I, too, have known some Christian Jews, who are anti-Semitic (go figure!). People who go out of their way to be “not Jewish”. It’s kind of sad.
One guy I know, however, now an Episcopal Priest (or was the last time I met him – if he hasn’t become RC by now), had a Damascus Road experience. He was just bowled over by a mystical experience that he KNEW was the Person of Jesus Christ.
He has NO axe to grind. He is not bitter or anxious about having come from a Jewish home. That said, he was raised in the Reform tradition: “we’re Jewish” – but we only go to Temple on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
I mentioned earlier in this thread, a woman I met many years ago at a social event…she was a Jewish woman who had converted to Catholicism. She REALLY hated Jews and anything Jewish. It truly scared me, because I’d never met anyone like that before.
Someone else at the event whom I knew well, and who evidently knew her, explained that she came from a very abusive family, and converting was her way of escaping from it. So it began to make sense.
Jews, especially, do not always convert to other religions out of pure motives. I have found in my 30 years of exit work that Jews who convert to religions such as Buddhism, do so because they seek a deeper spirituality than they felt they could find in mainstream Judaism. Also, because Buddhism seems to offer ways to practice compassion over the entire world, and not just within Jewish venues.
Jews who become mainstream Protestants often convert for the same reason they often convert to Catholicism: a desire to run away from their Jewishness. Such Jews are more likely to choose Catholicism over Protestantism, probably because historically, the RCC seems the least “Jewish” and the easier to become anonymous in, due to its size.
And sadly, there have been Jews who hated their families so much, that they felt joining the RCC provided better “shock effect” than a Protestant church might…perhaps also due to the terrible history between Jews and the RCC as well.
Historically, in countries where the RCC held sway, Jews often converted to advance their academic or business careers as well…because in many European countries in times past, unless you were Christian, you were blocked out of the best careers.
However, as much as I dislike the “messianic jewish” movement, I will say that so far, I have not met any Jews who converted to that movement who did so to run away from their Jewishness. This would be obvious, since that movement relies so heavily on external Jewish symbology, so it would be a poor choice for any Jew looking to hide or run away!
The more liturgical the church, and the worse of a history it has had with the Jewish people, the more likely that will be the religion a self-hating Jew will run to. This is perhaps one reason why I and many other Jews in exit work often look the most skeptically at Jews who join such churches, as opposed to groups like the MJs.
Incidentally, to see a movie about this very subject (Jews who become Catholic to run away from their Jewishness), see SUNSHINE starring Ralph Fiennes (1999). It illustrates this over the course of several generations of a Hungarian Jewish family.
It does have a good ending, though, but I won’t spoil it.
