Many years ago, I did some learning and much work with Rabbi Michael Skobac, co-founder of  the wonderful Jews For Judaism organization. We collaborated on countering deceptive missionary tactics and educating young and vulnerable members of our community to immunize themselves against this age old challenge. 

One of the things Rabbi Skobac talked about was the intersection at times in our history of missionizing with Jew-hatred. In one of our discussions, he put it this way, as I recall: “The missionary wants to bring the idea of a redemptive messiah to the world, but in the Jewish people he finds the subject matter experts, who received the revelation of Sinai, established the Davidic dynasty, and introduced the very concept of the messiah to the world. It is presumptive and also frustrating for the evangelist to tell a Jew that everything they know and learned from their prophets, sages, and ancestors is wrong. It’s a really hard sell.” 

A longer discussion about the way in which the Christian-Jewish relationship has evolved is warranted. Today I write to try to understand how the Jewish idea of the messianic impulse forms a large part of how our community, blessed to be a part of the American mosaic, perceives the ebb and flow of our experience here, and what it has to say about America as we celebrate 250 years of liberty and independence. 

There is a Jewish lens through which we understand our experiences, whether we sat in our Bubbe’s kitchen as she made rugelach and sang about redemption, or we sat in a yeshiva and pondered the intricacies of Jewish law. Both of these and so many other paradigms........

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