The LDS Church's relationship with the Jewish Officials

First of all, we need to look at what the current proselytizing laws are in Israel.

Additionally, Covid19 has thrown a monkey wrench into everything, and now, no non-Israeli Citizen may enter Israel, without full vaccination, unless special permission is granted.  (As of Nov. 2021)

1.  ISRAELI LAWS RE: SHARING {NON-JUDAISM} BELIEFS

There are a couple of links below if you would like to read more about Israeli laws in regards to Missionary work in Israel. They do have limitations, but it's not illegal to share your beliefs as long as it is within certain parameters. There is also freedom of religion in Israel. Note that, the United States is not Israel. Thus, people or organizations which are independent of the LDS Church, theoretically could share the gospel with Jews or other people in Israel, within the parameters of what Israeli laws allow.  The LDS church has signed agreements in the past to not proselytize, and to restrict most Temple ordinance work for deceased Jews.  These LDS-BYU agreements last for years.

There are groups in Israel that "share" the Good News and gain interested Jewish and Arab people, more than 30,000 souls now have come to Yeshua - Christ. However, it is this ministry's hope that American Mormons will get prepared on their own, to share with their Jewish friends, wherever they may be, here or abroad.

https://lawoffice.org.il/en/missionary-activity-in-israel/

https://2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2001/5697.htm

 

 

2. WHAT IS THE LDS/BYU AGREEMENT WITH ISRAEL?  TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE BYU CENTER IN JERUSALEM.

 

 

https://jerusalemcenter.ce.byu.edu/sites/jerusalemcenter.ce.byu.edu/files/non-proselytizingagreement.pdf

https://byu-jc.org/

Yes, it is a beautiful complex. Ultimately it is the Word and Spirit of God, which bring a soul to higher spirituality.  Not the building itself.

https://www.ldsliving.com/How-the-BYU-Jerusalem-Center-Nearly-Caused-the-Collapse-of-the-Israeli-Government/s/4399

https://www.deseret.com/1988/5/18/18766373/byu-leases-israel-center-for-49-years

 

1988 + 49 years =2037 CE. Nothing in terms of the Mormon restored gospel via the LDS Church, officially shared, for another 16 years (as of 2021). If they renew the lease, then it will be even longer with no direct sharing of the message, ...or else the Israeli government needs to change their mind about proselytizing.  This would include other Jewish authorities too. 

If you wish to read about the BYU Center situation from a Jewish perspective (from the 1980s), read

https://www.jcpa.org/dje/articles2/mormon.htm

 

The LDS Church used to have a not-well-known pilot missionary program in just a few areas in the USA-- it abruptly ended around the time that the BYU Center was built.  They also discontinued printing of a Hebrew Book of Mormon, likely sometime in the last 10 years.  The LDS Church does engage in some interfaith activities with Jews, such as inviting Jewish leaders to LDS temple open houses.  There is also some scholarly exchange, mainly BYU research, and things like that.

 

The facts speak for themselves.  Those are the agreements that the LDS leadership made in light of Media/Political/Religious Jewish response (or threats of lawsuits). 

Here's a link to the 1995 agreement made in terms of proxy baptisms for Jewish deceased.  

https://www.avotaynu.com/mormons/MormonAgreement.pdf

Do you think that the Lord wants us to wait until circumstances are perfect to share the fullness of the gospel with the Jews?  Regular Mormons can choose to share their beliefs.  Regular Jews can make their own decisions too.  Free choice is given to human beings.

 

 

Different types of communal living

There are different types of settled communal living.   In our post- World War II era, the most famous are the kibbutzes and moshavs in Israel.   There are hundreds of these types of communities in Israel.

One older gentleman who, when I mentioned to him that I want to start a United Order, Kibbutz or Moshav type place here in the USA, he said to me, "They don't work!"  Of course, there have been failures, but those that learned to adapt, have worked out in our modern world.  The trick is, to find the right solutions!

Kibbutz Eilot

Moshav Zekharia

Moshav Nahalal

Kibbutz Yagur

Originally, out of sheer necessity for survival (i.e. equals = a very motivated people), Jews purchased land, which wasn't always good, and cleared it through very arduous work to make it liveable.   A few communities started after the late Nineteenth Century call of Jewish Zionism.   Degania Alef (1909) was the first kibbutz.

The Kibbutz:  This word means, a gathering, in Hebrew.  For your information, if my blog, Gathering Zion's People, were written in Hebrew, it would be Kibbutz Am Tzion.

This was the original model for these agricultural settlements.   In the earlier days, people worked very hard to survive.  They lived, ate, and worked together as a community.  Everybody got the same reward or pay no matter what job they did on the Kibbutz [to eliminate rich and poor -- all jobs were equally important to the collective whole.]  There were religious and atheist (cultural Jews) communities.  They were successful in terms of living, but socially, damage was done because often the children grew up in a children's home on-site, and the parents, because they worked so much, did not have close family bonds with their children.  The children were overseen by a few adults, and without close one on one attention everyday, children sometimes suffered by lack of caring attention, or bullying, or grew up to feel like disconnected adults because group mentality was too strong in their youth.  Parents also suffered from this arrangement because of the breakup of usual gender roles within the family structure.   This lack of family-arranged living is not practiced anymore.

Around the 1970s-1980s, Kibbutzes were in decline because some of the grown children or grandchildren of the founders left looking for other opportunities.   Other members were aging, and some younger people had the tendency to waste food and resources.   Another problem:  It wasn't always easy for the kibbutz members to agree 100% in regards to how resources were going to be spent or in other day to day running of the kibbutz issues.  They found that with some things, it was better to get a majority agreement in order to move forward.

After a trend of some kibbutzes closing their cafeterias or being at risk of completely closing, the Kibbutz movement had to re-invent itself.   Some of them privatized to some degree or another.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/13/kibbutz-100-years-old-uncertain-future

 Also, there are kibbutzes which, for several decades, have allowed (and still do) outsiders to come do volunteer work on the kibbutz temporarily.  You can find kibbutz volunteer opportunities online if you are young and healthy, and you don't necessarily have to be a Jew.  As society has become more complex, some descendants have returned to kibbutz life.  Others work outside the kibbutz but contribute their income to the cause.  Although most kibbutzes are out in the Israeli countryside or small town areas, a few are now urban.  Other kibbutzes instead of being strictly agricultural, have an industry or two on-site in addition to farming.
Israel has made many innovations, not just in agriculture.  Some kibbutz are now hi-tech.  http://www.thetower.org/2367-kibbutzim-transition-to-high-tech-entrepreneurship/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz   If you wish, please click on this link to read more about the different types of kibbutz that came about after the original type of 100% collectivism and 100% equality.

There are some large kibbutzes which offer many amenities.  "Free {this}, and free {that}," said a news person who visited one of the large kibbutzes in a YouTube video.   I hope that is just fun advertising and not the mentality of the kibbutz members, because no resource is truly free.  Somebody works, somebody pays.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ies2R__4c58

The best thing about a kibbutz, they say, is the sense of community, and knowing that somebody has your back.  It provides a safety net which normal capitalistic living often lacks.  All members enjoy the same living standard.  Also it provides lots of fresh air and food grown nearby.

YouTube.com is a good, quick resource for watching videos about kibbutz or moshav life in Israel.

The Moshav:  It's a particular type of cooperative agricultural settlement, of usually individual farms of fixed and equal size.  They emphasize community labor.  Workers produce crops and goods on their properties through individual and/or pooled labor and resources; profit and foods are used to provide for themselves.   Moshavim (plural of Moshav) are governed by an elected council.  There is also a commitee tax which is equal for all households of the community, which means that the good farmers would be more easily able to pay the tax than the worse farmers.   The Moshav style was more attractive to the later Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) immigrants, but the Kibbutz was the invention of European Jewry.   All collective communities of either type have legal status with the Israeli government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshav

There are several types of Moshav, the most common are:

• Moshav Ovdim:   A workers' co-op settlement.  Most Moshavs are of this type.  They rely on joint purchasing of supplies, and joint marketing of the produce.   The family is the basic unit of producing and consuming.  In simple English, the farms are independently owned but jointly worked.
• Moshav Shitufi:  It is a little bit more like a kibbutz.  The economics of production and marketing, and land ownership, are joint:  The farming is done collectively and the profits are shared equally.   Consumption is family-household based.

The Amish

I went to:
https://amishamerica.com/ and 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_raising and 
https://www.businessinsider.com/money-secrets-of-the-amish-2013-4 

and did not find evidence that the Amish live communally in terms of their finances.  However, they still help each other out when needed.  They will help each other build a barn, and sometimes they contribute to a family having a hard time, say with a hospital bill.  Amish hate debt and are very industrious and frugal, but will do so for a major important purchase (ex: home/farmland).  They also pay taxes.  Amish also pay taxes, but don't pay Social Security tax unless they work for an employer who requires it.    Their communal living is more religious and social, which means that they will live geographically in close enough proximity that they live the social and religious life with each other.

Two similar groups to the Anabaptist movements, which the Amish are part of, are the Mennonites, and the Hutterites.   The Mennonites are similar to the Amish, but less strict.  The Hutterites, however, do live similar to a religious Kibbutz.  

• Hutterites:  "Hutterites practice a near-total community of goods: all property is owned by the colony, and provisions for individual members and their families come from the common resources. This practice is based largely on Hutterite interpretation of passages in chapters 2, 4, and 5 of Acts, which speak of the believers "having all things in common". Thus the colony owns and operates its buildings and equipment like a corporation. Housing units are built and assigned to individual families but belong to the colony and there is very little personal property. Lunch and dinner meals are taken by the entire colony in a dining or fellowship room. Men and women sit in a segregated fashion. Special occasions sometimes allow entire families to enjoy meals together. Individual housing units do have kitchens which are used for breakfast meals."          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterites

Last but not least, Latter-Day-Saints have a history of living communally, although they were a minority of the people.  

Latter-Day-Saints:  In the 19th Century, the Mormons had over 200 of these communities.  They all eventually closed due to problems between people within the group, or sometimes due to problems with location, like running out of adequate water for farming, or soil problems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Order:

"Under the United Order, private property was not abolished. The sharing of goods, often cited as communalism, was voluntary. Members of the church who chose to participate in the United Order voluntarily deeded their properties to the church, which would then give all or a portion of it back to the original property owner as a stewardship. The "residue," or property which was over and above what the owner and his family required for themselves, was used by the church to provide to the less fortunate, who would be required to pay it back either monetarily or by labor. The private property owner was not forced to participate in the Order nor was his property forcefully confiscated. Private property owners were free to join or leave the orders and were in control of their stewardship. J. Reuben Clark, a member of the First Presidency, explained:

The fundamental principle of this system was the private ownership of property. Each man owned his portion, or inheritance, or stewardship, with an absolute title, which he could alienate, or hypothecate, or otherwise treat as his own. The church did not own all of the property, and the life under the United Order was not a communal life. ... The United Order is an individualistic system, not a communal system.^[2]

Lorenzo Snow, a president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also highlighted the United Order's preservation of individual free will:

In things that pertain to celestial glory there can be no forced operations. We must do according as the spirit of the Lord operates upon our understandings and feelings. We cannot be crowded into matters, however great might be the blessing attending such procedure. We cannot be forced into living a celestial law; we must do this ourselves, of our own free will. And whatever we do in regard to the principle of the United Order, we must do it because we desire to do it.^[16]"

***

So, it's a little bit confusing, did the person own the land or not?

General human nature is to want to own the basics, at least, something which provides now and security for old age.  Who doesn't want to own their own land, a place to call their own and call home, taxes aside?  Everyone, except for a nomad.  Everyone wants to be rewarded for effort.  It's human nature to want security and comfort.

There has to be answers which satisfy the desired balance between self and others, ...ownership, and generosity in the greater common good.   

How does this apply?

02/21/2020

How I chose the Logo for this Blog (etc.)

"Gather the Wheat into my Barn"

In Matthew 13:24, Jesus put forth a parable about the Kingdom of Heaven.  He said that the Kingdom was like a man who sowed good seed in his field.    This was wheat seed.  He went on to describe that the enemy came in the night and also sowed -- tares--imposter plants, as an attempt to crowd out the wheat and make it weak, effectively diminishing the work of the farmer.  Then the servants of the farmer reported this intrusion of tares in the field.  Should they immediately start pulling up the tares?  "Nay," he said.  The plants were young and if the tares were pulled, wheat would come up with them, so wait until harvest time.  The tares were to be pulled, bundled, and burned.  The best line came:  "Gather the wheat into my barn."   The barn was a place of safety for farm animals and storage of harvested crops.

In the Doctrine and Covenants, there are various passages which refer to gathering the people of Zion, such as D&C 45:71-  

"And it shall come to pass that the righteous shall be gathered out from among the nations, and shall come to Zion, singing with songs of everlasting joy."

The Doctrine and Covenants in 97:21 calls Zion the "pure in heart."

So, the righteous people in the Last Days, who listen to the Lord's voice call them, will be gathered into his barn, in the place of safety.   Thus, I chose the wheat as my symbol.

Many people have heard of the term, Kibbutz, for the agricultural working and housing collective of Jews in the Land of Israel.   The word, Kibbutz  (Modern Hebrew qibbūṣ) means, gathering. 

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/kibbutz  

Wheat is also a one of the symbols of the tribes of Joseph, who in the Last Days would dominate in the Western part of the world.   In the book of Genesis, Joseph saved his family from starvation.  Wheat makes bread, which when multiplied, means loaves to feed many.  When bread came from the kingdom of heaven it was called Manna.  When bread was a house, it was Bethlehem.  When people are fed, it can be physical or spiritual.  So the whole thing is very full of much symbolism!

So this is the Logo I chose in September 2019.  Notice the sheaves of wheat:

Off and on for a couple of months, my spouse has been watching YouTube videos about the world's trash and how it is being processed (or not).    So this past week on the evening of January 31, 2020, up on the suggested videos feed on YouTube, was a video about trash in Jerusalem.  I watched it -- Imagine my delightful shock, when I saw an image of a coin found in an ancient dump outside of Jerusalem, that dated back to the time of Jesus!  The coin had an engraved image on it very similar to my logo!

Credit for this image (which I photographed from the video) comes from the work of Archeologist and Professor Ronny Reich and a colleague, who, in 1995 in the Kidron Valley outside the walls of Jerusalem, found the above-mentioned ancient dump containing bones from ancient animal sacrifices, pottery, household trash, and coins dating to King Agrippa the First.  The king had the coins minted his 6th year of the 40's CE (AD).  Archeology is very valuable to Israel because of the naysayers, both historical and political.

If you wish to watch the video yourself, here is the link.  If you don't want to watch the whole thing, the portion mentioning the coins and other items in the ancient dump, look for minutes around 2:59 - 5:16 of the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt1oorwSvU0    Enjoy!

Purifying vision, departing Babylon

Here are some scriptures about good vision and understanding:

[King James Version]
Proverbs 29:18 Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.
[The commandments help people see right from wrong]

Proverbs 11:14 Where no counsel is, the people fall; but in the multitude of counsellors, there is safety.  [Have your counsel and checks and balances, to make sure that things are right, are proper, inspired, and not done in foolish haste]

Hosea 4:6    My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge   [This is similar to where there's no knowledge, the people perish]

(The full verse is good too:    6 ¶ My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.) 

Proverbs 4:7  Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting, get understanding.

Society is full of corrupted systems and people who are just living day to day.  Wise people are those who are becoming un-blinded from the deceptions in their own lives and in society.  The wise see the need to prepare for hard times, to purify themselves, and also to unite with like-minded people, rather than follow the blind crowds.  The wise might also be fighting to retain our freedoms and good values.

Eventually a person might find a metaphorical line drawn in the sand, in their lives, and say, "Enough is enough, we're not going to keep doing this corrupted system that the powers swirling around us are trying to force us into."

Revelation 18:4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her [Babylon], my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. 

Similarly expressed, in Isaiah 52:11 
Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord.

So, what are we to learn by these scriptures?  We have to continue to remove the blinders off of our eyes, as there are layers and layers of things in society which contradict the Lord's will for our personal lives and the lives of our communities and nation.  We need wisdom, and careful understanding.  We need to be with like-minded people.  As we draw nearer to God, we will draw further from the ways of the world.

Doctrine and Covenants (D&C) 88:63:
Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

There's a video that I watched recently, about King Solomon's temple.  I liked how the narrator talked about how the temple was a representation of the reversal of Adam's Fall, and exit from Eden.  One must reverse their steps.  To me, this seems similar to departing from Spiritual Babylon.  Enjoy the video!