We Must Never Forget
The Importance of Jewish Remembrance
November 5, 2025
Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell
Guest: Olivier Melnick
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 11/5/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
Jamie Mitchell:
Hello and welcome to another Stand of the Gap today. I’m Jamie Mitchell, director of church culture at the American Pastors Network. I hope that sometimes in your life that you will get to visit Israel. That’s where our beloved Sam Rohrer is right now. We continue to pray for him and look forward to him getting back, but as believers, you probably have heard a pastor, a Bible teacher suggest that you should go to the Holy Land. It will change you forever, not only how you view the Bible, but also to understand the Jewish people better. My first trip was in 1994. The most impactful moment of that trip was following a class of fourth graders around one of the many museums there and listening and how the teacher was explaining their nation’s history and the importance of them never forgetting. I had a similar experience in 2013 when visiting Masada and talking to two young soldiers, a man and a woman, and how they felt about the memorial.
And I heard the words from this young man. He said, this Masada must never fall again. It does not take a lot of exposure to Jewish people to understand that they hold a high value to remembering and dwelling deeply on their national history, both the good and the bad that paints their past. Why is that? Why must they never forget? And what is it that we who know the Messiah and desire to impact them with the good news of Christ? Need to understand. Well, that’s today’s program title. The title is simply this. We must never forget the importance of Jewish remembrance and to help me is no stranger to stand to the gap. Olivier Melnick, the president and founder of Shalom in Messiah Ministries. Olivier, I know you are usually with Sam. I will try to match him in hosting skills, but welcome again to Stand in the Gap.
Olivier Melnick:
Thank you so much, Jamie, and I’m sure we’ll be doing just fine.
Jamie Mitchell:
Well, I hope so, and hopefully Sam can’t hear this program today or I’ll be getting my report card, Olivier. Today. I want to consider a number of pieces of Jewish heritage and history and have you explain some of it with the hopes to make us more sensitive towards the Jewish people and hopefully to be a more effective witness to them. But before we do that, can you just take some time in this first segment? Why is it that Jews dwell on the past and make remembering so important to them?
Olivier Melnick:
Well, I think a good place to start is Leviticus 23 where the feasts of the Lord are listed, the weekly Sabbath and then the seven yearly festivals that God gave the Jewish people at that time. And the reason why I think it’s a good place to start because we have those yearly reoccurring festivals to teach the Jewish people, the chosen people to remember God and to year after year after year commemorate God’s provision, God’s protection, God’s blessings. And so we have all those festivals, not to mention of course that beyond that they also all point to a specific event in the ministry of Jesus, of Yeshua. That’s the icing on the cake. But those festivals set the stage for a mindset that God is asking the Jewish people to have to remember him year after year and actually really on a weekly basis on Friday night to Saturday night, we have the Shabbat, the Sabbath, where Jewish people are asked to rest for a day and remember God and spend time with God.
So that’s a good foundation right there. Then beyond that, I think, so that’s kind of setting the stage and giving us a little bit of our DNA as Jewish people. But when you look at Jewish history, Jewish history has been, we could say punctuated by acts of antisemitism, by many different people, group including the church unfortunately. And so many of those events we have to remember what happened because it goes beyond the Jewish people. If you don’t remember history and the mistakes that were made, you’re bound to make them again. And in a sense, we are experiencing some of that in the 21st century unfortunately. So Jewish people place a lot of importance on remembering and commemorating and also it helps us with the importance of our identity, our identity. For Jewish people, identity is connected to survival. They’re both, they go along together. Our identity and our survival, they’re connected.
Now, mind you, biblically speaking, God promised you would never destroy Israel discipline and chastising happens and there will be, and there has been a lot of casualties because of God’s discipline. But his covenants promised that he will never destroy Israel. The good scripture for that is that Jeremiah 31, 35 through 37, when he describes the sun and the moon that will never be destroyed. And if he can destroy them, he can destroy Israel. So God has promised that, and that is not going to change, but we commemorate those different events, the events of history that it connects our survival and our identity together. So it’s very important. And when you talk about those events, you talk about things like we never forgetting the Holocaust, never forgetting various events like the Crusades and the Inquisition. We remember those things because we have to make sure, Lord willing it doesn’t happen again. And then on top of that, you put again the Jewish holidays and there are other Jewish holidays that actually are not even part of the Levitical feast that you found in Leviticus 23 that have happened later in history that are also commemorated.
Jamie Mitchell:
We’ve got about a minute or two left, but it really is in history. The Jewish people, one of the things that has occurred is people have tried to wipe them and their history off the map. I guess that’s one of their concerns, Olivier, that’s just what they have seen and felt
Olivier Melnick:
Absolutely Jewish people. One thing that you’ll know about Jewish people, you probably already know this, is that over the centuries, and it continues to this day, we have used humor to move forward and to survive. And so we have this thing that if we look at the holidays and every single Jewish holiday has a special food that we eat because we love to eat and they all commemorate a people group trying to kill us. And so we have this thing saying to summarize the Jewish lifecycle, we can easily say they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.
Jamie Mitchell:
Hey, it’s important that all of us have our identity, but most importantly have identity in Christ. When Olivier comes back, we’re going to talk about some of those Jewish holidays. Don’t go anywhere. Well, welcome back. Our guest today is a regular on Stand in the Gap today, Olivier Melnick. Our subject today is never forget in regards to Jewish identity and remembering their past and why it’s so important, Olivier, one of the ways that Jewish people bask in their history and their identity is continued to be cultivated. It is through various holidays. Now, one of those holidays is Hanukkah. It happens around Christmas. And so a lot of times non-Jews, sometimes we miss it, but also sometimes we don’t fully understand it. Can you take a few minutes here today? What is the story behind Hanukkah? What are Jews celebrating and what is the significance in regards to their heritage?
Olivier Melnick:
Well, the significance of Hanukkah, Hanukkah is first of all, here’s a statement that’s going to probably puzzle your audience. They wouldn’t be Christmas if it wasn’t for Hanukkah. And the reason why I say that is because think about it like 30,000 feet view of the whole thing. Hanukkah was a holiday that came out that came out of the time where Anus, EPIs IV wanted to destroy the Jewish people he was fighting. There were fights between Egypt and Syria and Israel was in the middle as a buffer zone. And they went back and forth and eventually Antiochus Epiphanes the fourth, who by the way is mentioned in the latter part of the book of Daniel. So this is not something that comes out of thin air. It’s mentioned in the book in the prophet Daniel. He went after the Jews, he desecrated the temple. And at that time, from the small town of Modine, which still exists today, we drove by it last recently when I was in Israel came a group known as there were five brothers and their father, the leader in the brothers was Judah Macabee.
And that’s where you get the Maccabees or the Maccabean revolt, which by the way is also mentioned in two of the four Maccabees out of the apocrypha, which is outside of our accepted Bible, but still very good historically. And so you have this man who puts himself in the place of God, desecrates the temple, sacrifices a pig on the altar just to humiliate the Jews and forbid the Jews from doing anything, from studying, from practicing Judaism, from eating kosher, from doing the customs and pushing Jews away from our Jewish, again, our Jewish identity, which is our Jewish survival. So there was this revolt and eventually a small group of Jewish guerilla fighters you could say went against a bigger army of an Antiochus Epiphanes the fourth, and were able to take back the temple and rededicate the temple. Now the rest of the story is a little bit of a legend, so we don’t really know if it really happened that way, but we hear that there was enough oil in the temple to relight the menorah enough pure holy oil to take care of the Menorah for one day and it would take about a week to make new oil for the menorah.
So they said, let’s at least like the menorah for the day and make the oil as fast as we can. And the legend says that the oil that was enough for one day continue for the whole week. So now we celebrate Hanukkah around the time of Christmas. It’s actually on the 25th. It starts on the 25th of the month, the Jewish month of Kissle, and it goes for eight days. And we do it by lighting a menorah, which is different from the regular menorah that has seven branches like the one at the temple. That one has nine branches, which is really eight plus one, and it’s the eight knights of Hanukkah. And what’s interesting is that there is a candle on the Menorah that is higher than the others, either on the side or in the front or in the middle. And we light that candle.
And with that candle each night we light the other candles one, then two, then three, then four. And that candle is known as a servant candle and it lights all the other candles, which I think is really, really interesting when you try to connect ConnectUS to Yeshua to Jesus because the servant brings light to the others. And that’s the Jewish tradition. And it’s not difficult for me to make a connection between that and the servant Kendall and the servant Yeshua who brings, who’s the light of the world. So the feast of Hanukkah is again commemorating the fact that Antiochus Epiphanes tried to kill the Jews and a small group of Jews fought back and were able to take the temple back, rededicate the temple, and move on with Jewish practice and depose Antiochus Epiphanes the fourth.
Jamie Mitchell:
Olivier, I grew up in New York City and so as a kid it was very, very common in my neighborhood that my Jewish friends and neighbors would put a menorah in the window and that would identify them as a Jewish family. Now, I’m not sure if that’s going to happen today with the antisemitic feeling around the country, but let’s say I know I have a Jewish family across the street from me as a Christian, what would you suggest is something that I could do to both affirm them and to acknowledge that I recognize that holiday, I know a little bit about that holiday and I just want to like they would maybe be respectful of my Christmas. How can I use Hanukkah as maybe a doorway to open to the gospel?
Olivier Melnick:
Well, I think what’s a good starting point for you as a Christian talking to a Jewish friend and for churches and pastors really is to wish the Jewish community a happy Hanukkah. It is a perfectly fine Jewish holiday to send greetings to the Jewish community. There are few that you should not do that. One of them being Yom Kippur, the deal of atonement. We do not wish anything on Yom Kippur. It’s a solemn fast, not a feast, but on Hanukkah, go to your Jewish friend, knock on the door, send a card, you buy him a card and say, Hey, happy Hanukkah.
The date will change every year because it’s not based on our calendar, but it’s based on the Jewish calendar. So I believe that year, it starts the night of the 14th of December and next year will be something different around the same time, but different. I wish him a happy Hanukkah even give him a present because Hanukkah parallel to the Christian Christmas, there is an exchange of presents. And it’s funny, sometimes we joke, we go, we Jews, we got it made because you, Christians, we you get presents one day we get presents for eight nights, but it’s just a little side joke here, but give him a little present that’s perfectly fine. Wish him a happy Hanukkah.
And maybe if you have a close relationship with that Jewish person, you could even say ask him, did you know that Jesus celebrated Hanukkah? And they would look at you and they would go like, really? And how do you know that? And you can tell them, take him to John and say, well, let me take you to the scripture that says at that time the feast of the dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter and Yeshua was walking in the temple in the Porch of Solomon. And so we have here Jesus Yeshua celebrating the feast of dedication, which is another word for Hanukkah. So you read them the scripture first and they go like, oh, I didn’t know that. And then you tell them, by the way, this is from the New Testament, the book that you are not allowed or you’re not supposed to read, which is too bad because it’s a very Jewish book. And then so maybe you can make a connection and take them into a place where you can discuss spiritual things by starting saying, Hey Jesus, the Jew celebrated Hanukkah in the book of John
Jamie Mitchell:
Olivier, again, as you were telling the history behind Hanukkah, here it is again that somebody was attempting to wipe out the Jewish people. And so we can fully understand that we just have about a minute left, but we can fully understand why remembering these events are both a solemn event to them, but so important for them to continue to remember this idea like you have put of survival. It really does go to the heart of why they remember.
Olivier Melnick:
Absolutely, absolutely. And because of all the things that were done against us. I mean really when you think about it, Jimmy, we the Jewish people, we should not exist by all human understanding. By human logic, we should not exist because the entire history of the Jewish people has been, you look at it and they literally so many different people, group and leaders and people have tried to kill us and there is a spiritual connection. It’s basically at the end of the day, it is Satan who’s trying to get rid of the Jews. And there is an end times connection that we do not want to miss. And I hope we talk about it.
Jamie Mitchell:
We will. Hey, when we return, I want to talk about Masada and some of the more modern day remembrance that the Jewish people do and why it must never happen again. Continue to watch and listen with us as we focus on the Jewish people here today. Stand the Gap with today’s theme focusing on the Jewish people. I guess I should welcome you back by saying, Shalom, we know that it means peace. We often pray for the peace of Jerusalem, but we also pray that our Jewish friends would come to know the Messiah, Jesus the Prince of Peace, Olivier Melnick from Shalom in Messiah Ministries. As our guests we’re attempting to understand why there is such an emphasis on remembering and never forgetting the important events in Jewish history. Olivier, I mentioned in my opening my encounter at the top Masada a number of years ago. Can you take just a few moments and explain what place on Masada and why is again this such a significant event in Jewish and Israel history?
Olivier Melnick:
So Masada is in the Judean Desert. It’s not too far from the Dead Sea. I was there just days ago. We took a group of about 40 plus Christians to tour Israel and we always go to Masada. It’s quite a site. And it was originally built by Herod the Great on this big plateau on top of a mountain because here the great was always in fear for his life and he always wanted to be protected and he had places everywhere to go to as a refuge for himself in case something would, a revolt would erupt or somebody would want to try to kill him. So he had all those places in different areas of Israel and Mata was built as this place. What happened is that there was, so it’s a mountaintop fortress, some sort with a bunch of different buildings, and there’s even a synagogue on top of that plateau at Masada.
And so there was, it’s most remembered for the role that it played during the first Jewish Roman war between 66 and 73 AD where a group of Jewish people ended up getting on top of the plateau inside the fortress and basically did not surrender to the Romans who wanted to destroy them. The Romans had to build a massive ramp to get to the top of Masada. It took a lot, it took thousands of soldiers to get to build the ramp and to get to the top. And by the time they got to the top, I believe the number is around 960 Jewish people had all committed community suicide. There was only maybe I think one woman and a couple of children who survived that community suicide that they would rather commit suicide than surrender to the Roman Legion. And so basically they struggle with that and they ended up just committing suicide.
So Masada has become a symbol of Jewish community and Jewish heroism, so much so that for years, and you experienced that when you went there a few years ago, soldiers as well as students would be brought to the top to visit and to be told the story and the resilience and the heroism of the Jewish people and soldiers actually who would graduate, they would go through their training for the IDF would often end up on top of ma for ceremony of something that was organized by the Israeli government. Now I’ve noticed over the years though over the last few years, especially in the last couple of years, but even more than that, that students and youngsters and soldiers are regularly brought to other sites as well, like the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and I was there too recently. And the of course, the 2-year-old site known as the Nova Festival site where Hamas killed over three 50 young Israelis at a music festival. Those two sites now are being used heavily and even in the last couple of years, the Nova Festival very heavily, heavily to bring young people in a lot of the idea of soldiers, I guess in a sense to show the idea of soldiers, a remember what they’re still doing to our people. And remember, this is why you fight and this is what you fight against
Jamie Mitchell:
Olivier. I understand, and correct me if I’m not correct here, that today Israel, there are more non-practicing Jews or more secular ethnic Jews than there are more religious Jews. How is this spiritual condition of the nation color the reason why these events are memorialized? Do non-practicing Jews even understand the spiritual significance of some of these events but also Passover or do they just go through the motions? Help us understand, is this having any spiritual effect on the Jews?
Olivier Melnick:
There is a community spirit. Israelis as a whole are very proud of being in Israel, having the country, and it is not really a religious thing. When the war broke out after October 7th, 2023, very unusual for any country to do that. I don’t know of any others actually Israelis that were all over the world voluntarily said, I’ve got to cut my travel short, I got to go back home to fight. And that’s just unheard of the pride that they take in the country. And the reason why Jamie is because Israel is the only very small, that is the only piece of land in the world that is known as the Jewish state. That’s the only place in the world where Jews are safe. Even though right now they’re still fighting tourism in a sense, they’re still at war even though we talk about ceasefire. So there’s a pride where Jewish people are really seriously, they want to protect their only homeland because they’re fighting an existential war.
Now religiously, there’s only 15% Jewish of the Jewish people who are practicing orthodox religious, 15% of about 15 to 60 million. That is not a lot. And that’s global, not just in Israel, that’s global. So these people are, and that creates a problem currently because actually the Orthodox community in Israel known as the ha redeem the Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox, they live there. The study, they get subsidies from the government paid by the Texas of the other Israelis, and they absolutely do not want to fight in the war. And that’s a big problem that they have right now. And I don’t know how they’re going to solve that. But there is a pride by most Israelis. They want to defend their country. And except for the few ultra-Orthodox, it goes beyond all the it transcends, it supersedes all the differences that the Israelis might have. And they do have a lot. You put two Jews in a room, you get three opinions. So you have a lot of disagreements. But when it comes to protecting Israel, they all work together, especially at a time like right now where the world is increasingly turning against Israel in fulfillment of prophecy. I believe
Jamie Mitchell:
Olivier, as I was thinking through this program today, I couldn’t help but think how could it be that a nation like Israel with such rich history, rich biblical history, would not be aware of the spiritual significance behind their nation? But we could say the same thing here in America, America has a rich spiritual history, but now we find ourselves today almost void of understanding how quickly we do forget. Isn’t that the lesson of today?
Olivier Melnick:
That is, and that’s exactly why it’s important to remember and commemorate things and we feel like we’re doing the same thing over and over, but if we don’t, we forget. But as far as the Jewish people missing the spiritual significance of the Jewish heritage, the book of Romans says it very well in Romans 1125, I do not want two brothers to be uninformed of this mystery so that you will not be wise of your own estimation. A partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. So biblically speaking, not all, I mean I am a Jew, believes that Jesus is the Messiah. He died for my sins. He rose again, I not say 42 years ago. And I’m just one of many Jewish believers or messianic Jews. But in scripture we’re told that the Jewish people will be blinded spiritually. And again, the vast majority of our people, probably more than 95% of the Jewish people globally today, are blinded to the truth of the gospel when the scales fall off and a Jewish person understands the richness of the Bible, the Jewishness of the Bible, the fact that the old and New Testament are both Jewish books and they all talk about this Jewish messiah that came and he’s going to come back when they get it. There’s nothing more beautiful than that.
Jamie Mitchell:
Wow. Hey, when we finish up, I want to look at how the Jews sees the coming Messiah interesting for all of their remembering of the past, what did they do, what they have heard about a Messiah company? Stay with us for the last segment here at Standing Gap today. Thank you for staying with us for this last segment of Standing the gap today. It’s been so good today to look at Jewish history in their holidays, the heritage, and consider why Jews take very serious, this idea of remembering their past said it’s directly related to retaining their identity as Jews. And the reality that for centuries there’s been this attempt to remove the Jews from the memory of all humankind, but also remembering they can find how God has been involved throughout their life, their history with the Jewish people. Olivier Melnick has been a great help to us. Olivier, let’s finish up here. The Jew does not believe Jesus is the Messiah. So they do not acknowledge that the Messiah has come yet. Therefore, they must believe he is still coming in the future. What are they waiting for? And if they are so intent of being watchful of the past and what has occurred, how did they miss the fact that Jesus who has already come is the Yeshua Messiah?
Olivier Melnick:
Well, the expectation, and you get that from the Bible, the expectation was a conquering messiah in the first century looking at the control of Israel by the Romans and the life being made very difficult and at times miserable and dangerous in Israel. So the Jewish people expected this messianic king, this conqueror, this ruler to come. And what happened is that Jesus did come, but he came as the Lamb of God, which was also predicted in the Bible. And what I find fascinating, Jamie, is that Jewish people who are religious, the 15% that I mentioned earlier, they have an understanding of Messianic ministry, so to speak, that they believe that there will be two Messiah coming into the world for the Jewish people, but also for the rest of the world. And there will be Messiah’s son of Joseph and Messiah’s son of David, Ben Joseph and Ben David and the son of Joseph.
That’s the Joseph of Egypt, not the Joseph of Mary and Joseph, the son of Joseph would be the one that would suffer, be humiliated and even die for his people. And then there will be a second one coming as the son of David that would come and conquer and reign out of Jerusalem from the throne of David and be the Messiah and the king of the Jews and rule the world. They believe there will be two Messiah like that. And when I think about our belief as Christians, as Bible believing Christians, we see Yeshua, Jesus in his first coming, he came as the Lamb of God who died for the sins of the world, and he is going to return as the lion of Judah who’s going to conquer and reign out of Jerusalem. So really the two offices are identical except that Jewish mainstream Judaism believes it’s two different people.
We believe that it’s two different coming of the same person. So we’re not that far off. When you think about it, I find it fascinating, but the vast majority of Jewish people end up being gospel resistant simply because so much. Again, I’ve said this a couple of times now, but it’s important to understand so much has been done against us in the name of Christianity that Jewish people are going to go like, I’ll do anything. I’ll believe in anything, any God, any religion, but Christianity. And they do. We do. You have Jews who practice Buddhism, Hinduism, Jews who practice transcendental meditation and they still call themselves Jews. When you want to practice Christianity or follow Christ or Jesus, you are called a heretic. You’re called a traitor. You are disconnected. You are ostracized from the community. And it’s just with Christianity because there’s this block, this gospel resistance because of so much harm that have been done in the name of Messiah, in the name of the church.
And so that’s very, very unfortunate. But in the end times, Jimmy, the important part is that the reason why this is happening is because Satan knows that at some point at the end of the seven year tribulation, the Jews are going to call upon the one who they have pierced. That’s Zechariah 12:10 and say, blessed is you, comes the name of the Lord. As Jesus said, I will not return until you say blessed is you, comes the name of the Lord Barai. That happens at the end of the tribulation. All Jews who survive the Time of Jacob’s trouble will be saying this. And Jesus returns, yes, my friend, if you’re listening, Jesus will not come back until Israel corporately calls upon him. And that is why Satan created antisemitism. That is why he’s trying to push the Jews away off the map and kill them because he knows when Jesus returns, his career is over.
And actually, Jamie, if I may, I cover a lot of that in my new book, antisemitism in the End Times that just came out on October 7th, just like a month ago. Antisemitism in the end times, you can find it anywhere books are sold. And I cover a lot of the history all the way to October 7th, two years ago and beyond. And why we are at a crossroads right now. Jewish people are at a crossroads, but also Western civilization because the way things are turning right now, we need to continue supporting Israel. We need to understand that loving Israel, supporting Israel is part of God’s plan and we need to be on God’s side. So right now, the Jewish people need us more than anything, more than before.
Jamie Mitchell:
This is an excellent place to do this Olivier, but we must find ways to engage and clearly explain the messiahship of Jesus. I know that is what Shalom and Messiah is all about. How can they find out about your ministry and the resources that you have available? What’s the website and where can they go?
Olivier Melnick:
The website is shalom in messiah.com. Shalom in messiah.com. And we have resources on our website. Also, if they look for me on YouTube, I have a lot of videos, over a thousand, over 1100 videos of teaching to help equip the body on how to fight antisemitism and how to use that in Jewish outreach and how to reach Jewish people with the gospel properly and get Jewish people saved. And also how to be a blessing to Israel. So all that can be achieved through our website. And we’re a faith ministry so people can also donate to our websites to help us continue the work that the Lord has entrusted us with. And they can also order the book Antisemitism in the end times. That is going to be very helpful. A lot of tools in that book, along with the other books that have written on the topic, they’re all on Amazon.
Jamie Mitchell:
Thank you Olivier, for opening our eyes to these important facts to enhance our witness to our Jewish friends. Numbers of occasions, I remember sitting with some of my Jewish friends and I would take them to the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament, and I said, the book of Isaiah is very interesting. It is 66 chapters, just like the entire old and New Testament. I said, the first 39 chapters focuses on the groaning and the pain of Messiah. But then the last 20 sevens, the glory of the coming Messiah. And interesting enough didn’t happen many times, but pulling back that curtain and helping them see, as you have said, that the son of Joseph, the son of David, it is the same person. It is Jesus the Christ, the true Messiah. Friends, listen, Hanukkah is around the corner. This is a great opportunity to relate to our Jewish friends. Ask the question, share what you understand. Be bold, love them, encourage them. They feel as always threatened and wanting to survive. We as those who know Christ have an opportunity to love them and embrace them to do it. It’ll take courage. And so remember this, our courage comes from the Lord, live and lead with courage. We’ll see you in 23 hours here again for Stand in the Gap today.
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