How, if at all, does Christ’s being a Jew influence your interactions with, and feelings about, Jewish people today?
My father was Jewish and he told me that it was often the case that upon learning he was a Jew some people would immediately note that Christ was Jewish and then, apparently as a result, be especially friendly and solicitous. He went on to say how such behaviour confused him given the frequent displays of antisemitism he had witnessed (and had endured) over the course of his life.
So, does Christ’s being a Jew influence your interactions with, and feelings about, Jewish people today?
My father is one of the most devout Christians I know. He also has an antisemitic streak. Maybe not as deep as it used to be, but it’s still there.
I imagine that for him, he’d say that the Jews of yore are not like the Jews of today. The Jews of yore were cool, before they jumped the shark circa 33 A.C. That’s when they started talking with their hands and being homosexual money-grubbing Communists.
Not much really although my awareness of the faith and its people initially came through Christianity. There just wasn’t much of a Jewish community around me when I was little; not much to be exposed to. It at least gave me a basic understanding of, and respect for, the religion and the people.
I was just thinking about the parable of the Good Samaritan earlier today.
Jesus was 100% clear that it didn’t matter so much what religion someone was, but whether that individual was a nice person or not.
This and other basic parables about kindness are important to me. So I try not to “group” people by religion and such. It’s the person.
As to the form of question asked by the OP, my answer is sort of round-about. Jesus made a point about the mistaken notion among Jews of his time regarding “heretics” such as the Samaritans. If Jesus the Jew was okay with Samaritans, I’m okay with Jews.
As a believer just about everyone good you read about in the Bible is jewish. As a result meeting someone who is jewish is like a huge Star Trek fan meeting someone who is Vulcan. I know intellectually that it is not a big deal since in Christ there is no jew or greek but it is still cool.
About as much as Leonardo da Vinci being Italian affects my opinion of and interactions with Italians, and I think I’ve never had a conversation about LdV with an Italian. I like knowing where the RCC gets its stuff, and a lot of that is from Judaism (I know a priest who loves to freak out the holy-water-drinkers by pointing out that we’re just a really big, heretic branch of Judaism), but… so?
As a Mormon I can tell you as a rule we are all quite fond of Jews. At BYU they even have large Passover dinners each year and I’ve participated in quite a few in private lds homes.
Which denominations make a big deal about Christ having been Jewish? The mainstream churches that I’ve attended (Lutheran, Presbyterian A/USA, Methodist, Catholic) have never put any particular emphasis on that fact. Is this perhaps a Southern Baptist thing, for some reason?
Not really, but only because I never saw any reason to treat them differently from anyone else. I grew up thinking that Hitler was not only horrible, but really weird to focus on something so completely unimportant. I mean, I thought that at least black people look different–even it that’s a stupid reason not to like someone.
The only thing I might’ve done, had I realize that antisemitism was still a thing, is go out of my way to try and treat you better specifically because of that. The idea of being patronizing was not something I was ever warned against.
Heck, if you were at my school and didn’t have many friends, I’d have been your friend. Maybe permanently, or maybe until you found new friends and didn’t seem to like me as much anymore. All my real friends were some sort of outsider.
Jesus (or those who chronicled his life) was likely OK with the Samaritans because he was NOT OK with the Pharisees (who were not OK with the Samaritans).
Today’s Jews are the descendants of the Pharisees.
Jesus Christ was Jewish ethnically and culturally, not theologically (I.e. He was Jewish only in the sense than Albert Einstein, Karl Marx and Richard Feynman were Jewish). The NT accounts make it fairly clear, at least implicitly, that He taught that he was divine, and that’s entirely unacceptable by Jewish theological standards.
My grandfather (a Christian Serb) was somewhat anti-semitic, and that’s the only thing I hold against his memory. I think he thought he would not have had to fled the Nazi terrorism were it not for the Jews, and the prejudice/whatever that latched onto his people and that accounts for his bitterness, however misappropriated. Just putting that out there for education and posterity.
People are individuals, and there are good and bad in every single group. I’m no fan of “pick-and-choose” Christians who claim to follow the Bible, but eat bacon cheeseburgers.