"Ask A Jew" Wednesday

[u/AutoModerator]

It's everyone's favorite day of the week, "Ask A (Anti-Zionist) Jew" Wednesday! Ask whatever you want to know, within the sub rules, notably that this is not a debate sub and do not import drama from other subreddits. That aside, have fun! We love to dialogue with our non-Jewish siblings.

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[u/verrma]

I’m curious on what Jews’ views are on the Messiah prophesied in the Tanakh. My understanding is that Christians and Muslims believe that this Messiah is Jesus, while Jews believe that the actual Messiah will arrive sometime in the future. What qualities of this Messiah do you believe that Jesus did not have? Also, are there Jews out there who view Jesus as the Messiah, but don’t believe in the Holy Trinity like Christians do, and still eat Kosher etc.? Sort of like how the earliest Christians were?

I don’t practice any of the Abrahamic faiths, but I am curious about them

[u/douglasstoll → u/verrma]

There is no universal view on messianism. I do not subscribe to it. If there is a moshiach, it is all of us and always right now.

[u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet → u/verrma]

Hi! Not really "religious" in the traditional sense myself, but learned enough that I think I can answer this question.

What qualities of this Messiah do you believe that Jesus did not have?

The Jewish Messiah has the following requirements:

• Be from the house of David patrilineally
  
• Establish a theocratic monarchy under his rule in a united biblical Israel
• Rebuild a physical 3rd temple in Jerusalem
• Revive the dead en masse
• Bring all the Jews into biblical Israel
• Perform miracles on such a grand scale that no person on the planet is able to disbelieve in the Jewish version of the almighty
• Create an everlasting paradise on Earth

Meanwhile, Jesus:

• Is the "Son of Gd" in Christian canon, meaning he cannot also inherit kingship through a human father (though admittedly Muslims don't believe this)
• Did NOT establish a theocratic monarchy over the entire land of Israel, with the only claim of it being a metaphorical kingdom
• Did NOT build a physical temple, the only claim again being metaphorical
• Did NOT revive the dead en masse, only twice (a feat also claimed by multiple Jewish religious characters too IIRC, including some prophets and even regular Rabbis in the midrash)
• Did NOT transport all Jews to Israel
• Was NOT so miraculous as to make literally everyone on the planet believe in his version of Gd, as evidenced by the existence of Jews, Hindus, Atheists, etc
• Did NOT create an everlasting paradise on Earth, as evidenced by the continued existence of horrific evil

In short, Jesus's only claim according to Judaism is that he fulfilled a few of the requirements metaphorically instead of literally, but even then not all of them.

Also, are there Jews out there who view Jesus as the Messiah, but don’t believe in the Holy Trinity like Christians do, and still eat Kosher etc.?

There do exist so-called "Messianic Jews" that claim to be this but in general we don't consider them Jewish. I'm personally not sure the ratio in their ranks between gentiles who "convert to 'Judaism'" vs Jews who become "saved" in their ranks, but I've heard it leans more towards the former (and anecdotally I've only ever met/been harassed by the former). Either way we consider them the same way we'd consider the early Christians -- Christian, not Jewish.

[u/verrma → u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet]

Oh ok that makes sense, thank you. Didn’t the Tanakh also say that the Messiah is supposed to be born in Bethlehem? Given what the modern state of Israel is doing, I wonder how Jews imagine this will shape things. Given that Palestinians have a lot of ancient Hebrew DNA, are Zionist Jews not at all concerned that they may be displacing/exterminating the line of David?

Also, off topic but judging by your username, you’re a Linux user too, aren’t you lol

[u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet → u/verrma]

Didn’t the Tanakh also say that the Messiah is supposed to be born in Bethlehem?

I don't recall reading anything about that myself. I also think that this isn't likely to be correct given the amount of Jewish Messianic claims throughout history and how none I recall other than Jesus were born in Bethlehem (and not all of them were even born in the ME).

Given that Palestinians have a lot of ancient Hebrew DNA, are Zionist Jews not at all concerned that they may be displacing/exterminating the line of David?

The Jews believe the Messiah will be Jewish. Israel isn't displacing/exterminating Palestinian Jews (aside from eliminating the term itself).

This is aside from the fact that the Zionists doing the exterminating aren't religious by and large, meaning they couldn't care less about the Messiah.

Also, off topic but judging by your username, you’re a Linux user too, aren’t you lol

Yup, Debian sid. I made this account back when I was a child just starting out with Ubuntu over a decade ago lol. I honestly don't like the username but haven't bothered making a new account since then.

[u/verrma → u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet]

Oh ok that makes sense. I guess a religious Jew would not so blatantly violate the Ten Commandments lol.

I’m more of a Fedora guy myself, but I also like Mint and Debian Stable. I’d probably be using Ubuntu or Kubuntu if it weren’t for snaps

[u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet → u/verrma]

I guess a religious Jew would not so blatantly violate the Ten Commandments lol.

Unfortunately they aren't really violating the 10 commandments. "Thou shalt not murder" only means specifically not religiously allowed murder, while Judaism does allow war. Thou shalt not steal/covet can be argued by the religious Zionists (which are a large part of the actual settlers in the WB) believe that Israel is already religiously theirs so they're allowed to take it "back".

The only religious item that the Zionists are explicitly breaking are a) the prohibition on forming a Jewish state in Israel before the Messiah comes, which is explicitly rabbinical and therefore open to interpretation via contradicting rabbinical sources (again, as religious Zionists do), and b) Zionism is constantly doing Chillul Hashems (basically, making Jews look bad as a whole) which the religious Zionists handwave away with logic that I don't personally understand.

I’m more of a Fedora guy myself, but I also like Mint and Debian Stable.

I'm too joined at the hip with apt & dpkg to move to something else at this point. I'm on sid because I love rolling releases and admittedly making weird frankendebian systems lol. I get all the stability of Arch with all the support of Debian.

I’d probably be using Ubuntu or Kubuntu if it weren’t for snaps

Yeah I use Flatpaks even on my debian systems for this reason. My mini homelab is running Ubuntu on the physical nodes but everything runs on top of kubernetes so luckily I don't really need to care.

[u/loselyconscious → u/verrma]

u. Didn’t the Tanakh also say that the Messiah is supposed to be born in Bethlehem?

David was born in Bethlehem, so since the Messiah is a descendant of David, in liturgy and poetry, the Messiah is sometimes associated with Bethlehem because of this. Most scholars agree that the reason the story of why "Jesus of Nazareth" had to born in Bethlehem was to create this association with David