Identity Theft Page 4

  “After three days, a woman standing just a few spaces from me collapsed. She was dead. She didn’t appear to be much older than my mother, whose sobbing could barely be suppressed as my father sought to console her.

  “I had just turned thirteen. I was supposed to have had my bar Mitzvah by now. I would have stood proudly in the synagogue, chanted from the Torah, and endured the praises of my family, friends, and relatives. Instead, here I was enduring suffering like I had never thought possible. How much more of this could we take?

  “The next day we arrived at a work camp. We were taken off the train and separated into different groups. When my mother was told to follow the women, she became hysterical. She grabbed my little brother and begged the guards not to separate them. They ripped him from her and when she protested, the butt of a guard’s rifle found the back of her head, knocking her to the ground. I was in shock. Was this really happening? I wanted to fight, but I couldn’t move.

  “And then, when it seemed things couldn’t get any worse, one of the other guards solved the dilemma by pulling out his handgun and putting a bullet through Chaim’s head, with as much emotion and effort as he might have used pouring himself a glass of water. My little brother lay dead on the ground, blood streaming from the gaping hole in his head. The image haunts me to this day, and always will.

  “No one cried, no one screamed—we were simply in shock. Surely what we had just witnessed with our own eyes didn’t really happen. Chaim couldn’t be dead. And yet, he was. A five-year old Jewish life was of little consequence to the Nazis.

  “Father and I were herded into the men’s line, while my grief-dazed mother, still in shock, was pulled into another line. We would now work for our tormentors. My two sisters, barely twelve and fifteen at the time, were placed with other girls their age. Only later did I learn what would happen to these girls. They would be used to service the Nazis. Fortunately, I was too young to understand such things. It would have been too much for me. But now I am a man. I’m sixteen and know exactly what they did to my sisters. I don’t even know if they are still alive.

  “My mother only survived a few months. The devastation of watching her baby, her youngest son, murdered before her eyes, robbed her of the will to live. She was inconsolable. The other women covered for her as best they could, but soon it became clear to the guards that not only was she not doing her share of the work, she no longer cared whether she lived or died. Mercifully, before she could be sent to the gas chambers or terminated, she was gone. One morning she simply didn’t wake up.

  “This happened three months after we arrived, but my father and I only found out a year later. I didn’t even weep. By that time I was completely numb. Death was everywhere. It had become too familiar to warrant a response. I was sure it was only a matter of time before these monsters or this godforsaken place would kill me as well. My father, on the other hand, was completely undone by this news. He held on for another year, for my sake, but in the end, hopelessness, despair, and malnutrition claimed him. Like my mother, one morning he simply did not wake up.

  “At fifteen I was, at best, the man of the house, or at worst, the only one left in the house. Part of me hoped my sisters were dead. The thought of some sleazy, overweight, Nazi officer with alcohol-laden breath, laying his hands on either one of them, sickened me.

  “I was transferred to Auschwitz, a death camp, in early 1944. As I passed through a gate a guard hissed at me, ‘You killed Jesus Christ; now we will kill you.’ Jacek was right. They blamed me for the death of a man who died 2,000 years ago—a Jew no less, someone they themselves would have killed, given the opportunity. I was fifteen; I had never killed anyone! And I wondered, in passing, what exactly had become of Jacek. For all I knew he could be living in our house. Or maybe he’d joined the Hitler Youth, and was now training to fight for the Nazis.

  “The guards obviously agreed with Jacek as they forewarned us of our fate, their retribution for our crime of killing Christ. The butt of a rifle in my stomach accompanied the threat, in this instance. How much more could I take?

  “They then moved us to Birkenau, one of the camps adjacent to Auschwitz. There in a red brick building, which from the outside appeared harmless enough, they had built fake shower blocks. Instead of encountering clean water, unsuspecting victims were led into the showers and asphyxiated by poisonous gas.

  “This was one of the cruelest and yet most efficient tricks of the Nazis. How do you kill thousands of people at one time and keep them from panicking, or worse, revolting? You give them a cake of soap and tell them they are going to receive the first shower they have had in weeks, or months.

  “The red brick building was just one of many such death machines. Its only distinction lay in the fact that it had been the first, or so I was told. I know this because it was my job to remove the bodies. Every day, all day, I dragged the lifeless corpses of my people out of the gas chambers, loading them onto carts to transport them to the crematoria, all the while hoping against hope that I wouldn’t share their fate.

  “I was surrounded by death. I no longer felt human, so I guess they’d won. Clearly that was the subliminal message the Nazis transmitted by transporting us in cattle cars. In truth, I felt just like an animal seeking to survive the barren winter—only winter was now going into its fourth year.

  “Finally, in January 1945, the Germans began to demolish the gas chambers. Our captors blew them up, one by one. They seemed intent on getting rid of the evidence. You could see the fear in their eyes. Was this war coming to an end? Would we soon be free? Was someone coming to rescue us?

  “Our hopes of freedom, however, were soon crushed. The barely living were rounded up and ordered to march from Auschwitz to God knows where. Thousands who were too weak were simply left behind. It was freezing, the dead of winter. Tens of thousands of us marched and marched. It was nothing for someone in front of you to simply collapse. Those who couldn’t walk were left for dead. I passed hundreds of dead bodies. Who knows if they were dead when they hit the ground or simply froze in the snow? What would once have shocked me had become commonplace. A dead body, even that of child, barely fazed me. What had they done to me?

  “I had determined from the outset that I would survive—if not for me, in the faint hope that I might one day see my sisters again.

  “Finally, we arrived at Bergen-Belsen. By April, most of the guards had fled, but the remaining ones seemed perversely intent on leaving no inmate alive. After several days with no food or water, more and more Jews began to collapse, go crazy, or simply die. Bodies were everywhere. Typhus was spreading. Surely my body would soon succumb to these deathly conditions.

  “And then, yesterday, April 15, 1945, five days after my sixteenth birthday, British troops arrived and—miracle of miracles—we were emancipated!

  “Now I am free. Or so they tell me. What does that even mean at this point? My parents and little brother are dead. My sisters, if alive, have been violated repeatedly for years. What will become of me, of Tuvia Lebowitz?”

  By now I was sobbing inconsolably.

  “David,” the angel called out. I didn’t answer. “David Lebowitz!” he called out again.

  Chapter Six

  FROM CHAYA TO TUVIA…

  HOW DID WE GET HERE?

  Still sobbing, I cried out, “But why?”

  “I told you it would be hard, but He has a task for you, and you have to feel it deeply so that you can deliver it effectively, even though it pains you—even though you feel like your very guts are being ripped out.”

  I calmed down. “You know, he never told us what happened there. Not even my father knows the full story. After they came to the states, it was as if they took a vow of silence. Not just my grandparents, but my great aunts as well. My God.” I sighed, “What had they suffered?”

  Sobbing again, I could not get the image of my grandfather being tormented as a young Jew in Poland out of my mind. Finally, I looked up at Ariel and asked, “How in the world
did a message as pure as the one the woman from Galilee shared, get so corrupted? She talked about a Man of love and immeasurable compassion, and one thousand years later, His followers are marching across Europe killing Jews as part of their devotion to Him. Help me understand!”

  Ariel answered, “Indeed, these were religious people—but incredibly corrupted in their understanding of what true devotion to God really was. Yes, they were religious, but they were not practicing what is written in the Bible. Religion, apart from a true relationship with God, kills. Unsubmitted men will manipulate it for their own ends, be it lust for money or power.”

  “But didn’t they read the Bible?” I asked.

  “In time, David. All will be explained in time.”

  “In the story of the family in Spain, the Jews were being told, ‘Convert or leave!’ The Church there seemed more like the KGB or present-day Iran.”

  “You are correct, David. Those who converted were watched constantly by the Church to make sure they did not return to Judaism. Conversos accused of maintaining ties to or secretly practicing Judaism were cruelly punished.”

  I was struggling to process this.

  “The Church of the Middle Ages had certainly ceased to look anything like what the Holy Spirit had birthed on that warm summer day on Shavuot, 30 CE, when the Jewish man, Simon Peter, preached so powerfully on the Temple steps, birthing a powerful revival. Instead, Rome had become a combination of greed, power, and politics dressed in the robes of religion. The good news had not merely been robbed of its Jewish roots, but of its purity and power, its message of salvation and reconciliation to God.”

  Yes, I had read about Peter, the Christian evangelist, during my search for truth. But it hadn’t dawned on me at the time that he was Jewish. But, of course he was! It all took place here in Israel.

  “I am sure that you also noticed that the Jews in the first story had no qualms about believing that Yeshua was the Messiah. Not only was Chaya Jewish, but she met Him on His way to heal the daughter of one of the leaders in the local synagogue. Those first-century Jews were able to evaluate Yeshua without bias. However, two thousand years later, after the worst kind of anti-Semitism coming forth from those who claimed to represent Him, it is nearly impossible for a Jewish person to look at Yeshua without prejudice.”

  “We are taught, if not directly then indirectly, that one of the very definitions of being Jewish is that we don’t believe in Jesus,” I emphasized.

  “When I was in elementary school, we had a discussion at the bus stop involving several Jewish children and Christian children. We were seeking to define the differences between our religions. After a lengthy exchange of views—our bus was always late—the ‘Council of Cutshaw Avenue’ concluded that the primary difference was that they believed in a man named Jesus and we did not. End of subject.”

  “Listen to the testimony of this rabbi.” A man wearing a yarmulke appeared on the massive screen and began to speak.

  Growing up in an orthodox Jewish household, I held great antipathy toward Jesus. The very name reminded me of the suffering laid upon Jewish communities for two thousand years: persecutions, forced conversions, expulsions, inquisitions, false accusations, degradations, economic exile, taxation, pogroms, stereotyping, ghettoization, and systematic extermination. All this incomprehensible violence and cruelty against us, against our friends and families, committed in the name of a Jew!

  In my neighborhood, we did not even mention his name.1

  “This rabbi, along with countless other Jews, could not help but factor in the Church’s wide-ranging record of ungodly behavior when considering Yeshua. But what if Jewish people were able to appraise both the person and the message of Yeshua without any knowledge of either how the rabbis have viewed Him or how the Church has misrepresented Him?” Ariel pondered. “What if they could read the New Covenant without this bias?”

  “I don’t know that it could ever happen.”

  “Perhaps not, but you are with me, David, to receive an honest, accurate picture of this Man and His followers. No, it will not erase what you have learned from history, but it will give you the knowledge and capacity to discern history so that you will be able to differentiate Yeshua from religious fanatics who caused great damage to the Jewish people in His name.”

  Note

  * * *

  1. Shmuley Boteach, Kosher Jesus (Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House, 2012), ix.

  Chapter Seven

  WHO KILLED JESUS?

  Ariel continued, “While the Holocaust, unlike the Crusades and the Inquisitions, was not explicitly religious, the Church had set the stage. I am sure you have read the old axiom about Jews being called Christ Killers. The Nazis and others throughout the centuries have long enjoyed the employment of this claim as a satanic pretext for blood libels, pogroms, and Holocaust-scale genocide. In short, it is the excuse for nearly every perverted form of persecution that anti-Semitism has ever staged. And the enemy utilized all of this to further alienate Jews from their Jewish Messiah.

  “Yes, Christ Killer has become a common moniker for Jews during these past 1,900 years. Under this theme, Jewish blood has flowed down the streets of not only Jerusalem, but numerous other cities as well.”

  “It never made any sense to me,” I shared, “how an entire race of people over thousands of years of existence could be responsible for the killing of one man.”

  “Well David, who do you think really killed Yeshua?”

  “I could make a case for the Romans, as Jews were forbidden from enforcing a death penalty. But I do know that it was Jewish people who handed Him over to the Romans.”

  Ariel helped, “Actually, David, it was primarily the Jewish leaders, not the people, who had a problem with Yeshua. I want you to read this.”

  As the words came out of his mouth, they appeared written in fire. Two passages of Scripture were before me, with some commentary in between. They were suspended in air and close enough for me to touch. I was in awe. “Go ahead, read!” I did.

  Now when the chief priests and Pharisees heard His parables, they perceived that He was speaking of them. But when they sought to lay hands on [Yeshua], they feared the multitudes [of Jews]… (Matthew 21:45-46 NKJV).

  “In secret they found Him praying with His disciples at night, and only then did they dare arrest Him. In the morning, the day they planned to execute Him, the residents of Jerusalem were stunned to see this beloved Rabbi condemned. Read this next one.”

  Again, I read as I was asked.

  And a great multitude of the people followed Him… who also mourned and lamented Him (Luke 23:27 NKJV).

  “Yeshua was taken to the home of Pilate. He was the Roman governor over the province of Judea. Read on.”

  Again, emblazoned in fire I saw the Scriptures, but this time certain words were highlighted:

  Then the detachment of soldiers with its commander and the Jewish officials arrested Jesus… (John 18:12).

  Then the Jewish leaders took Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor… (John 18:28).

  “While in the Greek,” Ariel shared, “it merely says ‘they’ in verse twenty-eight, it is understood that the ‘they’ in this verse is referring to the Jewish officials in verse twelve.”

  “Ariel, I was told that the entire city of Jerusalem was shouting for Him to be crucified. That would be more than just a few leaders.”

  “Nowhere in the New Testament does it claim that the entire city was calling for His death, but a crowd of people, out of about a half a million who were in the city at the time… and even this crowd had been worked up by the religious leaders. But you are not the first to wrongly assume this. As you will see on our journey, Yeshua was loved by the Jewish masses and they came from all over the region to hear Him teach. I want you to read a message that a Messianic Jew sent to a Christian author on Facebook.”

  “Facebook? An angel who’s into Facebook?”

  “Well, I don’t have my own account, but yes David, w
e kind of know about everything. Read!” Immediately, a Facebook page containing a message appeared on the screen.

  Dear Martin,

  My name is Avi Marks. I came across your website and I found your article, “Jesus and the Jews” very interesting; it was certainly well researched.

  May I just offer one critique that will help your Jewish readers? You used the phrase “the Jews” over fifty times. Sometimes it is just part of the phrase “king of the Jews.” But more often than not, you are referring to the group of men who brought Yeshua to Pilate. John 18:12 makes it clear that it was not “the Jews” who brought Yeshua to Pilate, but “Jewish officials,” “officers of the Jews,” or the “Temple guards,” just to quote a few modern translations.

  The problem with the way you use the term “the Jews,” is that it makes it appear as if you are saying all of the Jews. There are a few times when you correctly say Jewish religious leaders, but for the most part you simply say, “the Jews.”

  It is true that in the Greek, John at certain times simply writes the phrase “the Jews” (John 18:14; 19:7,12), but there can be no doubt that he is referring to the Jewish leadership. In fact, some modern English translations, such as the New International Version, actually translate those passages using the phrase “the Jewish leaders” as opposed to “the Jews” even though they know that is not what the Greek says. How can they be so bold?

  I’ll explain. Take a look at John 18:14: “Now it was Caiaphas who advised the Jews that it was expedient that one man should die for the people” (NKJV).