Good Morning Everyone,

This morning at synagogue at Breakfast Club after morning prayers, we held a discussion of the differences between how Christians understand as the Messiah and how Jews view the Messiah.  Goodness, what a list and with such deep differences. 

I found that language was a core problem.  Defining terms shared by both faith traditions was an absolute must otherwise people could be greatly mistaken thinking that they had actually been understood when they had not. Moreover, the list on the Christian side was essentially unverifiable, verses the complete verifiability of the Jewish notion.

Take the notion of "savior" for example.  In Christianity, the term addresses a personal savior from sin and eventual (if not immediate) redemption by God.  In Judaism, the term has no otherworldly connotations, nor is it personal.  A messiah is a savior of the whole nation.  Moreover, savior means nothing more than a person who stops war, poverty, and other forms of human suffering.  One cannot verify that one is "saved" in the Christian sense.  One can, however, verify if poverty and war have ceased. So, from our POV, we were much more pragmatic.

Our resident fundamentalist was a great help in our understanding of a Christian view, although we do have one other Christian who attends on a regular basis (he is from a small Christian church that seems to be somewhat panentheistic in its POV.  So there was some divergence of Christian perspective.  In our group we have  one neo-Orthodoxer, a few Conservatives, and two Reconstructionists, but most of us are Reform.  So, the discussion was lively and very interesting. 

In the end, we decided that a Messiah was crucial to Christians but not to Jews.  They should keep theirs and we will continue to work with God to make the world a place the Messiah would wish to come.

Be well.