Martin Buber
From my youth onwards I have found in Jesus my great brother. That
Christianity has re-garded and does regard him as God
and Savior has always appeared to me a fact of the highest importance which, for
his sake and my own, I must endeavor to understand... I am more than ever
certain that a great place belongs to him in Israel's history of faith and that
this place cannot be described by any of the usual categories.
Martin Buber, leading Jewish writer, thinker, philosopher, and
theologian (1878-1965).
As a child I re-ceived 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.
Quote taken from What Life Means to Einstein, The Saturday Evening
Post, October 26, 1929. Einstein was a physicist and professor at Princeton
University. He lived from 1879-1955.
Benjamin Disraeli
(1868)
Benjamin Disraeli, who became Bri-tain's prime
minister, articulated Christianity's de-pendence on
Ju-daism:
"In all church dis-cussions we are apt to
forget the second Testament is avowedly only a supplement. Jesus came to complete
the law and the prophets. Christianity is completed Judaism, or it is nothing.
Christianity is incomprehensible without Judaism, as Judaism is incomplete
without Christianity."
Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of England
When asked why he had "given up the synagogue for the church,"
Zolli replied, "I have not given it up. Christi-anity is the completion of the syna-gogue,
for the synagogue was a promise, and Christianity is the fulfillment of that
promise."
"Once a Jew always a Jew."
Israel Zolli, Chief Rabbi of Rome
Rabbi Daniel Zion
(World War II)
"I am poor and feeble, persecuted and vulnerable, Yeshua conquered me, and with the New Man he honored me, He de-livered me from the poverty-stricken self with his great love, he cherishes me."
Daniel Zion, Chief Rabbi of Bulgarian Jews
Editor's Note: The above two men were both
Chief Rabbis, from Rome and Bulgaria respectively. They both had encounters
with Yeshua during the awful years of the Holocaust. Rabbi Daniel Zion was able
to intercede for his people with the anti-Semitic King Boris as well as with
Christian leaders. He managed to save most of the Jews of Bulgaria from being
deported to the death camps of Poland during the brutal Nazi occupation of
Bulgaria. After the war, he and most of the Bulgarian Jews went to Israel. He
remained the most popular rabbi among Bulgarian Jews, despite his belief in
Yeshua. He never converted to Christianity. He remained an observant Jew for
his entire life, until he died in 1979 at the age of 96. RAC
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