When the Rabbis Cry

By John S. Stevens

When the Rabbis Cry is the result of research into the Yemeni Jews and the wider issues surrounding Gods purpose with Israel. The book considers the intriguing history of the Jews and of Israel as a nation after Jesuss time and explores how we should view the regathering of the Jews to the modern state of Israel from a biblical perspective. What we find is a story within a storyan Israel within Israel where God is at work bringing salvation and reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians in a remarkable way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Aug 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512753745

John S. Stevens

John Stevens is a chemistry teacher in Bristol, England, who was compelled to write this book after listening to an interview with an old Yemeni rabbi. The rabbi was weeping. His Jewish congregation was being forced to leave in secret from Yemen or face severe persecution or death. Apart from teaching chemistry, John Stevens is a Christian lay preacher who has had a long-term interest in the subject of Israel.

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Copyright © 2016 John S. Stevens.

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Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-5375-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-5374-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016913640

Print information available on the last page.

WestBow Press rev. date: 8/23/2016

Contents

Chapter 1 Peki’in

Chapter 2 When the Rabbis Cry

Chapter 3 Messiah

Chapter 4 Jesus and the Two Israels

Chapter 5 A New Israel?

Chapter 6 Jesus and the New Covenant

Chapter 7 Jesus and the New Israel

Chapter 8 Diaspora and Zionism

Chapter 9 The Uncertainties

Chapter 10 Good Samaritan

To the memory of my mother and Marianne Fryer

Preface

One morning a few years ago I was listening to an interview between a BBC news correspondent and a small group of elderly rabbis from Yemen. Through many tears, they explained that many Jews in Yemen were being forced to leave but that they would stay.

It was a moving account of the present sufferings of the Jewish people, and it propelled me to write this book.

When the Rabbis Cry is an attempt to answer a question: how does the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah, leave the purposes of God for the nation of Israel?

For some Christians and biblical scholars, the regathering of the Jews to their ancient homeland and the creation of the state of Israel in May 1948 is seen as a fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy made all the more remarkable considering the depths of Jewish suffering through the Holocaust during the Nazi period. According to these commentators, it is an awesome privilege to be living during this historical period witnessing the faithfulness of God to His prophetic promises.

For others, equally sympathetic to the Jews’ plight following many forms of persecution, God’s purposes are now being worked out solely through the church, which includes Jewish and Gentile believers. In terms of God’s purposes, Israel, as a nation, came to a close by rejecting Jesus as Messiah, and the church has taken its place. The regathering of the Jews and the recreation of the state of Israel is not in fulfilment of scriptural prophecies; it is a secular version of Israel whose leaders, unlike Moses or Nehemiah or Ezra, have not returned the nation to the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob in repentance and faith.

I offer this book not as a third way especially but as an alternative statement about the meaning of the term Israel. St Paul said ‘not all Israel is of Israel’. This is a key verse. It is my belief that God, through Jesus, has forever redefined the nation of Israel, and that if we can discern, even as we gaze on the Israel of the twenty-first century, how God’s purposes are being worked out, we will be greatly enriched in our Christian faith.

It is very unlikely that any of the rabbis in Yemen that I heard interviewed will read this book. But I want to say to them that I know the views in this book will not exactly align with your hopes and dreams for Israel. In researching this book I have come to understand far more how the whole history of the Jewish people was, in some measure, distilled in your tears. The hope in your heart for the Messiah, and an Israel formed in honour of him is something I acknowledge and am humbled by. May your hope be honoured. I believe it has been.

References to passages I have quoted are listed in the Endnotes.

Verses quoted from scripture, unless otherwise stated, are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Acknowledgements

I want to acknowledge various individuals without whom I would not have been able to have written this book.

John Hosier. I attended a mid-week bible study John led on eschatology and the second coming of Christ. He spoke of the return of the Jews to Israel in the twentieth century as a remarkable fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. That was in 1975, and I still have the notes!

Ian Macaulay. Ian has been a friend for far too long. We have watched each other sprout grey hair from our otherwise youthful exteriors and guarded each other’s faith through thick and thin. Ian has travelled to Israel on a number of occasions, visiting churches in Israel. And we also shared a small but robust air-conditioned car travelling from Jerusalem to Galilee and Mount Hermon back to the Dead Sea and Jerusalem during a visit to Israel in 2014.

Gurchetan Shoker is a work colleague and, as a socialist and an atheist, has a very different view to mine on the Middle East and just about everything else! Despite this I have found his thoughts invaluable, and his perspective on the political power games being played out in the Middle East has enabled me to bring together important aspects of history, politics, and spiritual matters.

Abby McDuff studied theology at Exeter University, with a particular interest in Israel. Abby made many persuasive observations having read the draft – and disagreed with the one section that I had thought was watertight; the debate continues.

Conor Cruise O’Brien’s The Siege was the first serious book I read concerning the history and politics concerning Israel. He had represented Ireland on the United Nations Middle East committee: ‘As delegates sit in alphabetical order, I found myself seated between the delegate of Iraq, on my left, and the delegate of Israel, on my right… it took me a few moments to realize that my seating had relieved each of them of an extremely uncongenial neighbour’ – a unique perspective from which to comment on Israel and its history. The Siege helped to shed considerable light on the political process that led to the formation of the state of Israel and the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

1

Peki’in

Have we the right to live?

– Chaim Weizmann

Peki’in is a small village in northern Galilee just south of the border with Lebanon, approximately fifteen miles north of Nazareth.

It is certainly possible that Jesus may have visited Peki’in as he walked through Galilee with his disciples preaching the gospel of the kingdom. Records indicate that Jews have lived in Peki’in since the Roman era.

Today approximately sixty thousand visitors pour through its narrow streets each year to see and touch the synagogue and the well. These monuments date back to AD 135 when an influential rabbi, Shimon bar Yochai and his son Elazar, hid from the Romans for thirteen years in a cave near Peki’in after the collapse of the Bar Kochba rebellion.

Peki’in, therefore, encapsulates something of the historical scope of this book and symbolizes Israel’s struggle for sovereignty and independence.

A common understanding of the history of the Jews since the first century often runs like this:

Following the Jewish uprising in AD 66, its defeat by the Romans, and the subsequent destruction of the Jerusalem temple in AD 70, the Jews fled from Palestine or were exiled; they were dispersed into the Gentile nations. After this diaspora (or ‘scattering’), the Jews largely remained in exile for centuries and suffered banishments, pogroms, and Nazi concentration camps – until the restoration of Jewish sovereignty and the re-establishment of the state of Israel in May 1948.

The truth is far more interesting. The Israel of the Roman era contained various groups and affiliations, some of whom are familiar to us from the pages of the New Testament such as the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Scribes and the Chief priests. There was also the ‘royal family’ and groups opposed to the Romans such as the Zealots.

One of Jesus’s disciples was Simon the Zealot.

Zealots were a Jewish sect that advocated the violent overthrow of Roman rule in order to re-establish Jewish sovereignty. According to the Jewish historian Josephus (ca. AD 37–100), the leaders of the AD 66 revolt were largely from the ranks of the Zealots. However, it was a splinter group – the Sicari, led by Elazar ben Ya’ir – that is famous for resisting the Roman siege of the last Jewish stronghold, Masada. The siege began in autumn AD 72. In the spring of AD 73, the Romans finally broke through the defences only to find that instead of dying at the hands of the Roman army, all the remaining 967 Jews had committed suicide.

Josephus himself, the Jewish military commander of Galilee, was captured during the Vespasian siege of Jotopata (now Yodfat) in Galilee in the summer of AD 67.

In the period of AD 66 to AD 135, there were three Jewish rebellions.

The second Jewish-Roman war (AD 115) largely occurred in the exiled Jewish communities in modern-day Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. It was finally extinguished in AD 117 by Lusius Quietus – hence its name, the Kitos War.

In AD 131, Emperor Hadrian renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina, banned Jewish circumcision, and erected a statue of himself near to the site of the temple (which had been rebuilt for the worship of Jupiter). Originally, Hadrian’s plans had been to rebuild Jerusalem for the Jews, but the plans were discarded in favour of building a Roman metropolis with its worship of Jupiter (Jove). This proved to be sufficient provocation for the Jews to