For us, Jews who grew up in Israel, Jesus and His word were never part of the conversation. Not in our school system, not in our synagogues, and not in our media. Nor do we have easy access to the New Testament. Jesus has been studiously avoided, and hidden from our people. Today in Israel, 99.7% of the Jewish population, reject Jesus as the Messiah. How did our country, where the gospel first took place, come to be so adamantly against it?Within Judaism over the last two millennia, any kind of spiritual message had to go through the "gate keepers," the Orthodox Jewish Rabbis. The Rabbinic Judaism of the Orthodox comes directly from the sect of the "Pharisees," whom Jesus rebuked: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in." (Matthew 23:13)Ever since the days of Messiah, the Rabbis have set themselves in opposition to the gospel, blocking the message of Jesus from Israel. They deliberately prevent Jewish people from hearing about the free salvation offered to them in the death and resurrection of their own Jewish Messiah. They have gone to great lengths to conceal Jesus, and keep him the best kept secret in Judaism., keeping our people in spiritual darkness.But now the secret is out!After almost 2000 years, Jesus, or as we call him in Hebrew, Yeshua, can no longer be hidden from the people! Today, our ministry, ONE FOR ISRAEL, reaches Jewish and Arab Israelis exactly where they are - online. We no longer need the rabbis' permission for anything. We can go straight into the smartphones, tablets, and computers of every Israeli, sharing the saving good news of Yeshua the Messiah!In the past, the message of the gospel came to Israel from outside our borders, delivered by people who didn't understand our language, our culture, our heritage or our way of thinking. Today the messengers look very different. Now it is Jewish and Arab Israelis who are bringing the gospel back to where it started - back to our own people Israel. We can explain the gospel to our people in a way that makes sense to them, in our own native tongues of Hebrew and Arabic as only Israelis can, and help our people understand who Yeshua really is.The Orthodox rabbis in Israel operate an "anti missionary" organization called Yad L'Achim, specifically to fight against the spread of the gospel among the Jewish people. This very well-funded organization, works very closely with the Minister of Interior in the Israeli government. They seek to prevent Jewish people from leaving the confines of Rabbinic Judaism by any means necessary (not always legally), and relentlessly persecute us, the Jewish believers in Jesus in Israel. With over 90% of the names, photos and addresses of all the Messianic Jews in Israel on file, Yad L'Achim began sending a magazine called "Searching" to the homes of believers in Israel back in 2014. The magazine contains objections and refutations from Orthodox rabbis about the messiahship of Jesus, the credibility of the New Testament, and trying to ridicule and destroy the belief in Jesus. This caused several Jewish believers, even including some who had been missionaries, to deny their faith in Jesus and revert to rabbinic Judaism. Over the past five years, I decided to go over all of their magazines, books and videos, in order to answer their arguments and prove their objections false. Since 2015 we have released about 150 short videos where we share the gospel and directly refute these rabbinic objections to Jesus, New Testament and Christianity. This book is a compilation of transcripts from these videos, all in one place for your consideration. While the content of this book is based on five years of academic research, I did my best to write it in a simple, easy-to-read way, in order to keep this book as short as possible.Please SHARE links to this book!: )
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Refuting Rabbinic Objections by Etian Bar
I read this book as part of a dialogue I am internally constructing between Rabbi Tovia Singer's YouTube episodes and potential respondents. Rabbi Singer is an articulate and knowledgeable defender of the proposition that Christianity is an invented faith that is leading Christians to damnation because of their idolatrous worship of a mere man. Singer has a knack for arguing that Christianity's originators twisted and misrepresented the Jewish scriptures.
A little study will show that Rabbi Singer is erring in refusing to acknowledge that the early Christians, such as St. Paul and the Gospel writers were quoting the Greek version of a non-Masoretic text (aka the “Septuagint) verbatim. Singer refuses to acknowledge the so-called Septuagint as being anything other than a bad translation of the Masoretic text, when in fact (a) the Masoretic text reflects a post-Christian development and (b) the Septuagint (so-called) actually reflects an earlier textual tradition confirmed in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Elsewhere, however, Rabbi Singer scores some points, so I thought I would examine a response to such objections. In this case, the author is an Israeli Messianic Jew named Eitan Bar. Bar categorizes the objections and provides a response, largely from rabbinical sources in the Talmud. His answers are very informative. For example, Rabbi Singer had mentioned Messiah son of Joseph a few times to discount the importance of that “messiah.” Bar's citation of Rabbinical sources indicates that there is far more to the concept - which I was unfamiliar with - than Singer permits.
Bar explains:
“As you could probably guess, Rabbinic Yeshivahs don't exactly teach about Zechariah or his prophecies. Attempts have been made to interpret it in various ways, but the problem for contemporary rabbis is that the Sages of Early Judaism always interpreted Zechariah 12 the same way as today's Messianic Jews: As a prophecy about the Messiah who is to be pierced to death! One of the ancient interpretations in the Talmud explains that the prophecy in Zechariah 12 means that the Messiah, son of Joseph, must die. He is, according to ancient Jewish tradition, the tormented and suffering Messiah. If so, why is it such a surprise when the New Testament attributes this verse to Jesus? ... the Messiah who suffered and died upon the cross for their sins. The Babylonian Talmud says: “One holds that it was for the Messiah the son of Joseph who was killed, as written in Zechariah 12: When they look on me, whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child” (Tractate Sukkah, Chapter 5).
Bar, Eitan. Refuting Rabbinic Objections to Christianity & Messianic Prophecies (p. 34). ONE FOR ISRAEL Ministry. Kindle Edition.
Likewise the fraught claim about “alma” and virgin is enlightened by rabbinical commentary as follows:
“The Jewish biblical scholar Dr. Fruchtenbaum writes that the rabbis quote Rashi as someone who interprets the word ‘alma' as a ‘young woman,' and concedes that so does Rashi consider the word in Isaiah 7:14 to refer to a young woman rather than a virgin. However, Fruchtenbaum points out that it's easy to understand why Rashi would take a different position in this particular case: he was involved in polemical debates against Christians, and therefore he took an opposite position to the one which had been accepted up until his time in order to try and disprove Jesus' messiahship. In fact, he took a different position to the one that he himself held in a different case – Rashi didn't always interpret the word ‘alma' as a ‘young woman'. This word also appears in the Song of Songs and in these verses he interpreted ‘alma' as a ‘virgin'. Moreover, Rashi himself indicated that other Jewish scholars producing Biblical commentary in his time also interpreted the word ‘alma' in Isaiah 7:14 as a ‘virgin'. And it is important to note that the ancient Jewish Sages also held the belief that the Messiah wouldn't have a biological father. Here is what they taught – “The redeemer whom I shall raise up from among you, will have no father”
(Genesis Rabbah of Rabbi Moshe haDarshan)
Bar, Eitan. Refuting Rabbinic Objections to Christianity & Messianic Prophecies (pp. 63-64). ONE FOR ISRAEL Ministry. Kindle Edition.
Bar makes this argument about the “Septuagint” which is strong, but a useful corrective for those who completely discount that text:
“The Septuagint, was written only 600 years after Hosea, about 1,200 years before the Masoretic translation. An even higher level of grammatical accuracy is contained within the Septuagint because it was penned long before the time of Jesus, meaning it was closer to the original language of Hosea and wasn't theologically influenced by the appearance of Jesus and the New Testament.
Bar, Eitan. Refuting Rabbinic Objections to Christianity & Messianic Prophecies (p. 154). ONE FOR ISRAEL Ministry. Kindle Edition.
For me, a drawback with the book is that it does not provide the support for its citations. It would have been useful for him to provide footnotes and identify neutral books that the reader can review to verify his claims. Another drawback is that this book does become polemical toward the end, but that is probably understandable in light of Bar's probable treatment as a traitorous pariah.
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