Abstract:
The peculiarity of Messianic Judaism, that conciliates Jewish rituals and belief in Christ, makes common its portrait as an ambiguous religious movement in-between Judaism and Christianity and very often described as a “threat” to the borders between these two symbolical and religious systems. This article presents another look at this religious movement based on ethnographic research done in a Messianic Jewish synagogue in São Paulo and argues that approaching it as a threat to the borders between Judaism and Christianity fails to acknowledge the relevance that both the distinction of these two symbolic systems and the categories “Jew” and “gentile” play in the Messianic Jewish discourse that can be understood not as extinguishing differences between Jews and non Jews, but introducing alternative ways of being Jew and being gentile.
Keywords:
Judaism; Christianity; messianic Judaism; agency