From Yad L’Achim Watch
Exclusive! – Yesterday, Yad Lachim boss Binyamin Klugger has quit.
We are pleased that Yad Lachim has lost one operative who has been involved with spying on Messianic Jews and Christians living in Israel, and trying to coerce Israelis that have accepted Jesus to change their mind.
Recently people accused us of stealing pictures. That’s quite true. In a lot of ways thats the nature of political type blogging, including those attacking/defending Israel and the Jewish people, use snapshot images and text of what their opponents say.
Our tools for this type of theft is the PRTSC key on our keyboard and Microsoft Paint.
We don’t go sneaking up on people, or visit a religious congregation with a different belief system to our own to gain sources of information though. The only ways we gain information is via Google and Facebook, maybe with the exception of Yad Lachim’s office in Jaffa which one of our anti-anti-missionary associates was on holiday near there.
Our motive is to build an online dossier of criminal activities to help the police and lawyers dealing with those who have been hurt or harrassed by Yad Lachim.
On the other hand, we would like to wish Binyamin and his family the very best for his future plans. We really genuinely mean this.
Here’s a good quote from the Bris Hadasha, that we are not attacking people but idelogies and organized groups out to cause harrasment and distress.
Ephesians 6:12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
If YL don’t write unpleasant things and stir up trouble amongst our brothers and sisters in Eretz Israel we will take a holiday from this blog and enjoy the warm weather and visit some places. If not, then we will be back.
Good grief! How hard-headed do you “Christians and Messianics” have to be to get the message into your thick skull: leave the Jews alone!!! Get out of our land and leave us alone! Stop your scheming ways to convert Jews to your religion and organizations like YL won’t have to form to “rescue” Jews from your clutches! Get a clue! We are not your purpose, we are not your mission from G-d, we don’t want your messiah. We’d rather take our chances on your hell.
It is not your land. you are just an uneducated convert Moavite….
Dan does jesus make you so sweet?
Dan, what do you do for a living? I’m a senior analyst in test, research and development, software. Bet you don’t have a job at all.
so you are ok with people that use violence and intimidation to those with different views to you?
Leah, do you go on Chabad chat sites and challenge them not to get Jews to follow the Schneerson moshiach?
Weak argument here Maz. the majority of Chabadniks do not belive
that about Schneerson, just a small percentage. Meanwhile does this
justify dressing up christianity to snag uneducated Jews? The ends
justifies the means? is this what you are trying to say?
Thank you Bubby, I couldn’t have said it better myself! Maz, please justify your reasons for preying on Jews and convincing them to give up their very identity and soul to your religion. Should we not want to rescue our own?
On a side note, there are many Chabad Houses in the Pacific NW now and it’s very common for Jews who are affiliated with other branches of Judaism to stop by one from time to time and daven with them or celebrate a Upsherin, Purim, other celebrations, Torah study….. They’re a welcome part of our Jewish community which is very rich and diverse here: Sephardic, Ashkenaz, Orthodox, Chabad, Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative… I know this is a difficult idea for you to grasp.
wow, you guys haven’t been to Jerusalem much lately have you?
There are posters EVERYWHERE about the Chabad Rebbe is the moshiach, they are put on other peoples property, all around the Mahane Yehuda Shuk Market, and no one cares.
On thursday, there are Chabad religious fellas inviting men to do tefilin with a giant poster of the bearded rabbi dude.
and…. I havent touched on the Na Nachmans, or all the weird things that happen in Tel Aviv.
If you mention Yeshua people get a bit hysterical! its very hypocritical really.
I’m glad that they included the quote from Ephesians, as to me this underscores the “true” motives of the Yoshke movement. It is is the implicit , yet denied Jew-hatred at the core of Christianity.(Yup I am waiting for the response from that statement) It is the Jew-antogonistic book of John and Y.’s repeated grammatical separation of himself from “you people” in reference to the Jews.( maybe the first self loathing Jew) It is the misguided and malevolent suggestion that any group of observant Jews, be they Yad Lachim, Aish haTorah, or Chabad are not just pious adherents of their religion, striving to bring a greater knowledge of that religion to the less pious; but rather, they are instead ” the authorities …….the powers of this dark world and …..the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Ultimately, if you support a religion which rejects the human sacrifice , dead-god groupthink of Y., how can you be possibly anything else but “a power of darkness”, right?? I guess in the end, true colours are hard to hide, aren’t they???
Leah, you wrote “They’re a welcome part of our Jewish community which is very rich and diverse here: Sephardic, Ashkenaz, Orthodox, Chabad, Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative… I know this is a difficult idea for you to grasp.” Careful, Leah – Dan the “ad hominem man” will very shortly be lecturing you on the failings of each and every sect of Judaism in relation to his subtle Y. world view.
I know its a tireless task but hey, helping errant fellow Jews is a mitsvah, right??
Excellent Michael!
Yes, no doubt “Dan the Jewish man” who is authenticated by the fact that he resides in Israel will no doubt have some scathing remarks directed first at me to delegitimize my place with the people of Israel (because he feels so left out) followed by his attacks on Chabad.
Wonderful Hyechiel,
My work week is over and Shabbos is calling but my housework still beacons.
Good Shabbos to you and yours.
Vatican official says Israel fostering intolerance of Christianity
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9529123/Vatican-official-says-Israel-fostering-intolerance-of-Christianity.html
What about the “Jew hatred” of the Old Testament prophets like Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and so many others?
What about blaming the masses every time they lost a war for being sinners who turned their backs on God?
Here is what i wrote to Daniel Goldhagen on this topic:
http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Reckoning-Church-Holocaust-Unfulfilled/dp/0375714170/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1345313131&sr=8-4&keywords=goldhagen
Dear Prof. Goldhagen,
I perused your book Moral Reckoning. Although you have many important insights, I found the book very difficult to read. Your writing style is turgid and dense, and I feel you are substituting convoluted terminology for clear thinking and exposition.
I agree that the Catholic Church needs to have a cleaner reckoning with its past. One of the big problems is that American Catholics, who are so influential in the world of Roman Catholicism, seem genuinely ignorant of the Church’s slanderous campaigns against European Jewry that Prof. Kertzer’s book documents so thoroughly. And I suspect that Vatican officials want to keep their American constituents ignorant of the sordid truth as long as possible.
My main objection concerns your idea that the Church should modify the New Testament text to delete or exclude passages that you deem to be anti-Semitic. You may recall that I challenged you over this back in 2006, when you spoke at CSU in Fort Collins, Colorado. There I asked you if you would deem “anti-Semitic” the many fiercely threatening passages throughout the Old Testament, in which Jewish prophets excoriate the nation for its sinful abandonment of God’s covenant and threaten the most horrible and dire consequences if they do not repent. After a long pause, you said that you were there to discuss the New Testament and not the Old. I was needless to say extremely disappointed with your adroit sidestepping of the question.
But now that I have seen your book Moral Reckoning, in which you demand that the Church come clean of its racist past, my question to you seems all the more relevant. Indeed the first recorded genocide in Western literature and culture must be that conducted by Joshua against the Canaanites when he led the Israelites into their land. Would you wish to see such passages — or even the entire book of Joshua — expunged from the Old Testament Cannon? What about the many passages in the Talmud and other rabbinical writings that denounce, mock and demean Christianity in at times extremely vulgar terminology? What about the fierce censure of the Jewish people uttered by Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel? Would all these passages also qualify for a Jewish “moral reckoning”?
What about Orthodox Jewish scholar of the New Testament, Amy Jill Levine, who has endeavored to put these New Testament passages into cultural context? Are you insensitive to and ignorant of the technique of rhetorical hyperbole that fills the pages of both Testaments of the Bible?
I really think that the critique you level against the Church meets with so much resistance not because your ideas and claims are invalid but because you convey them with such an overpowering attitude of self-righteousness and haughtiness that you are bound to provoke resistance in all but your most credulous readers.
Thank You for considering my words,
Sincerely,
Menachem Mevashir
Thanks for your letter.
I think He has been redeeming His world steadily for the last 2000 years.
He is not a magic pill who will pefect the world with the snap of His fingers. He gives us the privilege and opportunity to get on board and promote His agenda.
And how does it promote Moshiach to stay in your cloistered study halls and shuls keeping the rest of the world at arms’ length?
At least the Na Nachnikim engage with the world around them.
Unselfishly.
When I lived in Jerusalem in 2005, I met Binyomin a number of times at King of Kings. He tried hard to convince me to jump ship. But I also felt part of him yearned for the simple faith and spiritual fervor of the Messianic Community.
So who knows why he really has left Yad L’Achim?
Yes, there are those who spend long hours in the study halls. What a pity Christians should endeavor to know Torah so well. As it is the number of professing Christians who have ever read the bible is critically low. The numbers range from 10 – 20 percent, give or take and the number who have actually read it cover-to-cover (ours and yours) are fewer still. As for Jews, in matters of Torah we read through it every year again and again and there is always more to know. You speak as though you’re insulting us for being scholars on the Words of G-d.
Of course, from your last comment re: “simple faith and spiritual ferver”… Yes, we know, faith (blind faith) is a substitute for learning. What makes you so sure Jews do not experience such “simple faith and fervor”? We don’t react to HaShem in the spiritual fervor you call “being in the spirit”. I know a Messianic minister (Jewish) who works his congregation into a real frenzy to “bring G-d down” and there’s a lot of babbling, raising the arms, dancing, jumping, shouting out things… to conjure up the presence of G-d. I’m reminded of the pagans who called upon their gods to consume the sacrifice with fire. They worked themselves into quite a frenzy while Elijah stood by.
We don’t require such “fervor” to know the “simple faith” of G-d. He is ever present and we abide in Him with calm. We know Him, we have always known Him. It’s not the fervor that shows we have G-d, it’s our mitzvot, what we give to the world, what we give to others, what we have given to humanity, how we have survived against all odds, how we have been restored to our Land after 2000 years that shows G-d is with us.
I know what the church and messianic preachers teach you about us. They tell you we don’t have a relationship with G-d. They tell you we don’t have forgiveness. They tell you we’re trying to get to heaven by following the Law. They tell you the “Law” is hard to keep and a burden even though G-d said His commandments are not too hard . They tell you we’re not allowed to read Isaiah 53…….
It’s clear from your posts that you believe this ignorant nonsense! You don’t know us at all. You don’t know what we think or what we believe or why we study. You stand on the outside looking in and do what you’ve always done, you talk about us as if you know who we are.
Leah:
I spent four years studying at Ohr Samayach in Jerusalem, then three years at the Bostoner Kollel in Har Nof, and lived a total of 18 years as an Israeli Charedi. So I think I know your world very thoroughly.
You are right that Christians emphasize the spirit rather than the text and therefore do not study as much as Orthodox Jews. But their scholars and pastors are often much more informed about the bible than most Jews, since you tend to focus on Talmud (except for the women and children who are encouraged to read psalms and such).
But I am overall becoming pretty cynical about all forms of organzed religions. This is what I have just written to Dr. Michael Brown regarding a message I sent out to friends about my doubts about the resurrections claims in the NT:
A. First I wrote:
Dear Scholars,
The following idea occurred to me today. I wonder how you would respond.
We know that if a person stops breathing, after 5-10 minutes he will sustain irreversible brain damage.
How then do we understand reports of resurrection from the dead in the Bible? Especially Lazarus after 4 days in the tomb? How could brain function possibly be restored in such a case?
I’m not sure why this suddenly is bothering me, but it seems a strong argument that these reports are symbolic, imaginative, etc.
Thanks for your input.
Mevashir
B. Dr. Brown replied:
Wouldn’t the answer be that God performed a holistic miracle, just as when He restores a totally dead part of the body, reverses a disease that ravaged a body, or even caused a limb to grow? Of course, God in His providence could have miraculously preserved the corpse, but that seems not to be the case with Lazarus, whom they said already stunk. But the same God who will one day give us resurrected bodies could easily restore every part of the person who had died, right?
C. And I responded:
I used to think along your lines.
But yesterday it hit me that all of J’s healings seemed to be of limbs that were twisted or mishaped but not missing.
For example, I don’t think when he healed people who were blind that they came to him with eyeballs that had been pierced by a metallic object or such. the eyes were intact but not functioning and allegedly he restored the sight.
But in regard to brain death, it doesn’t fit into that paradigm at all. It would require completely remaking the brain tissue from scratch as it were. And that does not make much sense to me.
So I am in a very skeptical mood about all the miracles reported in both Testaments. I think they might just be holy hyperbole or pious propaganda.
It fuses with other doubts about religion that I have had since my conversion in 2000, when I found churches utterly enamored of Israeli militarism. Then later readings showed that the Catholic Church had engaged in an ongoing campaign of vicious anti Semitic vitriol that seemed to have fueled the Nazi’s own rhetoric.
More and more it seems to me that all world religions have one primary purpose: to sanctify the security of the rich and to placate the poor from rising up in revolution.
This is mainly because there is an inherent flaw in the biblical system of tithing, whereby the priests and other religious caste leaders survive on the economic largesse of the rich. This corrupts them and prevents them from upholding norms of justice with regard to the ill begotten gains of the rich. And instead they will focus on the small sins of the small sinners whose lives are of desperation because of the rich.
So for example the Messianics in Israel will preach to us about not stealing and other such things, but never once will they denounce the Israeli theft of Palestinian lands.
Likewise the church in America will gainsay the petty thief, but no comment on the casino economy that ravages the savings of all Americans, the addiction of professional sports that exploits people for money, and the contrivances of 9-11 to justify a lucrative neverending war [of] terror.
Religion panders to the rich and placates the poor with vain promises about eternal life. I: don’t see it as significantly different from the Egyptian slave system so long ago.
Another thing: both Judaism and Christianity uphold social justice as underdog religions, but as soon as they attain any degree of respectability they become as oppressive and corrupt as the old order.
For example, many historians see Islam as a kind of reformation and revolt against the incredible corruption of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the same church that later on colluded with the Tzars to instigate and encourage pogroms against our ancestors in Eastern Europe. And the Catholics were not much better.
So I am about ready to wash my hands of organzed religion. It is a deadly form of psychological warfare against the weak and oppressed on behalf of the rich and corrupt. Always has been and always will be.
Sorry to disillusion you, but as they say… The Truth Shall Set Us Free.
Mr Gev,
can we have a ban on loony conspiracy links please?
Yes, please. Also, can we ban the topic? This is a growing trend of self-hating Jews who have bought into propaganda that the Jews stole Israel from the Palestinians. They’re starting to insert themselves into our dialogues here and on facebook.
Hey Lea Hate,
I am not a self hating Jew. Just a selfish hating Jew.
Big difference but maybe too big for a puny brain to fathom.
the only thing “loony” is that a supposed follower of the Way the Truth and the Life would be blind deaf and dumb to the contrivances of the mass media.
some folks are deaf and dumb and need to feed on Alex Jones, David Icke and other conspiracy Loon jobs.
what does scripture says about conspiracy wacko stuff.
Isaiah 8:12 “Do not call conspiracy everything this people calls a conspiracy;
do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it. “
Hey Mr. Jap Car,
An even bigger and more ridiculous conspiracy is that 19 barefoot Arabs could take down the world’s most sophisticated air defense system.
Of course you believe whatever you want and whatever feels good and is convenient.
Like the way you interpret the Bible.
But as I have written before, no one can force you not to be ignorant. We can only provide you the tools to emerge from your darkness.
But we will fight with all our might to prevent your darkness from deceiving others.
We don’t want plagues of Jewish Neocon idiotosis and moronitis.
Mevashir,
its seems you want a rational explanation to everything. God operates beyond logic, which is why Jesus was able to walk on water, as well as raise the dead, and drive out evil spirits.
some miracles have a tangiable way of working.
if you look at Jesus’ miracles, sometimes he uses a “prop”, some unusual ones at that, like spitting in mud to fix someone’s eyes. Other times he just does it without anything apart from a command for it to be done.
Theres no need to think that death and resurrection has to follow the laws of physics to happen.
PS, I think sometimes too much theology can be bad. Especially as you are now talking about “stolen palestinian land”
we need to get back to the raw basics of scriptures and none of these synthethic crap that intended to replace of the real truth of Yeshua and his word.
So the “raw basics of scripture” is that it is ok to steal palestinian land?
what are Palestinians? common rhetoric says Israel helps themselves to other land that historically belongs to someone else.
Theres never been a Palestinian state. The word Palestine isnt Arab its Roman. There was a non-entity of a largely empty nation between 100-ish-AD and 1948. owned during that time by various people like the Turkish and British. Never a Arab sovereign state there. Hebron, Bethlehem, Shiloh, etc all places with significant Jewish history.
Have Arab people lost the homes unfairly, I think so probably. All of Israel is start part of a covenant from the old testament.
There never was a Jewish state either. Long ago it was a kingdom and then a territory controlled by Persia Greece and Rome.
The point is that there were native inhabitants living in the land at the same time the Jews began to settle it in the 19th century. In fact the Arab inhabitants outnumbered the Jews by 2:1 and owned 90% of the land just prior to 1948.
These people were disenfranchised by Zionist and UN policies.
What Would Jesus Do?
It seems to me that you Israelis are taking out your frustrations at having been victimized by the Nazis by beating up on unarmed and helpless Arab peasants. Good job. Big strong courageous Jews!
Jewish heroes used to be Davids beating Goliaths. Today they are Goliaths beating up on Dawids.
Why don’t you start a fight with someone your equal?
Or maybe the ignorant Arab peasants are your equals … or even superiors.
Israel seems like a glorified Christian tourism theme park and the Jews are the shopkeepers, innkeepers and restauraters for international Christendom.
That’s all. Just a bunch of proprietors for foreign tourists.
Mevashir,
Now you remind me of Saint Augustan who was impulsive insufferable and more into lust sins that perhaps you are. But he had a great mind and great heart too. He spoke badly about the Jews but then in factuality he risked a lot of his own position in the early church to perorate for their cause. It is also thanks to his intervention that the early church didn’t persecute (physically at least 
) Jews in Rome. He also wrote I don’t know if you are aware of a book about the two cities: one of God and one of man who would not be in harmony until the end of times. Dear Meverish it is not so good for you to go after justice when it is not possible for you and perhaps for anybody to have a city of God on this earth too. Be mature and realistic please. And anyway if you ever read trhought the ‘good news’ you know that Jesus wrote that you can’t chop the bad seeds without risking to chop up the good seeds too and it seems for God/ the Son of God it is important not to do this cleansing. Every time there has been in history someone so not humble doing it…it has ended in disaster. Perhaps as Saint Augustine you are going to appreciate on this earth the goodwill and strong discipline of obedience and humility of those who built ithe church knowing that would not be on this earth perfect. Saint Augustine offered this church what he knew how to do better as everybody else
I think if you are not making a complete wrong detour you are going to be finally on the right path and rest in peace…still alive of course
I disagree with you totally if you are trying to claim that Jesus did not care about justice on this earth!
Otherwise, why protest Catholic pedofile priests? Let them bugger their flock and we can just console ourselves that they will pay the piper in another realm of existence.
Is that what you think Jesus meant by The Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven?
We could and should fight for justice but knowing that it will never be perfectly achieved and without presuming that all is rotten either
“It seems to me that you Israelis are taking out your frustrations at having been victimized by the Nazis by beating up on unarmed and helpless Arab peasants. Good job. Big strong courageous Jews!”
Hey idiot…Learn your history…There was a time when unarmed Jews were attacked by animalistic blood thirsty Arabs…How about you go live in their countries and declare yourself a Christian, they will chop you to pieces….You anti-Semite……
If you provide a plane ticket, I would be happy and willing to go to any Arab country and work there as a Christian missionary.
It would be a privilege.
What a fool! Typical Christian mentality. Just before they cut your head off you can say “I did if for Jeezus”. Good grief, just keep your religion to yourself.
How can you be a “Christian Missionary” when you have no idea what Christianity is?
Dear Israeli Friends,
I know you think I am an anti-Semite and Israel hater. I do not hate Israel, but I hate its injustice. I especially resent how Israeli Messianics have hijacked Jesus’ Gospel of love and forgiveness of enemies to justify a crude nationalism and policy of ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinian Arabs, many of whose families have lived there for hundreds of years.
What is both galling and ironic is that Israeli Jews imagine they are the restoration of the ancient Jewish Israel of Biblical times. They invoke the bible to justify running the indigenous Arabs off the land like so many Canaanites. Yet consider modern day Israel. It is basically a high tech society, a kind of Mediterranean Silicon Valley, along with a Jewish Sparta.
Biblical Israel, by contrast, was almost totally an agricultural society. Many Torah commandments concern agricultural practices. Today’s agrarians in Israel are mostly Palestinian Arabs, both Moslem and Christian. They are the ones who tend the land with love and produce its famous grapes, olives, and myriad fruits and vegetables that are found in shuks throughout the land.
Ambitious Israelis work in high tech and other kinds of professions. The kibbutz movement is largely bankrupt. Israelis are so divorced from the land that they require a system of national parks just to preserve their memory of that land.
Israeli settlers steal Arab land and water, and then sell it back to those Arabs at extortionist prices. They also run them off their farms and then set up suburban communities dedicated to Torah study or serving as bedrooms for commuters to the big cities. But the last thing they do is work the land.
In short, Israelis have almost no connection to the land and they hate those who do: the Palestinian Arabs. And they have the temerity to boast of their Biblical roots! Their only Biblical connection seems to be to the Sadduccean priests who ran an extortion racket out of the Jerusalem Temple, and to the Pharisees who despised the Amay Ha’aretz.
And the Israeli Messianics, who could have brought a measure of sanity to this wicked situation, then go and distort the Gospel of Jesus to justify their own unthinking hatred of Arabs and to support crude and naked militarism!
They egg on the modern Judaic Sparta. They don’t even pretend to be wolves in sheeps’ clothing, but proudly bare their fangs and claws and boast to the world that the true Jewish followers of Yeshua Hamoshiach are savage and ruthless killers.
As Yeshua warned, you don’t go to Heaven and you don’t let others go there either. And, like the blind leading the blind, you lead others into the ditch.
One day I fear all this Israeli hubris will come crashing down just like in 70 AD. And you all, Jewish and Messianic boasters, will end up in two of Israel’s most famous valleys: Emek Habacha and Gay Hinom.
Please fulfill Jesus’ calling to serve as salt and light to a hurting and wounded world. AMEN!
I have children and grandchildren in Israel, and my hope and prayer is that they along with all Israelis will fulfill their mission to be a light to the nations and to live in peace with their neighbors.
I don’t know anyone in Israel who wouldn’t wish for peace with their neighbors!