Teaching Team
Rise of Anti-Semitism in UK
In a recent report by the Community Security Trust (a charity that ensures the safety and security of the Jewish community in Britain) figures show that anti-semitism is on the rise in the UK from 244 incidents to 266 within the first six months of 2008; this number is a 9% increase from this same period during 2007. Although actual violent assaults were down 24% (bless God), the number of property damages increased from 30 to 31 and the cases of mass-produced anti-semitic literature was almost double from the first half of 2007 which reported 6 to this same time in 2008 reporting 11.
There was an alarming increase in anti-semitic incidents with Jewish students on campuses. The number during the first half of 2007 was reported as 26 while the number during the first half of 2008 was 49 resulting in an 88% increase! Also among the numbers in the report were 22 incidents against synagogues and "a further 25 in which synagogue congregants were targeted on their journeys to or from prayer." The largest monthly total for 2008 occurred in May with 62 incidents reported which was an increase of more than double the 35 reported in May of 2007.
The majority of reported incidents involved imagery or references to neo-Nazism or the Nazi period of history; this was a total of 51 incidents. The second highest number of incidents (39 total) referenced Israel and the Middle East.
We as disciples of Yeshua must concern ourselves with the rising anti-Semitism. We must seek to reach out to comfort those who mourn. Anti-Semitism affects us as well. The Messiah himself said, "And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me'" (Matthew 25:39). One of the most stirring things I have ever read concerning the horrors of anti-Semitism is the book Night by Elie Wiesel. In the introduction to the Bantam Books English translation, the French Catholic Nobel Laureate Francois Mauriac who helped Wiesel publish his book in French wrote the following account of his encounter with the young Wiesel. Mauriac's words explain the feelings we may often have when hearing news of anti-Semitisim:
And I, who believe that God is love, what answer could I give my young questioner, whose dark eyes still held the reflection of that angelic sadness which had appeared one day upon the face of the hanged child? What did I say to him? Did I speak of that other Jew, his brother, who may have resembled him - the Crucified, whose Cross has conquered the world? Did I affirm that the stumbling block to his faith was the cornerstone of mine, and that the conformity between the Cross and the suffering of men was in my eyes the key to that impenetrable mystery whereon the faith of his childhood had perished? Zion, however, has risen up again from the crematories and the charnel houses. The Jewish nation has been resurrected from among its thousands of dead. It is through them that it lives again. We do not know the worth of one single drop of blood, one single tear. All is grace. If the Eternal is the Eternal, the last word for each one of us belongs to Him. This is what I should have told this Jewish child. But l could only embrace him, weeping.
The CST report from which the information in this blog was derived can be found here:
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