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SCAN THIS PAGE IF YOU WANT TO
HEAR THE PRAYER GIVEN BY LOREN
JACOBS AT A POLITICAL RALLY
LAST WEEK.
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Editor’s Note: We asked Rabbi
Jason Miller to explain to readers
why there was such an uproar over
a Messianic “rabbi” delivering a
prayer at a political rally last week.
W
ith the controversy last
week of Loren Jacobs, a
leader of a Bloomfield
Hills church who calls himself a
“rabbi,” delivering a
politically charged
invocation at a
Republican party
rally featuring Vice
President Mike
Pence, there have
been a lot of ques-
Rabbi
Jason Miller
tions regarding the
Contributing Writer
messianic “Judaism”
movement.
The first time I had ever heard of
messianic Jews or the group called
“Jews for Jesus” was as a high
school student. Preparing us for
the college campus, teachers at my
synagogue’s Hebrew high school
informed us that there are prosely-
tizing Christians who claim to be
Jewish and seek to convert Jewish
students to Christianity. Some of
these “Jews for Jesus” adherents, we
were taught, were, in fact, apostate
Jews who had left our faith and
believe Jesus is the Messiah.
While I don’t recall any direct
encounters with any proselytizing
Christians during my four years
at Michigan State University, I did
have an unusual experience in a
course called the “Foundations of
Judaism.” The course was part of
the Religious Studies Department
and the teacher, Mark Kinzer, did
a wonderful job teaching a wealth
of material in the course. At that
time, I was already planning to
apply to rabbinical school, and
the lectures and reading material
helped prepare me. My eight years
at Hillel Day School were good for
a foundational understanding, but
Prof. Kinzer went much deeper
into the history of Judaism. I pre-
sumed the instructor was Jewish,
but I was not certain. On the final
day of class, I asked him which
denomination of Judaism he affil-
iated, and he simply stated, “it’s
complicated.” I didn’t pry.
Several years later, after I had
become a rabbi, I was working
at the University of Michigan
Hillel Foundation. I encountered
Prof. Kinzer at a meeting for
campus religious leaders. It was
there that he explained he was
a Messianic “rabbi.” I felt duped
and confused at that moment. (He
never alluded to his own theology
during the class and never men-
tioned Christian messianism.) He
explained that he was not part
of the “Jews for Jesus” group and
didn’t seek to convert anyone.
While I appreciated Prof. Kinzer’s
academic integrity and I learned
from him, had he been introduced
as a rabbi at an event, I would feel
just as insulted as I felt after watch-
ing Loren Jacobs’ prayer.
THEIR MISSION: CONVERT JEWS
So, how do we understand messi-
anic “Judaism” and Jews for Jesus?
continued on page 22
20
November 8 • 2018
jn