Firebombs Bolster Prayers Among Messianic Believers

Three firebomb attacks within two weeks in March highlighted growing pressure on the Christian and Messianic Jewish communities in Israel.

On March 7, Mikhail and Tirtze Shvaneberg's parked car was firebombed outside their home in Moshava Migdal, a community of 2,500 near the Sea of Galilee. The Shvanebergs and their eight children are members of the Peniel Messianic Jewish congregation in Tiberias.

Flames spread to the home's balcony in the 3:30 a.m. fire. The eldest daughter, Hadassah, heard windows breaking. "I called everyone and we extinguished the fire. It's a miracle from God that the house didn't burn down."

The Shvanebergs had been threatened in the past for openly sharing their faith that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.

Eight days after the car fire, two Molotov cocktails were thrown into the Baptist Book Shop in west Jerusalem, also during early morning, causing several thousand dollars' worth of damage.

Six days later, Joseph Shulam, an early Israeli Messianic leader and head of the Netivyah Bible Instruction Min is try, was awakened in his Jerusalem home at 3:45 a.m. by a Molotov cocktail. "I opened the window and took the burning bottle to the sink and drowned it in a pot full of water," Shulam says.

Israeli police have made no arrests in connection with the three attacks, but they did apprehend three ultraorthodox Jews after an assault last November. Hundreds of black-garbed Jews in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem ransacked and burned the contents of an apartment occupied by three Swiss Christian women accused of "missionary activity." In February, a court sentenced 28-year-old Yehoshua Weiss to eight months in prison for his part in the attack.

ORGANIZED CAMPAIGN? In Beersheva, however, religious institutions supported by the Israeli government itself have been campaigning against the city's mixed congregation of Christians and Messianic Jews.

Last November, hundreds of ultra-orthodox surrounded the congregation's meeting place on a Saturday morning after rumors circulated in local synagogues that Jewish children had been kidnapped and were to be baptized that morning. Congregants were trapped inside and had to be escorted to safety between police lines, which held back the spitting and cursing crowd.

A month later, Beersheva's newly installed Sephardic chief rabbi, Yehuda Deri, addressed an emergency rally of hundreds of Jews from the Negev region to oppose the congregation of "missionaries," characterized as "sons of Satan" in a film shown to the gathering. "We will fight the mission until the last drop of our blood," declared Deri.

Rabbi Jeremy Calife, an employee in Deri's government-financed office who helped organize the rally, made repeated visits to the workplace of a Christian member of the congregation and at tempted to have him fired. Calife told CT he made the visits on his own time as a "volunteer for the Jewish people."

Handbills were also posted outside the apartments of other congregants warning neighbors to stay away from the "wolves in sheep's clothing" and inviting residents to file complaints with the police. The notices were signed by the Heart for the Brothers organization, which, according to documents on file with the Israeli Interior Ministry, has made application for substantial government funding.

LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS: Efforts have also been made in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, to restrict evangelization. Last year, a bill that would have imposed a maximum prison term of three years and a $12,500 fine for "anyone who preaches with the goal of causing any other person to change his religion" passed an initial reading (CT, May 18, 1998, p. 22).

Rabbi Raphael Pinchasi, the Knesset member who sponsored that bill, is not seeking office in this month's Israeli elections, according to Paul Liberman, copastor of the Beit Asaph Messianic congregation in Netanya. "The bill will go into retirement with him," Liberman says. "Then the religious parties will introduce new legislation."

Liberman, chair of the Messianic Action Committee set up by Israeli congregations to oppose legislation restricting religious liberty, has been monitoring reports about Messianic Jews that appear in ultraorthodox publications in Israel. "You almost understand why the firebombing takes place," he says. "The lies about us are rampant: kidnappings, bribing people to convert with food, all sorts of extreme slanders are stoking the fires to produce this violence."

Liberman compares the situation to that of Jews in the Middle Ages, when false reports that Jews kidnapped Christian children to use their blood in religious ceremonies were repeated so often that the Christian majority believed them to be true.

"When something is stated by rabbis [about Messianic Jews] without corroborating evidence, they're assumed to be truth tellers, while we're thought to be unethical soul stealers without credibility," Liberman says.

The only recourse for Christians in Israel may be to follow the counsel of Mikhail Shvaneberg after attackers firebombed his car and home. "Simply bless them and pray that God will open their eyes," he says. "They want to serve God but don't know how. It's the same situation as Paul in the New Testament—he pursued the believers because he believed he was doing something good for God."

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