What Jews Have Said About Jesus

Not enough good things can be said about the Lord Jesus, who is Himself a Jew of all Jews. Thanks to the Jews For Jesus Blog, I discovered what some Jews have said about Jesus that I think you will find fascinating. Many modern and some well known Jewish people have recognized Jesus for who He is, and have said some wonderful things about Jesus that most people probably, like myself, were not aware of, so I decided to share these compelling and wonderful words of what Jews have said about Jesus here.

• I couldn't help writing on Jesus. Since I first met him he has held my mind and heart. I grew up, you know, on the border of Poland and Russia, which was not exactly the finest place in the world for a Jew to sit down and write a life of Jesus Christ. Yet even through these years the hope of doing just that fascinated me. For Jesus Christ is to me the outstanding personality of all time, all history, both as Son of God and as Son of Man. Everything he ever said or did has value for us today and that is something you can say of no other man, dead or alive. There is no easy middle ground to stroll upon. You either accept Jesus or reject him. You can analyze Mohammed and...Buddha, but don't try it with him. You either accept or you reject....1
  Sholem Asch
  Yiddish Author
  1880-1957


• The New Testament is also our book, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.3
  Y.C.H. Brenner
  Israeli Writer
  1881-1921
  


• J. Carmel
  Israeli Teacher and Author
  If the prophet Elijah has ridden in a fiery chariot into heaven, why should not Jesus rise and go to heaven?
  Cited by Pinchas Lapide, p. 138 in The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1983).
  


• Albert Einstein
  Physicist and Professor, Princeton University
  1879-1955
  As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene....No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.
  Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrase-mongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot.
  George Sylvester Viereck, "What Life Means to Einstein," The Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929.
  


• Samuel Hirsch
  German and American Reform Rabbi and Chief Rabbi of Luxembourg
  1815-1899
  In order that Jesus' power of hope and greatness of soul should not end with his death, God has raised in the group of his disciples the idea that he rose from death and continues living. Indeed, He continues living in all those who want to be true Jews.
  Cited by Pinchas Lapide, p. 137 in The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1983).
  


• Kaufmann Kohler
  Rabbbi and Educator
  1843-1926
  The times of Jesus were ripe for a social upheaval, for the Messianic Age, when the proud will be brought low, and the humble will be lifted up. Jesus, the most lowly of all men, the despised, beyond comparison, of the despised Jewish nation, has ascended the world's throne to become the Great King of the whole earth.
  In Judaism at the World's Parliament of Religions (Cincinnati: Clarke, 1894).

• Dr. Elie Soloweyczyk
  Orthodox Rabbi
  19th C.
  Jesus had no other end in view than to animate men with faith in the one God and to urge them on to the practice of all the neighborly virtues and love for everyone, even enemies. May God grant us all, Jews and Christians, that we may follow the teaching of Jesus and his shining example, for our well-being in this world and our salvation in the next. Amen.
  
  Kol Kore o Ha-Talmud Wehabrith Hachadasha III: 9; published 1875; cited in Pinchas Lapide, Israelis, Jews and Jesus (Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1979), pp. 112-13.
  
  Continues

And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.
Written by: "The disciple whom Jesus loved."- John 21:25