August 29 - Friday

All the volunteers met at Nona’s Chocolate Factory this morning for treats (this is really hard work) before the guys headed to the Hassidic part of town to run some errands and I went back to our friends’ place to help with Shabbat preparations. In the afternoon we came back to our apartment and I read for a while before going back down for dinner. I finished another short book called “Our Hands are Stained with Blood,” by Michael Brown. It’s an older book, but it gives insight into why the Jews are so resistant to the Gospel. They faced the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, and the Holocaust all while Christians, for the most part, actively participated or else stood by and did nothing to stop it. My biggest shock came from anti-Semitic quotes from people I would not expect. Let me share just one. When Martin Luther, the great reformer, was asked, “What shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews?” His answer was decisive: “First, their synagogues should be set on fire…Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed…Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer-books and Talmuds… Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach any more… Fifthly, passport and traveling privileges should be absolutely forbidden to the Jews.. Sixthly, they ought to be stopped from usury (charging interest on loans)… Seventhly, let the young and strong Jews and Jewesses be given the flail, the ax, the hoe, the spade, the distaff, and spindle, and let them earn their bread by the sweat of their noses… We ought to drive the rascally lazy bones out of our system… Therefore away with them… To sum up, dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your domains, if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one so that you and we may all be free of this insufferable devilish burden – the Jews. (Martin Luther, Concerning the Jews and Their Lies, reprinted in Talmage, Disputation and Dialogue, pp. 34-36) The book is a tragic story of the “Church” and the Jewish people, one which parallels in many ways, the “Church” and the First Nations people of North America. We have much to weep for.

We celebrated the Friday night Shabbat with 16 of us (the group is growing) on the rooftop of our friends’ home again. I’d love to take a picture and show you all what it’s like, but that’s not proper protocol in Jewish homes. No photos on Shabbat.