Tag Archive for: Abraham

Where Is the Safe Space for Jews?

A recent trend on college campuses is to install “safe spaces,” places where students — or certain identity-group subsets of students — can go to feel safe. These safe spaces are exclusionary by design; they protect students by insulating them. In extreme cases, safe spaces have been deemed to cover entire campuses, leading to the exclusion or disinvitation of undesirable visitors.

This “safe space” trend has been rightly ridiculed for its tendency to protect college students’ feelings from exposure to opposing viewpoints. Such exposure serves to sharpen the mind and used to be college’s main virtue. Thus, protecting students from “harm” by sequestering them from intellectual diversity undermines the whole point of college education.

But the silly “safe space” trend adopted the language of harm and safety because those are important considerations. Sticking with the collegiate context, students can’t devote themselves to their studies if they take their life in their hands every time they walk across campus. Fertilizing their mental acreage is orders of magnitude more difficult when outside sounds like a warzone, or a rock concert, or both at the same time.

The safety of college campuses — most of whom have a department devoted to preserving it — is often taken for granted, else loving parents would think twice before sending sweet Suzy off to a dormitory. Basic physical safety should be a guarantee on which all students can rely, regardless of their background. Unfortunately, that guarantee is no longer universal.

Where is the safe space for Jews?

On Sunday, Rabbi Elie Buechler of Columbia University’s Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (JLIC) strongly recommended that Jewish students “return home as soon as possible and remain home until the reality in and around campus has dramatically improved.”

“The events of the last few days, especially last night, have made it clear the Columbia University’s Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme anti-Semitism and anarchy,” wrote Buechler. “It is not our job as Jews to ensure our own safety on campus. No one should have to endure this level of hatred, let alone at school.”

Last Thursday, anti-Semitic activists took over Columbia University’s central quad, turning it into a tent city overnight. The activists, many of whom are students, have praised Hamas’s military arm Al-Qassam, called for the destruction of Israel, and openly invited the killing of counter-protestors. Despite more than 100 arrests on Thursday, the rabble have only grown bolder.

Now, university administrators appear to have given up any hope of reasserting control of their campus property. The rabbi’s counsel to Jewish students was “the reason why classes went virtual at Columbia today,” Rabbi Yaakov Menken, managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values, said Monday on “Washington Watch.” By Tuesday, Columbia University announced it was switching to hybrid classes for the remainder of the semester.

“There was one professor, Shai Davidai, who was having none of it,” Menken continued. “He said, ‘I am bringing 10 students and alumni with me Monday morning. We’re going to go on to the campus. We’re going to go right into the middle of that anti-Semitic demonstration, and we insist you keep us safe.’”

Rather than keep him safe, “Columbia deactivated the access card of their professor,” Menken related in disbelief. “Professor Shai Davidai of Columbia University had his access card deactivated by the university to prevent him from interfering with the anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas demonstration at that campus.” Columbia University COO Cas Holloway personally appeared at the campus gate to prevent Davidai from entering the.

Davidai is an assistant professor in Columbia Business School’s Management Division, and he also leads Columbia’s anti-Semitism task force. Columbia administrators had to know that barring the head of the anti-Semitism task force from campus would provoke outrage, yet they chose to confront the backlash rather than confront the unruly mob that has taken over their campus. “Columbia was confronted with a clear choice either the anti-Semitic barbarians or the Jews. They expressly chose the anti-Semitic barbarians,” exclaimed Menken. “The entire administration of Columbia is utterly compromised by Jew hatred.”

Where is the safe space for Jews?

Certainly not at Columbia University, nor at Yale. Sahar Tartak, a Jewish student at Yale who is also a conservative reporter, was physically assaulted and blocked by protestors while attempting to film the pro-Hamas demonstration — which included taking down an American flag on a university flagpole — at that university. After demonstrators surrounded and blockaded her, a keffiyeh-garbed man stabbed Tartak in the eye with a Palestinian flag he carried.

At this point, the terrorist groupies aren’t even pretending to be motivated by non-violent, humanitarian concern for Palestinian civilians. “Anti-Semitism is always about finding a façade, a pretense, and then moving on to their end goal, which has always been ethnic cleansing and genocide,” argued Menken. “They were never anti-Israel protests. They were always anti-Semitic protests that glorify terrorism, that glorify atrocities, actual beheading of babies and rapes and holding hostages. These are not decent human beings.”

Where is the safe space for Jews?

You won’t find one at MITNYUUniversity of MichiganOhio State UniversityUC Berkeley, or Boston University. I’m sure that’s only the tip of the iceberg, since the anti-Semitic protests have reached even smaller, lesser known schools like Cal Poly Humbolt or UNC Charlotte.

At this point, it seems like American Jews are safest anywhere that isn’t a college campus. But that’s obviously not a workable solution in the long run. Today’s students are tomorrow’s lawyers, bankers, and politicians — not to mention professors. Are American Jews simply supposed to accept a second-class status, where they don’t get to go to college and are governed by those who hate them? How well did that work in 1930s Germany? If Jews aren’t safe on American college campuses, then ultimately they won’t be safe anywhere else in America.

Where is the safe space for Jews?

Jews could perhaps find a safe haven on other shores. But a cursory glance around the world shows the same violent anti-Semitism on shameful display in American universities. Judging by U.N. voting records, America sits near the top of the list of pro-Jewish countries. If Jews can find few countries friendlier than the U.S., and they are hated here, where can they go?

Where is the safe space for Jews?

The obvious exception is the world’s only Jewish-majority nation-state (although two million Arabs also live there peacefully), the postage stamp-sized parcel of seacoast known as Israel. Established in 1948 in response to the Holocaust, the modern state of Israel has provided a safe haven for persecuted Jews of every nationality.

Yet Israel’s Jews are not safe even within their own paper-snowflake borders. Hamas proved that on October 7, 2023, when they launched an unprovoked invasion on a Jewish holy day, slaughtering more than 1,200 Jews, kidnapping more than 200 prisoners, burning, raping, and pillaging wherever they could. Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group supported by America’s geopolitical adversary Iran, openly calls for Israel’s “annihilation” and has broadcast its intention to repeat its October 7 attack as often as it is capable.

Hamas is not Israel’s only threat. Hezbollah, another Iran-backed terror group, operates out of Israel’s northern neighbor Lebanon, and it has kept up frequent rocket barrages against Israel to divide its attention. “There are, I believe, about 80,000 Israelis who can’t go home every night because the rockets being shot in by Hezbollah out of Lebanon,” Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wisc.) remarked on “Washington Watch.” “Obviously Israel cannot permanently tell 70 or 80,000 of their citizens, ‘you can’t go home at night.’”

Behind these groups lies Iran, a global terror sponsor, which is close to developing a nuclear weapon and is avowedly committed to Israel’s destruction.

Where is the safe space for Jews?

But perhaps the campus mobs openly supporting Hamas are ignorant of Hamas’s goal and merely want American Jews to return to Israel. If that were true, they would also have to be ignorant of the words coming out of their own mouth.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine is almost free,” they chanted. That’s a strange twist on their classic, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” By “free,” they mean free of Jews. By “from the river to the sea,” the chant invokes (and confuses) the boundaries of the land God promised to give to Israel in Deuteronomy 11:24, “from the River, the River Euphrates, to the western sea.” The technical term for seeking to drive all people of a given ethnic group out of a given territory is “ethnic cleansing.”

Again, they chanted, “There is only one solution: intifada, revolution.” “One solution” echoes the Nazis’ “Final Solution to the Jewish problem”: extermination camps. Intifada and revolution — both terms for riots or armed uprisings — are the means by which this chant proposes to achieve its end: the annihilation of all Jews everywhere.

No, the protestors know very well what unthinkable barbarity these chants call for. They share the end of Hamas.

Where is the safe space for Jews?

The utmost irony is that these disgraceful displays of anti-Semitism were sparked by the attack on Israel. When most sovereign nations suffer an unprovoked attack by an international terrorist outfit, they receive universal acknowledgements of sympathy, solidarity, and solace, even from parties who usually maintain a frosty distance. But when Israel was attacked, that outrage provoked not only sympathy for Israel but also expressions of solidarity with those who attacked her — even before Israel had mounted any military response.

This has led some Jews, even non-Zionists, to the inevitable conclusion that Israel’s demise would only result in further attacks on Jews everywhere. “The idea that Jews can be safe anywhere if they’re not secure in Israel has just been shattered,” said foreign policy expert Caroline Glick. “It’s very clear that the security of all Jews everywhere is contingent on Israel defeating our enemies in Israel.”

Under the Biden administration, Israel’s closest and most powerful friend is working overtime to snatch that rightful victory away from them. If that happens, it will lead right back to the question we’ve been asking all along.

Where is the safe space for Jews?

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.


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Has God changed from when He asked men, like Noah, to do strange things?

“As in the days of Noah,” God asked him to become the laughing stock of the world. But on Father’s Day, we might recall Noah was a better Dad than most other great men–he saved his whole family!

Abraham is another person who was willing to do strange things for God. He left home and all that he knew because he heard a voice? Later he accepted circumcision as a token of his faith, that even if amputated, he would still have children. His name meant “father of many.” And he insisted his servants be circumcised too–before the days of anesthesia! Embarrassing, but he was willing to be a fool for God.

Moses also heard voices, and life became harder for the Israelites—they had to make bricks without straw. Maybe they hated Moses with the frogs and lice, and then he asked them to kill a lamb and put its blood on their doorposts. Bizarre?

All of the above must have seemed weird. Looking back, we understand the reasons, but could God want us to do something strange?

Israel celebrated the Passover, the greatest event of Old Testament history, by eating the lamb and staying awake all night. We no longer need to kill lambs, but Christ asked His disciples to “watch and pray.” Those words are repeated throughout the New Testament and if we did them on the eve of Passover, it would commemorate the greatest events in Scripture.

Maybe Ellen White had that in mind when she wrote, “As [Christ] ate the Passover with His disciples, He instituted in its place the service that was to be the memorial of His great sacrifice.”1

We know it as “the Lord’s Supper” and we celebrate it as communion, but we haven’t done so “in its place.” on Passover. And because we don’t, we could be missing an important part that’s still enjoined, ”Watch and pray.” We spiritualize the word watch and think it means to be aware.

The Greek word for watch is gregorio, and it means to be awake. Paul wrote, “let us not sleep…let us watch.”2 and the context has several clues suggesting Passover.

  • Verses 1,2 imply a time we [should] “know perfectly.” Perhaps we’ve misunderstood something. Paul referred to the holidays like Passover as “shadows of things to come.”3
  • Writing of those times that we “know perfectly, the day of the Lord” comes as a thief. “The day of the Lord” is the Old Testament apocalyptic term and it’s linked to Passover as “the day of the Lord’s sacrifice” in Zephaniah 1:7,8 where God will punish “the king’s children clothed in strange apparel.” No wedding garment? Each wedding parable has Passover imagery, like the midnight cry in Matthew 25:6 and also in Exodus 12:29-30.
  • That cry was also the cry of childbirth. At Passover, God brought forth “my son…my firstborn.”4 “The day of the Lord comes” as travail on a woman with child and we are to know “perfectly.”

Paul kept Passover with Greek believers in Philippi and Corinth and he said, Follow me as I follow Christ. 5

Ellen White cited Christ’s death at Passover and said, “In like manner [at Passover?] the types which relate to the second advent must be fulfilled at the time pointed out in the symbolic service.”6

Perhaps we should see Passover also as when God said, “I will execute judgment.”7 Seventh-day Adventists believe in a pre-Advent judgment, but it may have three components:

1.  “the time of the dead that they should be judged”8

2.  “the nations were angry” (the rider on the red horse takes peace from the earth—a time of judgment for the living when they face life and death situations as in Daniel 1-6. “Daniel” means “God is my Judge.” But the book of Judges shows judges as deliverers, and God may deliver us as the three Hebrews who also said, “But if not…we will not worship…the image”9

3.  “thy wrath is come” on those who worship the beast or his image.10

The point is, just as Adventists believe #1, the judgment of the dead, began on the Day of Atonement, perhaps we should consider that when judgment is executed, it could begin on Passover, as in the type.

If God isn’t going to do anything without revealing it,11 shouldn’t we consider it revealed and try to understand when?

Christ’s disciples were probably thinking of Passover as a time of judgment for those events in Matthew 24,25 when He said, You don’t know the day or hour.

We overlook the meaning of the Greek word, oida—be aware, consider, understand. Christ was saying, You don’t understand, and each time He said it, He gave an example that fit a provision in their law for Passover a month later, “as in the days of Noah.” But how much “as”? Could it include timing?

The Flood came with Passover timing. Noah entered the ark on the 10th day, the same day that the sacrifice was selected in Exodus 12:3, but it was the 2nd spring month because Noah had to bury Methuselah who died as a sign of the Flood. His name meant, at his death, the sending forth of waters.12 That delay of one month is specified in Numbers 9:10,11 as a reason to observe Passover later.

Again, after five women missed the wedding, Christ said, Watch (a word linked to being awake at Passover), for the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country.”13 Israelites didn’t travel in winter, but if they took a long journey in spring and couldn’t get back for Passover, they were to keep it in the 2nd month as specified in Numbers 9.

Could it be significant that Christ punctuated His two parables in Matthew 25 with instruction to watch and a qualification of when to watch, if we understood their law better. And didn’t Christ say, “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall in no wise pass from the law”?14

Could we be the “goodman” who doesn’t know when to watch [be awake] so that our house is broken by the thief? The King James has only one reference to goodman in the Old Testament. A harlot says, “The goodman…is gone a long journey…and will come home at the yom kece [full moon]. Passover comes on a full moon, but “long journey” means 2nd Passover.

Christ said, “If you shall not watch, I will come on you as a thief.” But there’s Good News as well…

“Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when He comes shall find watching [another link to Passover] Verily I say unto you, that He shall gird Himself and make them sit down to meat and come forth and serve them.” Girding Himself and serving us is also Passover imagery—the Last Supper.
If we are “so doing” when He comes and “knocks…He will make [us] ruler over all that He has.” So much to gain and so little to lose!
Why we should do so this year is beyond the scope of this article, but this year, 2nd Passover (“as in the days of Noah,” falls on Wednesday evening, May 14. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our churches were filled with members seeking communion on the authentic time for Christ’s return from “a long journey”?

Our favorite author said those seeking the Lord’s return should be found in prayer meeting. Why not on May 14? We have many reasons for all night prayer vigils. “It would be well for us to spend a thoughtful hour each day in contemplation of the life of Christ. We should take it point by point, and let the imagination grasp each scene, especially the closing ones…If we would be saved at last, we must learn the lesson of penitence and humiliation at the foot of the cross.” Why not share this article with your pastor and ask if we could do something crazy?

References:

1    The Desire of Ages, p 652

2    1 Thessalonians 5:1-6

3    Colossians 2:16,17

4    Exodus 4:22

5    Acts 20:6; 1 Corinthians 5:8; 11:1

6    The Great Controversy, p 399.9

7    Exodus 12:12

8    Revelation 11:18

9    Daniel 3:18

10  Revelation 14:9,10

11  Amos 3:7

12  Genesis 5:21, King James, margin

13  Matthew 25:13,14

14  Matthew 5:18

[1]   Proverbs 7:19,20

[1]   Revelation 3:3

[1]   Luke 12:36,37

[1]   Luke 12:43-48

[1]   The Desire of Ages, p 83