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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It’s not true. They feel extra persecuted because they’re Christians who claim they’re Jewish and they don’t understand why Jews find that obnoxious and offensive. [/quote]

This sounds anti-semitic. Who gets to decide who is Jewish?[/quote]

Well... Jewish law has a lot of discussion about this actually. Jews get to decide who is Jewish, and Christian missionary groups that try to offer "Messianic Judaism" as a culturally sensitive way to become Christian are, in fact, antisemitic.

The Jews they are able to convert to this everything bagel-scented Christianity had weak Jewish affiliations to begin with or have psychological problems.  [/quote]

They see themselves as Jewish, so if you agree that Jews get to decide, then they’ve decided they’re Jews, right? You repeatedly trying to just write them off as psychologically disturbed says more about you than about them. [/quote]

Jews have rules and courts where rules get decided. People don't get to just declare themselves Jewish. By definition, people who accept Jesus as the Messiah are Christians, and Christians are, by definition, not Jews.[/quote]

NP. I'm curious, where and who are these courts? I can see a problem with a Messianic Jew showing up at a synagogue and proclaiming himself Jewish in front of the presiding rabbi. But control over the designation would seem to be in the hands of a group that calls itself Jewish, no? There's no Jewish pope, is there? Is there a structure like bishops?

Also, Jesus, his 12 disciples, Paul, and many others considered themselves Jewish even as they promulgated Jesus' message. [/quote]

Good for Jesus and his disciples, but if they appeared tomorrow and started telling everyone there that they, in fact, are the ones who understand the real meaning of Judaism and the rest of us are wrong, we'd probably think they were pretty annoying, too. I know that's part of what they did in their own time, but the last couple thousand years since then — including many attempts by their later disciples at forced conversion of Jews or of slaughtering us because we don't accept Jesus as our savior — have sort of changed the context with which that message would land now.

I take it from your question and your reference to what Jesus did here that you're not Jewish, but no, there is no Jewish pope or a centralized structure with bishops. There are rabbinical courts, though, called beit dins in Hebrew, that specifically deal with questions like whether someone is or isn't Jewish (i.e., they perform conversions), along with other matters like divorces. In more observant communities than my own, they also handle disputes between members.[/quote]

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