In his article about Catholic Church’s recent change in stance regarding its missionizing of Jews, messianic leader Russ Resnik made the following statement:
Just as the Post-WWII Catholic Church renounced centuries of error about the Jewish people without losing its core identity, so we [Messianic Jews] are freeing ourselves from centuries of Jewish denial about Jesus as Messiah without losing our Jewish identity.
My reply to Russ Resnik, taking issue with his self-assessment of Jews who become Jesus-worshipers today, as opposed to prior centuries:
I think that what’s important here is not the “messiahship of Jesus”, but rather the explicit but seldom publicly promoted (in front of “unbelieving Jews”) belief (in common with the rest of Christendom) of Messianic Jews that Yeshua is divine, or G-d, worthy of worship due to G-d alone. How can Jews be wrong for refusing to worship a man-god instead of G-d alone? How can they be in “denial” that such a thing is wrong? The issue of messiahship of this or that candidate pales in comparison to the issue of idolatry.
As far as MJs not losing their “Jewish identities” – how many MJs, including their rabbis, are married to Gentile Christians? How many have children who are not considered Jewish by any Jewish denomination? How many of their own children and grandchildren marry Gentiles? And how can this failure to transmit Jewish identity (which is the most basic of ways to do so) be compared to intermarriage among secular / Reform Jews who are often far removed from religion and Jewish community, when Messianic Jews supposedly know “the ultimate truth” even better than the Orthodox Jews?
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