When the Rabbis Cry

Written by John S Stevens

The present war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is more deadly than a very similar conflict that arose in 2008.

That conflict inflamed opponents of Israel around the Middle East including Yemen. Attacks against Jews in 2008-2009 in Yemen forced the wholesale evacuation of the Jews to two principal destinations: New York and Tel Aviv.

One morning in 2009 I switched on Radio 4’s Today programme and found myself listening to an interview with a few elderly Yemeni rabbis weeping over the loss of their Jewish congregations. It was a moving interview and proved to be the final straw in motivating me to write a book about the Middle East.

When the Rabbis Cry was eventually published in 2016.

At the age of seventeen, in 1976, I was a reluctant and argumentative convert to Christianity. Unconvinced about the reliability of the New Testament, the lack of miracles in the church, the absence of corroborating evidence of the resurrection, and so on. In the period running up to my conversion, I listened to a talk given by a church leader looking at Old Testament passages that prophesied the return of the Jews to Israel. He linked these to contemporary history and the re-creation of the State of Israel in May 1948.

The reliability and accuracy of the Old Testament intrigued me and was a piece of the jigsaw that fell into place as I came to faith in Christ, believing Him to be, as the New Testament records, risen from the dead, the Son of God, fully God and fully human.

 In the years following that crisis of faith, I became aware that many believers held distinct positions concerning God’s purposes with Israel. One is a ‘dispensational’ view that in the New Testament era, the church is the new Israel. This is often referred to as Replacement Theology i.e. the church (made up of Jews and Gentile believers) has replaced Israel as God’s people and the Old Testament frames of reference towards Israel as a people and Israel as a nation and its territory is irrelevant now to the purposes of God. The other position, often entitled Christian Zionism, believes that God has fulfilled His promises to the Jews and brought them back to the land from their worldwide diaspora following eviction in AD 70 by the Romans. And that God is still working His purposes out through Israel as well as the church.

Listening to the interview with the Yemeni rabbis made me confront the tension between Replacement theology and Christian Zionism. It was time to make up my mind. So I set about writing When the Rabbis Cry which is part history and part theology.

It considers the intriguing history of the Jews and the nation of Israel after Jesus’ time and explores how we should view the regathering of the Jews to the modern State of Israel from a biblical perspective.

It was an eye-opening journey of research and discovery. Without giving away any of its conclusions there is a key phrase that Paul uses in the book of Romans that proved to be pivotal: ‘They are not all Israel who are of Israel’ (9v7). This scriptural division of Israel into two Israels served as an effective doorway into understanding Israel…from the point of view of God’s purposes as encountered in Scripture.

Why read When the Rabbis Cry?

 It was published in 2016 but the present Israel-Gaza war and the unrest between the Houti’s in Yemen and Western nations supporting Israel following the Hamas-led attacks on 7th October 2023, brings the book back into view. The underlying history and theology explored in the book underpins the present-day suffering we all long to come to an end.

Will I agree with When the Rabbis Cry?

 The sources I used to research historical and political facts are referenced, but one thing is almost certain, no two historians see the past in quite the same way. If historical facts can be disputed, so will interpretation. I have tried my best to eliminate personal bias, but inevitably I bring my thoughts to bear on the material and draw my own conclusions. I can only hope that you will be generous enough to conclude that I have attempted, at least, to be guided by facts not preconceived ideas.

Is the book anti-Israel or anti-Palestinian?

 Neither and not at all. The love of God as expressed in the gospel of the kingdom is for everybody. When Christ died on the cross, He said ‘Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.’ It is a profound statement of love. That forgiveness is available for all: Jews, Arabs, Palestinians, the whole world, and, as I found out when I came to faith in Christ at the age of seventeen, that forgiveness restores us to a relationship with the Father.

There are many Jews and Palestinians who share a living faith in Jesus as the Messiah, as the Christ, and they are living out their Christian lives in the chaos and context of the political realities of 2025, far closer to the conflict than the rest of us. They deserve our prayers.

When the Rabbis Cry is written for all.

‘When the Rabbis Cry’ by John S Stevens is available on line:  WestBow Press. 23 Aug. 2016 

References

When the Rabbis Cry - all researched historical and political facts are referenced