Vegan,
I do not need to clarify their doctrine with others, I have had first hand experience with J4J. I could go on with numerous personal testimonies concerning this issue, but I will aslo back up my statements with quotes taken directly from the J4J website.
However, I will share a couple of experiences I've had with J4J before posting some quotes.
A little under a year ago, a friend of mine invited me to his congregation where a J4J speaker was doing an "outreach". After the service the guest speaker noticed I was wearing a Kippah and Tallit Katan. He felt it was his call to minister to me, so he came up and started an hour long discussion why the messiah came so that I don't have to follow the "old archaic laws of Moses" and can be free in J-sus.
Four or five years ago when I was looking into an internship with J4J in San Francisco. During a phone interview I asked if there were any Jewish congregations in Sanfran that I could attend, or if J4J was directly involved in a Messianic congregation that met
specifically on Sabbath. I was told that J-sus rose on Sunday, so the J4J's held their church services on Sunday. If I was to receive the intern position I would be expected to be very involved in sunday services. Because the housing involved in the internship was communal housing with J4J I asked if they kept Kosher. They said no, but if I wanted to do so on my own I was allowed. But it was made evidently clear that Kosher was not kept within the J4J communal housing.
Finally, I have also spoken with Moshe Rosen (the founder of J4J) via email a few times. He has openly declared that he teaches Y'shua came so that we don't have to obey the Torah. If one chooses to do so, they may but only if done out of a respect for their Jewish heritage... one is not spiritually viable if they did it for spiritual reasons, as this was 'Judiazing'.
I haven't been to the J4J website in a couple of years, but specifically to bring something to the table here in this discussion I have copied and pasted a few quotes I found while browsing the site just now.
Taken directly from the J4J website:
Under the New Covenant, we all have a Holy Spirit-governed liberty and a God-sensitized conscience, whereby one believer might choose to accept more or less of a burden to follow certain holidays or customs than another. Those observances are purely subjective and voluntary, and never to be considered ways of gaining merit with God. The Holy Spirit gives us the liberty to maintain our heritage and culture so long as the traditions and observances do not obscure the gospel and we realize that the only way of salvation is through grace, by faith in the atoning work of Y'shua.
Many Jewish believers who choose to be observant to one degree or another recognize that The Law of Moses is no longer binding as such upon Israel.
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Here's an interesting one where he takes multiple passages out of context:
Traditionally, Judaism has insisted that the Torah will never come to an end, despite the passage in Jeremiah.....
Before continuing in quoting this article, just let me state for the record that the passage in Jeremiah (31) is not a reference to the end of Torah, but rather the
RENEWING of Torah.
...Yes, some of us might keep kosher, for example. But what of other parts of the Law?....
notice again, "some" keep kosher
The author then goes on to state that it is not viable to keep all of Torah, thus there is no requirement to adhere to the commandments of the Torah.
This logic has many trappings (such as, because we can't be perfect [keep torah in whole] does that give us the inherrent right to not try to obtain perfection?) , but I'm not here to discuss those issues in this thread.
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Quite simply, J4J do not teach Torah is for today.
Shalom,
Yafet.
But you should know better than any of us what it feels like and means to be told you are not a "true" Jew.
