Interview: Understanding the Jewish People (915 Talk)

Below is an transcript of the conversation between Rev. Cariño Casas and Andy Frecka of KELP Christian Talk in El Paso, Texas. The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Andy Frecka: Good afternoon, beautiful citizens of the borderland. This is 915 Talk, and I am your host, Andy Frecka. Today we are broadcasting from the heart of the world’s largest borderplex. We’re here at the KELP studio in El Paso.

A thing I've noticed recently is a rise of antisemitism. You see that out there on social media, and it is concerning. So we're going to be talking about a lot of those things.

With us today, we have a very special guest.

She is a true daughter of the borderland. She's from El Paso. She's lived and served in Jerusalem, and often speaks on topics like the Holocaust, combating antisemitism, and biblical faithfulness in light of Israel and the Jewish people. She's the Executive Director of the Church's Ministry Among Jewish People, CMJ USA.

Cariño, welcome to 915 Talk.

Cariño Casas: Shalom. Shalom.

Andy: How did someone from El Paso become so interested in the Jewish people?

Cariño: Wonderful question, Andy. I grew up in El Paso. I grew up at Abundant Living Faith Center.

I've had the benefit of going to Christian school. I went to Agape Christian Academy, and then it became Faith Christian my last year. I felt like I knew the Word of God.

Ten years into a journalism career, I found myself in a spiritually dry place. The Lord moved me to be in community with Christians again. I went to look for something to study, and I ran across something in the bookstore that I had never seen before. It said The Jewish New Testament. Right next to it was another Bible called The Complete Jewish Bible. This was a translation by a Jewish believer named David Stern.

He had intended to write the commentary, but then he found there were translational issues in the New Testament that he felt were obscuring or purposely hiding the Jewishness of the text. So he went back to the Greek and translated the whole of the New Testament into Hebraic‑sounding English. He puts all their names back into Hebrew and teases out other connections that we, as non‑Jews, just read over. Sometimes we read Jesus and we're like, “Jesus, what are you on about here?” and we just keep moving.

So when I read Matthew in The Complete Jewish Bible, I felt like I was reading it for the first time.

I went back for the commentary and did a deep dive with David Stern.

One of the cool things he does in that translation—which is available, by the way, on Bible Gateway if you don't want to buy a print copy—is that every time something from the Hebrew Scriptures is quoted, he bolds it. You flip through the New Testament and you see how much bold there is in it.

I finally got to this question: “Okay, why can I, a Mexican‑American gal from the borderland, see that Jesus is the answer to all the promises of the Hebrew Scriptures, but our Jewish neighbors cannot?”

This question moved me to intercession and to prayer. I really just sat praying with this question for a year.

Andy: Wow. Okay. So you're in a spiritually dry place, you pick up a Bible that gives, I guess, the same meaning but different words. Would an example be that instead of it saying “Jesus,” it says “Yeshua”?

Cariño: That's right. So Jesus is Yeshua. Matthew is Mattityahu. John is Yochanan.

I'll give you another example. One of my favorite examples is in John 10. Most of our Bible translations, in the middle of the chapter, say, “And Jesus was in the temple for the Feast of Dedication, and it was winter.”

And we're like, “Okay, what's going on there?” Stern translates that, “And Jesus was in the temple, and it was Hanukkah.” All of a sudden we understand where we are in the calendar.

Andy: Sure. Okay. What are some of the other things that popped out to you as you were reading that? It doesn't have to be the most important things, but maybe some little hooks where you thought, “Oh, this is different.”

Cariño: One of the really important ones that I keep going back to, especially in the Gospel of John: some people will read John—and even Jewish people reading John in our English translations—and Jesus is always after “the Jews” in those translations. He speaks very harshly about “the Jews.” This has been read in the worst possible light, as if Jesus is no longer Jewish and is condemning all of Judaism.

Stern makes a translation choice. Jesus is a Jewish person speaking within a Jewish community to people in different expressions of Judaism at the time. Instead of translating that word as “Jews,” Stern translates it “Judeans,” to show that there's a religious and geographical thing happening.

Jesus grows up in Galilee, even though he was born in Judah, and he practices a particular Judaism that was different if you didn't live near the temple. Part of his critique is for those who do live near the temple and have started to make things harder for people. That's one of his critiques of the Pharisees. So it's an internal Jewish debate. I think that translation choice is very important to remind us that it is an internal Jewish debate.

Andy: One of the things you said is, as you're reading through this, what I heard you say is you're reading and thinking, “As a Mexican American, I understand that Jesus is the promised one. Why don't the Jewish people see this?” So where did that take you?

Cariño: The Lord does crazy things to us sometimes. At the end of this year of intercession, I was freelancing as a photographer. It was 2008, and if everybody remembers who’s of working age, 2008 was an economically tough time.

I was tired of freelancing and I wanted a real job. Be careful what you ask the Lord for, right? I went to church for prayer, and the pastor said, “I know a lot of you are struggling financially, you need jobs, whatever is going on—come up for prayer if you need that.” The whole church came up.

I heard one of the clearest things I've ever heard from the Lord there, as I was waiting for the pastor to lay hands on me. He said, “Your job is not here. It's in Israel.”

I took it pretty seriously and began to pack up my life in Minneapolis. A few months later, I did get to Jerusalem and said, “Here I am, Lord. What are we doing?” That started an adventure I'm still on. I ended up with a ministry there, a house of prayer ministry, and through that I ultimately got connected to CMJ.

Andy: I've had the privilege in my lifetime to travel much of the world. Sadly, I've never been to Israel. What is it that you would want our listeners to know about a first trip? What are some of the first impressions when you visit the Holy Land?

Cariño: One, I think that they're people just like us. A lot of times we idealize—and maybe, dare I say, idolize—Jerusalem. I love it; it's my favorite place on earth. But these are real people with real‑world problems.

One of the things that struck me as an El Pasoan, and that I think the Lord used my growing up on the border to prepare me for, is that Jerusalem and Israel is a land of borders. There's always tension about whose land is what, and whether you've crossed a border. You can see it visually in some places. I even use the analogy that there are parts of the city where you feel like you're in downtown El Paso, and then you somehow cross an imaginary border and it feels like you're in Juárez. Things shift. Language shifts also.

I felt there were a lot of similarities to the culture. It's just that instead of somebody yelling at me in Spanish from the market, it was somebody yelling in Arabic or somebody yelling in Hebrew. It's people wrestling with the same questions that come up when you live near or on a border.

Andy: Interesting. So you go to Israel for the first time, you become involved in a house of prayer ministry. What does that look like?

Cariño: I was with a ministry called Succat Hallel, which means “Tabernacle of Praise.” It's a 24/7 house of prayer. There are a few of them in Jerusalem and around Israel. Their purpose is to be in prayer—for the people of the Land and for the nations. There is always somebody either praying or worshiping with music, 24/7.

That was an opportunity for me to sit before the Lord. To use the analogy people often use of Mary and Martha: I can be a Martha. I'm a “get‑it‑done” kind of gal. Being at the house of prayer, it was, “Let's just sit at the feet of Jesus and listen.” That's what I did, especially those first three months, but I did that for three years at that house of prayer—listening for the heart of God for the people of the Middle East.

One of the things I've learned in my time working in the Holy Land is the power of the ministry of presence. These are a people that have been under conflict since their founding, and war is almost normal now. This particular war that is happening now has been exceptional in many ways. It's the longest war they've suffered since the founding in 1948, and it's been the most costly in terms of lives and psychological trauma.

Because of that, and because of this resiliency—this “we're tough, we live here”—a lot of times foreigners leave when the conflict heats up. When you stay, it speaks volumes. This is a way to do what particular types of Christians would call incarnational ministry—that we are being Jesus to these people by staying and living their situation.

Andy: You're there, you're being present, you're looking to love your neighbors. What are some of the ways that those of us here in the States can be praying for Israel right now?

Cariño: Right now, people need to call on God. That's what we really need to pray for.

They're being bombed by Iran quite regularly right now, just as they are bombing the Iranians. I happened to be in Israel last summer for the last round of Iranian missiles, and I got to experience it for myself.

Andy: We see what's on TV with that. What's it like there on the ground that we don't see on TV?

Cariño: It is fascinating how quickly it becomes a mundane part of your day. It's like, “Okay, we're going to get up and live life. We're going to go to the grocery store. I'm going to go to the laundromat.” You may even go to work, depending on what Israel is requiring of its citizens.

Then a siren goes off and it's like, “Well, time to go to the bomb shelter.” Everybody runs to the bomb shelter. Most of the people who live there and have lived through many bombings are looking at the clock, because they know that after ten minutes they can leave the bomb shelter if they still don't hear things.

It's interesting to see how quickly it becomes a mundane part of your day, but also how taxing it is. I have never been so sleep‑deprived in my life. I got to experience missiles for seven days.

Andy: Wow.

Cariño: Part of the tactic is to break down the people. You wait till everybody's just about to go to bed or has just gone to sleep, and there's a round of missiles. So alarms go off, you run to the bomb shelter, you're down there for half an hour, then it's over. You go back and try to still yourself to get back to sleep. Maybe eventually you do, and then—boom—another siren at about 4 or 5 a.m. That was the rhythm I experienced in June of last summer. You're just exhausted.

Andy: Sure.

Cariño: But you get up and you live life.

Andy: Wow. Okay. Let's get back to David Stern's translation of the Bible. It's been interesting for me—this Sunday is Palm Sunday; we're recording this the week before Holy Week—to see the relationship between Zechariah 9:9, Jesus riding on a donkey into Jerusalem, and then we see the fruition of that in the New Testament.

I've heard it said many times that Jesus read the Old Testament. That's the Bible he read, because the New Testament hadn't been written yet, and he was basically able to preach the gospel, in my understanding, out of the Old Testament. What are some of the other things for us to understand about that, and to keep in mind when we're having conversations with our friends or family, even here in the borderland, who are of a Jewish background?

Cariño: When you're reading the New Testament or reading the Bible – and I hear preachers do this – we talk about the Jewish people in the past tense. That's part of our problem sometimes.

There is a book I recommend to your listeners who may be interested in this topic. The title is quite shocking. It's called People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn. The point she is making is that we'll talk about history and we'll talk about the Bible, and we'll do Holocaust education, but it's all back there. And there seems to be, in her estimation, little care for the living Jews among us.

These are a people—not all of them, because not all are synagogue‑going people—but people who are synagogue‑going are reading the Scriptures every Saturday. They read from the Torah and they read from the Prophets every Saturday. These are people who still have an expectation that the promises in the Torah and in the Prophets are still there—that God is still going to fulfill those promises.

For us as Christians, sometimes we jump to Jesus so fast. We say, “Well, yeah, but Jesus already did it, so let's just move forward.” That is detrimental to the conversation.

Andy: Interesting. So what is another way of having the conversation? Because I'm sure I'm guilty of that.

Cariño: I think we need to listen to their expectation. We need to listen to their interpretation, and then engage in a conversation that says, “Okay, what are you expecting?” We may find we're expecting that too.

I told a guy one time, in a conversation I had, “You know, you've been waiting for the Messiah twice as long as we have. So let's wait for him together.” They've been engaging with the Scriptures—particularly the Hebrew Scriptures—twice as long as we have.

So where can we be listening instead of lecturing, and creating a true relationship and a true friendship that engages with hard questions?

Andy Frecka: You started talking a little bit about antisemitism. What was the name of the book?

Cariño Casas: People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn.

Andy: Right. And it's an interesting point that very often we love historic Jewish people, but how are we loving Jewish people around us today?

My wife and I have talked about this several times recently because we've seen on social media — particularly among young men here in America — what feels like a rise in antisemitism, possibly brought on by geopolitical events. Obviously I'm teeing you up with a huge question, but speak into that.

Cariño: Yes. There's a book called How to Fight Antisemitism by Bari Weiss, and she has a really interesting analogy that antisemitism is like a virus in humanity. In good times it's just sitting there dormant, but tough economic times or war times trigger this virus.

Andy: Interesting.

Cariño: Because we're looking for somebody to blame, and too many times in history throughout the West — and this is a Western problem — the Jewish people become the scapegoat. This has to do with bad theology that came up early in the Church, blaming the Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus and charging them with deicide — the murder of God. And then not only holding the first‑century Jewish leadership accountable, but putting blame on all Jewish people for all time.

Unfortunately, we see this in some of the early Church writings. And I think that's part of what's happening. There is a resurgence right now among young people who are clamoring for the old way of doing church. We're seeing growth in some of our liturgical churches — whether it's the Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, or in my context, the Anglican Church.

But one of the things that has come with that, unfortunately, is that as people go back to some of the older readings, they're reading them without context or critique, and taking at face value some of the really antisemitic things that some of the Church Fathers said, and others afterward. Even Martin Luther, father of the Protestant Reformation, ends his life as an antisemite and says horrific things that set up Nazi Germany for the Holocaust 400 years later.

Andy: Right.

Cariño: So one, we have to see that it's false to blame the Jewish people. There are about 15 million Jewish people in the world — in a global population of 8 billion. And yet there's this egregious lie that they control the levers of power, that they're the reason everything goes wrong in society. It's such a crazy lie.

I really believe there's a spiritual aspect to this that we have to be mindful of. What is the enemy trying to distract us from?

Andy: It's interesting — I asked you about this, and the first thing you said is that it's a Western problem. I think a lot of times here in the West we think, “Well, it's the Arabs who hate the Jews,” which I assume is definitely a problem and definitely exists. But you're pointing toward what's happening here.

And what I heard you say was that during times of war and terror, and also during times of economic stress, this virus seems to flare up again — where everyone starts blaming the Jewish people for economic hardship. And you're saying that's completely false. Is there a way to fight the virus?

Cariño: Yes, there is a way to fight the virus. I believe the antidote — especially within the Church — is to remember the Jewishness of Jesus and the Jewishness of the gospel.

This is why David Stern's translation was so revolutionary for me and is still one of the Bible translations I read. We need to keep that Jewish context before our eyes at all times. And we need to take Paul's words in Romans seriously — that God still loves the Jewish people, even if they can't see Jesus right now.

Cariño: “The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable,” Paul says in Romans 11. Do we take this seriously? Especially as we read the Scriptures and the prophets and what God has promised the people of Israel — and as we engage with Jewish people.

If Jesus has Jewish DNA for all eternity, how are we going to treat his brothers and sisters in the flesh?

Andy: Right? So how are we going to treat them?

Cariño: Yes. As I was saying earlier, we need to listen. We need to listen better. We need to show ourselves friendly. Right now antisemitism is at an all‑time high, and it continues to rise. It was already at an all‑time high before October 7, 2023, and that just seemed to take the lid off something.

And then we also need to check on our Jewish neighbors. Every time something happens in the community like this, it's very traumatic for the larger community.

One of the things Dara Horn writes about is a series of three high‑profile antisemitic attacks in the United States over an 18‑month period. The first one was here in Pittsburgh — a man walked into a synagogue on a Saturday morning and murdered 11 helpless people.

Now we've had all these antisemitic attacks on synagogues and Jewish spaces. We need to check on our Jewish neighbors because, as a whole people, they are very sensitive to this. When something happens in Michigan, the Jewish people here in Pittsburgh are double‑checking their security. They're increasing the security guards they have on Saturday morning.

So I call or reach out to the rabbi or the cantor and say, “Are you guys okay? Do you need anything? Please remember that our church is just down the street. If you need anything, call us.”

Andy: And what's the response to that?

Cariño: I had the great privilege of speaking at a synagogue. They asked me to speak about my last trip to Israel. I also spoke about how I'm pushing the Church on the antisemitism issue and trying to raise awareness.

The cantor came up to me in front of the whole congregation, gave me a hug, and said, “I feel a little less afraid and a little less alone.”

Andy: Wow.

Cariño: Our Jewish neighbors really want to know who their friends are. And the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah of Israel, should be at the top of the list. We need to love them for the sake of loving them and for the sake of Jesus.

Do we want to talk about who the Messiah is? Of course we do. But can we love them when they say no? We should. I think Jesus is calling us to love them even when they say no.

Andy: Yeah. Wow. So much to dive into.

I have a question now. One of the things I've seen — our listeners know that I lived overseas most of my adult life, and I've been back for the past four years — is that there are so many organizations working in Israel. I would say most of our listeners are extremely pro‑Israel, so they want to do something.

As I've looked into some of these organizations, at least online, it makes me question how well those funds are being used. Do you have a rule of thumb or two for supporting Israel financially?

Cariño: Yes, I do. Because you're right — there are a lot of organizations. Some are Christian organizations, some are not.

One of the most important rules of thumb, if you're being asked for money, is: what does that organization think about the Jewish followers of Jesus in the Holy Land?

There are a couple of organizations that do wonderful work and a lot of interfaith work — Jews and Christians together. But the instant a Jewish follower of Jesus shows up, the conversation shuts down. They don't want them there. They don't see them as Christian, and they don't see them as Jewish — they see them as an apostate Jew.

That's very important, because there are Christians in the Holy Land — both Arab and Jewish.

So if there's a ministry that is, one, working with the Messianic congregations, and two, even better, working at reconciliation within the Church so that Jews and Arabs who know Jesus get to know each other and work past the political issues for the sake of Jesus — that's a strong ministry.

People have different things they want to support in the Land. If you want to give toward bomb shelters right now, that's great — find an organization doing that. If you want to make sure people are getting food — because right now there's no tourism, which means shops are closed and tour guides have no work — then give to ministries doing food distribution.

Listen to your heart and what the Lord is calling you to, but also make sure they are thinking of the whole body of Christ in the Land.

Andy: That's really helpful advice. Another question I have: when I've seen some of these fundraising efforts for Israel, some organizations are helping the poor in Israel. And when I see that, I guess in my mind I've always thought of Israel as a prosperous nation. So is there a need to help the poor in Israel?

Cariño: There is. I was talking earlier about how sometimes you cross borders and it feels like going from a really clean, prosperous, shiny building to something less taken care of. So yes, there are people struggling — especially right now because of the war — but there are always people struggling.

One, Israel is a nation of immigrants, and people are always immigrating to Israel because they're Jewish and returning to their ancient homeland. Hebrew is a tough language to learn. And sometimes immigrants get stuck because they're not picking up Hebrew fast enough, which means they can't get work other than menial jobs. So some people get stuck in those places.

Others, like in any society, are stuck because of a broken marriage, widowhood, or being orphaned. War is an issue. Terrorism can be an issue. Those things affect people, and that means there's need — on the Jewish side or the Arab side, the Palestinian side or the Israeli side.

Andy: Okay. Love it. Cariño, tell us what your organization is doing.

Cariño: Here in the United States, the Church's Ministry Among Jewish People is encouraging and equipping the Church to build bridges with their Jewish neighbors. If you're not sure how to start that conversation, reach out and we can talk about it. We also focus on teaching the Jewishness of the gospel and the Jewishness of Jesus, because that's so important for framing how we engage with our Jewish neighbors.

In Israel, we work closely with CMJ Israel. We have two churches, two guesthouses, a tour company — which is under hiatus right now — study tours, and a primary and secondary school that teaches kids from across the spectrum: Arab, Jewish, Christian, Muslim.

We also have the Mercy Fund that does practical ministry: food distribution, language lessons for immigrants, and helping people who are falling through bureaucratic cracks.

Andy: The website is cmj-usa.org. Or people can Google “Church's Ministry Among Jewish People.” Love what you're doing and hearing all of that.

Cariño, if the internet is correct, it says you've done some tours at the Holocaust Museum in El Paso. What would you want our listeners to know about that? Why would it be worth visiting?

Cariño: If you can't get to Poland or Germany to study this, I really think — for the small space that it is — they did a wonderful job of recreating one of the camps so you have an idea of how they worked. And that is important history we need to wrestle with as Christians.

I've been to Poland twice. I've toured many of the camps. The director of Christ Church Jerusalem does a yearly Jewish history tour of Poland — he's going again this summer. It's called the Narrow Bridge Tour, narrowbridgetour.com. I highly recommend it.

I remember getting to a camp called Majdanek outside of Lublin, and I kind of hit a wall and cried out to the Lord: “Why did you let this happen?” And we have to wrestle with those hard questions.

This is this is a good God. This is the God of Israel that we have attached ourselves through through Jesus. And the Holocaust is horrific. I can't even describe when you see the evidence.

And we have to wrestle with God and understand how can we trust God with even these horrible things, trust that he is sovereign and that he has righteousness and justice lined up for these horrible things.

If you've never engaged with these questions, the El Paso Holocaust Museum is a great place to start.

What I love the most, especially as an El Pasoan, is that at the end they have this panel of Holocaust survivors who settled in El Paso.

Andy: Oh, wow.

Cariño: And their stories are marvelous — stories of survival, stories of what must be providential protection. From all the way over there, from that horrific scene in Europe, they landed in El Paso, Texas of all places. I was so encouraged by those stories. You’ll recognize some names — prominent businessmen at the time, or families who may still be around. It's encouraging how the Lord saves people and where He plants them.

It's important for us to know Jewish history and how it engages with us. The Jewish people have been in the United States since colonial times. They came here for religious freedom just like the pilgrims did.

Andy: Yeah. We have a historian who comes on this program once a month, Bernie Sargent, and he was saying that even from the times of Oñate, the original Spanish explorer to come here to El Paso in the late 1500s, he had a group of Jewish people with him who were looking to escape what was happening in Spain. They were kind of undercover Jewish people in this very Catholic entourage crossing the desert.

There definitely is that whole connection here in El Paso. I have not visited the El Paso Holocaust Museum — I need to remedy that. I did have the opportunity to visit Auschwitz in the late 90s. And I think that's really important — just as you're saying — to at least begin to understand the history, what happened then, and then we can begin to see what's possibly beginning to happen again right now.

Cariño: That's one of the things I appreciate about the way Rev. David Pileggi does the Narrow Bridge Tour of Poland. You look at how people responded to what was happening — the people who responded well and the people who responded poorly. And it challenges us: are we ready to protect our neighbor when something bad comes for them simply because of who they are?

We need to think those things through. We need to look at the mistakes of the Church especially, and learn from those mistakes.

Andy: Earlier in the program you said it would be a good idea to call the local synagogue, tell them we're here, ask if they need anything. And you would recommend that — like if a pastor is listening — just look it up online and make a phone call?

Cariño: Definitely. Pastors especially — if you're near a Jewish center, look up the email address. It's Passover. This year Passover and Holy Week are right on top of each other. First night of Passover is Wednesday night, the 1st.



Send a greeting card and say, “Happy Passover. We're thinking of you. If you ever need anything, let us know.” Shoot an email. “Can we go for coffee? I'd like to hear how you're feeling, what security issues you have, and how we can help you.” Start a conversation.

Now, it takes patience and grace because there's a lot of antisemitic history, and the Church has made many mistakes in its 2,000‑year history in how we engage with the Jewish people. So there may be a, “Why is this guy talking to me?” kind of reaction.

Be prepared for that skeptical look — but this is where we need to be persistent and say, “No, we want to make sure you're cared for. We want you to know we see what's happening and we want to know how it's affecting you, because we need to learn.” If we approach with humility, a friendship will start, and the hope is that it will sustain deeper conversations down the road.

Andy: Love it. Cariño, if you could pray one prayer for the Jewish people, what would that prayer be?

Cariño: That everything they want and hope in Messiah will be revealed to them — and very soon.

Andy: Love it. Today we've been with Cariño Casas. She's with the Church's Ministry Among Jewish People. The website is cmj‑usa.org. Cariño, really appreciate your input, your time, this conversation.

Cariño: Thank you so much, Andy, for the opportunity.