![\"ELAV\"](\"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/ELAV.jpg\")
<\/a>ELAV<\/p><\/div>
\nElav Conference Brings Arab Christians and Jewish Believers Together <\/p>\n
Sandwiched between the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli yeshiva students, followed by the revenge killing of an Arab youth from East Jerusalem, and just before Hamas began to rain down rockets on Israel\u2019s main population centers, Succat Hallel, Jerusalem\u2019s 24\/7 Prayer Ministry, as it has for the last several years, brought together a divergent group of Arab Palestinian Christians and Jewish believers from Israel and abroad for its annual Elav Youth Conference. <\/p>\n
Against this background of abductions and murders, conference organizer Rick Ridings told Israel Today Magazine, \u201cThese young people came carrying a lot of hurt because of all the recent violence here in Israel. Many of them thought that they had dealt with these feelings, but because of the kidnappings and killings they are in pain, on both sides.\u201d<\/p>\n
The uniqueness of the conference is that it gives Arabs and Jews the opportunity to meet together, to praise the Lord, and to pray for each other. In past years Arabs from the Gaza Strip have attended where they gave their testimonies and prayed together with Israeli believing soldiers. This year Christian believing Arabs attended from East Jerusalem that had been barricaded in their homes for days before, due to the riots that had broken out over the deaths of the three abducted soldiers followed by that of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, the Arab Muslim youth who had been cruelly murdered by Jewish extremists. <\/p>\n
At this year\u2019s conference a formerly ultra-Orthodox Jewish girl, Chava, gave a moving testimony of extended abuse by her extreme Orthodox family, of being forced into a loveless marriage at an early age and of working to save her money to buy her way out of the marriage by paying off her husband and her own family. Having come to faith in Yeshua Jesus she was sent by her father to an uncle in the states and forced to suffer psychiatric treatment designed to cure her of her belief in Yeshua. Returning to Israel she managed to free herself from her family and to attend the conference. \u201cDancing together with Arabs? Laughing together with them? These are the people I hated my whole life,\u201d said Chava.<\/p>\n
Chava described how she used to accompany her family to the Western Wall to pray that bad things would happen to the Arabs. \u201cBut when I saw them praying to God, and heard them worshipping in Hebrew and then in Arabic, God touched my heart. These are the lost brothers and sisters I have been looking for all my life,\u201d she said.
\n\u201cAs I washed the feet of my Arab sister, I was able to ask forgiveness for the way my family, and my people, look at them (Arabs),\u201d said Chava. \u201cTo hear her say that she forgives me and loves me was so healing. It was the love from Yeshua, nothing else. I never had an Arab friend. Now I have daily contact with my sisters in Ramallah, Jordan and Lebanon,\u201d said a smiling Chava.<\/p>\n
Because of her sensitive situation, it was necessary to remove Chava\u2019s archived videoed testimony from the conference website for her own safety. <\/p>\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/div><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Barry Rosenfeld \u201cThere is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.\u201d (Galatians 3:28) Elav Conference Brings Arab Christians and Jewish Believers Together Sandwiched between the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli yeshiva students, followed by the revenge killing of more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1866,"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":[131,28],"tags":[75,625,632,631,125,287],"class_list":{"0":"post-1865","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israeli-life","8":"category-israeli-life-culture","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-israeli-news","11":"tag-israeli-culture","12":"tag-israeli-life","13":"tag-news-from-jerusalem","14":"tag-reconciliation","15":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1865","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=1865"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1867,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1865\/revisions\/1867"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}