How Do Orthodox Jews View Jesus?

Dear Jew in the City,

How do Orthodox Jews view Jesus?

Sincerely,

Wondering

Dear Wondering,

Thanks for your question. I would be hard-pressed to tell you how many times in the course of my “day job” a non-Jewish reader has written me asking, “What do Jews think of Jesus?” Sometimes they just can’t accept the honest answer:

Generally speaking, we don’t think about him at all. Full stop.

The reason they can’t accept this is because Jesus is the central figure in their religion. Everything revolves around him. They can’t understand how Jesus could be a complete non-entity in Judaism.

Right now, many Jewish readers probably don’t understand why some Christian readers don’t grasp this, so allow me to recontextualize it.

Let’s say you met someone from a religion called Samanambalism. (I made that up, so any resemblance to any real word is strictly coincidental.) So, you ask your new Samanambalistic friend what they think of God and he replies that there’s no God in their religion. Isn’t that a headscratcher for you? How can there even be a religion without God? It’s like that.

Anyway, Jesus lived after the Jewish Bible was completed. He’s not a prophet in Judaism, prophecy having ceased before he was born. He’s not the messiah in the Jewish faith, not having fulfilled the messianic prophecies (including gathering the exiles and rebuilding the Temple – which, by the way, was still standing in his lifetime). He’s certainly not the son of God in Judaism – that’s a concept that doesn’t even compute.

So, yeah, Jesus is the central figure in the various Christian faiths, but he’s simply not a part of Judaism. The same is true of Odin, Zeus, Zoroaster, Buddha, Muhammed, Joseph Smith, Brahma, and many others. Some of these are historical figures and others are fictional characters, but what they have in common is that none of them are part of our faith, so we just don’t think about them.

Some people will tell you that the Talmud discusses Jesus. Basically, people identify him with several characters, including Ben Stada/Ben Pandira and the student of Yehoshua ben Perachya. The evidence is sketchy. For example, Ben Stada/Ben Pandira’s mother was “Miriam, magdela nashei” (Aramaic for “Miriam, the women’s hairdresser.”) “Aha! A clear reference to Mary Magdalene,” people conclude. But Mary Magdalene wasn’t the mother of Jesus – she was a different person altogether! Not only that, the father of Ben Stada/Ben Pandira lived about a hundred year after Jesus, which would have made it very hard to be Jesus’ father, adoptive or otherwise.

Similarly, the story involving Yehoshua ben Perachya takes place eighty years before Jesus would have been born. Yes, Yehoshua ben Perachya’s student arguably shares a name with Jesus, but the facts just don’t line up.

Bottom line, Orthodox Jews spend 0% of their time thinking about Jesus. In fact, pretty much the only time his name comes up is when someone asks, “So, what do Orthodox Jews think of Jesus?” And any Talmudic references that people think might refer to Jesus don’t really stand up to scrutiny.

Sincerely yours,

Rabbi Jack Abramowitz, JITC Educational Correspondent

Educational Correspondent
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