Messianic Judaism Quest

The scholar James Charlesworth once noted that accentuating the Jewishness of the carpenter from Nazareth should be redundant.

After all, how would you describe an individual that underwent brit milah, pidyon haben, traveled regularly to the Temple, went to synagogue every Shabbat , read from Hebrew texts, celebrated Jewish holidays, and considered his “mission” to fellow Jews alone, anything but Jewish?

So if I append “Jewish” as an adjective to the term “Messianic Judaism” is this not redundant?

Well, unfortunately it appears not. The simple reality is that most groups identifying themselves under the label “messianic Jewish” are far from what is traditionally understood as Jewish.

Put aside the question of the halakhic status of each individual. While Christianity prefers define itself through propositional statements (e.g. I believe…), Judaism prefers do describe itself through its behavioral norms. That is, does a person keep Kashrus, do they daven, do they observe Shabbat, do they understand the world Jewishly.

For many in the messianic movement, attending services on Saturday and the inclusion of some catchy Hebrew songs transliterated on overheads reflects the extent to which both the leaders of these communities and their constituents are either willing or perhaps capable of understanding what Judaism means.

To claim to have a synagogue yet fail to create Jewish space is to misunderstand the nature of what Judaism is. It is a failure to connect with the historical, spiritual, emotional, and mystical experiences of the Jewish people throughout the ages.

Psalm 145, the Ashre states: “Each generation will praise your deeds to the next.” Why does the Psalm state this and why does the siddur include this prayer?

Because it understands that the knowledge of G-d expressed in Judaism, the service of G-d is in its fullest form, is beyond the measure of any one isolated individual in history to conjure or create.

The individual is incapable of understanding the presence of G-d in its entirety – even more so without an understanding of the past. So each generation collectively attempts to pass on what it has experienced and the praises (and the covenant expressed the Torah and its covenantal culture (which it has received from the past) stemming all the way to Sinai.

Judaism can only be understood and observed in the context of its history and the generations that came before it. This is not to eliminate innovation, but to understand that it must occur in the context of an education understanding traditional Judaism and traditional Jewish thought.

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