Last week, I had a dialogue on social media with a devout believer in Jesus whom I have known for years. He is an intelligent and an out-of-the-box Bible scholar I have interviewed for articles. In the course of the dialogue, he presented a line of reasoning in which he said that many, if not most, of the Jews today are probably not from the line of Abraham. He claimed that due to intermarriage, false claims of Jewish heritage, rape and infidelity, any claim to ancestry going back to the patriarchs is unlikely at best. He also claimed that since Judah was only one tribe, it is more likely that the average person not claiming to be a Jew was actually descended from the ten lost tribes. He reinforced this theory by citing the Book of Hosea. He not only insisted that his position was logical, he claimed it was the ONLY logical and fact-based explanation.
His claims made me furious to the point where I seriously questioned whether I wanted to continue writing for Israel365 or whether I wanted to continue connecting with Christians. I realized that I had no choice but to attempt to write down the source of my anger, why he infuriated me, and how his statements discounted the very essence of what it means to be a Jew. While they may seem benign to many, his “logical statements” were the most horrific form of Jew-hatred; an attempt to erase the identity of Jews as a nation, the chosen people, and all of our history going back to the patriarchs. I realized that I had no choice but to write my feelings down.
To begin, his statement displayed an absolute ignorance of what goes on inside a Jewish family. Even the most secular Jew lives his life with the unshakeable knowledge that when his parents told him he was a Jew, they were passing on a factual connection to being at Mount Sinai. For a Jew, this aspect of his identity is indelible, lasting until he dies. It does not matter what he does or believes. A Jew can eat pork on Yom Kippur, and he is still a Jew. A Jew who converts to another religion does not have to convert back to Judaism. He is and will always be a Jew.
It is only in the last few decades that this absurd claim about Jewish identity could be made. Judaism always had a one-way door. Jews left, but no one ever entered. In most countries, conversion to Judaism was illegal and usually punishable by death. It was also an absurd desire. Jews were the eternal outsiders, the ‘other’, a stranger in a strange land. Napoleon was the first state leader to offer citizenship to Jews, and many refused.
No one in their right mind would want to be Jewish. This was especially true of Christians who were sure that Jews were all damned or rejecting and killing Jesus. Yes, Jews intermarried, but it was rare. No one would allow their children to marry a Jew. And no one would pretend to be a disgusting Jew.
The people claiming to be Jews today are undeniably the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who stood at Mount Sinai.
At this point, I could bring genetic testing as proof that Jews have a shockingly cohesive ancestry. I have been approached by Christians who claim to be “priests” or “kohanim” in the tradition of Malkitzedek. I try to explain that Kohanim are a strictly guarded family lineage that is absolutely verified by DNA. Their kohanic identity, and that of their sons, is known to everyone in the community. They are afforded public honors exclusive to the descendants of Aaron. They are forbidden from marrying converts and entering a cemetery. Their kohanic identity is inscribed on their gravestones. However, for the “Melchizedek priests”, their belief is more important than ancestry and the Kohanic tradition as mandated in the Bible.
Similar to my former friend, to insert themselves into God’s covenant with the Jews at Sinai, they must first discount the claim made by the actual descendants of Abraham described in the covenant. And they do this without any idea of how this identity has been passed from generation to generation.
That man actually made the stunning claim that he rejected replacement theology. He accepted that the covenant was eternal and that the Church had no claim to the covenant as the Church. But he also insisted that Jews today are not the subject of the covenant.
And that as a possible/probable descendant of the ten tribes, he is in the true covenant.
And there is the crux. While I know many Christians who claim to reject replacement theology, they actually don’t. They fail to realize that to exist, the Church had to create a complex and insidious belief that the Jewish claims were not valid. Jews cannot be trusted because we rejected Jesus. The Talmud is an evil book written by men. Judaism is rabbinic and not the faith of Jesus.
I have learned a bit of the New Testament and am perplexed that Christians are not clamoring to learn Talmud from Orthodox Jews. The Talmud is a 3,000-year-old commentary on the Bible. Why would Christians not want to access this knowledge?
The New Testament cannot be understood without learning the Talmudic precepts it describes. Christians insist that baptism was created by John, even though the Torah mandates mikveh. Christians insist that even though Jesus was a Torah-observant Jew in Jerusalem on Passover, he did not bring the Passover offering. This is illogical in the extreme. The examples are endless. The New Testament is based on rabbinic Judaism, yet the Church has indoctrinated Christians into believing that rabbinic Judaism is synonymous with evil.
Yes, the Talmud was written by rabbis. But I know another book that rabbis wrote in the first century. You claim to be a Christian who has rejected replacement theology. But are you willing to learn from a Jew on the basis of his clear lineage to Sinai?
In the book “The Student’s Obligation”, Rabbi Kalonymous Kalman Shapira, known as the Piezetsner or Warsaw Rebbe, cautioned educators to be very cautious in respecting their students. “Every Jew has in him a physical piece of Father Abraham,” he said.
Christians who connect with Jews have the unbelievable merit to see a physical piece of the patriarchs, of a Jew who stood at Sinai. There is living and breathing proof that the Bible is the true word of God. Doubting a Jew’s claim to being from Abraham wipes that out, and, horribly, this has no basis.
Yes, the ten tribes will be reunited with Judah. But not by some Jew-hater on Facebook. He will not be the one to determine who is part of Israel. As impossible as it sounds, the ten tribes will return, and it will be apparent to all that they are descended from Abraham. If this sounds impossible, it is. But it was also deemed impossible that the Biblical prophecy of God returning the Jews to Israel, and here we are, living the prophecy.
Could Jews forget that they were Jews, that we are the descendants of Abraham? That is clearly impossible. It has not happened and never will happen. I am reminded of Dan Pearl, an American journalist who lived in Mumbai, India. Pearl was murdered by Pakistani Islamists in 2002. The last words he uttered before his throat was slit were, ““My name is Daniel Pearl. My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, and I am a Jew.”
Similarly, Yarden Bibas told his family that as a hostage in Gaza, his captors informed him that if he converted to Islam, they would treat him much better. He responded, “I was born a Jew, and I will die a Jew.” After rejecting their offer, they refused to feed him for two days.
While Christians may see that as a statement of faith, once a child is told by his parents that he is a Jew, it is the most essential aspect of his identity and will be at the forefront of his entire life.
Compare this to Christianity, a faith that can be taken on and abandoned and is not an inherited identity.
Jews have a saying that if we ever forget we are Jewish, the Jew haters will surely remind us. Modern, secularized Jews believe they are indistinguishable, that they can pass for non-Jews. But the Nazis did not have to go around hunting and investigating, asking tens of millions of Europeans who the Jews were. Everyone knew exactly who the Jews were. We see this today on college campuses. The new Nazis, the keffiyeh wearing Hamas supporters on campus, banned Jews from entering. It was not about Zionist ideology. They knew precisely who the Jews were.
The Jewish home is the basis of Jewish identity, which has given it the strength to withstand 2,000 years of exile. My mother was at my Shabbat table, and we were discussing our plans for the Pesach seder. I related that my father had always told me about seder night with his grandparents and how they had done the same. My family’s connection to the Exodus reaches back to my father’s grandparents. My mother nodded, saying she had heard the same from her grandmother about her grandparents at their seder table. My mother’s grandmother’s grandparents. I don’t even know what that is called. My children overheard this, and I hope they remember it. I am sure they will, adding another rung in the ladder that leads back to Abraham and the covenant.
That man refuted this story, claiming that there was no documentation. He is a fool who does not understand the Jews’ claim to being the descendants of Abraham, to have stood at Sinai, and to have kept the covenant for over 4,000 years. Jews proclaim our ancestry every time we are called to the Torah in Synagogue, every time we pray. We don’t document family trees. The Torah is a tree of life, and we have always clung to it. The Nazis documented the Jews when they set out to annihilate us. It is clear which tradition this man is following.
