ADDITIONAL COMMENTS JEWISH OBJECTIONS ANSWERED JEWISH PEOPLE DO NOT BELIEVE IN THREE GODS Of course we do not believe in three gods! That belief would be very un-Jewish and in no uncertain terms should be called idolatry! The Torah (Five Books of Moses) clearly states in the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4) that there is only one God. However, there have been Jewish scholars from earlier generations who did not see a problem with God being understood as three-in-one. For example, Jewish Theological Seminary’s Benjamin Sommer writes, “No Jew sensitive to Judaism’s own classical sources, however, can fault the theological model Christianity employs when it avows belief in a God who has an earthly body as well as a Holy Spirit manifestation, for that model...is a perfectly Jewish one.” This is an astonishing statement, but the evidence in the Hebrew Scriptures and ancient Jewish tradition supports the idea. As Messianic Jews, we affirm that the New Testament reveals the mystery: God is three-in-one! Certainly this is beyond our ability to truly comprehend, but as the prophet Isaiah writes, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your SPECIAL EDITION | THE CHOSEN PEOPLE | 7 ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9) More importantly, the Bible uses the word echad, translated as “one” in the great Shema prayer, as a way to indicate a composite unity. Another example of composite unity is when God created Adam and Eve, the first husband and wife. The Bible describes their union in the following way, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24) The “oneness” of the first couple was described as a composite unity. The term used is echad, the same Hebrew word used in Deuteronomy 6:4. This does not prove the triune nature of God, but challenges the idea that the term was always used to indicate singularity without some type of unity among equals. BY JONATHAN MANN WHY DID GOD ALLOW THE HOLOCAUST? Many of us find the horror and scope of the Holocaust inconceivable, even though we know it happened. Humankind’s capacity for cruelty is hard to grasp—harder still to imagine being subjected to it. Where was God? How could God allow this? Does God even exist? These are very difficult and agonizing questions. But let’s attempt to shine a light of clarity on this issue. If someone told you every day, “I love you,” but they were forced to do this, would that be real love? No. True expressions of love come from an active choice to love. However, because we have this freedom to love, we also have the freedom and opportunity to hate and do evil, often with horrible results. The Holocaust is a prime example of the evil humanity is capable of perpetrating. We may not know the reasons why God allowed this. Yet God shared the suffering of His chosen people. He was not distant. We believe that the God of Israel entered this world and experienced the most painful death imaginable, by crucifixion. Yet He also rose from the dead. Consequently, as philosopher John Lennox said, “God has not remained distant from our human suffering but has become part of it.” We can trust God not only because He has experienced human anguish, but also because He gives us hope of eternal life through His resurrection. One cannot equate the cross where Yeshua suffered for our sins with the death camps like Auschwitz. Yet the Messiah, destined to die and fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 53, understood the anguish of human suffering at a level very few of us, other than Holocaust victims, could imagine. His suffering does not make the Holocaust more palatable, but it helps us to see that God might understand our anguish a little more than we thought. BY JONATHAN MANN AND BRUCE KLEINBERG Where was the Messiah Yeshua during the Holocaust? If He was indeed the Messiah then why did evil run rampant and why didn’t He save His chosen people? These are questions that are difficult to answer, but there is one verse in the New Testament that helps us understand the relationship between Yeshua and His people. The verse is one of the shortest in the entire Bible and is as follows: “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35) He wept because of the death of His friend Lazarus and because He loved His fellow Jewish people! But, this is not the only occasion where Jesus wept for the Jewish people. In the Gospel of Luke, we read the following passage, “When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it.” (Luke 19:41) This time He wept because He knew that in the near future, the Romans would destroy the city of Jerusalem. The One whom so many of us believe is the promised Messiah of Israel loves His people. According to the New Testament, He will one day return to reign as King of Israel, destroy the enemies of the Jewish people, and judge those who tried to destroy the Jewish people throughout the centuries (Revelation 19:15, Zechariah 14:1-5). This might not answer the entire question as to why He allowed the suffering of the Holocaust. Jewish people have tried for decades to figure out where God was during the Holocaust. Again, we do not fully understand the reasons why the Lord allowed His chosen people to suffer, but we do know that He loves His people and those who persecuted the Jewish people will one day be held accountable before our Jewish Messianic judge. BY DR. MITCH GLASER, A MESSIANIC JEW FROM BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
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