{"id":1423,"date":"2014-05-12T21:12:26","date_gmt":"2014-05-12T21:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/?p=1423"},"modified":"2014-05-14T19:49:34","modified_gmt":"2014-05-14T19:49:34","slug":"voting-as-a-believer-in-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/voting-as-a-believer-in-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"Voting As A Believer in Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Cookie Schwaeber-Issan,
\nManaging Director of Makor HaTikvah<\/a> Messianic School, Jerusalem, Israel<\/p>\n

Navigating your way around Israeli political candidates is a completely different ballgame here in the land.
\nIn the U.S., born-again believers, generally speaking, hold conservative values and opinions which usually translates into their voting either for the Republican or Conservative candidate who most closely shares their biblical viewpoint \u2013 one which does not accept abortion, civil unions (gay marriage) and not ceding any of the land of Israel for \u201cpeace.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BenjaminNetanyahu\"<\/a>

BenjaminNetanyahu<\/p><\/div>\n

Here in Israel, it is not quite that black and white. For example, the Likud party, from which Benjamin Netanyahu emerged, and which may be defined as holding more conservative positions, may not be so sympathetic towards Messianic Jews. In fact, among the present coalition are many ultra-Orthodox parties which would be seriously opposed to Aliyah (immigration) of believers or which would seek to silence their ability to freely share their faith to other Israelis who are interested in knowing more. A case in point was that in the late 1990\u2019s, a bill was introduced, although never adopted as a result of Netanyahu ultimately killing the bill, which would have made it illegal to share one\u2019s faith or even distribute a New Testament to an Israeli non-believer. This bill was initiated by the ultra-religious parties and sought to impede the rights of believers in a way that could be so loosely translated so as to imprison believers for even the smallest infraction of just explaining what it means to be a Messianic Jew.<\/p>\n

On the other side, there are political candidates who tend to favor more religious and social freedom which would include an \u201calmost anything goes\u201d attitude as it concerns marriage (civil unions, adoption of children to gay couples), non-observance of Shabbat (making it legal for public transportation to operate and stores to open), abortion on demand, adopting the two-state solution and much more. Yet, those individuals are more open to Messianic believers, are more likely to embrace the diversity and to allow them full religious and immigration rights.<\/p>\n

Therein lies the dilemma \u2013 do you, as an Israeli believer vote for the candidate and party which would support your personal freedoms as a believer but who, at the same time, would be in favor of breaking God\u2019s laws or do you vote for the candidate and party which would align itself more biblically but could ostensibly end up sending you to prison?<\/p>\n

Certainly not an easy choice, and that is why most Israeli believers are very split on this subject. While a number of them embrace the more liberal parties, for the obvious reasons, others feel that their conscience would not allow them to do so, and they tend to vote Likud, knowing only too well that this could, one day, backfire on them.<\/p>\n

Some Israeli believers feel that there should be a Messianic Jewish representative in the Knesset in order to make sure that believers\u2019 rights are always maintained, and in order to make that happen, a number of Jewish believers are seeking to be more politically active and involved in the goal of making sure that freedom of religion is always preserved in the country where their Messiah was born.<\/p>\n

Either way, much prayer needs to precede voting in Israel and being fully aware of the candidate\u2019s coalition preference. This can help to make a wise and informed choice as to which is the lesser of the two evils. For now, that is how Israeli politics works.<\/p>\n

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By Cookie Schwaeber-Issan, Managing Director of Makor HaTikvah Messianic School, Jerusalem, Israel Navigating your way around Israeli political candidates is a completely different ballgame here in the land. In the U.S., born-again believers, generally speaking, hold conservative values and opinions which usually translates into their voting either for the Republican or Conservative candidate who most more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1424,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[184,75,135,631,185,132,125,197],"class_list":{"0":"post-1423","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israeli-life-culture","8":"tag-faith","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-israel-news","11":"tag-israeli-life","12":"tag-makor-hatikva","13":"tag-messianic","14":"tag-news-from-jerusalem","15":"tag-voting","16":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1423"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1428,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423\/revisions\/1428"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}