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Penina Taylor is Executive Director of
Jews for Judaism in Jerusalem.
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By Penina Taylor
May 21, 2008
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It was reported yesterday by several major news outlets that recently the religious Jews of Or Yehuda set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament and other missionary propaganda. Ha'aretz called it "the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the Holy Land." Calev Myers, attorney representing the Messianic communities of Israel called for the people who did it to be brought to trial. But brought to trial for what?
The people who burned these books and pamphlets broke no law. Despite the allusions being made to the burning of Jewish holy books during the times of the inquisition or the holocaust, there is absolutely no comparison here. The New Testaments and evangelistic leaflets had been basically thrown out -- they were unsolicited garbage, and there is no law against incinerating garbage, even by religious Jews, even in public.
First let's look at the whole story. The town of mostly religious Jews had recently been targeted by missionaries, a form of harassment. The missionaries were not invited to come, they invaded. In the wake of their invasion, they left hundreds, maybe even thousands of New Testaments and other missionary literature. The townspeople were in a quandary -- what to do with this heresy that they did not want in their homes? So, the Deputy Mayor came up with a solution. He offered to take the unwanted trash off the residents' hands and dispose of them in such a way that made it clear and in no uncertain terms that such literature was not only unsolicited, but unwelcome.
Like a modern day King Josiah, Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon set out to unburden the citizenry he was sworn to serve, and they gave him the unwanted materials willingly. In the book of 2 Kings, chapter 22 and in 2 Chronicles 34, we read the story of King Josiah who took the throne at the age of eight years old. It is said of him, "And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the ways of his father David; he did not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. " (2 Kings 22:2) -- a claim that no Christian would deny. And yet, we read in 2 Chronicles 34:33 that "Josiah removed all the abominations from all the country that belonged to the children of Israel, and made all who were present in Israel diligently serve the Lord their God. All his days they did not depart from following the Lord God of their fathers."
Now, King Josiah removed the objects of heresy and idolatry forcibly, he did not give the citizens a choice in the matter, including regarding their service to God and this is where the two stories diverge. Truth be told, we could go on about how the burning of the New Testaments was simply an exercise in freedom of expression or even freedom of religion, which Israel claims to be why proselytizing is no longer illegal in the land.
But the bottom line is this: there was no persecution or violence against Christians here, and no one was forced to do anything he/she didn't want to do. If anything, it is the missionaries who are guilty and deserve to be brought to trial for mass harassment, not to mention the countless number of trees who senselessly gave their lives for the printing of the unwanted material and the ridiculous amount of space this story is now taking up on web pages and newspapers the world over.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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