Do Jewish People Believe in Jesus? What Judaism Teaches

Short answer

• No, not in the way Christians do. In mainstream Judaism, Jesus of Nazareth is regarded as a historical figure, a first-century Jewish teacher, but he is not believed to be the messiah, the son of God, or a prophet, and he plays no role in Jewish worship or theology. Jewish sources explain the position in Judaism's own terms: the messiah, in Jewish teaching, is a human descendant of King David whose arrival brings world peace, the ingathering of the Jewish exiles, and a rebuilt Temple, and since those events have not occurred, the messianic age, and with it the messiah, is still to come. A small minority movement, Messianic Judaism, does accept Jesus as messiah; how it is classified is disputed, and both its self-description and the mainstream Jewish classification are given below.

By Emma Hudson

The question sounds simple, and the short answer really is no. But the reasons are worth understanding properly, because they are not a shrug or a blank refusal. They follow from what Judaism itself teaches about God, about the messiah, and about how a religious claim is tested. This article sets out those teachings from Jewish sources, chiefly My Jewish Learning, the Jewish Virtual Library, and Encyclopaedia Britannica, and then explains the history of how the two faiths separated and the minority movements that complicate the picture today.

Jesus the historical figure: a Jew of the first century

Begin with what is not in dispute. Jesus was Jewish. He was born to Jewish parents in Roman-ruled Judea, was circumcised and presented at the Temple according to Jewish law, worshipped in synagogues, debated Torah interpretation with other Jewish teachers, and kept the Jewish festivals. His earliest followers were Jews, and the movement that formed around him began inside Judaism, not outside it.

Historians, Jewish historians among them, generally treat Jesus as a real historical figure, a preacher and teacher of the early 1st century CE who was executed by crucifixion under the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate. The Jewish Virtual Library, summarizing the view of many Jewish scholars, describes Jesus as largely a law-observant Jew whose central teaching, love of neighbor, stood within Jewish tradition, and notes that almost no Jewish scholars believe Jesus intended to start a new religion. My Jewish Learning makes a parallel point about the range of opinion: there is no single Jewish view of Jesus as a person. Some Jewish thinkers regard him as a wise rabbi or moral teacher; others, historically and today, have regarded some of his attributed claims as heretical; many Jewish people simply do not think about him much at all, because he has no place in Jewish religious life.

What unites those varied personal views is the theological line. As My Jewish Learning puts it, where Jews draw the line is at calling Jesus a prophet or messiah. That line is the subject of the next sections.

What Judaism teaches about God

Judaism is strictly monotheistic, and its central prayer, the Shema, states the point in a single line: “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). In Jewish teaching, God is one, indivisible, and incorporeal: God has no body, no physical form, and no partners or offspring. The medieval philosopher Maimonides codified these ideas in his Thirteen Principles of Faith, which include the oneness and incorporeality of God, and they remain standard statements of Jewish belief.

This is the first reason the Christian understanding of Jesus cannot be absorbed into Judaism. Christianity teaches that Jesus is divine, the Son of God, and one person of a triune God. From within Jewish theology, a divine human being is not a possible category: it conflicts with the oneness and incorporeality of God as Judaism defines them. Jewish tradition also holds that no intermediary is needed between a person and God. As the Jewish Virtual Library summarizes the contrast, Judaism teaches that anyone can come to God directly, citing the Psalms: “God is near to all who call unto Him” (Psalm 145:18).

What Judaism teaches about the messiah

The English word “messiah” comes from the Hebrew mashiach, meaning “anointed one.” In the Hebrew Bible, kings, priests, and occasionally prophets were anointed with oil when they took up their office, so the word originally described a role, not a supernatural being. Jewish expectation of a future mashiach grew from the prophetic books: a descendant of King David who would rule Israel in an age transformed for the whole world.

Jewish sources state the criteria plainly, and they are events, not inner experiences. Drawing on the prophets, especially Isaiah and Ezekiel, Jewish teaching expects the messiah to:

• Be a human leader, a descendant of King David through the paternal line.
• Gather the Jewish exiles back to the Land of Israel (Ezekiel 37 speaks of the scattered people restored).
• Rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, which has stood destroyed since the Roman siege of 70 CE.
• Bring an era of universal peace, in the words of Isaiah 2:4: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war anymore.”
• Bring the whole world to recognize and worship the one God (Zechariah 14:9).

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, quoted in a widely used Jewish Virtual Library treatment and in his book Jewish Literacy, makes the logic explicit: since world peace must accompany the messiah, and world peace has not come, the messiah has not come either. Maimonides stated the test just as firmly in his legal code: a candidate who does not succeed in these tasks, or who is killed before completing them, is definitely not the messiah promised in the Torah. The Christian response to the same evidence, a second coming in which the unfinished tasks will be completed, has no basis in the Hebrew Bible as Jewish readers read it; Telushkin notes that the idea of a second coming is nowhere found there, which is why, from Judaism’s perspective, the two faiths reach different conclusions from the same texts in good faith.

This is also why the question of Jesus has never hinged, for Jews, on his character or teaching quality. A teacher can be wise, compassionate, and learned, and still not be the messiah, because messiahship in Judaism is verified by the arrival of the messianic age. Jesus lived and died in a world where the Temple was still standing but Rome still ruled, exile and war continued, and the prophetic conditions were unmet. Within Jewish criteria, that settles the question, and Judaism continues to await a messiah who is yet to come.

Is Jesus a prophet in Judaism?

No. Judaism holds that prophecy ended in the era of the last biblical prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, centuries before Jesus was born. Figures after that era, however revered, are sages and rabbis, not prophets. So Jesus receives no prophetic status in Judaism either. My Jewish Learning’s summary of the spectrum of Jewish opinion is worth repeating here: views of Jesus the man range from wise teacher to heretic, but calling him a prophet or messiah is exactly where Jewish opinion, across the denominations, says no.

Jesus in rabbinic literature

Does the Talmud mention Jesus? Some scholars read certain Talmud passages as references to him. The name used is “Yeshu,” an Aramaic form of the Hebrew name Yeshua. Some passages describe a figure accused of sorcery or of leading Israel astray; others place their “Yeshu” in periods matching neither each other nor the historical Jesus, with discrepancies of up to a century.

Scholarly opinion ranges widely. Minimalists, such as Jacob Lauterbach, found only a few passages with Jesus in mind; maximalists, such as Peter Schäfer, read many as deliberate third and fourth century responses to Christian Gospel narratives. Johann Maier argued there is virtually no evidence of the historical Jesus in the Talmud at all. They also carry a difficult history: Christian authorities censored many out of printed Talmud editions between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, and most were restored in twentieth-century editions. What is not disputed: these are late rabbinic traditions, written centuries after the events they appear to discuss.

A short history of the parting of the ways

If Jesus and his first followers were Jews, how did Christianity and Judaism become separate religions? The honest historical answer is: gradually, over several centuries, and this article reports it in the neutral terms historians use.

In the decades after Jesus’s crucifixion, around 30 CE, his followers continued to worship in the Temple and observe Jewish law, while also proclaiming him the risen messiah. The movement’s expansion changed its composition. Paul, a Jew from Tarsus who became the movement’s most energetic missionary, argued that gentile converts did not need to adopt the full Torah, including circumcision and the dietary laws. As gentile membership grew, the movement became less recognizably Jewish in practice, a development other Jewish groups of the time did not share.

The Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE was a catastrophe for all Jews and reshaped both faiths. Rabbinic Judaism consolidated around Torah study, prayer, and synagogue life in the Temple’s absence. The Jesus movement, increasingly gentile and increasingly defining itself by faith in Jesus’s divinity and resurrection, developed its own scriptures, worship, and institutions. Through the 2nd to 4th centuries the separation hardened into two distinct religions, a process scholars often call the parting of the ways. Later centuries of Christian majority power brought periods of persecution of Jewish communities in Christian lands, which form a painful part of this history and one reason the subject remains sensitive. Modern Jewish and Christian scholarship, and interfaith work since the mid-20th century, has increasingly emphasized the Jewishness of Jesus and the shared roots of the two traditions, without either side abandoning its own theological position.

Modern Jewish-Christian dialogue

In 1965, the Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council issued Nostra Aetate, promulgated on October 28 by Pope Paul VI, declaring that “the Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or accursed as if this followed from Holy Scripture.” It was the Church’s first formal denunciation of antisemitism directed against Jews at any time and by anyone, and it affirmed the spiritual inheritance common to Christians and Jews.

From the Jewish side, the landmark statement was Dabru Emet (“Speak the Truth”), published as a full-page declaration in the New York Times and other newspapers on September 10, 2000. Drafted by four Jewish scholars, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, and Michael Signer, and signed by more than 160 Jewish leaders and theologians, it set out eight shared grounds, from the worship of the same God to working together for justice and peace. It names the difference plainly too: the question of Jesus is, in its words, “humanly irreconcilable,” and will not be settled until God redeems the world as promised in Scripture.

The minority movements: Messianic Judaism and Jews for Jesus

Two names account for most of the “yes” answers a reader may encounter, and accuracy requires describing them with both attributions on the table.

Messianic Judaism is a movement whose adherents, many of them ethnically Jewish, believe that Jesus (usually called Yeshua) is the Jewish messiah and the Son of God, and who also maintain Jewish practices such as observing Shabbat, the festivals, and circumcision, regarding the New Testament as scripture alongside the Tanakh. Messianic Jews describe their faith as a form of Judaism, indeed as Judaism’s fulfillment, and their congregations often worship in synagogue-like settings. The movement’s modern roots lie in the Hebrew Christian missions of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it grew rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s.

The mainstream Jewish classification is the opposite. My Jewish Learning states the position directly: because of its identification with Jesus, all of the major denominations of Judaism, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist, have rejected Messianic Judaism as a form of Judaism. Within Christianity, the movement is often located within or near the evangelical world. Both descriptions are reported here because the classification itself is the disputed point: adherents call the movement Judaism; the organized Jewish world classifies it as Christianity. This article endorses neither label; it reports who uses which, and why.

Jews for Jesus is the best known organization in this orbit. Founded in San Francisco in 1973 by Moishe Rosen, it is a missionary organization whose stated purpose is to make the messiahship of Jesus an issue Jewish people worldwide cannot avoid. It is formally part of the broader Messianic movement, and the same classification dispute applies to it: Jews for Jesus presents belief in Jesus as compatible with Jewish identity, while Jewish religious authorities do not recognize it as a Jewish organization. Hebrew Christians is the older label, used mainly in the 19th and early 20th centuries, for Jews who had accepted Christian faith while retaining a Jewish identity; the term has largely been replaced by “Messianic Jews” in current usage.

The afterlife, and why Jesus does not figure in it

Judaism affirms an afterlife, but one that is “famously ambiguous,” in the words of My Jewish Learning: the immortality of the soul, the World to Come (olam ha-ba), and the resurrection of the dead all feature, though their exact relation is unsettled. The World to Come, the ultimate reward of the individual, was itself debated: Nahmanides tied it to the resurrection of the dead, while Maimonides placed it beyond the resurrected world entirely.

Resurrection itself, t’chiyat hameitim, is a core doctrine of traditional Jewish theology: the Mishnah declares that those who deny it have no share in the World to Come, and Maimonides listed it among his Thirteen Principles of Faith. Jewish tradition expects it in the Messianic Age, with the Temple rebuilt and the exiles ingathered. That timing is the structural point: the Jewish afterlife is tied to a collective future redemption and to the life a person has lived, not to acceptance of a divine savior, so salvation through Jesus does not map onto it. In Judaism no intermediary’s acceptance determines one’s fate, and the messiah’s role is to usher in the redeemed world, not to mediate between God and humanity.

Diversity within the Jewish community today

Judaism is not monolithic, and this article’s claims describe mainstream teaching, not every individual’s opinion. Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist Jews differ on many things, including how literally to read the messianic prophecies; some Reform thought historically reinterpreted the messiah as a messianic age brought about by human action rather than a personal redeemer. Secular and cultural Jews may hold no religious view of Jesus at all. What the denominations share, across those differences, is the boundary described above: Jesus is not the messiah, not divine, and not a prophet in Jewish belief.

A smaller number of Jewish scholars and theologians have worked to recover Jesus as a figure within Jewish history. Rabbi Irving Greenberg, for example, proposed describing Jesus with the term “failed messiah” rather than the harsher historical label “false messiah,” meaning, in his framing, a figure with the right values who did not reach the redemption Judaism expects. Such reappraisals change the tone of Jewish writing about Jesus, sometimes considerably. They do not change the theological conclusion, and their authors do not claim that they do.

Questions people often ask

Do Jews believe Jesus performed miracles or rose from the dead? Mainstream Judaism does not accept the New Testament’s accounts of Jesus’s miracles, resurrection, or virgin birth as matters of belief. These are Christian doctrines. Jewish historians may discuss what Jesus’s followers believed and proclaimed, which is a historical question, without Judaism adopting the claims themselves. In Jewish theology the resurrection of the dead is associated with the messianic age, which has not arrived.

Do Jews blame or hold grievances about Jesus himself? Jesus is not a figure of Jewish worship, teaching, or polemic in ordinary Jewish life; he is simply absent from it. Historical Jewish writing about him was often shaped by the circumstances of Jewish minorities living under Christian rule, and modern Jewish scholarship generally treats him as a subject of history. The sensitivity around the topic today has more to do with two thousand years of interfaith history than with the historical Jesus himself.

What do Jews believe happens after death, and does Jesus figure in it? Judaism teaches belief in an afterlife and a future resurrection in the messianic age, though views of the details vary by movement and thinker. Jesus plays no role in Jewish eschatology: he is not awaited again, because in Jewish belief he was not the messiah in the first place.

Can a person be Jewish and believe in Jesus? This is the live edge of the classification dispute. Jewish identity by birth is defined in traditional Jewish law by matrilineal descent or conversion, and Messianic Jews argue that faith in Yeshua does not erase that identity. The mainstream denominations answer that accepting Jesus as messiah and divine savior places a person within Christianity, whatever their ancestry. Both positions are stated here as their holders state them.

What would change the Jewish answer? Within Judaism’s own framework, the arrival of the messianic age itself: universal peace, the ingathering of the exiles, and a rebuilt Temple, led by a descendant of David. Jewish teaching evaluates any messianic claimant against those events, which is precisely the test Jewish sources apply to Jesus.

Frequently asked questions

Do Jewish people believe in Jesus as God? No. Judaism’s core confession is that God is one and incorporeal. Belief in a divine Jesus is incompatible with that teaching, and no mainstream Jewish movement accepts it.

Do Jewish people believe Jesus existed? Yes, broadly. Jewish scholars and historians generally accept Jesus as a historical figure, a Jewish teacher of the 1st century CE, while differing among themselves in how they assess him.

Do Jews believe in the New Testament? No. The Jewish Bible is the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. The New Testament is a Christian scripture; Jews may study it academically or historically, but it has no religious authority in Judaism.

What is the difference between Jews for Jesus and other Jewish people? Jews for Jesus is a missionary organization, founded in 1973, that promotes faith in Jesus as the messiah to Jewish audiences. It belongs to the Messianic movement. Mainstream Jewish denominations classify that belief as Christianity, not Judaism, while the organization presents it as a Jewish expression of faith.

Do Jews celebrate Christmas or Easter? No. Christmas and Easter are Christian festivals centered on Jesus, and they are not part of Jewish religious practice. Jewish festivals include Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Hanukkah, among others.

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Sources & references

• My Jewish Learning, "Ask the Expert: Who Was Jesus?": the range of Jewish views of Jesus; Rabbi Irving Greenberg's "failed messiah" formulation; Amy-Jill Levine on the diversity of Jewish responses; the line is drawn at calling Jesus a prophet or messiah. Opened and read 24 Oct 2026.
• My Jewish Learning, "Who Are Messianic 'Jews'?": Messianic Judaism's beliefs and origins in the Hebrew Christian missions; all major Jewish denominations have rejected Messianic Judaism as a form of Judaism. Opened and read 24 Oct 2026.
• Jewish Virtual Library, "Jesus, The Crucifixion, Pontius Pilate and the New Testament" (drawing on Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Literacy): Jesus as a law-observant Jew; most statements attributed to him conform to Jewish teachings; almost no Jewish scholars believe he intended to start a new religion; Judaism holds that anyone can come to God directly (Psalm 145:18). Opened and read 24 Oct 2026.
• Jewish Virtual Library, Glossary, "Messiah": an anointed royal descendant of David who would restore the kingdom and usher in an age of peace, justice, and plenty. Opened and read 24 Oct 2026.
• Rabbi Joseph Telushkin on the messianic criteria, quoted in First Things, "Why Aren't Jews For Jesus?": world peace (Isaiah 2:4) must accompany the messiah; the second coming is nowhere found in the Hebrew Bible, from Judaism's perspective. Opened and read 24 Oct 2026.
• Wikipedia, "Jewish views on Jesus," summarizing rabbinic and scholarly sources: God's incorporeality as a central tenet; the Maimonides criterion that a presumed messiah who is killed before completing the task is not the messiah. Used as a synthesis source; all claims attributed in the article text. Opened and read 24 Oct 2026.
• Wikipedia, "Jews for Jesus": founded by Moishe Rosen in San Francisco, incorporated under its current name in 1973; a Christian missionary organization affiliated with the Messianic Jewish movement; Jewish authorities do not recognize it as a Jewish organization, while the organization maintains that belief in Jesus is compatible with Jewish identity. Opened and read 24 Oct 2026.
• Jews for Jesus, "What is a Messianic Jew or Jew for Jesus?": the movement's self-description, including congregational life, the UMJC and MJAA, and adherent population estimates (not relied on for numbers in this article). Opened and read 24 Oct 2026.
• Wikipedia, "Jesus in the Talmud," synthesizing rabbinic and scholarly sources: the "Yeshu" passages and their contested identification; the minimalist-to-maximalist scholarly spectrum (Lauterbach, Herford, Schäfer, Maier, Klausner); the censorship history from the 13th to 18th centuries and the 20th-century restoration. Used as a synthesis source; all claims attributed in the article text. Opened and read 24 Oct 2026.
• OSV News (via Detroit Catholic), "Nostra Aetate: a document that revolutionized Catholic-Jewish relations, turns 60": promulgated October 28, 1965 by Pope Paul VI as part of the Second Vatican Council; the Church's first formal denunciation of "hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone"; affirmed the "spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews." Opened and read 24 Oct 2026.
• The Rabbi Sacks Legacy, "Nostra Aetate: Fifty Years On": the 1965 declaration that "the Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or accursed as if this followed from Holy Scripture." Opened and read 24 Oct 2026.
• Catholics for Israel, "Dabru Emet: A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity" (reproducing the full statement text): the four drafting scholars (Tikva Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, Michael Signer); publication as a full-page declaration in the New York Times and other newspapers on September 10, 2000; more than 160 Jewish leaders and theologians as signatories; the full text of the eight points. Opened and read 24 Oct 2026.
• My Jewish Learning, "Is There a Jewish Afterlife?": the ambiguity of Jewish afterlife ideas; olam ha-ba as the most ubiquitous Jewish idea related to the end of days; Nahmanides and Maimonides on the World to Come. Opened and read 24 Oct 2026.
• My Jewish Learning, "Jewish Resurrection of the Dead": t'chiyat hameitim as a core doctrine of traditional Jewish theology; the Messianic Age expectation of Temple rebuilt, exiles ingathered, and dead resurrected; Maimonides' inclusion of resurrection among his Thirteen Principles; Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1; the Amidah's resurrection blessing. Opened and read 24 Oct 2026.