Evangelical Support for Israel Is Not Limited to the U.S.

Evangelical Christianity, often assumed to be predominantly an American phenomenon, is rapidly gaining large numbers of converts all over the world—especially in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. As a byproduct, writes Jürgen Bühler, Israel is becoming more popular in those places:

An international survey conducted by the BBC revealed that the countries most sympathetic to Israel are the U.S., Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria; the common denominator [among these nations] is a high proportion of evangelicals. In Latin America, the highest support for Israel was recorded in Brazil, which has the highest percentage of evangelicals in South America. . . .

This evangelical revolution is beginning to find a political voice. In the recent presidential elections in Argentina, the pro-Israel candidate Mauricio Macri replaced Cristina Kirchner, who had taken a strong pro-Palestinian [stance] and made secret deals with Iran. This change was made possible largely thanks to the evangelical vote. . . . It is also worth mentioning the Ivory Coast’s recent decision to refrain from supporting UN resolutions condemning Israel.

Read more at Mida

More about: Africa, Brazil, China, Evangelical Christianity, Israel & Zionism, Latin America

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society