Hebrew Voices #242 – A United Future: The New Messianic Generation: Part 1

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Max Bonilla: … the Acts 15 Council. I had constantly been told by preachers that that discussion, it disavowed the practice of circumcision. But the discussion was never about the practice of circumcision itself to begin with, it was about the Rabbinic giyur process where they were teaching people that they would be saved through the process of circumcision and not necessarily condemning someone being circumcised in order to keep the Pesach. Because if that were the case, then they would not have left four commandments for all new Christians to keep.

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Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m here today with Max Bonilla. He has a bachelor’s in political science. He is a Bible study leader at Altar of Truth Ministry. And he’s a 20-year-old social media influencer and guitarist. Max, shalom and welcome to the program.

Max: Yeah, Shalom Nehemia. Thank you for bringing me on. So, I graduated high school at 16, started college early, then finished it.

Nehemia: Wow!

Max: And then now I’m just on TikTok talking about my messianic beliefs, essentially, and it’s something that I really enjoy doing. And I’ve picked up a bunch of hobbies on the side. I just love life and I love having a life.

Nehemia: Well, that’s wonderful. Max, you’re actually not the youngest person I’ve ever had in the program, but I think the younger person doesn’t really count because I was interviewing a woman and her daughter was there, and we were… there was a social worker, and the social worker was asking her questions. But as a full-fledged guest, you’re definitely the youngest full-fledged guest I’ve ever had.

So, welcome to the program. Let’s see what we can do here. I don’t know how this is going to go. Like, there’s this generational divide, and I’m learning more and more how significant that is. You know, there’s this profound verse where it says, “And there was a new pharaoh over Egypt, and he did not know Joseph.” And I was a young boy, and I was studying under rabbis, and we were taught that, well, that can’t literally be true because, how could somebody not know Joseph? He was the viceroy. And so, it has some other kind of meaning. He pretended he didn’t know Joseph. But what I’m realizing, as I get older, is, no, that’s literally true. Right? There is such a thing as a generational divide…

Max: Right.

Nehemia: … and the young generation really doesn’t know things that the older generation knows, and vice versa. So, you know what? Let’s start with, how are you, someone who’s such a young man… You’re really active on social media. You’re engaging in these debates. And I want to understand what that’s like, because when I was your age…

Max: Sure.

Nehemia: … oh, man, I’m old. When I was your age, we didn’t have an internet. We didn’t have social media. So, what is this like? Just try to share for my audience, who may not know, and even some of the younger audience may not be exposed to social media the way you are.

Max: Yeah, well, first of all, there isn’t as big of a generational divide as you think. I’m terrible with the Gen Z slang. I don’t quite understand it, or even the brain rot that’s spreading on the internet these days. But I will tell you this; one of the debates that I had seen recently was between Charlie Kirk and one of the people that came up to him, and he was quoting all these things from the Talmud, but they were such out-of-context quotes. And for me, I just like engaging in intellectually honest discussions, even with people who disagree with what I believe. And a lot of people who are Christian are coming at it from a standpoint where it’s authoritative. They’ll take these slight quotes where, okay, you treat the non-Jew as someone who’s not human, or Jesus is burning in excrement. They’ll take these very fringe, small beliefs, or even these out-of-context quotes, and think that there’s something that all Jews believe as if it’s something monolithic.

The reason why I come into the picture is because I don’t like when people take other people’s texts out of context, even though I may dislike them. I also don’t like when people just completely misunderstand Bible verses, and I don’t like when they misunderstand Old Testament prophecies and things of that nature. So, where I come in is, I like to try to bridge the gap, essentially, between the Christian and the Jew and the misunderstandings that they have between each other.

Nehemia: So, give us a little bit of your background. And bear in mind, some people will be viewing this, and they’ll see you, that you’re this young man. Guys, he’s 20 years old. Literally, when we were in first contact, I’m like, are you 18? Because if you’re not, we’re not having a conversation, right? Because you could pass for 16. So, tell us a little bit about your background. So, how did you get… you say Messianic, am I right to assume that you’re not from a Jewish background?

Max: I’m not from a Jewish background whatsoever. So, when I talk to Jews, they’re shocked that I know a lot about the Talmud, or their traditions, or even about the Hebrew Bible. And the interesting thing is, I actually came through Protestantism first.

Nehemia: Okay.

Max: So, I grew up in the Sunday church and I learned about Yeshua, and then I also learned about all the things that he did. But it just didn’t suffice for me. So, when I truly read the New Testament, I understood that it was preaching Sabbath observance, Torah observance, keeping the dietary laws…

Nehemia: How old were you when you realized that?

Max: Uh, 14 years old when I started realizing…

Nehemia: Okay.

Max: …that that’s what it was truly preaching. And one of the things that woke me up to that reality was the Acts 15 Council. I had constantly been told by preachers that that discussion, it disavowed the practice of circumcision. But the discussion was never about the practice of circumcision itself to begin with; it was about the Rabbinic giyur process, where they were teaching people that they would be saved through the process of circumcision and not necessarily condemning someone being circumcised in order to keep the Pesach. Because if that were the case, then they would not have left four commandments for all new Christians to keep. That come directly from… and some scholars say Leviticus 17 through 18, but I argue from Leviticus 17 through 21, because there’s a lot of laws about incest in Leviticus chapter 20 and 21 which would also classify as a form of sexual immorality that the apostles were trying to condemn. So, when I looked into things for myself, I realized that these preachers were mistaken, and so, it wasn’t merely an emotional connection.

Nehemia: So, you’re saying Acts 15, and it appears again in 21; it’s in a number of places. So, this letter, this decision of the Jerusalem Council, you’re saying is a summarizing of Leviticus 17 through 21.

Max: Yeah, and a lot of scholars say…

Nehemia: Like, not eating blood in 17.

Max: Yeah, not eating blood in 17, and some laws in 18, but in 20 through 21 there’s the worship of false idols and also, you know, pointing to sexual immorality, where there’s incest practices between family members.

Nehemia: Which was done in the ancient world, right? Meaning, like, and I guess there’s evil people everywhere, but it was done and it was considered a sacred act in certain contexts in the ancient world. Yeah.

All right. So, you’re coming from this Protestant background. What denomination were you?

Max: Non-denominational. And so, church was more like a concert, but I didn’t really like that. I didn’t like the contemporary Christian music and then the sermons that were so watered down. That was something that bothered me.

Nehemia: So, you say there’s not a generational divide, but one of the things I’m seeing in people of your age is that there’s kind of the woke approach and then there’s the reaction to the woke, which is going in the opposite direction, saying… And maybe we can talk a little bit about this. This is kind of beyond the purview of what I thought we would talk about, but you brought up Charlie Kirk. Meaning, that there’s this reaction to the wokeism, which in some ways is going, I would say, too far in some cases. Not in the case of Charlie Kirk but in the case of, like… do you know anything about Nick Fuentes?

Max: Yeah, I do. And not a fan, necessarily, that they’re making him the voice of the next generation…

Nehemia: Yeah that’s… kind of scary.

Max: …especially given the fact that he said that when Jesus came, he did away with the old law. And now we’re under this new covenant, and he thinks that the new covenant is Catholicism. So, his theology is way off, and I don’t think he should be teaching it.

Nehemia: Well, I mean, look, he’s coming from a Catholic perspective. But even as a Catholic, some of the things he’s teaching are contrary to modern Catholic theology. Meaning, like, he blames the Jews, and he’ll talk collectively about the Jews. And he’ll just in general talk about the Jews. You know, “the Jews are doing this and the Jews…” I mean, look, there’s a clip that’s going around where he says, “the Jews control everything” or something to that effect. As if there was this one thing called “the Jews”, right? I mean you get two Jews in a room, and they can’t agree about almost anything

Max: Yeah, there’s that saying.

Nehemia: There are Jewish institutions, but those Jewish institutions don’t dictate what I believe, and don’t agree with each other. And look, so, the Catholic theology has something called the Nostra Aetate, which says you can’t blame the Jews of today, nor could you blame all the Jews even in the 1st century, for the death of Jesus. Right? So, when he says that, you know, the Jews are enemies of Christians, the Jews collectively, that is not the Catholic… Well, it’s not the official Catholic approach, right? Obviously, it’s the approach of some Catholics, but we’ll have to have a Catholic on to talk about that.

So, you know, I was talking to a friend about this recently, a friend from my generation, or slightly younger than me, and I said, “This guy, Nick Fuentes, he really has the ear of the young people. And you can’t underestimate how…” I mean, look, I look at this guy, he’s like a little Hitler. But he’s, I would say, much more eloquent and much more strategic than Hitler. Hitler was crazy. I mean, like mentally ill, I think, on some level. This guy is really smart and really clever. And that makes him a lot more dangerous, in my view. And what do you think about it?

Max: Right. Well, smart and clever people is how you defile the faith. Paul said in the Book of Acts that “the wolves are coming as soon as I depart”. And the reason is because, when he penned his letters, you know, he said that “what I learned, I counted as dung,” which means that when he threw off some of his beliefs, he was throwing off Rabbinic Judaism. But he was never throwing off any of his Torah-based beliefs. He said, I’m a Hebrew among Hebrews.

And so, when he said that, he was talking about people like Nick Fuentes. He was talking about Christian scholars. He may have even been talking about Catholic scholars, and also people not very long after his departure, maybe a year, a couple years, five years, who would begin to come in and say that you don’t need to keep Shabbat. You don’t need to keep Torah. You don’t need to keep dietary laws. You don’t need to keep the ritual laws. And the heretics in Antioch were the first ones, pretty much, who started making these claims, and they called the group of believers Christianos, Christians, Christ followers. And I think a lot of them, as they were obeying their heresy, they didn’t even know what to call the Nazarenes, who were believing in Yeshua and continuing to obey those scriptures.

Nehemia: Let’s slow down here. This is much more important than Nick Fuentes. Who cares about that guy? In five years, we won’t remember who he is. Or he’ll be president, God forbid. Well, I guess he’ll have to wait until he’s 35, so eight or nine years, but whatever.

Max: Oh, boy!

Nehemia: So, this is actually really important. So, there’s two narratives I hear from the Hebrew… I’m going to use the term Hebrew Roots, and I know you’re not claiming that term; you said messianic. But I just…

Max: Tomato, tomato.

Nehemia: Tomato, tomato. And I think it’s useful, because what I find is, many of the people who I would define as Hebrew Roots don’t consider themselves Hebrew Roots. Many of the people I would define as Messianic don’t consider themselves Messianic. I mean, that’s actually part of the definition, right, my definition, right? Which you could say is invalid. It’s fine, whatever.

I once was talking to this Orthodox Jew, and I said, “Are you an Orthodox Jew?” He said, “An Orthodox Jew is defined as someone who, if you said he was not Orthodox, would be offended. And I’m not offended.” So, I’m not actually sure if he was Orthodox, now I’m thinking about it… but it doesn’t matter.

So, many of the people, as I would define as Hebrew Roots, or Messianic, or Torah-keeping Christians, whatever term you want to use, I hear two different narratives. Well, they all agree that the original followers of Yeshua kept the Torah. And one narrative is, “Well, and they were part of Judaism. There was no difference up until the Bar Kokhba revolt, and then they split.” Actually, that’s something I’ll hear from some scholars. And then the other narrative is up until the year 325 at the Council of Nicaea, everyone was a Torah-keeping Christian, and then Nicaea just changed everything. And I think the latter we can laugh at and dismiss immediately. Do you agree with that?

Max: I completely agree with that, because the Nicaean Council was a culture change. It was a response to a culture change that was already happening in the 1st and 2nd centuries.

Nehemia: And you’re saying within a year or two after Paul, there were people already going against the Torah. Talk about that. What’s your evidence for that? Because people will say, “No! That’s not true! It wasn’t until the Bar Kokhba revolt!” Or… I’ve heard different stories.

Max: Well, Ignatius of Antioch actually talked about… and he lived in the later 1st century AD, where he talked about how there were people who began disregarding the Sabbath and the dietary laws and regarded them as heretical simply because Jesus was a sufficient sacrifice. Which meant doing away with the law. And he had several letters on this matter.

Nehemia: Wait, so, Ignatius says that that’s a heresy, or that was the view of Ignatius?

Max: No, that was the view of Ignatius is, that you shouldn’t have done those things, because if Jesus died, then you shouldn’t believe… It’s like a works-based salvation, essentially. It’s what you find a lot of Christian preachers teaching today. Their theology is directly modeled off of Ignatius of Antioch, whether they realize it or not.

Nehemia: So, Ignatius was anti-Torah.

Max: Ignatius was heavily antinomian, yes.

Nehemia: Okay. Antinomian in plain English is anti-Torah. Okay. Meaning, nomos is the Greek word for Torah. Wait. So, in what year is Ignatius? Just help me out here. Off the top of my head, I don’t remember.

Max: Yeah, he’s somewhere between the 60s and the 70s, I believe, AD.

Nehemia: Okay.

Max: So, not that far after Paul.

Nehemia: So, he is solidly in the 1st century, and if you believe, let’s say, the mainstream scholarly view of the… and maybe you don’t, of the authorship of the Gospels, he might even be before the Gospel of John was written. Isn’t that…

Max: Yeah, and the interesting thing is, he could have been before John, but he would have definitely been post-Galatians because he was post-Acts. And when the events of Acts were occurring… for example, you look at Acts 21 and Acts 24, where Paul consecrates his Nazarite vow and he completes it, and Paul affirms that he believes in all the law and the prophets, he penned Galatians before doing all that. So, that’s why there were all these rumors spreading. “Hey, look, Paul, he’s actually doing away with the law. He doesn’t believe in the Torah of Moshe any longer.” So, then he has to go and prove it because people are misreading and completely misunderstanding his letters already. And that actually provides sufficient evidence that there is no supersessionism in Galatians at all. He’s not doing away with the law of God.

Nehemia: Explain supersessionism.

Max: Yeah, so, supersessionism is basically this idea in theology where people believe that there’s some new agreement that God made, like the new covenant, that completely supersedes… meaning, it just completely overrides the old covenant, which would be Torah. And in their theology, the new covenant doesn’t really require that much obedience. It requires minimal obedience or maybe no obedience at all. Because I talk to Christian preachers who say that Acts 15, even that council’s recommendations, are completely done away with to this day. Because…

Nehemia: Wait, wait, wait, hold on a second. The Christians today say that you’re allowed to eat blood and an animal that’s been strangled, for example?

Max: Well, you know, that’s what really puzzles me. Because I don’t think that deep down they believe that you’re allowed to do some of those things. But some of them say, “Hey, look, those aren’t actually binding.” That’s where their theology actually confuses me.

Nehemia: Hmm.

Max: Because they say those four things are not binding, but yet, I don’t find many of them doing those four specific things.

Nehemia: Remind us what the four specific things are.

Max: Yeah, so, the four specific things are: no food sacrificed to idols. Which, by the way, includes don’t put cookies out for Santa Claus on Christmas. And another thing…

Nehemia: Help me out here. Do people eat those cookies?

Max: Well, people eat those cookies. That’s the problem. I know people who put out cookies for Santa Claus, and they teach their kids the lies about Santa Claus, and then they eat those cookies. You just offered the cookies to an idol and then you ate them. So, you’re violating the apostolic, basically, commandments.

Nehemia: Okay.

Max: And the second thing is sexual immorality. And then the third thing is things that are strangled. And so, in Torah, obviously, there’s a commandment that says that you have to slaughter an animal so that the blood comes gushing out. This means that you’re not allowed to suffocate it to death and just consume it however you would like. Because if you don’t let the blood out, you’re going to be consuming it with blood, which is an abomination. And then the fourth thing is blood. They both go hand in hand. You’re not going to be eating a clean… a kosher animal by biblical standards if you do not get the…

Nehemia: Well, no, but you could slaughter the animal and catch the blood, which is what they do, for example, with blood pudding in Scotland. And then, when I was in China, they had this dish which was tofu, but I found out it was soaked in blood, and the blood gave it a certain flavor. And I’m like, “Yeah, I can’t eat that.” So, in other words, you could slaughter an animal and then still catch the blood and use the blood.

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, in other words, both of those are forbidden. And you’re saying modern Christian, let’s say Protestant pastors, are saying you’re allowed to have blood pudding?

Max: Well, they’ve told me that those four commandments are not binding. So, I mean, just through that phrase, I mean, you could logically deduce that they’re…

Nehemia: Do they think you’re allowed to engage in sexual…

Max: …basically saying that you’re allowed to eat blood.

Nehemia: They obviously don’t think you’re allowed to engage in sexual…

Max: No, I mean, they say that moral commandments carry forth…

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

Max: …but they say that those four specific commandments are not binding in themselves because they advocate for the Torah.

Nehemia: So, in other words, if they had been in the 1st century in Jerusalem, that’s what they would have written in their epistle, in their letter to the…

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: …to the believers. But that’s not what was written.

Max: Well, they would have written in their epistle also “don’t circumcise your young males”, because they believe that Acts 15 does away with circumcision. All they’re saying is, circumcision doesn’t save you. They’re not abrogating the Genesis 17 covenant, because guess what? If they were, they would be false apostles, and the Torah would call for their execution.

Nehemia: Wow, those are strong words. Okay.

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, all right. So, talk about this idea of salvation, because I don’t know that there are any Jews who have ever taught, that I’m aware of, that you need to be… well, it depends what you mean by “saved”, right? But let’s define that. I don’t know of any Jewish source that says you need to be circumcised in order to be saved. You need to be circumcised to eat of the Passover sacrifice and be part of the covenant of Israel.

Max: Right. Well, it’s clearly what they were teaching in the 1st century, because Acts 15 says that a group of Pharisees, which I would liken to Rabbinic Messianics today, these Pharisees essentially… And the reason is because they would have believed in the Rabbinic law, the Oral Law, but they also affirmed Yeshua because otherwise they wouldn’t be at this council. So, it was them who were saying, “We need to compel people to be circumcised to be saved.”

Then they say a second time, “We need to compel people to be circumcised.” And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with being circumcised, the reality is that there’s nothing in Tanakh that teaches circumcision for salvation. I think you just said it; circumcision is necessary to participate in the Pesach meal, or risk being cut off from among your people. Which is a serious penalty, and I don’t think people really take that seriously, especially in the Messianic movement, so to speak.

But again, Abraham walked in righteousness with God before he got circumcised. So, a correct theology would be to say that Abraham accepted belief in God, and then he walked with God. He did the righteous things that God required of him, and all that was counted to him as righteousness before he ever received physical circumcision.

Nehemia: Well, and maybe their position was, like… I’m trying to figure out what they would have been thinking from 1,900 plus years ago, but maybe their position was, if Yeshua is the Passover sacrifice, and you need to be circumcised to partake in the Passover sacrifice, therefore you need to be circumcised to partake in Yeshua. Maybe that was the position of these… you’re saying these Christian Pharisees, or not Christian, or Nazarene…

Max: They would have been like Christian Pharisees.

Nehemia: Or Nazarene Pharisees. Because you said the Christians in Antioch, those were heretics?

Max: Yeah, the Christians in Antioch were heretics because they started abrogating and messing with the law.

Nehemia: So, in other words, the people mentioned in the New Testament as Christianos, in the Book of Acts, you’re saying those were heretics already. Is that what you’re saying?

Max: I think they were trying to figure out what to label the Nazarenes specifically, and they called them Christianos, which some Messianics say is an insult. I don’t believe that the term Christianos is inherently an insult, I just think it’s people who are confused. They’re like, “What do we call these people? These people are preaching the Christ, so we have to give them some sort of title, some sort of name to go by.” And so, I think that was the motivation behind that. But I think a lot of Christ followers who dwelt in Antioch were starting to depart from the commandment.

Nehemia: Okay. And by the way, what you’re bringing up here is, there’s what they call an endonym, which is what people call themselves, and an exonym, what other people call them. Right? So, an example is, you know, in Greece, they call themselves Ellada or Elenas or something like that. And we call them Greek, right? The word Greek doesn’t exist in Greek, right? Or it doesn’t exist as the name of the nation.

Max: Right.

Nehemia: And look, “Jew” is an exonym, right? In Hebrew sources you’ll see the term, Israel.

Max: Right.

Nehemia: And, you know, eventually Jews have adopted that term because it was being used so widely by non-Jews. You’ll find sources even relatively recently where they’ll talk about Israel, not referring to the country, but referring to the people.

Max: Right.

Nehemia: So, I mean, I grew up with that, that we were Am Yisrael, the people of Israel. And Jew is what the non-Jews call us. Can we talk a little bit about some of these anti-Semitic… I’m going to call them anti-Semitic; some of these Talmudic tropes that you mentioned before that Charlie Kirk was debating about? Like, I’ll hear from people… I was talking to a guy, and he’s actually much older than me, and he said, “Oh, you call us goyim, don’t you?” And I’m like, “The way you say that indicates you don’t know what that word means.” It’s like in that movie, The Princess Bride. “That word doesn’t mean what you think it means.” Because goy is just “nation”, and Israel’s called a goy, and goyim is just “the nations.” And there were these anti-Semitic books put out in, like, the 1800s, which people are still referencing. I mean, Candace Owens held up one of them, an English Translation of The Talmudic Jew, written by a guy who had literally falsified Talmudic sources. And interestingly, Franz Delitzsch, who was a translator of the New Testament, confronted the guy who wrote the book The Talmudic Jew, the one that Candace Owens is holding up.

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: I forget his name. And Franz Delitzsch confronted him and exposed him as a forger, that he just made up sources that weren’t in the Talmud. I think that’s really interesting.

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: But… yeah, go ahead.

Max: No, no, no, I’m sorry. I mean, that is part of the problem. I do have this friend who will send me these quotes, and he’ll claim they’re the Talmud, but they’re actually fabrications. They’re something that’s made up. There’s stuff that’s not in the Talmud. I said, “You realize that half of what you sent me isn’t even in the Talmud, right?”

And then, also, when you talk to somebody about the Talmud, you need to be explicitly clear about what they’re referencing. “Okay, so are you referencing the Jerusalem Talmud or the Babylonian Talmud?” You have a Babylonian Talmud that’s targeted more towards diaspora communities and a Jerusalem Talmud that’s targeted more towards people who are in the land, so let’s be very specific. Also, do you know which text is held as more authoritative in the religion of Judaism? And if people can’t answer those questions, I can’t take them seriously.

Nehemia: Well, just to remind people, I’m a Karaite Jew, and the Talmud to me is discussions of rabbis who lived thousands of years ago, and not Scripture. Not the word of God, not binding.

Max: Right.

Nehemia: And I have a lot of criticism of the Talmud. There’s horrific things in the Talmud, and there’s wonderful, beautiful things in the Talmud. Both of those exist. And there’s profound wisdom in the Talmud. But there’s also things that I… I mean, there’s things that I find very objectionable theologically, many, many things, and there’s other things I just find to be utterly ridiculous. And so, to quote the Talmud to a modern Jew, even an Orthodox Jew… You know, there’s this idea in Rabbinical Judaism that you’re not required to believe… and so, here’s a fundamental difference in Christianity and Judaism, right? So, in Christianity, and I don’t mean necessarily what you’re coming from, but let’s say mainstream Christianity; I’ll use that term. Or historical mainstream Christianity. The belief is everything, right? Or what you profess you believe, at least. Right?

So, you have to profess very specific beliefs, right? There’s the famous thing about homo usios. You know, the same substance in the Nicene Creed. And there were people who said a slightly different pronunciation, and it meant a similar substance, meaning, whether Jesus and the father were the same substance or a similar substance. And people could be executed for pronouncing it similar, which in Greek is difference of one letter, versus the same. Right? And I don’t even know what any of that means, frankly.

Meaning, like, to me those are really abstract concepts that… And Judaism is much more about action. So, the idea in Rabbinical Judaism is you can believe anything you want, you just have to obey the rabbis. You don’t have to believe them. So, in other words, you can believe that everything in the Talmud is just made-up stories, right? Even the miracles in the Talmud, as long as you obey the authority of the rabbis. That’s the Orthodox Jewish approach.

So, to hold even an Orthodox Jew to what the Talmud says is kind of ridiculous. They don’t have to agree with it. They don’t have to believe it even, right? And this idea that, you know, the Talmud says you’re allowed to kill non-Jews, that’s crazy. You know…

Max: Yeah, I mean…

Nehemia: Who knows what kind of obscure things there are in the Talmud. But even the obscure things in the Talmud, the average Jew has never heard of those things and doesn’t live by them. So, that’s ridiculous.

Max: Yeah. And even if there is one little quote, it’s part of a larger discussion, and it’s one fringe rabbi saying something that many would deem very heretical.

Nehemia: Or a lot of times they’re kind of like… they’re spit balling; they’re, like, throwing out ideas.

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: And those ideas are immediately shot down and replaced with other ideas. And then, what’s the conclusion of the whole discussion? There usually isn’t one.

Max: I mean, just imagine if people took that one quote from a rabbi who said there is no Messiah in the Talmud and ran with it, and said, “Oh, look, Jews don’t believe that there’s a Messiah.” Well, that would be ridiculous, because if you read the rest of the tractate, the claim from that rabbi is mocked and even shut down. And a later rabbi goes on to quote Zechariah and says, “You don’t see that there’s messianic dualism. He could come lowly and riding on a donkey if we haven’t done good as the people of Israel, or he could come on the clouds in heaven to save us if we’ve done good as the people of Israel.” So, he gets made fun of by a whole consortium of rabbis, because there’s this one who says there’s no Messiah and the rest who say, “That’s ridiculous. He’s all over the Hebrew Bible.”

Nehemia: So, one of the things I’ll hear from the younger people, and I guess some of the Nick Fuentes minded people, is that, you know, the Talmud is full of blasphemy, and it says that Jesus is boiling in excrement. So, how do you respond to that? How do you view that first of all, and how do you respond?

Max: Yeah, well, this idea that Jesus is boiling in excrement is not a monolithic Jewish view whatsoever.

Nehemia: What does that mean, it’s not monolithic?

Max: What I mean is, it’s not a view that’s held by all Jews. In fact, I would say most Jews who I’ve talked to would just say he’s a good teacher, but he’s not the Messiah. He’s not a prophet, he’s not any of that. There are many Jews who I’ve talked to who have pried open the New Testament. And I know that they don’t necessarily have to believe that they don’t have any part in the age to come because they’ve read the New Testament, because some rabbi said that somewhere along the lines, but they have read the New Testament and they understand it totally from, like, a Hebraic perspective. They’re like, “Okay, I see what he’s saying. He’s got some good points; he’s made some interesting remarks. The Beatitudes are very well written. And also, I find it pleasing that he teaches the law and the prophets. But I don’t think he’s fulfilled this, this, and that messianic prophecy, especially as it relates to the restoration of Israel, the reconstruction of the Temple, the reinstitution of the Levitical system. He’s not sitting as King Messiah on the throne. All the nations don’t know the Lord’s name yet. And so, I’m just not really sure about this guy.” I think that’s the majority view that I’ve heard. There aren’t a lot of Jews who will come up and tell me, “Oh, yeah, he’s boiling in human excrement.”

Nehemia: Well, and even within that Talmudic discussion, that’s just one thing that’s floated. And other things are floated there as well, right? Meaning, we could go delve into that, but let’s save that for a different context.

Max: Sure.

Nehemia: Meaning that, even within that passage, if you keep reading… I don’t remember the exact verbiage. Somebody go look this up and post it in the comments. But within that exact passage, there’s a different position as well. I forget exactly what it is off the top of my head.

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: Yeah, go ahead.

Max: Well, no, I mean, that’s exactly right. I mean, there are some rabbis here and there who will run with that and say, “Look, yeah, Mary was an adulteress. Jesus was a sorcerer; Jesus led the people of Israel astray from the Torah.” Because there are lies that are told within that religion. People who believe that he came to do away with the law and the prophets. Because why? Because Protestant and Catholic Christianity say so.

But the reality is, none of that is true. And it’s interesting because they think that Jesus was born of adultery, but, you know, there’s no indication of that. In the New Testament texts, we see that there’s evidence of a virgin birth. And that’s where, actually, you were talking about the fracturing of the original Nazarene. So, you had the Nazarenes who believed in virgin birth, who believed in deity, who believed in all the books of the Hebrew Bible, and then you had the later Ebionites, who didn’t really believe in the stories of the New Testament. They didn’t believe in the virgin birth, they didn’t believe in the deity, and they even started departing on some of the mainstream beliefs from the 1st century.

Nehemia: So, I’m going to try to, as an outsider, characterize what you just said. In other words, you said the Ebionites who came later… so there, in a sense, you’re expressing that you believe the Nazarenes are the original followers of Yeshua…

Max: Correct.

Nehemia: …and the Ebionites are the splinter heretics who denied the virgin birth, right?

Max: Yeah, the Ebionites are the splinter heretics, and Paul actually was called the ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes, not the ringleader of the sect of the Ebionites. One of the things that the Ebionites did was, they rejected Paul, so that’s why they wouldn’t be considered Nazarenes. If they were Nazarenes, they would fall under the ring leadership of the apostle Paul. And they would also subscribe to the teachings of James, because James was the apostolic prince of the council that met in Acts chapter 15. We may even call him the nasi in Hebrew. He was the constitutional presiding officer. Because he said, in Acts 15:19, like, even though we see Peter as like a de facto leader throughout Acts, we see James as a de facto leader after the fact, where even people are reporting to him. Like, Paul is having people report to him and stuff like that in his letters. Where James says, “I need to tell you this right now. You’re not going to go and harass the goyim, the nations, who are coming into the beliefs of the Messiah and into the beliefs of the Torah.” And as you had stated earlier, goyim is not even a derogatory term. It means nation. Israel is called the Goy Kadosh, “the set apart nation”. So, if it’s used as a derogatory term, that means that God was using a derogatory slur against Israel.

Nehemia: I mean, here’s the irony, that there is a derogatory term for non-Jews that some Jews will use. I grew up hearing this and using it all the time, because, you know, it was the term, and it means abomination. And it’s not the word goyim; it’s a different word altogether. And, you know, in American culture, they know the word shiksa. That is a racial slur against non-Jews, and it means female abomination. So, we shouldn’t make jokes about that; that’s horrible. There’s jokes in Seinfeld about shiks appeal, right? But that’s really not funny.

Max: Right.

Nehemia: I mean, it kind of is funny.

Max: [Laughter] Yeah, a little bit.

Nehemia: It’s a little bit funny, but we should acknowledge that that’s a disgusting term and we shouldn’t use that. I don’t know, some of that’s political correctness of my generation, so you can ignore that. But the point is, there is a term, sheketz or shegetz in Yiddish, and that’s not the word goy. If a Jew wants to use a slur, there’s a perfectly good slur available. I don’t know when the last time I heard that term is outside the ultra-Orthodox world. It’s probably been over a decade.

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: Probably two.

Max: So, I actually said that. So, I was talking with a Conservative Jewish woman, and I said, yeah, shegetz is the term against males, and shiksa is the term against females, and it’s Yiddish. It’s not like full…

Nehemia: No, it comes from Hebrew.

Max: It comes from Hebrew?

Nehemia: In other words, it’s a kuh in Hebrew, and that becomes a guh in Yiddish. So, sheketz is shegetz, right? Meaning, that’s the Yiddish pronunciation.

Max: Yeah, so, when I said that, she was actually curious as to how I knew that, or even…

Nehemia: You’re not supposed to know that. You’re supposed to think we call you goyim.

Max: Yeah, or Shabbos goy, if I’m working on the Shabbat.

Nehemia: Yeah, but that’s not a slur. A Shabbos goy is…

Max: It’s not a slur, it’s just flipping a light switch for an Orthodox Jew, or…

Nehemia: Well, that’s something that Orthodox Jews highly prize, a Shabbos goy, right? There’s nothing negative about that. I mean, I think it’s ridiculous because I’m not an Orthodox Jew.

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: But I don’t think there’s anything negative in a Shabbos goy.

Max: It’s like a glorified servant.

Nehemia: No, it’s like, “This is my best friend. He’s willing to play this game for me.” No, that’s how they look at it. That’s my experience. I mean, I grew up Orthodox. That’s how it was viewed. “Ooh, we’ve got a neighbor who’s going to turn on the light for us if it went out,” right?

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: Because, you know, they believe you’re not allowed to turn on and off lights on Shabbat. Look, I want to talk about Jesus being a sorcerer, that you mentioned in Rabbinical sources. So, here’s how I look at that, and I want to hear your input on this. The way I look at that is, what can I learn from these sources? I was studying with my wife yesterday morning. We’re going through Proverbs. It was something in 14, and it’s a really difficult verse. And the medieval commentators, they paraphrase it with these… and I think they’re right about what it means but they paraphrase it with their own proverbs.

And the proverb they paraphrase it with is, there’s two approaches to things. One is, you could always look for the negative in somebody, but generally you do that because of your own inadequacies. That’s the first half of the verse in Proverbs, and we’ll throw it up on the screen. I don’t remember off the top of my head what the verse is. And the Rabbinical phrase is, “he who invalidates, it’s because of his own blemish that he invalidates.” Right? They’re talking about, if you’re a priest, and you say, that priestly family, they can’t serve in the Temple. Look, in my generation, that was he who smelt it, dealt it. I don’t know if you know what that means. Do you?

Max: Yeah, I’ve heard the saying before.

Nehemia: In other words, why am I saying, “Oh, no! Something smells bad.” Because I’m the one who farted, right? So, it’s “he who invalidates because of his own blemish that he invalidates another.” And then the other half of the verse in Proverbs was, if you see a corpse, and you say, how stinky, you could also say what beautiful white teeth it has, right? Or what white teeth it has, right? There’s always a positive that you can see in something, and I try to focus on the positive.

So, when they call Jesus a sorcerer, what does that tell me? So first of all, these are rabbis who are writing in the 2nd and 3rd century. They don’t know the first thing about what Yeshua actually did historically. But what they’re doing is, they’re acknowledging, “Yes, there are people who believe miracles happened, and we don’t need to deny that those miracles happened. We’re just going to reclassify them and say they weren’t miracles. He was doing that using the name, you know, the shem hameforash,” I guess it’s the name of Yehovah, or not necessarily, right? Some kind of name of God. He was performing those miracles using basically a supernatural power he shouldn’t have used.

But they’re acknowledging, “Yeah, he healed the sick and raised the dead. Okay, we don’t need to deny that.” And why didn’t they deny that? And look, this is me trying to take an historical approach. Because they were seeing people in their own day who were doing that kind of thing, who believed in Yeshua. And how do I know that? Because they mention that, right? There’s a story about a rabbi who was bitten by a snake…

Max: Oh, yes.

Nehemia: …and the man who was going to come and heal him in the name of Yeshua. And he said, “No, I’d rather die.” And he died.

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: Right? In other words, they’re seeing… and look, anybody listening to this could say, “Oh, that was, you know, like Benny Hinn. It was fake miracles.” They believed it was a real healing, the rabbis, and they believed his disciples, or people who said they were his disciples, were doing the same sorts of miracles he was doing, and that it was magic. Why is it magic? Because they weren’t doing it. There’s an old joke in the study of religion; what’s magic? Somebody else’s religion.

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, talk to me. What do you think about that? Is there any historical value in these negative things in the Talmud?

Max: Yeah, there is, for sure. I mean, it shows that they understood that these miracles were happening, but that they were false miracles. Not that they were fake, but that they were happening from the wrong source. And obviously, Deuteronomy says that sorcery is an abomination. So, if they can classify or characterize it as an abomination, then people can run away from it. And in Deuteronomy 13, it talks about how you could have any prophet, they could come and do any miracle, perform any sign, and say, “Look, this is from God.” But if they lead you astray from the God of Israel, then you’re not supposed to follow them. So, they would classify it as sorcery and then say, “Okay, fine. These miracles happen, but he’s leading people away from the God of Israel. So, whether they happen or not is completely irrelevant.”

And this rabbi who was bitten by the snake was greatly praised because he didn’t accept healing in Yeshua’s name. The rabbis who were with him, they praised him. They said, “Great job. This is a great thing you’ve done.” But it’s the same idea that goes even back all the way to Jesus’s day, where the teachers of the law were saying, “Yeah, you healed. We know you healed this person, but you healed him by the power of Beelzebub, not by the power of God.” It’s literally the same concept.

Nehemia: Isn’t it interesting? It would have been so much easier in the 2nd and 3rd century to say, “Oh, that didn’t happen. You say Jesus raised people for like…” Look, if you talk to most modern Jews and you say, “How can you not believe in Jesus? He raised people from the dead and he healed the sick.” They would say, “I don’t know if that happened.” Right? Legitimately, they would say that, right? How come these 2nd and 3rd century rabbis didn’t say that? Probably because they believed that the Christians of their day, or let’s say the Nazarenes of their day, were healing people.

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: I don’t know why, right? But it’s interesting; when you see these debates, you know, and I can’t remember if Tovia Singer ever addressed this, off the top of my head. I haven’t watched that much of him, to be honest with you. But I can’t imagine he would acknowledge that those miracles really took place, right?

Max: Sure.

Nehemia: Because most Jews who I speak to would say, “Oh, no, you know, people make all kinds of claims from thousands of years ago or hundreds of years ago.”

Max: Right.

Nehemia: But the rabbis in the Talmud, as far as I know, or let’s say of that period, of the Tanaim and Amoraim, let’s say the rabbis up until around the year 500-550; as far as I know, their argument was never, “Well, those miracles didn’t really happen.” Right?

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: Their argument was that they were done illegitimately, just like you’re saying in the New Testament they were already making that accusation.

Max: Right. And I’m almost certain that that belief carried over into the Rishonim, those rabbis, that they believed that they were legitimately done.

Nehemia: The Rishonim refers to rabbis much later than that, but…

Max: Yeah, they were rabbis much later. And I’m just saying, I’m sure this is a belief that even carried over all the way to that period, and they were making claims or assertions that those miracles were illegitimate.

Nehemia: Oh, and there’s ultra-Orthodox Jews today who read Toldot Yeshu, which has been described as a gospel parody, and they say, “Oh, that’s literally true. That’s what happened.” Right? Meaning, like, no historian would say that Toldot Yeshu is… Interestingly, by the way, in the manuscripts it’s called Toldot Yeshua, with an Ayin, or in some of them at least. So, there are modern Jews who believe that, right?

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: I think they’re probably in the vast minority, right?

Max: Oh, yeah, for sure.

Nehemia: I think the average Jew today would say, “Oh, you know, the Buddhists believe that” whatever the guy’s name that was Buddha, “went up to Nirvana,” or hadn’t, whatever that is. “He transcended to Nirvana, and the Christians believe that Jesus ascended into the sky, and we’re not bound by those beliefs, right?” Meaning, like, we don’t believe miracles happened thousands of years… Look, I mean, most Jews don’t believe miracles happen in the time of Moses, let alone in the time of Jesus!

Max: Yeah, there are a lot of people who read some of the things in Torah as allegorical. One example I came across was Genesis 18. There are a lot of Jews who believe that when Abraham was seeing the three men, including the angel, that was just a dream that he had.

Nehemia: Well, that’s a bit different because Maimonides says that, right?

Max: Maimonides said that.

Nehemia: You could have a traditional Jewish approach and still believe that.

Max: Right.

Nehemia: Meaning, that the whole thing was a vision. But what I’m referring to is, there was a debate years ago in Florida, and I didn’t see it, but I was told about it, between… what’s that guy’s name? Michael Brown…

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: …who is a Jewish convert to Christianity, and a Reform rabbi. And they get up to debate, and the Reform rabbi says, “We don’t believe any of these prophecies, so why would we believe Jesus fulfilled them?”

Max: Right.

Nehemia: And Michael Brown’s like, “I don’t even know what to say here. It’s the end of the debate!” Because if you don’t believe the Old Testament, then yeah, you’re not going to believe the New Testament.

Max: Well, what’s interesting about Toldot Yeshu is, it portrays Jesus as this illegitimate child that was conceived, not just in adultery, but in an adulterous rape. And it also talks about how he… I believe he created birds. He created birds from clay. And there’s another Gnostic gospel text that makes that claim, that he created birds from clay, and it’s why I don’t read those Gnostic gospel texts. Like, somebody gave me a copy of the Gospel of Thomas…

Nehemia: So, let’s back up. So, tell us about the birds from clay. I know what you’re referring to, but I think most of the audience doesn’t.

Max: Yeah, so, I don’t really remember the story…

Nehemia: So, basically, the idea is, Jesus as a baby must have performed miracles, because he’s God. And so, he has these clay birds, and I don’t know if he blows on them or something. I don’t remember exactly…

Max: I don’t remember what motion he does.

Nehemia: …and they come to life. And what’s interesting is, that’s in these, let’s say, non-canonical gospels, what are called Infancy Gospels.

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: Meaning, these are Christian sources. You say they’re Gnostic. I don’t know that they’re necessarily Gnostic. But they then appear in Islamic sources as well. And it shows you what some of the sources of… well, I guess if you’re a Muslim, you would say that really happened, right?

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: But let’s assume that there are human sources to the Quran, or let’s say the Islamic sources, they obviously were influenced by Christians who believed that Jesus as a baby performed these miracles. And I don’t know that that was limited to Gnostic sources. In other words, it’s essentially a midrash that comes to answer the question, if Jesus is God in the flesh, then as a baby, surely he performed miracles, right? He didn’t just, you know, around the year 30, all of a sudden start performing miracles, right? In other words, it’s coming to explain this kind of tension, right? This baby is drinking milk from his mother, but he’s also God. Like, how do we reconcile that? Okay, well, he didn’t realize his own power, and so, he accidentally killed his playmates, right? That’s part of the Infancy Gospels.

Max: Right. Well, there’s Yemenite manuscripts where there’s the curse that’s added. You were talking about the Proverbs. Directly, I think it’s Proverbs 10 and verse 7, where it says, “May the name of the wicked rot.” And so, not only is there in that Talmudic tractate, but there is in some of these satirical sources, “May the name Yeshu be blotted out.” Meaning, may his memory be forgotten because of all the people he was leading astray.

Nehemia: Wait, you have to be more clear. You say Yemenite manuscripts; of what? What are we talking about? The Talmud?

Max: The later Yemenite manuscript of the Toldot Yeshu.

Nehemia: Okay. That’s very possible. Toldot Yeshu isn’t a specific book, it’s a constellation of traditions that are vastly different even between the manuscripts.

Max: One of the traditions has that.

Nehemia: Okay, and I don’t doubt that. But that’s what is now referred to as a backronym. Do you know that term? Backronym is where you have an acronym like NASA, which is National, I don’t know if I remember, Aeronautic Space Agency or something?

Max: Yeah, Space Agency.

Nehemia: And before you were born, there was a shuttle that exploded. And I remember this; I was in sixth grade. And within hours, there were jokes going on. It was one of the first viral things. Within hours, there were jokes that NASA stands for, because there were seven people killed, that NASA stands for Need Another Seven Astronauts. And it was a joke. It was a stupid, childish joke. I don’t know how this happened so quickly because we didn’t have the internet. But within hours, that joke was being told, certainly by the next day. And that’s a backronym, right? That’s not what NASA stands for.

So, this is an important thing; the name Yeshu originally is not an acronym. The name Yeshu appears on ossuaries, these ancient bone boxes, as a form of the Greek Yesus, right? In other words, you have bilingual ossuaries where there was somebody buried in a bone box, and Yeshua was a very common name, so there’s lots of them, with some form of the name Yeshua, and it’s written as Yesus in Greek. It’s written as Yeshu in… you could call it Aramaic or Hebrew, and then it’s written as Yeshua with an Ayin, but the Galileans didn’t pronounce the Ayin, so Yeshua became Yeshu, right? That’s probably the explanation of how it goes.

Max: Kind of like the concept of a zip code.

Nehemia: What do you mean?

Max: Like a zone improvement plan.

Nehemia: Is that what zip code really means?

Max: I think it does, actually.

Nehemia: Okay, so that’s a real acronym. So, backronym is where you take something that’s either not an acronym or it’s an acronym for something else, and you superimpose, often in a satirical way, but not always, the meaning, onto that, right? So, NASA really stands for something positive, but we’re making a joke out of it, or we did in 1980 something. And so, Yeshu originally was just a shortened form of Yeshua, and in, like, for example, in Italian, he’s called Yesu, which is literally just Yeshu, right?

And so, the rabbis, in order to make it into an insult, they turned it into an acronym, right? But it wasn’t originally meant to be an acronym. Obviously, right? Meaning, what I’m suggesting is, probably some of his disciples called him Yeshu; certainly, the Galilean ones because they couldn’t pronounce the Ayan. Right? We know that from a bunch of sources. That’s like when they said to Peter, “You’re a Galilean. We can tell it from your speech.”

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: There’s this famous passage in the Talmud, or somewhere, where the Judeans are mocking a Galilean who goes to the marketplace, because he pronounces the word chamar and amar the same way because he can’t pronounce the gutturals.

Max: Right.

Nehemia: All right. So, let’s go back to, what is the positive that you can see in these accusations?

Max: Yeah.

Nehemia: I mean, even the accusation that Yeshua is boiling in excrement, they don’t deny that Yeshua existed. Isn’t that something positive that we can see in that?

Max: The positive is that, exactly. They acknowledge him as a historical figure, and they acknowledge these miracles as historical events. Meaning like, “Okay, no, we actually recognize that it took place…”

Nehemia: And that should be the starting point of discussion.

Max: I agree.

Nehemia: Not the discussions that you’ll see today. “Well, we don’t even know if Jesus existed. And all four gospels are anonymous. And we don’t even know if the guy existed, and if he did, he was, you know, we don’t know if the miracles happened.” Right? Which is the basis of most modern dialogue.

Max: And that’s a claim that Tovia makes, is that the four gospels were anonymous. But like you said, we need to ground our claims first in historical truths. Like, you could refer to the letter of Tacitus or Flavius Josephus, some of his works, and they both talk about Yeshua. And they both talk about the miracles that he performed. And so, you could start there and say, “Well, look, there’s essentially a consensus amongst historical scholars that he was a real person. He performed these miracles. He died at the crucifix,” those kinds of things. And then just go from there like you were saying.

It doesn’t require that I believe all of Christian tradition, right? Like, obviously, I don’t believe in these Christian texts outside of the Gospels that may refer to Jesus as creating birds out of clay or essentially having a literal bride, a human bride. Or an apostolic succession, which I think a lot of Christian traditions personally are borrowed from Jewish traditions, because it’s like another form of smikhah. Like, we have this line of rabbis going all the way back to Moses. Okay, we have this big line of apostles going all the way back to Peter and James. So, you know, there’s no arguing with them, there’s no refuting them because they have carried all the traditions over perfectly.

Nehemia: Well, and more importantly, you can’t argue with whoever the representative is today, like the Pope, because he has an unbroken line going back to Peter, right? That’s kind of the claim. Or that is the claim.

Max: Right, that is the claim. Just like the rabbis, they have a…

Nehemia: Look, and there’s Hebrew Roots people who I’ve encountered who say, “We have an unbroken line of apostolic tradition.” And it’ll go through like the Waldensians or something like this, right? And, like, okay… so, who in, like, the… I don’t know, the 5th century, was… And look, there were people, right? Meaning, there were Christians, I’ll use that term, there were Christians who kept Torah in the 5th century. How do I know that? Because John Chrysostom, who is one of the so-called Church Fathers, rebukes some of the Christians of his day for going to the synagogue on Shabbat.

Max: Yes.

Nehemia: Right? So, obviously there were Christians. Why were they going to the synagogue on Shabbat? Because they were something like what I would call Hebrew Roots.

Max: Right. And there were plenty of letters too, acknowledging that there were many Christians going to synagogue on Shabbat and still going to attend church services on Sunday. So, they were, like, dipping their feet in both worlds, but still keeping the laws of Moses. And so, there were a lot of people that took aim at that.

Nehemia: And they were persecuted on both sides!

Max: Exactly, right? Because they rejected the church traditions, and then, in the synagogue, they were upholding belief in Yeshua. And so, that really illustrates the narrow path that Yeshua was talking about. “You’re not a Jew. You’re not really a Christian. You’re going to be persecuted and hated wherever you go.”

—

Nehemia: So, you brought up something before, and I want you to talk about this. So, you essentially, if I’m right, you have… And you mentioned Charlie Kirk and this whole spirit of debate, and I’ve seen some of your videos, and it looks like you’re debating people in two directions, maybe three directions, right? So, you have the Jewish counter-missionary position, which says you shouldn’t believe in Yeshua. You’re debating that. You have the anti-Torah, anti-Nomian Protestant position. You’re debating that. And then you have, and this is what I want you to talk about because it should come from you, because I don’t really have a position here, or I shouldn’t, which is, you’re debating the… what do I want to call it? The Rabbinical Messianic position. Right? In other words, there’s a certain strain of… I would say it’s the predominant strain of the Hebrew Roots movement, of the Messianic movement, that says that, “Well, we are just…” here’s how it was described to me by one Messianic rabbi. He said, “We’re Conservative Jews,” like big C Conservative, like of the Conservative Movement, “we’re Conservative Jews who believe in Yeshua.”

Max: Right, sure.

Nehemia: Right? So, in other words, we believe in Rabbinical halakha with a modern twist, right? We’ll drive to the synagogue on Shabbat, right?

Max: Right.

Nehemia: Which is the Conservative approach, or for many Conservative Jews. So, talk to me about this third strain, the Rabbinical Messianic. What is your approach to that?

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