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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]^This.  You retain your ethnicity, obviously (which is different from nationality).  Jewish culture is very intertwined with the Jewish religion though, and herein lies the problem for some converts.  An acquaintance who is ethnically Jewish said that his community made it clear that, basically, he could believe anything he wanted and remain culturally Jewish EXCEPT for claiming that Jesus is the Messiah.  Then you're out.  Pray to mother earth, talk to flowers, practice astrology, whatever, just absolutely no Jesus is eternal God claims.[/quote]

The last sentence is spot on.  What is it about accepting Christian beliefs? [b]The Jewish context of the New Testament is apparent to anyone who reads it, so, if anything, you would think ethnic/cultural Jews who profess Christian beliefs would be accepted by Jews perhaps in a similar way to Jews who assert the Chabad Rebbe is the Messiah are not shunned.[/b]

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) was a Jewish nun who was arrested specifically because she was Jewish and killed by the Nazis, along with other Jewish Catholics.  While she may not have taken a traditional contemporary Jewish path, she was no less Jewish.

Are there ethnic, cultural Jews who are baptized Catholics who attend mass, but also periodically attend Reform congregations (or other Jewish denominations), perhaps for a Purim celebration or Shabbat? 
[/quote]

What on Earth are you on about???

The Christian bible repeatedly and deliberately mistranslates the Hebrew in the Tanakh for the purposes of getting people to join Christianity. Jews do not believe in the Christian bible..

And there are definitely plenty of Jews who think the Lubavitchers are on the edge of or fully on idolatry with their Rebbe beliefs. No other Jewish denomination shares that belief.

You cannot expect "mainstream" Jews to accept a by birth Jew (or even convert) who has religiously walked away from the Jewish faith to be bumping elbows at Shabbat services.

And why would the OP even want to continue to be involved with *religious* Jewish life given they have rejected it??

Why is this so hard to comprehend?[/quote]

"The Christian bible repeatedly and deliberately mistranslates the Hebrew in the Tanakh for the purposes of getting people to join Christianity. Jews do not believe in the Christian bible."

Would it be fair to assume that you are Modern Orthodox? Would it be fair to assume that you have never read the New Testament?
Please provide examples.  Keep in mind that the Septuagint Tanakh (translated by Jewish scholars in the 200 BCs) and the basis of the New Testament citations predates the Masoretic Tanakh (of which you may be referring) by about 1,000 years.
[/quote]
DP Jewish (I've been both Reform and Conservative). I have read the New Testament.

The most blatant example of a Christian mistranslation (or perhaps just a misunderstanding) is the whole "virgin" thing. The Hebrew means more like "young girl," not an allusion to a virgin birth.

There are more translations that Christians use to read Jesus into the Old Testament, like translating a Hebrew word with connotations of "digging" to mean "piercing" or reading prophets who were talking metaphorically about themselves in the third person to be talking about the future Jesus.

Plus, there's a whole way that Jews understand the Tanakh through our history, through midrash (Oral Torah), through our other texts (like Mishnah and Talmud), and through centuries of teshuvot (responsa or rulings on various issues). Reading it without those contextual pieces makes the reading of it incomplete from a Jewish perspective.

All of this is to say that it doesn't make sense to be Catholic and to engage [i]religiously[/i] with Judaism. We technically read the same texts, but don't fundamentally don't read them the same way. If OP wanted to find a way to continue celebrating Purim or Passover by throwing a Purim party or hosting a Catholic seder (problematic, but that's a different conversation) as cultural things, then sure. But she's talking about going to synagogue. There is nothing [i]cultural or ethnic[/i] about synagogue. That's where [i]religious[/i] Judaism happens, and she rejected being religiously Jewish by becoming Catholic.

To echo PP, I really don't understand why this is such a difficult concept for y'all to grasp.[/quote]

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