After a three week period of mourning during which the Jews remembered the series of events that led to the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of God’s people’s first Temple on that date in the year 586 BCE. we still do not have any reason to be very happy.
The last few days we could take some time to remember also the year 70 CE when the Roman legions pushed through the crumbling defences of Jerusalem to desecrated and destroy the rebuilt second Temple, as they crushed a rebellion that shook the heart of the Empire and drove the Chosen people of God into exile, but also to remember many of the most painful moments Jews had to undergo in camps and pogroms.
Many lovers of God showed their faithfulness to the Most High Elohim. They did everything to join with brethren and sisters and feel united in the family of the Patriarch Abraham.
On Tisha b’Av, many Jews felt most keenly their sense of powerlessness and their feeling of separation from their spiritual centre in their ancestral homeland. It was the day on which we acknowledged the emotional and spiritual pain of God’s people‘s exile.
Today, no longer in exile, when there is such an opening to see the Holy Land becoming a reality, so many Jews having returned to the Eretz Ysrael or Land of Israel, it looks like there is even more division than in the previous times of worries.
There are some groups who consider it not necessary any more to remember all the evil that has happened to the Jewish people. Even in the light that many may see a brighter future we should know and keep remembering what happened in the past. Jews and real lovers of God should understand that despite the many setbacks the Chosen People underwent, their struggles, their real loses and deep suffering, the Jewish people, have overcome the obstacles fate has set before them.
The Fast of the Ninth of Av should in a way stay a day of mourning to commemorate the many tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people, many of which have occurred on the ninth of Av. But in these times we also should open our eyes and receive a ‘slap in our face’ because there is something going on in this world by those who call themselves Jew. As in this world where we see many who call themselves ‘Christian‘ calling themselves names and fighting against each other, we can find also persons who call themselves Jew doing things against the Will of God, like creating hate between people or excluding people as if they are the pest.
Rabbi Ruth Adar, or the Coffee Shop Rabbi, has her eyes also open, seeing the division in the Jewish communities she also felt sick at heart this Tisha B’Av.
The people’s spirit might have gone in so many varied directions whereby some of them might have us wonder if they are not going away from the path laid in front of them by the Most High Elohim.
The Coffee Shop Rabbi writes
” The Jewish community is horribly divided. We are divided in many ways, and we poke many fingers at one another, scolding.
Some Haredim see the Kotel as their synagogue. From their point of view, whatever they need to do to maintain the sanctity of that place as they define sanctity is justified.
Some other Jews believe that the Kotel belongs to all Jews everywhere and because the Haredim have said and done ugly things, whatever they say about the Haredim is justified. {Sick and Tired}
The world has come to know so many different Judaic groups and various movements with very different ideas. Years ago between Jews there was a feeling, a sense, a rich swirl of emotion, a deep notion of Jewish communality. This is what the Talmud means when it says,
“all Jews are responsible one for the other” (Shavuot 39a).
But today it looks more that there is egotism and greed that has darkened the hearts of many Jews, not willing to be open for others. Perhaps today only a few (or more?) Jews are swimming upstream and striving for peace between all people living around Jerusalem, which in the end shall have to become the capital of the Holy Land, for all those who love and go for the Divine Creator. It was the wish of the Bore and it shall become so, whatever man wants to go against it.
In Israel there are Jews living who have put aside their faith in God and have become atheists calling other Jews to fight against the enemies of their state. In Israel as well as in other places around the world we also, strangely enough can find Jews who have taken a three-headed god as their god. Though they take Jesus (Jeshua) as their god, they clearly do not follow the teachings of that Nazarene rebbe who taught peace and tolerance. We can wonder if one may call such ‘Messianic Jews‘ really Jews. Opposite to them are real Messianic Jews, who stay faithful to the Jewish belief in One True God, the God of Israel, Jacob, Isaac, Jesus and his disciples, but have taken Jesus as the Messiah. But they are ‘shredded’ and hated by the trinitarian ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’. By other Jews they are spoken of as traitors to the faith. Others speak about the Conservative Jews as the wrong believers, whilst others talk about the Reform, the Orthodox, Ultra-Orthodox Jews, the Liberal or other sorts of Jews, as if they are “monsters”.
Some Jews act as if Jews of color don’t even exist.
Some Jews think other Jews don’t “look Jewish enough.”
Some Jews say Jews who became Jewish as adults aren’t really Jews. {Sick and Tired}
We can see that Judaism has become sick in the same bed as Christendom. There too has come such a shims that several groups claim the other group may not call themselves Jew. It has even come so far that Israel’s rabbinical authorities have compiled a blacklist of overseas rabbis whose authority they refuse to recognize when it comes to certifying the Jewishness of someone who wants to get married in Israel.
Israel’s Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef (L) and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau. Moti Milrod – The Chief Rabbinate having released a list of foreign “kosher” rabbis whose conversions it recognizes and whose signatures it accepts on documents attesting to various aspects of personal status.
The Christian community and the Jewish community should remember
However, considering that the people during the Second Temple period were engaged in Torah study, observance of mitzvot, and acts of kindness, why was the Second Temple destroyed?
It was destroyed due to the fact that there was baseless hatred during that period. This comes to teach you that the sin of baseless hatred is equivalent to the three transgressions: Idol worship, forbidden sexual relations and bloodshed. – Yoma 9b {Sick and Tired}
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Preceding article
Women their education and chances to become a parliamentary
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Additional reading
- Converso Involvement in the Sabbatai Zevi Movement
- Difference between a Messianic Gentile, a Messianic Jew and a Christian
- The modern Messianic Jewish movement
- Today’s thought “Ability to circumcise your heart” (May 13)
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Further reading
- Synagogues and Sanctuary: It’s Time to Get Politicized
- On anti-Semitism, anti-Islam and fictitious alliances in U.S.
- UK’s chief rabbi: Labour ‘failed Jewish community’ with Livingstone suspension
- Happy Passover – Celebrate freedom
- The Insults Are No Accident
- Mimouna night in CSL
- Remembrance: Candle Lights For Fallen In Holocaust
- Canada’s oldest Jewish community welcomes new addition – a history museum
- Now Available: Wrestling in the Daylight 2.0!
- Cote Saint-Luc Rabbi represents Canada at Conference of Cardinals, Bishops and Rabbinic Leaders
- Israel must honor God or the Rule of Law is meaningless
- Jewish Security Funds In State Budget Leave Others Feeling Excluded
- New Holocaust museum will preserve lost Jewish identity and history in Thessaloniki
- Economic roots of Jewish persecutions in Medieval Europe
- B’nai Brith recognizes Cote Saint-Luc in fight against racism, anti-semtism, discrimination
- A Community for Secular Jews
- Marking the Boundaries
- The Real Wall Problem: When Will Diaspora Jews Fight For Palestinians?
- God-Optional Judaism
- Incredible speech in UN: “Where are your Jews?”
- What is Yom Yerushalayim and what does it consist of?
- #Navarra University listening to the GM of Spain Jewish Communities Council(#
- #Jews in #Zimbabwe
- Toledo: Sephardic Culture at the University
- Israeli Blacklist of US Rabbis Points to Widening Rift — The Rabbis Deemed ‘Kosher’ for Conversions by Israel’s Rabbinate: The Full List
- El Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Madrid rechaza el Boicot contra Israel
- Macabiah: The Zionist Olympics
- Malaga will have more than two years with a museum devoted to Spanish Jewish thought.
- The invisible Jewish population of Udine
- “Qualitavely Jews are not a minority”
- Potential new location found for CSL synagogue
- The Small But Mighty Greek Jewish Community of Thessaloniki -The Forward
- Chechnya’s Jewish community is angry at Israel… but doesn’t seem to exist
- French Jews ‘will have to give up dual Israeli citizenship’ if Marine Le Pen wins presidential election
Those priests who got other ideas than the papal directions are considered the bad ones who do not have Christ (or God) in them. Rodney Stark reminds us that we will meet a great many of these
Does it mean that some of those Catholic priests believe they are some Christ? Or have the same power as Christ? This last question also denoting that they consider themselves as powerful as God because Jesus is their god, they think to be God.
Stepping Toes 