A number of years ago, I was asked the following question: Why do dedicated Christians are obligated to support Israel?
Both Christians and Jews believe in the Torah, also known as the Five Books of Moses. Both believe in the holiness of Abraham, our shared patriarch, who introduced the world to monotheism. And both believe that when G-d sends a message, it is our responsibility to seek its meaning and make every effort to understand it properly.
Jewish and Christian philosophers alike have long been challenged by the question of Abraham’s greatest test—the binding of Isaac. After all, G-d knew the outcome in advance. Why, then, was such a test necessary?
I am of the opinion that the test was neither for G-d nor even for Abraham himself, but for the world.
Abraham had separated himself from the society around him. He rejected its norms and began worshipping a “new” G-d. His contemporaries ridiculed him, saying: We are more devoted than you—we even sacrifice our children to our gods, such as Molech.
G-d therefore instructed Abraham to speak to them in their own language. Go and sacrifice your son, G-d commanded—thereby demonstrating that Abraham’s dedication to G-d was no less absolute than theirs to their idols. But once the world witnessed Abraham’s total devotion, the point had been made. There was no need to proceed further, and the angel stopped him.
As a Jew, I do not believe in Jesus. However, I do believe that the unique historical phenomenon represented by Jesus was ‘an act of G-d’, for nothing in this world happens unless G-d wills it.
G-d offered the Christian world a remarkable message. Christians are obligated to understand it.
Christians measure history along two parallel lines: from the creation of the world [as do Jews], and from the birth of Jesus. If we search for a point of convergence between these two timelines, we discover the reason why Christians need to support Israel.
1,948 years elapsed between the creation of the world and the birth of Abraham, who is holy to all monotheistic religions. Exactly 1,948 years elapsed between the birth of Jesus and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
This parallel is not coincidental. It is a message—one that calls upon Christians to recognise the rebirth of Israel as part of a divine historical continuum and to stand with the Jewish people in their return to their ancestral homeland.
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