Ilya Chusov about the main function of the Jewish people. The secret mission of the Jews in Russia

Jews: the historical failure of the people-messiah

God created the World, that is, everything that really exists: both material and non-material. However, His Creation is not complete.
This is not due to the fact that He has not yet completed it: so to speak, did not have time. The reason for the incompleteness of Creation lies in its very Intention.
The idea is that at the end of Creation, God created man - the Crown of Creation. This is a special - God-like - being, natural-supernatural. Man, on the one hand, is an animal (natural being). On the other hand, he is endowed with inner freedom and creativity, just like the Creator himself.
It is precisely this being that is called upon to complete Creation.
What is the “inner freedom” of a person (often called “freedom of choice”)? This, among other things, is the opportunity - and even the need - to determine what he should be.
What is "Creative Ability"? This is not only the ability to create something outside of oneself - but also the ability (and necessity) to create oneself.
* * *
So, now we are witnessing the final stage of Creation. Indeed, it has only just begun.
The essence of this stage is that the active role has passed from God to people. Such is His Intention.
A person will become what God wants him to be only when he accepts His Plan as his own and starts working for its realization.
What does God want from us humans? To make us human. That is, they have become non-contradictory natural-supernatural beings that rush about, sometimes performing human actions, but much more often they behave like animals. And they definitely became Humans, spiritual beings: the image and likeness of their Creator.
But how can this goal be achieved?
If God created a person – like animals – in such a way that a person would not have a choice what to become, but everything would be predetermined for him from the very beginning, from birth, then His Intention would lose its meaning. He needs a FREE being. And that would be a non-free being.
A free being MUST CREATE ITSELF. Become YOUR OWN CREATOR.
That is why it is rightly said that a man is not born a Man, but is called to become one during his lifetime. For this, he is given the short period that we live on Earth.
God created us as natural beings, i.e. - animals, but at the same time with the ability to become completely different, spiritual beings - if we ourselves want it.
* * *
So, God, so to speak, “stepped aside” and no longer participates in his own Creation, in the embodiment of his Plan. Everything He had to do, He had already done. Now it's up to the person.
However, it is much easier for a person not to become a Human, which is very difficult, but to go the other way: to try to become the most powerful and most prosperous animal. "Superchimpanzee" - this is how the Russian philosopher V. Gubin called such a plan of a person about himself.
It is easier to ignore the Intention of our Creator, and pretend that He (and this Intention, and the Creator himself) does not exist. And we ourselves are the masters of the Earth and everything that is on it. And our task is simply to settle down on it with the greatest comfort.
This property of man was, of course, initially clear to our Creator. He understood that this was the main difficulty of the final stage of Creation. In order for a person to become a Human, he must WANT IT, REALLY WANT IT.
But how to do that?
And then He decided that there must be one people on Earth, which would be completely special. His mission will consist in the fact that he will have to show all other people, all other peoples, how to serve God well, that is, to be Humans. How wonderful it is to do what He, God, wants from a person.
This people should become an example for other peoples who do not yet understand what their calling on Earth is, and strive exclusively for purely earthly prosperity.
This people, chosen for special service, became the Jewish people.
The Jews were chosen for this ministry, for this mission by God himself.
However, the Jews AGREED to this by entering into an agreement - the Covenant - with God. They might not agree. But they agreed. It was their own decision.
Since that moment - and this was about 4 thousand years ago - the Jews have become a very special people, with a unique mission. “A kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” as the Torah (Bible) says.
* * *
In order for the Jews to become what they were supposed to be, they had to be brought up in a special way.
To do this, they were expelled from their country, that is, they ceased to engage in public administration (in which some people suppress others), war (in the language of European Ashkenazi Jews there were no words at all that called military operations and types of weapons, that is, even to talk about these wars). the Jews could not, although all the peoples around them continuously fought with each other), etc. deeds that disfigure the soul of a person and prevent him from becoming human.
For this, a special religion and a special culture was created - Judaism. This culture, on the one hand, is characterized by an unprecedented tendency in the history of mankind towards isolation. The famous 613 mitzvahs - commandments - were needed to separate the Jews from other peoples. Very high moral requirements also served the purpose of educating the “holy people”.
The same purpose was served by a special education based on reading the Torah and discussing it. The Jewish religion - the only one in the history of mankind - has almost no dogmas. Almost everything - except the very existence of God and His covenant with the Jewish people - could and should have been questioned.
Children were taught through constant arguments. so-called. “Talmud” (this is not a book, but a whole library that occupies a rather large room with shelving on all walls) - these are the recorded disputes of Jewish scholars (teachers, rabbis) about the meaning of the commandments of the Torah. At the same time, one says one thing, the other another, the third third, the fourth - something else - and all this is written down - but it is not clear what is true. There are no dogmas, no predetermined truth that can be read and remembered.
Every Jew must himself, with his own mind, reach the truth, discover it.
After the destruction of the 2nd Temple, the Jews no longer have priests - and every Jew is his own priest. The Jew was required to establish a personal relationship with God. He had to build these relations himself, without intermediaries.
* * *
So.
The people were isolated from others by their special culture and religion, a special way of life. He was freed from the need to build his own state, thereby - to manage it, which would inevitably mean the oppression of some Jews by others, also Jews, and also to constantly fight. Thanks to this, the Jews could concentrate on their religious life.
This was necessary for the education of the people.
* * *
At the same time, the meaning of galut (exile - in Hebrew) lies in something else. Since the mission of the Jews is to testify by their very existence that God exists and that it is good for a person to serve him, then it is better, more convenient to achieve this goal - to live among other peoples.
That is why the Jews were sent into exile and became a people without their own land and without their own country, a people of the Diaspora.
As you can see, God's Plan for the Jewish people - his special chosen people - provided for this from the very beginning. Just as it is impossible to be clean, constantly bathing in mud, so it was impossible to educate the “Kingdom of priests and a holy people” from an ordinary people.
Without separating, without isolating from others, the Jews could not become what they were called to become.
However, this plan failed.
Why?
* * *
When one person living among others is honest and kind, and many others are deceitful and evil, it is unlikely that these others, looking at this one, will think: “It's good to be so honest and kind! Let's be like that too!"
Most often, they think: “Oh, you bastard! How to kill you!"
The Jews, having lost their country, became defenseless in the earthly sense of the word. At the same time, they turned out to be the only people on Earth who really, not in words, but in fact, kept the commandments, moral standards.
That is, I do not want to say that all Jews observed them: it is impossible. Of course, there were many immoral Jews among the Jews. However, as a whole, as a people, the Jews really gradually became human in many respects.
And this terribly irritated those peoples among whom the Jews lived.
This is how anti-Semitism arose: hatred of Jews, persecution of Jews. Especially in this sense, the Europeans distinguished themselves, crowning the centuries-old persecution of the Jews with a grandiose genocide - the so-called. "Holocaust" (or in Hebrew - Shoah), when in the middle of the 20th century. in a few years, several million European Jews were physically destroyed.
In such conditions, it is painfully difficult for a person to live. And so the Jews got the idea that galut (knowledge) is a PUNISHMENT for sins. Here we are cleansed of sins - and God will return us to the Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey.
This is a completely erroneous notion. As we have seen, galut is not a punishment. It follows directly from the special mission of the Jews.
“Go to other nations and testify with your very life that I exist and it is good to be in union with Me,” God would say to the Jews.
The Jews did not understand Him.
They decided that galut was the result of random errors. When they correct them, the Messiah (the messenger of God to the Jews) will come and bring them back to Israel, and there they will again be prosperous in a purely earthly sense of the word.
That is, the goal was still seen in earthly well-being. And service to God was understood as a means to achieve this goal.
This is the first reason for the collapse of His Plan for the Jewish people.
* * *
The isolation of the Jews, their very special way of life, in which they did not take any part in the life of the rest of mankind, and the life of each individual Jew mattered exclusively and only for other Jews, but meant absolutely nothing for the “goyim” (a goy is a non-Jew, moreover, this word also means “an unenlightened, dark person who does not know God” and has a contemptuous connotation) led not only to positive consequences (to the fact that the Jews did not “dirty” about other peoples with their animal interests and goals, avoided many temptations, thanks to which spiritual cultivation, the upbringing of the Jewish people became possible), but also to one, very terrible, extremely negative consequence. The Jews have become selfish.
Never in all my life have I seen such selfish people as the Jews. They are the most selfish people on our planet.
Why did the Jews become selfish? Because they lived ONLY FOR YOURSELF. An egoist is a person who lives only for himself.
Other Jews were considered as extended I. Goi, in fact, were not considered people. They were a threat. It was possible to trade with them, to profit at their expense. But as people equal to the Jews, they were not perceived.
However, selfishness is an animal quality. In its purest form, egoism is inherent in animals. We do not call animals "egoists" just because they cannot be anything else and we do not expect anything else from them.
That is, having become spiritual in some other respects (for example, having learned to solve all the most difficult questions of life, philosophical, religious, etc., on their own; having learned to make high moral demands on themselves and others), in this respect the Jews became as unspiritual as possible .
This is the second reason for the collapse of His Plan for the Jewish people.
Finally, the result of the specific conditions of life in the Galut was a very one-sided development of the Jews. Yes, their intellectual and moral development, in most cases, does not raise questions. However, among Jews, for example, very often women are stubborn, strong-willed, practical, worldly strong. Because all practical issues were traditionally decided by them, families were kept on them. And this is in the most difficult conditions of existence. And the men - sat over the books. This is why Jewish men are often strong only in the intellectual and creative fields. Otherwise, these are weak, unadapted people who tend to rely on their close women. I know this well, because I myself was like that.
But this is completely unnatural and abnormal: on the contrary, a woman should rely on her close man.
Of course, all these weaknesses and shortcomings were obvious to other peoples among whom the Jews lived, because people have a phenomenal skill in looking for the smallest speck in their brother's eye: precisely in order to be able to overlook the big thick logs in their own eye. The Jews seemed to everyone powerless and weak, incapable of defending themselves.
Seeing such imperfections of the "chosen people", the "goyim" lost respect for them. How can someone you don't respect be attractive?
* * *
So, galut, the isolation of the Jewish people was necessary for education. It turned out to be largely successful, this cannot be denied. Among the Jews there are many remarkable, namely highly spiritual, people. There are as many of them - in percentage terms - as there were not and are not in any other nation. This is true.
However, the mission of the Jews was, so to speak, to lure other peoples with their spirituality, to please them.
The Jews did not do this - and did not even try to do it.
They decided that they became spiritual FOR THEMSELVES. For God to bring them back to Israel again. To be happy and happy again.
Somehow, God never sent the Messiah and brought His people back to the Promised Land. Religious Jews are waiting for the Messiah to this day, which is wildly ridiculous, since a significant part of ethnic Jews have already returned to Israel without any Messiah - at the behest of the United States and England, and under a UN mandate. And on their own initiative, after all.
In fact, there was no need to wait for the Messiah because the Jews themselves are the Messiah. Only sent not to themselves - but to other peoples.
This they did not understand. Still.
An egoist cannot understand how one can live not for oneself, but for someone else.
* * *
In order to successfully fulfill their mission, the Jews needed to give up their selfish worldview. Recognize that their mission is not for themselves, not exclusively for them, the Jews, for the good - but for all of humanity.
We should not be devoted to God for ourselves, but for all people: to show them how good it is. Or - in order to become Humans, because it is good for a person when he is completely Human. Or - for God: to help Him complete Creation by creating themselves.
All these three goals coincide: they are three sides of the same process.
But to expect a special reward for devotion to Him, whether in the form of being settled back in the Holy Land, or the coming of the Messiah, or something else, is a mistake.
The reward for a person who lives like a human being has already been given: it is that he feels himself to be a Man, a Higher Being, in a sense equal to God. It is in those spiritual possibilities that are given to him by this. It is in the feeling of unity with God, and thus in overcoming death, because the Earth is the mother's womb, where it ripens - unlike the mother's womb - not the body, but the soul - and if the soul has matured, then it is then born for some another life, about which here, on Earth, we cannot know anything, just as a child in the womb cannot know anything about our earthly life.
What we call "death" can indeed be death, that is, the annihilation, the disappearance forever of what used to be - and now it is no more. Nowhere.
But death is death only when the soul is UNDEVELOPED. It will be a miscarriage.
Children, too, are sometimes born physiologically immature to the point where they cannot live in our world—and die.
Similarly, an immature soul cannot be born, cannot live in the world where we have to leave this world. And it will indeed be death.
But not all people are like that.
And the “death” of a mature, spiritually developed person is actually BIRTH.
Like the birth of a child, it is a transition from one world to another.
This is what the reward is.
It is pointless to expect another, because there can be nothing more than this award.
* * *
So, in Galut, the Jews did not give anything to other peoples, because they did not seek to give them anything.
But now the galut is over. Now the Jews, on the one hand, have their own country - Israel. On the other hand, Jews in all countries no longer live their own separate, isolated, Jewish life, but in exactly the same way as other peoples.
As a result, the Jews completely lost their culture, their values ​​- and "assimilated" (or "absorbed", as they say in Israel, where there is a Ministry of Absorption. It can be clarified: "absorption" - a chemical term, means "the absorption of one substance by another, in which what is absorbed ceases to exist as an independent entity). That is, they ceased to be Jews. Because a people is a community of people united by one culture. She is no more.
There are Americans, French, Israelis (a new people, very similar to Americans), etc. - of Jewish origin.
That is, the Jewish question was finally resolved.
I will clarify: the so-called. The Holocaust is not only German, but a pan-European, pan-Christian project. Jews were not allowed to enter any country, including the United States, although it was well known what Hitler was doing to the Jews.
Hitler is only a performer, and the customer is the entire Euro-Atlantic civilization.
But it was not possible to destroy all the Jews.
And then they were very easily seduced, and they themselves refused to be Jews.
That is, the Jews themselves finally decided the Jewish question.
The final drowning of the drowning is the work of the drowning themselves.
* * *
So, at the present time, it can be stated that the Jewish people no longer exist and they have not fulfilled their mission. Although at the same time he achieved considerable success in his development, intellectual and partly spiritual.
The Jews did not convince anyone, did not "seduce" - and the state, spiritual and moral, of humanity now is not only not better than it was 4 thousand years ago, but even worse.
This is the result. The idea failed.
* * *
Does this mean that God can make mistakes?
Oh sure.
God is a person. Moreover, it is a creative person. A creative person who follows unknown paths, creating what has never been before, cannot never be mistaken.
The assertion that God does not make mistakes is a manifestation of slavery. And just stupidity.
God is indeed an incredible, incomprehensible for a human being, a powerful being with a huge creative potential.
But he is wrong.
He made a mistake by creating dinosaurs, and they had to be abandoned. He made a mistake by creating the Neanderthals, and they had to be abandoned.
And in this case, he also made a number of rather gross errors.
First, for me, as a teacher, it is quite obvious that one people cannot be an example for other peoples, just as an individual person cannot be an example for all other people. This is very naive.
People, of course, have the ability to influence each other, but it is naive to hope that one person can influence everyone at once.
It was naive to think that, living in the monstrous conditions of constant persecution, people, earthly beings, would not dream of ending them, of living "like everyone else."
It was naive to think that isolation is only a positive factor - and does not bring anything negative with it.
This idea was doomed from the start.
And I write this word with a capital letter, not because I think it is so wonderful, but only because the rules of Russian grammar require it. God is one. All singular nouns must be capitalized. And its idea is unique, unique.
But he was unsuccessful.
If God makes mistakes, then maybe He learns from his mistakes?
Yes exactly.
* * *
What did the failure of His Plan for the Jewish people and its special mission teach him?
I dont know.
I can guess. For example, it is possible that instead of artificially cultivating a "kingdom of priests" from one nation, it is better to take the path of increasing the number of highly spiritual people IN ALL PEOPLES, or at least the majority of them.
True, this is not His task. Not God. This is our task. The task of the people.
So, it is very likely that this failure also taught him to be consistent - and not to interfere. Never.
Since we have to complete the Plan, then it’s up to us to do it.
And yet it was precisely His ideas that worked. Alas, unsuccessful.
The plan for the Jews was also doomed to failure because it was not a human, but precisely His plan.
This was also a mistake.
* * *
A friend of mine once told me that the path of human development reminds him of the famous Potemkin Stairs in Odessa, which has 200 steps. We are now at about 4-5 steps. And we are not in a hurry to climb the next one. More and more - we are marking time, trying to settle down on this very step. It's like we're going to stay here forever. Strange behavior!
In fact, the real human life of people will begin when they climb to the very top of the stairs - along all 200 steps - and "go out into the city."
True, it will be, for sure, not in 4 thousand years, but more. If it will be.
Because this is also our task. And, of course, it is not predetermined whether we will solve it or not. Maybe not.
The task is difficult, very difficult.
But if we decide, then everything will begin. Then people will become Humans – and only then will they truly live on Earth.
* * *
Giuliano Huxley once said that the life of the people of the future, in his opinion, will differ from our life as much as ours differs from the way of life of Sinanthropus. I think he's right.
Yes, it didn't work out with the Jews.
But that doesn't mean anything.
God's plan for man remains.
Man (with a capital letter) is, in fact, His Intention. Initially, it exists precisely as an idea, as an idea.
The one whom we call “human” (any representative of the biological species Homo Sapiens) is just a kind of “blank” from which it is possible to make a Human.
But the most interesting thing is what should be done from this blank of a Person ... THIS PREPARATION ITSELF!
Here is His Intention. The original cannot be denied.
It's difficult.
But that is why we live on Earth.
Yes, so far it doesn't work.
But the goal remains.

- Please tell us how you became the head of the mission.

“I was a non-believer when I came across the work of Jews for Jesus, who were distributing tracts on the campus of Boston University, where I studied. One day, it was 1976, I was invited to attend a Bible study group and I accepted. That same evening, in prayer, I placed my life in the caring hands of God. For a whole year I worked in the mission "Jews for Jesus" on a voluntary basis. I distributed tracts and invited people to attend our meetings. Later, with a scholarship allowing me to study theology, I entered the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. In 1981, when my education was coming to an end, my wife and I were already working as missionaries. We traveled for three and a half years with the band The Liberated Wailing Wall, and then for a short time I ran the Chicago branch of the mission. We later moved to San Francisco, where I worked in Human Resources. Some time later, I became head of our mission in New York, and in 1996 I was elected international director of the Jews for Jesus mission.

- Please tell us about your family.

“I come from an old line of Messianic Jews. On my mother's side, my great-great-grandfather Reb Levi Yitzhak Glaser was the chief rabbi. He came from a Hasidic family. In 1900 his wife came to believe. A book, The Romantic Career of a Twice Born Jewess, was written about her life. All her children also believed, but at different times. She has worked for the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Among the Jews in Odessa, London, Toronto and Detroit. The father's family, who emigrated from Poland to America, was orthodox. My father came to believe when he was 19 years old. So my mother and father were believers, but I remained a rebel. Since childhood, I celebrated all Jewish holidays, which was very important in our family, but Jesus did not interest me. And he entered the university - and ... believed.

What is the main purpose of your ministry?

— The main principle of our service to the Jewish people around the world is to show Jesus' messianism. We are a mission centered on evangelism in the streets, through the media and through personal contact. To ensure that believers have a solid foundation of faith, we work with both messianic and evangelical communities and churches. From time to time we are engaged in the creation of messianic communities, which we support and encourage, but this in itself is not our main task. The most basic thing is evangelization, evangelization, evangelization.

- When you hire a new missionary, what is the most important thing for you?

— All missionaries serving with us are Jews or must be spouses of Jews. Not because we consider the participation of non-Jews in the evangelization of Jews ineffective, but I am sure: we must correspond to the name of the mission "Jews for Jesus." These are the indisputable principles of our ministry. I know that other missions have a similar vision of working among the Jews, but we want to introduce the world to Jews who love Jesus. Thus, the one who ministers with us must be, firstly, a Jew, secondly, love Jesus, thirdly, be ready to serve in various places, to preach the gospel at any opportunity, even if it is dangerous. Because we work in teams, we need to have a team spirit to support and reinforce each other. It is always interesting to serve with creative people who are full of fire and who love the Lord. There are also certain qualities for ministers, for example, to have a completed higher education. Of course, we make exceptions, since not everyone has such an opportunity. People with a theological background are given preference, although this is not a requirement. The most important is the spiritual maturity of the future missionary.

- Could you name the countries in which your missionaries serve.

— We are located in America, Canada, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, South Africa and Australia. I would like our missionaries to be in all countries.

- Can you tell in which of the countries your ministry has found the greatest support among Christians?

— I think in the USA.

- In which of the countries - the smallest?

- I can not say for sure. Perhaps in Russia. Although, perhaps, in Germany, since there is a historical barrier - the Holocaust.

I have preached in some Christian communities in Germany. I had the impression that people did not quite understand what, in fact, was at stake. So, for example, after my sermon in the large Berlin church “Assembly of God”, which holds its services in a former Catholic church, a believer approached me and said: “I have been praying for a long time for my Jewish dentist, but I did not know that I had the right to testify to him about Jesus. Today I heard your sermon and realized that now I will definitely do it!”

I do not think that it is necessary to have any right to testify about Jesus, on the contrary, it is the duty of every believer. But, apparently, we still have work to do.

Let's go back to the Jews. During evangelism, everyone can see the name of your mission "Jews for Jesus" on the clothes of the missionaries. What is the general reaction of passers-by?

- At first we used various mottos, for example: "Jesus makes me kosher" or “If you are not happy with your birth, try to be born again”. The slogans were written on posters displayed near the universities. The first newspaper to report on our ministry was from the University of San Francisco. One of the headlines read: "New Group at University: Jews for Jesus". We began to be perceived as Jews for Jesus, although this was just a definition given to us from outside, fixed for a long time. We found it expressive, meaningful, and evocative of various reactions. They began to wear T-shirts with the inscription "Jews for Jesus", and interested people immediately recognized us and could get answers to all their questions. The reaction, as I have already noted, was different, but, in any case, we were easily accessible to those who really sought God - we could always be recognized from afar by the inscription on our clothes. This is as true today as it was in the beginning.

- Do you have problems with Orthodox Jews?

To illustrate more, I'll tell you a story. Once in New York, I was standing on the corner of Broadway and 34th Street handing out tracts. A woman came up to me and, after reading the inscription "Jews for Jesus," she began to cry and shout: “How could you write such a thing? You should be ashamed of this! You are continuing Hitler's work!" Then she showed me a tattooed number on her arm - she survived Auschwitz. I didn't argue with her. A few months later, I was on duty at our office in New York. I was genuinely surprised to see this woman come to us. After talking, she told me that she wanted to learn more about our faith. Today she follows Jesus with us! What is impossible for man is possible for God! This is the work of the Holy Spirit.

- Tell me, please, what questions of the Jews are the most difficult to answer?

- For example: “If Jesus is the Messiah, then why is there still no peace on Earth?” We answer that the world is not an external situation, but an internal state. The coming of the Messiah brought peace between God and man, made possible through his death, burial, and resurrection from the dead. Yeshua brought the forgiveness of sins, as a result of which we have peace with God. He will come again and bring peace to the earth. Or: “How can I believe in Jesus after all that has been done to the Jews under His name?” This is a serious matter, especially in Germany. I think we should clearly answer that for the crimes committed by sinful people, Jesus does not bear any responsibility. He never taught this, and anyone who has done or is doing such things is sinning against God. Jesus loved his people! Anyone who loves Jesus must also love His people. That is why I and other Jews believe in Jesus and follow Him. His love cannot be stopped, even if there are terrible crimes where His name is used by the criminals.

What do you think about the observance of Jewish traditions by Messianic Jews or Jews who believe in Jesus. Is it important to follow them or not?

- I think it's important. Since the moment of faith, we have not stopped eating our favorite Jewish foods and have not replaced them with pork. No one can take away our Jewish identity from us. By following Jesus as Jews, we fully identify with God's chosen people. For Jews who believe in Jesus, this is natural if they continue to retain their national identity. The roots of Jewish culture, like Jesus himself, prophecies about him and their fulfillment, go deep into the Bible. Since the New Testament speaks of freedom in Jesus, our faith does not depend on tradition. However, this does not mean that Jewish traditions and faith in Jesus conflict with each other. We must understand the principle of freedom: Jews who believe in Jesus are free to follow their traditions and culture. I find it important that the apostle Paul speaks of believing Jews as God's preserved remnant (Rom. 11:5). If you are a remnant, then you must be visible and recognizable. If you are not visible, then you are not a remnant. There is now a remnant of Jewish believers in Jesus who live as Jews and are proof of God's mercy. If we lose our Jewish identity, we will not be able to testify to the world of God's faithfulness to His people.

Since for unbelieving Jews the name "Jews for Jesus" often means not only the mission, but also the messianic movement itself, what would you like to wish the messianic movement? What are your expectations from him?

Subscribe:

- I would like to wish more unity and joint efforts on a common path. I agree that "Jews for Jesus" has become a brand for some, just like Mc'Donalds or Kleenex. Many people happily told me: “We believe, just like you, but we belong to a different organization ... You are somewhat different”. In relation to the goals of our common faith, we are all the same. I know and understand that not everyone is unanimous about our direct and open appeals at street evangelism. I stand in solidarity with those who want to have their own non-Jews for Jesus identity. However, I believe that the name of our mission reflects our common faith and our common goals.

- Thanks a lot!

For more than one century, the theme of God's chosenness of the Jewish people excites the minds of mankind. The paradox is that Jews, recognizing the right to be called "chosen ones", often refuse the imposed label. There is no uniformity in this regard in the sacred writings.

Controversial topic

For Jews, the theme of God's chosen people has always been special. But lately it has become painful. Representatives of the Jews complain that other peoples see in the chosenness the doctrine of superiority and a thirst for world domination.

Indeed, the cornerstone of many conspiracy theories is the idea of ​​some kind of world government, consisting of Jews, exploiting the rest of the population of the Earth and striving to reduce its numbers as much as possible.

But even for an ordinary person who is not a Jew or a conspiracy theorist, God's chosen Jews cause, if not irritation, then at least bewilderment. The rabbis here take a dual position: they believe that the concept of "God's chosen people" in its current sense is a product imposed by Christian ideology, but at the same time they recognize that the chosen mission of the Jews remains in force, since no one canceled the Covenant of Moses with God.

However, the Jews do not have unity in the latter either. In the religious circles of Judaism, there is a position that only strict adherence to the commandments makes the Jews a chosen people, while the Orthodox say that even a Jew who leads an exclusively secular lifestyle can be considered "chosen."

For what merit?

A person inexperienced in religious knowledge may have a question, for what such merits did the Jews in the eyes of God gain a privileged position? To do this, you need to turn to religious texts.

In the Torah (Breishit, chapter 12:1-3) God tells Abraham: “Get out of your country, from your kindred and from your father’s house to the country that I will show you. And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will magnify your name, and you will be a blessing.”

The very concept of the chosenness of the Jewish people was first voiced approximately 1300 years before our era (500 years after the time of Abraham) on Mount Sinai by Moses, who conveyed the words of God: “So speak to the House of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel ... If you obey Me and keep my covenant, you will be my chosen one out of all nations” (Exodus 19:3-6).

According to Judaism, a Covenant was concluded between God and the Jewish people, which can be interpreted both as a blessing and as a huge responsibility that is placed on the Jews. Orthodox publicist Sergei Khudiev writes that God's election is different from human. If we choose for something, then for God it is an act of pure, freely given mercy, which is not associated with any merit.

This idea is conveyed by the Bible, which emphasizes that the Jews were not chosen for merit, but in order to save all of humanity. According to the Old Testament, the pagan peoples were not able to accept the incarnate God, and therefore the people of Israel had to prepare them for the coming of the Messiah.

Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov clarifies this issue. The Lord, in his opinion, did not choose the Jewish people. God chose Abraham. While many representatives of the human race were mired in pagan cults of worship of a whole host of gods and deities, Abraham was faithful to the one God - the creator of everything that exists on earth. And only later the chosen one was correlated with the whole people.

Not elected, but appointed

A careful reading of the Bible shows that the word "God's chosen one" does not accurately convey the meaning of the relationship between God and the Jewish people, as reflected in the Scriptures. “This people I have formed for Myself,” says the pages of the Old Testament (Isaiah 43:21). It turns out the people are not God's chosen, but God-created.

As one rabbi wittily remarked about the chosenness of his people: "Jews did not participate in the elections, no one elected them, they were simply appointed."

The Apostle Paul says that the Jewish Old Testament law is "a schoolmaster according to Christ" (Gal. 3:24). This strange word becomes clear if its Greek basis is established. The Greek original contains the word "pedagogon", but it is not equivalent to the word pedagogue, which is close to us. In the ancient world, the teacher was a slave who carefully watched the child so that he got to school on time, did not play pranks and did not waste energy.

Likewise, the Law of Moses, which the Jews were entrusted to implement, in its true sense not so much teaches as warns. It is no coincidence that among the 613 commandments of the Pentateuch there are 365 prohibitions and 248 commands. The original mission of the chosen Jews was to warn other nations against the abuse of dangerous beliefs.

One of the attributes of pagan cults practiced in Canaan, Phenicia or Carthage was such a terrible rite as the sacrifice of babies, confirmed by modern archeology. Under these circumstances, the orders of Joshua to burn the land of Canaan no longer seem so terrible from people whose religious mind was so clouded that they sacrificed their own firstborn as a sacrifice to their god.

“Fanaticism is tolerated in the Bible – in the face of pagan extremes, it is a lesser evil than indifference,” notes Russian theologian and philosopher Andrei Kuraev in this regard.

Chosen no more?

More than one thousand years have passed since those distant times. Are the people of Israel still compelled to carry out their mission? In the New Testament era, many denied the Jews this creative role. The Apostle Paul, endowing Christianity with universalism, contrasted the saving gospel with the obsolete Law. The Christian Saint interpreted Judaism as a "passed-over stage," thereby downplaying the theological significance of Judaism in New Testament times.

In 2010, bishops from the Middle East, meeting at a conference in the Vatican, passed a resolution demanding that Israel stop using the Bible as an excuse for injustices against Palestinians. “Promised Land rights are no longer the privilege of the Jewish people. Christ abolished this right. The Chosen People are no more,” the Vatican’s resolution said.

For the Jews, such a statement was another reason to declare that the idea of ​​being chosen by God was accepted and transformed by Christianity. According to the concept of medieval theologians, the mission of Israel ended with the birth of Jesus Christ in its midst. "Israel in the flesh" was now the Christian Church.

Perhaps the numerous troubles that befell the lot of the Jewish people with the onset of the Christian era are evidence that the mission of Israel is over? In the 19th century, the Russian hierarch Theophan the Recluse expressed his interpretation of this theological question: “Whoever Gd has chosen, he will punish for correction, he will deprive him of His mercy for a while, but he will not completely reject him.”

In one of the documents of the World Council of Churches of the Protestant communities for 1988, it is said that the Covenant between Gd and the Jewish people remains in force. Anti-Semitism, like any doctrine that condemns Judaism, must be rejected.

Compensation for humiliation

All the complexity and inconsistency of the question of being chosen by God in the modern world lies in a dilemma: dogmatically, the Jewish people remain the chosen people of God, but no one can explain what manifestation this should have in real life, except for declaration.

In the eyes of the anti-Semitic part of the public, the chosenness of the Jews is expressed in their dismissive and arrogant attitude towards other peoples, in the privileged possession of rights and opportunities that are not given to mere mortals.

Moving away from anti-Semitic rhetoric, one can try to understand what the special status of modern Jewry is. The well-known translator of the Koran, Valeria Prokhorova, writes that “after a slave existence in Egypt, the sons of Israel became free, received abundant lands and prosperity, each of them was like a king.”

This aspect was also considered by the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev: “There is a Jewish conceit that irritates. But it is psychologically explainable: this people was humiliated by other peoples and they compensate for themselves with the consciousness of being chosen and their high mission.

The desire to gain self-esteem after many years of deprivation and humiliation was imprinted in the genetic memory of the Jewish people and expressed itself in gaining protection, including through a sense of superiority and the achievement of status and wealth.

Andrei Kuraev sees in the Jews a prophetic pathos, saying "we are responsible for everything." Quite often one has to notice, writes Kuraev, that an ethnic Jew who has become an Orthodox priest becomes a person of "party" and extremes. He cannot limit himself simply to the circle of his parish or monastic duties. He needs to "save Orthodoxy."

Interfaith conflict

The Russian writer Yakov Lurie, explaining the Jewish phenomenon, noted that the point here is not in the Old Testament and not in nationality. “It is something intangible and elusive as a whole,” Lurie writes, “it is an extract from all elements fundamentally hostile to the moral and social order that has developed on Christian principles.”

Indeed, the modern idea of ​​God's chosen Jews can also be explained through a conflict with Christianity. After all, those rights and obligations of God's chosen people, which were presented to Israel by Moses, Christianity, in fact, applied to itself - "once not a people, but now the people of God" (1 Peter 2:10).

One of the preachers of Jewish nationalism in Russia, Sergei Lezov, sees the anti-Semitism of Christianity in the fact that it "usurped Israel's claims" to the exclusivity of its relationship with God. At the same time, the fighters against anti-Semitism go further and demand that the Christian peoples, in order to repent for the crimes of pagan German Nazism, adopt a view of Israel as a nation that still preserves its God-chosenness in absolute uniqueness.

For the Protestant theologian Oskar Kuhlman, there are two understandings of national messianism, between which there is an impassable line: whether the chosen people exist in order to serve all mankind, or so that all mankind, having come to its senses, serve it.

Covenant under duress

The Talmud says that when the Jewish people stood at the foot of Sinai, God announced to them that if they refused to recognize Him, He would command grief to cover the entire Jewish camp with their mass, and out of fear, against their will, the Jews feignedly agreed to serve Jehovah. The Law of Moses was therefore a great bondage for the Israelites (Shabbat 88:1).

If we were called to court, says Rabbi Solomon Yarkhi, and asked why we do not adhere to what was told to us at Sinai, then we could answer that we do not want to know what is forced upon us by force. So is it worth considering the covenant received by the Jews under duress as valid?

God-fighting motives were noted as early as the time of the first Patriarchs. It is no coincidence that Jacob, when blessed, received the name Israel - "Wrestling with God." “You fought with God, and you will overcome men” (Gen. 32:27,28), the Creator admonished him.

The craving for freedom was also manifested in the heirs of Jacob. They were interested in everything that the Torah forbade. This is how Kabbalah arose - preaching magic and astrology and denying the One Personal God-Creator. The pagan doctrine of the transmigration of souls also found its place in the house of Israel.

The Jews have created a religion of self-deification,” Andrey Kuraev says about Kabbalah. They finally gave in to the desires of their hearts, which the Prophets forbade them to do. The Prophets are gone, and the Grace of God is gone. "Jerusalem! Jerusalem! who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to you! How many times have I wanted to gather your children together, as a bird gathers her chicks under her wings, and you did not want to! Behold, your house is left to you empty,” Christ addressed the sons of Israel (Matthew 23:37).

Israel, for whom the Testament turned out to be a heavy burden, indulging in the temptations of secret knowledge, in many respects left God's chosen people. Christianity values ​​the historical mission of Israel more highly than Israel itself,” wrote the Catholic theologian and French cardinal Henri de Lubac. “Israel does not exist for its own sake, but for the sake of all mankind.

Henri de Lubac compared the Jews to the eldest son, who, in a famous parable, did not want the Father to accept his younger brother. Israel gave Christ to the world, but did not notice it. As a result, according to the theologian, when, at the end of their providential mission, Israel desired to retain its privileges, it became a usurper.

The difference between mission and Messiah is obvious. Not every person can be the Anointed One. Moreover, only one person can be the Messiah. Or a god-man. But this is theology. We are talking about teleology - the science of purpose. Every person, social group, state has a life goal, a life task - the mission of its existence.

In order to facilitate the task of understanding the life mission, it makes sense for a person to analyze the basic data of his destiny. Esotericism, from Kabbalah to Buddhism, teaches that during incarnation, the soul chooses a family, country and tribe not by chance. Metaphysics, of course, can be denied and believed only in chemistry and in the Haaretz newspaper, but even inveterate materialists are not a sin to analyze their essential connection with the mentioned circumstances.

In our case - and this unites all readers of this book and this article - these basic components of fate are the same: our "selves" have chosen the Jewish people, the country of Israel and Russian culture.

We are relatives in a cube. Why? Why do our destinies stand precisely on these three pillars? To answer this question, one must understand the metaphysical tasks of the Jewish people, the State of Israel, and Russian-speaking culture.

Jewish mission

The book of books says that this mission is to be a “holy people”, a people of priests.

What are the functions of a priest? He possesses a consciousness that comprehends the higher spiritual laws, and the ability to bring down these higher energies on matter, sanctifying it theurgically, i.e. the priest transforms the material existence in accordance with the spiritual consciousness.

This is the uniqueness of Judaism in comparison with other, primarily Eastern, religions. Both in Judaism and in Hinduism-Buddhism, the goal is to realize the Truth and comprehend spiritual laws. But this comprehension in the East is an end in itself, the end of the journey: to reach enlightenment in order to disidentify with this world. In Judaism, the goal is to know spiritual laws in order to rebuild, correct, and transform the world on their basis. In Christianity, this task, adopted from the Jews, remained at the level of dogma (“transfiguration of the flesh”, “transfiguration” as the longed-for end of history in Orthodoxy), but did not become Halakha - a guide to daily, persistent and painstaking action.

Another image useful for understanding the Jewish function of "light to the nations" is anthropomorphic. In a single body of humanity, the Jewish people is chosen to be the center of consciousness - a kind of hypothalamus, located between the two hemispheres, rational and irrational, "material" and "spiritual". This small gland, the totality of the higher centers of the body, is designed to harmonize their interaction - to permeate the material with the spiritual (which symbolizes the Star of David), to reconcile God and man, advancing the human race to God-manhood.

The method of fulfilling this function was given to the Jews in two ways: to teach the peoples spiritual laws and to show them an example of ethical life, i.e. application of these laws. This energy is in the conductor and gives light to the nations.

Every time when humanity found itself in a spiritual impasse, the Jews gave it a new portion of light - an impulse of spiritual knowledge that lifted peoples to ever greater degrees of spiritual freedom and spiritual responsibility.

Preparing it in dispersion, the Jewish people could produce this spiritual explosion only by concentrating their spirit in a narrow material vessel with special properties - in

Land of Israel. So it was after each Exodus - from Egypt and Babylon.

Having given knowledge and built its great material symbol, the Temple, the Jews had to fulfill the second part of the dual function - to build their lives as an example of the embodiment of these laws. Failure in the latter led to the destruction of the Temple and a new exile.

The third and hopefully final Exodus has now occurred. Otherwise - i.e. not in the context of the spiritual history of the Jews - it makes no sense to consider the restoration of the State of Israel.

Accordingly, Israel is again brought out of Galut into the Promised Land to fulfill this specific function, which is to give the nations a new consciousness that will help humanity to solve the main spiritual problems of this age; and give an example - to create a perfect social organism, i.e. turn the State of Israel into an example of a society built on this knowledge.

Israel Mission

What is the main spiritual task of our time? what consciousness, what new revelation, is the restored Israel to give to the world?

The main conflict of the era is the eternal conflict between the Personality and God, which has aggravated and penetrated into all spheres of life, including geopolitics. Today it is the West against the East: Modernization against Tradition, the Individual against the Community, Science against Religion, the Moral Relativism of the Western, nominally Christian world against the Totalitarian Faith of the Islamic world.

Israel is at the epicenter of this conflict, at the crossroads of East and West both geographically and spiritually. In Israel, this conflict has been compressed to an explosive state: both in the struggle against the Palestinians and in the conflict between East and West within Israeli society itself. This tension, which is felt by all Israelis, should give rise to the release of a new spiritual impulse - an impulse that will break the way out of this impasse for the world.

The way out that Israel will show the world is not to spread the form (democracy) in breadth, but to introduce the essence into the very depths of society and man. This essence is an integral consciousness that fills the civilizational forms of the West with the desire for the spiritual ideals of the East and directs the religious passionarity of the East into humanistic and creative civilizational forms.

It is Israel that is called upon to return the lost Personality to the East and the lost God to the West, creating in the world that “shalom” (completeness-integrity) that is necessary to continue the universal mission - the conscious spiritual transformation of the world.

It is Israel that is called upon to be the first to reach the end of History - understanding history as a process of development of states. The culmination of this History should be the creation of a Perfect Social Organism - such a unique spiritual and political structure that, having retained Western rights and individual freedoms, will come to the Eastern ideal of communal love. Israel is called upon to become a pilot project of humanity, setting an example of a free, based on the knowledge of spiritual laws, transition from competition to cooperation in all areas of social life.

This is service to all nations; this is the universal priesthood of the new Israel: bringing to humanity the true Peace - shalom, slamut - wholeness and holiness, and not that morally rotten and rationally suicidal compromise with evil, which in today's politics is called "peace".

However, today's Israel, having long had a unified Jewish theology, does not even think about the need to create a unified Israeli teleology - understanding the goal (national task) of Israel.

At the past historical stage, it was understood correctly - Israel had to restore the form of the state, its body. And the rightly understood goal led to the assistance of higher forces and to miraculous victories. But then the body had to be filled with the spirit: the understanding of what exactly Israel was restored for. The answer - to create a safe haven for the Jews - is not correct. If that were the goal, Israel would be rebuilt in Brooklyn or, at worst, in Uganda. It's safer there. Israel today is generally one of the most dangerous places in the world for Jews. Then what for?

Israel has not yet responded. The body is not filled with the new spirit. A body without a spirit is a corpse. And the corpse begins to decompose: pieces of territories are falling off the state, corruption has corroded the political system, the social fabric is spreading - the cohesion of society.

The two existing answers about the national task - the "assimilators" answer and the "ghetto" answer - are teleologically incorrect. Since false goals have been chosen, neither higher powers nor, if you like, historical laws help the country move towards any of them.

The ideology of Israel's ruling elite - you can call it post-Zionism or pseudo-pragmatism - is actually assimilation. Not the religious assimilation of the individual Jew in the foreign society surrounding him, but the political assimilation of the collective Jew, Israel, about which Jabotinsky wrote, in the world community.

According to this ideology, the meaning of the two thousand year desire to return to Zion is the realization of the "California dream": a villa, the sea and the opportunity to forget about everything. For the sake of achieving this dream, this world, today's Israel is trying to be accepted into the family of peoples as a little Izi.

But metaphysics is as real a factor in the fate of the Jews as physics is in the fate of an apple falling from a tree. And the peoples will not allow Israel to deviate from its mission, spurring it on with various sufferings to spiritual work - so that it produces a new impulse of "light from Jerusalem" - gives the peoples an example and a way out of the impasse. Anti-Semitism, therefore, was and remains an impatience for the salvation of the peoples of the earth - a salvation that - according to the immutable, albeit burdensome for the Israelites, decree of the Book - was and remains "from the Jews."

But the second answer about the national mission that is available in Israel today, the answer of the religious "ghetto" - in which it is remembered that the new Exodus took place to "do service" and not just for "freedom" - is also not correct, for service this is seen by the ideologists of the "ghetto" as a return to the golden halachic past of the kingdom of Judah. However, without even wondering about the sample of that golden archaism, one should remember that history is not a copier, but a spiral, and one must return to a higher turn.

We have deliberately tried to identify a typical outline of Jewish history in order to create the prerequisites for a deeper understanding of it. Nevertheless, many unresolved questions remain. Now we need to introduce another dichotomy that accompanies this story and makes it one of a kind. We have repeatedly mentioned the mission of Israel. What is this mission? What are the stakes in it? Is there any elaborate plan under which this mission unfolds?

Israel's mission is twofold. She is mentioned in the book Shemot. When Moshe was to prepare the people for the acceptance of the Torah, Hashem called to him and said:

“… so say to the house of Jacob and proclaim to the children of Israel:

You saw what I did to the Egyptians; I carried you on eagle wings and brought you to Me. And behold, if you will obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you will be My dearest possession of all nations, for all the earth is Mine; but you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Shemot 19:3-6).

"Kingdom of priests" - these words define the relationship of Israel with other peoples of the world. “Holy Nation” is a definition of the internal conditions that ensure the success of these relationships. If Israel succeeds in fulfilling its mission, the result will be Kiddush Hashem— consecration of the Name of God. This means that the degree of awareness of the Divine Presence in the world depends on the fulfillment of Israel's mission. The consecration of the Name of G-d means that everyone recognizes the Almighty as the Creator and Guardian of the universe and the Author of the historical drama. If Israel succeeds in sanctifying the Name of G-d, the goal of the drama will be achieved and the meaning of its existence as a people will be justified.

If Israel does not fulfill its destiny, the result will be hilul hashem— desecration of the Name of God. Humanity will lose the ability to perceive the Divine light and will assert its independence with the intent to rebel against Gd. Using the free will granted to them, people will deny the very existence of the Almighty.

The responsibility for any of these possibilities lies directly with Israel. This is what the Jewish people were created for. As he succeeds, he advances the moment of final redemption for all mankind. If he fails, he pays first. This was what our wise men meant when they said that Israel's survival among other nations is like a miracle, like one sheep surviving among seventy wolves. When Israel fails to fulfill its destiny, G-d's prophetic hand is hidden and the sheep is given over to be torn to pieces by wolves.

The ultimate reward of Israel is the opportunity to fulfill the mission adopted at Sinai and bring humanity to the highest perfection. Its punishment is that it is experiencing an unheard-of tragedy: instead of becoming a "kingdom of priests," the Jewish people will evoke hostility and even hatred. But in the end, this punishment will turn into a blessing for him. Israel is like an olive tree, the fruit of which must be crushed to make oil. In the same way, Israel is persecuted in order to achieve perfection and so that its fire will continue to shine.

In this sense, the destiny of Israel is unique. Any nation reaches the pinnacle of its development and eventually fades away. Israel, unlike all other nations, cannot fade away and go into oblivion. His continued existence is an integral part of the Divine Plan. He suffers a lot from other nations, but these sufferings are compensated, and, having passed through them, Israel continues to live.

In other words, Israel's progress towards a greater degree of dependence on G-d and G-consciousness is closely related to the same process in the rest of humanity. Not only the sons of Israel, but people all over the world suffer when the Jewish people fail to fulfill their mission, i.e. when he refuses the laws commanded by God and accepts the ideals of other peoples. But the suffering of Israel is expressed in the fact that she becomes a scapegoat for the sins of others, and the misfortunes of mankind - in the gradual decline of civilization; in the fatal pursuit of material well-being, each civilization sows the seeds of its own destruction. And yet, Israel is steadily moving towards its goal, and the sins of other nations further convince the Jews of the superiority of their primordial Divine ideal.

Another consequence follows from what has been said: redemption can be brought closer in one of two ways. It cannot fail to come true - this is the main promise of G-d to the world. But the desire of the Almighty is that mankind, especially Israel, deserve redemption by virtuous deeds. Otherwise, it will come through suffering. But it will come.

We see that the history of mankind is developing according to a certain plan, in which the Jewish people play an important role. Although the ending is "predetermined", the script is not finished yet. Thus, the stakes are very high. We cannot change the ending of the drama (which, however, will be happy), but we can influence the way it is approached. Recognizing this, Israel and humanity must take this mission very seriously, especially as the cosmic drama draws to a close.