Interesting post from former Messianic

[2xx1xy1JD]

I stumbled across this blog, while following a link to another post on her blog on a completely unrelated topic (the problem of shaming your kids online).

 

heidistone.net/what-do-i-think-of-calling-yourself-messianic/

 

We've discussed the Messianics ("faux Jews") before. My main problem with them is what I see as deceptive tactics - using a smattering of Hebrew terms and Jewish rituals to lure Jews into a religion based entirely on Christian theology.

 

Heidi's giving her perspective as someone who sincerely came to the Messianic movement from the Christian side, was genuinely interested in the Jewish roots of Christianity, but who also came to realize imitating Jewish customs in a superficial way and not respecting the actual people and their history was wrong.

 

I havent' read the rest of the blog, just these two posts. Thoughts?

[clueliss]

Off to read the article. I don't consider them faux Jews but Jews for Jesus! My sister is/was one (she's sort of fallen off the map and not communicating with me at the moment). Before that she was Seventh Day Adventist. She and some others moved from Adventists to Messianic when a study group they were in got 'in trouble' for using non SDA approved material.

She was (my term here) sucked into the Adventists through a Bible study and she'd not really studied the Bible much before and next thing you know it's no pork then on to a vegetarian diet (which for her wasn't much of stretch given her actual meat consumption to begin with).

[Firiel]

This post really jives with an account I read of a woman who converted from Orthodox Judaism to Christianity (specifically, Anglicanism of some sort). I just read a preview of the book, but the portion I read discussed the difficulty of leaving the culture and worship and lifestyle of Judaism and switching all that over to Christianity. She visited a Messianic Jewish synagogue and felt like it was cheapened-- missing the depth and beauty of Jewish worship and trying to replace it with bits of Hebrew. She does end up really connecting with the speaking style of the rabbi, but her impression of the general feeling of the service reminded me of this quote from the blog post:

A little kippa here, a little tzit-tzit there. A lot of fabrics with glitter, dancing in circles, blowing of horns, and the waving of prayer shawls as we stumbled over Hebrew phrases in a poorly executed transliteration of the guttural and soft rumble of a language drawn on tablets and the hearts of an ancient, yet newborn, society which has, against all odds, resurrected a people, a nation, an identity, and a language from the ashes of the Holocaust, the gulags, the pogroms, and the centuries old evils of replacement theology.

[MajorMajor]

I guess I'm a little confused because she makes a good argument about the problems with messianic Judaism but I fail to see how her current lifestyle is any different. It seems like she is still appropriating Jewish culture. Maybe I am missing something.