SPECIAL EDITION Volume XXII, Issue 8 International Headquarters: 241 East 51st Street New York, New York 10022 212-223-2252 www.chosenpeople.com Australia: Celebrate Messiah P.O. Box 304 Caulfield South VIC 3162 Australia 61-3-9563-5544 www.celebratemessiah.com.au Canada: Dufferin-Lawrence PO, Box 58103 Toronto, ON M6A 3C8 416-250-0177 www.chosenpeople.ca South Africa: Emet Ministries PO Box 13393 Hatfield 0028 Pretoria, South Africa +27 12 804 5212 www.emetministries.co.za United Kingdom: P.O. Box 47871 Golders Green, London NW11 1AL United Kingdom 020 8455 7911 www.chosenpeople.org.uk New Zealand: Celebrate Messiah NZ PO Box 8355 Cherrywood Tauranga 3145 New Zealand 64-3-431-2564 www.celebratemessiah.co.nz This newsletter is published monthly by Chosen People Ministries. Visit us on the web at: www.chosenpeople.com. Our Spanish website is www.puebloelegido.com. PRINTED IN THE USA. “I am arguing that the portrait of Jesus we find in the Gospels (especially in Mark) is one that could completely fit into the context of Second-Temple Judaism in which a Messiah who would be divine and human at the same time is not a foreign notion…So it’s not only Jesus who was a Jew but the Christ (and Christ is not Jesus’s last name but his title!).” – Daniel Boyarin, Orthodox Jewish Scholar I was raised in a traditional Jewish home in New York City. I heard very little about Jesus while growing up. As I got older, I made no effort to learn anything about Jesus. This is because, in my mind, Jesus was linked to Christianity and both Jesus and Christianity were about as non-Jewish as you could get! I am not really being negative when I say that—it is just that every Jewish person I knew believed that there was an ocean of difference between Jews and Christians and for Jews there were no boats available! Not that we thought much about it, but deep inside we knew if, perchance, anyone converted to Christianity, they would no longer be considered Jewish. Religion was neatly compartmentalized from my perch—you were either Jewish or Christian or something else. I did not distinguish between Catholicism or Protestantism or any other religion! In my mind, if you were not Jewish or Christian, you were probably from another part of the world and therefore may practice Buddhism or Hinduism, etc. There was no merging of faiths and “normal” people remained part of the religion they were born into. Now, whether or not they believed or followed their own faith was another matter…but switching was not a possibility in my mind. Though I attended a modern Orthodox synagogue as a kid, spent two months a year at Jewish summer camps, and became bar mitzvah at 13 years of age, still, I was not all that interested in religion. I loved being Jewish, I even enjoyed studying the Bible —mostly to learn more about my own history, but I simply was not trying to discover some type of religious truth. Did I believe in God? I was probably some kind of agnostic without seriously thinking it through. Simply put, I knew I was Jewish and identified with the Jewish community. Furthermore, I understood that 2 - The Chosen People A NOTE FROM THE PRESIDENT Dr. Mitch Glaser President Chosen People Ministries
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