Messianic Judaism is a conspiracy by Christians to convert Jewish people to Christianity.

What is Messianic Judaism? In general, very general, it is the idea that you can be “Jewish” and still believe in Jesus as “the Messiah” as a Christian does. This article will discuss why this is impossible and why people still try to promote the idea.

There are two camps of “Messianic Judaism” with which we need to carefully delineate.

First let it be stated that all of the “original” Jewish people (ex. 1st century Jews, later, European Jews) who became “followers of Jesus” – as well as any Jewish person in the present day who converts to modern Christianity – are no longer considered a Jew by any group (including themselves). In general, “jews” who convert to Christianity are no longer considered Jewish – especially by Jewish law as discussed in the Bible itself.

By way of explanation, it would be wrong for us to assume that such a Jew would (for example) not necessarily keep the Sabbath or the laws of Kashrut. So let us assume that such a Jew was a Jew in all respects except that he believed the essential core tennet of Christianity “The Trinity” and that Jesus had to die for our sins. In such a case these people are already not Jewish because they have broken faith with the standard prescription for salvation found in the “Old Testament”. Ezekiel 18 (entire chapter) is a slam dunk refutation of this belief, in various forms.

Any further separation from the body of Jewish practice only serves to isolate such a Jew from the nation of Israel; ex. not worshipping on the Sabbath, but on Sunday:

• 1. Exodus 20:11 “11 Bescause in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day, therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”
• 2. Deu 5:15 “15 And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.”
• 3. Exodus 31:16-17 “16 Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. 17 It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.”

or for example the mention/use of the name Jesus:

• Exodus 23:13 “13 And in all things that I have said unto you be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth.”
• Deuteronomy 13:6 “…a god your fathers did not know;”
• Deuteronomy 28:64 “…other gods your fathers did not know,”

In a nutshell:

• Judaism holds that the sabbath is holy as a memorial to God's creation(1); Christians reverse this by hallowing Jesus's death and resurrection and placing that before the eternal covenant(2) given by God in Exodus.

(Ex. 31:13–17, Ex. 23:12, Deut. 5:13–14), a rule that also applies to proselytes, and a sign respecting two events: the seventh day, during which God rested after having completed Creation in six days (Gen. 2:2–3, Ex. 20:8–11), and God's deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt (Deut. 5:12–15).

“Jews” who believe in “Jesus” are no longer part of the Jewish Community. The purpose of this section (part 1) is only to illustrate how a Jewish person, raised and educated in a Jewish community, will have a certain set of beliefs, from which he must convert in order to become a “messianic jew”; there is no extant group of “messianic” Jews which have existed through history, which have passed down a belief in Jesus. All of them, without exception, are converts.

I'll just conflate the historical section with the second camp, because there really isn't any history of a Jewish sect that believed in Jesus – such a “sect” is in fact “messianic judaism”, so presenting the history of this group will be sufficient to kill two birds with one stone.

It is an undeniable fact of history that “Messianic Judaism”, as a movement which still exists today, begins with the Hebrew Roots movement. Here are the facts:

In the 19th century, some groups attempted to create congregations and societies of Jewish converts to Christianity, though most of these early organizations were short-lived.[28] Early formal organizations run by converted Jews include: the Anglican London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews of Joseph Frey (1809),[29] which published the first Yiddish New Testament in 1821;[30][verification needed] the “Beni Abraham” association, established by Frey in 1813 with a group of 41 Jewish Christians who started meeting at Jews' Chapel, London for prayers Friday night and Sunday morning;[31] and the London Hebrew Christian Alliance of Great Britain founded by Dr. Carl Schwartz in 1866.[32]

The September 1813 meeting of Frey's “Beni Abraham” congregation at the rented “Jews' Chapel” in Spitalfields is sometimes pointed to as the birth of the semi-autonomous Hebrew Christian movement within Anglican and other established churches in Britain.[33] However, the minister of the chapel at Spitalfields evicted Frey and his congregation three years later, and Frey severed his connections with the Society.[34] A new location was found and the Episcopal Jew's Chapel Abrahamic Society registered in 1835.[35]

In Eastern Europe, Joseph Rabinowitz established a Hebrew Christian mission and congregation called “Israelites of the New Covenant” in Kishinev, Bessarabia, in 1884.[36][37][38] Rabinowitz was supported from overseas by the Christian Hebraist Franz Delitzsch, translator of the first modern Hebrew translation of the New Testament.[39] In 1865, Rabinowitz created a sample order of worship for Sabbath morning service based on a mixture of Jewish and Christian elements. Mark John Levy pressed the Church of England to allow members to embrace Jewish customs.[37]

In the United States, a congregation of Jewish converts to Christianity was established in New York City in 1885.[40] In the 1890s, immigrant Jewish converts to Christianity worshiped at the Methodist “Hope of Israel” mission on New York's Lower East Side while retaining some Jewish rites and customs.[41] In 1895, the 9th edition of Hope of Israel's Our Hope magazine carried the subtitle “A Monthly Devoted to the Study of Prophecy and to Messianic Judaism”, the first use of the term “Messianic Judaism”.[42][43] In 1894, Christian missionary Leopold Cohn, a convert from Judaism, founded the Brownsville Mission to the Jews in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York as a Christian mission to Jews. After several changes in name, structure, and focus, the organization is now called Chosen People Ministries.[44]

Missions to the Jews saw a period of growth between the 1920s and the 1960s.[4][45] In the 1940s and 1950s, missionaries in Israel, including the Southern Baptists, adopted the term meshichyim (משיחיים‎, 'messianics') to counter negative connotations of the word notsrim (נוצרים‎, 'Christians'). The term was used to designate all Jews who had converted to Protestant evangelical Christianity.[7]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messianic_Judaism

• All of the original “messianic” congregations were converts to Christianity. They were not originally Jewish.

The Messianic Jewish movement emerged in the United States in the 1960s.[6][46] Prior to this time, Jewish converts assimilated into gentile Christianity, as the church required abandoning their Jewishness and assuming gentile ways to receive baptism. Peter Hocken postulates that the Jesus movement which swept the nation in the 1960s triggered a change from Hebrew Christians to Messianic Jews, and was a distinctly charismatic movement. These Jews wanted to “stay Jewish while believing in Jesus”. This impulse was amplified by the results of the Six-Day War and the restoration of Jerusalem to Jewish control.[47][48][49] Foundational Messianic organizations

In 2004 there were 300 Messianic congregations in the United States with maybe half of their attendance being Gentiles and maybe one third of the congregations consisting of thirty or fewer members.[50] Many of these congregations belong to the International Association of Messianic Congregations and Synagogues (IAMCS), the Union of Messianic Congregations (UMJC), or Tikkun International.[citation needed]

The Messianic Jewish Alliance of America (MJAA) began in 1915 as the Hebrew Christian Alliance of America (HCAA).[citation needed] As the idea of maintaining Jewish identity spread in the late 1960s, the Hebrew Christian Alliance of America (HCAA) changed its name to the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America (MJAA).[51] David Rausch writes that the change “signified far more than a semantical expression—it represented an evolution in the thought processes and religious and philosophical outlook toward a more fervent expression of Jewish identity.”[52] The MJAA was and still is an organization of individual Jewish members.[53] In 1986 the MJAA formed a congregational branch called the International Alliance of Messianic Congregations and Synagogues (IAMCS).[54]

In June 1979 nineteen congregations in North America met at Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania and formed the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations (UMJC).[55] (emphasis added)

“Tikkun International is a Messianic Jewish umbrella organization for an apostolic network of leaders, congregations and ministries in covenantal relationship for mutual accountability, support and equipping to extend the Kingdom of God in America, Israel, and throughout the world.”[56]Wikipedia, ibid.

• Messianic Judaism is a church-created denomination with the sole purpose of converting Jews by pretending to be Jewish.
• Each year, hundreds of millions of dollars are poured into Messianic congregations in order to complete this purpose.

Now that we have established that the Messianic Judaism movement is not Jewish per-se, we must consider the Jewish response to Messianic Judaism:

As in traditional Jewish objections to Christian theology, opponents of Messianic Judaism hold that Christian proof texts, such as prophecies in the Hebrew Bible purported to refer the Messiah's suffering and death, have been taken out of context and misinterpreted.[107] Jewish theology rejects the idea that the Messiah, or any human being, is a divinity. Belief in the Trinity is considered idolatrous by most rabbinic authorities. Even if considered shituf (literally, “partnership”)—an association of other individuals with the God of Israel—this is only permitted for gentiles, and that only according to some rabbinic opinions. It is universally considered idolatrous for Jews.[15][108][109] Further, Judaism does not view the role of the Messiah to be the salvation of the world from its sins, an integral teaching of Christianity[110] and Messianic Judaism.[11]

Jewish opponents of Messianic Judaism often focus their criticism on the movement's radical ideological separation from traditional Jewish beliefs, stating that the acceptance of Jesus as Messiah creates an insuperable divide between the traditional messianic expectations of Judaism, and Christianity's theological claims.[111] They state that while Judaism is a messianic religion, its messiah is not Jesus,[112] and thus the term is misleading.[16] All denominations of Judaism, as well as national Jewish organizations, reject Messianic Judaism as a form of Judaism.[14][113] Regarding this divide, Reconstructionist Rabbi Carol Harris-Shapiro observed: “To embrace the radioactive core of goyishness—Jesus—violates the final taboo of Jewishness.…Belief in Jesus as Messiah is not simply a heretical belief, as it may have been in the first century; it has become the equivalent to an act of ethno-cultural suicide.”[114]

B'nai Brith Canada considers messianic activities as antisemitic incidents.[115] Rabbi Tovia Singer, founder of the anti-missionary organization Outreach Judaism, noted of a Messianic rabbi in Toledo: “He's not running a Jewish synagogue.…It's a church designed to appear as if it were a synagogue and I'm there to expose him. What these irresponsible extremist Christians do is a form of consumer fraud. They blur the distinctions between Judaism and Christianity in order to lure Jewish people who would otherwise resist a straightforward message.”[116]

Association by a Jewish politician with a Messianic rabbi, inviting him to pray at a public meeting, even though made in error, resulted in nearly universal condemnation by Jewish congregations in Detroit in 2018,[117][118] as the majority opinion in both Israeli and American Jewish circles is to consider Messianic Judaism as Christianity and its followers as Christians.[119] ibid.

• Without exception, all Jewish denominations have unanimously rejected messianic Judaism as an authentic form of Judaism.[14] Further, mainstream Jewish rights groups consider Messianic Judaism to be anti-semitic.[115]

It is important to note that in general, the MJAA and similar organizations do not deny the above;

Though Messianic Judaism itself dates back to Yeshua’s twelve apostles, its “resurrection” is a relatively new phenomenon.

In the late 1800s, after several large-scale “revivals” among protestant believers in the United States and Europe, many Christians sought to tell Jewish people about Yeshua, or Jesus. Even as some Jewish people in Europe began to desire to return to the land of Israel and establish a permanent Jewish homeland there, the Lord stirred many Jews to look at the so-called “Christian Bible,” or New Testament Scriptures, for themselves. […] In the following decades whole congregations of Jewish believers in Jesus were born. This movement was dubbed “Hebrew Christianity.”

“Hebrew Christianity” has since become known as “Messianic Judaism.” There are now tens of thousands of Messianic Jews in the United States alone; some estimate as many as 1.2 million.https://mjaa.org/messianic-movement/

Messianic Judaism, without exception, is a Christian creation and is not Jewish.

• [6] Feher 1998, p. 140: “This interest in developing a Jewish ethnic identity may not be surprising when we consider the 1960s, when Messianic Judaism arose.”
• [7] Ariel 2006, p. 194: “But the generation that came of age in the 1960s and 1970s thought differently about these matters. They wanted to make their own choices and did not feel constrained by old boundaries and taboos. Judaism and Christianity could go hand in hand.…In the first phase of the movement, during the early and mid-1970s, Jewish converts to Christianity established several congregations at their own initiative.…The term Messianic Judaism came into public use in America in the early 1970s.…The term, however was not entirely new. It was used in the internal debates in the community of converts as early as the beginning of the century.…Missionaries, such as the Southern Baptist Robert Lindsey noted that for Israeli Jews, the term notzrim, “Christians” in Hebrew, meant, almost automatically, an alien hostile religion. Because such a term made it nearly impossible to convince Jews that Christianity was their religion, missionaries sought a more neutral term.…They chose Meshychim, Messianic, to overcome the suspicion and antagonism of the term notzrim.…It conveyed the sense of a new, innovative religion rather that [sic] an old, unfavorable one. The term was used in reference to those Jews who accepted Jesus as their personal savior, and did not apply to Jews accepting Roman Catholicism who in Israel have called themselves Hebrew Christians.
• [11] “Statement of Faith”. Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations. July 19, 2012. Retrieved September 10, 2015. “There is one God, who has revealed Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Every divine action in the world is accomplished by the Father working through the Son and in the power of the Spirit. This God has revealed Himself in creation and in the history of Israel as transmitted in Scripture.…In the fullness of time, the Divine Son became a human being—Yeshua the Messiah, born of a Jewish virgin, a true and perfect Israelite, a fitting representative and one-man embodiment of the entire nation. He lived as a holy tzaddik, fulfilling without blemish the mitzvot of the Torah. He brings to perfection the human expression of the divine image.…Yeshua died as an atonement for the sins of Israel and of the entire world. He was raised bodily from the dead, as the firstfruits of the resurrection promised to Israel as its glorification. He ascended to heaven and was there enthroned at God's right hand as Israel's Messiah, with authority extending to the ends of creation.…Forgiveness of sins, spiritual renewal, union with Messiah, the empowering and sanctifying presence of the indwelling Ruach Ha Kodesh, and the confident hope of eternal life and a glorious resurrection are now available to all, Jews and Gentiles, who put their faith in Yeshua, the Risen Lord, and in obedience to His word are joined to Him and His Body through immersion and sustained in that union through Messiah's remembrance meal. Yeshua is the Mediator between God and all creation, and no one can come to the Father except through Him.…Messiah Yeshua will return to Jerusalem in glory at the end of this age, to rule forever on David's throne. He will effect the restoration of Israel in fullness, raise the dead, save all who belong to Him, judge the wicked not written in the Book of Life who are separated from His presence, and accomplish the final Tikkun Olam in which Israel and the nations will be united under Messiah's rule forever.…The writings of Tanakh and Brit Hadasha are divinely inspired and fully trustworthy (true), a gift given by God to His people, provided to impart life and to form, nurture, and guide them in the ways of truth. They are of supreme and final authority in all matters of faith and practice.”
• [14]
  • Orthodox
    • Simmons, Shraga. “Why Jews Don't Believe in Jesus”. Aish HaTorah. Retrieved December 13, 2016. “Jews do not accept Jesus as the messiah because: 1. Jesus did not fulfill the messianic prophecies. 2. Jesus did not embody the personal qualifications of the Messiah. 3. Biblical verses “referring” to Jesus are mistranslations. 4. Jewish belief is based on national revelation.”
  • Conservative
    • Waxman, Jonathan (2006). “Messianic Jews Are Not Jews”. United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. Archived from the original on December 20, 2016. Retrieved December 13, 2016. “Hebrew Christian, Jewish Christian, Jew for Jesus, Messianic Jew, Fulfilled Jew. The name may have changed over the course of time, but all of the names reflect the same phenomenon: one who asserts that s/he is straddling the theological fence between Judaism and Christianity, but in truth is firmly on the Christian side … we must affirm as did the Israeli Supreme Court in the well-known Brother Daniel case that to adopt Christianity is to have crossed the line out of the Jewish community.”
  • Reform
    • “Missionary Impossible”. Hebrew Union College. August 2, 1999. Retrieved December 13, 2016. “Missionary Impossible, an imaginative video and curriculum guide for teachers, educators, and rabbis to teach Jewish youth how to recognize and respond to “Jews-for-Jesus”, “Messianic Jews”, and other Christian proselytizers, has been produced by six rabbinic students at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion's Cincinnati School. The students created the video as a tool for teaching why Jewish college and high school youth and Jews in intermarried couples are primary targets of Christian missionaries.”
    • Glazier, James Scott (2012-09-06). “What are the main differences between a Jew and a Christian?”. ReformJudaism.org. Retrieved 2019-04-02. “The essential difference between Jews and Christians is that Christians accept Jesus as messiah and personal savior. Jesus is not part of Jewish theology. Amongst Jews, Jesus is not considered a divine being.”
  • Reconstructionist/Renewal
    • “FAQ's About Jewish Renewal”. aleph.org. 2007. Archived from the original on October 23, 2014. Retrieved December 20, 2007. “What is ALEPH's position on so called messianic Judaism? ALEPH has a policy of respect for other spiritual traditions, but objects to deceptive practices and will not collaborate with denominations which actively target Jews for recruitment. Our position on so-called “Messianic Judaism” is that it is Christianity and its proponents would be more honest to call it that.”
• [15] “Why Jews Don't Believe in Jesus”. Ask the Rabbi. Jerusalem: Ohr Somayach. 2000. Retrieved July 28, 2010. “The Christian idea of a trinity contradicts the most basic tenet of Judaism – that G-d is One. Jews have declared their belief in a single unified G-d twice daily ever since the giving of the Torah at Sinai – almost two thousand years before Christianity. The trinity suggests a three part deity: The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost (Matthew 28:19). In Jewish law, worship of a three-part god is considered idolatry; one of the three cardinal sins for which a person should rather give up his life than transgress. The idea of the trinity is absolutely incompatible with Judaism.”
• [16] Lotker 2004, p. 35: “It should now be clear to you why Jews have such a problem with 'Jews for Jesus' or other presentations of Messianic Judaism. I have no difficulty with Christianity. I even accept those Christians who would want me to convert to Christianity so long as they don't use coercion or duplicity and are willing to listen in good faith to my reasons for being Jewish. I do have a major problem with those Christians who would try to mislead me and other Jews into believing that one can be both Jewish and Christian.

• [29] Moscrop, John James (2000). “Remembering Jerusalem: 1799–1839”. Measuring Jerusalem: The Palestine Exploration Fund and British Interests in the Holy Land. A & C Black. p. 15. ISBN 9780718502201. ”… the perspective of the Holy Land the most important of these societies was the London Jews' Society. Founded in 1809 during the high point of evangelical endeavour, the London Jews' Society was the work of Joseph Samuel Frederick Frey …”
• [30] Greenspoon, Leonard Jay (1997). Yiddish language & culture then & now. Fordham University Press. ISBN 978-1881871255. “The first Yiddish New Testament distributed by the BFBS was published by the London Jews Society in 1821; the translator was Benjamin Nehemiah Solomon, “a convert from Judaism, who [had come] over to England from Poland.”

• [31] Cohn-Sherbok 2000, p. 16: “On 9 September 1813 a group of 41 Jewish Christians established the Beni Abraham association at Jews' Chapel. These Jewish Christians met for prayer every Sunday morning and Friday evening.”
• [32] Schwartz, Carl (1870). “An Answer to Friends and Foes”. The Scattered Nation. No. V. London. p. 16. Retrieved May 22, 2018. “What does the Hebrew-Christian Alliance signify? is asked by well-wishers and opponents. True, its objects have been clearly stated…. Let me try briefly to state the nature and objects of the Hebrew-Christian Alliance.”
• [33] Sobel 1968, pp. 241–250: “Hebrew Christianity was born in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century through the efforts of a group of converts calling themselves the Beni Abraham, or Sons of Abraham. It was on 9 September 1813 that a group of forty-one Jewish converts to Christianity met in London setting forth their purposes as being 'to attend divine worship at the chapel and to visit daily two by two in rotation any sick member, to pray with him and read the Bible to him; and on Sunday all who could were to visit the sick one'.”
• [34] Gidney 1908, p. 57: “The Jews' Chapel, Spitalfields, had to be given up in 1816, as the minister refused his consent to its being licensed as a place of worship of the Church of England. Frey's connexion with the Society ceased in the same year, and he left for America.”
• [35] Cohn-Sherbok 2003.
• [36] Kessler 2005, p. 180.
• [37] Cohn-Sherbok 2000, pp. 18, 19, 24.
• [38] Ariel 2000, p. 19.
• [39] The Missionary review of the world No. 35 Royal Gould Wilder, Delavan Leonard Pierson, James Manning Sherwood – 1912 “The letter to Joseph Rabinowitz brought an encouraging answer and also a few copies of the New Testament translated into Hebrew by Franz Delitzsch. They gave Scheinmann the thought to organize a class of young men for their study”
• [40] “The Only One in America: A Hebrew-Christian Church Dedicated Yesterday” Archived 2011-07-21 at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, October 12, 1885. p. 2. Archived at The Online Jewish Missions History Project.
• [41] Ariel 2000, p. 9.
• [42] Rausch 1982b.
• [43] Harris-Shapiro 1999, p. 27.
• [44] Balmer 2004, pp. 154–155
• [45] Ariel 2000, p. 191.

• [46] Juster & Hocken 2004, p. 15.
• [47] Hocken 2009, pp. 97-100.
• [48] Kinzer 2005, p. 286: “The cultural ferment of the 1960s threw Hebrew Christians in America and their institutions into the same turmoil that characterized the rest of American society. Three factors played an especially important part in turning their world upside down: a social movement (i.e., the youth counterculture), a cultural trend (i.e., ethnic self-assertion and pride), and a political-military event (i.e., the Six-Day War).”
• [49] Harris-Shapiro 1999, p. 286.
• [50] Juster & Hocken 2004, p. 10.
• [51] Juster 1995, pp. 152–153: “In 1975, the Alliance changed its name to the Messianic Jewish Alliance, reflecting the growing Jewish identity of Jewish followers of Yeshua.…Hebrew-Christianity, at times, saw Jewishness as merely an ethnic identity, whereas Messianic Judaism saw its Jewish life and identity as a continued call of God.”
• [52] Rausch 1982a, p. 77.
• [53] Robinson, Rich (2005). The Messianic Movement: A Field Guide for Evangelical Christians. San Francisco: Purple Pomegranate. p. 42. ISBN 978-1-881022-62-6.
• [54] “Home”. IAMCS. Archived from the original on 2019-04-03. Retrieved 2019-04-03. “As more and more congregations were formed, many within the MJAA had a desire to form a fellowship of Messianic congregations or synagogues under the auspices of the MJAA.…As a result, in the spring of 1986, The International Alliance of Messianic Congregations and Synagogues (IAMCS) was formed.”
• [55] Juster 1995, p. 155.
• [56] “Archived copy” (https://web.archive.org/web/20191016180222/https://tikkun.tv/). Archived from the original on 2019-10-16. Retrieved 2019-11-13.

• [110] Grudem 1994, pp. 568–570.
• [111] Cohn-Sherbok 2000, p. 182.
• [112] Simmons, Shraga (March 6, 2004). “Why Jews Don't Believe in Jesus”. Aish HaTorah. Retrieved September 13, 2010.
• [113] Ariel, Yaakov (2005) [1995]. “Protestant Attitudes to Jews and Judaism During the Last Fifty Years”. In Robert S. Wistrich (ed.). Terms of survival: the Jewish world since 1945 (Digital Printing ed.). New York, New York: Routledge. p. g. 343. ISBN 978-0-415-10056-4. LCCN 94022069.
  • Simmons, Shraga. “Messianic Jews, Buddhist Jews”. Ask Rabbi Simmons. About.com. Retrieved 2007-02-14.
  • Schoen, Robert (April 2004). “Jews, Jesus, and Christianity”. What I Wish My Christian Friends Knew about Judaism. Chicago: Loyola Press. p. g. 11. ISBN 978-0-8294-1777-7. LCCN 2003024404.
  • “Messianic Judaism: A Christian Missionary Movement”. Messiah Truth Project. Archived from the original on 2007-02-12. Retrieved 2007-02-14.
  • Ariel, David S. (1995). “The Messiah”. What do Jews believe?: The Spiritual Foundations of Judaism. New York, New York: Schocken Books. p. g. 212. ISBN 978-0-8052-4119-8. LCCN 94003550.
  • Nuesner, Jacob (February 2000) [1994]. “Come, Let us Reason Together”. A Rabbi Talks With Jesus. Donald H. Akerson (forward) (Revised ed.). Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press. pp. 3–4. ISBN 978-0-7735-2046-2. LCCN 2001339789.
  • Schiffman, Lawrence H. (1993). “Meeting the Challenge: Hebrew Christians and the Jewish Community” (PDF). Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 7, 2006. Retrieved 2007-02-14. “Though Hebrew Christianity claims to be a form of Judaism, it is not. It is nothing more than a disguised effort to missionize Jews and convert them to Christianity. It deceptively uses the sacred symbols of Jewish observance … as a cover to convert Jews to Christianity, a belief system antithetical to Judaism…. Hebrew Christianity is not a form of Judaism and its members, even if they are of Jewish birth, cannot be considered members of the Jewish community. Hebrew Christians are in radical conflict with the communal interests and the destiny of the Jewish people. They have crossed an unbreachable chasm by accepting another religion. Despite this separation, they continue to attempt to convert their former coreligionists.”
  • Balmer 2004, pp. 448–449: “Messianic Jewish organizations, such as Jews for Jesus, often refer to their faith as fulfilled Judaism, in that they believe Jesus fulfilled the Messianic prophecies. Although Messianic Judaism claims to be Jewish, and many adherents observe Jewish holidays, most Jews regard Messianic Judaism as deceptive at best, fraudulent at worst. They charge that Messianic Judaism is actually Christianity presenting itself as Judaism. Jewish groups are particularly distressed at the aggressive evangelistic attempts on the part of Messianic Jews.”
• [114] Harris-Shapiro 1999, p. 177.
• [115] “1998 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents”. B'nai Brith Canada. 1998. Archived from the original on 2006-07-19. “One of the more alarming trends in antisemitic activity in Canada in 1998 was the growing number of incidents involving messianic organizations posing as “synagogues”. These missionizing organizations are in fact evangelical Christian proselytizing groups, whose purpose is specifically to target members of the Jewish community for conversion. They fraudulently represent themselves as Jews, and these so-called synagogues are elaborately disguised Christian churches.”
• [116] Yonke, David (February 11, 2006). “Rabbi says Messianic Jews are Christians in disguise”. The Blade. Toledo, Ohio. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
• [117] Nathan-Kazis, Josh (October 31, 2018). “A GOP Rising Star Asks Jews For Jesus 'Rabbi' To Pray For Pittsburgh. What Could Go Wrong?”. The Forward. Retrieved 2019-04-03. “I could see nothing more offensive or more poorly calculated than to make this decision,” said David Kurzmann, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council/AJC, a local Jewish advocacy group in Detroit. “The reaction and the rage in the community right now is very significant.”
• [118] Siemaszko, Corky (October 30, 2018). “Jews assail 'Christian rabbi' who appeared with Pence, and so does his own movement”. NBC News. Retrieved 2019-04-03. “The “Messianic rabbi” who outraged many Jews by invoking the name of Jesus while delivering a prayer in memory of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre victims was also spurned Tuesday by the organization that ordained him. Loren Jacobs, who was invited onstage by Vice President Mike Pence to speak at a rally in Michigan for a GOP congressional candidate, was defrocked 15 years ago, according to a spokeswoman for the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations. 'Loren Jacobs was stripped of his rabbinic ordination by the UMJC in 2003, after our judicial board found him guilty of libel,' Monique Brumbach said in an email. Brumbach did not say who Jacobs allegedly libeled, but it appears from his synagogue website he was involved in a theological battle with other leaders of the group, which believes that Jesus is the son of God — a belief that is anathema to the vast majority of the world's Jews. Jacobs seemed to be concerned that the group was insufficiently conservative on doctrinal matters. Meanwhile, mainstream Jewish leaders and experts on the faith said they could not fathom why GOP congressional candidate Lena Epstein, herself a longtime member of a Detroit–area synagogue, invited Jacobs at all to her rally Tuesday because in their eyes he’s not even a real Jew, let alone a rabbi. 'We don’t even recognize him as a rabbi,' Rabbi Marla Hornsten, past president of the Michigan Board of Rabbis, told NBC News. 'Even to call him a rabbi is offensive.'”
• [119] Stanley-Becker, Isaac (October 30, 2018). “Honoring Pittsburgh synagogue victims, Pence appears with 'rabbi' who preaches 'Jesus is the Messiah'”. The Washington Post. Retrieved 2019-04-03. “But the man who shared a stage with Pence, Loren Jacobs, preaches Messianic Judaism, a tradition central to Jews for Jesus, a group condemned by Jewish leaders as faux Judaism that seeks to promote Christian evangelism. The major Jewish denominations join the state of Israel in viewing followers of Messianic Judaism as Christian, not Jewish.”