Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The " I Believe " Forum

Y'know I love ya, brother, but take it from me, you ain't Jewish. If you don't take it from me, find yourself an Orthodox or Conservative synagogue and attend Shabbat worship services some Saturday morning and see how Jewish it makes you feel. Prediction: not frickin' very.

Anyway, it takes more than being grafted into Abraham. Arabs are descended directly from Abraham, and it doesn't make them Jewish.

I understand what you mean to say, and if you say it among Christians it'll almost certainly be taken as you mean it; but see below for an argument why if you say it among Jews it will almost certainly not be taken as you mean it.


Other folks are of course entitled to call themselves anything they like (I'm a libertarian!) but in my experience, Gentiles who call themselves Messianic Jews (or any other kind of Jews) can be very damaging to Messianic Judaism (always inadvertently) and aggravating and insulting to Jews.

First. Most Jewish people who are aware of Messianic Judaism (by no means all of them know it exists) and who are not Messianic themselves are very offended by it and eager to assert that there is no such thing as a Messianic Jew: that people who call themselves Messianic Jews are merely Gentile Christians playing at being Jewish.

Anytime they can locate clear examples of their accusations (like the folks you mention), their argument is strengthened, and the cause of Messianic Judaism is correspondingly injured. The thing that counters their argument is when Jewish people (you know, short, curly dark hair, bald spots, big noses--Jewish people) claim Yeshua (Jesus) as their Messiah and make Jewish arguments from the Jewish Scriptures and the Jewish writings about him--and when Gentiles associated with Messianic Judaism call themselves Gentiles, don't allow themselves to ever be caught saying anything that in any way could be interpreted as claiming to be Jewish, actively deny it when anyone suggests that they might in some way be Jewish, but yet continue to hang around with and obviously love and support Jewish people.

That attacks both sides of the argument: both the side that says Messianic Jews are Gentile Christians--these people are obviously not Gentiles--and the side that says Gentile Christians play at being Jewish.

"Yeah, but I'm part of spiritual Israel" doesn't cut it: the dichotomy between "spiritual Israel" and "physical Israel" is lost on Jews, and a good argument can be made that the modern Christian understanding of that dichotomy is a mistake. Jewish opponents of Messianic Judaism will seize on something like that and use it against Messianics, even if you didn't mean it that way--not because they're congenitally mean and nasty and want to take over the world, but because they're unfamiliar with the nuances of evangelical Christian theology and that's what it sounds to them like you said.

Second. We Christians are a variegated bunch. Exactly how one becomes a Christian may vary from denomination to denomination, but all the groups I'm aware of have no trouble with the concept that anyone can become a Christian: all he has to do is have certain words said over him or have a certain kind of water dumped on him or believe a certain way or whatever. So we naturally assume the same sort of thing about Judaism: anybody can become a Jew, as long as he proclaims himself one, or claims the God of the Jews, or follows some other procedure.

But that's not the way Jews look at being Jewish. For them, it's a combination of religion, heritage, and culture. (For example: according to the Israeli Law of Return, an atheist with a Jewish mother is a Jew; a Buddhist or Hindu with a Jewish mother is a Jew; but a Messianic Jew with a Jewish mother who keeps all the laws of Moses more diligently than the most orthodox Lubavitcher Chasid is not a Jew.)

Any Jewish adult--even one who is not in the least religious--has spent his whole life being very conscious of his identity as a Jew, learning about his heritage and culture, developing Jewish habits and mannerisms, thinking and talking in Jewish ways, and so on.

In other words, he's had enough practice to be much, much better at being Jewish than you could ever possibly dream of being.

So when you say something that he understands as claiming to be Jewish, he thinks two things: first, that you're completely ignorant and full of crap and have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, which is probably true but has the instant effect of creating an unnecessarily adversarial relationship right from the beginning; and second, that it's extremely inconsiderate and presumptuous (not to say ridiculous) of you to assert that you could so easily and in so short a time assume a set of characteristics that he has worked on all his life.

So you see, the objective you were attempting to achieve--that of professing your love for Israel, your support of the Jewish people, and your recognition that your faith springs always from Jewish roots without which it could never exist--is completely lost whenever you tell a Jewish person that you consider yourself a "spiritual Jew," and you end up making him angry and hostile without any idea why. That objective would be much better served if you acknowledged that you're a Gentile Christian, but that even so, you still hold all the positions outlined above. That is impressive and gratifying to a Jewish person.

I don't mean to tell anybody what to say or what not to say--that's his own lookout--but I do mean to try to make a little clearer what the consequences of his choice might be.