‘Messianic Rabbi’ brings Jewish perspective to Christian faith

Jason Sobel is not your typical rabbi.

Born and raised in a Jewish home, confirmed as a “bar mitzvah,” meaning “one subject to the law,” at age 13, Mr. Sobel went on to study Hebrew scriptures with a rabbi in the U.S. and at a yeshiva in Israel.

But his rabbinic ordination comes from the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations, a group that recognizes Jesus — Yeshua in Hebrew — as the Messiah. That puts him at odds with much of the larger Jewish community.

“I grew up in a Jewish family in New Jersey and wound up going on a spiritual journey, where I had an encounter with Jesus,” Mr. Sobel told The Washington Times during the National Religious Broadcasters 2022 convention here. The Times is a sponsor of the event.

He said he was working as a recording engineer in New York City when a combination of Jewish studies with a rabbi and his practice of meditation yielded a surprising result.

“One day I was meditating, and I had this out-of-body spiritual experience, where I encountered this king on a throne in heaven, and I felt the presence and the power of God. He told me I was called to serve Him, and I knew that was Jesus,” Mr. Sobel said.

The only problem is, apart from growing up alongside Roman Catholic neighbors in New Jersey, Mr. Sobel knew nothing of Jesus: “I thought He was a nice Jewish boy who grew up and became Catholic,” he said with a wry smile.

Some trappings of traditional Christian practice still confound him, he said. 

“You see pictures of da Vinci’s Last Supper and you’re like, ‘Why are they eating fluffy loaves of white bread on Passover? And how did the Passover lamb become the Easter ham?’ That’s still the question I can’t quite figure out.”

The immediate reaction of Mr. Sobel’s parents to his epiphany was to send him to further study Judaism. That led the young man deeper into Hebrew tradition, where he found more connections to the Nazarene now revered by two billion people across the globe.

“I realized Jesus was a rabbi,” Mr. Sobel said, using the Hebrew word for a spiritual teacher. “He honored Torah, he observed Torah. He encouraged his disciples in that direction, as well. Really looking at Him in its historical context made my Jewish Jewishness and Torah come to life for me in new ways.”

Mr. Sobel’s first book, “The Rock, The Road, and The Rabbi,” was co-authored with singer and TV personality Kathi Lee Gifford, an evangelical Christian. It was a New York Times bestseller. 

His newest book, the “Mysteries of the Messiah” (Thomas Nelson), seeks to make those connections for non-Jewish readers as well as Jewish ones, he said.

“We kind of make those connections — from a Jewish, scriptural and a rabbinic perspective — and use what I was raised in from the traditional Jewish texts, as well as Jewish interpretive tradition such as the gematria, the numerical values [of Hebrew letters] and all these things, which I think are significant, especially if you’re a Jewish person reading it.”

Mr. Sobel said the book is reaching Jewish readers. He said the son of a prominent rabbi — whom he did not name for privacy considerations — told Mr. Sobel he’d been “impacted” by the book.

Stripping away the non-Jewish trappings appended to Jesus and the faith makes it easier for Jewish people to grasp the concept of a Messiah who was here and is coming again, he said.

“When we take off the garb that had been placed upon Him and put him back in his Jewish garb that is Jewish and Hebraic context, Jewish people become open to it,” Mr. Sobel said.