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Nehemia: What is the attitude of Reformed Judaism towards Messianic Judaism?

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: It has changed throughout the years. In recent years, in the last 20-30 years, we get voices in the Reform movement that say, "We need to accept those people and include them. They're not our enemies."

I'm not saying that this is a unanimous decision or there's an article of faith about it, but you get voices. It was only 100 years ago, in the 1920’s, 1930’s, that the first Reform rabbis, theologians if you will, came out with not just, "Let's talk with Jews or have meetings with Christians and have meeting with Christians, but let's say just as we ask Christians to respect our faith, let's look upon their faith as valid and compatible to ours."

Nehemia: Shalom, this is Nehemia Gordon, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I'm here today with Professor Yaakov Ariel of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He is a scholar who deals with religion, religious movements, and he was scheduled to give a lecture at the World Congress of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem in 2022. And it was reported that it was going to be about the relationship between Messianic Judaism and Reform Judaism, and I was very excited to hear this lecture. He got sick and had COVID, and so now I want to hear what the topic is about.

I'll be honest Professor Ariel, I arranged this interview so I could hear your lecture, or at least the gist of it. What the topic is about…

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me and I'm excited to be here, and I'm happy to share my thoughts. Let's start with Reform Judaism and its attitudes towards Messianic Judaism.

Nehemia: Can you first define what Reform Judaism is? Because some of my audience...

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Yes.

Nehemia: Okay, beautiful.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: That's what I want to do. Reform Judaism came on the scene,
its very, very early appearances were in the early 19th century in European countries, and occasionally even in the small growing American Jewish community, but it really took off the ground in the mid-19th century and became a large and influential movement in a number of countries, in Hungary, occasionally also France, and a few more European countries, and a little bit in England, but mostly the United States, where it became a large, influential, normative Jewish expression and set of communities.

Contrary, I would say, to very common perception among more traditionalist Jews, among Orthodox Jews, Reformed Judaism did not come to abolish or to flatten Judaism, not from its own perspective. It's in many ways a movement that came to preserve Judaism in the face of other alternatives, because Judaism was facing certain groups and certain movements, and certain Jews were facing crises following emancipation, allowing Jews to become full-fledged citizens, following Jews trying to move over into the center of European or American societies.

Sensing the traditional forms of Judaism as they were known in the 18th century, for example, among mostly Ashkenazi Jews, don't fit anymore, and the Jews are moving away from them anyhow, and then left, sometimes if they searched for spiritual, theological, communal meaning and frameworks, are attracted to Christianity. So, there was that element too, of closing and suggesting a Jewish alternative to modernization, to embracing ideas of the Enlightenment, to becoming successful bürghers in, let's say, Germany. With citizens in America within the midst of what became somewhat more accepting, more inclusive society, in which there were still a lot of prejudices against the Jews and obstacles to Jewish participation, but the Jews were not anymore in the ghetto. The Jews were not anymore restricted to certain professions, or barred from the universities, the professions, and the guilds, but were now entering the more urban, competitive, industrialized, modernized scene, as energetic, entrepreneurial citizens.

Nehemia: And let me just jump in there and maybe for the audience explain that… and correct me if this is wrong, because I deal more with biblical history and medieval history, but Jews before the Reform movement, and certainly before the emancipation, if let's say they had questions about the Rabbinical authorities who were essentially their overlords, they didn't really have the freedom to ask those questions, did they? I mean, I think for example of...

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: They did.

Nehemia: They did? Okay.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: There's the whole issue of responsa. Rabbis didn't always also agree with each other. It's not as if traditional Judaism was fully uniform. There were geographical, cultural variations, linguistic variations. But Jews were Jews were Jews. They were separated from mainstream societies. There was not just a social barrier, there was a legal barrier.

Nehemia: But the point is that if you ask too many questions or the wrong kinds of questions, somebody, I think, like Uriel da Costa, you could find yourself excommunicated from the Jewish community, and that was the only game in town.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Yes, but Uriel da Costa… or to bring another example, such as Benedictus Baruch Spinoza, talking about 17th century Dutch Jews in Amsterdam, they didn't just ask questions, they didn't come to the rabbis to ask questions. They expressed ideas that were in contradiction to the assumed mainstream, I would say even the core, the fundamental beliefs and understandings and exegesis not only of Jews, but also of Christians.

When Spinoza writes his political theological tractatus and says, "No, the Bible is written by men," he didn't say persons, he said men or women and men, he was offensive, if you will, or challenging, both to the Jewish system and the Christian system, and his first publications were in some ways anonymous, were under pseudonyms. The Jewish community invited him to explain, offered the option of repentance, but he refused.

Yirmiyahu Yovel, a historian of... a philosopher, not an historian, but he wrote an historical book about Spinoza and his contemporaries, he calls him the first secular Jew. But this was rather rare. This would become much more possible 150 years later, when Jews are offered in certain places the option of not being a member of the Jewish community, but don't have necessarily legally to find a place in another religious community.

Nehemia: And I guess my point was, I'm suggesting perhaps it was rare because people saw the consequences when you not just ask questions, but you made statements. And I bring the example of Uriel da Costa, who challenged not the Scripture, but Rabbinical authority and was accused of being a Karaite and found himself excommunicated. So, I guess my point is that I've always understood the Reform movement as a context in which people could make statements, not just ask questions, but make statements contrary to the Rabbinical authority. Is that right or is that wrong?

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Okay, so, it's right and wrong at the same time, but you have your own agenda, I see, even as we talk about Reform Judaism.

Nehemia: I just know more about Uriel da Costa because he was accused of being a Karaite. It's not that I have an agenda. I want to put the Reform movement in its historical context.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: I want to say a few things about the Reform movement. Many of the major early Reform leaders, including in America, the most striking example in this regard would be Isaac Mayer Wise, who is in many ways the big, one of the dayans, one of the leaders, one of the formers of Judaism in America in the second half of the 19th century. He was insisting the Torah was given to Moses in Sinai. But not only he. Reform Jews continued, and this is important to realize in relation to Messianic Judaism, Reform Jews continued to understand Judaism. In fact, more so than later on, in the 19th century, early 20th century, they insisted that the Jewish people are the chosen people, that the Jewish people are in covenant with God, that Judaism is a holy nation by a nation of priests, a holy nation. "Am Cohanim and goy kadosh", and that it has its obligations and its, I would say, almost manifest destiny, if I can borrow a term from American history.

And they actually preserved the ethos, the internal ethos of Judaism. They preserved the notion, or they even assumed the notion, in spite of deciding that the Talmud is not binding - the Torah is binding but not the Talmud - they very often saw themselves as continuers of the old Rabbinical tradition that was turning Judaism, the Second Temple period and beyond, reinterpreting Judaism and turning it more attuned to the demands and needs and thoughts of the day.

In some ways they saw themselves as heirs and continuers of the Pharisees, of the early rabbis. At the same time they eventually decided that the Talmud isn't binding, that you are entitled to move away from Rabbinical decrees if you find them to be not answering the questions of the day.

And so, in many ways, Reform Judaism continued traditional Judaism in a different way than Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy was also a new movement of the 19th century, a reinterpretation of Judaism in the name of tradition. I mean, people there to uphold tradition, more even than before, in the face, as you put it, of alternatives, both within Judaism and outside of Judaism.

But the Reform tradition, its internal ethos is actually a continuation of the Mishnaic period in which major sages reinterpreted the tradition, and reinterpreted the laws, and reinterpreted or recreated the internal ethos. And at the same time that they were willing to move, sometimes more gradually and moderately, sometimes more decisively, from
Rabbinical Halachic Judaism of the 18th century or of their time.

A lot of the changes had to do with adjusting, if you will, Judaism to the needs of now involved bürghers, or citizens, in places like Germany, or Hungary, or the United States, or England, in which the idea wasn't really to move out of the synagogue, but to reframe, repackage the synagogue. In some ways some people would accuse Rabbinical Judaism of being Karaites. Some accused Rabbinical Judaism, in spite of the fact that many rabbis did not…

Nehemia: Do you mean Reform Judaism?

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Yes, Reformed Judaism of being Karaite. In spite of the fact that quite a number of Reform rabbis were not crazy about the Karaites and did not see themselves as continuing in the direction of the Karaites. They were changing, if you will, Rabbinical Judaism, moderately, partially, and they were continuers of Rabbinical Judaism. They continued the idea of rabbis and the idea of smicha, of ordination. And in fact, one of the reasons that Reform Judaism in America had already early proponents, even, I would say before it's time, but could really move into reform, only following in the 1850’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, is the fact that they needed rabbis to come from Europe, who would be liberal Reform rabbis to make the changes.

The authority of the rabbis, the social moral authority of the rabbis, remained. The early Reform rabbis were patriarchs of their communities. They were erudite, they were well educated. The first generation were well educated in Jewish law and Jewish lore and in the Jewish texts, but they took upon themselves the authority to make changes to the synagogue, to liturgy, deciding there's no need for the Mussaf, the repetitive, or, I don't think it repetitive, the repetition or the additional prayer that very often repeats the morning prayer in weekly gatherings. They decided that the reading from the Torah doesn't have to… and again, when I say "they", it's not everyone and everywhere and all at once, but they decided that you can go back to Second Temple Judaism, to Mishnaic or to post-Second Temple Judaism to Mishnaic times, and read the Torah in a cycle of three years, as it used to be, instead of as a cycle of one year.

Nehemia: Let me ask you this. So, you're describing 19th century early Reform movement in Judaism, that they see the Torah as binding but not the Talmud as binding. Would you say that is still the characteristic of Reform Judaism today in the 21st century?

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: The Talmud is not binding. I would say it is even more 20th century than 19th century.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Today there is a consensus the Talmud isn't binding, but the Torah is binding. But in reality, Reform Judaism in the last half a century went in both directions, both reintroducing, reincorporating all their traditional rights and ways, and in some levels going towards further reform, for example over women, women rabbis, admission of, and ordination of LGBTQ. I think that you see that in both directions.

The truth is, I think, that Reform Judaism allowed itself both to preserve much of Judaism, its spirit and its ethos, but also to move away whenever it found it necessary. I think speaking about Torah versus Talmud is sometimes arbitrary, because when things in the Torah didn't seem… nobody there would have dreamed of preserving some of the laws of Leviticus. But I think that the preservation, the preservation of the Torah, is preservation… the most important is not the laws or regulations, it's the narrative; preserving the historical narrative of a nation chosen by God, and then embodied and directed to take upon itself more missions and more restrictions and more proactive actions that we would call the law, which is both restrictions and proactive actions, than other nations.

Nehemia: So, you're saying if someone in the audience were to go to a Reform rabbi here in the United States and ask them, "What is your approach towards the Torah?" They would say the Torah is binding. That's what you're saying?

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: They would say... I don't think that this is a question that comes out today when a person goes to a Reform rabbi today. Reform rabbis today don't issue Halacha the same way that Orthodox rabbis would. They put enormous emphasis, particularly in the last half century, on individual authority and individual choices. They might tell you, "You make your own choices on A, B and C. In some things you don't make your own choices, though." But usually, you won't come and ask if you're allowed to kill. The answer is unequivocally no.

Nehemia: What about "am I allowed to eat shrimp"? If I asked a Reform rabbi?

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: If you come to a Reform Rabbi, he would tell you something that already rabbis at the turn of the 20th century said, and this is that the dietary laws are antiquated, and it's up to you. You can keep kosher if you want to, and you can eat at your heart's choice if you feel that your conscience allows you.

Reform Judaism today can be compared… not just compared within Judaism to Orthodox Judaism, Conservative Judaism, or to Reconstructionist Judaism or to Messianic Judaism, Reform Judaism today can also be compared to a whole series of progressive liberal Christian groups in America. Unitarians. This is the comparison that already came about in the 19th century. Many Jews asked themselves whether they should become Unitarians or join the Reform movement.

Nehemia: I don't know if that helps me. I think I know more about the Reform movement than I do about Unitarians.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: That's okay. Or to give you the example of Anglican, Quaker… not all of them, but Episcopalian, Quaker, Presbyterian USA, et cetera, et cetera, groups in America, Protestant groups mostly, that also put an emphasis on individual choices.

Nehemia: This raises a really interesting question. So, if the Reform rabbi would say it's up to you whether you decide whether to eat pork or to eat shrimp, and I guess about being LGBTQ and all those other issues, would they say the same thing about believing in Jesus? Which brings the topic up of...

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: No, no.

Nehemia: No. Okay, so help us understand that.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Okay. No. One of the traditional elements, in many ways… among the Jews, many novelties, allowed itself a lot of choice when it came to issues of the synagogue, liturgy, move to the vernacular, doing the vernacular. As I said, there's also been a retraction, going back to older times in some ways, but it allowed itself many, many innovations.

It continued with innovations into female rabbis and LGBTQ rabbis. One of the major changes in the 1970’s has been recognition of children of mixed marriages who grew up Jewish, as Jews. The statues on a major issue, who is a Jew. In that, incidentally, they're very similar to Messianic Jews. Some rabbis in the last particular two decades that will need to officiate in mixed marriages, which is again very popular among liberal Christians, including Catholic priests, and not just liberal Protestants, in which there are sometimes two clergy persons… you know, like a Jew and a Catholic, a Catholic and a Protestant, and so on and so forth.

It has put increasingly more emphasis, particularly since the 1960’s and 70’s, on individual choices, on personal choices. It does not insist on dietary laws. There are some. There are many Reform Jews who are what you would call "kosher light". They won't eat ham, they won't eat shrimp, but they would eat… they don't have a separate… in their kitchen separate sets for meat and dairy. Some, few, are more or less fully kosher, but usually Reform synagogues are kosher. That's not by Orthodox standards but are more or less kosher by even Orthodox standards within the sanctuary. That is, they would not serve shrimp in a synagogue.

Nehemia: You know the famous story of the Trefa Banquet, I'm assuming.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Yeah, I know this story, and it was following the Trefa Banquet, which was a mistake, which happened by mistake, that then Isaac Mayer Wise and other people said, "Hey", they didn't eat shrimps, but they said "this is not really important. Whoever pays attention nowadays to antiquated dietary laws," et cetera, et cetera. But actually, in the 19th century, most Reform, certainly the Reform Rabbinical elite did keep kosher, in essence, even if they didn't consider it to be essential.

Nehemia: I had an interesting encounter. I was speaking at a synagogue in Ohio, and I asked them… You know, they invited me to come and read from the Torah. And I said, "I don't know what your traditions are here." It was unaffiliated, which I wasn't sure what that was, and I said, "What do you want me to do? Do you want me to wear a talit, a kippa?" They said, "Here's how we're different than the Reform synagogue down the road." They said, "They won't allow you to wear a kippa or a talit. In our synagogue you decide, and you choose whether you want to wear a kippa or a talit." I was shocked, because I lived for many years in Israel, in Baka, and if you went to the local Reform synagogue there...

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Kol Haneshama.

Nehemia: Kol Haneshama. Everyone there is wearing… the women are wearing kippas, let alone the men!

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: In many Reform synagogues there are talitot and kippot. And it's not that they don't allow it. It used to be, perhaps 100 years ago…

Nehemia: No, no. This was a few years ago in Ohio…

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: But what they told you about the Reform synagogue down the road was not accurate.

Nehemia: That's very possible.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Was not accurate.

Nehemia: So, you're saying that that's not… okay.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: It was not accurate. I know Reform synagogues in which you don't have to wear a talit, but if you go out for the Torah, if you go on the bima, you do wear a talit.

Nehemia: Okay. Maybe this is like some of the European explorers, who, everywhere they went they would say they're cannibals, because when you're describing the other, you tend to exaggerate and maybe dehumanize.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: That is correct. Anyway, I want to come to the point that when it came to Christianity, 19th century Reform Judaism, and even early 20th century Reform Judaism, was very much a traditionalist Jewish community. The understanding was that Christianity is a misinterpretation of the Torah, of the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible. It moved away, it is not a legitimate expression of Israelite religion, there's not anger at Jesus in the 19th century… it's very interesting, there is a willingness to reclaim Jesus.

At the same time, there's a lot of anger at Paul, who kind of moved Christianity away, moved Jesus' disciples away from Judaism, at least according to Reform understanding and to many other Jewish understandings. And there is a lot of anger… not just disclaimer, but a lot of anger on evangelists of Jews.

This was understood as encroachment on Jewish integrity and Jewish pride. Telling Jews “Your religion isn't worth much" was seen as part of Christian animosity toward Judaism and Christian triumphalism. "Only we count, only we know the way". And there's huge anger, as there traditionally has often been, against Jews that embraced Christianity and were propagating the faith, and against Jews who claimed to be Jewish while they're Christian. Nobody understood that, I would say, except in negative terms.

Amazingly, in America of the second half of the 19th century, there wasn't an anti-missionary, an anti-convert the Jews crusader more than the Reform leader Isaac Mayer Weiss. If you read what he wrote... he edited a journal and he published books, and he was sarcastic. He just hated those people. He was in Cincinnati, and if he heard that there's a preacher coming to preach to the Jews, or especially if that person was Jewish, he described those people as crooks, because the Jewish understanding very often was that the Jews cannot sincerely adopt Christianity. If they do it, it's for social mobility, and if they become missionaries, it's playing tricks on their old brothers and sisters.

Nehemia: Let me ask you. You're describing this Rabbi Weiss. Tell us who he is. I'm not sure most of my audiences know who that is.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: So, you spoke about the Trefa Banquet. He was a prestigious rabbi in Cincinnati, founder of the 1st Rabbinical seminary, Rabbinical school in America, which he intended it to be the Rabbinical school for everyone in America, The Hebrew Union College. He was a founder of a number of American Jewish organizations, one of the first people to attempt to unite and bring together and create American Judaism. One of the first to write an American prayer book, Minhag America, The American Way, The American Version.

He was not the most radical reformer. He was working against such people as David Einhorn, who was much more radical than he was. He also wrote an alternative prayer book, Olath Tamid. But in some ways, in spite of the fact that Weiss was a more moderate reformer, they were in some ways similar. They were both there to preserve Judaism as a distinct religious community, as the covenant people. His wisest successor at the Hebrew Union College was the son-in-law of David Einhorn, Kaufman Kohler, who was a first-rate scholar of early Christianity, and had lots of respect for what you could call the Jesus movement, but not necessarily for the Christianity that came out of Pauline Theology and Christology, and certainly did not appreciate the Trinity.

Nehemia: So, Rabbi Weiss and these other Reform leaders, you're saying, were in the 19th century, vehemently opposed to Jews who...

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: The early 20th.

Nehemia: The early 20th. They were opposed to Jews who had become Christians. What then is the approach of Reform Judaism? Which is the crux of your lecture that you were going to give. I mean, we spent the whole time right now explaining what Reform Judaism is.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Reform Judaism, well until the turn of the 21st century was anti-Messianic Judaism. There is a book by David Eichorn, a Reform rabbi, not of the 19th century or early 20th century, but a late-20th century rabbi, a rabbi in the second half of the 20th century, who wrote a book about the attempts to evangelize the Jews in America, about congregations of Jewish believers in Jesus, Messianic Jews, about such leaders, such personalities.

I'll put it moderately and carefully; he could not take that movement seriously. He could not treat it respectfully. He was very suspicious of Jews who consider themselves to be Jewish at the same time that they accepted faith in Jesus. And in his book, very much like following in what I would call the Isaac Mayer Weiss tradition, in spite of the fact that there is 100 years difference at times between things they wrote, he treats those people as insincere. He did not really give much credit and credibility to the claim to be sincere followers of Jesus, and at the same time wishing to maintain their ties with the Jewish community, to maintain elements of Jewish culture, of Jewish languages, and did not take very seriously what you could call their Christian Zionism, but you can also call it support for the Zionist movement and at times being part of the Zionist movement. He could not understand that, because it was not something that people understood until very recent years. People continued, including in the Reform movement, to view the attempts to evangelize Jews as attempts of delegitimizing Judaism and Jews as non-Christians.

Nehemia: There are attempts like that, though…

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: The Reform rabbis were particularly sensitive because they were accused. They were accused of deluding Judaism. They were accused of moving away from normative Judaism. They were very often blamed for quote-unquote assimilation. You become a reformed Jew; you don't treat the tradition seriously. The next step there's intermarriage. The third step there's conversion. They felt that they needed to distance themselves from the elements in the Jewish community that are accepting Christianity, that are moving away from the faith.

Nehemia: That's interesting.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: One of their aims, from the very beginning, is to pose an alternative to assimilation, to pose an alternative to Christianization. Here they see Jews that advocate openly the amalgamation of Judaism and Christianity, which until the turn of the 21st century people could not understand. And I think there's more understanding today for two reasons. One is that you know very well that joining religious communities became a matter of choice, not of birth or of just a tribal affiliation or loyalty. There's an individual choice involved, commitment, A, and this is very sincere.

B, American religious groups are very often hybrid. Most of the new groups, particularly that came out of the counterculture, Asian groups that have recreated themselves in America, took root in America, Buddhist groups, Hindu groups, various Christian groups. There are nowadays groups that didn't exist until quite recently, like groups that promote both indigenous American traditions and rituals with Christianity. It used to be that you had to move…

Nehemia: Let me let me ask you this. So, you mentioned that earlier on in the 19th and 20th century there was this feeling that what we today would call Messianic Judaism… let's be careful, I don't know that it was called that in the 19th century for sure, like Hebrew Christians maybe, that it delegitimized Judaism. And I feel like we spent the whole first half talking about Reform, and now we have to get into Messianic Judaism and its relationship...

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Absolutely, absolutely.

Nehemia: Let me ask this. Isn't there something about it that really did delegitimize Judaism? Like, I've been approached by missionaries who say, “If you want to be a completed Jew, you have to believe in Jesus.” That inherently delegitimizes Judaism, doesn't it?

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Well, that is not just the million-dollar question, it's by now with inflation, the billion dollar question. I put a lot of premium on people's intentions, on what they feel, what they think. From their perspective, Jewish believers in Jesus today are sincere followers of Jesus. Most of them have gone what you could call the evangelical way of establishing a personal relationship with Jesus, being born again in Christ. There are many definitions and many ways, at the same time that they sincerely see themselves as Jews. It's not just a few hundred congregations. A few hundred, for the size of American Jewry, that's a lot. A few hundred congregations, tens of thousands of members.

I'm going to be provocative. It's also their interest, sometimes renewed interest, in learning Hebrew, in learning Jewish history, in studying, learning about the Holocaust and its details, watching movies, reading books, taking courses at the university on Jewish themes. I will be provocative for a second, just to put things in an extreme way for a moment and then go back to your question about Messianic Judaism, which is not one thing and it's not, it's not one thing. It's not unified and uniformed completely at all. But also, like Reform Judaism, like all religious groups, it's dynamic and not static, and develops and changes.

Let me be provocative. Most members today of what are still mostly known as Messianic congregations, Messianic synagogues, most of them were not raised Jewish. The overwhelming majority did not grow up Jewish. I don't know if it's true about the whole, the majority, that they don't have any Jewish roots. I didn't say that. But there are congregations in which only a minority grew up Jewish. The movement at large has more members that did not grow up in a Jewish home. That is, they might have had a Jewish grandparent, their spouse might be Jewish or might have come from a mixed-marriage background, and a large amount of people don't claim any Jewish roots.

Those people joined communities in which some of the prayer, not all of it, is in Hebrew with translation, in which Jewish texts are read and celebrated, in which Jewish songs, very often in Hebrew, are sung, routinely. In which the Jewish calendar of meeting on the Jewish Sabbath and celebrating the Jewish holidays is maintained, in which there are Jewish symbols, Star of David and menorah, shofar, in which sometimes in the social hour the meal or the celebration or the snacks that are offered after either Friday night meeting, which they call very often oneg, or on Saturday noon, early afternoon. They very often eat Jewish delicacies, as they are understood in America, including the ubiquitous bagel.

Nehemia: You gotta love the bagel.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: And, I mean, you probably know that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ate bagels every day.

Nehemia: One of my major culture shocks is when I moved to Israel 1993, you couldn't get a good bagel. I couldn't understand that; I'm in the Jewish state and you can't get a bagel in Jerusalem. Back then.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Right. And in many ways, they are in there with their lectures on Jewish themes, where there are organized tours to Israel, where they sometimes participate in choirs, dance groups that sing and dance Israeli or Jewish songs. They're also of course Messianic. There's also, of course, a unique Messianic culture.

But I will make now a provocative claim. Those people… you stay in such a community for 20-30 years, and in effect there's a question who converted to what. Those are Christians who adhere to the faith in Jesus, and they maintain that faith, but they are becoming culturally Jewish. They are joining the Jewish fold.

Nehemia: That's interesting that you say that. That's really interesting you say that.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Who's evangelizing whom? Who is evangelizing whom? It goes both directions. What I'm saying is, you also have to look at people's sincerity. Some people are very comfortable with this hybridity. Yes, many Jews accept Jesus, and they go on to non-Jewish communities, and while they perhaps identify as Jewish, it's a question whether they can transmit that to further generations. But the Messianic Jewish community has built the whole network with summer camps and publications and websites and music.

Nehemia: Would it be fair to say that some Messianic Jews are more active in Judaism than non-Messianic Jews?

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Totally. Totally.

Nehemia: I mean, that seems to be the case.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Totally. So much more so than unaffiliated Jews. They participate in a Jewish community, a community that sees itself in connection with Jewish history, with Jewish covenant with God, which they recognize, with the Jewish state as it is today.
They learn Hebrew to some extent or greater extent. They are more affiliated with things Jewish than many other Jews. I think to dismiss that is wrong.

Nehemia: Reform Judaism is the largest denomination of Jews in the United States. What is the attitude of Reform Judaism towards Messianic Judaism?

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: It has changed throughout the years. In recent years, in the last 20-30 years, we get voices in the Reform movement that say, "We need to accept those people and include them. They're not our enemies." I'm not saying that this is a unanimous decision or there is an article of faith about it, but you get voices…

It was only 100 years ago, in the 1920’s, 1930’s, that the first Reform rabbis… theologians, if you will, came out with not just "let's talk with Christians and have meeting with Christians, but let's say just as we ask Christians to respect our faith, let's look upon their faith as valid and compatible to ours." Solomon Freehof, to give one example.

But you do find today, for the first time, a much more easygoing, accepting attitudes with Messianic Judaism. It's not understood anymore as an affront to Judaism or something that we Reform Jews need to disassociate ourselves completely. There's still such an element, very often Jewish communities don't like it when under "Judaism"… it used to be the telephone books… nowadays there are no telephone books, that the problem isn't, isn't what it was until 20 years ago, but used to be that under, you know, "religious congregations" you'd get churches, et cetera, and then there would be "synagogue" and a Messianic synagogue would place their information there, and the other Jewish congregation said, "Wow! No, no, no, no, no, but they're not Jewish."

I've seen in front of my eyes in the last 20-30 years a more easy-going attitude. I've seen… and again it differs. When in my area, in Cary NC, the Jewish Messianic community was, I don't know if I would call it "attacked", that would be a little bit too much, but it was certainly… it's building... but they perceived threats, building was defaced. It could have been much, much worse.
Nehemia: Was it by Jews or by anti-Semites?

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: By anti-Semites. By anti-Semites. And the person responsible was caught, and I immediately sent the rabbi there a message saying that I'm horrified and that he has my total sympathy, of course, he and his community, and he received dozens of such notices from members and leaders in the Jewish community, but not from all, not from all.

So, this is still an issue, of course, I would say, but I think that the late 20th century, early 21st century brought with it a better understanding that there is such a reality. It's a reality of not just Christians who were Jewish; this has been the reality for hundreds and hundreds of years. But there is a community and a culture and a contemporary interpretation of Judaism that is actively Jewish and involved with Jewish matters, at the same time that it places Jesus at the heart of its spirituality.

Nehemia: Yeah, it's very interesting. This has been a fascinating conversation, Professor, thank you so much. Any final words you want to share with the audience about this?

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: Well, again, thank you for inviting me, for allowing me to share my thoughts, and this is an opportunity for me, I hope. I did so very, very freely. No censorship, no inhibition, telling you what I think, what I feel, and I hope that this is well-received, and that people show the same tolerance towards my ideas that I show towards their faith and beliefs.

Nehemia: Well, thank you so much. Toda.

Dr. Yaakov Ariel: You're most welcome.

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