So... Are You Jewish or Christian?

My first introduction to Messianic Judaism was several years ago while I was still in high school. One of my mom's Baptist friends gave her a Messianic Bible to pass along to me (after she heard I was dating a Jewish guy). She thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Turns out, it was just a regular Christian Bible, with a little more Hebrew interpretation and whatnot, aimed at Jews.

After this, I got a pretty quick and dirty explanation of what Messianic Judaism was. Essentially, these people claim to be Jews while believing in the divinity of Jesus. There are several movements out there aimed specifically at converting Jews to this movement, the most prominent of which is Jews for Jesus. My (now-ex) boyfriend explained to me that Jews for Jesus frequently stood outside the subways in New York City to get the attention of the Jews who lived there (the largest Jewish population outside Israel).

Many years later, I still hear a great deal about Messianic Judaism. The most recent incident I hear of is that a Messianic Jew joined the Navy to be a Chaplain. After some confusion as to which insignia he should wear, the command told him to either wear a cross or leave the Navy. He chose to leave.

This touches on one of the main questions surrounding Messianic Judaism... are they Jews, or are they Christians?

People are (generally) considered Jews under two circumstances; they are either born to a Jewish mother, or they convert. Some movements of Judaism consider those born to a Jewish father and raised as Jewish to be Jewish as well, and some movements do not consider the conversions of other movements to be valid, which makes all this very sticky, but those are the basic ideas.

Messianic Jews can either be born as Jews, or can convert to Messianic Judaism (though this isn't the focus of the movement, since Christians already get all the 'benefits', some Christians still convert to this movement of Judaism). I do not think any other movement of Judaism would consider a person who converts to Messianic Judaism to be a Jew, plain and simple. If the person is born a Jew and follows Messianic Judaism, (s)he is considered an apostate Jew; a sinning Jew, but (s)he is still a Jew.

Rabbis in the four movements of Judaism (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist) can easily be leaders in the communities of any of the other three (with the exception of female rabbis, who cannot be leaders in an Orthodox community). In fact, it isn't unheard of for an Orthodox rabbi to lead a Conservative or Reform congregation. But a Messianic Rabbi does not follow the same sort of theology that the rest do, so can he or she really lead another congregation?

This is the source of the confusion in the chaplain's office. Since Messianic Jews believe that Jesus is the messiah, and the rest of the movements believe the messiah has yet to come, there is a rather fundamental difference in the theology, and so Messianic Jews are likened more to Christians than to Jews.

Was the Navy wrong in asking the Messianic Jew to wear the cross on his insignia, rather than the Luchos? Personally, I don't think so. Messianic Jews are more like Christians than they are like Jews, and I, for one, don't consider them Jews because of that.

What do you think?