“Don’t you ever say that you used to be Jewish! You are still Jewish and always will be!” Like an Old Testament prophet, complete with boney finger in my face, Zeva, an Israeli believer rebuked me. I greeted her saying, “I also used to be Jewish.” I was a new believer and she was the first other Jewish believer I had met. I had considered myself cut off from Judaism. It was a price I was willing to pay, as I had found the pearl of great price.
However, I mistakenly assumed that to believe in the Jewish Messiah, was to renounce Judaism: my religion, my heritage, my culture, my people. Strange, right? If He is the Jewish Messiah, why would I consider myself not Jewish? You need to know what it was like to grow up Jewish.
Mr. and Mrs. Christ?
“I was about twelve years old when I first learned that Jesus was Jewish,” writes Dr. Michael Brown.*
My friend Jeff Bernstein grew up thinking that Jesus was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Christ!*
I can relate to both of their experiences. I too thought for longest time that Christ was Jesus’ last name. We are taught that one of the very definitions of being Jewish is that not believing in Jesus. In elementary school, we had a discussion at the bus stop between several Jewish and Gentile kids. We were seeking to define our differences. After a lengthy discussion, the ‘Council of Cutshaw Avenue’ concluded that the distinction was that they believe in Jesus and we don’t. No one mentioned that their guy was actually one of our guys—Jewish.
So when I received Yeshua in 1983, I assumed I was no longer Jewish.
I am Still a Jew
However when Ziva shared those words with me—you are still a Jew!—it was life-changing! This was a revelation—I am still Jewish? I am still part of the people of Israel? Of course this would have seemed a very strange revelation to the first disciples, whose Jewishness was never in question. They struggled with Do Gentiles have to become Jewish in order to believe in Jesus? (Acts 10, 15), not their own Jewishness.
Moreover, I discovered:
- Jesus’ Hebrew name is Yeshua, which means salvation.
- Mary, was an Israelite named Miriam, a Jewish name, like Moses’ sister’s.
- John was a not Baptist, but a Jewish prophet like Ezekiel, Jeremiah or Isaiah.
- Paul was actually a Jewish rabbi who also had a Hebrew name Sha’ul (see Acts 13:9… he had two names!).
- Peter was not a pope, but a Jewish fisherman turned preacher.
- Gentiles didn’t even begin to believe in Jesus until many years after the Holy Spirit fell on Shavuot (Pentecost)!
So, if the gospel is so Jewish why, after 2,000 years, are Jews so reluctant to embrace the Jewish man that so many of our ancestors did? Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Shmuley Boteach shares:
Growing up in an Orthodox Jewish household, I held great antipathy toward Jesus. The very name reminded me of the suffering Christians laid upon Jewish communities for two thousand years: persecutions, forced conversions, expulsions, inquisitions, false accusations, degradations, economic exile, taxation, pogroms, stereotyping, ghettoization, and systematic extermination. All this incomprehensible violence against us—against our friends and families—committed in the name of a Jew!
In my neighborhood, we did not even mention his name.
Harsh Words against Yeshua’s Brothers
As the gospel made its way through the Roman Empire, the Church became increasingly hostile to Jews. The Jews were blamed for killing Jesus and would pay. The destruction of Jerusalem, according to Eusebius, was God’s judgment: “The divine vengeance overtook the Jews for the crimes … against Christ.”
Jews were told that they were cut off from God, lost and under judgment. The Church was now Israel. Origen, a 2nd century theologian summed it up nicely saying:
We may thus assert … that the Jews will not return to their earlier situation, for they have committed the most abominable of crimes, in forming this conspiracy against the Savior of the human race… another people was called by God to the blessed election.
It gets worse. In the 4th Century John Chrysostom, nicknamed the “golden mouthed” for his great preaching unleashed a demonic flurry of hate against Jews.
The synagogue is worse than a brothel… it is the den of scoundrels… the temple of demons devoted to idolatrous cults… and the cavern of devils. It is a criminal assembly of Jews…a place of meeting for the assassins of Christ… As for me, I hate the synagogue… I hate the Jews for the same reason.
He went on to say that it is every Christian’s duty to hate the Jews. “Truly I doubt whether a Jew can be really human,” said Peter the Venerable in the 12th century. Pope Innocent III proclaimed, “The Jews, against whom the blood of Jesus Christ calls out, although they ought not to be killed… yet as wanderers ought they remain upon the earth….”
It was quite easy for Hitler to proclaim, “In defending myself against the Jews, I am acting for the Lord. The only difference between the church and me is that I am finishing the job.”
In light of this bloody history, now you can understand why the Jewish people are hesitant to put their faith in Yeshua.
But what if they could see the real Yeshua?
What if they could see Him not as the leader of an anti-Semitic movement, but as the sacrificial Passover Lamb who willingly laid down His life for them? Indeed the enemy has perpetrated a treacherous act of Identity Theft. He has so altered the nature of the Jewish Messiah that he is barely recognizable to His own brothers. But what if they could take a fresh, honest look at Him?
For this purpose, I wrote Identity Theft. For more information on my book Identity Theft: How Jesus was Robbed of His Jewishness, please go to www.IDTheftBook.com or find it at bookstores everywhere.
* Michael L. Brown, The Real Kosher Jesus, Frontline, Lake Mary, FL, 2012, p. xv, ibid, p. xvi
About Ron Cantor
