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Messianic Judaism

MESSIANIC JUDAISM
By Dan Cohn-Sherbok
Cassell. 234 pages
ISBN 0 30470730 9

This, the latest contribution from the prolific Professor of Judaism at the University of Wales, Lampeter, provides us with an irenic, remarkably objective and generous study of Jewish believers in Jesus who seek to find a way to remain loyal to the claims of Yeshua (Jesus) and yet retain a lifestyle attachment to the Jewish community.

At one level this book truly makes history! Until now, as Cohn-Sherbok shows, all traditions in the Jewish world have seen acceptance of Jesus' messianic claims as 'the final taboo of Jewishness'. It is therefore most welcome that a Rabbi should argue against such long-standing animosity. Rather, he calls for the reintegration of Messianic Jews into the Jewish community as the seventh light on the Menorah (lamp-stand) of Judaism, taking their place along with the Hasidic, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and Humanistic branches of Judaism.

But herein lies the rub. And the irony too. The Rabbi wants to claim them for the Jewish community, at a time when some of them, faced with what are seen as unacceptable demands for total assimilation, are feeling increasingly alienated from the Church. Some go so far as to deny that they are 'Christians' and form their own messianic groups, a few of which have become quite sectarian.

But, semantics apart, Messianic Jews though fully Jewish are Christians too. A way then needs to be found to implement the requirements of Ephesians 2, which insist that God's redemptive purpose 'was to create in himself one new man out of the two', without cultural totalitarianism. This then poses an urgent problem and makes Rabbinic Judaism such valuable reading. However, it does not point towards any satisfactory solution, largely because it acquiesces in the all too common assumption that the primary model for authentic Jewish lifestyle is based on Rabbinic tradition or some derivative of it. Modern historical research challenges this, showing convincingly that during Second Temple times, the days of Jesus, there were many Judaisms. It seems to me, there will be little hope of finding a satisfactory solution until Messianic Jews manage to throw off the stranglehold of the Talmud, and Gentile Christians learn to become more culturally and historically sensitive to the dilemmas of post-Holocaust Jewish believers in Jesus.

John Ross