Baruch Hashem (Bless the name of the Lord)
Stephen

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Israeli Supreme Court sides with Messianic Jews
By Erin Roach
Apr 21, 2008
 
JERUSALEM (BP)--The Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that Messianic Jews have
the same rights regarding automatic citizenship as Jews who do not believe in
Jesus as the Messiah.

The case was brought by 12 applicants who had been denied citizenship
primarily because they were Jewish believers in Jesus. Most of them had
received letters saying they would not receive citizenship because they
"commit missionary activity," according to an e-mail circulated by Calev
Myers, founder and chief counsel of The Jerusalem Institute of Justice.

A clerk at the Ministry of Interior reportedly had told one of the applicants
that because she was committing missionary activity, she was acting against
the interests of the state of Israel and the Jewish people.

Israel's Supreme Court ended the two-and-a-half-year legal battle April 16 by
ruling that Messianics should receive equal treatment under the Israeli law of
return, which says that anyone who is born Jewish can immigrate from anywhere
in the world to Israel and be granted citizenship automatically.

"This is yet another battle won in our war to establish equality in Israel for
the Messianic Jewish community just like every other legitimate stream of
faith within the Jewish world," Myers wrote.

Jim Sibley, a professor at Criswell College in Dallas and a former missionary
to Israel, told Baptist Press that Jewish believers had been excluded from the
law of return by previous court rulings, including one in the 1980s declaring
that if a Jew believed in Jesus as the Messiah, he was not to be considered
Jewish.

Traditional rabbinic Judaism teaches that Jewishness is determined by the
mother's bloodline, Sibley explained. Biblically, though, it is traced through
the father.

"Apparently at least one of these 12 who were being denied citizenship had a
Gentile mother and a Jewish father," Sibley, director of the Pasche Institute
of Jewish Studies at Criswell, said. "Even in a situation like that, it's
usually enough to be granted citizenship. All this [court decision] does is to
basically say the same rules that apply to any other Jewish people would apply
to Jewish believers in Jesus."

With the ruling, Sibley said, Messianic Jews may seek citizenship in Israel
without religious discrimination.

"It's really a huge ruling because the court apparently further ordered the
Israeli Ministry of Interior to stop persecuting Jewish believers," Sibley
said. "Some of the very Orthodox Jewish sectors of society had taken positions
in the Ministry of Interior and had been using their positions to revoke
believers' citizenship, deny visas and generally harass not only Jewish
believers in Jesus but also Christian workers in Israel."

The Supreme Court's decision should alleviate some of the pressure that Jewish
believers and foreign Christian workers have felt in Israel, Sibley said,
adding that he "can't help but believe" the ruling is related to a terrorist
attack on the Messianic community that occurred in March.

In that incident, 15-year-old Ami Ortiz, whose parents are noted Messianic
congregational leaders in Ariel, opened a bomb disguised as a gift delivered
to his home. He suffered extensive damage to his body but is expected to
recover after at least a year of treatment. Though a police investigation is
ongoing, anti-missionary Orthodox Jews were among those originally suspected
as perpetrators.

Sibley said Orthodox Jews should reconsider their view of Messianic believers
and stop persecuting them.

"With the multitude of Jewish people simply walking away from their Jewish
identity and assimilating through secularism and intermarriage, Israelis don't
need to fear Messianic Jews," Sibley said. "As they themselves should know,
Jewish believers in Jesus not only affirm their Jewishness, they insist on it.
And furthermore, those who are citizens of Israel are patriotic. They serve in
the military and they pay their taxes."
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Erin Roach is a staff writer for Baptist Press.


© Copyright 2008 Baptist Press
Original copy of this story can be found at
http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=27874