In Search of Jewish Identity Ruth Rosen

Noriega is a busy street in the Sunset District of San Francisco, so I was pleased to find a parking

spot quite near the shop where I buy coffee. As I slowed the car, I immediately noticed a bubbe

(grandmother) standing on the curb. She watched as I pulled into the parking spot. As I got out of

the car, I smiled and said hello.

“Oy,” she replied, as though we were well acquainted. “I have been waiting an hour and a half

for the bus.” She proceeded to tell me how much her feet hurt and after a few minutes of

conversation, I offered to drive her home. She thanked me and smiled with great satisfaction. I

wore no star of David, nor any other Jewish symbol, yet somehow that bubbe had recognized me

as a Jew, just as I’d recognized her.

I helped her into my car and introduced myself. Upon hearing my name, Ruth Rosen, the

satisfied smile reappeared. “You are Jewish?” she asked, as a mere formality, and confided that

she, too, was Jewish. As we drove, she told me that she was from Germany and had lost her

whole family, all her relatives, to the Nazis. She told me quietly, matter of factly, knowing that I

would understand. When she asked me about myself, I had the opportunity to explain my belief

in Jesus. The bubbe seemed chagrined, but not angry. We arrived at her apartment, exchanged

phone numbers, and I watched her disappear through the door.

***

Handing out gospel tracts on a crowded street corner clad in a Jews for Jesus T-shirt makes one

into a kind of human lightening rod. Yet many people have found our tracts a step along their

path to salvation, so we continue this form of evangelism. As I was doing just that, a bubbe

approached me, her features darkened and distorted by a scowl. I smiled and offered her a tract.

She threw it back at me and told me I ought to be ashamed of myself. Though she was small of

stature, she seemed to increase in volume (visually as well as audibly!) as she launched into a

tirade. My T-shirt was a lie, she said, and I was not a Jew. She pulled up her sleeve to reveal a

tattooed number which immediately identified her as a camp survivor. She screamed at me about

what the Nazis did as though I didn’t know, yet as though I were somehow to blame for the

Holocaust. I could not engage or calm her down. After a few more expletives, she spat on the

sidewalk and I watched her disappear into the crowd.

***

Both these stories are true and represent countless similar experiences. Please note that each of

these bubbes demonstrated in her own way that she was talking to a fellow Jew. Bubbe number

one needed something from a stranger and felt more comfortable asking a Jew, trusting that a

landsman (countryman or fellow Jew) would care for her in a way that she might not expect of

others. She was not only getting the ride she needed, but giving a nice Jewish girl the opportunity

to do a mitzvah (good deed).

Bubbe number two was far less direct in her recognition of my Jewishness. Yet she would never

have stood in the street screaming about the Holocaust to a gentile whom she’d never met.

Further, the pronouncement “You are not a Jew” was a punishment. The only person who would

receive it as such is, in fact, a Jew. The very anger with which Jewish people denounce us is

proof that deep down, they recognize us as Jews. What would be the sense in denouncing a

gentile as a non-Jew?

What has this to do with a Jewish believer’s search for Jewish identity? We Jewish believers

know that we are Jewish, and, at the most basic level, our fellow Jews know it as well. Being

Jewish is a matter of birth and of fact. Most of us are glad that we are Jews; nevertheless, the fact

of our Jewishness was not a matter of choice. On the other hand, we do have choices as to how

we express our identity and we also have choices as to how we respond to the policy of some

unbelieving Jewish people who want to deny our identity.

The politics of denial

Some Jewish believers experience an identity crisis because they feel a need to have their

identity validated by those who are committed to denying it. Yet the denial is understandable for

several reasons.

First, there are questions and conflicts regarding Jewish identity among diaspora Jews who do

not believe in Jesus. There is nothing even close to a unanimous answer to the question of who is

a Jew. Perhaps for that very reason, people seize on one agreed-upon factor to determine who is

not a Jew, namely anyone who believes in Jesus as the risen Messiah. The statement “You can’t

be Jewish and believe in Jesus” is somehow affirming and reassuring to Jews who don’t believe.

It affirms who they are without requiring much by way of a commitment, for the commitment is

to unbelief, not to belief. If members of the unbelieving Jewish community want to define

themselves by what they are not, and if we are what they are not (i.e., believers in Jesus), they

must deny our Jewish identity in order to maintain their own.

It is important to see that the denial of the Jewish believer’s identity is a political policy. It is not

personal. And there is more at stake than preserving the identity of a Jewish community whose

members are not unified by a common underlying faith. There is also a matter of authority.

We are not to be accepted as having a legitimate Jewish identity because we are seen as a threat

to the Jewish community. Our isolation is a preventative measure. Jews who accept the Messiah

Jesus as teacher and authority cannot submit to the authority of the rabbis, no matter how much

we might respect or admire certain ones. How can we be regarded as anything other than a threat

when we not only look to Jesus as our authority, but encourage others to do so as well?

Though the official stance of the Jewish community is that we are no longer Jews, on a personal

and individual basis those who take the time to know us and those with whom we have a

relationship usually do not deny that we are Jews. However, out of loyalty to the community and

its leaders, they sometimes feel obligated to at least give lip-service to the party line.

One of the keys to a Jewish believer’s identity is to accept rejection, to recognize denial for what

it is, and to refuse to base one’s own identity on the acceptance of other people.

Can you identify with people who don’t identify with you, who reject you and want nothing to

do with you? Certainly. Jesus did. To love our people and to count ourselves as belonging to

them when they count us as traitors is the ultimate test of love ... not only love for our fellow

Jews, but also for the Lord who still counts the Jewish people as his own.

The promise of identity versus the process of identification

The promise

According to Scripture, the Jewish people exist by virtue of a promise that God made to

Abraham (Gen 12:1-3; 13:15-16; 15:4, 5). Biblically, a Jew is a Jew because of promises which

God made concerning Abraham’s descendants, promises that were reiterated to Isaac (Gen 26:2-

5, 24) and again to Jacob (Gen 28:13-15).

A person is not Jewish according to a litmus test determined by a Jewish majority. We are part of

a people whom God called into existence according to his promises. No person or people can

revoke God’s promises.

The process

In a book entitled The Mask Jews Wear, author Eugene Borowitz wrote: “A man is less

something given or arrived at, than something continually in the process of becoming.”1 This

viewpoint is common among Jewish leaders and theologians. The Jewish question is not so much

“Who is a Jew,” but “How am I to live Jewishly?” This existential view is certainly relevant to

believers in Jesus. We know that we are to be transformed into the image of Christ. On the one

hand, this transformation will be completely achieved by supernatural means beyond our power

or understanding (1 John 3:2). On the other hand, we are commanded to be transformed through

the renewing of our minds (Rom 12:2). The latter implies that we must make choices to be like

Jesus, choices to be non-conformists to the world’s standards. Every day, the Christian faces

choices of identification: making a stand to be like Jesus or choosing to conform to the world’s

standards.

Jews who are Christians are no different in that we are daily challenged to identify with our

Messiah, Jesus. But we are also challenged to identify as Jews. And here is where our choices are

not as clear cut.

The process of “living Jewishly” might be seen in two ways: through separation and through

affiliation.

Part of being Jewish has to do with being recognizably separate. However, as Jewish believers in

Jesus we are told that God has united us with gentiles in Christ: “For we were all baptized by one

Spirit into one body – whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free – and we were all given the one

Spirit to drink” (1 Cor 12:13).

How can we be united with gentile Christians and still maintain a distinct identity as Jews? How

can we be separate without being separatists, without compromising the unity that is to be a

hallmark of Jesus’ disciples?

Well, the Jewish people have always had antisemites to “help” keep us a separate people, and the

same can be said for Jewish believers in Jesus. Those who hate Jews do not care one whit

whether or not we believe in Jesus. Just as Jews who do not believe in Jesus find their identity

reinforced through persecution so, too, do we Jewish believers. In his book, When Being Jewish

Was a Crime, Rachmiel Frydland wrote of his own experiences as a Jewish believer in Nazi-

occupied Poland, of his many beatings, brushes with death, and of the tragic deaths of many

Jewish Christians he knew and loved, including his first wife.2

The facts of antisemitism have not changed to this day. For every Jewish bubbe who passes by a

Jews for Jesus missionary shouting, “You’re no Jew” there is a non-Jew who will also pass by

and mutter “Dirty Jew” or “Christ killer.” There’s not one of us who hasn’t experienced some

degree of antisemitism, and for our missionaries in Moscow and Odessa the epithets are

sometimes accompanied by acts of physical violence or police harassment ... not because we

believe in Jesus, but simply because we are Jews.

As long as we make known the fact that we are Jews, as long as we stand up for our people, as

long as we take exception to antisemitic remarks we may overhear in the workplace or in a social

setting, we participate in the process of identifying with our people.

However, the process of identification cannot be meaningful if it is only a matter of separation.

There must also be affiliation. This is a challenge for the Jewish believer in Jesus, because the

majority of the Jewish community holds a policy of non-affiliation towards us. We must

recognize that actions we take to show loyalty and affiliation with our people might go

unreciprocated and unappreciated, and that some will even attach sinister motives to them.

Instead of being hurt and angry, it is helpful for us to remember the politics of denial. Our

choices to live out our Jewishness will be meaningful to us. They will probably be meaningful to

unbelieving family and friends. But it is highly unlikely that we will ever be accepted as Jews by

Jewish community leaders.

We should continue to identify as Jews in ways which are meaningful to us regardless of how we

are perceived by others. But there is a natural desire for fellowship with other Jews, to be with

those who recognize that we are part of the people to which they belong. That is why Jewish

believers often seek to affiliate with one another. We need each other, and although we do not

always agree on the process of identification, we can at least identify one another as fellow-

partakers in God’s promises to Abraham.

Whether we seek to identify as Jews through life-cycle ceremonies (circumcision, bar mitzvah,

wedding, or funeral), family life (holidays, prayers, etc.), social activities (Jewish concerts,

lectures, folk dancing, etc.), or just by keeping informed through Jewish periodicals, each Jewish

believer in Jesus must decide for him or herself the way he or she will live Jewishly. No matter

what we decide, our own people will see us as outsiders, at least officially. There is no unanimity

among Jewish believers as to how we should live Jewishly. Let each one be persuaded in his own

mind as to what God would have us do regarding such matters as what to eat and what days to

observe (Rom 14:2-7).

Jewish believers need to find areas of commonality despite the fact that we vary widely in our

ideas of how to identify as Jews. We also need our gentile brothers and sisters in Christ to

understand and encourage our identity as Jews and to encourage our fellowship with one another.

In closing, the search for Jewish identity can be as simple as searching through the promises

recorded in the book of Genesis. The search for meaningful ways to express that identity must be

a careful and prayerful one. The pursuit for acceptance by our unbelieving Jewish brethren,

however, can be disappointing at best and dangerous to our spiritual well-being at worst. It is

important to understand the politics of denial, and to be willing to be denied for the sake of our

Messiah, even as he was willing to be denied out of love for us and obedience to his heavenly

father.

NOTES

1

E. Borowitz, The Mask Jews Wear (Port Washington, New York: Sh’ma, 1973), 12.

2

R. Frydland, When Being Jewish Was a Crime (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1978).