the Sabbath, and had a deep love for His fellow Jewish people. If He were alive today, we would say in Yiddish that Yeshua was a mensch (a person of integrity)! The goal of the Jewish Jesus Reclamation movement is to help those within the Jewish community who have neglected Jesus to see Him as a Jew who had great wisdom to share with His people. This seeming neglect or unawareness of the Jewishness of Jesus is not only a problem within the Jewish community but also among Christians. Historically, Christianity has minimized the Jewishness of the One so many believe to be the Savior of the world. We are glad the Reclamation movement understands that you cannot understand Jesus and His teachings without viewing Jesus through a Jewish lens! His historical and religious context underlies all that He said and did during His three years of ministry and teaching. Without seeing Jesus as a Jew, it would be difficult to understand Jesus in any significant depth. The Modern Messianic Jewish Movement However, there is another movement within the Jewish world that is now taking place as well. Some Jewish people are reading me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35), they recognize that Yeshua is offering far more than mere food and drink. These Jewish people come to Jesus not to find fodder for pilpul (like argumentation), but to find Sabbath rest for their souls. He is the one who calmed the stormy seas of the Sea of Galilee and is able to soothe the tumultuous waves of angst that confront everyday men and women—Jews and gentiles. Over the past two centuries, more and more Jewish people have come to believe that Jesus is the promised Messiah of Israel. Today in the United States, there are tens of thousands of Messianic Jews—Jewish men and women who believe that Jesus is the Messiah. This would probably have been unheard of in years past, though according to some historians there was a burst of belief in Jesus in Europe immediately preceding the devastating years of the Holocaust. Today, we also see a growing number of Israeli believers in Jesus. There are a multitude of voices declaring that Jewishness and belief in Jesus is kosher. What would lead these Messianic Jews to ignore centuries of crusades, inquisitions, expulsions and pogroms to now believe in Jesus? You can find out for yourself by viewing the dozens of video stories of Messianic Jews who now believe in Yeshua by going to From my youth onwards I have found in Jesus my great brother. That Christianity has regarded and does regard him as God and Savior has appeared to me as a fact of the highest importance which, for his sake and my own, I must endeavor to understand…My own fraternally open relationship to him has grown stronger and clearer, and to-day I see him more strongly and clearly than ever before. – Martin Buber, Two Types of Faith (1951) the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament and discovering a rabbi who not only impacts billions of people in our world, but also transforms the lives of His true followers on a deep personal level that goes far beyond religious ritual. In Jesus they recognize a man who gives hope to the hopeless, answers to the puzzled, and encouragement to those downtrodden by the challenges of life. It is almost impossible to read the words of Jesus in such comforting passages as “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28) and align them with the actions of those who persecuted the Jewish people. Jewish believers in Yeshua separate themselves from those who perpetrated evil in His name and falsely claimed to be His followers. When Jesus says to the multitude of Jewish people seeking food for the body and nourishment for the soul, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to the website www.ifoundshalom.com. But what if you’re looking for more than the personal stories of Messianic Jews? The following will provide some additional reasons as to why many Jewish people today believe that Jesus is the Messiah. Reasons to Believe First of all, there is the recognition that Jesus is one of us. He is Jewish! The Jewish Jesus Reclamation movement has demonstrated that Jesus was Jewish. This is a tremendous first step in eventually determining the “Messiah question” as Jewish people understand the Messiah must be Jewish. He was to be a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah and a true son of King David. We see this to be true about Jesus from the very first verse of the New Testament where Matthew, one of Jesus’ disciples, writes, “The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham…” (Matthew 1:1). Believing in Jesus is deeply personal and spiritual and at the heart of our relationship to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This is not merely an academic exercise. If Jesus is the Messiah Special Edition - 5
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