This book is the go-to source for introductory information on Messianic Judaism. Editors David Rudolph and Joel Willitts have assembled a thorough examination of the ecclesial context and biblical foundations of the diverse Messianic Jewish movement. Unique among similar works in its Jew-Gentile partnership, this book brings together a team of respected Messianic Jewish and Gentile Christian scholars, including Mark Kinzer, Richard Bauckham, Markus Bockmuehl, Craig Keener, Darrell Bock, Scott Hafemann, Daniel Harrington, R. Kendall Soulen, Douglas Harink and others. Opening essays, written by Messianic Jewish scholars and synagogue leaders, provide a window into the on-the-ground reality of the Messianic Jewish community and reveal the challenges, questions and issues with which Messianic Jews grapple. The following predominantly Gentile Christian discussion explores a number of biblical and theological issues that inform our understanding of the Messianic Jewish ecclesial context. Here is a balanced and accessible introduction to the diverse Messianic Jewish movement that both Gentile Christian and Messianic Jewish readers will find informative and fascinating.

The official establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948 constituted the realization of the Zionist vision, but military victory left in its wake internal and external survival issues that would threaten this historic achievement for decades to come. The refusal of the international community to recognize the political, geographic, and demographic results of the War of Independence presented Israel with a permanent regional security threat, while isolating and alienating it in the international arena. One of the most formidable problems Israeli foreign policy faced was the stance of the Christian world toward the new state. Attitudes ranged from hostility and categorical non-recognition by the Catholic Church, through Protestant ambivalence, to Evangelical support. Cross on the Star of David presents the first scholarly analysis, based on newly declassified documents, of Israeli policymaking on this issue. Uri Bialer focuses on the impact that modes of thinking rooted in the historical tradition of Jewish-Christian interactions had on Israeli policymakers and concludes that they were not innocent of the perceptions and biases that influenced the Christian world's behavior toward Israel. The result is a fine-grained, original interpretation of an important dimension of Israeli foreign policy from the founding of the State to the 1967 War.

The Star of Redemption is widely recognized as a key document of modern existential thought and a significant contribution to Jewish theology in the twentieth century. An affirmation of what Rosenzweig called “the new thinking,” the work ensconces common sense in the place of abstract, conceptual philosophizing and posits the validity of the concrete, individual human being over that of “humanity” in general. Fusing philosophy and theology, it assigns both Judaism and Christianity distinct but equally important roles in the spiritual structure of the world, and finds in both biblical religions approaches toward a comprehension of reality.

A vast reconstruction of the knowledge of the ancient Jewish priest-scientists, with vital implications for contemporary spirituality and science. • Reveals an ancient science that used geometry, sound, and number to link the finite world of human experience with the infinite realm of the divine. • Uses teachings extending back thousands of years to explicate key concepts of quantum physics and quantum cosmology. For centuries the Kabbalah has fascinated devotees of mysticism while its origins have remained obscure. Now, in her brilliant new work, Leonora Leet reveals that the Kabbalah was the product of a sophisticated, though largely forgotten, Hebraic sacred science that was the rival of any in Egypt or Greece. Not only does Leet reconstruct the secret teachings of the priest-scientists of the Hebrew temple, she also shows them to be the key to understanding both biblical and kabbalistic cosmology. Unlike previous purely historical explorations of the Jewish esoteric tradition, The Secret Doctrine of the Kabbalah resurrects this ancient body of knowledge to reveal eternal truths that can have a profound and positive impact on contemporary spirituality. New experimental methods of practicing Hebraic sacred science are explored that explain as never before the meaning of the central cosmological diagram of the entire Western esoteric tradition--the kabbalistic Tree of Life. Leet shows that the Kabbalah and its central diagram enshrine a key to the purpose of the cosmos, a key that has vast implications for modern physics and cosmology. In a final synthesis, she envisions a culmination in which the universe and its divine child, perfected humanity, achieve that unification of the finite and infinite which has ever been the secret doctrine of the Kabbalah.