THE BOROUGH PARK PAPERS SYMPOSIUM I The Gospel and the Jewish People THE BOROUGH PARK PAPERS SYMPOSIUM I The Gospel and the Jewish People October 8 – 10, 2007 Borough Park Symposium An imprint of Messianic Jewish Publishers Clarksville, MD 21029 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitteD in any form for by any means without the prior permission of the publisher, except for brief reviews in magazines, journals, etc. or as quotations in another work when full attribution is given. The use of short selections or occasional page copying for personal or group study is permitteD, within reason. However, we ask that you respect the intellectual property rights of the authors. The ideas expressed in this collection of presentations represent those of their respective authors, and not necessarily those of the publisher—the Borough Park Symposium anD Messianic Jewish Publishers. 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Brooklyn is home to many Orthodox Jews who have not recognized Yeshua as their promised Messiah … yet. ****** TABLE OF CONTENTS HOW THE BOROUGH PARK SYMPOSIUM CAME TO BE AND WHAT IT IS The Borough Park Steering Committee ...................................................... i WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION Rabbi Barry Rubin, M.A., C.P.A................................................................1 GUIDELINES FOR HEALTHY THEOLOGICAL DISCUSSION DaviD RuDolph, Ph.D. ................................................................................7 BOROUGH PARK SYMPOSIUM OPENER TO THE FIRST SYMPOSIUM Mitch Glaser, Ph.D...................................................................................15 WHAT IS OUR MESSAGE? Rachel Wolf .............................................................................................23 WHAT IS THE GOSPEL WE SHOULD BE COMMENDING TO ALL ISRAEL IN THESE TIMES OF TRANSITION? Stuart Dauermann, Ph.D. .........................................................................47 THE CONDITION OF SALVATION FOR JEWS AND GENTILES IN THIS AGE ArnolD G. Fruchtenbaum, Th.D., Ph.D.....................................................85 THE VIEW FROM HERE Rabbi John Fischer, Ph.D., Th.D..............................................................91 THE JEWISH PEOPLE AND SALVATION Michael RyDelnik, Ph.D..........................................................................109 FINAL DESTINIES: QUALIFICATIONS FOR RECEIVING AN ESCHATOLOGICAL INHERITANCE Mark S. Kinzer, Ph.D..............................................................................131 KERUV AS GUIDING PRINCIPLE FOR PROCLAMATION OF THE GOOD NEWS Tsvi SaDan, Ph.D. ..................................................................................165 THE GOOD NEWS PROCLAMATION BY THE MESSIANIC CONGREGATION Sam NaDler, D.D.....................................................................................183 PRESENTING THE GOSPEL TO THE JEWISH PEOPLE —AN ASSESSMENT OF WHAT IS AND A PLEA FOR THE FUTURE Susan Perlman.........................................................................................199 PRESENTING THE GOSPEL TO THE JEWISH PEOPLE: COMMUNICATIONAL PERSPECTIVE VlaDimir Pikman, Th.M..........................................................................207 DREAMING OF THE DAY: A PROPHETIC PORTRAIT OF REVIVAL Rabbi Jason P. Sobel, M.A. ....................................................................223 THE BOROUGH PARK PAPERS SYMPOSIUM I - THE GOSPEL AND THE JEWISH PEOPLE HOW THE BOROUGH PARK SYMPOSIUM CAME TO BE AND WHAT IT IS The Borough Park Steering Committee The time had come for leaDers across the organizational spectrum of the Messianic Jewish/Jewish Missions world to unite as members of the Jewish community, leaders of a Remnant, with a responsibility to the God who called us his chosen people. On October 19-20, 2006 ten Messianic Jewish colleagues met in Brooklyn, New York. We agreed on a direction, a Steering Committee, and shared convictions that would determine who should actively participate: We are Jews who believe in Yeshua and in God’s covenant with Israel, and as members of the Jewish community, are committed to the welfare of our people. We feel compelled by the spirit of God to advance the good news of Yeshua among our people. We desire to preserve the unity and secure the future of the Messianic Jewish movement and our common mission through respectful dialogue, without acrimony, even in the face of critical disagreements. We believe in the authority of Scripture and the deity of Yeshua, and that eternal life is the gift of God in Messiah Yeshua our Lord. Since we held our planning meeting in an Orthodox Jewish hotel in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, our setting provided a great name for this consultation—“the Borough Park Symposium.” We scheduled it for a year later, October 2007, and chose a topic that we i THE BOROUGH PARK PAPERS knew would be controversial, but which seemed like a logical starting point for our dialogue: The Gospel and the Jewish People. When the symposium arrived, we discussed the nature of the gospel itself, how it applies specifically to Jewish people, and what outreach should look like in light of all this. Participants were impassioneD, anD not afraiD of iDeological clash or of expressing agreement when it was there. Leaders who had staked out opposite ends of the Messianic Jewish spectrum years earlier now sat down together and talked. Indeed, several leaders reconnected with colleagues with whom they hadn’t spoken, for one reason or another, for twenty or thirty years. When the Steering Committee evaluated the Symposium, we determined that it was a big success, not only in discussing the issues, but also in helping to “preserve the unity and secure the future of the Messianic Jewish movement and our common mission through respectful dialogue.” Although we didn’t want the Symposium to become institutionalized into an annual event, we started to think about a second one. The Steering Committee met in May 2008 and chose a topic that we imagined to be less controversial among us, The Deity of Messiah and the Mystery of God. Paradoxically, this is the issue most controversial in the wider Jewish community, the boundary-marker that the Jewish community has set for centuries to define itself. No matter how Jewish in all other ways a person might be, a Jewish gatekeeper might say, belief in the deity of Yeshua, by itself, drives him or her out of Judaism into Christianity. And Messianic Jews are problematic (and even to be feared) because they refuse to accept that they’ve crossed this line. From this perspective, all of us who gathered for BPS II, as diverse as we might have been, were on the same side of the Divide, despite our differences, and even despite our lack of precise definition of the deity of Messiah. Our goal in meeting was not to produce a precise theological definition, but to discuss how we can embrace and share the truth of the deity of Messiah specifically as Jews. How Do we respond to questions we often hear from non-Messianic Jewish friends? “Are you telling us to worship a man as God?” “Can it possibly be right for a Jew to acknowledge a Messiah who claims (or whose followers claim for him) to somehow be God?” “Why are you trying to bring such a non-Jewish idea into Judaism?” Much was accomplished by hearing the thoughts of others in our Community. ii SYMPOSIUM I - THE GOSPEL AND THE JEWISH PEOPLE A clear benefit of the Symposium was the heightened sense of unity that came out of this event. Some of the panels included speakers who had been in robust debates with each other in recent years, who had widely different perspectives, and yet, at the Symposium, communicateD with the greatest respect and deference. There were disagreements on many specific points, but an underlying sense prevailed that we are all in this together—marking out new territory as Jews who recognize the unique nature of the Messiah of Israel. It is our hope that this renewed awareness of our underlying unity will help the entire Messianic Jewish community to move forward. As one of the Steering Committee members remarked afterwards, “I guess this BPS Symposium was about more than our theology!” With that irenic spirit, a third symposium was set for October 22- 24, 2012 in which the Steering Committee decided to tackle the subject: How Jewish Should Messianic Judaism Be?” This may seem like a question with an obvious answer, but when you look at the topics in BPS III, you’ll see that there are varied views. Talks are underway to hold future symposiums, perhaps on Israel and other topics