is very polluted, too, and we didn't want to raise our children there," Debbie Figueras says. "We now have four children. We did a lot of looking before we came to Arad and fell in love with this small, pleasant town." Figueras says they did not come to Arad "to raise a ruckus," and therefore the group was surprised by the Haredi assault.

Why were you surprised? You're wandering around in a small town with quite a large Haredi population and offering the New Testament - weren't you afraid that people would be angry?

"It's not true that we preach. If we talk to someone, it's with a person who is in any case interested. I don't shove the faith down anyone's throat. We preach only to those who come to the congregation, we don't go into the streets. Most of the people I know take no interest in these subjects. Most of my friends are secular."

Debbie has been living in constant fear in the past few weeks. "They came with signs next to our house. They prayed loudly in Yiddish, but as far as I know there are no prayers in Yiddish, so apparently they cursed us. It's hard to describe the feeling. It's dreadful. They don't even know us. Yakim asked them why they are frightening the children. They said, `Because there are missionaries here,' and they had no idea that they were demonstrating against us and that we are supposedly the missionaries. It's not pleasant. I served in the army, I was in the territories, in Gaza, my mother is Jewish, and suddenly I'm subjected to attacks like these. Before all this started I lived a perfectly normal life, but now I feel marked. I just can't believe it's happening to me. It's as though I'm living on another planet. A few days ago I went to visit my parents, and there everything is perfectly regular and normal. It's only in Arad that I'm marked."

More...



Very few people in Arad are standing by the Messianic Jews. "Expel them from here immediately," demands Udi Asher, a kiosk owner in the town's large commercial center. The center is empty on this blazing hot afternoon, and Asher seems to be waiting for an opportunity to get mad. "Some woman came here, bought nuts and gave me a New Testament. I wanted to throw her out of the store. I restrained myself, but I didn't understand what she was after. She knows I'm Jewish, so why did she try to convert me? If they're allowed to do that, then so are the Haredim. It's a war of survival. We have to preserve a Jewish character in the town. I still have a limitation in my brain: I don't want to live next to a Christian or next to a Muslim."

Arad has a population of 26,000, with an unemployment rate of 9.6 percent (as compared with the national average of 10.9 percent). Some 40 percent of the residents are new immigrants, mainly from the former Soviet Union. There is a large Haredi population - 300 families of the Gur hasidic sect, 50 or so Chabad families, and another 50 families that support the ultra-Orthodox Shas Sephardi party. In the past few years Arad has changed from a town that traditionally supported Labor to a bastion of the right. In the 1996 elections, Labor won 30 percent of the vote, Likud 22.9 percent, and in 1999, Ehud Barak, Labor's candidate for prime minister, received 64 percent of the vote, nearly 30 percent more than the Likud candidate, Benjamin Netanyahu (35.9 percent). The turnabout occurred in 2001: Ariel Sharon won 58.7 percent of the vote, Barak only 41.2 percent. In 2003, the Likud took about 62 percent of the vote, as against only 21.3 percent for Labor.

Labor also sustained a defeat in the municipal elections last November, when Dr. Motti Bril, an independent candidate who is considered to have a right-wing orientation, defeated Labor's Bezalel Tabib, who was mayor for 15 years. The Messianic Jews settled in Arad during Tabib's tenure. "I never felt their presence," the former mayor says. "I heard about them when someone came to me three years ago and said that they were here and were holding meetings in someone's house. It wasn't a complaint. He said they were very nice. It's true that they talk about the Christian cause, but they are also happy and they sing and talk about love. Every person has the right to do what he wants in his home. It didn't bother me."

The new mayor takes a different approach to the subject. "They are not being persecuted. In what way are they persecuted?" Bril asks. "They come to the place and operate on the fringe of the law that bans missionary activity. We treat them politely and with due courtesy, but they are far from being complete tzadikim [saintly people]. There is a group of Haredim that says they already broke the law when they distributed food to Holocaust survivors ahead of Pesach and placed a copy of the New Testament and some money in the package."

They deny that.

"In the meantime I am not taking action and not doing anything against them. I don't have enough evidence to act against them, so I am not taking any active steps. On the day they cross the line the municipality of Arad will use all its might to expel them. If I had something that is absolute proof, they wouldn't be in Arad. Because I don't, I am tolerant. In the meantime, they are on the borderline but they are far from being persecuted saints. We're on the threshold of a struggle. A group arrives that tries to do something else, and they are allowed to proceed up to a certain limit, but only up to a certain limit. This is a very tolerant city, but missionary activity is against the law. As long as we're in the gray area, we're not bothering with them."

So, to maintain the municipal coalition you prefer to ignore the harassment of the Messianic Jews?

"People are allowed to hold a demonstration next to private homes. It's not pleasant, not conventional, not ordinary, but it's allowed. And it has nothing to do with the municipal coalition. There are people who think that what they are doing is bad and they are demonstrating next to their homes. What's wrong with that?"

Yitzhak Benishti, a Labor Party representative on the municipal council, also objects to the presence of the Messianic Jews. "I'm against all this messianic organizing, I'm not in favor and I don't support them. These are Jews who are engaged in missionary activity."

That's a rumor being spread by the Haredim, but there's no proof of it, is there?

"That's why I say that if they are engaging in missionary activity, I am against. I am not intervening in the matter."

If there's no proof of missionary activity, why shouldn't you intervene to protect them?

"The truth is that I am against holding demonstrations across from private homes and bothering the neighbors. All the neighbors are already very upset."

And what about the Messianic Jews - they are also very upset, aren't they?

"I just haven't been in Arad for the past two weeks. I will consider intervening in their favor. I will definitely consider it."

What the law says

Sergei Bikhovsky, a representative of the centrist, anticlerical party Shinui on the municipal council, and the party's top official in the south, says he is torn between the law - "For me the law is the most important thing, and the law says that missionary activity is forbidden" - and the people themselves, "who are very nice and have even opened a chess club for immigrants from the former Soviet Union. I'm in a really bad spot."

But aren't they in an even worse spot?

"The action taken by the Haredim is not right. The way they reacted isn't so nice."

Gabi Bahan, who was a representative of the liberal Meretz party on the previous municipal council (Meretz does not have a representative on the current council), objects to the Haredi demonstrations. "The rabbis here are conducting illegitimate politics by taking advantage of the Messianic Jews," he says. "It's very easy for a large group to exploit a minority group to crystallize itself. The Messianic Jews live their lives and don't make themselves felt. The question is who the missionary is here. The Gur hasidic sect built a school for secular children to get them to become religious. The town should be pluralistic. The greater the diversity, the stronger we will be as a community."

Nevertheless, Bahan has so far done nothing to protect the Messianic Jews. Maybe he'll write an article for the local weekly, he says. Eitan Michaeli, a resident of Arad and the deputy director of the Be'er Sheva branch of Shatil - which defines itself as "a capacity-building center for grassroots social change organizations" - was also a Meretz representative on the last council. And he has already written an article for the local paper. "It's hard to do more than that," he says. "Arad has become a place where it's very difficult to mobilize people. In the past, people here voted for Mapai [forerunner of Labor], Dash [the defunct Democratic Movement for Change, a centrist party] and for Meretz, but in the past few years the Likud and Shas have become stronger. It's a pity that the rabbis don't understand that they are playing with a double-edged sword. Just as they are now inciting against the Messianic Jews, tomorrow people will incite against them. They are fanning the flames and in the end they will be burned."

The head of the local Likud branch, Moshe Edri, says that he has read the law - "and I hope the mayor will act according to the law and thus resolve the problem."

Won't the problem be resolved if the Haredim are prevented from harassing the Messianic Jews?

"I don't see that anyone is harassing them. I would suggest that there be no missionary activity in any city in this country."

Three sections of the Penal Code deal with missionary activity. According to Par. 174(A), anyone "who gives or promises a person money, the equivalent value of money or any other material benefit in order to entice him to change his religion or so that he will entice someone else to change his religion, shall be imprisoned for five years or pay a fine of 50,000 [Israel] pounds." Par. 174(B) states that anyone who receives material benefits in order to convert is liable to a prison term of three years and a fine of 300,000 pounds. And Par. 368 stipulates that anyone who conducts a conversion ceremony for someone who is under-aged is liable to six months in prison.

In December 2001, the Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee voted down a bill by MK Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism), which would have imposed a three-month prison term on anyone who tried to cajole someone to convert by means of the mail or by fax. "I have a small boy at home, who could receive missionary material by mail, by fax or by e-mail," Gafni told the committee. "I'd be interested to know why you receive this kind of thing but I don't," wondered MK Ophir Pines-Paz (Labor). "I have spoken about this to the director of the postal service many times, and piles of this material arrive," Gafni said.

In recent years the Knesset has held only a few discussions on the subject of missionary activity. In one of the most exhaustive discussions, held by the Interior Committee in November 1999, Inspector Yosef Cohen, an officer with the police Investigations Branch, warned against militant persecution of the Christian sects in Israel. "The U.S. administration itself closely monitors the law-enforcement authorities in Israel in regard to persecution of what it calls religious sects, as the messianic sects in the United States have a very powerful lobby in the administration," Cohen said. "Therefore, as with any other law, the law-enforcement authorities in Israel should be especially careful and adopt an attitude that is completely legal, no less and no more."

Cohen also cited some interesting statistics. During the 1990s, he said, the police received between 10 and 20 complaints concerning offenses relating to religious conversion. However, the members of the messianic sects, he said, had submitted no fewer than 60 complaints against Yad L'Achim. "I would expect organizations engaged in guarding the Jewish public against Christian preaching not to resort to violent activity," he noted.

Constant fear

H., a lawyer, is very fearful of the Haredi activity in Arad. She is a 41-year-old single mother with three children. She refuses to divulge any details that might disclose her identity, but agreed to meet with me at the Arad shopping mall. She doesn't meet with strangers in her home, she explained, so that they won't find out where she lives. Her children try not to say anything about her religious beliefs to their friends, so as to spare her harassment.

She became a Messianic Jew two years ago, she says. "For many years I searched for God," she says. "In the course of the search I also became close to the Haredim. A few years ago I even became a regular donor to a Haredi radio station, and I wore long skirts, went to the mikveh [ritual bath] and read three chapters of Psalms every day."

One of her neighbors in Herzliya, where she lived, was a Messianic Jew. "She read me chapters from the Bible. It scared me, but I was also attracted to it. It responded to a lot of things that were bothering me." H. told hardly anyone about her new faith. "My mother knows. We have long arguments. She is a Holocaust survivor. My father doesn't know to this day. The father of my three children became very frightened. He was certain that harm would befall the children. He calmed down only after seeing that nothing happened to the children. My brother learned about it only recently."

Relatives who know about her belief sometimes harass her no less than the Haredim. "My son went to visit someone in the family who knows. My son was wearing a crown that he received from a fast-food restaurant. The crown had illustrations of crosses on it. The relative was so frightened that he cut out the crosses."

Her faith is a private matter, she says. "How can I be a missionary if I hardly talk about the subject with anyone? A friend expressed interest, and I gave him a book to read. He returned the book and said he's not interested in these subjects and that was the end of the conversation. In the past few months I took a course given by the Labor Ministry, and no one there knew I am a Messianic Jew. As far as I'm concerned, it's a private spiritual process. If I don't share it with even those who are closest to me, why would I share it with others?"

For the past few weeks she has been gripped by fear. "It was a bad surprise for me to find out that there are religious wars in Arad. It sounds absurd. It's a small, quiet, lovely town. When I was a girl we spent summer vacations here, and when my mother retired she dreamed of coming back here - which is why I came to Arad a year ago. Who believed it would happen here? We know that we can expect more persecution. We will accept it the way Gandhi did in India, with passive resistance. We will not leave this place. We believe we are doing a good thing for Arad. I pray that there will be an economic boom in Arad. I remember better days here. When I was a girl, there was the Masada Hotel, today it's a heap of rubble. In the winter I prayed for rain in Arad.

To secular eyes, you very much resemble the Haredim.

"That's true. There's a saying that we met our enemies and they are us. The sharpest clashes are with those who are like you.


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