Hanukkah and Christmas for many American Jews can cause confusion about which holiday to celebrate and how. Hanukkah, specifically, has lost much of its original meaning, and the birth of the Messiah, Christmas, is no different.

Jesus did NOT begin His existence with His birth out of the womb of Mary.

He is the eternal Son of God. He “became” flesh in the womb of Mary through the supernatural work of the Ruach Hakodesh (Holy Spirit). It was a miracle from the beginning to end!

We want the birth of Jesus to be relevant to our Jewish people as the Messiah intended it to be. 

We want to highlight the incarnation through Jewish eyes and provide an understanding of what this word, incarnation, could mean if you are a Jew reading this.

We want the birth of Jesus to be relevant to our Gentile Christian brothers and sisters as we reclaim the Jewishness of Jesus, especially in His birth. 

We’re not telling you to throw away the tree and get rid of the presents, but to faithfully examine Scripture and your remembrance of the birth of Jesus, and celebrate it for what it truly is, not for what it has become. We’re not going to be any more prescriptive than that, but to ask you to bring deep meaning to the annual celebration. 

Wherever you may find yourself during this season, our hope is that you find yourself getting curious. This means for many of us we will begin to challenge our preconceived notions and traditions, and seriously contemplate what the birth of this baby, the Promised Messiah of Israel, means for us today.

To read our eBook, "5 Questions Every Jew Should Be Asking About Christmas" go to our website at thejewishroad.com/christmas to download it for free.

THE MESSIAH WAS TO BE BORN OF A VIRGIN.

When we approach the subject of the virgin birth, whether Jew or Gentile, we tend to think about the story we are most familiar with: Mary and Joseph, the baby in the manger, angels and shepherds. Though this miracle is a complicated thing to explain, we are dancing in familiar space in the Christian world. For us Jews, exploring this topic means we have wandered into foreign territory that’s “not for us.” At least that’s what our mothers told us. 

The subject we’re talking about is obviously Christmas and yet, it has nothing to do with anything Jewish. But does anybody meditate on the deeper significance of what was going on that day in Bethlehem? For Jews, it’s a non-issue. For many Gentiles, they don’t want the ugliness of the cross to interfere with the stocking celebration. 

It seems pretty obvious that as our culture has become more and more secularized, it has also become enamored with a one-dimensional, simplistic view of reality that leads us to focus so much on the story and the sweetness of a baby boy that we can forget the bigger reason for the season. 

Question number two in our series is, "When will the Messiah be born?" Knowing WHEN the Messiah (Jesus) would come is important to know whether He has actually already come, is still yet to come, or maybe even both.

THE MESSIAH MUST COME WHILE THE SECOND TEMPLE WAS STILL STANDING.

“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.” (Malachi 3:1)

Malachi was not promising that Elijah would appear before the first coming of Messiah, but before the second. Malachi says Elijah would come before the second coming: 

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

(Malachi 4:5-6)

It's December, and the Jewish people are once again bombarded with confusing messages about Christmas. Instead of trying to make sense of it all, we usually go to the movies and order in Chinese food.

The problem is that many of these messages are not only inaccurate but they also present a false picture of the incarnation and who Jesus really is.

On one hand, when approaching Christmas, the Jewish people can see it as embracing a "cultural Christmas" with the trees, tinsel, and Santa Claus.

On the other hand, the other option the Jewish people see is to embrace the more "Christian Christmas" of Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus in the manger. For the Jewish people, there’s always been an aversion to Jesus. Not that Jesus is bad, “he just isn’t for us.”

The problem for the Jew is that both of these options feel divorced from the "Jewish roots" of a Jewish Messiah being born and fulfilling the words of Jewish prophets hundreds of years earlier.

This series of podcasts is based on our new eBook is an answer to restoring Jewish eyes to the incarnation narrative. You can download it at thejewishroad.com/christmas. There's so much to be said on this topic, however for our purposes we focused on just "5 Questions Every Jew Should Be Asking About Christmas." 

These five questions will help us understand what has been hidden from the Jewish people for centuries - that Yeshua (Jesus) was in fact born a Jew as He claimed. This episode is looking at the question, "Where will the Messiah be born?"