My little blog of 49 posts has a new record for first day hits on one entry

I've so far received 122 hits since my new post about Israel and those who attack her...and attack me for defending the moral right of Israel to defend her citizens.

I'm so hoping that all the references and information they find..amid all the sidetracking and bickering..are what they'll focus on in importance. Please feel free to bookmark and share.

I'm going to copy here an excerpt  I received in an email and agree with wholeheartedly:

Dear Friends,

The Hamas missile attacks from Gaza and Israel's urgent operation to quell them have the attention of the world. Our support for Israel in this venture needs to be prompt and wholehearted. There many ways you can demonstrate this support, but first and foremost we need to understand that Israel simply had to answer the nearly 300 rockets that were launched last weekend from Gaza, a huge escalation in quantity and range in the attacks that have been ongoing for over a decade.

We don't yet know what the ultimate result will be in Gaza. We do know that there will be criticism of Israel for defending its civilians against this brutal violence, as there always is.

But as Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the immediate past president of the Union for Reform Judaism, wrote in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz yesterday,

"My answer to progressive American Jews who ask me why Israel can't just muddle through rocket attacks from Gaza: Israel came into being so that Jewish children would never again have to huddle together in fear, terrorized by enemies of the Jewish people, while their parents stood by helplessly.

 

"Progressives, of course, want the use of force to be a last resort. But it would be hard to imagine a case where Israel was more patient than Gaza. Sderot and the surrounding communities have been subjected to missile fire from Gaza for 11 years. With sickening regularity, rockets fall on civilian centers and hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens flee to shelters. Israel responds, usually with modest force aimed at lower level operatives, the violence stops for a while, and then the cycle begins again.

"Progressives should be as outraged as everyone else about this. As innumerable Israeli leaders have said, no other civilized country in the world would tolerate for a week what Israel has tolerated for a decade; a single rocket aimed at an American city would call forth a far more drastic response than anything that Israel has attempted or even contemplated. And yet, incredibly, despite her tough talk, Israel has tolerated these attacks - with the exception of Cast Lead, which brought a respite from the violence, although only for a while."

I encourage you to speak out in support of Israel, in private and in public, and to attend Shabbat services tonight where we will address this issue in a larger and more complete way and offer some practical ways you can demonstrate support. Please do not restrain your response. Israel is and has been under attack-without restraint. Our support needs to be effective."
......
the above excerpt was written by :

May peace return soon to Israel - with security for its citizens.

Shalom al Yisrael,

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon

 

and forwarded to me..so i share with you.

EDIT:  Interesting to me that this entry received twice as many views as the one I referred to in my title! 
I am hoping that this means there are a growing number of people who are educating themselves as to the FACTS and not relying upon emotive rhetoric designed to create hatred to justify eliminating the Jewish people living in the eternal homeland of Israel. 
All people deserve the same human rights and justice will never be served with hate propagandizing and violence.  Shalom al Yisrael  or as I say in my southern way

Shalom y'all!

Thoughts on Cultural and Religious Identity Theft

Avoid this if you don't like armchair philosphy :) AND I preface this with warning it is long-winded rambling stream of consciousness thoughts combined with other things I've even written elsewhere. I've had this in DRAFT form unpublished for more than a year from the time I wrote what is below and only came upon it again today because of a new post I'd placed on a topic that touches on a little of this one, too. See http://mamaspajamaparty.blogspot.com/2012/05/christopher-columbus-and-jews.html
=========================================

This is all about spirituality and self-identity and being true to oneself while respecting other people. Every people and every person has a sense of purpose to existence or strives to find and fulfill one. It's an aspect of human nature. I'm not discussing or debating atheism vs theism or going to promote a pissing contest over whose religion or philosophy is "best", but I will talk about what people believe.

I think a spiritual void in modern civilization appears to lead many people who have have an identity void to feel entitled to appropriate the paths and identities of *others*. Taking on an identity not really your own isn't exclusive to the malicious, the huckster, the con, or the willfully bigoted troublemaker. People can be genuinely fooled in sincere acceptance and trust what they want to hear.

Yet, no matter the origin or motivation, in their so doing, rather than bringing them a sense of real identity and contentment of self-knowledge, it results in strife and escalates conflict.

In modern civilization, not just in the United States, the “melting pot” of so many different and conflicting cultures, histories, religions and philosophies there are many people living in a "spiritual vacuum".

**I specifically refer to people whose spiritual path, or sense of a spiritual nature is devoid of grounding in a sense of "self", a sense of who they are and who their people are and what their people's collective purpose and message is to the world through their own identity.**

I see this in so many different people who flit from one group, one religion, one identity to another. These people without a grounded center, a sense of *self in relation to others* often readily justify latching onto anything that fills that that void. This is how we live in a world where a science fiction author can create an idea that we’re all alien spawn and all women secretly want to abort their babies and all human problems stem from experiences while in your mother’s womb…and hundreds of thousands of other people can be gullible enough to believe it and where celebrities are spokespersons to promote it. ( the late L. Ron Hubbard, his Scientology and the Hollywood celebrities that follow it)

We live in a world where ethnocentrism isn't considered a virtue but it is still widely accepted in the manner it has taken on new forms. Rather than what more overt forms of this thinking inspired in the past, to try to eliminate peoples and religious or spiritual paths once claimed “inferior” by outright mass murder, the socially acceptable methods employed are assimilation, appropriation and identity theft. Fake Indian nations and groups are big business and show utter arrogance in their sense of entitlement to take ritual items, symbols, names and stories and misappropriate them for whatever purpose suited them. The "Black Hebrew Israelites" with their New Testament doctrine and racist ideology and the equally deceptively named "Messianic Judaism" in it's different forms based entirely on which Church is sponsoring them, displays extreme self-righteousness in their entitlement to claim Divine authority to either negate outright, or redefine Torah to mean things antithetical to Torah and Judaism.

All while claiming utmost love for the very people's whose history, spirituality and cultures they've hijacked and misappropriated very offensively.

Too many people who possess this spiritual void and lack of who and what they are are easy prey for the charlatan. They claim no responsibility for bad behavior to do so because they come from a paradigm that teaches "let the buyer beware" and that freedom means that you're free to do anything or say anything you want to say if you can say it is your "freedom of speech" to do so.

A more respectful way to live and actually honor any other group is to stop ignoring the ill effects such entitlement perpetrates. It is not respect that inspires groups or individuals to appropriate the identity, symbols, culture and history of another people and pervert those things by turning them topsy turvy, most often to impose beliefs that are offensive to and violate the laws of the authentic nation people.

The impostor groups also simultaneously declare great love and loyalty to the identity they claim while the words they use to speak of the original people display hatred and insult to the laws, ethics, values and the actual peoples whose identity they hijack.

While I'm only detailing a couple of different groups this applies to more than just the two I'll talk most about here.
The surviving Native American Indian nations and the Jewish covenant nation people have many different groups who openly display bigotry and hostility to the original nation peoples they will claim to *be* while they simultaneously corrupt and distort their histories, traditions, laws, and their different spiritual beliefs.

Other common experiences shared by these very different peoples:
Any individual or group that speaks out *against* the bigoted display of entitlement to hijack and remove the right of a people to maintain their own unadulterated history and laws, is then chastised as the bigot and condemned for their hatred at not being "tolerant". The commonly hurled deflection is to say you hate us because you don't want to give us the freedom to choose what to believe. This is also projection, but it is often effective to their co-religionists.

Sometimes the mention of love of all people or brotherhood is even brought up to deflect the misrepresentation of identity or history or belief.

The Europeans would not have survived on the shores of the foreign continents had it not been for the mercy/civilized assistance of it's native inhabitants who taught them how to find and cultivate foods. This was the case for both North and South America.

From farming methods of the Natives of the northeast that taught Europeans how to rotate crops to ensure soil fertility that when imported to Europe staved off famines that had regularly plagued parts of Europe for thousands of years, to the 5,000 year old weaving techniques of the Peruvians that were incorporated into textile making, to medicines (aspirin among a great many others) to systems of law (Ben Franklin and other "Founding Father's" directly credit) borrowed from the Iroquois, the Europeans were far behind in many areas thought to represent "civilization". Modern farmers still use an adaptation of the Iroquois "three sisters" system of corn, beans and squash that preserve soil fertility.

In a time when the very lives of early European astronomers were being persecuted for their "heresies" to declare the solar system to be heliocentric, the Incas and others had accepted and gone far beyond this in astronomical knowledge.

The native inhabitants of the Americas helped the very peoples who committed genocides. And the effort to eliminate them still exists, although rather than through outright murder, this is continuing through assimilation, discriminatory laws and other forms of socially acceptable bigotries that are even sometimes perpetrated in ignorance.


What can we do if we are genuinely caring for another but wish to learn about them and the wisdom that another people may have to share and not misappropriate?

There is a difference in sharing wisdom and culture with one another in the methods I illustrated and in misappropriating the identity and spiritual wisdom and life of other nations.

As humans who wish to know brotherhood and respect for one another we also hope to learn from one another. We can learn from many different First Nations Peoples..but they key is to let us learn what they want to TEACH us.

ASK rather than take. Some things can't belong to every person. Mixing the customs and religions of the different nations who still survive is not respecting them. Their ways belong to them.

Use that guide for any people, not just the different nations of the Americas.
Those precepts are what I wish people would also do for Jews. The world would be a much nicer place if people behaved in a way that simply respected the rights of peoples to be different from one another in their own purpose and path.
Jews are more open with our beliefs and practices than many Native peoples, but we are also accustomed to seeing this openeness abused in the same manner. We don't proselytize when we share to help dispel misinformation that leads to hate.

Perhaps if history and sociology courses included the topic of cultural and religious identity theft, tragedies of the past may be averted from repeating themselves in new forms.

If we can't learn this lesson, we are indeed doomed to keep repeating the history. The legacy of culture vultures, no matter which one's bones they're trying to pick clean, will ultimately doom the vultures, too.

Finding out who you are and where you belong may lead you to a path you might not have always chosen for yourself before you began a search to learn about the past of your ancestors, but if you don't know where you came from, it is certainly easier to get lost.

You may decide that the people you came from are not the people you wish to belong to now and your loyalties and path is elsewhere or you may decide that someone else strayed away from where you should have been all along. But if you decide to be a part of a particular people or path, you can't redefine their criteria for membership/citizenship to suit YOU, you are obligated to abide by their laws. If you don't meet their criteria for belonging, you haven't really found your people if that's the case.

Shalom y'all.

How Intolerant of Me?

I've said this many times in a few different ways. Once in a while I think it bears repeating:
I raise my child as my parents raised me, to be respectful and tolerant of the right of individuals and groups to have their own unadulterated culture, customs and beliefs. My tolerance extends to the point where the expression of those beliefs violate certain standards of behaviors: If they attempt to violate another’s civil rights, seek to incite harm to anyone, willfully deceive another or misrepresent the beliefs of others then my tolerance ceases.


Since coming to Y/A and answering questions addressed to Jews about Judaism, I have been repeatedly called:
intolerant
hate-monger
bigot
of my "father" the Devil (that I do not believe exists btw, since I'm Jewish and that concept is outside my religion)
and chastised for "persecuting with jealousy and spite"
and far worse..
All of the above accusations were hurled at me for simply saying that the New Testament doctrine of scriptures is outside of Judaism and that the Christian religion is not Judaism!

The New Testament is incompatible with Judaism because of unchangeable Jewish law from the Torah. That is a plainspoken fact regarding the laws of the religion and not personal opinion. I don't demand or ask that anyone take on that aspect of faith. I do not demonize people who wish to follow New Testament doctrine as their spiritual path in life.

Would Christians be subject to similar insults if they answer questions that worship of Odin or Vishnu are outside of Christianity?

Then why should Jews be repeatedly subject to sometimes rabid insults if we note that the worship of Jesus is forbidden to Jews by our laws of Torah?

Torah teaches that God does not become a man. That is a core part of Judaism and what differentiated it from most of the religions of the ancient Levant. That won’t ever change about Judaism.

Christian Bible's concept of messiah fits Jesus. The beliefs of those who call themselves “Messianic Jews” fit the New Testament doctrine of the nature of God, sin, and their concept of messiah is at odds with that of the Jewish religion. When Jews are explaining the differences, not once has any Jew told the Christian that they're damned or evil for choosing to believe their doctrine of the New Testament.

This is all about being told that we do not have the right to explain Jewish law that has existed for more than 4000 years prohibiting worship of men as deities and human sacrifice and demanding that we worship God alone and rely on God alone for atonement.
When Jews declare that any other form of worship is OUTSIDE of Judaism and IRRELEVANT to it, we are accused of hate.

Jews are told to be “tolerant” of people who have no legal ties to the Jewish people who demand that they be considered the “real” and “fulfilled” Jews as Jewish and following Judaism. We are told to be "tolerant" of people who take every aspect of Jewish practice and impose concepts into them that are forbidden to Jews and call it “practicing Jewish custom”. We are told to be "tolerant" of people who have never been Jews claiming to be “Torah observant Jews” who turn that phrase meaningless by violating every aspect of Torah! We are told to be "tolerant" and call their preachers of the New Testament *Rabbi*! I refuse to call someone who has fraudulently appropriated the title of Jewish clergy by a title that was created by the Great Assembly after the destruction of the Second Temple, to refer to one great in knowledge and honor of Torah. They can call themselves "Messianic Jews", call their Christian seminaries "yeshivas", and call their evangelical clergy "rabbis" if they want, but anyone who knows Jewish law will know they're dishonest to do so. A real Rabbi is devoted to Torah, does not preach the New Testament, and takes years of study before this title is conferred by other Rabbis with an ordination (semicha). An evangelical "Messianic" title can be purchased online for $250. If you can prove you have "Jewish blood" you're a superstar and get a special gold seal title on your certificate where they'll trace your "tribe" by your name at different site. sheesh.

It does not change the fact that Jews know and God knows that as long as they worship to or through a man or assign to a dead Jew the power of God to atone, they are lying that their dogma is Judaism or Torah observant and committing sins against every other Jew, living and dead. Whenever they teach lies about Jewish belief and then claim to love Israel, they are committing acts that are no different from any other group of the past who has tried to eliminate the faith and covenant people Israel. When they claim that they are the "real" Israel and that the world's believing Jews are "cut off" and "hate then for their faith" they repeat centuries old antisemitic libel with new labeling. Should they die without teshuvah,they will be held accountable for this egregious sin, as were all apostates in Tanakh who tried to get Israel to worship false man/gods.

Judaism is more about deed than creed. The deed of deception about Jewish belief speaks far louder than any self-professed love for Torah and Israel. I see them as no different from any other group who is out to destroy Judaism.

Yet Jews do not even need to address that point or refer to it to be demonized and verbally attacked with the label hate monger.

We are told that if we say that human sacrifice and deicide are considered abhorrent in Judaism we are hate mongers when we are simply and straightforwardly describing what the Holy Scriptures of Judaism say directly. How is it bigotry to say that human sacrifice is abhorrent to our religion? How is it bigotry to anyone else to say that Judaism declares that God does not become a man?

Go figure

The divinity of Jesus, virgin birth, original sin, the Devil/Lucifer, vicarious atonement and an eternal hell for those outside the sphere of faith and membership in the covenant nation Israel are all contradictory to Torah and Judaism. To define the boundaries and beliefs of a religion according to it’s doctrine/law is NOT bigotry.

If questions or answers that simply explain core differences between religions and doctrines can be defined as "hate", then that would mean that every comparative religion class must be defined as hate. There is no hate involved in recognizing and understanding DIFFERENCES as well as looking to find common ground with our fellow humans.

The above includes an adaptation of an answer I gave recently IN Yahoo answers to a very good question by a contact there, The angels have the Arc Light. She asked, Is it intolerant to point out that certain beliefs fall outside the criteria for inclusion in your religion?

And the Best Answer chosen by her was succinct, “Providing factual corrections isn't intolerant. And when one is factually correct, it is more than annoying to have someone inform you that you're wrong. It's the Humpty-Dumpty syndrome - "words means whatever I want them to mean" - I suspect. When you're pointing out that the name of one's religion does have a definite meaning and that some beliefs fall outside what is included in that perfectly clear and well-understood (by the rest of the world) term, you are not being intolerant. Someone else is being crazy, tediously obstinate and totally narcissistic.” This answer was from another Jewish user and contact, Ambivalent LAUghter.

It is obvious that these accusations are upsetting and it is also obvious they are escalating and increasing in antisemitic tone.


I could fill pages of examples of this form of topsy turvy accusation of bigotry, but I’ll only show one here.
So I won’t be considering assaulting individuals, I’m not going to give their Yahoo names. The question was later deleted anyway, but I had saved portions of it at the time as it was simply astounding to me the level of hate directed to Jews that answers addressing Jewish belief inspired when all the Jews there agreed in simple straightforward language that the New Testament was not Judaism.

A few months back a question had appeared that asked about Judaism’s view of sin and repentance. One of the answers that appeared had absolutely nothing to do with Judaism, but gave New Testament doctrine in lieu of Jewish belief. The person claimed to be a “Torah observant Messianic Jew”. There was nothing at all mentioned about the Jewish religion’s concept of sin and repentance in the answer at all. The rest of the answers gave straightforward answer to Jewish doctrine. One quoted passages of Tanakh and the other three gave detailed references.

Each of the Jewish respondents had also noted that the answer that gave New Testament belief or referred to Yeshua or Jesus , did not give an answer coming from Judaism. No personal insult was made, no one said anything demonizing or hateful, but my answer did express dismay that “once again, a question asking about Judaism has had a response giving the doctrine of a religion that is incompatible with Judaism as an answer.” I said that, “Jesus is insignificant to Judaism. The New Testament concepts of messiah, atonement and the nature of God are incompatible with Judaism and thus irrelevant to this question.” The asker then gave an additional detail that went off on an absolute diatribe demonizing Jews for saying that and accused me personally of violating Yahoo‘s rules.

I then added an edit to my answer, and oddly enough I have had more than one occasion to use a variant of this edit after giving a correct answer about Judaism since this first time posting it:
“I am at a complete LOSS as to why the asker is making the accusation of a "flood of hate" in responses here and claiming I am breaking the rules. Giving honest information about Jewish belief, reputable references to support this information and doing so in a polite and straightforward manner are hardly hate. I see five answers here, four of them giving detailed and accurate information about Judaism and supporting the right of the Jewish people to maintain Jewish law for the purposes of self-determination and identity.
Three movements of Judaism are represented in the four answers, as well. All four answers are stated without hatred, without rudeness and three of them (my own included ) give many reputable Jewish references to support the facts of our answers. So, unless it is the case that I simply missed answers that were posted earlier and now do not show up here at all..the respondents who have so far posted are owed an apology for this additional detail from the asker>>>"That no one can apparently even mention Messianic Judaism without a flood of hate and insults from anti-messiah people. Even a top contributor here couldn't resist breaking the rules to persecute their own who embrace their Jewish messiah." (I was the only one with a TC badge that appeared so that had to have been directed to me)

Lastly, believing Jews are definitely not anti-messiah people, so I must also assume that comment was made to someone whose answer does not now appear. I am glad that apparently I missed that hate as there is far too much of it in Y/A.. Remember, Judaism is a messianic faith, the original messianic religion.

-------------------------------------------------

Then today a QUESTION appears that has this whole premise as the basis of the question..that Jews are bigoted to Jews who believe in Jesus. After receiving several polite and detailed answers that he proceeded to insult and call the users names, the asker removed his own question..that is the message that was posted when I went to edit a typo in my response that I’ll show here. I did not save all the other answers but I did save my own and had used my “back’ screen to save the question as I’d answered it.


OK I have a question on Messianic Jews *braces self* and LDS etc?
Apparently I am being dismissive and uncaring about how passionately these people are hated by the Jewish community. Help me understand (in a simple and brief way please)

Truly I can't get my head around it or like the way they are demonized by some. Not just that they are saying they can't be Jews, but that they are pretending to be jews in order to bring them all down from the inside. Perhaps they are idk... but how is that different from any religious sect.

I also don't get how Christians claim different sects aren't Christian, like Protestants, Catholics, LDS... all of them.

So really I want to know what makes them different, and why we can't all just get along.

I don't need it explained to me how Jesus wasn't the messiah or anything btw. I just want to know how people can be considered Jews and be practicaly secular, if anything just "bad Jews", but people who observe Jewish practices and just think Jesus DID fulfill the prophecies are excluded (even if YOU think he didn't)
--------------------------------------------
Before I post what I answered, I want you the reader here to now think carefully about how that question is phrased.

Do you see that accusation of hate and demonization hurled at Jews in the question?
He declares they observe Jewish practices..that’s a misnomer. Jewish practices are performed to honor Jewish belief. Performing behaviors of certain Jewish rituals but imposing dogma of the New Testament that contradicts the beliefs those rituals were created to honor does not entail Jewish practices.
He considers them a ‘sect” of Judaism. This is not a schism from within the religion or the Jewish people and all movements of Judaism are in complete agreement over this.
This isn’t about “bringing them down from the inside” at all, but an attempt to hijack and replace and have the world believe that the “real” Jews are New Testament believers and the rest of the world’s Jews are impostors..it is an attempt at identity theft and an assault TO Judaism. Period. This is the topsy turvy nature of all of this.

The saddest part of this is that this evangelical movement has now existed long enough and grown fast enough in the Christian populace that there are now a few thousand children who have grown up with a false sense of identity and understanding of Judaism. They believe themselves to be Jews, but have no idea that their concept of Judaism, Jewish law and identity is utterly contradictory to Judaism. They were raised to believe they were being persecuted for their faith in their Jewish messiah and actually fear the people that they claim to love and be a part of.
They claim love of Israel and the Jewish people while spending millions of dollars a year to remove our identity and faith in evangelizing efforts. That’s a very misguided love at best.
Now here is the answer that I gave there. It’s long, but thorough and if you read nothing further, at least scroll down to the bottom and read the ISRAEL INSIDER article.

HERE is what I answered. The questioner removed the question less than 10 minutes after this posted there:

I will also not be responding to any question of a schism within Christianity. It is sad this question includes a false accusation against Jews as well.

There is no branch of Judaism known as "Messianic Judaism" because ALL of Judaism *is* messianic. The principles of faith contain promises by God of a Davidic messianic age. Judaism is the original messianic religion. The concept and job description of the term messiah in the Tanakh is simply VERY different from that of the New Testament

ALL movements of Judaism are in complete agreement that this is an assault to Jewish identity by people who profess faith in the doctrine of the New Testament. Jews are not telling these people what to believe, but just trying to inform the world that these people are not being honest when they hijack the identity of the Jewish people. Not only do they try to hijack our identity, but their teaching attempts to remove from the Jewish people aspects of our faith as they often use the insulting term, "non messianic" to Judaism, the original and still existing messianic religion.
Their religion is not Judaism and this was not a schism within Judaism.
We currently have no other honest name to call them than what they were FORMERLY identified themselves to be before they decided that appropriating the name of Judaism to eliminate authentic Jewish identity was an accepted method of evangelizing., Hebrew Christians. The Messianic Jewish Alliance of America was known by the name Hebrew Christian Alliance from it's beginning in 1915 until 1975. Jews consider them Christian since their statements of beliefs are Christian New Testament doctrine and not Judaism. It is not the function or job of Judaism to give other religions their own names.

The term "Messianic Judaism" began around 1967 according to "Christianity Today" magazine. Their statements of faith are in contradiction to the statements of belief of every form of Judaism on planet earth. Every Chief Rabbi and Jewish organization of every branch on every continent you find Jews and every Jewish user from five continents here in Yahoo that I've seen posting on this issue are in full agreement. This isn't a schism within Judaism, It isn't Judaism.

If they called themselves something else you wouldn't see Jews showing up on questions such as this. BUT because Jews are obligated by the commandments of God in Torah to speak up to the truth of the covenant of Israel and because the Jewish people should also have the same rights as all other nation peoples according to the Declaration of Human Rights. It is the basic human right of the Jewish people and obligation to speak up for the right of Jews to continue to use Jewish law for self-determination!

Y/A is supposed to be a place where people seek knowledge and factual information. If Jews did NOT speak out when Judaism and Jewish identity is being misrepresented and Jewish people were being maligned as bigoted toward the rights of others to believe in whomever they want, that would mean that false information is condoned as fact. That should not be acceptable to ANY honest person using Yahoo as it is intended, Jew or Gentile. In fact, because Jews are so few in number, we hope that more people will stop turning a blind eye to this and also speak out for honesty.

Jews and Christians can and do get along wonderfully when there is honesty and integrity in communication. As a believing Jew of course I respect the right of others to their own beliefs and understand as Torah teaches that the righteous of all nations merit blessing. Misrepresenting the beliefs of others is deception and that is a behavior condemned by both religions, no matter how different our religions may be to one another on many levels.

These groups are considered antisemitic and are harming Jewish-Christian relations. A recent Jewish Herald Voice I received in the mail had a headline article about how “Messianics pervert Passover at some Houston-area churches” with a subtitle, “Deceptive tactics harm healthy Jewish-Christian relations, experts say.” I have personally been involved in interfaith groups and dialog for 30 years and it is my strong belief that the different deceptively named "Messianic Jewish" groups have done just as much to increase antisemitism as the propaganda of the Middle East. Daily insults and false accusations of bigotry to *them* and false accusation that Jews are persecuting them because they believe in Jesus in Y/A is clear evidence of this.

The New Testament is replacement theology and no more relevant to the Jewish people than the Quran is to the Christian.

This is NOT OPINION but Jewish LAW of the eternal covenant. They are not of the Jewish religion so they may not speak to DEFINE Judaism.

Torah does not teach Jews that one must be a member of the covenant nation, Israel, the Jewish people, to know or connect to God.

All humans are equal before God. God is not exclusive to the Jew. God commands the Jew to be exclusive to God. Isaiah and Jeremiah both echo that the righteous of all nations have a place in the world to come. Micah sums it up well, "What Does the Lord Require of You? to Act Justly and to Love Mercy and to Walk Humbly With Your God"

They are most definitely free to believe whatever they want to believe. Mazel Tov on their choice of following the New Testament doctrine.

They simply will never ever be able to call it Jewish belief without Jews being forced to speak out to declare that is not true if they wish to call worship of or through a human a form of Judaism.

If a worshipper of Odin were to call themselves a "completed Christian" I think it would be expected that if a Christian said that Odin worship is outside of and irrelevant to Christianity, there would be no outrage displayed to the Christian for bigotry. Jews do not like to see Judaism misrepresented and Jewish identity attempted to be hijacked. If genuine respect and tolerance were being honored and there is someone who insists on misrepresenting Jewish belief and Jewish law and claims false identity, when Jews point that out with clear evidence that isn't something that should be declared hostile .

The assault to the rights of Jewish people to maintain Jewish identity through Jewish law is hostile to Jews and is creating antisemitism because they falsely claim that Jews persecute them for their faith in Jesus. That essentially says Jews hate Christians for their belief and fuels centuries of antisemitism. We just want them to stop calling themselves as following Judaism so that we don't have to keep coming along behind them to say..no, you're not. God defined in the Torah what is and isn't of the eternal covenant and the New Testament doctrine is contradictory to it. It is not Judaism.

it is not bigotry to declare that Judaism is not Christianity. It is fact.

Judaism IS a messianic faith but there is NO separate branch or sect of Judaism called "Messianic Judaism". The people who identify themselves as such follow the New Testament doctrine/scriptures and are thus, not of the Jewish faith by ANY stretch. More than 90% of the people who call themselves "messianic Jews" have no Jewish ancestry and are thus, not even apostate Jews. A group of people comprised of less than 10% apostate Jews who do not follow any form of Judaism, but only take Hebrew language, customs and holidays and impose replacement theology into then, does not get to redefine or hijack the identity of the Jewish people without the whole world's Jewish population of EVERY branch on every continent speaking in unison that they are not following Judaism. If they do not want to call adherence to the New Testament Christian, that's not a Jewish concern. Jews simply do not want them to hijack Jewish identity.

I am a Jewish believer. I am a real "messianic" Jew since my concept of the Davidic messiah is from the Tanakh. It has nothing to do with Jesus or the New Testament.

I am a monotheistic Jew. There is no trinity or tripartite deity in Judaism. There is absolutely no need to designate any particular branch of Judaism as monotheistic. It is every bit as illogical and redundant to have a phrase naming a separate branch of the Jewish religion as "Messianic Judaism"

I pray for the day when these explanations are no longer needed and such disrespect is no longer displayed to the Jewish people.

-----------
Under source I listed these links:

http://israelinsider.ning.com/forum/topics/messianic-synagogues-target < a very enlightening and informative article
http://mamaspajamaparty.blogspot.com/2009/04/jewish-position-has-been-clear-for-two.html Position statements from the world's Jews on this issue.
http://mamaspajamaparty.blogspot.com/2009/04/because-there-are-groups-and.html < Regarding Jewish law to determine identity.

I'll Begin With Something Old: Favorite Quotes From A Favorite Author

Elie Wiesel
Nobel Peace Prize winner and Boston University Professor Elie Wiesel has worked on behalf of oppressed people for much of his adult life. His personal experience of the Holocaust has led him to use his talents as an author, teacher and storyteller to defend human rights and peace throughout the world.
Wiesel's efforts have earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States Congressional Gold Medal and the Medal of Liberty Award, the rank of Grand Officer in the French Legion of Honor, and in 1986, the Nobel Peace Prize. He has received more than ninety honorary degrees from institutions of higher learning.
His more than forty books have won numerous awards, including the Prix Medics for A Beggar in Jerusalem, the Prix Livre Inter for The Testament and the Grand Prize for Literature from the City of Paris for The Fifth Son. The first volume of Wiesel's memoirs, All Rivers Run to the Sea, was published in New York (Knopf) in December 1995. The second volume, Et la mer n'est pas remplie, published in Paris (Le Seuil) in 1996, was published in English, And the sea is never full, in New York (Knopf) in late 1999.
A native of Sighet, Transylvania (Romania), Wiesel and his family were deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz when he was fifteen years old. His mother and younger sister perished there, la two older sisters waived. Wiesel and his father were later transported to Buchenwald, where his father died.
After the war, Wiesel studied in Paris and later became a journalist in that city, yet he remained silent about what he had endured as an inmate in the death camps. During an interview with the French writer Francios Mauriac, Wiesel was persuaded to end that silence. He subsequently wrote La Nuit (Night). Since its publication in 1958, La Nuit has been translated into twenty-five languages and millions of copies have been sold.
A devoted supporter of Israel Wiesel has also defended the cause of Soviet Jews, Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, Argentina's "disappeared," Cambodian refugees, the Kurds, South African apartheid victims, famine victims in Africa, and more recently the victims and prisoners in the former Yugoslavia.
Three months after he received the Nobel Peace Prize, Marion and Elie Wiesel established The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Its mission is to advance the cause of human rights and peace throughout the world by creating a new forum for the discussion of urgent ethical issues confronting humanity.
A selection of my favorite quotes of Elie Wiesel:
"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."
****
A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.
****
I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason.
****
I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
****
I write to understand as much as to be understood.
****
Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.
****
Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life.
****
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
****
Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.
****
Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other.
****
I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.
****
An immoral society betrays humanity because it betrays the basis for humanity, which is memory. An immoral society deals with memory as some politicians deal with politics. 'A moral society is committed to memory: I believe in memory. The Greek word alethia means Truth, Things that cannot be forgotten. I believe in those things that cannot be forgotten and because of that so much in my work deals with memory... What do all my books have in common? A commitment to memory.
****
I rarely speak about God. To God, yes. I protest against Him. I shout at Him. But to open a discourse about the qualities of God, about the problems that God imposes, theodicy, no. And yet He is there, in silence, in filigree.
****
Terrorism must be outlawed by all civilized nations — not explained or rationalized, but fought and eradicated. Nothing can, nothing will justify the murder of innocent people and helpless children.
****
After the war we reassured ourselves that it would be enough to relate a single night in Treblinka, to tell of the cruelty, the senselessness of murder, and the outrage born of indifference: it would be enough to find the right word and the propitious moment to say it, to shake humanity out of its indifference and keep the torturer from torturing ever again. We thought it would be enough to tell of the tidal wave of hatred which broke over the Jewish people for men everywhere to decide once and for all to put an end to hatred of anyone who is "different" — whether black or white, Jew or Arab, Christian or Moslem — anyone whose orientation differs politically, philosophically, sexually.
****
If someone had told us in 1945 that in our lifetime religious wars would rage on virtually every continent, that thousands of children would once again be dying of starvation, we would not have believed it. Or that racism and fanaticism would flourish once again, we would not have believed it.