Are Messianic Jews Jewish Enough For a Bible Competition?

An international youth Bible quiz is held annually in Israel, and the competition is fierce. (I went to a high school with several competitors, and they spent months studying the minutia of Tanach only to make it through the first round of testing.) This year, one of the contestants, an Israeli who won the Jerusalem district quiz in Israel, is a Messianic Jew. Bat El Levy is a world class Old Testament scholar, but she also brings some knowledge of the New Testament to the table, and that’s making a handful of Israeli rabbis, well–a bit testy.

Some rabbis are concerned that if Levy competes and win, her success might encourage Jews to convert to Christianity. Another worry they're harboring: That Levy could make the Jewish competitors who have only mastered Tanach–and not the gospels–look bad. Levy’s Jewishness is being called into question, but so far the Education Ministry has no plans to bar her from the competition. Messianic Jews have always been a hot button issue in the Jewish community, and it’s hardly a surprise that groups like Yad LeAhim and Jews for Judaism would take issue with a family like Levy’s. But those groups are meant to combat active evangelism and proselytizing, and there’s no proof, or even allegations, that Levy or any member of her family has done anything of the sort. If the winner of the quiz was a secular Jew who just happened to enjoy learning Tanach, no doubt the rabbis would be irritated, but they’d have no grounds to call the win into question.

If Levy breaks the rules of the quiz or Israeli law, she should be disqualified. But there’s no reason to exclude her from the competition now. If anything, we could benefit from more widespread familiarity with the intricacies of the Old Testament, instead of windbags who claim to love the Bible but can’t name the Ten Commandments.