Haredim, Racism And The N Word
'Watch out, missionaries!'
Larry Derfner , THE JERUSALEM POSTThe word "nigger" features prominently in the videos taken by Eddie Beckford and his wife Lura, a Messianic Christian couple living in the desert town of Arad. The videos, going back to 2005, show anywhere from a handful to a mob of local Gur Hassidim harassing them and other Messianics in town. Eddie Beckford, 61, is a black American, hence the racial slur.
"Nigger, go back to Harlem!" chants one gleeful man in the midst of hundreds of shouting, singing, fired-up hassidim who surrounded Beckford's storefront chess-club-cum-Christian-mission on Shabbat, June 17, 2005. Eddie was filming from inside the club while about 10 other fearful Messianics were praying.
"Come here you stupid nigger!" another hassid calls out. "Nigger bastard!" yells another. They curse in English, usually accented. The police keep the crowd a short distance away from the club; otherwise they do nothing.
The term "bastard" is also popular with the Gur Hassidim seen in the videos, but it's usually in reference to Jesus. "They took some bastard and they believe he rose from the grave," says one haredi filmed last year taunting the Messianics who were giving away second-hand clothes outside the chess club. "Where is your bastard?" the man demands, laughing quietly.
About two months after the video was taken, the club, near the entrance to the town's market, was burned down in the middle of the night. (Rebuilt, it now has bars over the rear entrance.) Some time later, dozens of liters of gasoline were poured around the club's perimeter in the daytime, when several elderly Russian immigrants were playing chess inside, say local Messianics.
Members of the Arad congregation, which numbers about 50, say they've had their tires slashed dozens of times. They've been surrounded, threatened and cursed by Gur Hassidim in the market, on the streets or in their homes for about five years. In all this time they can only recall one arrest of a suspect, and he was released immediately. I tried three times, in person and by phone, to speak to Yuval Paz, Arad's police chief, and he was never available, nor did he call me back.
"All their claims are false," insists a haredi man passing by Yeshivat Lev Sameah near the entrance to Arad's Halamish neighborhood, where the 2,000 or so local Gur Hassidim live. The man, who wouldn't give his name and who was the only hassid I approached who agreed to talk with me even off-the-record, said he took part in some of the protests against the Messianics. "We all did," he said, pointing to the Halamish quarter.
He said he wasn't against Christians, just against missionaries who proselytize Jews, insisting that this was against the law. (In fact, it isn't. Israeli law only forbids proselytizing minors or "bribing" potential converts with money or material favors.)
"This is not their land, this is the land of the Jews," he said. "All these missionaries have to be removed."
From Arad? I asked.
"From Israel," he replied.
ISRAEL'S MESSIANIC Jewish congregations, which are heavily mixed with born Christians like the Beckfords, have been hounded by the haredim in numerous cities over the years. But no congregation has gotten it worse than the one in Arad. In nearby Beersheba, the main local Messianic group also receives much more than its share of trouble from local haredim.
Yoyakim Figueras, the Israeli-born leader of the local congregation, says that when the demonstrations outside his family's Arad house began a few years back, "they used to yell 'Nazi,' and 'Nazi dog.' Now they've become more sophisticated and they chant, 'Stop baptizing Jews into Christianity.'"
The congregation in Arad includes Christians, Arabs, African refugees, foreign students and workers and Russian immigrants who weren't brought up Jewish, says Figueras.
Asked if there were also "standard" Israeli Jews - those raised Jewish by a Jewish mother and father - he replied, "Very few."
The Messianics baptize those who "come to Jesus," but they have scant attraction for mainstream Israeli Jews. As for gaining new converts, Figueras says nothing has helped the cause in Arad like "the publicity we've gotten from the ultra-Orthodox."
Virtually every Tuesday night, about 15 of them come to chant outside his house. "This is where we used to hold our prayer meetings. They got a permit to demonstrate, and now we hold the prayer meetings elsewhere, but they keep coming to my house and bothering my wife and kids. When I ask the police how they can let people demonstrate week after week outside a person's private hone because they don't like his religion, they tell me, 'This is a democratic country,'" says Figueras, 39, a social worker who now works full-time as the congregation's pastor. A couple of haredi protesters also show up at the Messianics' weekly Shabbat morning services, he adds.
Those protests are the focus of the local Gur Hassidim's campaign now that Beckford is under house arrest for assaulting one of them. Beckford has been confined to a rented, furnished house in a nice part of Arad, where he is kept company by his wife and by frequent visitors from the congregation, since February of last year. He is under house arrest because of an incident that occurred last year, when he was visited at the chess club by a Messianic couple who'd brought their infant along. A few Gur Hassidim pursued them and soon had them surrounded. Beckford, a tall, strongly-built Vietnam War veteran raised in a rough part of Manhattan, waded into the pack, pushed the leader to the ground and punched him out, injuring his ear.
The husband of the visiting couple, who has since left Arad to get away from the hassidim's harassment, told me by phone that he and his wife, who had been holding their baby in a "snuggly," were terrified. "Before that they'd come to our house and yelled 'goy,' 'Christian,' 'traitor.' They once threw a placard at my daughter, she was afraid to leave the house for a long time after that. One of them, named Mendel, had given me a lot of trouble, and when he saw us that day in the shouk he began following us, yelling, chasing us with the others and I thought he was going to attack us. Then Eddie jumped in, threw Mendel down, hit him and then I grabbed Eddie and pulled him off," the husband recalls.
On the wall opposite the chess club are faded posters put up by Yad L'Achim, the haredi anti-missionary organization that's instrumental in the campaigns in Arad and elsewhere. "The missionary Edwin Beckford under house arrest," reads the headline above a copy of the court order. Underneath, it reads: "Citizens of Arad: The missionaries are out to ambush you! Don't give them a stronghold in Arad." Underneath that, the warning, "Watch out, missionaries!" is repeated four times.
SITTING IN their living room, Beckford, with his thick white moustache and goatee, looks like a distinguished jazz veteran while his wife Lura looks like a youthful Middle American grandmother. She immigrated to Israel in 1995 with her Messianic Jewish husband, a Vietnam War buddy of Eddie's. After her husband died of a heart attack, Lura and Eddie gradually became close and eventually married; Eddie joined her here in 2001.
On the soundtrack of the video of the 2005 mob scene outside the chess club, Beckford, after the first time he films someone calling him a "nigger," is heard saying into the microphone, "You're the only guy who's living who doesn't have a broken jaw for calling me that... You better be glad I'm saved."
He's taken a lot in Arad. "They slashed six tires on our car and van. They scratched the car; they wrote 'f**k' all over it. They'd call us up all the time in the middle of the night. I'd come home and see them leaning up against the wall of the house," he says. "I went to the police over and over again, and they'd tell me to wait here, sit over there, go to some other office. I'd be there for four hours, six hours, and nothing ever got done." After being called "nigger" repeatedly by one haredi man, Beckford sued him for slander, but the case has been delayed from one date to the next.
A Jewish shopkeeper in the market says: "Everything that happened to him, his troubles with the law, are a result of the provocations by the haredim. They were very, very aggressive. The haredim came every Monday, when the produce stands are open and a lot of people come to shop. They'd come by the dozens every week, and on holidays there'd be hundreds of them, blowing a shofar. They called him and his wife terrible names. They'd call him 'nigger'; they'd call her 'whore.' Really, no normal person could listen to that all the time and do nothing. Eddie's a good man, peaceful; he has his own ideology, but he doesn't bother anybody. Just finally he couldn't take it anymore, and so maybe he hit one of them."
The shopkeeper says he called police several times against the marauders, "but as soon as the police showed up, they would run away, and that was it." Since Beckford was placed under house arrest and no longer comes to the chess club, the haredi assaults have stopped, he adds. "It's quiet here now." The shopkeeper insisted on anonymity, saying, "I don't want to take any chances with the haredim around here."
IN ONE of the Beckfords' videos, a Gur hassid is seen berating one of the Messianic women handing out free clothes when the hassid is told that the woman was born Jewish. Speaking to the camera in accented English, he offers Jesus a sarcastic word of thanks.
"All the rotten Jews he took out of us, we should thank him. Take all the rotten Jews. Take all the stinking Jews that no one wants," he says.
Pointing to the woman he's targeted, he goes on: "She has a black child. All the blacks, he'll take them all." Waving his hand dismissively, the hassid mutters, "Sick people."
A Messianic woman is heard telling him, "God made black children."
He continues: "We needed that stupid Jesus, that bastard of Jews, to take out all the sick Jews and all the sick Christians out of us." In the end he says something about "six million Jews." It's hard to make out the context. Overall, though, the picture is clear enough.
[Hat Tip: Joel Katz.]
Whatever happened to freedom of religion? I guess it's not a concept that the Talibanista frumbags believe in. Unfortunately, that's not news to any of us.
Posted by: MisterApikoros | July 05, 2009 at 08:31 AM
As much as I dislike Jeez for Jewsus, I a support freedom of conscience. And using racial slurs is never appropriate. Hello? Some Jews are brown or black.
Posted by: Yochanan Lavie | July 05, 2009 at 09:08 AM
yohanan: those brown and black jews are only jews if u recognize their conversions... which those shmucks wouldn't.
Posted by: Backseat Blogger | July 05, 2009 at 11:20 AM
I thought the Hassid is from the root Hesed, but how can you call this behavior hesed?
Posted by: Ben | July 05, 2009 at 11:29 AM
This reminds me of the Chinese Jews who met European Jews for the first time...that couldn't be true! Jews looked like...Chinese!
From that it's clear that Jews look like everybody in the world.
I myself am one big Israëli Salad with Greek, Spanish and Portugues ancestry...dark hair bright eyes, my father is a red-head, mother is 'black' etc...
Very colourfull. But (in this case) the (Gur) Hasidiem are colourblind.
They have no 'wordly-education', they don't speak their languages, they have no idea of politics or knowledge of historical events and the connection between those... they are driven by hate and contempt. What is there to expect from an idiot?
Not only are Christians etc...outcasts but so am I/we. The only reason for them to let me live is because I am a Jew. But that's about it. They don't look down on us..we don't even excist!
They insult every holocaust survivor by the misuse of the word nazi (...), as if one can compare anything to the Shoa.
In their stupidity they enjoy insulting and hurting and ridiculing others in their convictions. They don't hesitate to use violence or worse. They love to incite eachother and create a complete hysteria.
Loving to use their 'crying-voices' as if they're praying on Yom Kippur...A complete show in order to convince themselves and others...
(What was the first Latin lesson at the Gymnasia..treife education to them!..MUNDUS FULDECIPI !!.."the world want's to be fooled!"...and so it is..)
Not the police..but (also) the army should be enforced to solve problems IN and caused BY that community. No second-thoughts. It's a safety/security matter.
And when it comes to riots..that should be a know-brainer.
A police-unit of women only should approach them...shouting they are all NIDDE! Might save a lot of damages...
Posted by: Dorian | July 05, 2009 at 12:01 PM
He is in Israel only to proselytize which for a Christian is not optional. This is the only reason he is in Israel, seeking to convert as many jews as possible before the "Second Coming".
Any Christian found proselytizing a Jew in Israel must be deported, in my opinion. Obviously, he cannot promise not to do it. We have enough people destroying the country as it is.
As far as haredim - quit paying for yeshivot and draft everyone of the right age and they won't have time to make trouble.
Posted by: Reader | July 05, 2009 at 05:15 PM
By your convoluted "logic," any Jew in the USA caught proselytizing a Christian should also be deported.
Most Christians, btw, aren't proselytizers.
Posted by: MisterApikoros | July 05, 2009 at 07:20 PM
Well, why don't they go to Saudi Arabia and see what happens when they try to proselytize for Christianity there.
Oh yeah. They get put to death.
Posted by: Dr. Dave | July 06, 2009 at 03:13 AM
I get it now, Dave. As long as we're not quite as bad as the Saudis it's all good.
This is the same tortured - forgive the pun - logic that the Right wingnuts used to justify torture. Al Qaeda cuts off people's heads, so if we're just as bad as Al Qaeda and torture people to death, which we have been doing it's alright. We should only be judge by the standards of the worst people in the world.
"Jews and Americans: No worse than the scum of the Earth."
Not exactly my idea of a ringing endorsement.
Posted by: A. Nuran | July 06, 2009 at 10:37 AM
Hello.
I have just read through this story & would like to say from a neutral perspective. This Gur Hassidim group is just as bad as the thousands of groups that hate & persecute Jews for simply being Jews.
However, Gur Hassidim hatred does have an excellent "posative" effect on messianic Christians. They aid in the free publicity of Christianity in Israel. Gur Hassidim insensativity shows the Muslims that they advocate religious persecution just like the Muslims do making Gur Hassidim no better than them.
Gur Hassidim also does a wonderful job at seperating the true believers in Christ from the luke warm half hearted followers as a true believer knows the scriptures speak about persecution in the name of Yeshua & the more they persecute, the more strength Jewish Christians gain from the prophecies of Christ being fullfilled in front of their eyes.
Just as a fanatical Muslim loves to blow-up Jews in the name of Allah. A true Christian will not return violence instead praying for the honour of suffering in the name of Christ.
My personal advice is for Gur Hassidim to keep up the good work, Christianity in Israel needs more pig-headed groups like this to maintain the growth rates they are achieving around the planet & in the home-land.
Posted by: David Morris | July 07, 2009 at 05:56 AM
These Gur Hassidim really do need a wake-up call. I assume that they are not familiar with the "Do unto others as you wish them to do unto you" verse.
Posted by: Yakira | August 25, 2009 at 11:41 AM