Free Republic

On August 22, on the spur of the moment, I posted this on X and on Facebook: A friendly reminder: Jesus was a rabbi, not a reverend. He was a Jew, not a Christian. His name was Yeshua and His mother’s name was Miriam. He was called Christ because it was the Greek way of saying Messiah. He is the Savior of the world because He is Israel’s Messiah.

The son of a leading Iranian authority accuses the Iranian President of changing his Jewish name. Several Iranian media sources are quoting Mahdi Khazali – the son of a leading supporter of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – as having written in a blog that the president has Jewish roots. So reports the Hebrew-language Omedia website and Radio Free Europe. Khazali, son of Ayatollah Abu Al-Kassam Khazali, says that Ahmadinejad changed his Jewish name on his ID card in order to hide his roots. Khazali the son says that the president hides his Jewish roots by attacking Israel and the Jews,...

Since Sen. John Kerry discovered a year ago that his father's father was Jewish-born, he has struggled over whether and how to talk about his Jewish background. The roots are surprising for a Massachusetts politician with an Irish name and Catholic upbringing. Kerry did not know the extent of his Jewish roots until a year ago when a genealogist in Vienna, hired by The Boston Globe, discovered that Kerry's paternal grandfather, Frederick Kerry, a converted Catholic, was actually born Fritz Kohn to Jewish parents in what was Austria-Hungary, now part of the Czech Republic. Kerry, 60, has known for about...

BEHIND THE HEADLINES Latest contender for president comes from long line of rabbis By Ron Kampeas WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 (JTA) — Raised a Southern Baptist who later converted to Roman Catholicism, Gen. Wesley Clark knew just what to say when he strode into a Brooklyn yeshiva in 1999, ostensibly to discuss his leadership of NATO´s victory in Yugoslavia. "I feel a tremendous amount in common with you," the uniformed four-star general told the stunned roomful of students. "I am the oldest son, of the oldest son, of the oldest son — at least five generations, and they were all rabbis."

Consider Abraham: "He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness."1 Avraham Avinu ("Our Father, Abraham") is terminology found frequently in Jewish and Rabbinic literature.2 It does not appear as such in the Tanakh (Old Testament). But the New Testament attests to it multiple times, in the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles.3 This should not surprise us since the theological reflections, traditions and terminology of the sages and rabbis informed the Jewish views of Jesus and his first disciples.4 Abraham was considered the first proselyte to Judaism, and subsequently became the patriarch of the Jewish nation. He is esteemed...