Because Jewish history is filled with persecution by many 'so-called Christians', I often hear questions that presume guilt---"Isn't the New Testament anti-Semitic?  Doesn’t it teach Christians to hate Jews?  What about Christian anti-Semitism and the Holocaust?"

The New Testament is Jewish? 
It’s a shock to many people when they discover just how Jewish the New Testament is! Jeremiah the prophet foretold that God would give the New Testament (or New Covenant, Brit Chadasha) to our people: “Behold, the days are coming when I will make a New Covenant with the House of Israel and with the House of Judah. It is not like the covenant that I made with your fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, a covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord….for I will forgive their iniquities and remember their sins no more” (Jer. 31:31-32, 34).

This New Covenant is what Messiah Yeshua (the Jewish way to say Jesus) initiated when He came to make atonement for sins. This was to establish the basis of the New Covenant relationship between God and His people: God’s forgiveness of sins through Messiah’s atonement for all who will believe.

As a young Jewish man growing up in New York, I thought the “New Testament” was a combination religious rulebook for Gentiles and an anti-Semitic instruction manual. I was surprised to find out the New Covenant is actually the Lord’s love letters to those who seek Him.

The Jewish Messiah's Love
And as far as being a cause for anti-Semitism, this could only happen for those who have never read it’s pages. For in this Jewish book, Yeshua is presented as “the King of the Jews”. Yeshua is shown crying over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41), fulfilling the Law and the prophets (Matthew 5:17) and in His daily activities, identifying only with the Jewish people (Matthew 10:5-6; 15:24). How could any so-called follower of Yeshua claim to have the King of the Jews in their hearts and also hate the Jewish people? Absurd! Rather, true Gentile followers of the Jewish Messiah love the Jewish people. The life and teachings of Yeshua give no justification for any kind of hatred, let alone hatred of His Jewish people. “For the love of Messiah controls” them (2 Cor. 5:14). It is rather to be said that anti-Semitism is proof of the ignorance of Messiah and His teachings.

True Followers of Jesus Love the Jewish People
The experience of the Holocaust of the 1930’s and 40’s, as well as other anti-Semitic persecutions, are often thought of as an expression of  “Christian” hatred toward the Jewish people. The *Holocaust was no such thing at all. Gentile governments have routinely used and abused the label of religion in a futile attempt to justify their pragmatic and evil (as at times like the Holocaust,) national interests. In the Hebrew scriptures as well, the same truth is revealed: anti-Semitism is anti-God (see Psalm 83:1-5).

True Gentile followers of Messiah were persecuted, imprisoned and murdered by the Nazis for helping the Jews in their areas. Jewish believers in Messiah were killed as quickly as the other Jews. There was nothing about the Holocaust that represented anything taught in the New Covenant or by any faithful follower of Messiah.

The Real Cause of Anti-Semitism
The New Covenant teaches us how the Jewish Messiah came to resolve a problem that is universal: the problem of sin. The sin that motivated and manifested itself in the Nazis is essentially the same problem all people have: rebellion against God. The sin problem ends when a person, any person, acknowledges their sin to God and places their trust in Messiah Yeshua.

I had the opportunity to speak at a Businessmen’s Breakfast, where I shared the message of Good News in the Messiah. I invited the people there to respond to God’s love and forgiveness in the Jewish Messiah. Of those who responded, I remember one businessman who burst into tears. Up to that point he had been an anti-Semite. But now he was convinced of his sinfulness and wanted to repent. After we prayed he mentioned that he was stunned to have heard the message of forgiveness and new life in the Jewish Messiah from a Jewish man! It became clear to him that his anti-Semitic feelings were just one symptom of his rebellion to God…affirming the scriptural truth that anti-Semitism is anti-God… and anti-Messiah.

As evil and offensive as anti-Semitism is, all sin is offensive to God. Though some sins are not nearly so blatant, God is aware of them all. All who sin need to repent in order to be forgiven and cleansed of their sins. The message of Good News is for all who will trust in Israel’s Messiah and the Savior of the world, Yeshua.

It seems rather strange to many Jewish people that the Messiah could have come, and yet comparatively so few Jews believe it.
Many times the question sounds like this: “So, with all the scholars and rabbis searching to discover the Messiah, you’re the only genius to figure this out?” 
The number of living Jewish people who believe in Yeshua (Jesus’ Jewish name) numbers somewhere between 200,000 to over a million.  Though this number is not insignificant, it’s still not the majority of the Jewish people.  For many, there’s the idea that the truth is determined by a majority vote.  But as much as this may play a role in the politics of men, this has little to do with the truth of God.

In the Jewish Scriptures (Tanakh), the prophet Isaiah declares that most Jewish people would not recognize the Messiah when He would first come: “Who has believed our report? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him as a tender shoot, as a root out of dry ground; He would have no majesty that would attract us, nor any beauty that we would desire Him. He is despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised and we esteemed Him not” (Isaiah 53:1-3).

God knew and revealed to Isaiah what may not seem all that hard to figure out:  The majority of people don’t want God’s way of salvation, not even religious people!  In fact, that’s exactly what Isaiah goes on to say: “All we like sheep have gone astray, each one has turned his own way; but the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all”  (Isaiah 53:6).

It was prophesied that although He would be our sin-bearer, the true Messiah would be rejected by the majority of the Jewish people when He would first come. Isaiah makes this matter crystal clear by further stating:  “The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob to the *Mighty God” (Isaiah 10:21).

God recognized that only a “remnant”, a very small portion of the whole nation, would believe and make “teshuvah” (repentance).  Only this remnant would “return to the Mighty God”. This prediction is fulfilled in the Jewish people (like myself) who have come to believe in Yeshua. The New Covenant (see Jeremiah 31:31-34) also compares the present situation of the Jewish majority with their apostate condition in the time of Elijah the Prophet:  “Even so, then, at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace” (Romans 11:5).

Though the Scriptures make clear the phenomenon of general unbelief,  there will be some who still wonder how the Rabbis could have “missed it”.  The Messiah that God promised and sent was not the 'Messiah' the world or the rabbis were looking for.  They wanted a Messiah who would immediately remove Roman domination from Israel and return Israel to its former glory.

But the purpose of Yeshua’s coming was to die for sins; and rather than vindicate the self-righteous judgements of the rabbis, He insisted that the religious leaders of Israel repent as well!  That was intolerable for the rabbinical leaders. Though many did accept the Messiah, the majority of the Jewish people and Rabbis rejected Yeshua, just as the prophets predicted.

But there will come a time when our people as a nation will come to believe in Him. The Prophets also predicted: “I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem,  the Spirit of grace and supplications: and they shall look on Me whom they have pierced, and mourn for Him as one mourns for an only son” (Zechariah 12:10).

“The stone which the builders rejected shall become the chief of the corner” (Psalms 118:22).

One day our people will trust in Yeshua, their Messiah and King.

We also see it was foretold that today a “remnant of Israel” believes in the Messiah. You can be part of that “remnant”, if you will acknowledge Yeshua for what the Tanakh and New Covenant declare Him to be, the Messiah of our people.  Shalom!