HashKama: The Jewish struggle
The Nazis sang hymns to God as they sent Jews to the gas chambers. Behaving less than human themselves, they considered the Jews to be less than human and worthy of extinction. How is it that the God Who created humans would choose a less than human species to be a light to the nations (humans)? (Isaiah 49:6). Those who hate the Jews today do so for the same illogical and demonic reason. Also, believing as some do, that God rejected the Jews (Israel) and replaced them with the Church is equally demonic and nonsensical. People believe such evil doctrines because they want to, not because they are God’s truth. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew Chs.5-7), Jesus calls His disciples “the light of the world.” They were all Jews. The twelve apostles (Jews chosen by God) as Israel’s representation, will make His Name known unto the ends of the world.
God works His purposes out through individuals as well as through nations even though they may be oblivious to it. We will take a brief look at a few examples of situations that individual Jews have persevered with, and lived through, during the long history of God’s people. Most who read this will be Christians, and will be aware of the call of Abraham, and Purim during the time of Esther, and the various exiles of Judah and Israel, and more recently, the Holocaust. This is a people that have endured hard lessons as they travelled through the centuries up until the very present time. Israel’s enemies not only encamp around her, they reach out far across the globe; but His people are preserved by the hand of God, and Jesus will come back to both His land, Israel, and His people, the Jews. They will be His people, and He will be their God (Revelation 21:3; Jeremiah 32:38; Ezekiel 37:27).
Moses
Let us begin with Moses. Many will have heard about or seen the statues and paintings of Moses depicted with horns coming out from his forehead. Medieval Christians on the whole, associated Jews with the devil. During the Hitler period in Europe, and Germany in particular, Jews were made to wear a yellow star on their clothing. In Medieval times, when going out into the public, they were made to have a horn somewhere on their outer garment, so that they could be easily recognisable as being a Jew. The Vienna Council, in 1267, decreed that Jews should wear a horned hat. Quite possibly, Medieval Germany wasn’t any better; they forced the Jews to bend the brim of their hats into the shape of a horn. However, some suggest that what was referred to as the “Jewish hat,” was instituted by the Jews themselves. Moving on to France, in 1219, Phillip III required the Jews to have a horned figure attached to the regular Jew badge (a rota, “wheel”). These are just a few instances when the horned Jew was identified with the legend. So that there was no misunderstanding, included in bold letters was the inscription: “This is the Jew Devil.”[i] You see how Satan has deceived the world into believing that, the people of God are the people of the Devil. Something similar is happening with Christians today; the world is turning against Christians (as well as Jews) making them evil. It is a part of calling evil good, and good evil (אֲמַר amar: to say, tell, command – Isaiah 5:20), and it will continue on into persecution.
In an interview about the movie The Ten Commandments, made in 1956, Cecil B Demille explained that he had considered giving Moses horns; he said this as he fondled a miniature replica of the statue of Moses with horns. Let us look a little deeper into Moses and his horns. The incident in question occurred because of a mistranslation of Scripture, concerning the time when Moses descended Mount Sinai carrying the Ten Commandments (Exodus 34:30) – “So when Aaron and all the sons of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to approach him.” The Vulgate (Latin translation of the Bible), confused the word “karan” (“sent forth beams” or “was shining”) with “keren.” Keren is “horn.” Both are spelled the same way in Hebrew – and translates karan or panav (the skin of his face was shining); it was read as cornuta esset facies sua, “his face was horned.” – It probably led to the whole scenario of Moses having horns, and the Jews being devils. It should never have happened because Scripture is very clear that God chose and loves Israel. His calling and His love have never been rescinded; but similar was said of the Jew, Yeshua, when He cast out demons (Matthew 12:24). The religious in the nations of the world stand against Yeshua today.
Imran Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, is calling for Muslim nations to band together and boycott Western nations if they fail to criminalise “insulting” the Islamic prophet, Mohammed. Perhaps Imran Khan would be a shining example to the Islamic world and the world in general, by speaking out against the vile insults God’s people the Jews have suffered for centuries. Besides the insults, there is also the physical attacks against Jews and Christians. April 23rd 2021, a female police worker in France was killed by a knifeman who shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ before he was shot dead by her colleagues. The 49-year-old mother-of-two was slashed in the throat by the Tunisian on Friday afternoon as she worked in the main police station in the Paris suburb of Rambouillet.[ii] It follows six years of savage Islamist attacks in France, including the beheading of schoolteacher Samuel Paty by a Russian-born terrorist in October 2020.
The deadliest single terrorist attack ever in the country came in November 2015 when 130 people were killed in Paris. Suicide bombers pledging allegiance to ISIS targeted the Stade de France, cafes, restaurants and the Bataclan music venue, where 90 died. Earlier in the year, two Paris-born gunmen linked to Al-Qaeda broke into the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, leaving 12 dead and 11 wounded. In July 2016, 86 people were killed and more than 400 injured when a 19-tonne truck was deliberately driven into crowds on the seafront promenade at Nice, in the South of France. In 2017, a sixty-year-old Jewish retired doctor and schoolteacher, Sarah Halimi, was murdered in a frenzied antisemitic attack in her Paris apartment. Her next-door neighbour, Kobili Traoré, a twenty-seven-year-old Muslim man of Malian descent, beat her and threw her out of her third-floor window to cries of Allahu akbar, or “God is great,” and calling her a shaitan, or “satan.”[iii] Perhaps Amran Khan, the womanizer[iv] turned moralizer, would lead by example by calling for an end to the murder of Jews and Christians at Muslim hands.
Chaim Weizmann
We have recently remembered the Holocaust; it is something Israel and various nations do every year. Previous to the Holocaust there were warnings, but in many cases, they were not heeded. Again, we are the same today; we are not listening.
Towards the end of 1932, Chaim Weizmann was counselling German Jews to leave the country quickly; – Weizmann had read Hitler’s Mein Kampf.[v] During his last visit to Germany, he told the Jews of Munich that “Hitler means every word.” He cautioned them that it was time to flee the nation. Weizmann was a wise man, and was saddened that the Jews were deaf to his pleas. By 1933 the situation had deteriorated, and Weizmann denounced the German fall “into barbarism.” In the same year, writing to Felix Warberg, (who was a member of the prominent German-American-Jewish banking family), he said: “The world is gradually, relentlessly and effectively being closed to the Jews (If we were speaking today, we would include that the world is closing to Christians too), and every day I feel more and more that a ring of steel is being forged around us…it is all inescapable, and every ounce of my energy…is going towards the consummation of that end [Palestine]. Everything else is palliative, a half-measure, and merely postponing the evil day.”
At the age of 11 Weizmann wrote a letter in Hebrew to his Hebrew teacher in Motol, a backwater hamlet in the western Russian empire, urging with boyish fervour that the Jewish people must return to Zion.
It was later, in 1936, that Weizmann appeared before the Peel Commission investigating Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine. Afterwards, Weizmann confided to Yeheskiel Saharoff, his private secretary, “I foresee the destruction of European Jewry…” In 1938 he confided in a friend saying, “I am distressed that the Jews don’t understand the apocalyptic nature of the times…Part of us will be destroyed, and on their bones New Judea may arise! It is all terrible but it is so – I feel it even here [in Rehovot, Palestine], and can think of nothing else.” It reminds me of the young Ivan (Tito) Rachnitzer, who we learned a little about in the previous article, and how he had tried to warn his people, the Jews in his district. May God give us ears to hear, and eyes to see, and understanding of the times that we are in today.
Chaim Weismann (27.11. 1874 – 9.11.1952), was elected as the first President of the new State of Israel on 16 February 1949, and served until his death in 1952. Although he gained international renown as a chemist, it was as a politician that he was most eminent. Weizmann settled in England in 1904 upon taking up a science appointment at the University of Manchester. During World War I he gave valuable assistance to the British munitions industry, then (1916) in dire need of acetone (a vital ingredient of cordite), by devising a process to extract the solvent from maize. This achievement signally aided the Zionist political negotiations he was then conducting with the British government. For those interested in reading more, there is the 3-volume set: “Chaim Weizmann: The Making of a Zionist Leader”. I think volume 3 is to be translated into English very soon.
The struggles Jewish people go through, and the success they achieve through their dogged determination, more often than not, leads to blessing to individual Gentiles, and sometimes to nations.
Bernard Baruch
Moving on from one great Jew that helped the nation of Great Britain, to another who came to the rescue of a ‘great’ Britain – Winston Churchill. In this story, as in others, the Jew proves to be a blessing to the Gentile. Jews struggled in the most difficult circumstances and achieved success; and through their personal success in life, they blessed others.
As the story goes, it was in the year of 1932, when Winston Churchill got himself into some personal and serious financial trouble.[vi] He was in the United States at the time, and while paying a visit to his friend, Bernard Baruch, he would do some trading of his own. Baruch was a wealthy financier as well as being a trusted advisor and confidant to President Roosevelt. Although Churchill was a great statesman, he was out of his depth when it came to being an investor.
Eventually, a somewhat distraught Churchill confided to his friend that he was a financially ruined man. He had squandered most of his family fortune and would be forced to sell everything, even his estate, Chartwell. He would have to resign from the House of Commons and begin a new career. He considered it would probably take him forever to pay off the losses he had accrued; and as he was not a young man, he didn’t relish the thought. It was then that Churchill was told some face-saving information. Very gently, his friend, Baruch, informed Churchill that he had lost nothing at all. I can’t imagine what went through Churchill’s distraught mind at that moment. Baruch knew how appalling Churchill was as an investor, so he took the precaution of instructing his employees to keep an eye on Churchill’s transactions as he went about his trading activities. Each time Churchill sold, Baruch’s employees were to buy the same securities. Each time Churchill bought, Baruch’s employees were to sell. Baruch explained that Churchill was back to where he had started, because his firm had absorbed everything, even the various commissions. Churchill, in effect, was given his life back by the Jew that watched over him. He could continue in politics, and because of the Jew, Baruch, Churchill was free to guide the free world through the trying times of WWII.[vii] The hand of God, in bringing deliverance to Churchill by the hand of a Jew, also paved the way for the deliverance of Europe and the free world – and, after all the destruction and chaos, there came the creation of the new State of Israel. On May 14th 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. U S President Harry S. Truman recognized the new nation on the same day. We have so much to thank the Jews for, even in modern times. God is watching over His people, and He is working His purposes out. From little acorns mighty oaks grow – from the deliverance of one individual, to the liberation of the West from Nazi tyranny, to the new State of Israel; and perhaps the beginning of the last of the Last Days.
Armand Hammer
We move now from the potential financial collapse of one man, to the financial debt of a nation; and to the deliverance of Churchill from his terrible business deals, and the deliverance of the nation of Britain from its national debt to the USA.
Armand Hammer was a Jewish businessman. God used a Jew to resolve another problem between the nations. America should have come to Great Britain’s aid when Germany declared war, but it refused to help. It was the beginning of WWII when the President of the United States found himself to be in something of a dilemma. The nation was morally committed to helping Great Britain but because of a legality, Roosevelt was impotent to do so. America’s Debt Default Act of 1934, was put in place to protect the United States. This law was implemented following the collapse of the international financial situation created by the Dawes Plan and subsequently modified by the Young Plan as a result of the Great Depression. The Debt Default Act prevented the President from lending to any country that had seriously defaulted on a debt. Great Britain had, and so was exempt from receiving the help they desperately needed. Apparently, Britain had defaulted on a loan of about $3.5 billion in US loans which was made during the First World War. So, these two nations were at stalemate. Britain in desperate need of help, and America impotent to provide that help. It was never forgotten by the ordinary citizens of Britain during that era. They felt aggrieved at America for refusing help in a time of dire need. But, on the 26th May 1940, when Britain was on the edge of defeat, with the British army trapped at Dunkirk, millions of people turned to the Lord in prayer; and a National Day of Prayer was held. In a spirit of repentance, King George VI led the nation in pleading with God for Divine intervention. Two events immediately followed. Firstly, a violent storm arose over the Dunkirk region grounding the Luftwaffe which had been killing thousands on the beaches. And then secondly, a great calm descended on the Channel, the like of which hadn’t been seen for a generation, which allowed hundreds of tiny boats to sail across and rescue three-hundred-and-thirty-five-thousand soldiers, rather than the estimated twenty to thirty thousand. From then on people referred to what happened as “the miracle of Dunkirk”. Sunday June 9th was officially appointed as a Day of National Thanksgiving. National Days of Prayer were held at critical times throughout the War. After each one, God responded with His blessing and protection. Looking back, Dr H.A. Wilson, then Bishop of Chelmsford wrote, “If ever a great nation was on the point of supreme and final disaster, and yet was saved and reinstated it was ourselves…it does not require an exceptionally religious mind to detect in all this the Hand of God.” The nation called upon the God of Israel – The God who had called Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God who calls all people everywhere to repent and to believe on His Son, Yeshua HaMashiach (Acts 17:30). God was a very present help in this time of trouble (Psalm 46:1).
It was during the years 1938 – 1940 that about ten thousand Jewish children made their way to Great Britain on the Kindertransport. They escaped the Holocaust, but for many, it was the last time they saw their parents. Under pressure from the British people, the British government changed its policy towards refugees, but the Western nations could have done so much more. Thankfully though, these children were allowed in; and who knows, perhaps because Britain repented of its attitude towards refugees and their act of saving the Jewish children, God heard the prayers of repentance and saved Britain. As a father and grandfather, I can feel the inhumanity of Britain’s humanity, making the children separate from their parents. We could have saved so many from the Holocaust. Perhaps in God’s mercy there is judgment, as the nation has now turned its back on Him and drifted into a chasm of Godlessness.
To continue our story, it was during this stalemate in America that Armand Hammer arrived on the scene. He met with President Roosevelt to speak about an idea he had developed. His plan, he explained, was that if America agreed, England should lease aviation and naval bases to the United States in exchange for clearing England’s debts. By doing this, America would be free to act, and England could receive additional ships, planes, and all they needed in the war effort.
The United States agreed to the ‘lend-lease’ plan and it was implemented, (it was a way to get around the law without breaking the law) God has His ways, and very soon it included not only Great Britain, but the Soviet Union (Russia) too. This law is still part of US foreign policy. That is the story in a nutshell. It took may years after WWII before Britain’s financial debt to America was completely paid off.
Abraham
God said to Abraham, “…the nations of the world will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3b).
In choosing Abraham, God has blessed the world. In His great mercy, God blessed all the peoples of the world through the great Son of Abraham, Jesus Christ (Messiah Yeshua). “Through Abraham” means “through his offspring,” as we are told in Genesis 18:18 and 22:18 – and according to Galatians 3:16, “through Abraham’s offspring” means “through Jesus Christ (Messiah Yeshua),” the Son of David.
Blessings and shalom
Malcolm [23.04.2016]
[i] The Devil and the Jews
[ii] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9504445/French-policewoman-stabbed-death-inside-police-station-attacker-shot-killed.html
[iii] https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-delirium-of-jew-hatred?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxNDc5NTYzOSwicG9zdF9pZCI6MzU1MjAzNzQsIl8iOiJYRDJ4RCIsImlhdCI6MTYxOTE4Njc5NiwiZXhwIjoxNjE5MTkwMzk2LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItNzc2NTUiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.84NeOI4Mvmo2w0th-wRfxaqfZon2TZui4rjtMYvnqio
[iv] https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/130718/imran-khan-is-womaniser-drug-abuser-gay-ex-wife-reham-khan-in-book.html
[v] Mein Kampf (German: [maɪ̯n kampf], ‘My Struggle’ or My Fight) is a 1925 autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work describes the process by which Hitler became antisemitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germany. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925
[vi] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/01/27/churchills-rescue-from-ruin/efff4a31-1473-45d6-8e8f-226f1d977310/
[vii] The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Vol.2
There was so much history i didn’t know especially about Churchill’s debts. Thank you. The Elohim of Israel is continuously watching over Israel