Jesus...A Genuine Jewish Personality

The following quote was taken from a book I am reading entitled "The Messiahship of Jesus: Are Jews Changing Their Attitude Toward Jesus?" This book is a compilation of essays and excerpts about Jesus by prominent Jews (rabbis, theologians, scientists, professors, writers, journalists), analyses by Hebrew Christians of present-day Jewish attitudes toward Jesus, and essays by scholarly Jewish Christians on the Messiahship of Jesus based on the teachings of both Old and New Testaments.

This book, compiled in 1980 is quite fascinating. I want to share a quote written by Leo Baeck who became a rabbi in 1897 and was for many years the acknowledged religious leader of German Jewry. He writes:

Most portrayers of the life of Jesus neglect to point out that Jesus is in every characteristic a genuinely Jewish character, that a man like him could have grown only in the soil of Judaism, only there and nowhere else.

Jesus is a genuine Jewish personality, all his struggles and works, his bearing and feeling, his speech and silence, bear the stamp of a Jewish style, the mark of Jewish idealism, of the best that was and is in Judaism, but which then only existed in Judaism.

He was a Jew among Jews; from no other people could a man like him have come forth, and in no other people could a man like him work; in no other people could he have found the apostles who believed in him.

So many of us have this notion that Jesus had no real race, culture or anything like that. We know He was born a Jew, but "so what?" Many of us carry a notion that Jesus had our mindset, our values, our worldview. The problem is that the Church has been cut away from its Jewish roots for countless centuries, and we have lost the vital understanding that can help us understand who Jesus was in greater depth and detail. Many Christians are fearful of anything that has the word "Jewish" attached to it, mostly because of an underlying anti-semitic, demonic spirit that has been subtly passed down through the ages.

Let us give the Holy Spirit the freedom to lead us into all truth without hanging onto our fear or our preconceived notions. Let's pray that He will teach us to know our wonderful Messiah in a deeper and more knowledgeable way in the coming days, months and years.