“Seek Yahweh while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh, and He will have compassion on him. Turn to our Elohim, for He will abundantly pardon.”
Isaiah 55: 6-7
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Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel (Part 3)
My last two SnyderTalk editorials have been about ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel. If you haven’t read them already, you should do it now:
In those editorials, I may have left the impression that I don’t like and wouldn’t defend ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel if the need arose. That is not correct for me or for ordinary Israeli Jews.
An Example
In 2016, an Israeli doctor gave me a physical and told me that I had aortic stenosis. It’s a congenital disease that causes the aortic valve in the heart to calcify and cease to close properly. Left untreated, it causes death 100% of the time. I won’t go into detail about it in this editorial. If you want to know more, read “Israeli Doctors are Fantastic”.
In August 2018, I was in Israel again. At that point, my aortic valve had reached a gradient of 38. When you have aortic stenosis, cardiologists track the progression of the disease. They won’t replace the aortic valve until the gradient reaches 40. At that point, you run the risk of dying from engaging in normal activities. At a gradient of 40, the aortic valve remains so open that strenuous activity can cause an aneurism of the aorta. It’s the main artery from the heart. If your aorta bursts, your blood pressure drops to zero in an instant, and you bleed out inside your chest cavity in a matter of seconds.
On the next to last day of our trip in 2018, Katie and I went to the Old City of Jerusalem in the evening to relax and enjoy ourselves. We like the Old City at night. At about 9:00, we started to make our way home. We exited the Old City through Jaffa Gate and walked toward Jaffa Street. Along the way, we came up on an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man who was begging for shekels. We saw him every night that we went to the Old City. He was in the same spot every time. That was his “office”, so to speak. He was holding a sign written in English. It said “I have 6 children.” Beside him, he had a boombox playing music.
There is no telling how much money he rakes in each evening from tourists who are filled with generosity, because they are in Yahweh’s holy city. Most tourists are in Jerusalem for only a few days. They have shekels in their pockets, and they are in a spending and giving state of mind. Additionally, most U.S. tourists treat shekels like Monopoly money. They are not as careful in Israel as they are in the U.S. when they are spending dollars. Also, the exchange rate from dollars to shekels changes constantly. Thus, there is always some confusion in tourists’ minds about how much they are spending and giving. These things work to the advantage of beggars.
It boils down to this: most U.S. tourists go to Israel with more dollars than sense. As a result, begging has become a cottage industry for ultra-Orthodox Jewish men in Jerusalem. You see a lot of them, and the closer you get to the Kotel, the more of them you see. Along the final approach to the Kotel, they form a virtual gauntlet through which tourists must walk if they want to visit the holiest site in Judaism today.
That night was different, though. Five Palestinian teenagers had made their way up from the area around Damascus Gate which is predominantly Palestinian to Jaffa Gate which is predominantly Jewish. The two gates are not far apart. It’s an easy walk.
The Palestinian teenagers were looking for trouble, and the ultra-Orthodox Jewish beggar was their intended victim. When we walked up on them, the Palestinian teenagers were in the beggar’s face trying to provoke him into a response.
We could have walked on by, but I decided to stand beside the beggar and stare down the Palestinian teenagers. The last thing Palestinians want is for tourists to get caught in the middle of a scuffle between Palestinians and Jews. That kind of thing runs the risk of hurting all Palestinians in their wallets. I knew that, but I didn’t know if the Palestinian teenagers knew it, too.
The leader of the pack was an arrogant kid. With his head high in the air, he was standing nose-to-nose with the beggar and waving his hands in front of the beggar’s face. An aggressive move on the beggar’s part would have resulted in a fight, and all five of the Palestinian teenagers would have joined in. It would have been a slaughter.
The leader seemed surprised that I refused to budge. He looked at me and kept waving his hands in the beggar’s face, but he was a lot less aggressive.
While I was standing there, I was thinking about how to take out the leader. If he made an aggressive move toward me, I decided to hit him in the esophagus with the base of my palm as hard as I could. That could crush his windpipe, and it might have killed him. It definitely would have disabled him for a while. The only question in my mind was what the other 4 teenagers would do if I took out their leader.
While that was going on, Katie wisely took out her camera and started taking pictures. When she did that, the leader became much less aggressive, and he pranced toward his companions as though he had achieved a moral victory. Then all 5 of them joined the dance and started to make their way back to Damascus Gate.
Below is one of the pictures Katie took. You can see the 5 Palestinian teenagers prancing away. The beggar is on the far right in the picture.
I don’t have a good opinion of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel. I explained why in the SnyderTalk editorials that I referred to at the top of this editorial. Even so, I was willing to put my life at risk to defend a man that I don’t respect. Ordinary Israeli Jews would have done the same thing. That’s their duty. That night, it was my duty. As we like to say, “Not on my watch.” I believe Yahweh expects that from all of His children. In The Trilogy, I call it “faith with legs”.
This is just one example of faith with legs playing out in the real world in which we live. There are literally billions of other examples. Like particles in quantum entanglement, they can’t be detected until they are observed. If that sounds freaky, it’s only because it is freaky. Let it suffice to say that there is an infinite number of possibilities over which Yahweh has complete control. Those possibilities are always there, but they can’t be detected until we observe them. As I said, it’s freaky. That’s because Yahweh is beyond our ability to comprehend.
The Jewish Religious Leaders of the Messiah’s Day were Ultra-Orthodox Jews
Ultra-Orthodox Jews during the Messiah’s day led by their high priest, Caiaphas, conspired with the Romans to crucify the Messiah. In Christian circles, we call them “holier-than-thous” or “self-righteous Christians”. They think they are better than other people, and they look down their noses at the unwashed masses. All of them, self-righteous Christians and ultra-Orthodox Jews, put themselves in a position that Yahweh reserves exclusively for Himself. He is the Judge: Not me, not you, and not anybody else.
The Person that ultra-Orthodox Jews conspired with Romans to crucify 2,000 years ago wasn’t an ordinary human being. He is Yahweh. Read His Name is Yahweh and see for yourself. When you do, you will see that the Messiah’s identity is revealed clearly in the Tanach. You have to reject Yahweh’s word not to see it. I’ll be blunt. Ultra-Orthodox Jews have rejected Yahweh’s word and replaced it with their own wild machinations.
With the exception of Revelation, what Christians call the “New Testament” isn’t Scripture. It’s simply a record of Yahweh doing what He said He would do in the Tanach. With the exception of Revelation, the New Testament adds nothing to Scripture. Like Daniel, Revelation is an eschatological book. See The Trilogy.
Self-righteous hypocrites were responsible for slaying the Person who came to die as the atoning sacrifice for their sins. Many of them stood beside the cross and mocked Him. They hurled abuse at Him while He was dying an agonizing death to complete His primary mission which was to become their Passover Lamb.
The Messiah’s words from the cross are quoted in the 4 gospels in the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. None of them are more important than these words:
“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23: 34)
That night, the beggar never acknowledged my presence, not even once. He conspicuously never made eye-to-eye contact with me. There was no “thank you”, no nodding of the head, or anything else. He just kept on doing what he had been doing as though nothing had happened. It was easy to see that he didn’t receive good raising. I feel sorry for his kids. I feel sorry for him, too, because he has no idea what he is doing.
I thank Yahweh that He allowed me to see past my lack of respect for ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel and complete my mission that night. The beggar had no idea that I was putting my life at risk. I can be self-righteous, too. All of us can. It would have been easy for me to walk on by. Thankfully, I didn’t.
I am as guilty as anybody else. The Messiah died for me, too. All of us need to remember what Yahweh did for us and what we continue to do to Him. We have to learn to let Yahweh be the Judge. That’s His job.
Within days of our return to the United States, I had a scheduled echocardiogram in Greenville, South Carolina. That’s how I know my gradient that night was 38. A few days after the echocardiogram, I was in my cardiologist’s office talking with him about the results of the procedure, and I explained to him what happened in Jerusalem. I said, “I don’t know what the other Palestinian teenagers would have done if I had taken out their leader, but if I had to fight all 4 of them at the same time, there is a good chance I would have died.”
My cardiologist said, “You would have died. There is no doubt about it.”
Ordinary Israeli Jews have intervened to protect me and help me many times over the years. It was never a life-or-death situation, but they were there for me in the blink of an eye. They see it as their duty, and they do it. They would have been there for the beggar, too, and most of them have no more respect for ultra-Orthodox beggars than I do.
Interestingly, I saw the same ultra-Orthodox beggar again in 2019. He had moved his “office” to Jaffa Street on the corner where it intersects with Highway 60. It’s across the street from Tzahal Square only about 80 yards from where he was before, but it’s a much safer place. I suspect the incident that night in 2018 caused him to rethink the location of his “office”.
There were two material differences in 2019:
- The beggar’s sign read “I have 7 children.”
- I had a new aortic valve: a bovine valve, not a porcine valve.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel are paid welfare by the State of Israel. The more kids they have, the more money they receive. They may not support Israel’s right to exist, but they don’t let that stop them from taking as many shekels as they can from hard-working Israeli Jews.
It’s impossible for me to respect people like that. Most of the time, they are not a problem, but as I said, the closer you get to the Kotel, the more aggressive they become.
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“I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me — just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father — and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd. The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father.”
John 10: 14-18
