Describing the Messiah, we have touched a fundamental issue – who is a Jew? David Ben-Gurion – founder of the State of Israel – has expressed a very liberal point of view: “A Jew is anyone believing he is a Jew” but many in modern Israel are not so liberal anymore which can be noticed with the deportation of immigrants from Africa.
The religious point of view based on the Word of God is very clear in this manner, at least when it comes to males. Anyone who is circumcised as a sign of the Covenant with God is a Jew, and this is a basic definition.
Therefore, some may ask what is the Covenant? Actually there are many of them in the Bible but a primary one was the laws dictated to Moses in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy, a basis for written and oral Torah.
The problem is, however, that the Jews have broken this covenant and the Lord decided to make a new one.
31 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:
32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord:
33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.
34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
Jeremiah 31:31-34
As the further text in the Bible is not clear, many scholars believe that this New Covenant is something the Lord will prescribe in the future, but the truth is that this New Covenant is already expressed in the verses right after the announcement. Here is a full text of the Covenant that has replaced an old one.
35 Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The Lord of hosts is his name:
36 If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.
37 Thus saith the Lord; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord.
Jeremiah 31:35-37
This New Covenant that was meant to replace the Mosaic is a final one. That’s why every Jew – a circumcised one – shall remember it and shall keep it in his heart.
It was a very smart move from the Lord because this time he didn’t concentrate on laws, which could be somehow obsolete with time, but focused on his own security.
The crucial verse is Jeremiah 31:36 that practically says that if something bad will happen and the ordinances enacted in the Bible will depart from before the Lord, then the nation of Israel, the Jews, will stop being a nation forever.
In other words, if the Lord would be, for example, killed by someone, the nation of Israel won’t be a nation anymore. The Jews will no longer be the Jews.
It’s a fundamental verse in Kabbalah and later you’ll see that it is of high importance both for the Jews and the Lord. From that time, after the New Covenant was made, the Lord has bound his fate with a fate of the nation.
You shall no longer be surprised at the reason why the Jews are so resuletly defending the Lord from the outside world. It’s not a matter of faith or patriotism but of national security and, therefore, whether or not to be a Jew at all.