| to Christianity, and even representatives of Satan himself (Ruether 1974, 117183). In turn, Jewish literature used the figure of Esau as the carnal, violent, rather stupid brother of Jacob to portray Christians and their persecutions of the Jews (Liebman and Cohen 1990, 39). A Jew who accepted Christ as savior was assumed to have abandoned the Jewish people, and indeed during the medieval era Jews who converted to Christianity (apostates) were notorious for their activities against the Jewish community (Endelman 1987, 6). While in the last two centuries this mutual enmity has changed first to toleration, and now at times even to admiration, both groups still perceive the other as having a unique, separate identity. |
| Even today, the ineradicable distinction between Christianity and Judaism is a crucial boundary marker for American Jews. A group easily assimilable into the Christianized culture of the United States, as well as a group internally pluralistic in religious and ethnic practice, the Jewish community needs a sense of "who we are not" to maintain its group cohesion and integrity. The one surety for even the most inactive Jew is that "Jews are not Christians." Norman Mirsky makes the point: "In a world where Jews and Christians are presumed to be equal and in law are equal one of the few universally shared Jewish values is that Jews are not expected to believe in, or even to admire, Jesus" (Mirsky 1978, 5). Jews who cross the boundaries are seen to be traitors, almost violating a law of nature. One notes the journalist Susan Schwartz McDonald (1976) comparing a Messianic Jewish service to the "ambiguous sexuality" of Renee Richards, a sex-change recipient. Solomon Goren, the chief rabbi of the Israeli Defense Forces, called one who is Jewish by nationality and Gentile by religion a ''hermaphroditic creature" (Litvin 1965, 47). In order to explain this anomaly, Messianic Judaism, almost since the group's inception, has been labeled a cult by the mainstream Jewish community, on the assumption that adherents have to be brainwashed into their assertion that one could believe in Jesus and remain Jewish. |
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