WHO IS THE MOST INFLUENTIAL JEWISH PERSON WHO EVER LIVED? When asked why he had “given up the synagogue for the church,” Zolli replied, “I have not given it up. Christianity is the completion of the synagogue, for the synagogue was a promise, and Christianity is the fulfillment of that promise. Once a Jew always a Jew.” – Israel Zolli, Chief Rabbi of Rome Who do you think is the most influential Jewish person who ever lived? Moses, Freud, Jonas Salk, Barbara Streisand…Woody Allen? There have been many influential Jewish people throughout the centuries who have not only impacted the Jewish community, but also the world in general. We all have our favorites and heroes, but let’s face it, the Jewish person who has certainly influenced more people than anyone else is none other than Jesus of Nazareth! In fact, it is possible that the area of His least influence would be among His own people—the Jewish people. He has often been misunderstood and marginalized. Most Jewish people I know are raised with virtually no knowledge of what Jesus said or did. Many of us might not even know He was Jewish! Jesus might not be a major part of our corporate Jewish consciousness, but there are many Jewish people today who are curious about Jesus and are at least beginning to think about Him as a long-lost brother. As Jewish people, we really cannot afford to ignore Him. As Yale historian Jaroslav Pelikan once wrote, Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture for almost twenty centuries. If it were possible, with some sort of super-magnet, to pull up out of that history every scrap of metal bearing at least a trace of his name, how much would be left?1 Jesus has achieved a profound and incalculable influence on ethics, law, family life, theology, piety, education, philosophy, and anthropology, to name a few. But even though Jesus is a major figure in world history, we tend to keep Him and His teachings at arm’s length. He may have been a Jewish man…and even the Messiah for the gentiles, but in our everyday Jewish opinion, He is nothing more than an average first century rabbi who thought He had some unique insights into the Torah, or at best was some type of Galilean mystic, but certainly not the promised Jewish Messiah. The Jewish Reclamation of the Jesus Movement At least this has been the usual view within the Jewish community. However, that is starting to change on multiple fronts. In the 1920s, Hebrew University began developing courses in New Testament Studies. Outstanding and brilliant scholars like Joseph Klausner, who edited the monumental Encyclopedia Hebraica, and David Flusser, as well as other mainstream Jewish scholars, taught these courses, wrote books, and presented scholarly papers about the Jewishness of Jesus. Partly due to their influence, Jesus began to have a renaissance in Jewish life and thought. During the last two decades, Jewish scholars have taken part in the “Jewish Reclamation of the Jesus Movement.” Some of these scholars worked together to produce the thorough and lengthy The Jewish Annotated New Testament, published in 2011. “Jesus reclamation” Jewish scholars have broken new ground and argue that Jesus was a Torah-observant, Middle Eastern, Shema-reciting rabbi (Deuteronomy 6:4, Mark 12:28-31). These Jewish scholars want to help the Jewish and Christian communities appreciate the Jewishness of Jesus. Consider, for instance, the parallels between Jesus’ teachings and the rabbis of the Mishna, presented on page six. In these three pairs of quotations, we find parallels of thought, vocabulary, ethics, and theology. Jesus is anything but gentile. His Hebrew name is Yeshua, and He is a sabra (native-born Israeli) who attended synagogue, observed the Jewish holidays and 4 - The Chosen People
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