Some Things that I Have Learned from Judaism

Last month, I attended a Shabbat service at Beth Meyer, a conservative synagogue in Raleigh. Since then, I have continued to attend Shabbat services at Beth Meyer, and one of the families at the synagogue invited Jill and me to participate in their Passover Seder. Jill and I had a wonderful evening at the Seder, and I have greatly enjoyed my time at Beth Meyer. I definitely plan to continue attending Shabbat services there. In addition, I hope to carve out some free time during the next few months to read a few books about Judaism.

I have learned a lot about God and the Bible from the congregation at Beth Meyer, and I feel that my Christian faith has grown as a result. Inter-faith relations are complicated generally, and they can be especially complicated for Jews and Christians given the church's history of anti-semitism. Nevertheless, it is important for people from different faiths to understand one another, and such understanding can only come through personal interaction and real human relationships. But there is more at stake than inter-faith relations here. Simply put, Christians can learn a lot about their own faith from Judaism.

Christians believe that Jesus is God, but Jesus was born a Jew, lived as a Jew, worshiped as a Jew, read the Bible as a Jew, died as a Jew, and, I believe, was raised as a Jew. Mary was a Jew, Joseph was a Jew, the Apostles were Jews, and probably all of the New Testament writers were Jews. Jesus was a Jewish Messiah who came to rescue Israel. True, Jesus also came to call the gentile nations to faith, and for this we should all be incredibly grateful. But Jesus didn't abolish the religion of ancient Israel when He called the gentiles. Rather, He fulfilled it. And, as Paul reminds us, Jesus called the gentiles by grafting them into Israel. Christians have detached their religion from Judaism, and the results have been disastrous for the Christian faith. (They have also been disastrous for the Jewish people, but that is a story for another time.) Nearly everything that Jesus said and did was firmly rooted in a Jewish context, and though it is possible to understand something of Jesus without a knowledge of Judaism, the Christian who knows little of Judaism will miss out on much of the Gospel.

Fortunately, one can learn a lot about Judaism - or at least the Judaism of Jesus's time - by reading the Hebrew Bible. In other words, you don't have to read books about Judaism or attend synagogue in order to learn a good deal about the Jewish background of the New Testament. At the same time, it is certainly helpful to read about Judaism and attend synagogue, and I would encourage all Christians to do these things at some point in their lives.

In my next post, I will share a few of the things that I have learned about God, the Bible, and the Christian faith from my recent exposure to Judaism.