This issue of Kesher includes additional articles and book reviews. Deborah Kaplan and Elliot Klayman explore the two most popular Messianic figures of the last four centuries. Both Shabbetai Zevi and the Lubavitcher Rebbe have been heralded as messiah by many Jews in the modern era and continue to impact the Jewish community. The last…

One of the central challenges Messianic Judaism faces is how to orient itself against its two parent communities: modern evan­gelicalism and American Judaism. As modern Messianic Judaism is historically rooted chiefly in the evangelical movements of the twentieth century, I will trace Messianic Judaism’s relationship with this particular parent. Nevertheless, one cannot discuss the one…

A few years ago a group from the local Jewish community met with the president (an evangelical Christian) of my university and demanded that he fire me from my position in Jewish Studies. The charge, repeated in a subsequent meeting with the group, with myself and the provost present, was anti-Semitism. How could I be…

The mission of the UMJC can be captured in one sentence: We are committed to establishing, strengthening, and multi­plying dynamic congregations for Yeshua within the wider Jewish community. This one sentence, however, introduces the tension underlying Gabriella Reason’s article-the inevitable tension of liv­ing at the intersection of Yeshua and Jewishness. This tension can be healthy…

Many years ago, one of my favorite philosophy professors made this point: before we have the right to criticize another per­spective, we should understand the perspective of the other. The acid test of this dictum is that we can repeat the perspective in our own words in such a way that the other will confirm…

In the Spring, 2004, issue of Kesher, Ms. Gabriela Reason tackles a series of complex and controversial issues facing the modern Messianic Jewish movement. Her thesis focuses on the tensions inherent in the movement between the pulls of Evangelical Christianity and Judaism. On the one hand, as she purports, Messianic Judaism was birthed from the…

I want to begin my response to Gabriela Reason’s article titled, “Competing Trends in Messianic Judaism: The Debate Over Evangelicalism,” with a “thank you” for her arduous work in gath­ering research. Every effort to gather data, whether sociological, historical, or theological, stimulates the Messianic community and advances us in defining our purpose and mission more…