Meetings in Memphis

March 16, 2013

Dear Pastors:

I am here in a hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, where I am to be in meetings with Crossroads Baptist Church, a black Baptist Church which Windsor Hills helped start when I pastored 15 years ago.

They are having AN ISRAEL MY GLORY week-end [Isaiah 46:13]. God’s glory was in a people,

 

Genesis 12:1, Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee:

2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:

3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

4 So Abram departed, as the LORD had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran.

5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.

6 And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land.

7 And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him.

8 And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east: and there he builded an altar unto the LORD, and called upon the name of the LORD.

God’s glory was in a Land [as hard as George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Condi Rice, and now our "obamagabbe" finds that hard to admit]!!!!

Numbers 33:50 And the LORD spake unto Moses in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho, saying,

51 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye are passed over Jordan into the land of Canaan;

52 Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places:

53 And ye shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land, and dwell therein: for I have given you the land to possess it.

54 And ye shall divide the land by lot for an inheritance among your families: and to the more ye shall give the more inheritance, and to the fewer ye shall give the less inheritance: every man's inheritance shall be in the place where his lot falleth; according to the tribes of your fathers ye shall inherit.

God’s glory was in THE MESSIAH!

Isaiah 59:20 And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the LORD.

21 As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever.

Now, pray for me as I try to CHALLENGE THESE BLACK CHRISTIANS about their responsibilities towards the EVERLASTINGLY COVENANTED PEOPLE. Yesterday, I had lunch with Dr. David Winston in Conway, Arkansas. David’s teenage daughter finishes her last year of high school in May. Then she wants to get a degree in history. "History" is my thing, as I love to read it. Years ago, I had the opportunity to write a "thesis" and turn in to the University of Indiana’s history department, whose head I knew personally and as a consequence receive a ‘doctorate’ in history. I did not want to have to go through all the "critiquing" process as I was busier than an one armed paper hanger in the ministry, and so did not do it. Many times I have critiqued myself with an "F" for not doing so.

 

Yossi Ben-Aharon wrote me yesterday about my "particular read" of Jewish history, and how I see the Jews, just as the Bible shows them, and how we should look to get a "blessing" for being a blessing to the Jews. One of the ‘legends" in Jewish history I love to read about is what is called "THE LEGEND OF SANDER HADAD." You Baptist pastors probably have not read of him. I would compare him to Israel Putnam, Daniel Boone, David Crockett, Jim Bowie, Ranald MacKenzie, [called by the fierce Comanche tribesmen as OLD BAD HAND - he did in the Comanche, the Sioux and all red men he faced] and other such legends in American history, although he was JEWISH.

 

Sander was tall. He had a strong back and was quick on his feet. The Arabs called him Hawajah Skander [Comrade Skander, which was considered a title of respect]. His name that he was born under was Alexander Krinkin. He was born in 1859 in the town of Krinkin, near Bialystok in Poland, which was, at that time, part of Tzarist Russia. SANDER GOT HIS FAMILY NAME FROM HIS TOWN, BUT HIS NICKNAME HE GOT FROM HIS OCCUPATION., which was the same as his father, a proud and strong Jew who made his living as a blacksmith. From early childhood, Sander used to watch his father pounding iron, and he wanted to follow in his footsteps.

Sander made aliyah to Jerusalem in 1872 when he was thirteen, bar mitzvah age. History does not tell us whether he came alone or someone accompanied him.

There he hired himself out as a local blacksmith, and in a short time became known far and wide as one of the best blacksmiths in the city of Jerusalem. He was called Sander Hadad, which means in Arabic, "man of iron, the blacksmith." He soon became known by this nickname more than by his original name.

He spent a few years in Jerusalem, then began to wander all over the Middle East. Among other places he visited Istanbul, the capital of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, and after a while he also reached the Island of Cyprus, in the Mediterranean. During his trips, people were impressed with his unusual strength, and hired him frequently as a ‘body-guard.’ That way he acquired knowledge and skill which gave him the experience he needed to become an expert in that field.

 

Hadad’s courage and cunning were legendary. One of the stories about him had to do with a high-ranking Russian officer who had been taken prisoner by the Turks during one of the many wars between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Sander, still a young man at that time, was the assistant to the supplies contractor on the same front. When he heard that the Russians failed in all their efforts to free this officer, he volunteered for the mission. At first, his volunteering was considered absurd. But, since the Russians had nothing to lose, they asked Sander what he intended to do. "Give me two soldiers," he replied, "and the rest you will see for yourselves." Once he was given the soldiers, he disappeared with them for a few days. He got hold of Turkish uniforms and managed to cross enemy lines. When he came back he brought the Russian officer with him. How did he manage to do it? No one knows!

 

He returned to Palestine from his wanderings around the time that the modern Zionist enterprise began, during the last quarter of the 19^th century. The truth is that without Sander Hadad and young people of his kind, it would have been difficult, perhaps even impossible to launch the Zionist enterprise.

 

Not only did the early Jewish settlers [they are called that in derision today], experience great difficulties int heir relationship with their Arab and Bedouin neighbors, but they were also treated with absolute contempt. Jews were considered "weaklings and cowards" at the time. Ole "Shylock" could handle money and usury, but he wasn’t much of a fighter, so went the Arabic wisdom. The European Jew, and the Jew in general, was, according to Ottoman law, at best "son of a protected minority," and at worst a walid al-mita [son of death].

 

That meant the Jews were a defenseless people, with whom the locals could do whatever they wanted, hurt them, and even kill them. It was told of Salman David Levontin, the man who founded the city of Rishon LeZion, that a guide who showed him the area, warned him, "Look West! There, on the sand dunes, the cruel Bedouins will lay in wait, and when you build your homes and settle here, scores of men will come on horseback in the dead of night, and rob and kill you." Levontin answered, "Do you really believe that we would take that without fighting back?"

 

But, the man who turned those words into reality was Sander Hadad. Already in Poland, and later in Jerusalem, Cyprus, and other places, Hadad was the model of "THE NEW JEW,"—TOUGH AND STRONG. His muscles like the materials he worked with were cast of iron. Any neighbor who dared mess with him soon felt the power of his fist. The founders of the new village of Petach Tikva, who came originally from Jerusalem, knew him well. When they decided to build a Jewish settlement in the marshes of Mulabbis, not far from the Yarkon River, they asked him to join them.

 

From reading about Sander Hadad, he appears to have reached the village of Petach Tikva in 1883 with the second group of pioneers, who first settled in Yahud, near the Arab village of Yehudia, in the area that is Savyon today. Sander worked as a farmhand for one of the farmers who lived in Yahud, as a sharecropper, which meant that he received part of the agricultural crop as payment for his labors.

 

Sander had done battle with the Bedouins first when during a run-in, a Bedouin tribesman had struck Sander’s horse with his club. In the battle of clubs and fists that ensued, Sander stood one against many, but nevertheless beat his Bedouin enemies mercilessly.

 

Sander was traveling with Mordechai Lovman, one of the founders of Rishon LeZion in the summer of 1886, carrying a load of fruit and vegetables in a wagon, when Bedouins were approaching. Men on horseback came tearing down from the nearby hills, and behind them men on foot suddenly appeared waving clubs.

 

They let out their blood-curdling war cries and did not hide their intent to catch Sander Hadad and lynch him. Sander whipped up his pair of horses, and according to Lovman, "the horses ran at breakneck speed, excited by the furor. The dust rose, enveloping the wagon and blocking the sun. Through the cloud of dust, our pursuers looked like fearful shadows, like ghosts. Their faces were those of wild animals, their eyes bulging out of their sockets, their white teeth gnashing, foaming at the mouth. They were shouting, raving, swearing and running and riding like the wind. From all that anger and exertion they tore off their robes and began to run absolutely naked...screaming ‘allahu akbar’ at the top of the lungs...throwing their clubs at us like they were arrows."

 

Sander didn't own nor use a gun at that time. He fought with his whip, his club, and his fists, and the Bedouins who were close by, saw their "fearful enemy" in Sander Hadad, and so re-doubled their efforts to take him. Coming too close, the Bedouins then encountered Sander’s fists, club and whip. He excelled in the use of all these weapons. Whoever came too close was struck a slashing blow which took him out of the battle.

 

For almost an hour Sander Hadad took on the Bedouin, then he arrived in his wagon at Petach Tikva. The Bedouin, according to Lovman, "battered and wounded, they returned to the security of the desert without taking revenge on anyone, especially their hated Sander Hadad. In the tents of the Arab tribes, the mysterious, awesome legend of the Jewish hero spread, and no longer was the disgraceful name of "walid almita" [the son of death] used to describe this strange Jew who had come over the sea to inherit the land of HIS FATHERS.

 

And so, the legend of Sander Hadad was born. Our frontiersmen, who fought the "red men" in America, and overcame them, had nothing on Sander Hadad. My prayer is that you have enjoyed this bit of Jewish history and that you will stand WITH THIS OLE MAN AS HE STANDS UNASHAMED WITH THE JEWS. PRAY FOR BOOGIE AS HE NOW FULFILLS HIS DUTIES AS ISRAEL’S DEFENSE MINISTER!

JIM VINEYARD

YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL