Welcome all to the Messianic Judaism community board!!!

Much shalom!

Ufretr

Hello all; I think that river asks a good question.

What happened to all the pages of posts?

Today I decided to check out some of my previous posts on beliefnet and found that all the old discussion boards are designated as; "This is a read-only area". So, all the old posts have not been transferred over to the new forums.

Something like this happened on beliefnet about six years ago when again, the discussion board software was changed.

So, I guess we will be starting from scratch over here.

Peace, BB ;-)

[QUOTE=preacher197;83730]Am a Christian who is intested in understanding his Jewish Roots as a believer in Jesus as the Messia. (Sorry for the misspelling)[/QUOTE]

Then welcome to the forum!

Feel free to ask any questions and I'll try to answer to the best of my knowledge.  In case I would not know an answer for a question, I'll surely research and help you out!

Much shalom! :)

I was part of a Messianic Jewish congregation for three years in Calif., this was in addition to my regular church.

I left the movement after attending a MJ national conference in which they were advocating required circumcision for membership of Gentiles (gers). I felt the movement had benefits, but movements usually degrade into heresies, and this was pretty evident they had stepped out to lunch in terms of balance at the time. I don't have a clue where they are at doctrinally today, but I enjoyed my time learning about it, and I also played acoustic guitar and vocals in the worship team, learning about 100 MJ songs.

I learned some valuable theology while studying this topic, which I added to the vault of my knowledge, which I am willing to share if anyone stumbles into a topic which i feel I hae a unique viewpoint to offer.

Sonic:

I'm sorry about that what happened in that conference.  I'm a member of the MJAA, which is the largest MJ organization worldwide and we agree that circumcision is not to be demanded as a meant for non-Jews to join the Messianic community.  This is a personal decision and we (circumcized or not) are one in Messiah and all children of ONE G-d.  However, there are individual Rabbis and congregations within our movement that believe this is required.  Most MJ congregations agree that it is not. 

In my congregation nothing is required.  You don't have to kiss the Torah when it is marched around or bend the knee and bow every time the phrase "Baruch ata Ad-nai" is said in a prayer.  There are things common to Christians that are not allowed (like extreme charismatic manifestations, etc.) but as a diverse community as we are, the key is discipleship as Jacob (James) encouraged in Acts during the Council of Jerusalem.  Those new to these practices and beliefs will learn as they go and apply as they feel.  The most important thing is for people to know why they do what they do, rather than having people do things because everybody else does.  If there's no kavanah (intention, passion, desire) in what we do, we do things in vain, IMO at least :)

Hope this helps