Slouching Toward Messianism

On the unholy heels of the news that the Presbyterian Church (USA) has established a "messianic" Jewish congregation in a Philadelphia suburb comes word now from the Connecticut Jewish Ledger that a Jew who venerates Jesus is currently serving as thefaculty advisor for the Jewish Student Union of a respected Connecticut boarding school.

The all-girls institution, Miss Porter's School, maintains that its advisor for Jewish students, Jessica Lemoine, is "a responsible adult... whose first priority is to the students," in the words of Head of School Burch Ford. And some of the students are enamoured of Ms. Lemoine as well; one describes her as "an amazing person."

Responsible and amazingshe may well be, but she's about as appropriate an advisor for Jewish students as an I am for Catholic kids.

Such stories are wake-up calls to all Judaism-affirming Jews. And their message is that "messianics" are not going away.

Quite the contrary, they are seeking to entrench themselves in the Jewish community as never before, listing their congregations under "synagogues" in phone books across the country and posting proselytization pitches on billboards in Jewish neighborhoods.

Beliefnet, the popular and respected religion website, has featured on its "Jewish" page a link to "Torahbytes: Weekly Torah/Haftarah commentary from a Messianic Jewish perspective." "Hebrew-Christian" congregations are well established in many cities, and there are scores of organizations and resources aimed at servicing Jews who have accepted Christianity and at bringing other Jews to do the same.

Messianics, moreover, seem to have discovered how to ingratiate themselves among Jewishly ignorant Jews: by playing the ethnicity card. Jewish ritual objects - tallitot, tefillin, menorahs, Torah-scrolls - are gleefully flaunted, and Hebrew or Yiddish phrases heartily embraced. (One messianic dating service bills itself as a "singles forum for thoseseeking a basheret [sic] that trusts in Yeshua.")

And "Hebrew-Christians" have even received the Jewish imprimatur they seek from some Jews. In 2000, Dan Cohn-Sherbock, a Reform rabbi, professor of Judaism at the University of Wales and the author of a book entitled "The Future of Messianic Judaism," told a group of hundreds of messianic Jews: "I do regard Messianic Judaism as rooted within the evolution of Judaism... To me it is totally inconsistent and illogical to exclude you."

Mainstream Reform and Conservative leaders, to their credit, have made clear that, like Orthodox Jews, they consider messianic "Judaism" beyond the fold. They have a harder time, however, explaining why. No one wants to define Judaism entirely as the rejection of Jesus; our faith is a comprehensive and holy system of beliefs and laws, and it existed long before Christianity was ever dreamt of.

Yet it is no secret that Reform philosophy has downgraded those beliefs and laws from mandates to options; and that Conservative theology, denying their divine origin, has subjected them to an "evolutionary process" aimed at bringing them into agreement with an assortment of contemporary notions. Some, like Ms. Lemoine, might argue that the movement should include Christian views among them. In fact, she maintains that she "teach[es] from the basis of Conservative Judaism."

What is more, both theReform and Conservative leaderships' devotion to what they consider theunassailable principle of "pluralism" - the idea that Judaism can takeon radically different forms that must all be respected as legitimate -would seem to take considerable wind out of the sails of their objectionsto the messianic movement.

But object they do, and they are to be commended for it. At the same time, though, all of us Jews need to confront the fact that principled rejection of messianism must, in the end, be based on something more than a negative; it must rest on the bedrock of affirming the Torah's eternal and unchanging nature.

That might be an uncomfortable thought for many of us. But, with the strides being made by messianics these days, none of us can lay claim any longer to the luxury of not thinking.

AM ECHAD RESOURCES

RabbiAvi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.

posted to JLaw.com: 11-21-03