Out of Zion

Susan Michael: Well, if you've tuned in to listen to me today, it's because you're interested in developing a relationship between Jews and Christians. But you do not learn how to conduct Jewish-Christian relations by reading a book, even though I'm going to recommend the best book at the end of today. You learn it by engaging in the relationship.

So, we're going to begin today hearing from some people and pioneers that have been involved in this relationship for many years. Today, we're going to start with hearing my story, so please stay tuned.

Guest (Male): Welcome to the Israel Answers Series, connecting Israel, the Bible, and you. Join Susan Michael as she explores timely issues and current events from a scriptural perspective to equip the Christian world with a balanced and biblical response. Be sure to subscribe for future episodes, which will ignite your faith and bring the Bible to life in your everyday world. Now, let's join Susan with your Israel Answers.

Susan Michael: Well, I’m often asked how I got started in the ministry of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem and in the work of Christians and Jews working together in support of Israel. I will say that there is just really nothing in my background or my upbringing that pointed towards this or that prepared me for it.

There is only one thing that I can remember from my childhood that would in some way explain it, and that was the summer when I was 16 going on 17. I gave my life to the Lord and I said these words: "Lord, I’ll go wherever You want me to go, and I’ll do whatever You want me to do." Well, I never expected that He wanted me to do anything outside of my hometown or my home state, much less outside of my country.

But within two years, I was on an airplane to Israel for a summer study program, and that summer changed my life and it changed the trajectory for my life. So, once I finished my college degree in biblical studies, I returned to Israel. It was now the summer of 1980, and I wanted to begin a master's degree at the same school I had studied that summer. I wanted more of that life-changing experience. I wanted to learn more.

It just so happens that one month after I arrived in Jerusalem, the very first Christian celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles was being held. At that celebration, they announced that they were starting the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. The director of my school became the founding chairman of the board. A fellow student at the school became the financial director.

I was there the day the ICEJ opened their doors, and I was in and out of there every week as a member of the family. I wasn’t on staff because I was a full-time student, but I was certainly a part of the staff family. I met with them regularly to pray and in their devotions and volunteered there.

When I finished my master's degree, I moved to Washington, D.C. on behalf of this new ICEJ organization because they wanted their head office for the United States to be in D.C. It took us a few years before it was, but I lived in Washington, D.C. 29 years and there I worked very, very closely with the Israeli Embassy in helping them develop relations with the Christians in America.

I also worked very closely with a number of major Jewish organizations there in D.C. That's how I got involved in not just supporting Israel, but in working with the Jewish community here in the United States. In Israel, I saw the impact of the ICEJ on the relationship because I knew exactly what it was like living there in the early '80s.

You regularly met skepticism. You regularly met a little bit of a critical, "Why are you here?" attitude. Ten years later, though, I showed up at the Feast of Tabernacles and I remember being struck by the complete change of attitude. People in the coffee shop or on the street would ask, "Oh, are you here for the Feast of Tabernacles?" I was like, "Well, yes, I am here for the Feast of Tabernacles." "Oh, welcome!" They were so happy.

Why? Well, because for 10 or 12 years now, the ICEJ had been bringing thousands of Christians into Jerusalem every fall for this Jewish feast. In Hebrew, it's called Sukkot; we call it the Feast of Tabernacles in English. A part of that feast is what's called the Jerusalem March, and thousands of Christians would join this march, marching through the streets of Jerusalem dressed in national colors and national costumes and carrying banners from their countries, letting the Jewish people know that they prayed for them, that they blessed them, and that they loved Israel.

So, the ICEJ and particularly the Feast of Tabernacles had had a tremendous impact on the people of Israel and on Jewish-Christian relations. This was so much so that after 20 or 25 years of our existence and our consistency and always being there and always demonstrating our friendship, we were approached by the Jerusalem Post. They wanted to start a Christian edition of their magazine, and we partnered with them and eventually that magazine went all online.

Also, a few years later, we were approached by Yad Vashem, and we knew that this was the moment in history that we had to stand up to the plate. We had to help Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem is the Holocaust Memorial and Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. It's a very sacred institution of the Israeli government to commemorate the six million that died in the Holocaust.

Many of the founders of Yad Vashem, the directors, and the Holocaust survivors that support Yad Vashem all understand the role that Christian antisemitism played in preparing the way for the Holocaust. So, when they came to us and said, "We are now ready to engage the Christian world. Will you help us?" we knew that we had to.

So, our partnership with Yad Vashem still continues today. We call it the Christian Friends of Yad Vashem. That just shows how deep the relationship has been developed. It wasn’t easy. They had to learn to trust, and we had to learn to work together in that sacred institution. These are some of the signs that Jewish-Christian relations in Israel have been greatly impacted by Christian support of Israel and particularly the pioneering work of the ICEJ.

In the United States, it’s a slightly slower development because back in the '90s, we organized a series of events all across the United States every single year. We would often reach out to the local Jewish community. We would invite them to come one evening to a special program. We made sure that it would be comfortable for a mixed audience.

We did everything that we could to accommodate them, but they would not come. The Israeli diplomats from the Israeli Embassy in D.C. would come and they would speak at our events. They were so frustrated that the local Jewish community did not trust us because the Israeli diplomats understood the importance of the Christian support of Israel, and they had been working with us in Israel.

The Jewish community in America was just very protective of themselves and were afraid. I watched it all change overnight in the year 2000. In 2000, it was the Second Intifada in Israel. You may remember it was a wave of suicide bus bombings in Israel. It was so traumatic.

These terrorists would put on explosive belts, they would get on a city bus in the middle of the busiest time of the day surrounded by children and women and innocent civilians, and they would blow themselves up. Tourism came to a screeching halt. It was a very dangerous time in Israel. You never knew where the next bomb would take place.

Well, there are no tours and no tourists in Israel, but here comes the Feast of Tabernacles and what happened? We still had a full hall at the convention center. Several thousand Christians came from all over the world. We heard stories. Some of them would go downtown and ride a city bus in solidarity with the Jewish people.

This had a tremendous impact. I remember coming back from the Feast, I was in Washington, D.C. in a meeting, and I heard two Jewish people talking. One said to the other, "Did you hear about the thousands of Christians that came to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles?" The other one said, "Yes, maybe they really are our friends." The other one said, "Maybe we should be working with them."

From that point, I began to be invited to speak to the boards of directors of various Jewish organizations there in D.C., to travel and speak to their chapter leaders in other cities. I spoke in synagogues. I spoke in Jewish conferences. I gave the same talk over and over and over because they wanted to know: Who are evangelical Christians? How many are there? What do you believe? Why do you support Israel? And should we work with you?

I am very happy to say that several of those organizations made the official decision to work with the Christian community. Others said, "Well, we’re just not going to oppose it if any of our chapters want to. They’re free to." Out of this budded a relationship in the United States that is astounding. I was even a keynote speaker at a conference of rabbis and pastors and Christian leaders. Out of that conference 10 years ago started a rabbi-pastor Torah study meeting that is still going on today.

The relationship has come a long way. What it took was Christians proving their genuine and sincere friendship and that they were committed. They were dedicated. We were going to be here for the long haul. Now, I want to share with you four pieces of advice whether you're Jewish or you're Christian and you want to get involved in this relationship.

My four pieces of advice are based on mistakes that I made. I can give you examples of things that I did that I learned the most from. First is we must understand that this has to be a sincere relationship. No hidden agendas, no strings attached. We must be sincere and transparent, or it will not work.

I'll tell you a story. I will always remember this. I'm in Washington, D.C. It’s somewhere around 2000 or 2001. The relationship is still very, very new in the United States. We came up with the idea of holding an all-day conference in a local church talking about Christian antisemitism, the history, and then that evening to hold a repentance service in a local synagogue.

So, I approached the largest reform synagogue in D.C. because its founding rabbi had been a pioneer in evangelical-Jewish relations. I knew him, and he told me, "Look, I no longer have any authority. I'm retired. I don't have a position or place of authority, but I will certainly let them know that I recommend they do this."

So, he did, and then I reached out to the head rabbi. He said, "Well, let me talk to my board of rabbis and get back to you." It took a while, but he called me back. He said, "Listen, I raised the subject with my board of rabbis and they just had some concerns and they had some questions. These are the kinds of things they were asking."

So, he’d ask a question, and I would respond and I’d give him the answer. He said, "Okay, well they also wanted to know this," and so I gave him the answer. After about the third question and me responding, he said, "You know, would you come and meet with the board of rabbis and allow them to ask these questions and for you to address them?" I said, "Sure, no problem."

I hang up the phone, and then all of a sudden I’m like, "The board of rabbis! I'm going to go before a board of rabbis!" Here I am, all of probably 40 years old, a young woman. What do I know? I don't even know what a board of rabbis is, and it was a little intimidating. But I've always been one to go where angels fear to tread, and so I’m going to do it.

The morning before the meeting, I opened my Bible and the thing just fell open to Proverbs 31, of course, about the woman of valor. But in verse 26, this verse just jumped off the page and hit me in the heart, and I knew that this was my confirmation, my direction. This is what verse 26 says: "She opens her mouth with wisdom, and on her tongue is the law of kindness."

I read this and I was swayed. You understand rabbis specialize in the law. They study the law and every interpretation of the law. That's their specialty. Here the Lord is telling me to go with the law of kindness on my tongue. I took a big deep sigh of relief. I can do that. I can be a sincere and kind friend.

That's what I did. I went there, I met with them, I answered their questions. They approved it on the spot and we later were able to hold that service of repentance. What a lesson that was for me. I hope you'll take it to heart as well.

A second lesson here that I have for Christians is that we must understand that the Jewish people are actually told to be afraid of evangelical Christians. They have been told a lot of negative things about us. We have been portrayed as only being after their soul, that we just want to convert them away from Judaism so that they will no longer be Jewish and make them Christian.

So, we have to give them a level of comfort that actually we are a sincere friend. I'll tell you an interesting story about this. At this time, around 2001 to 2004, I'm speaking to all these Jewish groups. I’m invited to come to Dallas, Texas to speak to a chapter of one of the major national Jewish organizations.

I’m very busy. I give this talk over and over and over, so I didn't give it a lot of thought. I grabbed my notebook with my notes, I’m on the plane to Dallas, and all of a sudden I think, "Wait a minute. This Jewish community lives in the heart of the Bible Belt. They’re surrounded by evangelical churches. They know everything I’m about to tell them. This talk is not going to fly. This is not the right talk to give in Dallas."

I started to panic. I thought I should have thought about this earlier. I should have spent more time preparing and I was really quite worried about it. The director of the chapter picked me up at the airport. She took me to dinner before the meeting. So, over dinner, I very gently said, "So, you work closely with the evangelical Christians here in Dallas?" She said, "Oh, no, we’re scared to death of them."

I thought, "Well, there we go. It’s the same talk tonight." It astonished me, but it showed me that the smaller the Jewish community throughout the South, throughout the Christian areas, they are very insular and they’re very protective and they are actually afraid. Now, a lot of that has changed in the last 20 years, but it still exists. It’s still there and you need to understand that.

Thirdly is that you Christians need to learn the history of antisemitism because most of it is the history of Christian antisemitism. The Jewish people all know this history. If you don’t know it, you don’t know the things that they’re very sensitive about. You don’t know those red flag words that you shouldn’t use because it means one thing to them.

Now, it may mean something different to you, but you need to know: What are the hot button items? What do you need to avoid or to better explain because of the history? The story I have to tell you about this happened way back in 1980. I had just landed in Israel, right off the airplane, Ben Gurion Airport, and I catch a shared taxi up to Jerusalem to my school.

In the shared taxi with me is another passenger, happens to be a young college-aged guy like me from New York probably, orthodox Jewish man on his way to study in Jerusalem also. So, we strike up a conversation. He’s very curious: Why am I there? Where am I studying? What am I studying? And all of this.

Then he asks this question, "Well, what do you want to do after you finish your studies?" I said, "I think I want to be a missionary." Whoa. Missionary. That to him means that I am after his soul and I am there to convert the Jews. He clammed up, didn't say another word. I think he was scared to death.

Now, what did I mean by missionary? Well, I didn't mean to be an evangelist. I meant to be an international Christian worker. Like, I was a musician, so I might go and volunteer in a church somewhere in their music department or teach Sunday school at a church in a third world country.

Maybe I’d work in an orphanage, something like that. I was an administrative person and I was musical and I liked to help. That was my gifting, and that’s what I meant by the word. A lot of our churches use the word missionary in a kind of a broad way. Not all missions work of a church is evangelism. It can include humanitarian aid.

So, we use the word in a broad term, and I was using it in a very broad term. Well, I learned my lesson. I’ve often thought about that poor young man and how I must have scared him. Now, the last lesson I want to share is for the Jewish people. That is to understand that evangelical Christians really do have good intentions.

It’s just that we’re not really skilled or taught about interfaith dialogue. We want to work with you, but we really are inexperienced at it. So, when we make a mistake, use it as a teaching moment and help us learn from it. I think you'll find that we are so eager to learn from our mistakes. We have a good heart and we have good intentions.

My closing story today about this point is back in 1996. We were celebrating the 3,000-year anniversary of the city of Jerusalem being made the capital by King David. So, we did a series of events all around the world called Jerusalem 3000. All around the world, we had invited the Jewish community to our events and to celebrate with us.

So, the date I was working on when the team would be in the United States was in June. We rented a huge hall in Washington, D.C. It held 4,000 people. We did a lot of promotion and we reached out to all the churches through radio and everything. We also reached out to the Jewish community and invited them to come celebrate with us.

One of the things that we did is that I wrote a letter to all the rabbis in the D.C. area letting them know what we were doing and that we were inviting them and their congregation to attend. I had a couple of Jewish leaders that were working with me on the event and I was talking to them about it. They helped me get the list of rabbis and I was getting advice.

Nevertheless, I made a big mistake. What was the mistake? I didn't realize that the two main Jewish leaders giving me advice were both from the reform movement. That means that they’re not very legalistic in ways that the conservative and the orthodox and the ultra-orthodox were.

So, the date I was working on in June was the longest day of the year. It was a Saturday night, and it was the longest Saturday in the whole year. Our event was starting at 7:30 p.m. Well, for the religious Jewish community, Shabbat didn't end until after 8:30 that night.

So, I got a phone call from the head of the board of rabbis in Washington, D.C. to let me know that my letter and my invitation were offensive because I was asking them to break Shabbat. I was devastated, absolutely devastated. Once again, at this time, I’m not even 40 yet. I’m a young woman. I’m just trying to carry out this event and I was really devastated.

So, I asked the rabbi, I said, "What should I do? Should I write a letter of apology? And if I do, would you be willing to read the letter before I send it to make sure that it's okay?" When I asked that, it melted his heart. He realized, "She is so sincere. This was a sincere mistake. There was nothing behind this. There was no animus."

He said, "I would be happy to review your letter." So, I wrote the most sincere letter I could. I sent it to him. He said, "It’s great. It’s beautiful. Send it." I sent a letter of apology to all the rabbis in D.C. I’ve never made that mistake again and I never will.

This is my point. We all make mistakes, but we learn the most from our mistakes. So, please, let’s use those moments as a teaching moment with each other so that Jews and Christians can learn how better to relate to each other and how better to work together.

I hope you've learned a little something from my mistakes and you've gotten a few chuckles out of my stories. I hope that you'll begin to engage in this amazing opportunity that we have in our generation for Jews and Christians to learn to relate.

If you do want to read a little something, I want to recommend to you the book "Our Father Abraham" by Dr. Marvin Wilson. We spoke with Dr. Wilson last week. Really, I could not recommend his book more. It’s going to teach you about the history of Jewish-Christian relations, about the Jewish roots of the Christian faith. It’s a textbook; you’ll want to get it. So, in today's show notes, we give you the link.

All right, that does it for today. We’ll be back next week with another story and lessons learned from a pioneer in Jewish-Christian relations. I’ll see you back here then. Until then, God bless.

And I want to offer you a free download. We have a download: 10 reasons to stand with Israel. In fact, it’s "10 Reasons Why Christians Should Stand with Israel." Get your free download by going to the link in today's show note or go to www.outofzionshow.com and click on the tab for resources.

We’ll have it there as well. But be sure to download this free resource for you. We’re going to be talking about some of the points in it in the coming weeks, so we want to make sure that you have it. You can print it out, you can share it with friends and family. Invite them to join us here on the "Out of Zion" show for our "Israel Answers" series. So, we’ll see you back here next week. Until then, God bless.

Guest (Male): We hope you have enjoyed this episode of "Out of Zion" with Susan Michael. Be sure to subscribe to "Out of Zion" now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Pray.com, Salem One Place, Salem Life Audio. "Out of Zion" with Susan Michael is a production of ICEJ USA. All rights reserved.