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CHRISTINE77
Guest
I’m not a Messianic Jew but I do enjoy listening to Paul Wilbur’s CDs. He has some really catchy, energetic songs.
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DelsonJacobs
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I’m a Roman Catholic and proud of my Jewish heritage. While some Catholics from the same background might self-identify as “Hebrew Catholic,” I’m not a stickler on what to call myself.
While I am all for other Christian Jews who feel the need to preserve their Jewish identity in one form or another, I personally don’t subscribe to keeping Jewish ritual as a requisite to keeping my Jewish heritage alive (even though in the past I have observed Passover and Chanukah). Again I applaud those Christians who manage to keep Jewish festivals and observances alive in unison with their observance of Christian feasts, but as a Catholic I personally see the observance of my religion as fulfilling my vocation as a Jew who believes his Messiah has come.
Of Sephardic heritage I grew up speaking Ladino, keeping kosher to a degree, even “sitting shiva” when family members died instead of holding a Catholic wake. Apparently my family has lived like this for centuries, even being specific about lighting candles on Friday night (even though they are usually votive lights in honor of the saints).
I think that what some Christians of Jewish heritage do can be very helpful to keep the Jewish voice alive in what has become a mostly Gentile religion. Christianity’s foundations are Jewish, its Scriptures written primarily by Torah-observant Jews, and even the word “Messiah” and all the theology surrounding the concept are Jewish ones—and this sometimes gets forgotten. To illustrate:
While I am all for other Christian Jews who feel the need to preserve their Jewish identity in one form or another, I personally don’t subscribe to keeping Jewish ritual as a requisite to keeping my Jewish heritage alive (even though in the past I have observed Passover and Chanukah). Again I applaud those Christians who manage to keep Jewish festivals and observances alive in unison with their observance of Christian feasts, but as a Catholic I personally see the observance of my religion as fulfilling my vocation as a Jew who believes his Messiah has come.
Of Sephardic heritage I grew up speaking Ladino, keeping kosher to a degree, even “sitting shiva” when family members died instead of holding a Catholic wake. Apparently my family has lived like this for centuries, even being specific about lighting candles on Friday night (even though they are usually votive lights in honor of the saints).
I think that what some Christians of Jewish heritage do can be very helpful to keep the Jewish voice alive in what has become a mostly Gentile religion. Christianity’s foundations are Jewish, its Scriptures written primarily by Torah-observant Jews, and even the word “Messiah” and all the theology surrounding the concept are Jewish ones—and this sometimes gets forgotten. To illustrate:
- Some of my fellow Christians refuse to say “Happy Holidays” around December, claiming that the only reason for the celebratory atmosphere of those days is Christmas—forgetting that Chanukah has been observed at this time too for much longer than Christmas (and that even Christ observed it). I’ve been told to my face that it would be absolutely wrong for Christians to acknowledge any other kind of observance when wishing others well during Christmas time, “especially that false Jewish-Christmas thing they do!”
- I’ve had some of my Christian friends refuse to let me in their homes once they found out I was of Jewish heritage, one of them angrily telling me when he learned of this: “I’ve had you in my family’s home and you even ate at a table near my own mother! I can’t believe you let us do that knowing you were a Jew!”
- I’ve had Latino Christians tell me that speaking Ladino made me of a lower class of humans and that my language was a sign of my “bad breeding.” And I’ve had some Christians flat out say: “You’re a Jew! You don’t belong in a Christian church! You should leave!” (And I’ve even had Hebrew Catholics get mad at me when I refer to myself as a Jew, even though I have Jewish friends including a rabbi who refer to me in this way of their own accord.)
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IgnatianPhilo
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I think in Jesus we find the implication that the way the Jews have been following the law is not correct. Jesus had disputes with the pharisees and he called the generation then wicked because they sought the wrong things (Like signs), mainly a messiah who would militaristic-ally conquer the world and put Rome under his feet. Jesus did not explicitly tell the Jews not to follow the ritiuals of the law or stop the kosher practice and I would be unsure as to the practice of the Jewish followers at this time. I do however believe that by the implication of Jesus coming and fulfilling the law, we are no longer bound to those specific old practices of being circumcised, following kosher, the feasts of Judaism and etc (Not only gentiles but jews are not bound by these practices). I think Paul understood this as I also think the second century Melito understood it as I think the author of Hebrews understood it. It seems to me you cannot have a church divided on lines of being Jew or gentile, they both have to be one in Jesus Christ, hence why a dispute concerning the Lord’s Pascha threatened to divide the eastern and western churches in the second century and why later at Nicea there it was agreed we should have a universal consensus as to when Pascha should take place. If there is to be one practice for the jew to get to heaven (IE following the law) and one practice for the gentile (Ie grace through faith in Jesus Christ), there’s a big problem there, as if the same old covenant was still there and nothing had been accomplished through Christ in the first place. Christians have a new covenant not the old.
I realize this might be unsatisfactory a response, as I am not giving an explicit verse from Christ but rather I think from the teaching of Christ that he was not merely doing the same thing any other rabbi would have done, he radically refocused things not towards the law but rather to himself.
I do believe the apostles more than likely continued their kosher practice but they did not make it a necessity like some messianic’s (not accusing the original poster of this, because I do not know his position) or some of the jews in the church, nor circumcision, nor the old Jewish rituals a necessity.
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7_Sorrows
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I am waiting for the op to tell how he came to accept Jesus as his savior and hear his testimony if in fact it is true.
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FabiusMaximus
Guest
You know I’m going to be honest and frank, but I want to add a disclaimer before I continue: I don’t have a problem with a Hebrew practicing the customs of the Old Testament. However, I did wince a bit when you claimed that Easter and Christmas are “pagan holidays,” which, if you read the history, you will see that that mindset is entirely incorrect. The ancient Church did not mix pagan practices with either holiday. In fact this early debate was decided, as describe in the Paulian epistles, whereby Christians are not constrained by the Old Testament Jewish customs. If you, as a Jew, want to add those customs are part of your heritage, fine, but it is not something that Gentiles are bound to, as IgnatianPhilo stated.
Curiosity: Do you consider Holy Communion to contain the real presence of Jesus Christ, as Catholics, Orthodox, and Lutherans maintain, or do you consider it symbolic?
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gracepoole
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“REAL” Jews? Which are the “real” Jews? Orthodox? Conservative? Reform? Hasidic? Reconstructionist?Interesting. But REAL Jewish people do not take up a collection. In fact they can’t because it is forbidden to carry money on Shabbos. This sounds much more than Fundamentalist Christian worship than anything I have ever participated in in a Shul. What are you calling ‘worship’, the whole thing sounds like worship to me.
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FabiusMaximus
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How fluent is your Ladino? It’s a rare treat to come across anyone who can speak it.
Given that Christmas is the holiday celebrated by the overwhelming majority of the US population, and that Chanukah is celebrated by perhaps 2%, I don’t see why anyone should be obligated to feel that they should say “Happy Chanukah.” Most Americans do not celebrate and it is Christmas that is recognized as a federal holiday, and not Chanukah. If I were to come across someone who, in response to my “Merry Christmas” stated “I’m a Jew I celebrate Chanukah,” I’d simply say “Happy Chanukah” back. Either way, when someone is wishing you “Merry Christmas,” they are wishing you a good time.
At the same time, the average American could very well find themselves in trouble for even uttering the words “Merry Christmas,” in their places of employment, and also if they display something like a nativity scene (sometimes even a Christmas tree), while a Jew who displays a menorah very rarely receive any comment on removing it.
I can’t imagine this is a common experience, though I’m sorry you faced this.
However if you lived in Israel and as a Jew converted to Christianity or became part of a Messianic community, you could very find opposition from Orthodox zealots.
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7_Sorrows
Guest
I also don’t have a problem with messianic jews practicing some of the jewish holidays but I don’t understand they would not want to celebrate the Resurrection. What about Pentecost?
Do you celebrate the jewish pentecost or christian pentecost? Or both?
Do you celebrate the jewish pentecost or christian pentecost? Or both?
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pablope
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Purgatory and the prayer to the saints both have Jewish roots…so how can you say you are jewish if you do not practice both? or believe in both?
It was actually the pagans who did not believe in the communion of saints:calledtocommunion.com/2012/08/relics-saints-and-the-assumption-of-mary/
Brown challenged my view that the place of saints and relics in the church was a mere holdover from paganism, and that the practice was somehow peripheral to true Christianity. Instead, Brown painted a picture of ancient Christianity and paganism in which relics were indispensable to the former, and repulsive to the latter. Far from a holdover from paganism, the place of relics in the Church appeared as something intensely Jewish, Hebraic, and Old Testament. Pagans, like Julian-the-Apostate, found the practice revolting and legislated against it. (Paganism, with its notions of ritual purity, had strictly delimited the realm of divine worship and neatly separated it from the realm of corpses and the dead.),Zaddiqim:
In Judaism, the Zaddiqim are the “Holy Men of Old” who are given special powers because of their close relationship to God. Think of Moses with his Shekinah glory, and of Elijah with all his miracles. As we saw from the passage of 2 Kings, these powers were understood to endure after death. And, given the Hebrew view of the body, its sanctity, and dignity, and the concomitant belief in resurrection, it is no wonder that these powers were believed to inhere even in the flesh.
the jewish roots of purgatory:catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0091.html
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Peter_J
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Granted this is outside my area of expertise, but it really seems to me that the name “Messianic Jews” is misleading. That is, it makes it sounds like Judaism (as such) is not messianic (when in fact it is, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_messianism ).
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DelsonJacobs
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My Ladino is quite good, but I don’t have anyone to speak with any longer as all my relatives have passed.
As for the comment on the holidays, I guess I wrote things badly as you got the wrong impression. I wasn’t implying or even suggesting that people feel obligated to wish people “Happy Chanukah.” I was commenting that I had been told by several people that the obligation should be “Merry Christmas” ONLY, even at the expense of wishing someone you knew who was a Jew “Happy Chanukah.” The Jewish celebration, according to those I was speaking about, was “hogwash” in their eyes and only Christmas has the right to be celebrated in December.
None of the experiences I wrote of are common though, in fact are as rare as my speaking Ladino. I didn’t even know I was speaking Ladino until well after my 30th birthday, or that I had been keeping kosher. I just knew my family had some “weird” ways that other Spanish-Catholic families in our area did not keep, and I had believed the stories I was told as a child that my Spanish was a sign of my “lower class,” until I was exposed to Biblical Hebrew and found out I could understand quite a bit of it as well as Yiddish.
As for the last point you made, while I am not so naïve as to claim it can never happen, Orthodox Jews (some from Israel) have been the most helpful and welcoming of any of the Jewish people I’ve had dealings with. It was a rabbi that first brought my heritage to my attention in 1996, and Orthodox Jews have shown the most interest in assisting me trace my family tree. Again this too may be rare, but I’ve known nothing else from them.
I am descended from two families that have been well established as Jewish so that might have something to do with it (my cultural practices are Jewish, but I didn’t recognize them as such as I grew up). Because of this and the fact that I did not know I was a Jew until I was an adult, I am generally not considered a convert to Christianity. From what I know from the contact I have with Jewish Catholics in Israel, they generally don’t experience any such opposition from fellow Jews. The other groups you mentioned do, and this is mainly because of their proselytizing work.
Of course I am sure if I look for it or don’t, someone who wants to hate on me for one reason or another will. That’s been my experience, but I don’t limit it to one group or other. All people are equal opportunists when it comes to prejudice.
meltzerboy
New member
Good post, but I cannot help wondering what kind of friends and Christians are these people who refuse to let you enter their home when they find out you are of Jewish heritage?
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DelsonJacobs
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Yeah, I was kinda shocked myself. Again it was the rare friend or acquaintance or Church member, but it did happen. And in all fairness some of them did apologize and are coming around.
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7_Sorrows
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Yeah that sounded odd to me too. I don’t know any christians or catholics who would react that way because they found out someone was Jewish.
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andrewstx
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The real Jews are Jewish only. They are not Messianic (read Christian) and they are not “jewtian, or Christish”.
I think these people try to blend two incompatible religions into one, and are mostly fundamentalist Christians in Jewish drag.
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andrewstx
Guest
Anti Semitism still exists, and predjudice. Don’t you realize how many Polish Catholics participated eagerly in the WWII Hollocost?
meltzerboy
New member
While belief in the coming of the Messiah is part of Maimonides’ 13 principles of Jewish faith, not all Jews believe in a Messiah or a Messianic age, and even Jews (including the Orthodox) who do believe in this, do not generally make it the cornerstone of their faith.
meltzerboy
New member
You are right about the existence of antisemitism even today, unfortunately. But what a can of worms you are opening with regard to Polish Catholics and the Holocaust! There is evidence on both sides of the issue.
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FabiusMaximus
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Meltzerboy,
I’m sure you probably are asked this on a regular basis, so I apologize, but which branch of Judaism do you subscribe to? I get the impression you are a Conservative or Orthodox Jew but I don’t want to make assumptions.
meltzerboy
New member
I identify now as a Reform Jew with some Conservative leanings. I was raised in a Conservative home and attended an Orthodox synagogue as a youth.
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