MembersWhen a Messianic Jew is Still a Jew

Celebrated New York Times columnist and best-selling author David Brooks isn’t keen on the term “Messianic Jew.” Still, according to its standard definition, that’s what he now is. Typically, when a Jew comes to faith in Jesus as Messiah and assumes that “Messianic” prefix, willingly or not, rabbinical authorities are quick to banish such a one from the people of Israel, to utterly deny their Jewishness. 

Not so with Brooks.

Brooks’ first wife converted to Judaism for him. His second marriage seems to have had something of the opposite effect. In 2017, Brooks married his former research assistant, Anne Snyder, a devout evangelical Christian. Since then, Brooks has made no secret of the fact that he now believes in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

In his new book “The Second Mountain: The Quest for the Moral Life,” Brooks calls himself “a wandering Jew and a very confused Christian.” That confusion no doubt stems, at least in part, from Brooks feeling “more Jewish than ever before,” as he said in an...