Wild Things Happening in Israel

Over the last day or so, I have seen some interesting videos from a man named Zev Porat. He’s a messianic rabbi who lives in Israel. I have probably written about him before.

His story is remarkable. He comes from a family of rabbis, and he was set to become one himself. He was guaranteed a huge inheritance. Somewhere along the way, he realized Yeshua was the Messiah. He adored his grandfather, but when he told him about his belief, the old man immediately began grabbing plates and throwing them at his head, cutting him so badly he had to get stitches. His grandfather yelled, “Goy! Traitor! Get out of here!”

That was the end of his cushy life and multi-million-dollar inheritance.

When his grandfather died, his family hired guards for the funeral, and they physically removed Porat from the premises. His grandfather left him an inheritance worth over $40 million, but to get it, he had to sign a paper saying he didn’t believe in Yeshua. He refused to sign, so he was disinherited.

He was fired from his job simply because he believed in Yeshua; he was not discussing his beliefs at work. He and his wife ended up living on a beach in a tent. One night, a group of rabbis entered the tent and offered Porat money in exchange for recanting. Porat refused, and the rabbis spat on him and his wife and left. It’s an amazing story. Intelligent clergymen, spitting on people!

Now he does exactly what the rabbis and his boss were afraid he would do. He tells religious Jews about Yeshua. He even does it at the Western Wall, which is Judaism’s most holy site. The place is always packed with Orthodox Jews who are not exactly open to the gospel.

There are a couple of things that surprise me about his story.

First, he successfully reaches religious Jews, including rabbis, who study in yeshivas. The conventional wisdom is that they are hard to get through to. The Christian explanation is that they have been filled with false ideas that make them resistant, and that God has put a veil in front of their eyes. The Jewish explanation is that they are too knowledgeable to be fooled by “missionaries.”

He has had wild success with a number of knowledgeable Jews, and he does it by showing them the Bible. Apparently, they spend a tremendous amount of time looking at secondary sources like the Talmud and the Gemara, but they know very little about the scriptures. That’s incredible. You would think they would know them better than anyone.

He shows them verses like Micah 5:2 and Isaiah 7:14, and they are surprised to learn the verses exist. He shows them Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, too. If they knew the scriptures well, they could not possibly be surprised like this.

One of the funny things that happens is that he will quote a verse, and the person he’s talking to will say, “That’s from the Christian Bible. Don’t read to me from that.” Then he shows them he’s reading from the Tanakh; the Old Testament. That blows their minds.

There is actually an Old Testament scripture that says the Lord will walk on water. That surprised even me. We all know Jesus walked on water.

I digress, but I’m surprised he gets anywhere with Isaiah 7:14. This is a messianic prophecy that says an alma will give birth to the Messiah. It says it will be “a sign.” The traditional anti-missionary argument is that “alma” means “young woman,” not virgin. I haven’t seen anyone throw that back at him, so maybe the anti-missionaries aren’t as thorough as they could be.

Question: how is it “a sign” if an ordinary young woman conceives? It’s obviously not. In the Bible, signs are miraculous things only God can do. If “alma” doesn’t mean “virgin,” then Isaiah 7:14 is wrong, because it calls ordinary conception a sign. It’s like saying, “There will be a sign. A man will walk on dry ground.”

He accosted a prominent rabbi in Ashkelon and showed him some verses, and the man was so shaken, he accepted Yeshua on the spot. That almost defies belief.

It shows that the rabbi was very humble in spite of his exalted status. When you think you know everything, you cease to learn. Learning is impossible without humility.

The second thing that startles me about Porat’s videos is that he shows that one of Israel’s most revered rabbis, who was venerated even by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, believed that Yeshua was the Messiah. He taught his students to accept Yeshua. I did not know this.

The rabbi in question was named Kaduri. He died a few years back. He was over a hundred years old. Before he died, he wrote a note suggesting the Messiah’s name was “Yehoshua,” which is the same name as “Yeshua.” If “Yehoshua” is like “Thomas,” “Yeshua” (which means “salvation”) is like “Tom.”

Kaduri’s son claims the note was forged and that Kaduri was not well enough to write it, but his students say the handwriting is Kaduri’s. I don’t know if it’s possible to determine the truth and prove it conclusively.

Porat has a video in which he interviews one of Kaduri’s students, and the man confirms that Kaduri accepted Yeshua and told his students Yeshua was the Messiah. He says Kaduri was afraid to go public, and this is why he kept it private. That was news to me. It looks like not all Jews with religious educations are immune to Yeshua.

I knew that Kaduri had written the note, but I didn’t know he had accepted THE Yeshua, or that he had taught others they should do the same thing. “Yehoshua” is a common name, so saying the Messiah is named Yehoshua is not the same thing as identifying him with Jesus Christ.

I’m not all that enthusiastic about Kaduri, because he said some things that don’t make sense. For example, he said the spirit of the Messiah had attached itself to a person living in Israel, who would eventually be revealed. Yeshua said he would return in the clouds, and that the whole world would see it. There is no mention of reincarnation. Still, Kaduri’s change of heart is extraordinary.

Something similar happened a long time ago in Bulgaria. Daniel Zion, a man who served for a time as the nation’s chief rabbi, had a vision in which Yeshua appeared to him. He never became a Christian, preferring to hold onto his Orthodox beliefs and practices while accepting Yeshua as savior and Messiah. His colleagues declared him insane based on his new faith and experiences. One wonders what they would have thought of Moses, wandering around in a veil, claiming he had seen God’s back.

He emigrated to Israel. In the 1950’s, he was offered a seat on the Beit Din (rabbinical court), but he was told he would have to keep his beliefs silent. He refused, so that was the end of that.

People try to discredit Zion. They claim, for example, that he was never the chief rabbi of Bulgaria. If you search for lists of Bulgaria’s chief rabbis, you will see they don’t include him, perhaps because of his “illness.” Some lists have gaps during the time when he served. A Jewish reference book written in America in the Fifties says he was, in fact, the chief rabbi. It’s available online. Strange, how his name is so hard to find now. Maybe someone needs to remove that book from the Internet!

Why is it that a seemingly innocuous fact is so hard to prove? Why is so much evidence gone? Surely no one who cares about the truth would try to hide it.

It really doesn’t matter whether that he was the chief rabbi. It’s a big deal when any Orthodox rabbi sees Yeshua and believes in him.

Zion helped save a Bulgaria’s Jews from the Nazis, so it is not possible to erase his name completely. Anyone who might want his name “blotted out,” as the curse goes, will have a hard time.

Here is the uncomfortable part of the story: Zion saved the Jews by mentioning a vision of Yeshua. Bulgaria had a king named Boris. Zion got a letter to him, saying that Yeshua had told him that if he gave in to the Nazis and started sending Jews to death camps in Germany and Poland, God would punish Bulgaria. Boris, though willing to support anti-Semitic laws and internal exile to labor camps, chose not to deport the Jews.

So Bulgaria’s Jews were spared through the efforts of a person their leaders determined to be insane, and the basis of his efforts was the supposed insanity itself!

The Nazis were not fond of Zion. He was flogged repeatedly in front of the community.

It’s not a shock to see that Zion was considered insane. This is not unusual. A friend of mine has a Jewish wife, and she forced him to see a psychiatrist because she believed Christianity was a mental illness. The psychiatrist agrees! Also, Zev Porat’s family tried to make him see a shrink. If you check One for Israel’s Youtube channel, you can find the testimony of a man who says his family had him locked up in an asylum.

He’s a Messianic rabbi now.

It’s strange that modern, educated people act like his family, but it happens.

I suppose we underestimate the power of God and his willingness to move people. We see individuals who seem impervious to persuasion, but when God touches their hearts, our feeble words do amazing things. We just have to know whom to talk to. People are like fruit. You can’t pick them until they’re ripe. We can’t tell which ones are ripe unless we ask God, and often he sends us people we thought were hopeless.

If elderly rabbis who have been soaking in anti-Yeshua teaching since birth can believe, then what group of people is beyond reach? We should even be able to reach many of the Muslims who torture and murder Christians every day. We just need God to put the ripe fruit in front of us so we can avoid casting pearls before swine who will turn and rend us.

Fascinating stuff. I hope Porat’s efforts spread throughout Israel.

MORE

This is remarkable. I watched another one of Porat’s videos, and I saw that the Holy Spirit has told him the same thing he told me.

Isaiah 7:14 says this:

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Christians who preach to Jews have used this verse a lot. It says a virgin shall give birth, and that points to Jesus. Jews have resisted, saying the Hebrew word “alma,” which is translated “virgin,” really just means “young woman.” Today I was writing about this. I saw that Zev Porat was using Isaiah 7:14 in his conversations with Jews, and I wondered why they were not reciting the anti-missionary claim that “alma” does not mean “virgin.”

I got the answer today.

I saw another of his videos. He was talking to a rabbi. He mentioned Isaiah 7:14, and the rabbi said “alma” meant “young woman.” Porat, an Israeli from an Orthodox family, who had trained to become a rabbi, asked if “alma” meant “virgin” in the Tanakh (Old Testament).

The rabbi told him it did.

Now I see why Porat is able to use this verse successfully.

Apparently, “alma” is like “maiden.” The word “maiden” actually means “virgin,” but because modern women are what they are, we now use it to mean “young woman.” “Alma” seems to work the same way. In Old Testament times, it was assumed that a young, unmarried woman was a virgin, because it was almost always true. Now, women are more debased, so it makes sense that modern Israelis would use the world “alma” differently.

Earlier today, I wondered why anyone would think a young woman giving birth would be a sign from God, because many, many young women give birth, and no one considers it miraculous. In the same video in which Porat got the rabbi to admit that “alma” means “virgin,” he asked the same question I did! He knew the verse made no sense unless “alma” meant “virgin.”

God tells everyone the same things, all the time.