How can Christianity convince Jews to see the light?

[Confused]

Historically, Jews were oppressed/persecuted/exterminated before the coming of Jesus and they continued to be oppressed/persecuted/exterminated after the death of Jesus. They continue this same pattern even today.
Now, Christianity has flourished, has become the dominant religion. Jesus, as the Christ, has brought unity to the masses. And still Jews continue to reject Him as the Messiah.

What can Christians offer Jews that would make them see the light? Make them understand, in the context that Jews would understand within their own ideology, that Jesus is the way, the only way?

[cnorman18]

cnorman18,

This thread has been most illuminating. I had always thought there was a great deal in being a Jew of which I simply had no idea (my father was a secular Jew who converted to Methodism in his teen years, though what I know of Judaism I know mainly from my classmates who practise it) - I'm glad I came across this thread, and read your discourse here on Judaism. Clearly it is something you are quite passionate about.

There are a few other threads of mine you might want to check out: "What Judaism Is," and "10 things you didn't know about Judaism." they're on the General Chat and Non-Christian religion boards, but I forget which was on which.

There are a couple of points on which I have a couple of quibbles. You seem to have rather flat-footedly asserted that faith is not an act of will. As you describe it, I must say that I agree - there is a streak in Christianity which does resemble the Cowardly Lion in that case. But I think that there are elements of will in faith - if you have read Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, I think the way he describes faith is very powerful, and (for me) convincing.

I expect you may agree that faith isn't something you 'have' or 'get' but something more along the lines of something describing and defining who you 'are'. When Abraham went up Mount Moriah with Isaac and prepared to sacrifice him, surely raising the knife to his son's throat - in so doing renouncing everything he had, and everything God had ever promised to him: a son in his old age, the fatherhood of a nation - was an act of enormous will. And when God gave his son back to him, such that he could receive Isaac with pleasure and gratitude, was not that an act of will as well? To tell himself that he could rest transparently in a power outside himself, to tell himself that he knew who he was, I think does indeed require a great deal of courage and will. Or, perhaps I am mistaken in what this means, having taken so much from Kierkegaard, who admitted his ignorance of Hebrew freely - I, too, am rather ignorant (to understate the case somewhat) of the original Hebrew, and the Talmudic perspective on the story.

It's hardly a quibble, but we're talking about different things. Of course it can take a tremendous effort of will to act on one's faith; but I am here speaking of faith as belief, as in believing that God is real. That wasn't much of a problem for Abraham, since God spoke to him directly. For the rest of us, it might be. My point is that the path to genuine faith does not involve merely suppressing and denying one's doubts, but in confronting them and working one's way through them to wherever that process may lead. If one truly has a core belief in God, all facts are God's facts, and one ought not fear any of them.

Not necessarily. To pick a crude and obvious example, where there is love, there can also be adultery. Identifying God with Love strikes me as a pretty severe oversimplification of His nature, and edging close to something very like idolatry. There is much more to God, whether of the OT or the NT, than love.

Indeed. There is also truth, as well as justice - and adultery is neither truthful nor just. But I cannot think of love as being anything but central to the being of God, and, as you quite clearly point out, love is never really as easy as we so often make it out to be. Likewise, I don't think God is ever really as easy to make out as we so often make him to be.

The lesson of the Holocaust is not "love." it is that hatred and evil and bigotry must be resisted and fought and stamped out, utterly without mercy, wherever and whenever it arises.

The problem with hatred and bigotry and evil is that, practically speaking, fighting and stamping out without mercy is never adequate means of getting rid of them. Martin Luther King understood this well, and he was of an ancestry that had been as despised and as trodden into the ground as the Jews have been. The Civil War and the Reconstruction did not end the hatred, the bigotry and the evil that slavery had engendered against black people in the American South, however much blood had been spilled and however thoroughly slavery had been stamped out.

I don't think love is either pat or smug, any more than I think it is easy. If I may wax colloquial for a moment here, it took balls for Reverend King to get up and say that 'hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that'. Think of how that must have sounded to black people who had been suffering under the hatred of white people for hundreds of years! It took even greater balls for him to actually live out what he said, right up to the end. His love wasn't an 'I'm okay; you're okay' kind of love - Martin Luther King's love also incorporated truth, and justice and (indeed) mercy, but it was capable of combating injustice; more so, to my mind, than fighting and stamping out without mercy.

And in terms of practical achievement, I think King's success was greater than Grant's. King, by combating injustice through civil disobedience and nonviolence, achieved greater equality for black people than General Grant had by force. I would also argue, as Mark Kurlansky has, that 'it was not the Civil War that freed the slaves; and World War II did not save the Jews'.

I would not take a particle of glory from Dr. King's achievement or his sacrifice; he was truly one of the greatest religious leaders of our time or any other, and we are fortunate to see his like once in ten generations.

But the situation was rather different in WWII. No one could have gone more peaceably and nonviolently to their deaths than the Jews; but it didn't help them much. In fact, it merely made the Nazis' work easier. "Like lambs to the slaughter" is a phrase used of them often, and we are not proud of it.

There was another difference, as well; when Bull Connor set his firehoses and dogs and nightstick-wielding cops on peaceful marchers, the entire nation rose up as one and said, "This is not right!" That happened to my own father, a lifelong racist whose views changed in one moment while watching the news that very night; I was there and saw it happen. The back of American racism and open, casual bigotry was broken by the courage of those nonviolent Freedom Riders who allowed themselves to be beaten and bitten do that the world could see bigotry and hate for what it truly was.

That did not happen in Europe. Though a few, a very few, helped to hide fugitive Jews and smuggle them to freedom and safety, the overwhelming, vast majority of Christians in Germany, Poland, Austria, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Russia, and Estonia--what did they do, when they saw their Jewish neighbors and friends being rounded up and packed into trucks and cattle cars and taken away to a fate that was common knowledge (else how did the few who helped know their help was needed)--what did they do? Did they, too, rise up as one and say, "This is not right"?

They watched. Sometimes they helped. They turned in their neighbors and even exposed Jewish families who had converted to Christianity, sometimes generations before--and the Nazis took them too.

Dr. King could have given it his best shot in Germany or Poland in 1941, and he would have ended up as smoke and ashes, just like the rest. In fact, we had our own Dr. Kings, who counseled peace and patience and faith--and they died, too. We aren't all that proud of them, either, though we respect their courage and their faith, however misplaced.

What are we proud of? The Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, who with no more than a dozen small arms, mostly handguns, made fools of the Nazi war machine for months; the inmate revolts at Treblinka and Sobibor, where doomed Jews rose against their executioners, killed many, and ran to freedom--though for most of them it only lasted a little while; Polish peasants, mostly Christians, helped hunt them down and murder them. Still, we are proud of what they did, and we celebrate it. Killing; yes. We are proud that they killed their killers. Sometimes killing is the right thing to do. The book of Ecclesiastes does not say, "There is never a time for war, but there is always a time for peace."

Appealing to nonviolence and trusting in God's love did not help the six million, and it is of no help against those who wish to murder us today. Nonviolent protest is effective against discrimination and hate, but against those intent on mass murder, it is the wrong tactic (and for the record, that applies to mass murderers at shopping malls, missionary centers and churches, too).

We have a saying: "Never Again." We mean it. "Turn the other cheek" has never been a tenet of the Jewish religion, and considering the events of the past ten centuries or so, it isn't going to become one anytime soon.

Sorry to be so cynical, but that is my adopted heritage. As I said somewhere back there: don't talk to us of the love of Christ. We have seen the love of Christians.

[Easyrider]

What are we proud of? The Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, who with no more than a dozen small arms, mostly handguns, made fools of the Nazi war machine for months; the inmate revolts at Treblinka and Sobibor, where doomed Jews rose against their executioners, killed many, and ran to freedom--though for most of them it only lasted a little while; Polish peasants, mostly Christians, helped hunt them down and murder them.

The studies I've seen have shown that Hitler and his crew murdered thousands of Polish Christian priests and many more times that number of Polish Christians. I can't help but feel you have unfairly sygmatized Polish Christians in general when so many also suffered at the hands of the Nazis. And there were certainly many WWII Christians who sheltered Jews at the risk of their own lives.

If anything, no person can call themselves a Christian when they so callously disregard and abuse the teachings of Christ.

As Jesus said, "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another as I have loved you."

As I said somewhere back there: don't talk to us of the love of Christ. We have seen the love of Christians.

No, you have seen the "love" of imposters.

Have another glimpse of Christianity from this photo at Normandy:

http://superiorphotos.net/IMG_2728-web.jpg

And then there's this: Christians United for Israel

http://www.cufi.org/site/PageServer

[cnorman18]

(Not sure if this has been brought up yet)

I'd ask them to read Isaiah 53 and ask me who they think it is referring to.

They are referring to the nation of Israel. This is the 4th of the servant songs,
and the servant is identified as Israel numerous times between Isaiah 42 and Isaiah 49.

There are some flaws with that assumption, as Norm Geisler points out:

"First, unlike Israel, the Servant is sinless (53:9). To say that Israel is sinless is to contradict and negate virtually the entire Old Testament. The recurrent theme of the Old Testament is that Israel has sinned by breaking God's commandments and by chasing after other gods instead of one the one true God. If Israel is sinless, then why did God give the Jews a sacrificial system? Why did they have a Day of Atonement? Why did they constantly need prophets to warn them to stop sinning and to come back to God?

Second, unlike Israel, the Suffering Servant is a lamb who submits without any resistance whatsoever (53:7). History shows us that Israel certainly is not a lamb--she lies down for no one.

Third, unlike Israel, the Suffering Servant dies as a substitutionary atonement for the sins of others (53:4-6, 8, 10-12). But Israel has not died, nor is she paying for the sins of others. No one is redeemed on account of what the nation of Israel does. Nations, and the individuals that comprise them, are punished for their own sins."

Sorry, we're not buying it.

Don't think "nation of Israel" as in the modern Jewish state. Think "nation of Israel" as in the people of Israel (the sense in which that phrase has been understood for centuries until 1948) in Eastern Europe in the 1930s and 40s.

Those people may not have been perfect, but they certainly didn't deserve what they got: and many of them were quite literally sinless, the children and infants who were gassed and burnt with the adults.

"Like lambs to the slaughter" is a phrase that has been applied to them rather often; see my last post, written before I read yours.

As far as dying to redeem others--we have always believed that our suffering and deaths for hundreds of years have been for the sake of the Torah, the burden and the price of bringing the light of the One True God to the world; and by that truth, the world will be redeemed.

That is what the much-misunderstood phrase, "the Chosen People" has always meant to us, you see. Chosen for a mission, and to suffer for it.

There is a problem with the Jesus interpretation, too, you know: Isaiah quite clearly says that the Servant will live to see his offspring, and Jesus had no children. There is no warrant for taking the rest literally and consigning that verse to "symbolism." There are other references that don't fit an individual man very well, too, if one troubles to read that whole section instead of selected verses.

Christians may read the Bible, as I have often said, in any way they choose, and peace to them; but they have no right to tell us how to read our own Book, that was ours for a very long time before it became theirs as well.

You have your own interpretation, and we do not dispute your right to have it and believe it; but we expect the same courtesy. If you wish to leave us in peace, as we do you, that is well. If you want an argument, you will get one. We have no intention of converting en masse to the faith of those who have treated us viciously for centuries and still have the temerity to judge us.

[Easyrider]

There is a problem with the Jesus interpretation, too, you know: Isaiah quite clearly says that the Servant will live to see his offspring, and Jesus had no children. There is no warrant for taking the rest literally and consigning that verse to "symbolism." There are other references that don't fit an individual man very well, too, if one troubles to read that whole section instead of selected verses.

"Zera" (seed) is sometimes used metaphorically in the Hebrew Scriptures, including Isaiah. Isaiah called Israel a "seed of evildoers," "a seed of an adulterer," and a "seed of falsehood" (1:4; 14:20; 57:3-4). While some of these could be intended in a literal sense, more likely they are intended metaphorically.

In addition, no less than than a traditional Jewish authority than Sa'adiah Gaon applied Isaiah 53 to Jeremiah the prophet, yet God commanded Jeremiah to never marry or have children (Jer. 16:1).

There is nothing that prevents the "zera" from being understood metaphorically to refer to the spiritual seed of God's / Jesus' offspring. The Spirit gives life and one must be born of the Spirit (John chapter 3) to be true children of God.

http://www.tektonics.org/guest/osama01.html

You have your own interpretation, and we do not dispute your right to have it and believe it; but we expect the same courtesy. If you wish to leave us in peace, as we do you, that is well. If you want an argument, you will get one. We have no intention of converting en masse to the faith of those who have treated us viciously for centuries and still have the temerity to judge us.

Seems to me it was the (ungodly variety of) Jews who first persecuted their own prophets, Jesus, his disciples, and the early Christians (note the Gospels and book of Acts). Now, I'm not holding any grudges about that and I think it would be wise not to characterize people who profess to be Christians, but who murder and persecute, as representing Christianity anymore than it would be fair to generalize and call Jewish people vicious and cruel just because some of them were. In both instances, the Tanakh and the teachings of Christ forbid murder and mistreatment of others. Do they not? So what you seem to be against are those imposters who claim to represent either faith, but who are in reality wolves in sheep's clothing (as Jesus alluded to).

Here's something you might find more suited to Biblical Christianity:

http://www.cufi.org/site/PageServer

God bless!

[Flail]

Perhaps if Christians and adherents to other belief systems would adopt the one and only universal belief system....that of 'selfless kindness'...we could all be done with the judgment,hatred and selfish righteousness that divides us, not only from each other, but from God.

there is no one to judge, no one to hate, no one to convert....just kindness...that is all we need to know and practice....

all this fighting over who will be anointed, how can people be so blind.

throw your beads in the trash, get up from you knees and find some real 'need' to get busy resolving....'need' is everywhere and in 'need' we find God....we pass 'need' every Sunday on our way to our selfish, righteous, dogma and ritual practice.

[cnorman18]

What are we proud of? The Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, who with no more than a dozen small arms, mostly handguns, made fools of the Nazi war machine for months; the inmate revolts at Treblinka and Sobibor, where doomed Jews rose against their executioners, killed many, and ran to freedom--though for most of them it only lasted a little while; Polish peasants, mostly Christians, helped hunt them down and murder them.

The studies I've seen have shown that Hitler and his crew murdered thousands of Polish Christian priests and many more times that number of Polish Christians. I can't help but feel you have unfairly sygmatized Polish Christians in general when so many also suffered at the hands of the Nazis. And there were certainly many WWII Christians who sheltered Jews at the risk of their own lives.

You are quite right; and I have acknowledged, on this very thread in in that very post" the bravery of those few who stood against Hitler in defense of the Jews.

I have also acknowledged that many more innocents than Jews were victimized my the Nazis, and more than once; but the fact remains that Jews were the only ones targeted for complete and total extermination, man, woman, child and infant. Among other groups, generally only adults who were troublesome to Hitler were targeted, including the Polish priests of whom you speak. They certainly weren't targeted because they were Catholic; Hitler was nominally Catholic himself.

On the other hand I have not acknowledged, and do so now, that of all the nations conquered by the Nazis, Poland without a doubt suffered the most. I regret not mentioning that before, but the list of Hitler's victims is not a short one, and no matter how one looks at it, Jews remain at the top.

As for my remark about the fate of the escaped Jews; it was not my intention to portray all Poles as bigots and collaborators, because they most certainly weren't. But what I said happened, happened, and I don't apologize for saying so.

If anything, no person can call themselves a Christian when they so callously disregard and abuse the teachings of Christ.

As Jesus said, "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another as I have loved you."

As I said somewhere back there: don't talk to us of the love of Christ. We have seen the love of Christians.

No, you have seen the "love" of imposters.

Have another glimpse of Christianity from this photo at Normandy:

http://superiorphotos.net/IMG_2728-web.jpg

And then there's this: Christians United for Israel

http://www.cufi.org/site/PageServer

I have spoken elsewhere, and at great length, of my high regard to the Christian faith and of Christians in general, and I see no need to repeat myself here. Today, here, in these United States, the relationship between Christians and Jews is the best it has ever been, anywhere, in all the world and in all the history of either of our faiths. This is a good thing.

But just as I have acknowledged the good Christians who helped us both during the Holocaust and throughout the centuries--and as I would acknowledge the Christians who stand with the state of Israel today--i think it would also be good if Christians acknowledged the fact that Jews have suffered, for century upon century, at the hands of Christians explicitly in the name of Christ, in service to formal doctrines of the Christian church, and at the direction of Christian clergy.

It will not do to simply dismiss them all as "impostors" (though that is inarguably true in the case of the Holocaust), because antisemitism and violence against Jews was all but universal among Christians from the fall of Rome till long, long after the Renaissance, and in some quarters, notably Russia, it remains so even today.

Denounce them as you will; they richly deserve it. But some small expression of regret and repentance still seems to me to be in order, on behalf of Christianity as an institution and not just expressions of disgust against individuals. These were acts of the Church as a whole, and that ought to be acknowledged as well.

[PC1]

(Not sure if this has been brought up yet)

I'd ask them to read Isaiah 53 and ask me who they think it is referring to.

They are referring to the nation of Israel. This is the 4th of the servant songs,
and the servant is identified as Israel numerous times between Isaiah 42 and Isaiah 49.

There are some flaws with that assumption, as Norm Geisler points out:

"First, unlike Israel, the Servant is sinless (53:9). To say that Israel is sinless is to contradict and negate virtually the entire Old Testament. The recurrent theme of the Old Testament is that Israel has sinned by breaking God's commandments and by chasing after other gods instead of one the one true God. If Israel is sinless, then why did God give the Jews a sacrificial system? Why did they have a Day of Atonement? Why did they constantly need prophets to warn them to stop sinning and to come back to God?

Second, unlike Israel, the Suffering Servant is a lamb who submits without any resistance whatsoever (53:7). History shows us that Israel certainly is not a lamb--she lies down for no one.

Third, unlike Israel, the Suffering Servant dies as a substitutionary atonement for the sins of others (53:4-6, 8, 10-12). But Israel has not died, nor is she paying for the sins of others. No one is redeemed on account of what the nation of Israel does. Nations, and the individuals that comprise them, are punished for their own sins."

Fortunately for the Jewish faith, Norm Geisler is wrong. He also should read the commentary about Isaiah before shooting his mouth off. There is a person who suffers too, but not the servant.

The reason , even if Isaiah 53 IS talking about a human, that it could NOT be Jesus is that the servant's life is extended,and has children.

Being killed on the cross certainly isn't having an extended life.

Textual analisys of Isaiah 53 can be found here, including some very important points that are mistranslations into the english by Christian translators

What did Geisler say that was wrong? That Israel is sinless, that Israel doesn't atones for others, or that Israel lays down to die?

The reason , even if Isaiah 53 IS talking about a human, that it could NOT be Jesus is that the servant's life is extended,and has children.

Please cite the specific verses so I can take a better look at that. Jesus' life was extended by His resurrection.

[Goat]

What did Geisler say that was wrong? That Israel is sinless, that Israel doesn't atones for others, or that Israel lays down to die?

The reason , even if Isaiah 53 IS talking about a human, that it could NOT be Jesus is that the servant's life is extended,and has children.

Please cite the specific verses so I can take a better look at that. Jesus' life was extended by His resurrection.

If you want an indepth analysis of it, you may take a look at http://www.messiahtruth.com/isaiah53a.html

[Easyrider]

Why Israel cannot be the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53:

Israel does not even fit the description of the Servant in Isaiah 53:

The servant of Isaiah 53 is an innocent and guiltless sufferer. Israel is never described as sinless. Isaiah 1:4 says of the nation: "Alas sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity. A brood of evildoers, children who are corrupters!" He then goes on in the same chapter to characterize Judah as Sodom, Jerusalem as a harlot, and the people as those whose hands are stained with blood (verses 10, 15, and 21). What a far cry from the innocent and guiltless sufferer of Isaiah 53 who had "done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth!"

When did Israel suffer and not open her mouth (v. 7)? Are you suggesting that Jews have never complained about their oppression? That doesn't match history either.

When was Israel cut off from the land of the living (v.8)?

When was Israel assigned a grave with the rich (v.8)?

When can we say that Israel did no violence (v.9)? Isaiah chapter 1, verse 15 states, “Your hands are full of blood.” They also went on a violent tear under the leadership of Joshua, etc., etc.

When did Israel bear your iniquities (v.11)? Specify the time of such an event. How does the Jewish nation bear your iniquities?

Now, here’s what the ancient Rabbis said concerning Isaish 53:

Rabbi Moses Alschech(1508-1600) says:
"Our Rabbis with one voice accept and affirm the opinion that the prophet is speaking of the Messiah, and we shall ourselves also adhere to the same view."

Babylonian Talmud: "The Messiah --what is his name?...The Rabbis say, The Leper Scholar, as it is said, `surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him a leper, smitten of God and afflicted...'" (Sanhedrin 98b)

Midrash Ruth Rabbah: "Another explanation (of Ruth ii.14): -- He is speaking of king Messiah; `Come hither,' draw near to the throne; `and eat of the bread,' that is, the bread of the kingdom; `and dip thy morsel in the vinegar,' this refers to his chastisements, as it is said, `But he was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities'"

Targum Jonathan: "Behold my servant Messiah shall prosper; he shall be high and increase and be exceedingly strong..."

Zohar: "`He was wounded for our transgressions,' etc....There is in the Garden of Eden a palace called the Palace of the Sons of Sickness; this palace the Messiah then enters, and summons every sickness, every pain, and every chastisement of Israel; they all come and rest upon him. And were it not that he had thus lightened them off Israel and taken them upon himself, there had been no man able to bear Israel's chastisements for the transgression of the law: and this is that which is written, `Surely our sicknesses he hath carried.'"

Rabbi Moses Maimonides: "What is the manner of Messiah's advent....there shall rise up one of whom none have known before, and signs and wonders which they shall see performed by him will be the proofs of his true origin; for the Almighty, where he declares to us his mind upon this matter, says, `Behold a man whose name is the Branch, and he shall branch forth out of his place' (Zech. 6:12). And Isaiah speaks similarly of the time when he shall appear, without father or mother or family being known, He came up as a sucker before him, and as a root out of dry earth, etc....in the words of Isaiah, when describing the manner in which kings will harken to him, At him kings will shut their mouth; for that which had not been told them have they seen, and that which they had not heard they have perceived." (From the Letter to the South (Yemen), quoted in The Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters, Ktav Publishing House, 1969, Volume 2, pages 374-5)

Rabbi Mosheh Kohen Ibn Crispin: This rabbi described those who interpret Isaiah 53 as referring to Israel as those: "having forsaken the knowledge of our Teachers, and inclined after the `stubbornness of their own hearts,' and of their own opinion, I am pleased to interpret it, in accordance with the teaching of our Rabbis, of the King Messiah....This prophecy was delivered by Isaiah at the divine command for the purpose of making known to us something about the nature of the future Messiah, who is to come and deliver Israel, and his life from the day when he arrives at discretion until his advent as a redeemer, in order that if anyone should arise claiming to be himself the Messiah, we may reflect, and look to see whether we can observe in him any resemblance to the traits described here; if there is any such resemblance, then we may believe that he is the Messiah our righteousness; but if not, we cannot do so." (From his commentary on Isaiah, quoted in The Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters, Ktav Publishing House, 1969, Volume 2, pages 99-114.)

Additional Rabbinic quotes in the following link:

http://www.hearnow.org/isa_com.html

[cnorman18]

Now show us quotes where the sages teach that Messiah will be God Himself Incarnate and the literal son of God.