Christian views on jewish dating
20-Jul-2020 12:02
They value tradition and family, but don’t plan on marrying only Jews.They are proud to be Jewish, but don’t feel that contradicts with practicing other religions.The survey found that 21 percent of Jewish millennials believe Jesus was “God in human form who lived among people in the 1st century.” And 28 percent “see him as a rabbi or spiritual leader, but not God.”The openness to non-Jewish practice extends beyond that: 42 percent of respondents say they celebrate Christmas.A majority says one can hold other faiths and still be Jewish.“I was not willing to just write them off entirely. We know religion is changing, we know parameters of identity are changing, so why would we expect different generations to look exactly the same?”The data on Jesus might be especially surprising to Jews who, if they agree on nothing else, believe that Jews for Jesus and its “messianic” philosophy are beyond the pale.But its goal was to conduct market research for “Messianic Jews.” And Jews for Jesus likes what it sees.“It was very hopeful from our perspective,” Susan Perlman, the San Francisco-based group’s director of communications, told JTA.“This was a generation that was spiritual, that is willing to engage in the subject of whether or not Jesus might be the Messiah.
Most people who fund research on American Jews also come with an agenda, and I’ve been in this world long enough to know that the people who fund that research don’t interfere. Almost a quarter of Jewish millennials attend religious services once a week, according to the survey, and one in three prays every day.A majority says “God loves people.”Ari Kelman, a Jewish studies professor at Stanford University who was interviewed as part of the report, said the study suggests a cohort distinct from all others.“These don’t look like Jews I recognize,” he said of the millennials surveyed.“Often molded by intermarriage and multiculturalism, they reject rigid or traditional definitions of what it means to be Jewish, but — more than any other generation — still consider their Jewish identity to be very important to them.”But it also includes a few unusual entries that Pew didn’t cover, like a detailed section on belief in God and the afterlife, and — no surprise here — an extensive examination of attitudes toward Jesus.
For those accustomed to thinking of millennials as religiously uninvolved and skeptical of traditional practices, the survey has some surprising news: Eighty percent of Jewish millennials self-identify as “religious Jews,” as opposed to just a slim majority of all Jews.[But] most Jews think that belief in Jesus is disqualifying by roughly a 2-to-1 margin.”)This week’s survey no doubt garnered higher percentages on those questions because it included Messianic Jews — that is, members of a religious movement that combines Christian and Jewish beliefs — whom Pew excluded from some questions.