I was just browsing my favorite stock photo library iStock photo to find pictures of Jewish people talking (for the logo of this blog). I typed "Jewish people" into the search. There were some nice pictures but then, there he was, Jesus. Not just a high school portrait of Jesus with big hair and a funky t-shirt mind you. Jesus up on the cross. I figured it was mislabelled. I continued further and found at least 20 other pictures of Jesus, crosses, or Jesus on the cross. Of course the pictures have a lot of different tags including Christianity and Faith but I was surprised to see that they were tagged with "Jewish" or "Judaism".
One could argue that Jesus was in fact a Jew. Some might even argue that aside from Slash, Gene Simmons, and Lenny Kravitz he is the most popular and well known Jew ever. And, since we should expect our heavy metal friends to be labelled as MOTs why not Jesus. Well, ok, I can think of about a bazillion reasons. But, in a twisted way, I can see how someone might do it.
But, a cross? I have no idea what that's all about. I suppose that if Jesus was Jewish and Jesus was killed on a cross, then by the transitive law crosses are Jewish. Hmmmm.
Anyway, my goal isn't to start a boycott of iStock photo. Heaven forbid I go to Getty images and pay full price for an image. I'm just curious as to what people think about Jesus being tagged with "Judaism".
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I always find this very annoying although I’ve come to understand it as a result of some conversations I’ve had recently one person I know who describes herself as “Christian.” From her point of view Jesus was a great Jew.
When I surf the net doing research on Jewish themed issues, I often come across sites that seem pertinent. But when I get inside them, usually within a few sentences I realize it’s a Christian site that is attempting to draw in Jews by the way they’ve represented the content. Further on they will make the some point that Jesus was Jewish but just took Judaism to a higher level. Or a a recent political operative said recently, “we just need to be perfected.”
The theology of Christianity is fundamentally different from Judaism despite the PC orientation that lumps the two together in shared "Judeo-christian values." To me, tagging Jesus with Judaism seems like nothing more than a bait to attract Jews and influence them into believing that there really isn’t that much difference. To the misinformed of either faith, this effort might seem harmless. But in my opinion, Christians that use their websites to do this are being manipulative. There is such a thing as “truth in advertising.” Many Jews reflexively resist this attempt to blur the line of Jesus and Judaism as a result of our history of persecution by Christianity. But without a solid education they don’t recognize the reasons why tagging Jesus with Judaism is actually sacrificing the value and preciousness of our distinctive beliefs.
So the bottom line for me is that I don’t like Jesus being tagged with Judaism.
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