In Jewish religious law, it is technically impossible for a Jew (born to a Jewish mother or properly converted to Judaism) to change his religion. Even though a Jew undergoes the rites of admission to another religious faith and formally renounces the Jewish religion he remains - as far as the halakhah is concerned - a Jew, albeit a sinner (Sanh. 44a). According to Nahmanides this attitude derives from the fact that the covenent between God and Israel was made "with him that standeth here with us today before the Lord our God and also with him that is not with us here today" (Deut 29.14; Nahmanides ad loc.). For the born Jew, Judaism is not a matter of choice and for the proselyte it ceases to be one once he has converted. However, persons who did assume another religion or formally renounced Judaism are treated differently by Jewish law from Jews who, even while sinning, have not taken such actions. These people are known in the Halakhah as mumar (from the root meaning "to change"), or meshummad (from the root meaning "to persecute or force abandonment of faith"), or apikoros ("heretic"), or kofer ("denier"), or poshe'a Yisrael ("rebellious Jew"). So even though a mumar (and that's what a Jew for Jesus is) is still Jewish, the question remains - "how Jewish"?
If for example, a Jew for Jesus celebrated a marriage according to the tenets of their Christian faith, (for even through they say they are not Christians, they most certainly are, because they believe just as do all evangelical Christians). What 'born again" Christian is there who would not worship and take into fellowship a Jew for Jesus? If therefore their marriage was performed according to their new found beliefs they are not married in the eyes of Judaism and therefore need no divorce. Either one of them, could contract another marriage without first divorcing their partner because they are not considered married by Jewish law.
The child of a Jew for Jesus is not to be given a brit milah. It cannot be brought into the covenant of Abraham even though it is a Jewish child.
A Jewish woman who becomes a Jew for Jesus is suspected as transgressing all the commandments of the Torah, including adultery, she therefore becomes prohibited to her husband, and as a married woman, prohibited to any other man. The observant husband of a Jew for Jesus would have to put her away. She could not be trusted with kashrut, or with the laws of nidah and because of her beliefs she is as I just mentioned suspected even of adultery. Normally, a divorce does not take effect until the 'get' has been delivered to the wife in person, but in the case of a Jew for Jesus who is married to an observant Jew, the divorce comes into effect the moment it is written meaning "one may confer it without the other party's knowledge or consent" ( Sh Ar EH 140:5).
A Jew for Jesus cannot be a witness in a Jewish Court of Law because the testimony of an apostate is considered to be unreliable since he disavows the whole of Torah and is therefore liable to be untruthful, even though he is still a Jew from the point of view of his personal status.
In strict law, a son is heir to his father by the fact of kinship (Num 27.8). However, the Jew for Jesus having sinned, the court is authorized to penalize him, excluding him from his father's inheritance (Kid 18a Piskei ha- Rosh to kid 22).
The death of a Jew for Jesus cannot be mourned by his family. No one sits shiva for him and he may only be buried near the fence, the perimeter of a Jewish cemetery.
How Jewish is a Jew for Jesus when no other Jew is allowed to eat his bread or drink his wine? How Jewish is a Jew for Jesus when he is forbidden to be called up to the reading of the Torah? How Jewish is he when he is not even allowed to handle a Sefer Torah in a synagogue? How Jewish is he when we learn that if he wrote a Torah Scroll, a mezuzah or tefillin these items should be destroyed? The name of God written by a Jew for Jesus has no kedusha. It can be erased and destroyed. How Jewish is he when he cannot be counted into a minyan and pray with fellow Jews?
A Jewish atheist has full rights in the synagogue, a Jew who has intermarried has full rights, a forced convert to another religion has full rights as we know from the Kol Nidra prayer, all these remain with and are included in the totality of Israel. But a Jew who gladly and willingly without force embraces the Christ deity, or Allah or Krishna, such a one is cut off from his people. To such we say, "You have no part in Israel, no portion in Jacob".
Jews for Jesus must be told the seriousness of their sin and its consequences. Maimonides in his Mishne Torah states:
"One may not make a covenant with the "seven nations" to make peace with them in order to let them worship their idols undisturbed... they must either repent or be killed and we may not pity them. If one of them is drowning ... we are forbidden to save him. However to kill them outright is forbidden since they do not war with us. However, all this is concerning the "seven nations" only; the betrayers and "apikorsim" of the Jewish Nation are to be destroyed with positive action and they are to be thrown into bottomless pits because they harm the Jewish Nation and force the people to leave God".
The point intended in the quoting of this lengthy passage from Maimonides is to show how the Torah's attitude is much harsher toward Jewish non-believers than it is even toward the seven nations and certainly toward other non-Jews, who are in no way marked for any harm.
In addition to this there is, as the quote from Maimonides made clear, a law which orders loyal Jews to kill these types of people if at all possible. Though this law was declared by a fairly recent leading Torah-scholar, the Chazon Ish, to be non-applicable today, it remains valuable for the light it sheds on the way Orthodox Judaism regards Jewish non-believers. The correct interpretation of this attitude was once explained by a great leader of Torah-Jews who said that these people are not so much meant to be hated as enemies and wished dead for the sake of "revenge" or to see them dead. The way we hate such people is not like the "cat hates the mouse", but rather like the "storekeeper hates the vermin" which infest his store, not hating the vermin themselves but wanting them gone in order to arrest the damage they are causing. We resent their existence. So, in lieu of the fact that today we are not allowed to physically harm these people, today we should still treat them with utter contempt and disrespect, avoiding contact with them as one would with any destructive fiend."
Rambam in his work on Repentance states;
"The following have no portion in the World to Come, but are cut off and perish, and for their wickedness and sinfulness are condemned for ever and ever. Among those listed are those who deny the Torah, those who cause a multitude to sin, and those who leave the ways of the community.... He who says that there is a ruling power but that it is vested in two or more persons; he who says that there is one God, but that he is a body and has form; likewise, he who renders worship to any one besides Him, to serve as a mediator between the human being and the Lord of the Universe.... Likewise, he who denies Torah interpretations, that is, the Orah Law... he who says that the Creator changed one commandment for another, and that this Torah, although of divine origin, is now absolete, as the Nazarenes and Moslems assert. Everyone belonging to any of these classes is a denier of the Torah.
A person who separates himself from the Community, even if he does not commit a transgression but only holds aloof from the congregation of Israel, does not fulfil religious precepts in common with his people, does not observe their fasts, but goes his own way, as if he were one of the Gentiles and did not belong to the Jewish people - such a person has no portion in the world to come." [All quotes come from Repentance 3]
Some may wish to object that what I am saying only applies to idol worshippers. By the later half of the 2nd century, the parting of the ways between church and synagogue had been reached. Acceptance of Christianity that had forsaken the Law was regarded by Jews as apostasy in the fullest sense. The Christian dogmas of Incarnation and Trinity gave to the acceptance of Christianity an idolatrous character (avodah zarah).
Only one privilege is left open to a Jew for Jesus. He can at any time in life make teshuva. He can return in deep contrition to his heritage and to the God of his people. Some rabbinical authorities require a symbolic act. The returnee is required to confess his sins and repent of them before three rabbis. Some authorities require ritual immersion in a mikveh.
Rambam says, "When it is said that one who commits any of these sins has no part in the world to come, the statement is to be understood as only applying to the sinner who dies unrepentant. But if he repented of his wickedness and expired while still penitent, he is of those who will have a portion in the world to come; for there is nothing that stands in the way of repentance. Even if a person throughout his life, denied the essential principle of religion and repented at the end, he will have a portion in the world to come; as it is said "Peace, peace to him that is far off and to him that is near, saith the Lord, and I will heal him" (Is 57.19). All wicked persons, transgressors, apostates and the like, who come back penitent, whether openly or secretly, are accpeted, as it is said, "Return ye backsliding children" (Jer 3.22). Even if one is still a backslider - since he only returns in secret and not openly - he is accepted if he repents.
In answer to the question, "How Jewish is a Jew for Jesus"? we have come to the conclusion that they are not very Jewish at all. They are not the kind of Jews we would want in our community. They are not the kind of Jews we would want our young Jewish people to marry. They are not Jews who speak for Israel and its religion.
Therefore who are they? What are they? They are victims of Christian love. They are Jews who sold their birthright for a bowl of Christian pottage. As Jews they felt inferior to their Christian friends in a predominently Christian environment. They were ashamed to be Jewish so they looked for identity and acceptance among the goyim. They are fully baptised Christians only in name are they different. They love it when other Jews join their ranks and so they spread their poison throughout the Jewish community.
Another unsavory aspect of a Jewish apostate is how he quickly joins the ranks of the anti-Semites. Prominent among the apostates who deliberately set out to attack Judaism were Nicholas Donin in France, Pablo Christiani, and Hieronymus de Sancta Fide (Joshua Lorki) in Spain, and Petrus Nigri (Schwartz) in Germany. These in the 13th to 15th centuries led the attack on Judaism in the theological disputations, preached against Judaism, and proposed coercive measures to force Jews to adopt Christianity. Other converts who achieved high rank in the church, like Pablo de santa Maria (Solomon ha-Levi), who became archbishop of Burgos, did everything in their power to combat Judaism. The most virulent representative of anti-Jewish and anti-Judaism was Abner of Burgos, who initiated the intensified persecution of the Jews in Christian Spain during the 14th and 15th centuries by formulating a complete theory which claims the necessity for, and justification of, such persecution. He advised the abolition of Jewish autonomy, arguing with vicious irony that the Messiah would not come to the Jews "until the Jews possess no authority, not even such petty authority as is exercised over them by their rabbis and communal wardens, those coarse creatures who lord it over the people like kings. They hold vain promises to them in order to keep them under constant control. Only with the elimination of these dignitaries and judges and officers will salvation come to the masses" (polemical tract, Baer, op. cit., 350). In the name of "many discerning Jews," Abner blamed the Pope and Christian monarchs for failing to oppress the Jews adequately. The conditions of salvation for the Jews would come only "when many Jewish communities are massacred and the particular generation of Jews is thereby reduced in numbers, some Jews immediately convert to the dominant Christian faith out of fear, and in that way a handful are saved ... and the pain of impoverishment will lead to an increase of shamelessness among them, that is, they will no longer be ashamed to profess the truth openly and convert to Christianity" (Baer, op. cit., 353-4). By this means this apostate tried to reinforce his own experience of Jewish weakness and convert it into a terrible reality that would force many more Jews to relinquish their faith.
Karl Marx, baptised as a child, later professed contempt for and revulsion against Judaism as the representative of Mammon.
Some deeply committed apostates like the Ratisbonne brothers in the 19th century founded special religious orders or groups for the propagation of Christianity among Jews. One of their centers can be found here in Jerusalem situated just off King George street in the center of town. According to statistics available there were about 21,000 apostates in Poland in the 18th century, and 204,500 throughout the world in the 19th.
Finally how Jewish is a Jew for Jesus here in the State of Israel in the eyes of the Supreme Court when it comes to the question of Aliya and the Law of Return?
The foregoing rules are generally followed in the interpretation of laws with reference to the question of determining the legal status of an apostate. The question of whether the term "Jew" in the "Law of Return, 1950," which entitled "every Jew" to enter Israel as an immigrant, included an apostate, or whether an apostate could be registered as being of Jewish nationality under the "Registration of Inhabitants Ordinance, No. 50 of 5709-1949" (replaced by the "Registration of Population Law, 5725-1965"), was decided in the negative by a majority opinion of the Supreme Court (sitting as the High Court of Justice, in the case of Brother Daniel; High Court Case 72/62, PD 16: 2428-55).
The case was conducted as follows with Judge Silberg answering for the majority: The judge admitted that Brother Daniel was a Jew according to halakah, but in rendering judgement stated that the Law of Return is not based on halakhah but on the Jewish national-historical consciousness and the ordindary secular meaning of the term "Jew" as understood by Jews. After referring to the "great psychological difficulty" facing the court due to the deep sympathy and sense of obligation felt for the petitioner, the spokesman for the majority stated: "I have reached the conclusion that what Brother Daniel is asking of us to do is to erase the historical and sanctified significance of the term "Jew" and to deny all the spiritual values for which our people were killed during various periods in our dispersion. For us to comply with this request would mean to dim the luster and darken the glory of the martyrs who sanctified the Holy Name in the Middle Ages to the extent of making them quite unrecognizable; it would make our history lose its unbroken continuity and our people begin counting its days from the emancipation which followed the French Revolution. A sacrifice such as this no one is entitled to ask of us, even one so meritorius as the petitioner before this court". The court stated that in order to be declared a Jew from the point of view of the modern Jewish secular conception of Jewish nationality, adherence to the Jewish religion is not essential. At the same time, apostasy to Christianity removes that person from his nationality (Jewish Encyc, Apostasy page 209-210).
In conclusion our answer to how Jewish is a Jew for Jesus is very clear. He has no part in the Jewish community, he has no part in the religion of Israel, and he has no place in the State of Israel. Our advice to such people is that they re-examine their tragic mistake, repent of their apostasy and return to their people, their heritage and the God of our fathers.
Shmuel Golding with your question and comments.
