Messianic Judaism
religious movement
Messianic Judaism is a syncretic Protestant Christian religious sect that incorporates elements of Jewish practice. It considers itself to be a form of Judaism but is generally considered to be a form of Christianity, including by all mainstream Jewish religious movements. Its roots are in Christian missionary activity aimed at Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in North America.
Messianic Jews believe that Jesus was the Messiah and a divine being in the form of God the Son (a member of the Trinity), thus taking characteristically Christian positions on distinctions that number among those that most strongly distinguish Christianity and Judaism. Messianic Judaism is also generally considered a Protestant Christian sect by scholars and other Christian groups.
It emerged in the United States between the 1960s and 1970s from the earlier Hebrew Christian movement, and was most prominently propelled through the non-profit organization Jews for Jesus founded in 1973 by Martin "Moishe" Rosen, an American minister in the Conservative Baptist Association.
Messianic Jews adhere to conventional Christian doctrine, including the concept of salvation by believing in Jesus (referred to by the Hebrew name Yeshua among adherents) as the Jewish Messiah and humanity's redeemer, and in the spiritual authority of the Bible (including the Hebrew Bible and New Testament).
In Hebrew, Messianics tend to identify themselves with the terms maaminim (מאמינים, lit. 'believers') and yehudim (יְהוּדִים, lit. 'Jews') in opposition to being identified as notzrim (נוצרים, lit. 'Christians'). Jewish organizations inside and outside of Israel reject this framing. The Supreme Court of Israel declared Messianic Judaism a Christian sect for purposes of the Law of Return.
“Messianic Judaism” enters the record as religious movement. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Messianic, Judaism and religious can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q216952. The Library of Congress control number is sh2003006559. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973.
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This entry incorporates text from “Messianic Judaism” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.