Shalom! I am Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg f the Ezra-Habonim Niles Township Jewish Congregation. This video is the attempt to explain from a Jewish perspective, why we do not believe that Jesus is God or the son of God.
The first point to make is that simply a not issue for us. We do not care. Jesus is not anything we discuss in our regular basis. It is no part of religion. I know, that maybe difficult for people who think that Jesus is everything, to hear and understand. But it is really true. We do not even really think about it until a Christian says, “Why do not you believe in Jesus?”
Second of all, we do not think that, from what we know that there is any in special about frankly what happened. There is lot and lots of miracle stories in the Hebrew bible and in the rabbinic period, there are lot of faith healers running around doing miracles, the story of Elisha or Elijah in the bible for example, or evidence of that. And Deuteronomy specifically warns us that there will be prophets, people would claim to be prophets and who will claim to do miracles and even do law of science and wonders and tell you not to observe Judaism, do not listen to them.
In addition when you analyze, what is supposedly said in the name of Jesus that is in the New Testament, we find remarkable similarities among the Rabbis of the same era and ever earlier. So Jesus was just basically promoting standard rabbinic ideas, maybe a little bit liberal but there are many other Rabbis who quoted very similar things as he did. But we really have a hard time to know if he is a prophet or the Messiah or the God. We know the prophetic period ended hundreds and hundreds of years earlier. And anytime we see a text which from the Hebrew bible which is supposed to be predicts Jesus, the way we read it show something completely different. I give you a one example.
The Christians often say in Isaiah—there is a passage that predicts that this kind of fellow be born of as virgin mother. Now the idea of virgin birth is a Pagan idea that way, way, way precedes the birth of Jesus. But many case, the Hebrew word there is not virgin. Hebrew word is ‘Almah,’ the Hebrew word for virgin is ‘betulah.’ But when the bible is translated into Greek, the Greeks mistranslated it. And the word ‘alma’ does not mean a virgin. It means a young woman who can have a family and children. And so, it has nothing to do with the stories supposedly about the birth of Jesus.
In addition Jesus comes from Joseph, if there is a virgin birth then how is that—the house of David because Joseph is the one, according to the New Testament, that comes from the house of David.
Furthermore, we do not see the world being messianic yet. What the bible predicts is going to happen in the messianic period does not happen. The world is in still in a huge mess, death and violence and worst, nothing that the bible predicts. And so now, if Christians claim well, Jesus will come again or I just read the passage in Malacai today in the synagogue in the Sabbath before Passover and said “I will send Elijah to announce the great awesome day of the Lord.” It does not say that I am going to do it twice or three times, we are still waiting for the messianic era.
But the most important issue is the matter of basic Jewish belief is that God has no form, it can never have a form. God would never limit God self to a table a cow or human being, God is simply too beyond. God is infinity or never ever limit God self to an entity as Christians believed that God did it in the form of Jesus.
Now there are some people running around and saying there Jews for Jesus—that is impossibility, they did say whatever they want. But we established this problem an issue along time ago, thousands of years ago. If you are Jewish, you can not believe that Jesus is the Messiah or God. If you believe that Jesus the Messiah or God, you are not Jewish, it is simply just that. And so as we reflect on this basic issue we are very happy and content being Jews. Christians, I know are happy and content being Christians. According to the Jewish idea, they are perfectly legitimate in following their religious path. There are multiple ways that we believe anyway to being good grace with God. You do not need to be Jewish, it certainly do not need to be Christian in our view, as long as you follow the basic rules of civilization.
Now the final reason that I think it is important to reflect on, that we take very seriously is, we and all other monotheistic religions agree that there is a God. We also agree that that God communicated God’s Will in a revelation to Moses. Now that revelation, says in Number, that God spoke to Moses alone, word to word, mouth to mouth and everyone else in dreams envisions. And Jews says that that was the ultimate revelation and everything else is interpretation. What other religion say, who came subsequent to Judaism, is that basically God made a mistake and had to fix it later. And every time you have a subsequent religion to that they are saying God had to add more.
Well, we just find it that it is impossible. It only makes sense to us that God would say it once. And if God said it twice, then how do you know it was not in three times or four times or five times.
So the bottom line is, Christians are very fine to be Christians and Muslims to be Muslims, everybody just needs to live in peace and work towards bringing the greater glory and grace of God. And we believed what it says in the prophet Zachariah that we say the end of all of our services “bayom hahu yihiyeh Adonai echad, u'shemo echad”—in the final end day. “yihiyeh Adonai echad”—God will bw onw God, “u'shemo echad” and his name will be one, and all people would gather in Jerusalem and declare “Adonai” as God. But until that day, we should all be content to live under on our own and will-free and no one make us afraid in worship God and trying to make a holy life.
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