I am a Jew. I was born and raised Jewish, secular or
non-practicing, but still Jewish. I
lived and grew up as a “good Jewish boy.”
Most of my friends and neighbors on the block were Jewish and my family
lived in a community (Lathrup Village, Michigan) in which many other Jewish families
lived. My Bubbie (Yiddish for grandma) and aunts who had escaped the
Holocaust in Poland and Russia at the beginnings of World War II spoke often in
Yiddish. I was taken out of Hebrew
school early so I never had a Bar
Mitzvah, but I would have had one otherwise. I guess in retrospect that the only events in
my life that were not Jewish were that some of the girls I had a romantic
interest in my youth were non-Jewish, I ended up married to a Gentile, and that
my wedding ceremony was secular, being performed by a Circuit Court Judge of
Appeals. Yet today, I feel more Jewish
than ever before. I feel and connect
with other Jews around the world in a form of solidarity. Though I have never been there, Israel is
my homeland and I empathize with the plight of many of my brothers and
sisters in the Holy Land. Now after all
of these statements about of me being Jewish, can there be any doubt of who and
what I am? To be honest, unless you know
me, I would have a hard time believing it.
Yet there is one statement that may make you change your mind. A statement that will make you forget
everything I have previously said about myself.
Ready? I believe in my body, mind, heart, and to the core of my soul that the
man known as Yeshua Ben Yosef or
Jesus son of Joseph was and is the Jewish Messiah.
So what does this
mean? Am I no longer Jewish and a
full-fledged Christian? Am I now a
Gentile? Am I part of some sort of
hybrid between the two? Am I part of
some strange and twisted cult? Or is
what I follow and believe part of Scripture?
I guess the answer will really depend upon who is reading this. If you are a Jew, and I am speaking of
Rabbinical Jews, I am sure it means that I have converted to a new religion
forsaking the old, becoming an apostate.
They may think I am a hypocrite, a fool, or even a traitor. If you are a secular Jew and you don’t
believe in the spiritual and religious side of Judaism then it may mean that I
am attempting to make a happy medium between my wife’s religion and my
own? If you are a member of my family
you might even consider this a form of betrayal against the memory of my
elders. Yet for me it changes
nothing. Absolutely nothing. I am still Jewish. The only thing that has changed is the
definitions of what Jews and Christians were 2000 years ago and what they are
today.
It is amazing how
we define words. What was once the common
definition for a word can easily change over time. Now, I hardly claim knowledge in regards to
this field of study. To be honest, I am
not even sure what the subject is called (possibly linguistics), and I can only
guess as to how it may work; yet I know that time changes language. It was this scenario that occurred with Jews
and Gentiles of the past two millennial
David Chernoff, one of my favorite Messianic Jewish authors, wrote of
this subject in his book Yeshua
the Messiah by saying, “What began historically and biblical as a Jewish
faith has been transformed in the years after His life into what is perceived
today as a “non-Jewish” faith, with Yeshua
Himself being perceived as being “non-Jewish.” (Chernoff 14) Note Chernoff’s use of the word perceived,
for this is the exact point I am attempting to make, for perception is the key
of defining who we are and the way people see us. The same theorem also applies to the terms
Christian and Jew. In the years after
Jesus’ death nobody questioned that the believers of Him were Jewish. After all, the early church was a Jewish
church, that is historical fact. Actually, according to the Apostle Paul’s
letters to the Romans and Galatians, many followers of Yeshua felt that you actually had to convert to Judaism to become a
true believer. Yet today the opposite is
true. To believe in Jesus today is
defined as non-Jewish and that is what Christianity has come to be known as,
the Gentile (non-Jewish) faith in Jesus.
Today, Replacement Theories are abounding in the Gentile Christian
world. This false theory states that the
Jews had their chance at the Messiah and they blew it, therefore Yeshua is no longer the Jews Messiah,
but the Gentiles who are the new Israel.
Sounds pretty spoiled doesn’t it?
It sometimes gets even worse when many Gentile scholars continue to
change many historical facts including those of an ancient Jewish sects like
the Essene’s who created the Dead Sea Scrolls.
This religious group is now being portrayed as budding Christians
instead of Ultra-Orthodox Jews who isolated themselves from other Jews. The Essene’s sole purpose of their xenophobic
behavior was to protect themselves from Israel’s emerging Hellenistic
lifestyles as well as protecting their own purity which they felt would be
damaged by the receiving of any self gratification or pleasure which they
deemed as sinful.
Partly due to
these false theories, being a Jewish believer has become an enigma to both
Rabbinical Jews and Gentile Christians.
For some reason it is wrong to be a Jewish Christian today. Chernoff says it perfectly when he states,
“This is particularly ironic in the light of the fact that Yeshua was Jewish, as were His disciples, all the writers of the
New Covenant (Testament), the apostles and all of Yeshua’s initial followers!!!” (Chernoff 5) Karen Armstrong, the highly acclaimed
theologian and author of the book, A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of
Judaism, Christianity and Islam, also spoke of this evolving aspect of the
Christian religion when she wrote,
His [Yeshua] disciples believed that he would
return to inaugurate the Messianic kingdom of God, and, since there was nothing
heretical about such a belief, their sect was accepted as authentically Jewish
by no less than Rabbi Gamaliel, the
grandson of Hillel and one of the
greatest of the tannamin [Rabbi creators of the Mishnah]. His followers worshiped in the Temple every
day as fully observant Jews. Ultimately,
however, the New Israel, inspired by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus,
would become a Gentile faith, which would evolve its own distinctive conception
of God (p. 79-80).
It is also important to note that
the term “Christian” was originally used to describe a certain sect of
Jewish followers of Yeshua, not
Gentile. It was only after the Temple
destruction in 70 A.D., and the Jewish revolt in Israel 125 A.D., which began
the Diaspora (Dispersion,
Exile), that the definition of the word changed. In that time period the term would have fit
quite easily into a list of sects at that time: Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots,
Christians, Hasidim, etc.
I find it
extremely ironic that when many people think of Yeshua today, they picture Him as a young Caucasian tanned and
clean, with His brown hair and beard kept nice and neat. Yeshua
is often depicted wearing long and elegant looking white or scarlet robes and
wearing an outer garment of the same color. Does anybody truly think that this is what the
historical Yeshua would have appeared
like? By all accounts Yeshua and all of His 12 disciples were
fanatical Orthodox Jews. Being Orthodox
Jews and by the fact that Yeshua
followed Torah or the Law to the
letter, it is logical that they would have all been attired as Orthodox
Jews. They each would have worn tallits (prayer shawls) and the other accouterments worn by the Orthodox (i.e. phylacteries). As they were travelers of long distances they
would have most often been dust covered with their legs and feet covered in
grime and muck. Being born in Israel, Yeshua would not have been a Caucasian
at all, but would have had the features and coloring of most individuals in
that region. His Semite coloring would
have included dark hair, most likely black or very dark brown. His skin would have been naturally dark
instead of a tanned white. As I said in part
one of this blog that people see what they want to see, not necessarily by what
is true, even if the evidence proves it.
The evidence for Yeshua’s
appearance has existed for hundreds of years, yet people still wish to see him
resemble themselves as close as possible.
A great example of this is some of the depiction’s I have seen of Yeshua as an African-American or even as
a Latino. Let us set the matter
straight, Yeshua was a born and bred
Israeli and He would have appeared so.
So now that we
have an understanding of who Yeshua
was and they way the term Christian was meant to be defined we need to know how
I define myself. I am and like to be
known as a Jewish Christian or a Hebrew Christian. I consider the term Christian to have three
meanings. The first connotation is the
technical sense of the word; to be a Christian means to be a follower of
Christ. In that aspect of the word that
is exactly what I am. In the second
definition, to be a Christian means to be a Gentile believer in Christ. In the third meaning it is defined as a
non-Jew. So which holds true for me? Definitely definition one, but never two or
three!
So
where does this lead us? To the term so
many Jewish believers love, being a Completed Jew. After all, we feel that we are the completion
of centuries of messianic prophecy. We
feel we are the “Remnant of the Children of Israel” spoken by Paul in Romans
11:1-5. We are those have remained
faithful to the Lord. We live in the
Time of the Gentiles, the Temple no longer stands, the temple grounds are
trampled upon everyday by our enemies, and we have become Isaiah and Ezekiel’s
get and the prophets’ fulfillment of their predicted future events. Now, as previously mentioned; perception is
the key to defining the term. Therefore,
I perceive myself to be a Hebrew or a Completed Jew, while other may simply see
me as just a Jew, others may consider me a false Jew. Yet notice, I am still a Jew.
So
can the issue of my Jewishness be disputed any further? Of course, there are always varying opinions,
yet ask yourself a set of questions.
Where the Jewish followers of the false- messiah Bar-Kochba (son of a star), false Messiah who led the revolt that
resulted the destruction of Jerusalem in 125 A.D., he has never been considered
being non-Jewish, even by other Jews who acknowledged him as a false Messiah. How about those Babylonian Jews who believed
the Persian king, Cyrus, to be the Messiah?
Where the Jews who broke off and formed the sect known as the Essene’s,
who created the Dead Sea Scrolls ever considered non-Jews? If they were not, then neither should we
believers of Messiah Jesus. After all
some Jews are Zionists while others are not.
Some Jews are Humanistic and do not even believe in the Messiah as an
individual, only as a concept and a philosophical argument, yet they are still
Jewish. If they are, then so are we. So add a new term to the list: Jew, Orthodox
Jew, Chasidic Jew, Conservative Jew, Reform Jew, Humanistic Jew, Messianic Jew, Hebrew
Jew, etc.
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