Category: Explore a Jewish Perspective

Download this Article

Prophecy and the Birth of a Messiah

Each December at the Hanukkah and Christmas season, we find a fresh opportunity to review God’s great promises concerning the Messiah who would come to save us from our sins.

The very first Messianic prophecy is found in Genesis 3:12-15 following the fall of mankind:

The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

(more…)

Download this Article

Messiah: The Anointed One

If you ask three Jewish people about the Messiah, you will get five opinions! There is little consensus in the Jewish community except for saying, “He hasn’t come yet. We are still waiting for Messiah! Jesus is not the Messiah.”

I grew up in the Reform Branch of Judaism. My family was not looking for a personal Messiah but for a messianic age, a time in which this world would be different… “The lion would lay down with the lamb, swords beaten into plow shares” based on what we do in making this world better.

(more…)

Download this Article

A Brief Survey of Jewish Views of Jesus

My wife and I were talking the other night. I asked her (yes, she is Jewish), “What do Jewish people think of Jesus?” Without batting an eyelash, her response was, “Jewish people do not think of Jesus!” Generally Jesus is given little to no thought.

Throughout the ages, the question of who Y’shua (Jesus) is has encountered a full spectrum of reactions ranging from He is a myth, fable and the New Testament is merely an assemblage of narishkeit (Yiddish for foolishness)… all the way to He is the promised Messiah, God incarnate who died for our sins and rose from the dead. Quite a spectrum, indeed.

(more…)

Download this Article

The Hanukkah Question: Was Jesus the Promised Messiah?

Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication, is marked over the same eight days every year. Because the Jewish calendar is a lunar one, the dates seem to move relative to our Gregorian calendar. But Hanukkah is really on the same eight days each year.

Hanukkah is a minor Jewish festival (meaning that work is permitted throughout the festival.) The holiday originated when Judah the Maccabee and his followers were victorious in battle in the village of Modi’in, just outside of Jerusalem. They defeated the Syrian King Antiochus IV. Antiochus’ often eccentric behavior, capricious actions and even insanity led some of his contemporaries to call him Epimanes (“The Mad One”), a word play on his title Epiphanes (meaning God manifest).

(more…)

Download this Article

Knowing the Messiah

Often I’ve asked Jewish people this question, “When the Jewish Messiah comes, how you will know? How will you be able to identify the true Jewish Messiah from many over the centuries who have claimed to be Messiah, but weren’t?”

Most Jewish people today don’t know how they will identify the Messiah of Israel. They typically respond, “Well, when He comes, we will just know it.” Others say, “Our Rabbi will be sure to tell us when the Jewish Messiah is here, but we know He hasn’t come yet.”

(more…)

Download this Article

The Yom Kippur Dilemma

If you journeyed back in time 3,500 years and saw Jewish life as our forefathers lived it, you would be astounded at how vastly it differed from today’s practices. Instead of synagogues and Jewish community centers, you would witness a tent-like tabernacle, or at a later date, Solomon’s magnificent Temple. And whether it were Temple or tabernacle, you would find the “services” totally foreign. In place of a chanted liturgy centered in the weekly Torah reading, you would discover a world of worship where animal sacrifice was the focal point. No rabbi would preside. Instead a kohen, a priest, would be responsible for the ritual handling of the animals’ brood.

(more…)

Download this Study Topic

The Lord is One

“Hear, O Israel, Adonai Eloheinu Adonai is one. These three are one. How can the three Names be one? Only through the perception of faith; in the vision of the Holy Spirit, in the beholding of the hidden eye alone.…So it is with the mystery of the threefold Divine manifestations designated by Adonai Eloheinu Adonai—three modes which yet form one unity.” [1]

A Christian quote? Hardly. The above is taken from the Zohar, an ancient book of Jewish mysticism. The Zohar is somewhat esoteric and most contemporary Jews don’t study it, but there are other Jewish books that refer to God’s plurality as well.

(more…)

Download this Article

Death: Our Universal Experience

Mankind has been confronted with the experience of death since the beginning of time, and yet there is hardly another subject about which we know so little. Modern man chooses to escape from the awesome awareness of his own mortality and seeks ways to isolate himself from those approaching death. Why is this?

(more…)

Download this Article

Fruit Harvest in Ancient Israel

When summer is gone, the final harvest is ready. Nimble fingers separate grapes from the vines. Some of the harvest is laid out for the sun to sweeten into delicious dried fruit: raisins. Huge quantities of grapes are crushed and their juice is stored in large earthen vats until the proper time for it to be poured into wineskins to complete the fermentation process. All look forward to the abundance of wine, which King David said, “gladdens the heart.” (Psalm 104:15)

Each of the family joins in collecting the fruit of the land, the fruit God has provided for his people. Children scramble to fill oversized baskets with figs and dates which will be molded into cakes for a sweet confection to be used in the months ahead. Some dates will be made into a sweet syrup, date honey.

(more…)

Download this Article

What Do Jewish Writings Say About Sin?

What do Jewish Scriptures and traditions say about sin and its consequence? Is there a permanent solution?

Steven was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home. He went to Hebrew school, had his bar mitzvah and observed the holidays. Yet when he turned 15, his parents began to experiment with a more liberal Jewish lifestyle. Perhaps it was an act of rebellion against her own mother, but Steven’s mother began making pork chops, a food previously forbidden from the family menu and alien to their palates. At the same time, and seemingly unrelated at first, his father bought a smoke alarm. In case of fire, they would be ready! But as it happened, whenever the mother made pork chops, the alarm would start to blast. Its piercing warning would upset the otherwise peaceful household. Sometimes there was even smoke accompanying the alarm. Steven’s father quipped that maybe God was trying to tell them something–namely that they shouldn’t eat pork. The rest of the family shrugged off the remark as a joke and the culinary experiments continued. Still, whenever pork was cooked, the alarm sounded. Eventually, Steven’s father took the obvious solution. He got rid of the smoke alarm!

(more…)