Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, December 24, 1994                   TAG: 9501170015
SECTION: RELIGION                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: NEIL ALTMAN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

JESUS IS BECOMING THE HOTTEST ISSUE IN JUDAISM

Since the rebirth of the state of Israel in 1948, and especially since the June War of 1967, there has been a steady increase in the number of Jews who believe in Jesus. A decade ago, a Los Angeles Times article said, "more Jewish people have accepted Jesus as Messiah in the last 19 years than in the last 19 centuries."

It was the Messianic Jewish movement of the first century that brought millions of Gentiles to know the God of Israel. In the 20th century, it is again Jewish believers who are declaring to both Jew and Gentile alike that Jesus is the Messiah, and that the purpose of Messiah's cleansing the heart from sin is so that Jewry can do God's laws and commandments out of a pure heart.

Though Jesus decried religious hypocrisy, he never preached against Judaism, but against sin - the failure to keep God's standards. Jesus said he did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it.

Neither Jesus nor the Apostle Paul tried to create a new religion.

In an article entitled "Paul and the Torah," Lloyd Gaston says, "Paul took for granted that the Law of Moses was still binding on Jewish believers..." Paul's role to the Gentiles was simply to teach them that the moral and ethical laws of Torah applied to them, though the ceremonial ones of keeping kosher, circumcision, keeping the sabbath, etc., did not.

Messianic Jews are concerned about many of the same issues as other Jews - assimilation and intermarriage, which now approaches 50 percent among Jews, the rise of anti-Semitism, the welfare of the state of Israel, Law and salvation. They are also part of the rising tide of interest in spirituality among Jews, seen in a proliferation of books and speakers on the subject.

That spiritual hunger has even appeared within the former Soviet Union. During May 1993, several sources reported that an unprecedented event took place in St. Petersburg, Russia. During a Messianic Jewish festival that drew large crowds to hear Messianic music and the Gospel, of the some 3,000 who came to know Jesus the Messiah, "over 2,000 ... were Jewish."

Some Jews, even those who had been the most secular, are finding their spiritual hunger fulfilled in a personal relationship with God through the Messiah.

Messianics today, like most Jews, generally do not come from observant backgrounds. Interestingly, the Jews who believed in Jesus in the first century were observant.

In the New Testament book of Acts, one finds that there were "many thousands of Jews which believe in Messiah and are all zealous of the law." Their numbers grew significantly until the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of Jewry in 70 A.D.

Today, Messianic Jews are coming home to the Judaism of Moses and the prophets. Virginia Messianic congregations in Reston, Richmond, Burke and Virginia Beach have grown without much conflict over the past 10 years. The movement is not without opposition, however. In New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Philadelphia, the Jewish establishment has reacted strongly. For example, in Philadelphia Messianic Jews have been tarred with the onus of assimilation.

Messianic Jews also have been beset by the illogical notion that it is Jewish to believe in anything - or even nothing - but it is not Jewish to believe in Jesus as the Messiah.

However, the world-renowned Yiddish author Sholem Asch said, "To me, [Jesus] is the outstanding personality of all time, of all history, both as Son of God and as Son of man. Everything he ever said or did has value for us today. ... He became the light of the world. Why shouldn't I, a Jew, be proud of that? When you understand Jesus, you understand that he came to save you."

In a world full of tension, Messianic Jews have found that Hanukkah and Christmas do not have to be mutually exclusive, but are festivals of the Light. The Scriptures say that Jesus came to his own and his own did not recognize him, but as Bob Dylan sings, "the times, they are a changin'."

Rabbi Pinchas Lapide, an Orthodox Jewish scholar and nonbeliever in Jesus, observes that "The time of new freedom from bias is beginning." Another Jewish scholar and also a non-believer, Hans Joachim Sohoeps, made this astonishing statement: "When the Jewish Messiah comes, it may yet be discovered that his face is that of Jesus of Nazareth."

Slowly, Jesus is becoming the hottest issue in Judaism.

Neil Altman is a Messianic Jew and a free-lance writer based in Philadelphia who specializes in the Dead Sea Scrolls.