The ignorance runs too deep to even contemplate ~ ~ Sooz

Pence faces backlash after appearing alongside a ‘Messianic rabbi’
10/30/18 08:40 AM
By Steve Benen

A gunman opened fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday, killing 11 people in the deadliest attack on American Jews in the history of the United States. It’s against this backdrop that Vice President Mike Pence thought it’d be appropriate to appear alongside a rabbi at a campaign rally in Michigan yesterday.

And while that may sound like a nice gesture in theory, the trouble is what happened in practice: Pence stood with a “Messianic rabbi” who invoked Jesus during his prayer.


Jacobs, not surprisingly for the head of a Messianic congregation, opened his comments by invoking “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, God and father of my lord and savior Yeshua, Jesus the Messiah, and my God and father, too.”

There’s a certain awkwardness in trying to summarize complex theological matters, but I think I can safely say that a fundamental difference between Jews and Christians is over the divinity of Jesus. Not to put too fine a point on this, but those who see Jesus as the messiah are generally identified as “Christians.”

Messianic Jews – sometimes referred to as “Jews for Jesus” – don’t quite see it that way. They describe themselves as Jewish, while at the same time embracing the central tenet of Christianity, which naturally leads others in the Jewish community to see them as being something other than Jews.

With this in mind, it hardly came as a surprise when many saw Mike Pence’s event yesterday as profoundly insulting. Just two days after horrific anti-Semitic violence, the far-right vice president stood alongside a purported rabbi whom most Jews would consider something altogether different from an actual rabbi.

Indeed, the vice president was in Michigan, where there are plenty of synagogues. Event organizers could’ve welcomed any number of Jewish leaders who wouldn’t have offended the community.

They didn’t.

Postscript: NBC News’ report added, “Jacobs graduated in 1979 from the Jewish studies program at Moody Bible Institute, a leading Christian college in Chicago.”

Again, in case this isn’t obvious, for the overwhelming majority of Jewish people, real rabbis don’t graduate from the Moody Bible Institute.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/pence-faces-backlash-after-appearing-alongside-messianic-rabbi

This follow-up is a DOOZY!!! ~ ~ Sooz

The story about the ‘rabbi’ Pence appeared with gets a little worse
10/31/18 11:20 AM
By Steve Benen

I didn’t really intend to return to the controversy over the “Messianic rabbi” who appeared alongside Vice President Mike Pence this week, but NBC News reported on some additional details that seemed worthy of note.


As part of the same report, Rabbi Marla Hornsten, past president of the Michigan Board of Rabbis, told NBC News, “We don’t even recognize him as a rabbi. Even to call him a rabbi is offensive.”

In other words, the overwhelming majority of Jews, here and around the world, wouldn’t consider Loren Jacobs to be an actual rabbi – or even Jewish – and his own small Messianic Jewish movement doesn’t consider him a rabbi, either.

And yet, there was Mike Pence, standing alongside Jacobs, with head bowed during a “rabbinical” prayer that ended up insulting many Jewish people.

If you missed yesterday’s post on this, Jacobs appeared at a campaign rally in Michigan, where he invoked “Jesus the Messiah” during his prayer – which probably should’ve been the first sign of trouble.

There’s a certain awkwardness in trying to summarize complex theological matters, but I think I can safely say that a fundamental difference between Jews and Christians is over the divinity of Jesus. Not to put too fine a point on this, but those who see Jesus as the messiah are generally identified as “Christians.”

Messianic Jews – sometimes referred to as “Jews for Jesus” – don’t quite see it that way. They describe themselves as Jewish, while at the same time embracing the central tenet of Christianity, which naturally leads others in the Jewish community to see them as being something other than Jews.

With this in mind, it hardly came as a surprise when many saw Mike Pence’s event this week as profoundly insulting. Just two days after horrific anti-Semitic violence, the far-right vice president stood alongside a purported rabbi whom most Jews would consider something altogether different from an actual rabbi – and whom we now know was also rejected by the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations.

NBC News’ latest report on this added that Loren Jacobs was invited to the event by Lena Epstein, a Republican congressional candidate this year, and a longtime member of a Detroit-area synagogue. “Mainstream Jewish leaders and experts on the faith said they could not fathom” why Epstein extended the invitation to a man they see as essentially a fake rabbi.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-story-about-the-rabbi-pence-appeared-gets-little-worse

The real problem, IMO, is that there enough ignorant people to make this shyte work.

A Jew that believes in Jesus. What more could Pence ask for? Thank you, Mother.

what an ignorant thing to do- - but not surprised.

As an aside - when I first moved to NC my neighbor, a southern woman who marched to her own drumbeat, was not Jewish but converted somewhere along the line and was a "Jews for Jesus" believer and follower. I had never heard of that before then. She had a mezuzah on her door (I knew what that was) and I had to chuckle every time she said, "Shalom, y'all."

One day she asked if I would like to go to her church some Saturday. I said sure. I went, and never experienced anything like it in temple when i went with friends - lots of singing and prancing about. The the minister/rabbi started preaching and all of a sudden she started babbling. I looked at my neighbor alarmed as I literally thought she was having a stroke - my neighbor said, "She is fine, she is speaking in tongues." Needless to say I never went again, and thought what BS and bunch of loonies lol.