January Webinar Q&A

There is never enough time for Q&A, so we are providing additional interaction with our January panelists below.

Question: You mentioned that Poljak founded an organization called the Jewish Christian Union. What was this group like? How diverse was its membership? Did it have anything in common with what we are doing in Yachad BeYeshua?

Boaz Michael:

For your first question I will give you Poljak’s definition of his term Jewish Christianity. He says, “We are a Jewish reform movement, a spiritual current within and not outside Judaism. In order to understand us, it is necessary to begin from the starting point of Christianity. Where did Christianity begin? In the synagogue. Yeshua preached only in the Temple at Jerusalem and in the synagogues of Palestine [Christ in the synagogue] .… “I have not come to destroy but to fulfill,” Yeshua preached. To whom did he preach? To the Jews of the synagogue. Therefore, the synagogue must be fulfilled and not destroyed. Thus, Jews believing in him ought not to leave the synagogue but rather to reform it and fill it with the Spirit of Messiah. The Star of David, the symbol of Judaism, must not be destroyed but fulfilled: the cross in the Star of David.”

I like his definition albeit very complex, but am remiss to say, nothing that I have found would indicated Poljak ever did this or make effort to implement it within a synagogue as he suggests. Essentially, a formal Union never seemed to really form.

Regarding parallels with the emerging work of Yachad BeYeshua. I think there are some similarities. Poljak had a knack to find Jewish Christians, he gives testimony of his contacts throughout Palestine and the world. He says, “From all lands Jews come to Palestine and from all spiritual directions they come to Yeshua. It is unimportant from where they come; important only is where they go.” And, “In our day both the Jewish Christian movement and the secret believers lack clarity and maturity, but this is the beginning and not the end, the start and not the finish.”

I think the work of Yachad BeYeshua is more mature, less polemic, than what Poljak could understand or tolerate. Remember he ultimately broke away from Levertoff because of his connection to formal Christianity. Yet Yachad BeYeshua seems to be similar in its unique ability to gather Jewish Christians together—which is incredibly valuable, to repeat Poljak, “this is the beginning and not the end, the start and not the finish.”

Question: Did the attitude of your parents to you and your faith change at all as the years passed? What was your relationship like with them in their latter years?

Juliet Pressel:

The Lord did answer my prayers that my parents not be left behind. I believe that my parents were afraid of my “conversion” because, just as in the Tevye-Chava scenario I referred to, it signified to them a complete abandonment of them personally, as well as everything they held dear. But, fortunately, through God’s grace and my friends’ kindness, and a certain amount of tenacity on my part, they saw that this was not my intent: I didn’t become a Jew-hater, and I certainly didn’t abandon them. It would take some time to describe how our relationship improved, but it actually happened more quickly than I ever imagined it would and, looking back, I’d say their own need/desire not to lose me played an important part as well.

It’s worth mentioning that after I met Mark Kinzer and other Jewish believers in Jesus who came to Ann Arbor in the next few years, and after my husband Jim Pressel and I were married, Mark proposed that the Pressels host a Seder in our upper room apartment, which we did. There were perhaps 8 attendees, celebrating, eating, drinking, pounding the table and stomping on the floor (undulation!) -- and my mother was one them, celebrating and pounding with the best of us. She did NOT go so far as to acknowledge Jesus, then or later but she was quite emphatically there that night!

As for my father, he too put away his disappointment, and even defended me against would-be critics. Later, after Jim and I had children, for several years running, my father would lead Seders at our house until he was too weak to carry on. In the last weeks of his life, my friend Peter Williamson lent him Cardinal Lustiger’s book “Dare to Believe” and to my amazement my father read it with enthusiasm. When he gave it back to me to return it to Peter, Peter said my father should keep it, so back I went. My father was in the Emergency Room on one of his last admissions when I brought the book back to him and he held it to his heart and cried with joy. He too never professed faith in Jesus, at least not aloud, but since he died almost literally with the words of Jean-Marie Lustiger on his heart, I have never doubted for a minute that his journey ended in Abraham’s bosom.

My mother’s own last years were challenging though we were at peace. She was far more disputatious than my father, and when she died, I did not feel the same assurance about her as I did about my father, but I knew I had been faithful and I trusted that God would be too. Some years after her death, out of the blue, I experienced a sudden sense of certainty that she, too, had arrived in the blessed realm, and my dear friend Ann called me just a few days later to tell me that God had given her a dream in which she saw my parents together in heaven. Bless the Lord!