Jews for Jesus

Great Debates
1

I work for a Jewish Charity. I am not Jewish. I was raised a half-hearted Christian (Lutheran). I am not a Christian now. I have a fair knowledge of Christianity and Judaism but not so much that I know what the Hell “Jews for Jesus” is all about (you should pardon the pun).

Every day I am confronted by people with “Jews for Jesus” tshirts at the subway station. Being pretty much a crab-ass in the morning, I never stop to talk to them or peruse their flyers.

Could some one explain to me what this movement is all about?

2

It’s a fraud.

J4J is a group founded and funded by the Southern Baptists. It was founded by an ordained Baptist minister named Martin (Moishe) Rosen.

The basic idea of the group is to try to convince Jews who are uneducated about their religion that you can be Jewish and accept Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God at the same time. The eventual goal is to have the Jew eventually convert and become a full-fledged Christian.

This subject was bandied about on this board before. If you do a search, you should come across a massive thread started about a year ago.

The fraud comes in in the fact that you cannot be Jewish and believe in Jesus as the messiah or as a Deity (or son of). There is precious little that all major branches of Judaism agree on, but one thing that Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Judaism agree upon is this: belief in Jesus is incompatible with Judaism.

My personal feelings about this are as follows: If you want to go out and seek to draw people to Christianity, then fine, do so; but do it based on the merits of Christianity. Don’t dress it up as Judaism and sell it as a flavor of Judaism.

Zev Steinhardt

3

Thanks for the info! I’m off to search.

4

I’m sorry. I was being lazy before. I’ll correct that now. Here’s the thread I was talking about above.

Zev Steinhardt

5

It’s impossible to be a Jew and be a Christian? I am not a Jew, and therefore not really entitled to comment much, but that seems like a very narrow definition. It also makes being a Jew entirely a religious affair.

Why is this not like someone saying that you can’t be an American and a communist? I may not like it, but it’s possible.

6

They have a website at http://www.jewsforjesus.org/
if you go on the website for believers they have section that describes their purpose and history.

7

Which, in context, is exactly right.

Leaving aside the whole “Is a Jew a member of a race, religion, or culture?” question, an observant Jew (following the precepts of the religion of Judaism) cannot be a Christian, any more than a Christian (as defined by the various denominations of Christianity) can be a Hindu (with Hinduisms rather markedly different views toward the Divine).

8

I really wish this was a Pit thread, so that I could say what I really think of the Jews for Jesus (who have been accosting me daily too – they are headquartered in San Francisco and seem to have really ramped up their campaign this month).

Dave - in the strictest sense, you are correct. It is possible to be of Jewish descent, ethnically Jewish, and Jewish by Jewish law, and yet to have accepted Christ according to Christian precepts and therefore to be a Christian. However, it is insulting and ingenuous for such people to claim that they are Jews without further explanation, which is what the whole “Jews for Jesus” movement boils down to. It is an attempt to obscure the Jewish religion and confuse people into thinking that Jews are just another variety of Christian. I am very, very tired of having to explain to people that NO, Jews do NOT believe in Christ. Some Jews do not believe in Christ, any more than some Jews worship Hindu gods. The Jewish religion has a very specific 5000 year old tradition that in no way involves a belief that Jesus was the messiah or that he was divine. Jews for Jesus are a Christian proselytizing organization (which should be your first clue – Jews do not proselytize) which uses the confusion between Judaism the religion and Judaism the ethnicity to present a fundamentally false view of Judaism for its own purposes.

As Zev said, Jews for Jesus is a fraud. It attempts to portray Judaism as something that it is not. I have nothing against people who want to worship in any way they like, even people who are ethnically Jewish. Just don’t use a name and methodology that is specifically designed to confuse Jews and non-Jews alike.

9

Yes, it’s impossible. The core beliefs of Christianity are incompatible with Judaism.

[ul]
[li]Judaism does not recognize the possibility of a literal Son of God.[/li][li]Judaism does not recognize the concept of Original Sin.[/li][li]Judaism does not believe in vicarious atonement.[/li][li]Judaism does not believe in a divine messiah.[/li][/ul]

These concepts (and others) are all core beliefs that most (if not all) branches of Christianity believe in. Yet, all branches of Judaism will agree that they are not Jewish. As such, it is impossible to be Jewish and Christian at the same time.

Zev Steinhardt

10

Dave Swaney:

Well gee, there’s a shocker.

Let’s put it this way: it is not possible to simultaneously practice Judaism and Christianity. It’s the equivalent of saying that you can’t be a capitalist and a communist.

11

Can one be a Christian, yet maybe keep some of their say, former Jewish heritage? Like I worked with a girl whose mother was Catholic and her father was Jewish. She was Jewish, but they still celebrated Christmas and Easter in a secular way-gifts and time with the family.

12

Well, I didn’t really intend this to be a Great Debate but it looks like it’s heading that way.

Perhaps a Mod should move it on over there?

FWIW - from what’s been said here and from zev’s link, I agree with him. It sounds like a pretty shady deal. Kind of like someone parading around in a Coke t-shirt telling my, "Try Pepsi.

13

I don’t know enough of Christianity to tell you what’s OK as far as Jewish practices go.

As far as your friend goes; if her mother is not Jewish, then she is not Jewish. Even Reform Jews (who allow for patrelineal descent) would not consider her Jewish if she grew up celebrating Christmas and Easter.

Zev Steinhardt

14

I agree with Zev: if you’re celebrating Christmas and Easter, you’re not a practicing Jew.

As an aside there’s a group of ‘Jews’ for Jesus (or, more accurately, Kosher Christians, since they’re Christians who keep Old Testament laws, despite Jesus revoking them, not Jews in any real sense of the word) who are running about calling themselves “Fulfilled Jews”. I’m fairly certain that they had another similarly disingenuous name in the '80s. Anyone remember it?

Leaving aside the obvious logical problem with the name it’s so damned insulting that I see red every time I encounter it.

And ‘Jews’ for Jesus is such a dumb name. It’s like “Marxists for Ayn Rand” or “Greens for James Watt”

A brief message to the so-called “Jews for Jesus” (AKA Fulfilled ‘Jews’ aka Kosher Christians aka Hopeless Goobers Fooling Themselves:

Look Bunky: if you believe that Christ was the only begotten Son of God, who incarnated on Earth, was born without sin, lived a sinless life and died on the cross to free mankind from original sin 'whosoever believth in him shall not perish": newsflash! You’re a Christian!!! That’s what the word means! And, next time you tell me that I’m ‘unfulfilled’, I’m gonna have loud words with you.

Fenris (trying to keep his response within the bounds of GQ)

15

as just a regular kinda jew, I thought I’d throw in my family’s definition of J4J:

We call them Christians

16

Zev, Chaim:

Do rabbinical scholars say that Jesus practiced Judaism?

(Marxists for Ayn Rand :D)

17

Sinced I am not a religious let alone Jewish scholar can someone tell me what Jesus was as far a Jewish faith goes? What he just a man? Was he a prophet? What is their view of the guy…

18

If you are part jewish (or even all jewish) and you celebrate easter and christmas in a secular manner does that still keep you from the jewish faith? (I hope that makes sense.) That is if you practice Judaism in some form but also go on an easter egg hunt and open presents on christmas would that be OK as far as your acceptance as a practicing jew?

I mean, my parents aren’t specifically part of an organized religion (although they grew up christian) and we still hunted for eggs and opened presents on dec 25. And don’t forget Halloween. Halloween is as christian as easter or christmas, not to mention valentine’s day. That is to say it is a pagan celebration coopted by the church. (OK easter has a bit more of a heritage being related to passover, but the easter egg hunt can be traced back to pagan celebrations.)

19

not all christians, and probably most of the protestant variety don’t recognize the idea of original sin.

Also, I don’t know anything about fulfilled Jews, but I have known 7th Day Adventists who attempt to keep most Old Testament law.

20

I was raised Catholic, and was taught that Jews were already God’s chosen and didn’t need to be converted–they were already saved. So the whole idea of proseletysing (sp) Jews is, in my family, considered insulting and unneccesary. So I’m not too keen on J for J myself.

That said, I’m not entirely convinced that one can not be a Jew and consider Jesus to be the messiah. The argument seems to be that one can’t be a Jew and accept Christian doctrine–which makes sense, but it’s not the same thing.

but Judaism does recognize and expect a messiah, does it not? Identifying that messiah as Jesus isn’t the same thing as believing he’s the Son of God (Or God Himself, as many–but not all-- Xtian sects hold). I’d also like to point out that at one point religious Jews did believe this–or some did, anyway, enough to start their own sect of Judaism that eventually became Christianity.

This has nothing to do with JC’s eligibility for messiah. The Original sin thing was largely due to Augustine of Hippo and friends, and they had opposition --there was a contingent in the church that disagreed with the idea. I know someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall Jesus ever having said anything about it in any of the 4 “approved” gospels. And not all Christians believe in it–it’s not a defining thing.

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. I’m wondering about the Scapegoat business–isn’t that vicarious atonement? I realize few Jews today send goats out into the desert to get rid of the sins of the community, but it’s right there in a part of the Bible accepted by both Jews and Christians.

Do Jews believe in a messiah? If so, what makes Jesus so completely ineligible? Once again,some Jews believed he was the messiah–those apostles were all good Jewish boys, as was Jesus himself, and the early Christains were pretty much entirely Jewish until Paul won the argument over whether or not to let gentiles in.

As I said, I can buy that the observant, religious Jew couldn’t accept many points of Christian doctrine (which varies widely, btw) but I still don’t understand why, expecting a messiah to begin with, Jesus is an entirely impossible choice. I don’t doubt it would require an interpretaion of scripture that differs somewhat from yours, but I know there are different sects of Judaism, and I assume that these sects differ in their interpretations of scripture, in greater or lesser degrees. So why couldn’t a Jew decide that, as he or she read scripture, Jesus qualified as the messiah?