My father used to tell me, “Jesus was the first Reform Jew,” meaning that Jesus upset the religious apple cart. I always knew in the back of my mind that Jesus was Jewish, but he didn’t seem to be the kind of Jew that would attend Temple Emanu-El of Canarsie, where my family went, or Camp Shomria, the Zionist summer camp I attended as a teenager.

Judging from movie portrayals and the occasional painting, Jesus seemed thin, even gaunt, with light-colored, stringy hair and a soft-spoken persona—not exactly the type to engage in the animated conversations so typical of my family. If I tried imagining him at our local deli counter, I figured he’d be the guy who was always pushed to the back of the line.

The Old Testament seemed to be full of much more colorful Jews. (I always called it the Old Testament—“Old” conveyed a sense of grandeur to me. It was a thick, venerable book compared to the New Testament, which looked far less substantial.) Jesus may have been a Jew, but he wasn’t our kind of Jew, meaning the mostly New York Ashkenazi Jews I knew. Or so I thought.

Jesus’ Life as a Jew

When I became a follower of Jesus at around age 19, I found lots of things in the New Testament to confirm that Jesus was Jewish—and yes, even our kind of Jew.¹

Jesus’ Genealogy Was Jewish

Right in the very first sentence of the New Testament it says,

The book of the genealogy of Messiah Jesus, the son of David, the son of Abraham. (Matthew 1:1)

Or to paraphrase: this is the yichus (the family pedigree) of the Messiah—who, by the way, has an illustrious lineage through King David and in Abraham.

Jesus Had a Jewish Childhood

He had his bris:

Or at least the first-century equivalent of one.

And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Yeshua (Luke 2:21)²

He was brought to the Temple for the pidyon ha-ben (the redemption of the firstborn):

And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, [his parents] brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”). (Luke 2:22–23)

His family was steeped in Jewish liturgy:

Knowing that she would give birth to the Messiah, Jesus’ mother composed a song of praise.

And Miriam said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

…

And his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.

…

He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,

as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”

(Excerpts from Luke 1:41–56)

The first two chapters of Luke’s biography of Jesus contain this and other prayers that could be straight out of the siddur or from the book of Psalms.

Jesus Observed Jewish Holidays

He observed Pesach:

Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. (Luke 2:41–42)

And of course, later in Jesus’ life, his famous Last Supper with his disciples took place at Passover (Mark 14:12–16). It was the first-century equivalent of the later, more expansive seder.

He also observed Sukkot and Hanukkah:

Now the […] Feast of Booths was at hand…. About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. (John 7:2, 14)

And:

At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. (John 10:22–23)

He regularly attended Shabbat services:

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. (Luke 4:16–17)

Jesus’ Teaching Was Distinctively Jewish

He taught in a rabbinic style:

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. (Matt 13:44)

He frequently taught using parables, most much longer than this one, which was a common rabbinic way of teaching.³ And like many rabbis, Jesus taught using proverbs:

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:21)

He taught Jewish wisdom from the Torah:

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

And [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:35–40)

Similarly, Hillel the Great said, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour: that is the whole Torah, while the rest is the commentary thereof; go and learn it” (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a, Soncino edition).

He Taught Jewish Values:

For instance, he had this to say about charity (tzedakah):

“When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:3–4)

For another example, he taught avoidance of lashon hara, evil talk and gossip:

I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. (Matthew 5:22)

 

Contemporary Observations

For the past few centuries, there has been an increasing recognition of the Jewishness of Jesus in the Jewish community. We can look at a few recent examples.

Over fifty Jewish contributors to the Jewish Annotated New Testament write from the assumption that Jesus was Jewish and the New Testament is a Jewish book.

Over at PBS’s Frontline, a smorgasbord of Jewish and non-Jewish scholars affirmed Jesus’ Jewishness under the headline, “He was born, lived, and died as a Jew. Jesus’ identity cannot be understood apart from his Jewishness.”⁴

Jewish commentator and New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote an article titled, “Jesus Is a Jew,”⁵ in which he said:

Jesus was Jewish. He presumably had the skin colour of modern Sephardic Jews. He wore tzitzit, or fringes, that modern Orthodox Jews wear and donned the phylacteries that Jewish men still put on. He and his disciples kept kosher. He argued with other Jews but within the context of Judaism…. “Think not that I have come to abolish the Torah and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them,” he says in Matthew 5:17.

Paula Fredriksen, who taught at Boston University, has a haimische (homey) take on the conflicts Jesus has with other Jews as depicted in the Gospels:

He’s always arguing with the Pharisees. He’s not an Essene. He’s not an insurrectionist. And the fact that he’s arguing with other people who may be members of these other [Jewish] groups just simply signifies that he’s a Jew, because that’s what these Jews all did with each other—argue with each other all the time…⁶

Two thousand years later, arguing with each other is still what we (Jewish people) do.

Why should we care?

For many, interest in the Jewishness of Jesus might be the kind of curiosity we have about discovering if any famous person was Jewish. But Jesus’ Jewishness is much more important than that. Very bad things have happened when people have disputed the Jewishness of Jesus.

The Aryan Jesus

Hitler’s “Third Reich” fabricated the lie that Jesus was not a Jew. The so-called German Christian or Deutsche Christen movement blatantly denied the Jewishness of Jesus, as well as the Jewishness of the New Testament. In 1935, these same churches rejected the Old Testament altogether, dismissing it as “a Jewish book.” In so doing, they rejected the true Jesus, who repeatedly referenced the Old Testament. In his place, they fabricated the “Aryan Jesus” to fuel hatred toward Jews.

Holocaust scholar Doris Bergen, in her book Twisted Cross, provides some mind-boggling examples of the Nazi version of Jesus: One speaker in 1933 said that Jesus was “a person of Aryan blood from a Viking clan.”⁷ A piece printed in 1940 called “Was Jesus a Jew?” maintained that Galilee, where Jesus grew up, had been home to “indogermanic” people.⁸ Others offered the head-spinning argument that Jesus could not have been Jewish because he was an antisemite.⁹

To admit Jesus’ Jewishness would have made it impossible to use his name in the service of antisemitism. That’s why all indications of his Jewishness were either papered over or explained away by Hitler. There was no place in Nazi ideology for the truly Jewish Jesus of the New Testament—the one who followed Jewish laws and traditions, wept over the city of Jerusalem, fulfilled Jewish prophecy, and loved the people he came to redeem.

“Aryan Jesus” has contributed to the Nazi legacy of trying to wipe away the Jewishness of Jesus for the purpose of mass destruction. This betrayal of the name and truth of Jesus has made him anathema to many Jewish people and has robbed them of knowing him as Messiah to this day.

Though the lie of the “Aryan Jesus” is largely a thing of the past, other non-Jewish versions of Jesus have more recently emerged.

 The Palestinian Jesus

The idea that Jesus is Palestinian periodically makes the headlines, and it’s been coming up a lot more often since October 7th. Back in 2015, Katherine Frisk published a book called Jesus Was A Palestinian, a title sure to spark lively conversations.¹⁰ Other articles followed.¹¹

My colleague Sam Rood wrote a direct response to this trend, so I will not expand on it here. Sam explains that it is often (though not always)¹² a politically motivated claim that seeks to undermine Jewish legitimacy and self-determination.

Jesus for Everyone

Can we think of Jesus as Chinese, or Russian, Aboriginal, or whatever ethnicity will help people relate to him? It depends on what we do with his Jewishness. When other cultures resonate with Jesus without disenfranchising Jewish people in the process, it’s a wonderful thing. In fact, that was God’s plan all along (Genesis 12:1–3; Matthew 28:18–20).

For example, Chinese artist Lu Hongnian depicts events from the life of Jesus in “If Jesus Was Chinese: 8 Beautiful Paintings of the Life of Our Lord.”  Each painting portrays Chinese characters and culture. Japanese artist Sadao Watanabe depicted Jesus in the traditional mingei style. Artists from other parts of the world have done similarly.

God’s intention was for all nations to find redemption in Jesus, the Jewish Messiah. Jesus’ humanity is wide enough to embrace every people and every culture. It’s not that his particularity as a Jew is erased; in fact, it’s because he came into this world in a specific culture and place that he’s able to validate the worth of people from all nations.

God had promised Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3).

Not long after Jesus’ birth, a man named Simeon recognized that this prophecy was being fulfilled: “My eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2:30–32; emphasis added).

Yes, Jesus is Jewish. And yet his expansive love can encompass every ethnicity and allow each to flourish in their own particular expressions of faith in him.

Endnotes

1. For an overview of the topic, see: “Was Jesus a Jew?,” Biblical Archaeology Society, May 20, 2025.

2. His Hebrew name. English translations say “Jesus.”

3. See Brad Young, The Parables: Jewish Tradition and Christian Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008); Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (New York: HarperOne, 2014); Harvey K. McArthur and Robert M. Johnston, They Also Taught in Parables: Rabbinic Parables from the First Centuries of the Christian Era (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014; orig. pub. 1990).

4. “He was born, lived, and died as a Jew,” PBS, accessed September 26, 2025.

5. David Brooks, “Jesus Is a Jew,” Comment, accessed September 26, 2025.

6. “He was born, lived, and died as a Jew.”

7. Doris L. Bergen. Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 155.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., 156.

10. Published via CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; available on Amazon.com.

11. For instance, that same year, the Uniting Church of Australia was the subject of an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “Jesus Was Not Palestinian, Australian Church Says,” December 28, 2015 (behind a paywall).

^12. Some assertions that Jesus was Palestinian are honest attempts at a meaningful point of contact with Jesus. Arab America points out that Jesus’ traditions relating to family, hospitality, and honor resonate with Palestinian people today in this article: “Is Jesus Christ a Palestinian Superstar?” For an example of the controversy over this claim, see “Linda Sarsour: ‘Jesus was Palestinian of Nazareth,’” The Jerusalem Post, July 8, 2019.