Messianic Jews find returning to Israel to be major legal battle

Messianic Jews find returning to Israel to be major legal battle

A young Jewish woman and her mother tearfully plead for Michael Decker’s help. They have arrived at the Israeli lawyer’s office after a several hour-long interrogation by the Israeli Ministry of the Interior.

The mother had left the United States to come to Israel under the Israeli Law of Return (called “aliyah”), which grants any Jew or family member of a Jew the right to immigrate to Israel and receive citizenship. But, Decker said, when the Interior Ministry — which oversees citizenship and immigration in Israel — found out she and her daughter were both Messianic Jews, it not only denied the mother citizenship but revoked her daughter’s citizenship as well.

Neither woman, Decker said, could legally work in Israel because of their belief in Jesus as the promised Messiah, and they had already sold everything they owned in the United States.

“How can you not help someone like that?” said Decker, a partner in the law offices of Yehuda Raveh & Co. Decker also serves as senior legal adviser to the Jerusalem Institute of Justice.

For years, Decker — an Israeli believer — is among a small cadre of Israeli lawyers who have battled what some may see as a puzzling phenomenon: A government that relies on the global support of evangelical Christians has an Interior Ministry that, by Decker’s assessment, is fighting tooth and nail against Jews who believe in Jesus from becoming citizens. 

Messianic believers face an already tough hurdle in the Law of Return itself, which was amended in 1970 with religious restrictions that exclude many of them from its immigration and citizenship guarantees. Messianics with certain family and religious histories are able to qualify under the law, but the reality, Decker said, is different. He said the Interior Ministry does everything it can to prevent any Messianics from becoming Israeli citizens, regardless of whether they are legally entitled to do so.

Decker traces most of the trouble to a powerful Israeli religious organization called Yad L’Achim, comprised of Orthodox Jews who practice the most stringent strain of Judaism. He says Yad L’Achim opposes anything it believes to be a threat to Israel’s Jewish identity, including Christians, Muslims and Jews it believes are not religious enough.

“They want to make sure that every Jew remains Jewish according to their definition of Judaism,” Decker said.

Decker said Messianic Jews are prime targets for Yad L’Achim, which he said harasses Messianic pastors and suspects Messianics of being missionaries out to “steal Jewish souls.” 

“Because, to [Yad L’Achim], the Nazis in the Holocaust killed the Jewish people physically, and Christian missionaries are stealing the Jewish soul,” Decker said. 

“That’s why they would consider it a spiritual holocaust, even.”

Although ultra-Orthodox Jews are a small minority in Israel, they wield a significant amount of political power. 

Israel’s parliamentary democracy usually requires several political parties to join together to form a coalition government, with cabinet posts given to each party to secure their support. 

A small ultra-Orthodox party called Shas is part of the current Israeli government, with its leader in charge of the Interior Ministry.

Decker described the Shas-run Interior Ministry as allied with Yad L’Achim in keeping Messianic Jews out of the country.

“I’m sure that [those who run the Interior Ministry] have very strong connections with Yad L’Achim,” Decker said. “Many ministers and parliament members from within the Shas party probably donate to this Yad L’Achim organization.”

Even though Decker won a landmark 2008 Israeli Supreme Court case in which the court determined that Messianic Jews who meet certain family and religious criteria are indeed entitled to citizenship, he said the deck is still stacked against them.

The Interior Ministry will fight every Messianic seeking citizenship all the way to the Supreme Court, Decker said, because they know most Messianics cannot afford the costs of the legal battle, even if they would win in the end. 

Decker helps Messianic believers navigate the legal maze — even if they cannot pay — through his work with the Jerusalem Institute of Justice, an organization that aids the poor and victims of discrimination in Israel.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said what is going on at the Interior Ministry is “clearly religious discrimination.” 

He urges Southern Baptists to contact their legislators as well as President Obama to ask that this concern be addressed to the Israeli embassy. 

Ben Martin, an Alabamian who serves as a Christian worker among Jews, said he is grateful that Messianics have the right to battle it out in court and that the media in Israel has the freedom to debate these topics openly.

But, he said, the situation still causes “a lot of problems” for Jews who believe in Jesus.

“I am grateful for the Jerusalem Institute of Justice working to stand up for their rights,” Martin said. 

 

EDITOR’S NOTE — Ben Martin’s name has been changed for security reasons. (BP, TAB)