Understanding the Lived Experiences of Native Israeli Jewish Believers in Yeshua: A Lesser-known Subgroup within Israel’s Diverse Society

This paper offers a new cultural perspective on a sub-group of native Israeli Jews, “Sabras”, who challenge conventional boundaries of Jewish identity because their personal belief system is anchored around faith in Yeshua as the Jewish Messiah. Based on seventeen interviews, the study explores how the research subjects’ normative social contexts led to a subliminal path to search for meaning and purpose within their cultural system, and eventually led them to reconstruct their traditional frame of thought as they each found their answers beyond the boundaries of normative Judaism. The common assumption holds that Jewish Believers in Yeshua (JBY) abandoned their Jewishness, or what it means to be Jewish. However, through the expressed and lived identities of the JBY themselves, they maintain that their Jewish identity is not only intrinsic to them but is also an inseparable part of them, a fascinating element because their self-identification has been viewed as inauthentic by the mainstream. The very existence of Sabra JBY, having grown up within one of the dominant Israeli Jewish cultural contexts (secular, traditional, orthodox and ultra-orthodox), calls into question the commonly used sociological categories, and challenges how we think about Jewish identity in Israel. Their background, worldview, Jewish identity and faith in Yeshua inform their approach to sociocultural and sociopolitical issues that broadly pertain to religion, society, culture, and politics. They make for a dynamic research group which can shed new light on the complexity and diversity within Israeli society and allow for new sociocultural discoveries to take place.









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