Jojo,

This is not a matter of respect or lack thereof. I am talking about a movie. The movie does nothing to discuss the teachings of Jesus. The movie does nothing to show the spirituality of the man who was the inspiration for Christianity.

All the movie did was show Mel Gibson's interpretation of his last 12 hours of Jesus' life. I am not knocking anyone else's belief system, but when it comes to that movie, if you do not accept Jesus as your savior the movie is not moving in any way whatsoever. To me, Jesus is not G-d, the son of G-d, or anything having to do with my belief system so that movie had no spiritual effect on me whatsoever. It was two hours of watching a guy get the hell beat out of him. And sadly, the part of the movie where Jesus was getting whipped by the romans with metal tipped whips really comes across as fetishized.

Now, since there is a historical aspect to this site, I would pose a question to all you:

"Where were 'true' Christians over all the centuries those apparently 'false' Christians were persecuting and murdering Jews all across Europe?"

You will forgive us if we are not quite ready to take Christian honor at face value. The track record for respecting my faith is pretty bad.


Ok, time to address the rest of the group.

Amen Yehudit.

When I joined this group, the first thing I read was this:

"Here we can discuss this unique culture from the beginning of the Hebrew nation until present. We can discuss their customs, religion, food, festivals, art, economy, agriculture, medicine, philosophy, language, military, every day life, their trials and hardships on their journey to The Promised Land."

This is why I joined. As a way to reconnect to my people, and partly, to my faith.

However, everything here has a Christian spin to it. That is fine, but advertise the group for what it is. This group has a Messianic bent to it. The discussions on Jewish holidays are always taken to how they relate to Jesus.

There is a distorted view being given here. A new member with no knowledge of Judaism or western religion would be led to believe that Jews accept and worship Jesus. It just is not true. I appreciate your points of view people, but Hannukah, Passover, and any other Jewish holiday you would like to mention have nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus. They never have.

If you want to believe that Jesus is the lamb of G-d, fine. But do not make it seem like that is part of Passover or part of the Jewish belief system. It isn't.

It seems to me that maybe this group should be renamed as a group for Christian discussion of Jews. It is not a discussion of Judaism as it has passed and evolved through the centuries.

I will fully admit that I joined this group to get away from the Christian point of view for a while. Christianity, especially in the area where I live, is very in your face and I hoped this would be a nice respite. Instead, it is another dialogue on Christian viewpoint.

Yehudit is correct. We are made to feel uncomfortable because we don't accept Jesus as savior in a group purporting to be a discussion on Judaism. Can anyone see the irony?

Oh, and I have to ask: If this is a group to discuss Jews and Jewish people, would that not, by definition, focus on one religion?

I don't mind discussing Jesus on occasion, but he has no place in Judaism. We reject him as savior. I'll give you one good reason why:

I believe it was Hepzibah who mentioned that Jesus fulfilled a requirement of being descended from the house of David. Well, here is the problem. Jews believe the messiah will be descended from the house of David THROUGH HIS FATHER.

Kind of hard for Jesus to do that if G-d is supposedly his father. You are going to have a hard time proving that G-d is descended from David.

Another thing Jews believe that Yehudit hit upon. Jews believe that there is a place in heaven for everyone regardless of religion. We believe is is how you live your life that gets you into heaven, not your beliefs.

As she said, a righteous gentile is far closer to God than an unrighteous Jew. This is one of the reasons we feel no need to proselytise.