No religious or educated Jew would ever believe in Jesus
This statement is an absolute falsehood. There have been prominent rabbis along with brilliant Jewish scholars who have become believers in Jesus, but you rarely hear about them because they are generally discredited by their own people once they prove unshakable in their faith. Whereas they were revered as saintly giants before they believed, they are reviled as ignorant sinners after they believe. The fact is that Jews who are more religious than you and more highly educated than you do believe Jesus to be the Jewish Messiah.
Have you ever heard of Daniel Zion, the chief rabbi of Bulgaria during the Holocaust? He was instrumental in helping to save hundreds of Jewish lives during that horrific time in history, settling in Israel after the war. Yet, his name is unfamiliar to almost all Jews today. Why? Simple. He was a believer in Yeshua!
He was so highly respected by the Orthodox leaders in Israel that in 1954 the newly appointed chief rabbi, Samuel Toledano, offered him the position of judge in Jerusalem’s Rabbinic court. The only obstacle was Zion’s faith in Yeshua, a problem that Toledano suggested could be overcome if Zion kept his beliefs to himself. To this, Zion could not agree, and he presented the evidence for his faith in a meeting with the leading rabbis, concluding with these words: “I give up all earthly honor for the sake of the Messiah, my mate.”
Stripped of the title of “rabbi” by the Rabbinic court, he was still looked to as rabbi by the Bulgarian Jews and officiated in the Yeffet Street synagogue in Jaffa until October 6, 1973. In addition, every Sabbath afternoon, he would teach about Yeshua and the New Testament to a group he would bring home with him in between the morning and evening synagogue services. He died in 1979 at the age of ninety-six, firm in his commitment to the Messiah. And—to break another stereotype you might have—he never considered himself a “Christian,” living a traditional Jewish life until his dying day.
During the days of Nazi occupation, he was publicly flogged and humiliated, and all this time he was a believer in Jesus! On one occasion, he received a vision from Yeshua, in which the Lord told him to warn Boris, the Bulgarian king, not to submit to Nazi pressure to deliver the Bulgarian Jews over to the Polish and German death camps. This warning was delivered to the king in writing just one day before Boris left for Germany to meet with Hitler. The king refused to comply with the Führer’s demands! A beloved chief rabbi, through his close relationship with Jesus the Messiah, was used by God to save Jewish lives in the Holocaust. 43
An example of a different kind is that of Auguste Neander (born David Mendel), the outstanding historian of early Christianity who was a leading professor at the universities of Berlin and Halle last century. Respected for his great erudition as well as his godly, sacrificial lifestyle, he helped slow the rising tide of German theological rationalism that was spreading rapidly in the early 1800s. Neander had become a believer in Jesus while studying in high school, influenced by two of his Christian friends. (His parents gave him a secular education with the hopes of him becoming a lawyer.)
In complete contrast to Daniel Zion, the Orthodox rabbi, Neander came from a less observant home but distinguished himself as a learned scholar, lecturer, and author, also giving away the bulk of his income to help others in need. Do you think he was smart enough to think for himself?
If you say, “But Neander wasn’t raised in a strict religious environment,” I reply, “Then what about Daniel Zion?” If you say, “But Daniel Zion came from an Eastern European, Orthodox background, not having sufficient contact with secular scholarship,” I reply, “Then what about Auguste Neander?”
The fact is there are Jewish believers in Jesus (both past and present) who break every one of your preconceived molds. For every objection you raise, I can introduce you to a Jewish believer whose testimony refutes that very objection (see also below, 1.13–1.14). In fact, I’ll introduce you to one more Jewish believer in Jesus, a man who was both very Orthodox and very educated: Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky.
Born into an Orthodox home in Lithuania, he excelled as a student of Talmud, demonstrating an exceptional proficiency in language studies from an early age. When he was given a copy of the New Testament in Hebrew, however, he studied it carefully for himself, becoming convinced that the prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures about a coming Messiah were fulfilled in Jesus. Then, after graduating from the University of Breslau, he openly confessed his beliefs, which until that time he had kept secret. After further studies in preparation for ministry, he determined to go to China to translate the Bible, and this is where he left his mark.
“But I’ve never heard of him,” you say. Of course you haven’t! You see, if he had continued on his path of excellence in Rabbinic studies, he might be hailed today as one of our great rabbis—even if he had rarely left the confines of the yeshiva, spending all his hours learning and teaching and writing about the intricacies of Jewish law and tradition. Instead, because he poured out his life for multitudes of Gentiles who had never heard about the God of Israel—serving as a light to the nations, which is the very thing we Jews were called to do—his name is unknown to you.
By the time Schereschewsky arrived in China after a long journey by ship, he was already writing good classical Chinese—to the astonishment of the local people. But it was not always easy for him. Not only did he spend countless thousands of hours meticulously translating the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures into Mandarin and Wenli, he did so in spite of a severe illness that left him almost completely paralyzed for the last twenty-five years of his life. He was also mute for a time and in constant pain. Yet he persevered, training the middle finger of his right hand to strike the typewriter one agonizing character at a time. When he could not use his finger, he would grasp a small stick in his fist and use it to strike the keys.
So great were his accomplishments that Max Müller, the Oxford University philologian, considered him to be one of the six greatest Oriental linguists in the world, while Rabbi Dr. Max Margolis said of him, “Among the men and women who consider it their blessed work to bring the Word of God within the reach of far-off tribes by means of translations in their native idioms we may single out Bishop Schereschewsky, the Christian Jew.” 44
Rabbi Daniel Zion, Professor Auguste Neander, Bishop Joseph Schereschewsky—the list of illustrious Jewish believers in Jesus is really quite impressive. When you stop and consider the facts, you’ll have to admit that one of your excuses is erroneous: Educated and religious Jews have believed in Yeshua the Messiah and do believe in Yeshua the Messiah. It is not education and learning that stop people from believing in Jesus but rather ignorance as to who he really is and what our Scriptures really say about him.
43 For more details, see Joseph Shulam, “Rabbi Daniel Zion: Chief Rabbi of Bulgarian Jews during World War II,” Mishkan 15 (1991): 53–57. Members of the Shulam family personally witnessed most of the events described here.
44 From The Story of Bible Translations, cited by Gartenhaus, Famous Hebrew Christians, 171. As we think of men such as Isidor Loewenthal (a German Jew who spread the good news about the Messiah in Afghanistan) and Joseph Schereschewsky, both of whom used their linguistic genius to translate the Scriptures into the language of unreached masses—ultimately making the sacrifice of life and limb for these poor souls who had no knowledge of the one true God—it is only fair to ask whether you think they fulfilled their God-ordained purposes as Jews. Does it make sense to you that these men used their God-given talents in educating the Gentile world concerning God and his Messiah, or would they have done better to have studied Talmud day and night, coming up with new twists on the meaning of the ancient rabbis?
Brown, M. L. (2000). Answering Jewish objections to Jesus, Volume 1: General and historical objections. (42). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books.