THE DISPUTATION:

Are We Fair to Messianic Jews?

By David Klinghoffer

June 10, 2005

 

When you write a book called "Why the Jews Rejected Jesus" and make

your e-mail address available on a Web site bearing your name, as I've

done, you are going to get a lot of e-mail from strangers. Some of it

will be friendly, some hostile and some heartbreaking. In the last

category, I place the many communications I've received from messianic

Jews — a correspondence that has made me question the longstanding

Jewish policy of shunning such people.

 

Messianic Jews attend places of worship where traditional Jewish

religious observances are practiced, but they also revere Jesus as the

messiah and as God incarnate. As of 1995, there were 30,000 of them in

the United States, according to the World Christian Encyclopedia,

published by Oxford University Press, or 160,600 globally in 2000. They

belong to "messianic Jewish" denominations whose membership, according

to the same source, range up to 90% born gentiles, with only 10% born

Jews.

 

You hear little about them because the Jewish community denies their

leaders and organizations any recognition. Ordinary messianic believers

feel the painful effects of the quarantine.

 

A messianic Jew named Bob wrote to me of being ejected from synagogues

in Kansas City, New York's Upper West Side and Singapore. Susan from

San Francisco told of the "Conservative synagogue in which the

president of the congregation and the cantor gave the rabbi an

ultimatum: Kick me out or they would leave. I honored the rabbi's

request that I not 'evangelize' in the synagogue. But my membership

dues were returned and I was no longer welcomed." Michael, now living

in Harrisburg, N.C., recalled being spat on while riding the Long

Island Railroad.

 

Is the quarantine policy necessary? Is it fair?

 

It may be necessary. After all, passion can be persuasive; and

followers of messianic Judaism are passionate to share their faith in a

manner you don't often encounter in liberal Jewish denominations —

though you do in Orthodox Judaism. For this reason, the messianic

movement poses a special challenge to the continuity of Jewish belief.

Ostracism is also a spur to rethinking your beliefs.

 

But what is necessary may not be fair. Do messianic Jews depart from

Judaism in any way that alone sets them apart from other Jewish

denominations?

 

Theologically, messianic Judaism is a hybrid, with doctrines that run

counter to the Hebrew Bible — for example, the prophets' faith that the

messiah will preside over a world so radically changed that nobody will

need to ask if he's come — and other beliefs contrary to the New

Testament. The latter, calling Torah "obsolete," a "curse" and a

"captor" (Hebrews 8:13, Galatians 3:13 and Romans 7:6), dispenses with

the Jewish observances that messianics cherish.

 

Many Jews criticize messianic spokesmen for blurring the distinction

between Judaism and Christianity. But is this any different from

mainstream Jewish leaders who — on issues ranging from homosexuality to

abortion and euthanasia — blur the equally sharp divide between

traditional Jewish values and the values of secular liberalism?

 

Ah, you say, messianic Judaism is deceptive in doing this? Well, no

more so than those Jewish groups that campaign for gay rights while

disguising the fact that Jewish scripture unambiguously forbids

homosexual intercourse (Leviticus 18:22).

 

Other Jews argue that messianics have ceased to be Jews because they

revere Jesus as God incarnate, or because they worship a triune Deity.

From the perspective of Judaism as it has been practiced for three

millennia, there is indeed a problem in imagining God as taking a

bodily form (see Deuteronomy 4:15) or as comprising distinct persons

(Deuteronomy 6:4). But other beliefs constituting no less serious a

departure from biblical tradition are smiled upon in our community. For

instance, our liberal denominations reject the ancient faith that the

Torah was received by Moses from God, thus reducing much of Judaism to

mere folklore.

 

The gravity of this is evident from the teachings of Maimonides. In his

encyclopedic "Mishneh Torah," he lists 24 categories of people who may

forfeit eternal life. One is a Jew who attributes bodily form to God.

One is a Jew who believes in multiple deities. Another is one who

denies that even a single word in the Torah comes from God.

 

To revile messianic Judaism while embracing Jewish movements that deny

the revelation of the Torah at Sinai, then, makes little sense.

 

The irony is that messianic Judaism stands out by affirming the divine

authorship of the entire Torah. When I debated a Conservative rabbi

recently at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, a messianic Jew

in the audience thanked me afterward for "speaking up for what the

Torah says instead of what is 'politically correct' in Reform and

Conservative Judaism."

 

This same woman lamented, "We are often treated as 'pariahs' by other

Jews." Is that fair?

 

There is a further, practical objection to messianic Judaism. One may

reasonably argue that Jewish belief in Jesus acts as a corrosive, an

acid upon Jewish existence. There has never been a viable "Jewish

Christianity" that didn't ultimately disappear into the wider gentile

world. Yet secularism has done a better job of decimating our ranks

than has any other religion, and you don't hear many Jews speaking out

against secularism. Fair?

 

Certainly it is understandable that some Jews feel as they do about

these Jewish Christians. For many of the former, there is something

stomach-churning about a Jew who embraces a faith with a centuries-long

record of treating his own ancestors in cruel and humiliating ways.

 

And yet what is understandable, just like what is necessary, isn't

necessarily fair. After all, we live in America with her unique

philosemitic Evangelical Christian tradition. To imagine American

Christianity, of which messianic Judaism forms a part, as if it were

indistinguishable from medieval European Christianity is historically

inaccurate.

 

No, I'm not trying to be judgmental about anyone's beliefs. There is

value, however, in shining light on an area — of interest to believers

in Judaism as to believers in Jesus — that has been wrapped in

murkiness and unreason. Let there be light.

 

David Klinghoffer is the author of "Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The

Turning Point in Western History" (Doubleday).