Out of Zion

Voiceover: 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.

Shelly Neese: Welcome to the Out of Zion podcast. I’m Shelly Neese, filling in for Dr. Susan Michael. I’m here with an old friend, Rabbi Tuly Weisz. Tuly is the founder of Israel 365, which has grown so much over the years. I want to talk about that.

First, just talk about—I remember when you were a rabbi in Ohio and you were cold-calling Christians like myself and first entering into this world.

Rabbi Tuly Weisz: I didn’t realize that we were that old of friends. I got a cold call! You were doing the Jerusalem Connection first for 20 years. Tell us the founding. Tell us how you went from that point to there and you made Aliyah in the process.

I was in Columbus, and I was introduced to Christians for the first time in my life. I grew up in Columbus in a Jewish bubble, so I didn't have a lot of interactions with Christians until I was an adult. I returned to the community that I grew up in to be the rabbi of the synagogue that I grew up in, where my grandfather was the rabbi.

He was the rabbi for 50 years, a legend. Then he passed away, and I took over. I was very young and I knew everyone in the Jewish community, but I didn't know anyone outside of the Jewish community. I met Christians who loved Israel. To me, that was almost like a paradox because I had thought, we grew up to think, that Christians were all in opposition to Jews. Christians had this thing called the New Testament that replaced this Old Testament. That’s how I grew up.

When I met Christians United for Israel or Christians for Israel, it was so surprising and even refreshing. I got to know Christians, and I started Israel 365 after moving to Israel. I was doing some research and I was in touch with the local Christians who were supportive of Israel, and I found the Jerusalem Connection. Thank you for reminding me about that.

Israel 365 started out as a daily newsletter. The name is based on a verse in Deuteronomy that says Israel's the land that God's eyes are upon from the beginning of the year until the end of the year. Every day of the year, we send out a newsletter with a Bible verse and a photograph. We have outgrown that. We now have a news website, Israel 365 News, which is one of the first ways that they make a connection point.

Israel 365 News with Rabbi Pesach Wolicki has great videos and geopolitical analysis. He's fantastic. We also have the Israel Bible, which is another program that we started. I spent some time with you in Washington when we were doing the book launch of the Israel Bible in 2018.

Shelly Neese: Explain what that is. I know still with all of this growth and all of these new things you're doing, that has to be one of the favorite projects you've ever had.

Rabbi Tuly Weisz: That is definitely my personal pet project. We took all of those newsletters, all the content after just two or three years, and we said we've been writing about this daily verse and a little commentary study note on a specific verse about Israel for two years. We have hundreds of notes.

We then organized them chronologically from Genesis to the end of Chronicles, the Hebrew Bible. We laid it out, hired a graphic designer, and worked with Israel's leading Tanakh Bible company. They produced the Israel Bible. It's got the English on one side, the Hebrew on another side, and transliteration so even if you're not fluent in Hebrew, you could read the Bible in Hebrew. People love that.

It has notes all about the ancient prophecies and the modern Israeli context. We have every prime minister quoted whenever they mention a Bible verse. This morning we had Gideon Sa'ar, and he mentioned a verse in Isaiah. We have those kinds of examples. It's really wonderful.

Shelly Neese: I love that because what is my passion in teaching Christians is even just Christian Zionists do not need to be labeled as the weird Israel people in whatever their local church is. We are Bible people. That's how this starts, and that's how this ends. Christians love Israel because we love our Bible.

Rabbi Tuly Weisz: There is a study from the Manhattan Institute recently that throughout this war, Israel saw who our true friends are and who our friends are not. When much of the world abandoned Israel or vilifies Israel, the Evangelicals have stood in support of Israel.

There are really three factors that have kept the Christians: the Christians who go to church, the Christians who read the Bible, and the Christians who have some kind of Jewish friend or relationship. Those are the Christians who really stood with Israel the most. I feel like as the Jewish people, what we need to be doing is telling Christians to start going to church more and telling Christians to start reading the Bible more.

Shelly Neese: That's interesting that you say that because even in my own life, I grew up in the church and I grew up loving the Bible. But it wasn't until I went to Israel and met my first Jewish friend at 20 years old that this activated something in my spirit as well.

One of the things with Israel 365 is that you have a big focus on just—I really feel like what you're good at is you’re a visionary, of knowing what the next step in Jewish-Christian relations will look like. We have come so far in the last 20 years, and especially since October 7th. What can we still do better?

Rabbi Tuly Weisz: I wrote a book to answer that question. It's called Universal Zionism. It describes the next phase of the Zionist movement that is not just for the Jewish people. Zionism started with a political movement to bring back the Jewish people to our land. It started at a very specific moment in 1896 when Theodor Herzl published a book called The Jewish State. That's when political Zionism began.

Then there is the next phase that I describe here, which is religious Zionism. We built this great country; after 50 years we had a state in 1948. Then the goal became making this a state not like all other nations, but unlike all other nations. It would be a Jewish state and a place where the Bible is being fulfilled and where Jews could live without persecution and celebrate the festivals and have kosher food.

Now we hit a crossroads on October 7th because we were going towards this glorious future and then we were hit with a dose of reality. I believe the next phase is Universal Zionism, where Israel turns outward and starts to recognize that its role in the world is not just to be a refuge for the Jewish people, but to be a light unto all of the nations and to be a source of blessing for the whole world.

The next phase of the Zionist movement is for Israel to be a source of blessing and for Zionism to be as relevant for a Christian in Kentucky as it is for a Jew in Jerusalem. That's Universal Zionism.

Shelly Neese: That's beautiful. In my mind, what that also reflects—at ICEJ, we don't focus on negative prophecies, many of which have already been fulfilled in the Jewish story. We focus on the positive prophecies. Universal Zionism is a fulfillment of the positive prophecies.

Rabbi Tuly Weisz: It's a very hopeful sign and movement to get involved with. This isn't a book; it's a movement. It describes a movement and it really requires Jews and Christians to work together, Americans and Israelis to work very closely together. We were thinking, where do you start? The suggestion that I describe here is Shabbat.

Shabbat is the fourth commandment. It's holy for us and it's holy for you. It is something that Christians have moved away from to some extent. Jews have held onto the Shabbat very preciously. It's the best thing we have. It’s the biggest—it’s not even a secret, but the best thing that the Jewish people have is Shabbat. There's the famous line: "More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews."

At a time where America is being pulled in all of these crazy directions and this cancer of antisemitism is metastasizing very quickly, Shabbat allows people to get back to the basics, to unplug, to spend time with your family, to spend time with your community, and to spend time with God. What we're encouraging is for Jewish people to open up their homes to Christians to celebrate Shabbat together and to join a Jewish family for a Friday night dinner.

Shelly Neese: The Shabbat table is how Jews and Christians come together too. I have a lot of friends that have worked in the Christian Zionist space for years and years and one of their biggest heartaches is that they've never been invited to a Shabbat dinner. Here they are committing their young adult lives to Israel and to pray for Israel and to work for Israel, and they've never been invited to a Shabbat dinner.

Rabbi Tuly Weisz: That breaks my heart to hear that. Give me a list of your friends; we will invite them. That's exactly what we're trying to do. We have here at the NRB a Shabbat experience and at the end we have a Shabbat table and we walk people through what it's like. Then we have a card you can fill out.

If you're looking to be hosted by a Jewish family, we will help facilitate that. All of your listeners should follow up with Israel 365. Anyone who's interested, we will help facilitate an authentic Shabbat dinner with a Jewish family. Then you go home and you decide how you want to incorporate that into your own Christian life.

Shelly Neese: I thankfully have had the blessing. I have a lot of Israelis in my life and Israelis are very free with their Shabbat invitations. One time just with an Orthodox family, they're doing the Kiddush, they're doing the bread and wine. Even they know that this is a practice in Christianity, that when we have communion, it's part of the Passover experience and that we have our own spiritual imagination of what we're connecting with. An Orthodox rabbi looks at me and he says, "You should probably think about Jesus during this part." To me, we are so far down the path of just these relations of encouraging each other to live a holy and pleasing life to the Lord.

Rabbi Tuly Weisz: We're in a new era, but we can't take it for granted either. If we don't invest in these relationships, then the next generation is not necessarily with us in the same way. We as a Jewish community need to do more to reach out to Christians, and that's what Universal Zionism is all about.

Shelly Neese: I know we're talking about biblical Zionism as well. Switching modes to political Zionism, Israel's in a much stronger place. Last year I was crying in almost every interview because we were still just a year after October 7th and there was just such a brutal experience. Here we are two years later after October 7th and Israel's in a completely different place. The entire Middle East has been reshaped and reformed. Are you feeling optimistic as an Israeli? What does this look like for Israel to be so strong right now?

Rabbi Tuly Weisz: That's exactly what we think a lot about actually at Israel 365 because we are—it's wonderful and we're in a much stronger position militarily, economically, and politically in the region. At the same time, we shouldn't be surprised because this is foretold in prophecy. Israel is going to come back and we're going to be blessed and we're going to be a source of blessing for the rest of the world as well.

We have to figure out what that looks like. I think, for example, Israel has a real responsibility to taking care of persecuted Christians and minorities in the region. That’s something that hasn't really been a priority of Israel, but now maybe could be. Israel could be a safe haven not only for the Jewish people who have been persecuted, but perhaps even for persecuted minorities and persecuted Christians. That to me is what the next step might look like, but it's also all part of Universal Zionism, that next stage where Israel isn't only about the Jews; it's about the world.

Shelly Neese: It's such a better place to be. I'd rather be deep in the weeds of these kind of deep thoughts with Israel in a strong place. I'm going to put you in the hot seat. You're having a Shabbat experience with Christians tomorrow as part of NRB. What is the Torah portion of the week, and give me one thought on it?

Rabbi Tuly Weisz: The Torah portion of the week is called Terumah. It is about giving tithes to the building of the Tabernacle. It also talks about Shabbat in there because we actually learn a lot of the laws of Shabbat from the construction of the Tabernacle.

It’s loaded with really wonderful special nuggets about how to make Shabbat and how to tap into the true essence of Shabbat. It's not only about turning off your cell phone. That's obviously a new modern way of honoring Shabbat, but it really was about rest. The construction of the Tabernacle was the quintessential act of labor that they did in the desert, and then on Shabbat they refrained from construction and from agriculture. Tapping into the original meaning of Shabbat is something that we're going to discuss this weekend.

Shelly Neese: The Torah portion leads you right into that discussion.

Rabbi Tuly Weisz: Honestly, the Torah portion always leads us right into that discussion. We have a lot of resources on the Israel Bible website if you want to know what the Torah portion is and how to connect it with your own life. That’s the website we talked about earlier, IsraelBible.com, and we have courses called Israel Bible Plus. You can go deeper with our courses taught by our rabbis. We have a lot of really great information and content that is all from a Jewish perspective but is meant to be user-friendly and super engaging for our Christian friends.

Shelly Neese: That's wonderful. That’s one of my favorite things about Shabbat, just hearing a Jewish family talk about the Torah portion of the week and of course my own overlay and how I see Jesus in it as well. I'm excited for others to have that experience. We've been meaning to have you on this podcast for a long time, so thank you so much for joining us.

Rabbi Tuly Weisz: It was a pleasure talking with you again, Shelly.

Shelly Neese: Thank you for listening to the Out of Zion podcast. Hey, just give me one more minute. I want to offer you one of our free resources. We have wonderful resources in our show notes and if you go to our website at ICEJUSA.org/shownotes, you'll find links for a number of our free offers. We have downloadables to help root you in scripture, help you to understand the issues surrounding Israel, and the importance of Christian support for Israel. And don't forget, please, follow us on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn and stay connected. Thank you and God bless.

Voiceover: 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.