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Service Letter September 2005
Uncopyrighted 2005 September SSC

Shalom! I first want to express thanks to Yehovah for this work’s continuance. I never assume that it will continue, and I am thankful it has to this date. I also want to express this thanks to you. Your gracious participation has benefited my family and me.

I am often asked how the Bible studies are going. My normal response is that they are going normally. I am glad that this is the case. These studies can be very offensive, allowing consideration of any subject except the veracity of the Bible. Yet many discoveries are made in the studies for this very reason.

Richard and I have been doing a study of Psalm 119. This very large psalm always seemed repetitive and wordy to me when I was a child. I knew even then that this was because I didn’t understand the text, and I looked for the time when I could understand it. We have found it very different from my childhood perspective. It is now proving to be a very startling text.

The issue of the ‘fence around the Law’ arose while considering Psalm 119. I turned to the internet to explore this Jewish concept. I found the following:

Gezeirah: A Fence around the Torah

A gezeirah is a law instituted by the rabbis to prevent people from accidentally violating a Torah mitzvah. For example, the Torah commands us not to work on Shabbat, but a gezeirah commands us not to even handle an implement that you would use to perform prohibited work (such as a pencil, money, a hammer) without a good reason, because someone holding the implement might forget that it was Shabbat and perform prohibited work.

It is important to note that from the point of view of the practicing Jew, there is no difference between a gezeirah and a Torah mitzvah. Both are equally binding; neither can be disregarded on a whim. The difference is generally in the degree of punishment: a violation of Shabbat was punishable by death under Torah law, while a violation of the gezeirah would result in a less severe punishment.

—Judaism 101: http://www.jewfaq.org/halakhah.htm

This article explained that an Orthodox Jewish adherent sees the ‘fence’, the additional commands to keep a Jewish person from even coming close to violating the Torah, as equally binding as the Torah itself.

I then began to think of the Holocaust, and have thought more since that time. I have had questions about the Holocaust and its forms of destruction. I knew the following to be true:

a) Nothing touches Israel without going through Yehovah.

b) The leaders of this world are ordained of God, whether they are good or cruel. Yehovah doesn’t cause or participate in their cruelty, but He brings them to power, and He takes them out.

c) Yehovah brings enemies against Israel when He is furious with Israel. Yehovah then gives Israel a time of respite in order to increase the population against the next time of destruction, and will continue doing so until Israel finally is righteous.

d) Yehovah can be furious with Israel’s enemies, but Yehovah benefits enemies who treat Israel well after taking over Israel (as He did in the case of the Babylonian exile).

e) Yehovah uses pictures, doing to Israel what Israel did. The Prophets often speak of this.

Judges 10:13 Yet ye have forsaken me, and served other gods: wherefore I will deliver you no more. (He uses kind for kind retribution: they forsook Yehovah; Yehovah will appear to forsake them by refusing to deliver them.)

Jeremiah 7:13 'And now, because ye have done all these works,” saith Yehovah, “and I spoke unto you rising up early and speaking, but ye heard not, and I called you, but ye answered not, 14therefore I will do unto this House that is called by my name in which ye trust, and unto the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh. 15And I will cast you out of my sight as I have cast out all your brethren, the whole seed of Ephraim. 16Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to me! For I will not hear thee.'(They won’t hearken; Yehovah won’t hearken.)

f) Adding to the Torah is a violation of the Torah

Deuteronomy 12:32 What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.

I pictured this evil fence around the Torah that the Rabbis constructed in violation of the Torah itself. I began to picture the death fences Yehovah put around the Jews in the concentration camps. The picture then went much further.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Orthodox Rabbinic Judaism reached a high point unknown in history. Schools of Judaism sprang up in many places. Poor Jewish men and women could go to these towns where the schools were located, and would be fed, housed and taught. The men were taught the Rabbinic view of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) and the Talmud (the teachings of the Rabbis consisting of the commentaries on the commentaries on the Torah), and the women were taught fables of the Messiah and how to conduct a proper kosher home. Men and women were taught to place a fence around the Torah.

Seldom in history did Yehovah show such wrath toward the Jewish People as He did during the Holocaust. Enemies of Israel and Yehovah annihilated entire Jewish communities. I wondered why, and now I began to see the following picture.

Jewish Teachings and Actions

Yehovah's Response

Rabbis taught a fence around the Torah, a fence that led to death by keeping the Jews from faith founded on taking it literally.

Yehovah put Israel (starting with the Orthodox Jews) into the hands of Israel’s enemies who placed them behind a fence, leading them to death.

Many of the Orthodox teachings for women pertained to cooking and proper handling of stoves and ovens.

Israel’s enemies utilized ovens to be rid of Jewish bodies.

Central to Rabbinic Orthodox Judaism were foods and preparation.

Jews were made to eat every form of unclean and disgusting food in the concentration camps.

Judaism taught that if the Jews were righteous, they would be lords over their enemies.

Yehovah taught the same, and delivered the Jews into the power of their enemies to the point that they did nothing even while their enemies were slaughtering them in plain sight.

Adherents of Judaism were identified by their clothing.

Jews were identified by their prison clothing in the concentration camps.

Yehovah gave the Torah to be a light that led to life and the freedom to live righteously.

The concentration camp searchlights were used to aid in the slaughter of Jews who sought freedom.

Israel is Yehovah’s flock of sheep.

Jews were set in cattle cars and delivered to slaughter.

The Torah is a straight path to life.

The trains went on ‘straight’ paths to the concentration camps for death.

Copies of the Torah had multiplied.

The enemies took away Torahs from the Jews.

Rabbinic Judaism has never been able to explain the Holocaust, and never will desire to explain it. Yehovah’s actions in the Bible have always been according to these parallels. He has always done to the Israelis what they did to His Word:

Numbers 14:28 (literally) Say unto them, “I live,” said Yehovah, “if established, I will not do to you just as ye have spoken in my ears! 29Your carcasses shall fall in this desert! And all your visitors to all your account from a son of 20 year(s) and upward that ye lodged upon me 30if ye, ye will come unto the land that I carried my hand to abide with you in her, but rather Caleb son of Yephooneh and Joshua son of Noon! 31And your little-one that ye said will be to a booty—and I will bring them! And they shall know the land that ye despised via her! 32And your carcasses—ye, ye shall fall in this desert! 33And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness 40 year(s). And they shall carry your whoredoms unto the perfection of your carcasses in the desert! 34Ye shall carry your iniquities 40 year(s) via the account of the days that ye toured the land—40 day(s), a day for a year, a day for a year! And ye shall know my restraint!”

Yehovah was furious in the above paragraph. (Compare this strange wording to the wording in your own Bible if you find this translation confusing, but know how angry Yehovah is by the way this is worded.) Note that He did to them what they had done.

Israelis'Actions

Yehovah's Response

The Israelis said that they would die in the desert, as if Yehovah had no power to help them.

Yehovah said, 'Your carcasses shall fall in this desert!'

The Israelis said that their children would become booty of enemies.

Yehovah responded, 'I will bring them!'

The Israelis despised the land because of their fear of its inhabitants.

The children of these parents will know the land (and I maintain, will love it).

The Israelis said they would fall in the desert.

Yehovah said, 'Ye shall fall in this desert!' confirming their faithlessness and fear.

The number of days they toured the land is 40.

The number of years they will be given to die off will be 40.

The Israelis restrained their brethren from doing Yehovah’s commands to enter the Land.

The Israelis will now know Yehovah’s restraining them from entering the Land.

The Holocaust paralleled Yehovah’s perspectives of what the Israelis were doing. They kept fellow Jews from the Torah with their fence, so Yehovah fenced them in, and fenced out the Torah so that they could not have it. Then Yehovah gave great victory to liberal, unbelieving Jews who gave their lives to benefit His soil after World War II!

Every fearer of Yehovah has the responsibility to make the Jews jealous by walking Godly in the fear and faith of the God of Israel. The Hope of the Saints lies squarely in the Jews, for Salvation is of the Jews. And there can be no resurrection of the dead or return of Messiah without Israel’s Salvation and redemption. Anyone born of God who is not willing to be invested in the benefit and Salvation of the Jews is not born of God and has not understood the Biblical Gospel of Salvation. All who are born of God will always be ready to bring the Truth of the Word of God to the Jews in a proper and constructive way. (This implies already knowing the Word of God, for no one can truthfully claim to hold a faith that has never been studied.) Though mainline Christianity has always adopted the same errors that the Orthodox Jews adopted, Saints will only love Truth, not error that literally leads to death.

Thank you again for your graciousness toward us in this work. I desire that Yehovah will give us opportunities to rightly portray Truth to His People Israel.

2 COMMENTS:

Comment #1 from E. Rosen, September 2005
I think you're on to something! As a Holocaust refugee during my childhood I have spent the rest of my life wondering 'WHY?!" I'm sure every other refugee and survivor have asked the same. The first "why" refers, of course, as to why did God allow it. The second is why did I escape or survive.

I have come to some satisfying answers as to my family's escape because we eventually came to know Jeshua as our Lord & Savior and I'm sure He knew our hearts all along that this would be so.

I am thoroughly convinced that He will sustain life for anyone who will turn to Him in faith given time and opportunity. That is looking from the angle of the person, since parts of Salvation must be accomplished by the Spirit of Yehovah alone.

Unfortunately, my father, who died at age 48 in Colombia, S.A. while we were, so to speak, in exhile there, never received the Lord although he had the opportunity to find out about Him from some American missionaries who were the seed sowers in my life and my mother's life.

I expect that bitterness toward the God of Israel ran high in most of the survivors. This God didn't fit what they thought; their hope was destroyed as they saw their loved ones destroyed. They didn't know the view Yehovah held about the way His Torah was handled.

There is still the problem though of my mother's two brothers and their wives who were & are survivors. How come they never responded even though we did our best to witness to the truth to them? It is really in God's hands and I don't agonize over this any more.

A person must be willing to receive the love of the Truth in order to be saved (I obtained that from 2 Thessalonians 2:10). Most find the Truth unloveable and unlovely. It can certainly be painful, and it is often the source of great frustration. Salvation is not obtained by receiving the Truth, but first by receiving the love of the Truth. Yehovah will supply the Truth unto Salvation if anyone will receive that love that He must supply.

But the first "why", why did God allow it? My own opinion as a German Jew had been that the Jews in Germany tried to outgerman the Germans. That is to say, they accepted and loved the German culture so much that they had no room for any Biblical faith of their fathers. That is, of course, speaking from a secular German-Jewish point of view.

Yes, I have heard that most German Jews placed their trust in the civility and advanced perspectives of German society. The Germans were not crude or barbaric, but were civilized and forward-thinking in the earliest part of the twentieth century. The best Hebrew-English Tenachs were printed in Germany! I am using one at the presnt to read the Torah to [my son]!

Then I never knew what to think about the orthodox Eastern European Jews.  Should I admire them? The more I learned of their "religion" the less sensible it seemed to me. I've always felt that if I had turned to be an observant orthodox Jew, I would be so PROUD of my achievements of observance that it would totally negate any approval and blessing from God. This was my instinctive feeling from childhood on.

Oh my! They had reached the highest point of delight in life (before the destruction came). They had confidence that the God of Israel was only pleased with their achievements. Your instincts were right.

Just about a week or two ago I saw a TV program on PBS about an observant orthodox Jew who was very highly influenced in his young adulthood by a Rabbi Carlebach. This rabbi felt that Gentiles were not to be hated because many of them had a spark of the love of God in them. Yet this man's two sons were raised in a Jeshivah (sp?) which absolutely taught them to HATE &
have contempt for all gentiles.

Oy! How curious, since Avraham, Isaac and Jacob were Gentiles! On top of that, the teachings in the Tenach always point to Israel's responsibility to serve the Gentiles! How could Israel serve what Israel despised?

To make a long story short, the father decided to take his two sons on a trip to Poland where they looked up and found a family who had hidden & sheltered three Jewish brothers from the Nazis at the peril of their own lives. One of the brothers was the maternal grandfather to these young men. They saw for themselves that not all gentiles were wicked Jew-haters and some had compassionate hearts. The father eventually made sure these people were included in the memorial of Righteous Gentiles and had a nice ceremony honoring them.

How good it was that they saw concerning some Gentiles. How sad it was that they never extended that perspective to Yehovah Himself.

The whole thing struck me as being SO SAD! Where in the OT does God tell Jews to HATE anything other than sin, mainly idolatry?! When Moses was given the laws about the Sabbath, he was even to extend this PRIVILEGE to the "strangers" among them, not make them "Sabboth Goys" as the custom is today.

Yes, Yehovah maintained that treatment of sojourners must be good, else Yehovah Himself would avenge them! The only Gentiles that the Jews were commanded to hate included the seven races in Canaan, and one other race that had attempted to annihilate the Jews (the Amalekites):

1 Samuel 15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.1 Samuel 15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

What total misunderstanding of God's loving laws which were given us for our benefit rather than burden. (Math 11:28)

Yes, and what a spurning of the Jewish responsibilty to be the missionaries and priests to the races!

Even I, a Jewish girl, was asked to play the part of a Shabboth Goy by an orthodox Jewish lady once. I was 15 years old, not jet a believer, working in a summer camp as a Junior Councellor in a nursery. The camp was for recent immigrant mothers and their children. They could put their little children in the nursery while they went to eat in the common dining hall three times a day. One day this lady comes in & asks me to turn on the stove for her so that she could warm up her baby's bottle.

Naively I thought that she didn't know how it worked. No, it wasn't that, it was a Sabbath day and she could not kindle a fire. Silly me, I tried to explain to her that I was Jewish too and if it was wrong for her then it was wrong for me too. However, in her broken English she conveyed the idea that it really didn't matter since I was not "Orthodox".

That must have been very frustrating! The Rabbis did not teach what the Scriptures taught: if one Israeli is doing wrong, all Israel is doing wrong. You were not doing wrong, but since this lady thought you were (by not being Orthodox), violation was as much with her as with you! A Jewish person who sees another Jewish person violate the Torah and who can communicate that to the violator has a responsibility before Yehovah to the violator. Yet instead of this, the Orthodox Jews spurned other Jews, thinking that God would be pleased with the Orthodox regardless of what the rest of Israel did. That is arrogant, and it is a form of attempted annihilation! That isn't Yehovah's way, of course.

I think that what my feeling for the Orthodox Jews is now, is not admiration, but pity. Pity that they have obscured the true Torah to the point that it is perverted and meaningless. How can they hope to ever see the Messiah in it when all they know are the commentaries of men.

They can't; they have given their thinking ability over to men who darken counsel with words without knowledge (quoting from Job, Yehovah's words regarding Elihu).

God have mercy on them! It almost makes me want to cry.

By contrast, I read recently on the internet something about the Falasha Jews. It seems that they have had no contact with Rabbinical Judaism but
rather base their faith on the Pentateuch alone.

Of course there seems to be no real evidence that they are descendants of Israel, whether members of the tribe of Dan as some say or descendants of a son born of King Solomon & Queen of Sheba. Also, there seems to be no direct DNA evidence for their claims so maybe they were just proselites. At any rate, if they do believe and observe the laws of Moses, they're probably closer to the Kingdom of God than many religious Jews.

Comment #2 from E.W., September 2005
You did not mention that so many of the victims of the gas chambers were killed whilst supposably being sent to take showers.

That is true. The very means by which they were supposedly being cleansed was actually for their murders. The Orthodox Jews were very strong on issues of being clean versus unclean, and on the washing of hands. They were not to touch unclean folks lest they be rendered unclean. The Nazis gave Jews the assignments to pick up the unclean dead Jews murdered in the chambers. Those who died were not given burials, but put in mass graves. The Orthodox Jews considered a person married to another who went missing in limbo. Much of the race went missing. The Nazis used every detail that was considered a violent violation of proper Judaism. Yehovah was furious about all these things because Judaism left the most important things undone: obedience to the Biblical God, not to commentaries by the dead.

...And of course that zyklon-B was used, a vermin poison.

I noticed one parallel long ago. The Nazis compared the Jews to rats in their films. They showed the rats going into the sewer systems. Some brave Jews used the sewer system to resist Naziism! That is one case where the enemies prophesied how the Jews could resist! Germans were hardly willing to pursue Jews into the sewer systems!

Yehovah in His fury gave many over to be poisoned. One enemy chased a thousand. It all had to do with the contempt with which His Torah was being handled. Their forms of righteousness enfuriated Yehovah.

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