Deviants Wanted, Messianics Need Not Apply
Our local Jewish newspaper here in Phoenix lists thirteen local Reform synagogues or congregations—a little more than a quarter of the congregational listings. Add to that the six listings for Conservative congregations, and the Reform-Conservative majority rockets past a third of all organizations listed. The Metropolitan Phoenix and surrounding areas’ Orthodox–the expected preservers of Torah, tradition and Jewish piety–surprisingly account for almost twenty-four percent of the local listings (the national average for Orthodox is 13% according to a Special Report by the UJC), bringing the representational total for the “big three” Jewish denominations in Phoenix to just over sixty percent. The remaining forty percent is made up of a smattering of “independent” congregations, Sephardic/Crypto Jewish cultural centers, and other types of organizations, such as the Center for Biblical Hebrew, Hillel Jewish Student Center, and the Jewish Center for Spiritual Growth.
With such diversity of Jewish cultural and theological expression here in Phoenix, it makes me muse about why Messianic Jews are not invited for inclusion. Of course, the newspaper’s and community’s response to an inquiry from the Messianic camp is a foregone conclusion—to them, Messianic Jews have left the faith… we are an abomination, mixing the sanctity of Judaism with the perversions of a foreign religion. That is the way they see it. Within the local Jewish community, we are not even tolerated as an oddity or abberation—we are shunned, excommunicated, and declared no longer “Jewish.”