This is a critical moment in Jewish-Christian relations, and sadly, not a positive one. Let me explain what happened over the past two months in my country, Israel, because it is huge and most Christians outside Israel have no idea what they're looking at.
First, some background: If you want to understand Jewish identity in one image, it's this: Friday evening, the country exhales. Shops close. Buses stop. In Jerusalem, an entire city goes quiet in a way you have to stand in to believe.
This isn't a rabbinic invention. It's Sinai: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor... but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God" (Exodus 20:8-10).
God calls it a sign between Him and Israel forever (Exodus 31:16-17). Jeremiah stood in the gates of Jerusalem and said, do not carry a load through these gates on Shabbat (Jeremiah 17:21-22).
Nehemiah shut the city gates himself to stop merchants from trading on Shabbat, and threatened to arrest the ones who camped outside the wall waiting for sundown (Nehemiah 13:15-22). Commerce on Shabbat in Jerusalem was the Gentile's business, never the Jew's.
Thousands of years. Exile, pogroms, poverty. Jews still closed their shops on Shabbat. It cost them jobs, customers, sometimes their lives.
Now here is what happened: For the past several weeks, Israel has been consumed by protests in central Jerusalem over one café that decided to open on Saturday. A hundred ultra-Orthodox men on one side, offended by the breaking of the Holy Shabbat; a hundred Israeli atheists/seculars on the other; police in between. Every weekend. And every news outlet in the country has covered it for weeks now.
Like most Israelis, I assumed this was another provocation by militant secularists, because "Pink Front" activists were in the photos too. I don't pick sides in these fights.
Both camps in this already highly polarized country have learned to enjoy hating each other, and joining either camp helps no one. I think most Israelis stay out of it because they don't want to side with either extreme.
Then, over the last week, the truth came out, and it was a big surprise to most.
The café is run by Jews for Jesus.
Context for my non-Israeli readers: "Jews for Jesus" is an American Evangelical missionary organization, mostly Evangelical Calvinist/Baptist in its theology, devoted to bringing their version of the gospel to Jewish people so they become Evangelicals.
I want to be careful here. I have friends in that organization. I believe their hearts are in the right place. They are good people. The man managing the café is someone I have known personally for almost 20 years, a genuinely wonderful human being, ordained in a Lutheran church, and I disagree with much of his theology but not with his sincerity. Everyone has the right to share their message. I share mine. That is not my objection.
My objection is this.
Catholics do not call themselves Jews, even though in Israel many Catholics carry Jewish blood. Orthodox Christians do not call themselves Jews either, even though in Israel many of them, in fact, are.
But the Evangelicals in Israel do call themselves "Messianic Jews." Not privately, but as your public identity, your organizational name, your entire strategy. "Messianic Judaism." "Messianic Jews." "Jews for Jesus."
You go out of your way to convince other Jews that you are part of the family, which is a little strange, since you are the one at the table telling everyone else that your God will burn them forever unless they adopt your specific version of the faith, a version that happens to look identical to the Evangelical-Calvinist one.
Take only a quick look at "Messianic" theology, and you will notice it has very little to do with Judaism and everything to do with standard Evangelical doctrine, mostly Calvinist or Pentecostal, imported wholesale.
That's also the theology taught by all the messianic seminaries in Israel to messianic leaders, and Evangelical seminaries are where all messianic leaders went to school.
Now, when you take the single most visible, most costly, most sacred, most ancient marker of Jewish faithfulness, the Shabbat, and you publicly break it in the religious capital of the Jewish people, you have not made a bold witness for Messiah. Not for the one who Himself kept the Shabbat.
This is not merely a marketing fiasco for the Messianic movement in Israel right now. It publicly proves Judaism's points that Christians do not play honestly, and that the Messianic movement isn't Jewish.
By opening your Cafe on the Sabbath in the middle of Jerusalem, you have made a clear statement in the name of the Messianic/Evangelical movement: "We do not respect Judaism." And honestly, it's not even a Jewish thing you disrespect. It's a Biblical thing: “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you." (Deuteronomy 5:12).
Jews for Jesus have formally handed the Jewish anti-missionaries their argument, gift-wrapped. They have been saying for decades that Messianic Jews are just Evangelicals pretending to be Jewish. This month, Jews for Jesus proved it publicly, on national television.
Since I have friends among the leadership, I tried to talk them out of this myself. I asked their leadership to close their cafe on the Sabbath, and I reasoned with them. One of their leaders, a truly wonderful human being whom I would trust with my own child's life, answered that Yeshua Himself broke the Sabbath when His disciples plucked grain on Shabbat.
But that is a wrong and, in fact, poor example; What they broke was the Pharisees' tradition that counted plucking grain as a violation, not the Shabbat itself. Not the Law of Moses.
That makes for a very weak proof-text, especially for a "Jewish" ministry of Jesus-followers wanting to open a cafe on the Shabbat, in Jewish Jerusalem of all places.
And when Yeshua broke traditions, He never did it to spite them. He did it for the sake of mercy, every single time. He healed a man. He let His hungry disciples eat. He reminded them that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Not once did He break it for the sake of revenue or spite. And the one time He did storm into a holy space over what was being done there, it was to drive out commerce, not to bring it in. He literally flipped the tables over.
Then there is Paul, the great contextualizer. Read what he actually did. Acts 21. The elders in Jerusalem tell him that Jewish believers have heard rumors that he teaches Jews to forsake Moses. Their solution is not "let them be offended; the gospel is offensive." Their solution is: go purify yourself publicly, pay for the vows, so that everyone will know there is nothing to these reports and that you yourself live in observance of the Law. Paul did it. The apostle of grace paid money to prove he had not abandoned Jewish practice, probably because he felt he was one himself.
“More than the Jews have kept the Shabbat, the Shabbat has kept the Jews.”
— Ahad Ha’am (Asher Ginsberg)
Dear Jews for Jesus, you cannot win the Jewish people by publicly desecrating the one practice that has kept them a people for thousands of years. The reputational damage you are doing to the Jewish Messiah right now is hard to put into words.
The gospel is offensive enough on its own. A crucified Messiah is a scandal, and it always will be. But this is not that offense. This is a self-inflicted wound, an unnecessary insult that costs you the very hearing you're trying to earn. And the fruit is exactly what you'd expect. Not curiosity. Not conversation. Two radical crowds screaming at each other outside your door. And you've seen it going for five weeks now, and yet you refuse to close the cafe.
I don't say this from a distance or with any pleasure. I say it as a Jewish Israeli who believes in Yeshua, watching my messianic brothers spending tens of millions of dollars every year, making our shared witness harder for all of us. No wonder so many young people are leaving the Messianic movement...
Only one Israeli Christian that I know of spoke about this publicly. He happens to be the one and only Hebrew-speaking Christian influencer, and in a video that went viral, he openly called on Jews for Jesus to close their cafe on Shabbat (making similar arguments to mine). One of the top comments beneath it, written by a Jew, read: "Who would have believed a Christian would strengthen my faith more than almost any rabbi." Another said: "Look, a Christian giving over words of Torah," a Jewish way of saying he was speaking godly truth.
Dear Messianic brothers, you won't earn Jewish respect by trampling over the Shabbat. Please close your Jerusalem cafe on Shabbat and consider releasing a public apology to the Jewish people. A secular business making that choice is a different thing entirely from a mission whose whole claim is Jewish faithfulness and relevancy.
Eitan Bar, Israel
Feel free to comment or share.
