Y Not I

It has been a quiet week, with not much to post on, however a friend has been discussing with me about Mitt Romney, his faith, the reaction by evangelical Christians and the reaction to that by the mainstream media. With that in mind I happened across a post on Another Think questioned whether evangelical Christians were applying a religion test for the office of President. He linked in the post to a story from the Catholic site, First Things about whether Mormonism was Christian. The Another Think post also linked to a post from Mere Orthodoxy, which included a quote from this post by Matthew Yglesias of The Atlantic. The interesting part to me is the representation of “Jews for Jesus” and whether “they” are Jews or not. The comments themselves provide a great deal of amusement.

First of all Jews for Jesus is an organization, obviously a very successful one. Is someone who is a member of Jews for Jesus a Messianic Jew? Most likely. Is a Messianic Jew a member of Jews for Jesus? Possibly, but does not need to be. Most often it is assumed that the Jews for Jesus and Messianic Jews are synonyms, however they in actuality are not. As I mentioned, they are very successful, Praise God, and one evidence is how common the name has become. Like Band-Aid, Q-Tips and Xerox, the name of a brand has become synonymous for the entire product, or in this case faith.

While I am not a member of Jews for Jesus, I think I am in line with many of their tenants and beliefs. There are some Messianic Jews that are not, and there are some things that I would disagree with in Jews for Jesus and their beliefs and methods. However, as I mentioned, they are most definitely part of the faith and the body that I am also part of.

Matthew Yglesias states that his problem is not that we are not “real Jews” (whatever that means), but that we insist on saying that we are real Jews. This comes from an uneasiness that I think most especially secular Jews have with the idea of a Jew that accepts the Jewish Messiah. How funny it is that a liberal thinker like he appears to be, has a problem with a label that one chooses to apply to oneself. For a secular Jew to reject their faith, to reject their Rabbis, yet still be able to keep their allegiance to their roots and heritage, but Messianic Jews are not. A secular Jew is somehow a real Jew and a Messianic Jew is not.

David Klinghoffer, himself no friend to Messianic Jews having authored a book, “Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History,” wrote an interesting piece a few years ago for The Forward titled “Are We Being Fair to Messianic Jews?” In the piece he makes some very interesting points:

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).

He also takes on the claim that Messianic Jews are not real Jews because of our belief in Jesus as compared to the secular belief in no God:

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 plain truth is Messianic Jews have more in common with Orthodox Judaism than the other branches do in many, many ways. Once again Klinghoffer points out:

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.”

So while I have moved from Mitt Romney and the discussion of whether Mormonism is Christian or whether a Christian should vote for a Mormon, I came away from it all further renewed in my standing as a Jew, as a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And if it makes some uncomfortable, well, that is something they have to learn to deal with, and at the same time they should look inside themselves and see how real their own labels may or may not be.

B”H