There is not a simple answer to this question, given the great diversity in beliefs and perspectives among the Jewish people. And, for the most part, Jewish people do not spend a lot of time thinking about Jesus in a serious way. That is to say, outside of Christmas celebrations or concerns about the religious right or the latest media fad—like the Da Vinci Code furor in 2006 or the Passion of the Christ uproar in 2004—the person of Jesus is not a topic of discussion or thought in most Jewish households. After all, they would say, we are Jews, not Christians, and Jesus is for the Christians (i.e., Gentiles).
For the most part, then, Jesus is not viewed as a directly relevant religious figure by the great majority of Jewish people. It is true that more Jews now recognize that Jesus—Yeshua!—was Jewish, something that I did not realize until I was close to thirteen years old. When I happened to discover this fact, I cracked a joke to my Jewish schoolmates, asking them, “When did Jesus become Catholic? After He rose from the dead?” That reflects how we thought of things! In light of these kinds of perceptions, it is not surprising that most Jews would not immediately connect “Christ” with “Messiah,” seeing it primarily as part of Jesus’ name.
When Jews do have opinions about Jesus, they are quite diverse. In the eyes of the ultra-Orthodox, Jesus is an apostate Jew and an archenemy of the Jewish people, the founder of a destructive religion that has brought untold hardship and persecution on us through the generations. Some believe that He actually said what the New Testament attributes to Him—not that they would have read it for themselves—while others believe that His followers were the primary ones responsible for deviating from the path. (Paul comes in for special criticism here; see #44.) Either way, to the extent they believe that the Talmud and rabbinic writings actually speak about this same Jesus (whom they know as Yeshu; see #38), they would regard Him as a deceiver of the masses.[33]
Jews who are less religious and who have actually given thought to the person of Jesus tend to be more positive in their assessment, although there remains a wide range of opinion. Some view Jesus as a great rabbi who was either misunderstood or misrepresented by His followers in the next generations, leading to the birth of Christianity. Some see Him as a wise man and even a prophet; some consider Him to be a brave figure standing against the tyranny of Rome; others view Him as a mystic or guru figure (in many cases, projecting back on Jesus what they themselves feel are spiritually positive qualities). Still others feel that we cannot know much about Him, questioning the validity of the sources we have at our disposal, in keeping with critical, skeptical scholarship as reflected in the Jesus Seminar.
As divergent as these views are—deceiver, rabbi, prophet, teacher, mystic—they all have this in common: With the exception of Jewish believers in Yeshua, the Jewish people do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah and, more emphatically, they do not recognize Him as God incarnate. So, He might be a great rabbi or even a noble revolutionary, but certainly not the Redeemer. Perhaps He’s an enlightened guru, but definitely not God!
In the last few decades, there has been an increasing desire to reclaim Jesus the Jew by Jewish scholars, some of whom are Orthodox, and although this reclamation stops short of reclaiming Him as Messiah and Lord, it is still a step in the right direction.[34] And in Israel, schoolchildren learn something about Yeshua as well (they, too, know Him as Yeshu; see again #38), although, to repeat, they do not learn about Him as Savior or Redeemer.
A challenging recent study, written by a Jewish academic and reflecting Jewish problems with the Christian Jesus, is Professor Amy Jill-Levine’s The Misunderstood Jew: The Scandal of the Jewish Jesus.[35] I do not concur with a number of her key premises, and her ecumenical desire to affirm fully both Judaism and Christianity is not tenable (see #60). (As I have repeatedly stated, if Jesus is not the Messiah of Israel—which is a foundational truth of the New Testament—then no one should follow Him. Put another way, either Jesus is the Messiah of everyone or the Messiah of no one.) Nonetheless, her book helps give the Christian reader insight into some of the issues that the Jewish people have with Jesus, providing many valuable insights.
On a more personal, anecdotal level, a Messianic Jewish leader recently told me that his congregation has enjoyed extensive interaction with the Jewish community where he lives, even holding joint meetings with the Conservative synagogue—this is almost unprecedented for a Messianic Jewish group—and going on a tour of Israel together. Quality interaction like this has actually gone on now for several years. And yet this leader commented to me with sadness that after all the time these two groups have spent together, it simply hasn’t dawned on the members of the Conservative Jewish congregation that Yeshua has any relevance for them.
This remains typical for the great majority of Jews worldwide, and to this day, when I tell a Jewish person that I’m a believer in Jesus, the typical response is, “So, you were Jewish but now you believe in Jesus?” or, “How can you be Jewish and believe in Jesus?” The two seem incompatible to them, as stated by the Jewish comedian (and rabbi) Jackie Mason: “There’s no such thing as a Jew for Jesus. It is like saying a black man is for the KKK. You can’t be a table and a chair. You’re either a Jew or a Gentile.”[36]
So, it looks like we still have a lot of work to do in terms of getting the Jewish people to understand that Jesus-Yeshua is one of them and that embracing Him as the Messiah is the most Jewish thing they can do. But progress is being made, and it is also common to get this response when I tell a Jewish person about my faith: “So, you’re a Jew for Jesus!” At least they’ve heard of the concept! Best of all, there is a wonderful promise in the Word about the glorious spiritual destiny of the Jewish people (see #59).