re: #2 Vicious Babushka

I used to think so too, that they couldn’t be real “Jews,” and Messianic Judaism in the United States certainly started out “Christian” that way with the endorsement of Moody Bible Institute in the 1920s. (Dan Cohn-Sherbok’s Messianic Judaism pointed out that the first “Jewish Studies” program in an American university was at Moody and designed to educate Christian missionaries)

I just think religious identity is more complicated than either/or sometimes (or maybe I’m tired of people telling me I’m not “really” Jewish because I converted and I’m Reform), so I’m not so quick anymore to dismiss their “Jewishness” as I used to be. I think now I’d just say they’re a new religious movement (that’s been around for a few generations) with both Christian and Jewish elements rather than coming down on one side or the other.

Reading Shoshanah Feher’s ethnographic study Passing Over Easter: Constructing the Boundaries of Messianic Judaism changed how I think about Messianic Judaism… they still piss me off for sure and I find most of them offensive ,but I’m not so quick to utterly dismiss them as not “real” Jews.