Being Jewish and Christian in the Face of War
We hold on to both memory and hope.
Like many Jewish people around the world, on Saturday October 7, 2023, I was planning a picnic in my backyard sukkah. Then the world stopped. Because no matter where we live, our hearts are in Israel.
I won’t pretend that the grief and fear I feel here (in my relatively safe American home) compare in the smallest way to what our brothers and sisters living in Israel are facing right now. But if you are reading this and you are in Israel–know that our hearts beat with yours, your sorrow is our sorrow, your tears are our tears.
My Jewish neighbor still came over to the sukkah–but we just sat rather quietly together, talked and prayed. As more images and news have come out in the last few days, there’s been no talking. All that comes out are prayers and weeping.
I was a bit shocked, later, to step out into the community and find that for many other people, the world seems to have continued turning. I really don’t want to hear about the funnest part of your weekend or your halloween plans. Women and children–Jewish women like me, and Jewish children like mine, are lying in body bags next to pools of their own blood. Along with the elderly and disabled, they’ve been brutally murdered, kidnapped, dragged out into the streets, even their bodies defiled. Babies beheaded. Tens of thousands of young fathers and mothers are being called up to war.
Elie Wiesel, Romanian Jew and Holocaust survivor, said this in his Nobel Lecture in 1986:
“Each one of us felt compelled to record every story, every encounter. Each one of us felt compelled to bear witness, Such were the wishes of the dying, the testament of the dead. Since the so-called civilized world had no use for their lives, then let it be inhabited by their deaths.
The great historian Shimon Dubnov served as our guide and inspiration. Until the moment of his death he said over and over again to his companions in the Riga ghetto: “Yidden, shreibt un fershreibt” (Jews, write it all down). His words were heeded. Overnight, countless victims become chroniclers and historians in the ghettos, even in the death camps. Even members of the Sonderkommandos, those inmates forced to burn their fellow inmates’ corpses before being burned in turn, left behind extraordinary documents. To testify became an obsession.”1
In this speech, Mr. Wiesel asked us to keep our minds open to memory as well as to hope. He asked us to call evil what it is. The stories we’ve heard in the last few days, we haven’t heard since the Holocaust. If you listen to Hamas’ intentions, you’ll be terrified–their verbage is almost indistinguishable from that used by the Nazis. That’s because as long as there have been Jewish people, there’s been antisemitism.
Some non-Jewish Americans may not have eyes wide open to this horrendous evil. But many do, and are not only aware, but willing to do something about it.
Over the weekend, my friend’s church stopped their service and spent most of their time discussing and praying for Israel.
I have a few non-Jewish friends who work with Jews for Jesus, who are committed allies of the Jewish people, who’ve been working tirelessly to support and help their staff in Israel.
Thousands of faces from around the world came together for a video to say, “We stand with Israel.” Gentile Christians everywhere have been asking how they can help or donate. Christian musicians and filmmakers have posted pictures of themselves with the magen David. Buildings in the U.S. and Europe have been lit up in blue and white in a show of solidarity.
My non-Jewish husband, who is a member of the U.S. Air Force, will gladly get on a plane and fight alongside the IDF if given the chance. (And many of his fellow U.S. airmen, sailors, soldiers and marines feel the same, and will go when called.) He would do it because it’s his job–but he would also do it because he loves the Jewish people. And he loves the Jewish people because he loves the God of Israel.
My husband’s family actually has a long history of fighting alongside the Jewish people. Teodor Babutz, my children’s great-grandfather, was imprisoned in Communist Romania for distributing Bibles and for helping Jewish people escape the Nazis. As my mother-in-law puts it, her parents “instilled in us a love for God’s chosen people.” There are many, many stories like the Babutz’s–stories of people like the ten Booms, the Bonhoeffers, and everyday families, of Christian people who were not Jewish, but who risked their lives defending Jewish people–as an act of obedience to the God who loves and defends the Jewish people.
This is what Jesus does. He makes one new man out of the two–He brings peace between Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2:15). He unites us as together, we depend on the faithfulness of God and we wait in the fulfillment of His promises.
If you are Jewish and you haven’t seen this kind of love and support from non-Jewish Christians, I’m sorry. Maybe the Christians who don’t seem to care about Israel aren’t reading their Bibles–or maybe they need to learn more about the Jewishness of the Man they claim to follow.
The Jewish Messiah I follow affirmed his love and care for the Jewish people. His Father is our Father; and he reminded us to trust our Father with everything we need. In fact, he implored us to keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking on the door when we need our Father’s help.2
I read a story about two fathers today. An Israeli journalist named Amir Tibon lives with his wife and two daughters in a kibbutz on Israel’s border with Gaza. They hid in their safe room all day Saturday as terrorists shot bullets into their house. No food, no light, only a little water, and only enough cell reception to call his father. The journalist’s father, who is a retired military man in his 60’s, said he would come. Amir could only wait, and hope, and keep telling himself that his father was coming. Ten hours later, the older gentleman finally made it and rescued his family. He’d picked up many wounded Israeli soldiers and saved others at the kibbutz on the way.3
If we are to heed Mr. Wiesel’s advice, we need to read these stories too. We need to see the fighters, the ones who run towards trouble, and we need to remember our Father who runs to us in our trouble. As the psalmist says,
“[God] will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day.” (Psalm 91:4-5)
So to me, being Jewish and Christian in the face of war means three things:
It means we will keep knocking down the door–keep seeking the Lord in prayer as Jesus taught. In fact, we will “give [God] no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth” (Isaiah 62:7).
It means we can trust that true followers of Jesus will pray, hope, and stand alongside us.
And it means that our Father is coming.
If you would like to learn more about how you can stay up to date, love and serve the Jewish people, and be in specific prayer for the situation in Israel, please head here to Jews for Jesus.
- To read Mr. Wiesel’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, head here: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1986/wiesel/lecture/ ↩︎
- Matthew 7:7 ↩︎
- You can read the story of Amir Tibon in The Atlantic. ↩︎