WTF?
Other sources say a guy who knows Hebrew has handed them out T-Shirts saying "convert and become a Christian" (or so) in Hebrew letters, which would make the anger of the orthodox understandable.
Have you further infos?
Anti-Christian bigotry is rife in Israel but we're not supposed to talk about it on FR.
It's probably an "our religion is better than your religion" deal.
Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel.
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Very simple explanation: Folks woke up in the morning and said to themselves, "Gee, things are just too darned quiet in the Middle East. How can we liven it up?"
Were these folks Christian Missionaries active trying to convert people? Not saying that's an excuse, but may help in understanding WTF happened.
Missionaries Accosted in Meah She'arim
Wednesday, June 28, 2006 / 2 Tammuz 5766
Jerusalem scuffle: Christian missionaries in a religious neighborhood were accosted by hareidi-religious youths. "Missionary activity here is like waving a red flag at a bull," one resident said.
Details of the incident are sketchy. It began shortly after 10 AM, when a group of tourists, apparently from Germany, walked into the religious neighborhood of Meah She'arim wearing orange shirts, emblazoned with the missionary slogan 'Your G-d is my god, Your people is my people." Some eyewitnesses reported seeing a missionary emblem on the back of the shirts.
A group of religous youths and men very quickly surrounded the group and started yelling at them to get out of the neighborhood. It was not clear whether the hareidim pushed them before or after an orange-shirted man kicked one of the hareidim. There were also conflicting reports as to whether the hareidim chased the Germans up the street, or whether another group of suspected missionaries was encountered nearby in a separate incident.
A spontaneous protest rally was held afterwards in Sabbath Square, between the traditional religious communities of Meah She'arim and Geulah, and two hareidim were reportedly arrested.
Arutz-7 has received anecdotal evidence of increased missionary activity in downtown Jerusalem. Jerusalem-area tour guide Yoni Berg told Arutz-7, "I'm in downtown fairly frequently, and I have seen them of late. Friends of mine who work there have also noted them. They wear shirts with the words 'Your G-d is my god, Your people is my people', and they pass out pamphlets that have Jewish themes but are designed to lead the misinformed to believe in Jesus."
"Most of the people refuse to take the pamphlets," Berg said, "but unfortunately, I have seen several cases where the missionaries engage Jews in conversation."
IsraelNationalRadio "Light Unto the Nations" co-host Jeremy Gimpel says, "Over the last few months, I've seen several different missionary groups in Jerusalem - more than I remember in the past. They claim to love us and support us unconditionally, but their actions prove their hatred and their desire to destroy the Jewish Nation. I always tell them that if every Jew converted to Christianity and gave up their belief in One G-d, there would be no Jewish Nation to love and bless, as they claim to want to do."
"A group of 50 pro-Israel Christian tourists came under attack Wednesday from some 100 residents of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea She'arim in Jerusalem."
Ahhhh....lighten up. The Ortho's are just warming up for the big event coming up....The International Gay Pride Parade.
Just honing up on action skills.
I wonder what they'd do to Scientologists? How about we send Tom Cruise over there to find out?
Not so weird. I know plenty of Russian Orthodox (Christian) clergy whom have been spat at and verbally attacked by ultra-Orthodox Jews....in Jerusalem and in New York City (especially in Brooklyn). For whatever reason some tend to really dislike Christians...especially Orthodox Christians.
Gee, I wonder what Jesus would do if he was attacked by an angry mob of Jews?
Here is an article from 9 years ago that describes this community. These folks are not Zionists, they detest the State of Israel as a secular abomination and they seem to wish to return to the delights of the shetl.
Robert Fulford's column about ultra-Orthodoxy in Jerusalem
(Globe and Mail, June 4, 1997)
Senator Daniel P. Moynihan says in his recent book, Miles to Go: A Personal History of Social Policy, "The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself." Societies work only if culture and politics are reconciled, but they are in conflict everywhere these days, and nowhere more dramatically than among the divided Jews of Jerusalem.
The 4-A bus that takes me from my apartment in downtown Jerusalem up to the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University (where I'm roosting for a few weeks) weaves through the most contentious urban district on the planet, Mea She'arim. From the bus window you don't need to read the street signs to know where you are. Suddenly crowds of ordinary office workers are replaced by legions of men in black--black suits, black hats, usually black earlocks.
They are called, by everyone except themselves, "the black hatters." They belong to the growing ultra-Orthodox haredi community (haredi literally means "trembling," as in "trembling before the lord"). Suddenly they dominate the streets, and we bus riders move like time travellers from a bustling, modern city into an 18th-century Jewish village in Poland and then quickly back to modernity. In the process we visit a conflict of cultures that has lately coloured discussion of the future of Jerusalem.
The people in Mea She'arim, and in similar communities elsewhere, live much as their ancestors did in eastern Europe centuries ago. They read no newspapers, hear no radio, watch no TV. They are exempt from army service (a source of bitterness among other Israelis) and they are as opposed to the state of Israel as they are to birth control--just getting them to participate in the 1995 national census required an elaborate dance of diplomacy. They are passionate about female "modesty," and will sometimes throw stones at women whose legs and arms are not, in the haredi view, adequately covered. The black hatters are even more fanatical about keeping the Sabbath, and about drivers who intrude on what they consider their haredi streets between sundown Friday and Saturday.
While many other things are prohibited on the Sabbath in Mea She'arim, stoning is acceptable--even, apparently, mandatory. This grotesque tradition goes back decades. In Muriel Spark's 1965 novel, The Mandelbaum Gate, she mentions that "the Orthodox Jews would gather on a Saturday morning, piously to stone the passing motor-cars, breakers of the Sabbath. And across the street, streamers stretched from building to building, bearing an injunction in Hebrew, French and English: DAUGHTERS OF ISRAEL, OBSERVE MODESTY IN THESE STREETS!"
This year, as supporters of the party in power, the black hatters won a concession. Two weeks ago, after battles with the police made international news, the government closed Bar-Ilan street to all traffic, except emergency vehicles and local residents, for an hour and 45 minutes from the start of the Sabbath on Friday night, then from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, and then during the last hour and 45 minutes before the end of the Sabbath.
But this didn't mollify the black hatters. On the first Sabbath of the limited traffic ban, they were out once again, lining the street, stoning the cars that went by during the hours when driving was permitted. They didn't pause to savour their triumph, which to them was not a triumph but merely one tiny step toward recreating what they believe to be the only authentic and virtuous Jewish culture.
Secular Israelis and Jews from elsewhere have habitually looked on Mea She'arim with tolerance, even affection. While most Jews in Jerusalem rarely go to a synagogue, they are vaguely allied with Orthodox Judaism. The synagogue they don't attend is an Orthodox synagogue.
But their patience for the black hatters is wearing thin. I talked for a long time, for instance, with an angry secular woman who told me that she and her husband and their friends speak constantly of leaving Jerusalem for Tel Aviv. If they go, it will be because the fanatical haredi influence has poisoned the cultural atmosphere of the city.
A columnist in Jerusalem Report magazine, Ze'ev Chafets, argued recently that Orthodox intransigence may eventually affect Israeli policy on Jerusalem. For decades, politicians of all parties have held firmly to the opinion that Jerusalem is non-negotiable; none of it can ever be given up. Palestinians, on the other hand, insist that East Jerusalem should be their capital. But if feelings about Jerusalem change among the secular majority of Israelis, then perhaps an accommodation with the Palestinians could eventually be made.
As Chafets says, "Once most Israelis, even the least observant, felt a deep attachment to Jerusalem. But as the city has grown increasingly ultra-Orthodox and anti-Zionist, it has become a symbol of religious repression and fanaticism to many." Can the annoyance of the secular Israelis reach the point where it will reshape policy? Certainly, as Alice Shalvi wrote last week in the Jerusalem Post, many Israelis now believe that rifts within the Jewish population have reached the point where they are potentially more harmful than the conflict between Israel and its neighbours.
Up at Hebrew University, a professor of political science told me, with a rueful weariness, "One of the ironies of the state of Israel is that we have a Jewish problem." On the bus back downtown, moving again through Mea She'arim, I read the first lines of W. N. Herbert's poem, "The Angel of Tourism," in the Times Literary Supplement--
"People are people, some good, some bad."
Bert Stiles (Serenade to the Big Bird)
Leviticus 19:18 “‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudgeb'shem Y'shua
against one of your people,
but love your neighbour as yourself.
I am the LORD.
Additionally, if they were there to proselytize, once again, why don't they go to Gaza and proselytize to the Muslims? Too dangerous?
A kindly pastor of the church walks over to the Hassidic Jew and says;
Sir, perhaps you might do better if you sold your wares in a Jewish neighborhood...
The Hassidic Jew looked immediately to the other table and shouted;
See that Yankel?! He's trying to tell us how to do business!!!
I don't like any of these overly religious idiots. If you believe your god is the right one, he'll take care of the 'unbelievers' in the afterlife. And if you are insecure about your God, get over it.
The other religion of peace?