Personal identity is a major part of our self-concept. The latter being the sum total of our individual feelings and thoughts about ourselves as physical, moral, social and existential beings. Personal identity is about meaning. It answers such questions as "Who or what am I?". In reality we are all committed to a number of different identities. It is these that relate us to particular social settings. Our various identities impose a hierarchical structure on our self-concept; some identities being clearly more important than others. Identity also embraces our sense of personal continuity in space and time.
The importance we each attribute to a particular identity varies considerably. A recent survey of Jews in the USA, for example, found that 25% of them did not regard themselves as Jews. Social circumstance also plays an important role. In Germany under Nazi "race" legislation, many people who had virtually ceased to think of themselves as Jews suddenly felt "Jewish" again. They had found a renewed Jewish identity in spite of themselves and sometimes in contradiction to their own self-concept.
So the extent and nature of a person's Jewish identity expresses his or her self-perceived "Jewishness". This highly subjective product of inner reflection is the difference between a committed "Jew" and someone, who although Jewish according to Halachah (Jewish law), does not identify with Jewish peoplehood.
Self-evaluation is the other major aspect of our self-concept. This might be directed at a single identity or at our total self. It is broadly based on two criteria, a sense of self-competence and a sense of moral worth or virtue.
So what of the Christian convert from Judaism who despite everything retains a strong sense of Jewish identity? According to the general perspective of the Jewish community, such a person is a "bad Jew". This is expressed in Halachah by describing him or her as a heretic and an apostate.
More seriously, the convert, by attempting to identify as both a "Jew" and a Christian at the same time, can find him or herself committed to two incompatible identities. Self-competence in the role demanded by the needs and standards of the Jewish identity is automatically negated by a corresponding incompetence in the role demanded by his or her Christian identity and vice versa.
The moral worth or virtue of the convert is also brought into doubt as roles and perspectives oscillate between conflicting identities. If the convert wishes to retain his or her Jewish identity and be a Christian at the same time, the problem can only be resolved by embracing both identities in a way that he or she finds morally acceptable. To ensure a corresponding sense of competence, the demands and expectations of Judaism, Christianity and their respective communities, must somehow be melded together.
Self-concept is not just a passive construct, but it is also a powerful source of self-motivation. One motive believed by some scientists to be of great importance is that of self-consistency.
This refers firstly to the need for a consistent unity in ones overall self-concept. Most of us like to think that as persons we are a "seamless" unity without any serious contradictions. We also like to feel that we act consistently with the values and standards of the various identities to which we are committed. No one likes to think that he or she is a hypocrite. Is it this powerful need for self-consistency that motivates a minority of Christian converts from Judaism to publicly identify themselves as a "Messianic or Christian Jews".
Although reliable statistics are notoriously difficult to obtain, it should be noted that it is widely thought that most Christian converts from Judaism do not publicly identify as "Messianic/Christian Jews". For example exclusive affiliation with "Messianic" congregations was found to be slightly more popular with so called "non-Jewish Christians" than with Christian converts from Judaism in certain regions of the USA. In addition, the great majority (see below) of Christian converts from Judaism affiliated exclusively with mainstream churches.
Thus 10% of converts and 11% of "non-Jewish Christians" "intermarried" and surveyed in the USA affiliated exclusively with "Messianic" congregations. In the same population, 7% of converts and 5% of "non-Jewish Christians" affiliated with both mainstream (mostly Protestant) churches and "Messianic" congregations. Presumably this means that some 73% of Christian converts from Judaism in the same population affiliated exclusively with mainstream churches.
These statistics are not necessarily valid for the entire US population. They are based on my reworking of data in: Kohut, M.W, "Jewish gentile intermarriage," Report on the Fourth International Conference of the Lausanne Consultation on Jewish Evangelism, Zeist, Holland (1991) pp. 163-177.
So what is it about the concept "Jew" that enables a minority of converts to adopt the title "Messianic/Christian Jew"? What also enables them to justify this title sufficiently well to convince other converts to join them in formal associations? What is the true nature of the "Jew" in "Messianic Jew"?
Let us start by taking two examples from many of the nature of "Messianic Jewish" identity. Mr. W. Riggans, an experienced missionary to the Jews, devoted a section of his 1991 Birmingham University doctoral thesis to discussing definitions of "Jewishness". He noted (p. 315) that most Christian converts from Judaism rely on a "biological/racial" definition of their "Jewishness". He also quoted (p. 379) the eighth article of faith of the "Beth Messiah Synagogue" (a member of the "International Messianic Jewish Alliance" (1) a UK based Christian mission to the Jews) thus,
"Jews according to the flesh (descendants of Abraham through Isaac, whether through the blood line of the mother or of the father) who place their faith in Israel's Messiah, Yeshua (Jesus Christ - my comment) ... remain sons and daughters of Israel."
From these two brief quotations alone it is clear that the self- perceived "Jewishness" of many "Messianic Jews" is racial. In other words, their "Jewishness" is validated by reference to the "Jewish race" of social "race" mythology and not by any Jewish cultural or halachic standard.
An unanswered question is the extent to which this is self-generated racism, as opposed to a sympathetic response to peer pressure expressed through missionary propaganda. Personal identity is not only a matter of inner reflection, it is also moulded by social forces in the convert's own immediate environment.
Social assumptions are made about a person's group identity working from visual and other clues. One set of such clues concerns the individual's personal biological history and physical appearance. Individuals are often still grouped according to these criteria into so called "races".
An important point to note is that it is not the actual biological or physical significance of certain human characteristics that matters in the assignation of individuals to "races", but what those characteristics symbolise for the individual or an observer. To make this point clear, consider a commonly thought characteristic of "race", namely, skin colour.
Skin colour has long been abandoned as a reliable indicator of "race" by critical thinkers. It can be shown, especially by using scientific instrumentation, that human skin tones form a smooth gradient from one extreme to the other. It is only by comparing tones from widely spaced positions on this gradient that the fiction of the "coloured races" can be maintained. Any division of humanity into "races" on the grounds of skin colour is unscientific and purely arbitrary.
The division of the UK or US population into "black" and "white races" is accomplished only because "skin colour" has acquired a symbolic meaning in social mythology divorced from its biological function. To be fair, what today has only symbolic value, was thought to be based on good science, even by many reputable academics, as late as the early 20th century. Yesterday's respectable science is today's social myth.
So what chance will a convert from Judaism have of resisting the pressure to conform to the "Messianic Jew" concept once his or her personal history is known? In those circumstances, a Christian convert from Judaism would no doubt have about the same chance of being labelled a "Messianic Jew" as s/he would have had of being labelled a "non-Aryan Christian" in Nazi Germany (2).
Interpretation has been the virtually inseparable companion of "race" since its inception. The first recorded use of "race" in the English language, of which I am aware, dates to an Elizabethan poem. At various times "race" has been thought to determine many things ranging from a person's ability to make moral choices to his or her propensity for civilisation and culture. More fundamental, is the notion that the members of a "race" each embody some characteristic "ultimate essence". Hitler expressed this idea in "Mein Kampf" (p. 312) thus:
"In his new language (the Jew - my comment) will express the old ideas; his inner nature has not changed... the Jew... can speak a thousand languages and nevertheless remains a Jew. His traits of character have remained the same.... It is always the same Jew."
It is this classification of human beings into "races" on the grounds of the social symbolism of real or supposed physical characteristics, combined with the notion or claim that the members of such "races" share some ultimate essence, that transcends even historical and cultural boundaries, that I understand as racism. In its various forms, it constitutes the doctrine or ideology that drives and justifies those antisocial practises that civilised people condemn as "racially" motivated.
The Jews, as an easily distinguishable community, have long been considered by some "authorities" to constitute a "race" (even though they have never claimed this of themselves). Modern science however has repudiated this error. Currently much of the support for the "Jewish race" myth comes from certain members of the conservative and evangelical denominations of Christianity. They interpret passages from the Hebrew Bible such as Deut. Ch.7: 6-7 in support of their racism. The important question is, however, why do they do it? From my own observations I would suggest two overriding reasons, one theological and the other to do with life in a post-colonial world.
Theologically, many Christians appear to believe that if a Jew ceases to be a Jew by converting to Christianity it implies that there is something wrong with Christianity. Put simply, conservative Christianity sees itself as the sole heir to biblical Judaism. This is sometimes expressed by claiming that Christianity is "Messianic Judaism" (i.e. biblical Judaism that correctly identified the Messiah of Israel in Jesus of Nazereth) Yet plainly, modern Judaism and modern Christianity are two very different religions. If the modern Christian convert from Judaism is thus to be seen as equivalent to the "Messianic Jew" of primitive "Christianity" the required "continuity" can only be in "the flesh". Only in this way does the convert reinforce conservative Christianity's claim to represent exclusive biblical truth. Is it this driving theological need that motivates some conservative Christians to adopt racism? In my experience, many of them are "race"-thinkers and thus might readily adopt the "race" option as it is already a part of their personal ideology.
Missionaries have often been accused of genocide since the end of the Second World War. This has led to great efforts on their part to accommodate their beliefs to the cultures of their target communities. This tactic (called "contextualisation") is aimed in part at offsetting the charge that missionaries export and thus impose their own native culture along with their religion. This tactic has also been applied to the Jews (even in countries like the UK where there is often little real cultural difference to speak of between Jews and non-Jews). This has led in recent years to the establishment of church-style "Messianic Jewish" synagogues and the plundering of Jewish liturgy. The underlying assumption appears to be that the Jews are a "race", the religious members of which just happen to have practised a religion called Judaism for a number of centuries. It is now the oft repeated claim of missionaries that Judaism and "Jewishness" must be seen as separate. The old racist claim that one's culture is determined by one's "race" is often as in evidence.
So are we seeing, in the "Messianic/Christian Jew", a symbiosis between a minority of Christian converts from Judaism in search of a resolution to the inner self-contradictions generated by their conversion and "race"-minded missionaries seeking a new angle on Jewish mission that is more palatable to their critics? Lost souls in a common cause.
References
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