&Omega. JEWS FOR JESUS. One point I hope to make with this web-log is that theology is as interesting and intellectually challenging a subject as politics or economics. I don't know the religious affiliations of any but one of the Volokh Conspiracy folks, and I may not be up to date on the one exception, but that web-log is proving my point. Not only was there the interesting topic of whether Christians should object to Hindus as schoolteachers even more than to homosexuals, but the more recent thread of what status others Jews should give Jews who convert to Christianity while retaining Jewish customs. For a fascinating discussion, see David Bernstein and Eugene Volokh here and here. Professor Volokh says he has gotten more than the usual amount of email on this topic, so my interest apparently is not idiosyncratic.

Here's my two cents' worth.

One of the odd things about Judaism is that modern Judaism, whether Orthodox or Reformed, is very different from Old Testament Judaism. Much Jewish law--- the use of separate dishes for milk and meat, for example--- is not in the Bible except by a real stretch of interpretation (from "thou shalt not boil a kid in it's mother's milk"). On the other hand, much of Leviticus is devoted to animal sacrifices, which modern Judaism avoids completely.
The origin of this lies in the Roman destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the 1st Century. This led to a contradiction of two rules: (a) sacrifice for your sins, and (b) don't sacrifice anywhere but with a priest in Jerusalem (there actually had already been a problem with this because of the Diaspora-- a Jew in Babylon or Rome couldn't really sacrifice properly). There were two big responses within Judaism. First, there was Rabbinical Judaism--- what became modern Orthodox Judaism. Various rabbis in the tradition of the Pharisees wrote the Talmud, replacing the sacrificial rules with other rules that did not require the Temple. Second, there was Christianity. Christians said that Jesus had made the Temple and the Law obsolete by His sacrifice in the Crucifixion (interestingly, Paul calls himself a Pharisee, and Jesus is certainly closer to the Pharisees than to the Sadducees despite his criticisms of them). Both responses thrived, though Christianity did better. It is an interesting historical question as to which of the two attracted more of the Jews in the world. Christianity, however, was a sort of Judaism for Gentiles, and so had a wider audience generally. Even before Jesus, many Gentiles were attracted to Judaism, but could not become full members because of their ethnicity; Christianity allowed them full membership.
There was a third way possible: to reject Jesus, but also reject the Talmud and just stick with the Old Testament. I think this is what the Karaite Jews did-- an obscure group, but one which apparently survives and which produced the enormously important medieval scholars who put vowel points in the Old Testament and gave us the standard Hebrew versions of it (we have older Greek translations, and the Dead Sea Scrolls in Hebrew, but the standard Hebrew manuscripts before the Dead Sea Scrolls are Karaite ones, if I remember rightly).
The early Christian church did lots of thinking about the status of Jews versus Gentiles. By now, the percentage of Jews in the Christian Church is trivial, but in the 1st Century it certainly was not. The New Testament clearly tells us that it was decided that Gentile Christians need not obey the Torah; it is less clear as to whether, for example, Jewish Christians ought to circumcize their boy babies. Some relevant passages:
Galatians 2:14-16 (1952 Revised Standard Version) But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, "If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?" We ourselves, who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet who know that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law, because by works of the law shall no one be justified.
Romans 2: 29-3:3. He is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal. His praise is not from men but from God. Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews are entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?
Finally, we get to Jews for Jesus. I don't know much about them, but my impression is that they act in the spirit of the Romans 2 passage above-- anybody can be Christian, but there is something special about a Jewish Christian. If they want to be orthodox Christians, they can't say that anyone, Jewish or not, gets salvation by obeying the Torah. But they can perhaps say that it pleases God if Jews don't eat pork, even though He doesn't care if Gentiles do. Also, it seems they like the Talmudic customs and eating matzo crackers and using Yiddish phrases, but that is really a side issue. Christianity has nothing against particular cultural customs, so if Ashkenazi Jewish Christians want to eat gefilte fish and African Christians want to dance in church, that's not very important, as long as they don't think the cultural customs are a core part of their religion.
A hypothetical. Suppose someone is born of Jewish parents, and keeps the law of Orthodox Judaism in all particulars, except that he openly declares himself an atheist. Is that person Jewish? I suppose the answer depends on what use we are making of his Jewishness or lack thereof.

Note, too, that like politics and economics, theology can be a stimulating intellectual pursuit even if you don't accept the premises of the argument. Thus, Professor Volokh can argue that evangelical Christians, on their premises, ought to worry as much about Hindu teachers as homosexual ones; and I can argue about what Jews, on their premises, ought to think of Christians. In principle, an atheist can make a perfectly good theologian, if he applies himself to the subject, just as I could be a darn good astrologer if I wanted. The danger for the clever Christian is that he may mistake his own skill at theology for something God values; his skill won't help him in the end any more than it helps the atheist.

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