American Messianic Jewish Yeshua (Jesus)-Followers and Reform Judaism

In the year 2000 Dan Cohn-Sherbok called upon Jews to accept Messianic Jews. This revolutionary declaration from a Reform rabbi and professor of Jewish Studies stood in stark contrast to the manner Reform Jewish leaders had related to movements of Jewish believers in Jesus until the late 20th century. In the late decades of the 19th century, as the two movements were forming in America, Messianic Jewish leaders and Reform rabbis were less than enchanted with each other. Both groups were struggling to establish themselves as viable options of modernization and Americanization and considered the alternative Jewish options as threats. Jewish believers in Jesus labeled Reform Jews “deformed”, while Reform Jewish leaders described the former as spiritual swindlers who were actually attempting to lure Jews away from their ancestral faith. Harsh assessments and suspicions continued well into the 1970s. At that time, both groups were faced with a new reality, the reversing of tides, demonstrated in the re-growth of traditionalist Orthodox Judaism and the rise of a large movement of returnees to tradition, on the expense of other Jewish options and movements. Both groups noticed that in Israel they had a mutual agenda: to gain acceptance and establish themselves in a country where Orthodox Jews held monopoly on established religious life, and Jewish society at large had been educated to view both Reform Judaism and Jewish believers in Jesus as traitors. Both groups were now invested in the creating of an open pluralistic society.