Hello, fine Kineti readers. Hope you all had a great holiday, and also that you’re ready to enter a new (western, Gregorian) decade in a few days! Time flies.
As I got back on the computer after a few days of technical hiatus, I stumbled on a post detailing a video that is “causing alarm on Orthodox Jewish web sites”.
The video’s of the chief rabbi of the Israeli city of Efrat, an Orthodox Jew, speaking about Jesus and the hope in Messiah shared by both Jews and Jesus’ followers:
Here’s a snippet:
I was truly fascinated by the personality of Jesus, whom I refer to as rabbi Jesus, because I think he is, indeed, a model rabbi in many counts.
He lived the life of a Jewish rabbi, in Israel, at a very critical time in our history. And I've constantly come back to a study of his personality, and his teachings, which are very strongly rooted in Talmudic teachings, and I've come to the very obvious conclusion that Christians and Jews are the root and the branch.
Jesus emerged out of Jewish teachings and Jewish society. Jesus went on to present much of the fundament truths of the bible to the entire world.
He then goes on to describe messianism, the shared hope that “there will be an end game, in which there will be peace, redemption, good will, for all humanity” (his words).
The rabbi’s respectful words are a welcome change. I hope the 2010s will be marked by this kind of honorable dialog.
Hat tip to Aaron Eby.