11 February 2010

Messianic Judaism?

There is a new (to me) phenomenon that I find very disturbing and feel a need to talk about it a little bit. It is this growing movement in Christianity called Messianic Judaism or Jews for Jesus. As a Jew, I find the whole business to be very unsettling. Jews don’t believe Jesus was the messiah and that is all there is to it. If you believe he was, than you are not Jewish. I’m not sure if the movement is filled with Jews who were scammed by Christian missionaries, Christians fooling themselves or Jews hedging their bets. All I know is that I am getting very tired of doing searches for Judaism and Jewish resources just to be led to a Christian website.


Don’t read me wrong, I have nothing against Christians nor do I have anything against Jews who convert to Christianity or any other religion for that matter. I do have a problem with scam artists and that is exactly how I view Messianic Jews.

Why don’t Jews believe in Jesus as the Messiah? If you do a search you are sure to find many websites with this information. I won’t go into too much detail here but I’ll give you a quick list that I got from Aish and if you want to learn more please go to http://www.aish.com/jw/s/48892792.html where it is explained in more detail. You may also want to look and ask many questions at www.askmoses.com.

1) Jesus did not fulfill the messianic prophecies.

2) Jesus did not embody the personal qualifications of the Messiah.

3) Biblical verses "referring" to Jesus are mistranslations.

4) Jewish belief is based on national revelation.

I am getting very tired of searching for Jewish websites, homeschooling resources and books just to find that they are these types of groups. I’ve been to many sites claiming to be Jewish and selling Jewish materials only to find that are actually Christian. These sites and people are acting fraudulently and should be taken to task, at least.

I know my children will not be fooled by these people as we discus these groups but I worry some may. This is why it is so important to arm our children with knowledge about what Judaism is and is not. It is also important for Christians to understand that just because these groups are in existence does not mean they are in any way main stream or legitimate. I know many of my Christian friends think these “Jews” are enlightened or righteous but it is just the opposite.

1 comment:

  1. Sadly, not a new thing at all... שs long as there have been Christians, there have been Christians trying to convince us that Jesus is the fulfillment of Judaism and Jewish law.
    In my experience, many (if not most) of these "messianic Jews" are actually Christians seeking to add depth to their Christian life by celebrating what they call "Biblical feasts" and other observances.
    While it is inauthentic, those (in my opinion) are the benign type of messianic Jews - the ones who aren't as much trying to change me as to improve themselves and their kids' education. Theoretically.
    While my distaste for "messianic Judaism" (which I've heard called "Hebrew Christianity" as an attempt to show that it's not actually a form or movement of Judaism) has not diminished over the almost-30 years since I first learned about it (boy am I old!), I have begun to differentiate between the active-proselytization type and the sincere-Christian-seeking-knowledge type.
    Hope this helps!
    For more information, try JewsForJudaism.org . They have been very helpful to me in understanding these issues.

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