Firstly, let's define who a Jew is. Are you a Jew based on religion, culture or parentage? Biblically a Jew is a person who belongs to the people who are descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the people with whom God made the covenants through Abraham, Moses and David. It is God himself who has made us Jewish.

The term 'Christian' comes from the Greek 'Christos', which translates the Hebrew, 'Meshiach', meaning 'Messiah'. A Christian is defined as someone who has made a decision to follow Y'shua as the Messiah, be they Jewish or Gentile. Becoming a Christian is a personal matter between an individual and God; nobody can be 'born' a Christian. You have to have a second birth or be 'born again'.

The first Christians were Jews who came to believe that Y'shua was the Messiah. None of them renounced their Jewishness. Their faith was based on God's age-old promises found in the Hebrew Scriptures. In the very beginning, Christianity was considered to be just another sect within the Jewish faith. For the most part, it wasn't until some years later that Gentiles were even offered an opportunity of becoming believers in Y'shua without first converting to Judaism.

It follows that if Y'shua is the Messiah, then nothing could be more Jewish than believing in him.

This is a common misrepresentation. Christianity is as firmly monotheistic as Judaism. What Christians believe is that this one God exists in three persons or personalities. This belief is based on the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments.

We affirm that the Hebrew Bible teaches the oneness of God. The cardinal affirmation of the Jewish people has always been the Shema: 'Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.' Jesus also affirmed the Shema. (Mark 12:29)

The Shema uses the Hebrew word, echad. This word allows for a plurality or diversity within unity. Indeed the common Hebrew word for God, Elohim, is also plural in form.

There is a word in Hebrew to describe an indivisible unity, yachid. Maimonides, when composing his famous Thirteen Articles of Faith, substituted yachid for echad in describing the nature of God. Ever since, the notion of an indivisible unity of God has been fostered in Judaism. However, the Bible gives ample instances to show that there is diversity within God's unity.

The Zohar, the foundation book of Jewish mysticism, also recognized that the idea of a plurality-in-unity is not foreign to Jewish thinking.

In the Hebrew Scriptures there are two other personalities who are portrayed as distinct from, yet somehow the same as, God. These are the angel of the Lord and the Spirit of God or the Holy Spirit.

The angel of the Lord is sometimes identified with God himself e.g. Genesis 16:7, 13; 22:11-12.

God's Spirit is spoken of in Scripture as a personality of his own, yet identified as God, e.g. Genesis 1:2, Psalm 51:11, Isaiah 11:2.

In the New Testament, the three personalities mentioned above are portrayed as God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit, without compromising the fundamental affirmation of the Shema.

People often say, “Don't Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God and also God. And therefore they are making a man into God, and anyway God doesn't have a son.”

In 1 Chronicles 17:13, the King of Israel is referred to as God's 'son'. The Talmud also states that the Messiah would be God's son. The idea in the Scriptures is not that a man became God, but that the Messiah would himself be God coming as a man. Isaiah 9:6 portrays the coming of the Messiah in this way, 'For to us a child is born, to us a son is given and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.' But if God is indeed a 'tri-unity', then it is possible for the Messiah both to be called God and to exist in a relationship characterized as 'Son of God'.

This is a good question. There have been several false Messiahs in Jewish history. Among the most prominent were Bar Kochba and Shabbetai Zvi. Bar Kochba led a revolt against Rome in 132-135 CE. During this revolt, one of the most famous figures in Jewish history, Rabbi Akiva, proclaimed him to be 'King Messiah'. Unfortunately Bar Kochba, Akiva and thousands of Jews were killed in 135CE when the Romans stormed the stronghold of Betar. Shabbetai Zvi was arrested in 1666 by the Sultan of Turkey and converted to Islam rather than face death.

The idea of a Messiah is one that is found throughout the Hebrew Bible. Clues to the Messiah's identity are given to us. We are told his ethnic background, place of birth, time frame of his arrival and other identifying characteristics. These 'credentials' enable us to identify the Messiah and to recognize imposters. So why were Jewish people taken in by Shabbetai Zvi and Bar Kochba and not believe that Jesus was the Messiah?

This is due to the view of the Messiah that was held by the time Jesus was born. The Messianic hope had been greatly politicized in the Jewish people as they were seeking deliverance from the tyranny of Rome. Although the Scripture spoke of both the sufferings and the victories of the Messiah, the victorious aspect had become uppermost in the minds of the common people because of the Roman domination. This 'lopsided' view of the Messiah has stuck with Jewish people and the politicization of the messianic hope has continued. Thus, the hope of a political, rather than a spiritual, Messiah contributes to both the acceptance of people such as Bar Kochba, and the rejection of Jesus in his role as Messiah.

But not all Jewish people rejected the claims of Jesus. All the first followers of Jesus were Jews. And the rabbis from that time period and afterwards were well aware of the many messianic prophecies that Christians claimed were fulfilled in Jesus. Although the Talmudic rabbis concurred that Isaiah 53 was a prediction of the Messiah, by medieval times the pressure from those who applied this prophecy to Jesus was so great that Rashi, the greatest medieval Biblical scholar, reinterpreted the chapter and said it referred to the nation of Israel. This interpretation is maintained today by many Jewish scholars, though it only dates back to the Middle Ages.

What then, are some of the credentials of the Messiah? Six of the most well-known are listed below, but if you follow the link to Messianic Prophecies, there is a more in-depth investigation of these Scriptures:

• Messiah was to be born at Bethlehem: Micah 5:1
• Messiah would be from the tribe of Judah: Genesis 49:10
• Messiah would present himself by riding on an ass: Zechariah 9:9
• Messiah would be tortured to death: Psalm 22
• Messiah would arrive before the destruction of the Second Temple: Daniel 9:24-27
• Messiah's life would match a particular description, including suffering, silence at his arrest and trial, death and burial in a rich man's tomb and resurrection: Isaiah 52:13-53:12

In detail as to lineage, birthplace, time and lifestyle, Jesus matched the Messianic expectations of the Hebrew Scriptures. There are several other factors which contribute to further substantiate the Messiahship of Jesus.

Firstly, he claimed to be the Messiah, John 4:25-26. That doesn't prove anything, but if Jesus had never made the claim to be the Messiah, why would we bother to try and prove that he was?

Also Jesus' life is in sharp contrast to that of the false Messiahs, and it is a positive demonstration of what we would expect the Messiah to do. Jesus worked many miracles of healing, bringing wholeness into people's lives, forgiving sin and restoring relationships. In contrast with Shabbetai Zvi, Jesus carried out the Law of Moses as a devout Jew and in contrast with Bar Kochba, although Jesus also died, he was resurrected.

The resurrection is a third piece of evidence and it is perhaps the most convincing vindication of Jesus' claims. Interestingly several years ago, an Israeli scholar, Pinchas Lapide, wrote a book that said that the resurrection of Jesus was well within the realm of possibility. Several possibilities have been posited to explain away the resurrection: Did the Roman authorities steal the body of Jesus from the tomb? Did the disciples steal the body? Perhaps Jesus never died; perhaps it was a mass hallucination? None of these explanations have fully been successful. (Go to link for the Resurrection to see a fuller explanation of the theories of the resurrection)

If every missile in the world were suddenly disarmed, if every knife and gun were destroyed, people would soon devise new ways of propagating evil and doing violence to one another. True peace must involve more than just the cessation of war. It's not enough just to change the externals. Real peace is a matter of what is in people's hearts. Real peace has to start from within. This is something that only comes from repentance before God and allegiance to Jesus as the Messiah and Prince of Peace.

The fact that people have persecuted Jews under the pretext of following Jesus only shows that those who said they were Christians did not possess the peace of God and that they were not followers of Jesus' teachings. In fact, Jesus himself warned that there would be those who called him 'Lord' but would act directly against the will of God.

Those who have truly followed Jesus' teaching have extended help and support to Jewish people, e.g. Dutch Christians who hid away Jews during the Holocaust.

The best reasons proposed by the wisest people of this age are pathetically inadequate to answer this question. And perhaps the answers to the questions raised by the Holocaust, 'Where was God when the six million died? What does it mean? How can life have any meaning in the face of such an orgy of torture and death?' are just too frightening to be faced, because ultimately it's not just a matter of one race turned against another, one religion trying to exterminate a competing religion, nor of political expediency. Rather the awful truth lies in the very nature of all men at all times.

There have been holocausts before. Among our own people: the days of Pharaoh or of Haman. In recent times, there have been genocides in Sudan, Rwanda and Bosnia.

The Holocaust serves as further evidence that man's very nature is warped and perverted, carrying within it mankind's greatest curse. Rabbinic theology cannot explain how a just, loving, merciful God who declares Israel to be his chosen people could allow such a thing to happen. This differs from Biblical thought, which teaches that man is innately evil and that we are born with a nature that will inevitably sin. This is shown by Psalm 51:5, 'Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.'

In rabbinic thought, there is the presumption that somehow man can suppress this evil urge. The study of Torah, the observance of mitzvoth and the practice of prayer are suggested as sufficient to strengthen the human constitution in conquering the evil urge within. But this was not the teaching of the prophets and original Judaism. Jeremiah wrote, 'The heart is deceitful above all things, and beyond cure. Who can understand it?' (Jer 17:9).

One of the most disconcerting facts of the Holocaust is that many Nazis were supremely sincere. But man's sincere belief that he is doing the right thing is simply not enough to ensure righteousness, for the greatest atrocities have always been committed in the name of truth, religion and nationalism.

Man's capacity to do evil and to tolerate the evil done by others far exceeds any humanistic philosophy's ability to explain. Man is most dangerous when he believes he is absolutely right. Sincerity is as loyal a servant of evil as it is of good.

We need a Saviour who is more powerful than all the nations of this world combined. When confronted by our own human eagerness to be seduced by the attractive and the powerful, no matter what banners they display, our urgent need is for something far greater than mere good intentions and inward impulses. We need the intervention of the Creator himself to save all of us from ourselves.

The Jewish people will survive in spite of Pharaohs, Hamans, Hitlers and all of the demonic forces of this world. It is right to mourn over the six million destroyed, but one must see that if the forces of evil could have prevailed, our Jewish people would have been annihilated three millennia before this time. It is true that the Holocaust happened, but it is also true that God has preserved the Jewish people, and we have survived as evidence that the Bible is true and that God does keep his word.

The New Testament is a Jewish book written almost entirely by Jewish people. Most of the concepts in the New Testament cannot be understood apart from their background in the Hebrew Bible.

As far as allegations of anti-Semitism go, in the early days of Christianity, there were no Gentile believers. The whole question of whether Jesus was the Messiah was a family affair to be settled by the family of Jewish people. It is in this context that the tone of many passages depicting criticism of this or that segment of the Jewish people must be seen. The 'harsh' passages in the New Testament resemble far more the moral exhortations of the prophets than they do the intolerant rhetoric of medieval sermons.

The real question to be dealt with is not, 'Is the New Testament Jewish?' but rather, 'Is it true?'

Some of us carry out different parts of it more than others do, because some of us are more observant than others, just as is the case in the larger Jewish community. Those of us who do observe the precepts of Torah do so recognizing that the Law of Moses is no longer binding as such upon Israel. The prophet Jeremiah prophesied that a day would come when: 'I (God) will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them' declares the Lord' (Jeremiah 31:31-2)

What many people do not realise, though, is that even the Law of Moses was not an unchanging monolith. Some of the regulations given in the Book of Leviticus, for instance, which applied in the wilderness wanderings, were modified in the Book of Deuteronomy so they could find application in the settled life of Canaan.

The situation today is quite different than it was in ancient Israel. The Jewish people are no longer a theocracy nor do we have a king; our Temple and priesthood are gone. But unlike Reform or Conservative Judaism, which also speak of modifying and adapting the ancient laws for today, any changes or modifications must come from God himself, not from the decisions of rabbis.

Such a change was in fact indicated by God in the portion of Jeremiah quoted before. The content of the new covenant is spelled out in the Book of the New Covenant, otherwise known as the New Testament. There, as well as in the prophecies of the prophets, we learn of God's provision for this day and age when the Temple no longer stands, the priesthood is gone and there are no provisions for sacrifices for sin: namely the Messiah himself has come as our sacrifice. With his death, the new covenant has been inaugurated.

Traditionally, Judaism has insisted that the Torah will never come to an end, despite the passage in Jeremiah. But the Encyclopedia Judaica states that 'in the Bible there is no text unanimously understood to affirm explicitly the eternity or non-abrogability of the Torah'. In Maimonides' Thirteen Articles of Faith, the Ninth Article stresses the non-abrogability of the Torah. It is Maimonides, not the Bible, who has laid the basis for contemporary Orthodox Jewish views on the subject.

Although some of us do keep Kosher, it is not possible to keep laws pertaining to the tabernacle or Temple. The moral imperatives of the Torah are reflective of God's unchanging character and are therefore forever binding. It is especially in the area of the moral commandments that relate to our inward attitudes that we run into a problem.

This is the problem: it never was, and is not now, possible to keep the Law completely or perfectly. That's why God instituted a system of sacrifices in the first place – so we could find forgiveness when we failed to keep the rest of the Law. The question every Jew must ask is: do I fail to do what God requires? And when that happens, what do I do to obtain God's forgiveness? Our answer is the answer of the Scriptures: you must put your trust in Jesus as your atonement for sin.

The statement often made that 'Jews don't proselytize' may reflect the contemporary trend in the Jewish community, but hardly summarizes the Jewish attitude in the past. Indeed there was widespread conversion to Judaism during the period of the Second Temple.

What is usually meant by the statement 'Jews don't proselytize' is that no one truth is binding on anyone, and people should be left free to believe what they want. People should be free to choose what to believe, but it isn't the case that no absolute truth exists! This idea is completely foreign to the Jewish way of thinking; it reflects the trends of the larger gentile culture, which in the last few years has come to this conclusion.

We believe that there is a binding truth and that it is incumbent upon us to share that truth with others. Didn't God require us thousands of years ago to share his truth with the foreign nations of the world? Isaiah, the prophet, speaks of Israel as his servant, then goes on to say that Israel has not fulfilled this mission. The 'servant' is then narrowed down to one particular individual within Israel. Isaiah 42:1-6 speaks of a 'chosen people': chosen for a mission and a purpose, to make God's ways known to the nations. Unfortunately this sense of mission has decreased more and more over the years. Today it is virtually a foregone conclusion that we Jews just don't bother with proselytism. But for those of us who are believers in Jesus, what better news could there be to spread than the fact that the Messiah has come, and has provided atonement and an abundant life for Jesus and gentiles alike? It is not up to us to convert anyone; that's God's business. But we can – and we'll continue to tell – the message of the Messiah to our people and to anyone who cares to listen.

If everyone were good in God's sight, nobody would need Jesus.

The psalmist said, 'There is no one who does good, not even one.' (Ps 14:3) Most of us aren't murderers or thieves or anything like that. We like to think of ourselves as respectable, with no need for major changes in our lives. Yet the Scriptures demonstrate that even the best of us is desperately sinful; deeply alienated from God, from each other and even from ourselves.

According to the Bible, the problem of mankind is that we are 'happy with our own religion', 'happy with what we believe.' We're happy to think that we're good, that surely God will overlook our 'little' mistakes and shortcomings and that he isn't really serious about our sins. We're happy to place our own wills and desires at the centre of our private universe, rather than making the will and the desires of our Creator primary.

But God is serious about our sin. The Scriptures show us that sin is a condition of human existence which does not pertain to a particular act, but rather to an attitude – one of arrogance and rebellion. The best of men, like Abraham, Moses and King David, all committed acts of sin. Isaiah indicated that it is only human for each man, himself included, to seek self-fulfillment rather than to seek to fulfill the precepts of God. King David said that his sin was a condition from birth (Psalm 51:5). Sin is universal –that's why the Day of Atonement is universally observed among Jewish people as the most solemn of all holidays. And that's why God provided a way of forgiveness, beginning with the Old Testament animal sacrifices and culminating in the death of the Messiah. Our responsibility is to respond in faith and to place our trust in Jesus as our atonement. We must return to a view of life centred on God's way of looking at things, rather than in our own preferences.

We really are sinful in the depths of our being, and all the education, affluence and technology in the world hasn't changed that; it's only enabled us to express our rebellion in a more sophisticated fashion. Jesus really did come in history, really did die, and really did rise from the dead. All the objections in the world and all the ignoring of the evidence won't make that reality go away. Perhaps your attitude is that of the skeptic who said, 'My mind is made up, don't confuse me with the facts!' But God really does hold us responsible for facing the facts about ourselves, and accepting his offer of forgiveness, through Jesus.

The Messiahship of Jesus is not an open question in the Jewish community. A rabbi's study of Christianity is based on the assumption that Jesus is not the Messiah and the New Testament is not the inspired Word of God in the same sense that the Torah is. With such assumptions, Jewish students of Christianity always come to the same foregone conclusion, namely, that Jesus is not the Messiah. With the weight of responsibility upon them for the local Jewish community, few rabbis will consider the issue openly or sympathetically.

There is a reason for this lack of openness. Rabbinic theology is different than biblical theology. Rabbinic Judaism is not the religion of the Bible. This divergence was already taking place before the time of Jesus among different groups. At the time of Jesus there were a number of different sects within Judaism, each with its own set of doctrines and beliefs. With the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, and the loss of the priesthood and the means of sacrifice, there were only a few main options available to the Jewish community. One was to accept the death of Jesus as the atonement for sin. The other chief option was to reconstruct Jewish thought so that the community could exist without a Temple and so that sin could be forgiven without sacrifice.

This was the choice of the sect of the Pharisees, whose point of view ultimately prevailed to become what has been called 'mainstream Judaism' or current rabbinic Judaism. In place of the Scriptures as the chief guide to life, the rabbinic discussions of the Talmud and the various layers of tradition became the focal points for organizing Jewish life and thought. As a result, because there was no place for Jesus in these traditions, it became a foregone conclusion that he was not the Messiah.

This position was cemented by the ongoing interaction of Jews and the institutional church. Thus, in medieval times, the rabbinic stance against he claims of Jesus and the teaching of the New Testament was fortified. The meaning of Isaiah 52:13-53:12 was originally thought to be Messianic. However the famous French rabbi Rashi reinterpreted it to attribute the passage to the nation of Israel.

Maimonides substituted the term yachid for echad in describing God. So a word for an indivisible unity was used rather than the word suggesting a compound unity which is actually used in the Shema.

Belief in Jesus is not simply a matter of intellectual persuasion. It entails the crucial decision to admit that one is sinful and to repent and trust in Jesus as the atonement of sin. This is a difficult admission for anyone to make, whether he is a rabbi or not, or whether he is Jewish or Gentile. How much harder for one in a position of responsibility in the Jewish community to take such a step.

There have been rabbis who have come to believe. One was Rabbi Iechiel Lichtenstein, district rabbi in Tapio Szele, Hungary, during the nineteenth century. There was also Rabbi Chil Slostowski, an Orthodox rabbi in Dubnow, Poland, and later at Lodz. In the New World, one could name Max Wertheimer, a Reform rabbi who served in Dayton, Ohio, in the early twentieth century. Even today, there are rabbis like Harold Vallins in Melbourne, Australia, who have come to believe Jesus is the Messiah. They were willing to face the consequences of their belief in Jesus because they were convinced that it was true.

Those of us who believe in Jesus believe that everyone has sinned and that we all face the consequences of this in our lives and in the world. We believe that God sent Jesus, as Messiah, into the world to be our Saviour and to pay for our sins on the cross. From the very beginning of humanity, we have been sinning and disobeying God. And we believe that Jesus would die and rise again bringing forgiveness of sins for all who believe in him (Luke 24:46-48). We were also instructed to tell the good news to all nations (Matthew 28). We know that without the mercy of God, none of us is good enough and it is only through belief in Jesus' death on the cross, that we are made righteous in the eyes of God. And indeed, sending Jesus was God's most merciful act, because Jesus was sinless and innocent and paid the price for our guilt when he died on the cross. It is this that makes us tell people about Jesus and what he has done for all humanity. It is only Christianity that offers the means to wipe away our sin and come into a personal relationship with God, because it is only Christianity that offers a Saviour.