Wow! I'm going to have to read this a few times to understand the fullness of what you're saying.Well, you can start by not a) putting us and our people on a pedestal, and by b) allowing us the freedom to express ourselves in ways that do not conform to your stereotypes.
Let me explain. This will take some time...please be patient and perhaps go and get a cup of tea before reading further.
.....ok...now you're back..
The people here raised in Judaism will have a fairly similar experience and I speak on behalf of them with respect that each of us will have a differing history.
Being raised Jewish is being raised with a set of cultural opinions, traditions and prejudices all unique to the Jewish people. For some of us, it is reasonably liberal and for others it's basically brainwashing. Whether one is raised freely or strictly controlled, being Jewish is the central tenet of one's life. That's what seems the most important thing to your parents- that we're Jews. What that means is that things others take for granted like going to a BBQ with non-Jewish people becomes a massive source of guilt for some of us. Multiply that by 100 if you are romantically attracted to a non-Jewish person. You can feel guilty about a lot of things, actually. Especially anything not approved of by rabbis or parents. It's actually very unhealthy in my experience. I have neurotic anxieties to this day over this stuff.
Then along comes Jesus. He's not Yeshua and never was to you. That's the name you heard about for Him and He was always Jesus and now you've met Him. You are taken up by Jesus and He becomes the center of your life. You feel you are a new creation. You have a new heart, new motives and want to follow Him. You get baptized by the Church. You experience kindness, acceptance, teachings that fill your heart and mind and you begin that new life in the Church. Christians are mostly good people and you see a real difference in their hearts from those who are not. You study hard to get the full gamut of this new faith. It takes work and can be painful.
Life is fine.
Then you meet your first group of hyper-Israel-pro-Jewish-love-the-Jews Christians. They might be Messianic. They speak English. They are from a non-Jewish background. They are terrific people but a little draining. They want to know everything about Judaism. You do your best to help. But for some reason they call Jesus "Yeshua", thinking that somehow that's what you should call Him too. For some reason they keep the Sabbath and want to do it the way your family does. They want to build a sukkah even though their nation didn't have to wander in the desert fleeing Egypt. You guess that's ok too. They are lovely people- but you soon realize that they don't know much about Christianity and it puzzles you why they don't spend time and energy on that first. Then you raise the point...and regret it.
You soon realize that for some of them at least, the things you discovered as wonderful and spiritually transformative and which cost you personally quite a lot to adopt, they hate. They hate the name "Jesus". They hate the Church. They hate Holy Communion. They hate celebrating the life of Jesus in the Church's holy days. You realize their religion is not the one you came to but a strange spin on what you left behind. Jewish-ism.
But you cannot speak of it. You will be corrected if you do. And worst of all- if you don't live the life you left behind and do and walk and talk the way they think a Jew should- well, you're not Jewish enough for them! The non-Jew sits in judgment over your lack of being Jewish. 500 years ago they wanted you to be acting like a non-Jew, but now they say you're not Jewish enough unless Jesus is Yeshua and the Torah is, well, almost Adonai.
They completely reject your first hand experience in Judaism. You watch in vain and with a saddened heart as they try to get the fulness of the Spirit by making an attempt at adopting Judaism- the most complicated and muddied interpretation of the Torah possible. You marvel at their preaching against the things that made sense out of your guilt-ridden life in Judaism- Jesus, the Church, love, grace alone, faith alone, Jesus alone. You ponder why they preach all the easy stuff in the Torah as binding but avoid the tough stuff, or adopt a rabbinic practice but not a Torah one. Keep the Jewish holidays, but not circumcision. Speak in tongues, but reject tefillin. Don't eat a cheeseburger, but wear mixed clothing. Wear a kippa but not a tallit katan. Celebrate the fun holidays, but don't slaughter the animals or stone people for sins. Keep the Sabbath, but can't recite the decalogue with understanding, if at all. Strain a gnat but swallow a camel. We're back to square one.
You, OTOH, have never given up tefillin, tallitot, shabbat, moedim and even cover your head every day. But when you tell them that those things don't seem to be doing them much good- you're labeled "non observant" or "anti-Torah" and voila- you're not Jewish enough again. You're not the "true" Messianic Jew, they are. Even though you're the observant Messianic Jew in the conversation.
It's hurtful when you come to this forum and see the same. I know from private correspondence that most of those born Jewish on this forum feel rather ostracized and even sense a form of anti-semitism here. At worst we've been crushed by the judgement on our new life in Christ and some feel like we've even been loved to death.
You feel as though they want to steal away your new life in Christ and His people ("One New Man") and make you act like an observant Jackie Mason or a Hasidic Rebbe who found Yeshua. Play Jewish or get out. Just don't be yourself.
Don't love us because we are Jewish- love us for who we are, and respect what we've been forced to leave behind and most of all rejoice with us in the new life we have in Christ and His church (or Yeshua and His whatever if that floats your jingo boat!)
I wouldn't have known any of this without your explanation, and I don't fully understand all of this with one reading.
I'll have questions later when I get more of what you've said.
Thank you. This is an excellent post!
One question now is what do you mean by putting Jews on a pedestal?
How do we do that?
What can we stop doing in that regard?
I have other questions on the other points you raised but I need to read your post several times to see if I can find the answers already in your post.
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