This keychain combo features a large spring clasp that can attach securely to a purse strap or backpack, and a traditional style keyring for your keys. The Messianic Star medallion is single sided, plain on the back side. 

The clasp has a 9mm opening (about .354" inches)

The keyring is 30mm (1.18" inches across)

The Star is 30mm (1.18" inches across)

ABOUT

Messianic Judaism, Messianic Cross, Messianic Star, Jews for Jesus, Jewish Christian Symbol

Messianic Judaism is a modern syncretic religious movement that combines Christianity, most importantly, the belief that Jesus is the Jewish messiah, with elements of Judaism and Jewish tradition. It emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.

Many Messianic Jews believe that Jesus is the Jewish messiah and God the Son (one person of the Trinity), and that the Tanakh and New Testament are the authoritative scriptures. Salvation in Messianic Judaism is achieved only through acceptance of Jesus as one's savior, and Jewish laws or Jewish customs which are followed do not contribute to salvation. Belief in the messiahship of Jesus, his power to save, and his divinity are considered by Jewish authorities to be the defining distinctions between Christianity and Judaism. Protestant groups usually accept Messianic Judaism as a form of Protestantism.

Many adherents of Messianic Judaism are ethnically Jewish and argue that the movement is a sect of Judaism. Many refer to themselves in Hebrew as maaminim (believers), not converts, and yehudim (Jews), not notzrim (Christians). Jewish organizations and the Supreme Court of Israel have rejected this claim in cases related to the Law of Return, and instead consider Messianic Judaism to be a form of Christianity.

From 2003 to 2007, the movement grew from 150 Messianic houses of worship in the United States to as many as 438, with over 100 in Israel and more worldwide; congregations are often affiliated with larger Messianic organizations or alliances. As of 2012, population estimates for the United States were between 175,000 and 250,000 members, between 10,000 and 20,000 members for Israel, and an estimated total worldwide membership of 350,000.

History

Pre-19th century

Efforts by Jewish Christians to proselytize Jews began in the first century, when Paul the Apostle preached at the synagogues in each city that he visited. However, by the fourth century CE, non-biblical accounts of missions to the Jews do not mention converted Jews playing any leading role in proselytization. Notable converts from Judaism who attempted to convert other Jews are more visible in historical sources beginning around the 13th century, when Jewish convert Pablo Christiani attempted to convert other Jews. This activity, however, typically lacked any independent Jewish-Christian congregations, and was often imposed through force by organized Christian churches.

19th and early 20th centuries

Hebrew Christian Movement

In the 19th century, some groups attempted to create congregations and societies of Jewish converts to Christianity, though most of these early organizations were short-lived. Early formal organizations run by converted Jews include: the Anglican London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews of Joseph Frey (1809), which published the first Yiddish New Testament in 1821; the "Beni Abraham" association, established by Frey in 1813 with a group of 41 Jewish Christians who started meeting at Jews' Chapel, London for prayers Friday night and Sunday morning; and the London Hebrew Christian Alliance of Great Britain founded by Dr. Carl Schwartz in 1866.

The September 1813 meeting of Frey's "Beni Abraham" congregation at the rented "Jews' Chapel" in Spitalfields is sometimes pointed to as the birth of the semi-autonomous Hebrew Christian movement within Anglican and other established churches in Britain. However, the minister of the chapel at Spitalfields evicted Frey and his congregation three years later, and Frey severed his connections with the Society. A new location was found and the Episcopal Jew's Chapel Abrahamic Society registered in 1835.

In Eastern Europe, Joseph Rabinowitz established a Hebrew Christian mission and congregation called "Israelites of the New Covenant" in Kishinev, Bessarabia, in 1884. Rabinowitz was supported from overseas by the Christian Hebraist Franz Delitzsch, translator of the first modern Hebrew translation of the New Testament. In 1865, Rabinowitz created a sample order of worship for Sabbath morning service based on a mixture of Jewish and Christian elements. Mark John Levy pressed the Church of England to allow members to embrace Jewish customs.

In the United States, a congregation of Jewish converts to Christianity was established in New York City in 1885. In the 1890s, immigrant Jewish converts to Christianity worshiped at the Methodist "Hope of Israel" mission on New York's Lower East Side while retaining some Jewish rites and customs. In 1895, the 9th edition of Hope of Israel's Our Hope magazine carried the subtitle "A Monthly Devoted to the Study of Prophecy and to Messianic Judaism", the first use of the term "Messianic Judaism". In 1894, Christian missionary Leopold Cohn, a convert from Judaism, founded the Brownsville Mission to the Jews in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York as a Christian mission to Jews. After several changes in name, structure, and focus, the organization is now called Chosen People Ministries.

Missions to the Jews saw a period of growth between the 1920s and the 1960s. In the 1940s and 1950s, missionaries in Israel, including the Southern Baptists, adopted the term meshichyim 'messianics') to counter negative connotations of the word notsrim 'Christians'). The term was used to designate all Jews who had converted to Protestant evangelical Christianity.

Modern-day Messianic Judaism movement, 1960s onwards

The Messianic Jewish movement emerged in the United States in the 1960s. Prior to this time, Jewish converts assimilated into gentile Christianity, as the church required abandoning their Jewishness and assuming Gentile ways to receive baptism. Peter Hocken postulates that the Jesus movement which swept the nation in the 1960s triggered a change from Hebrew Christians to Messianic Jews, and was a distinctly charismatic movement. These Jews wanted to "stay Jewish while believing in Jesus". This impulse was amplified by the results of the Six-Day War and the restoration of Jerusalem to Jewish control.

Foundational Messianic organizations

In 2004 there were 300 Messianic congregations in the United States with maybe half of their attendance being Gentiles and maybe one third of the congregations consisting of thirty or fewer members. Many of these congregations belong to the International Association of Messianic Congregations and Synagogues (IAMCS), the Union of Messianic Congregations (UMJC), or Tikkun International.

The Messianic Jewish Alliance of America (MJAA) began in 1915 as the Hebrew Christian Alliance of America (HCAA). As the idea of maintaining Jewish identity spread in the late 1960s, the Hebrew Christian Alliance of America (HCAA) changed its name to the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America (MJAA). David Rausch writes that the change "signified far more than a semantical expression—it represented an evolution in the thought processes and religious and philosophical outlook toward a more fervent expression of Jewish identity." The MJAA was and still is an organization of individual Jewish members. In 1986 the MJAA formed a congregational branch called the International Alliance of Messianic Congregations and Synagogues (IAMCS).

In June 1979 nineteen congregations in North America met at Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania and formed the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations (UMJC).

"Tikkun International is a Messianic Jewish umbrella organization for an apostolic network of leaders, congregations and ministries in covenantal relationship for mutual accountability, support and equipping to extend the Kingdom of God in America, Israel, and throughout the world."

Theology and core doctrines

As with many religious faiths, the exact tenets held vary from congregation to congregation. In general, essential doctrines of Messianic Judaism include views on:

    God: that he is omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal, outside creation, infinitely significant and benevolent; viewpoints vary on the Trinity

    Jesus: that he is the Jewish Messiah; views on his divinity vary

    written Torah: Messianic Jews believe, with a few exceptions, that Jesus taught and reaffirmed the Torah and that it remains fully in force

    Israel: the Children of Israel are central to God's plan; replacement theology is opposed

    the Bible: the Tanakh and the New Testament are usually considered the divinely inspired Scripture, though Messianic Judaism is more open to criticism of the New Testament canon than is Christianity

    eschatology: similar to many Protestant views

    oral law: observance varies, but most deem these traditions subservient to the written Torah

Certain additional doctrines are more open to differences in interpretation, including those on sin and atonement and on faith and works.

The Trinity

Many Messianic Jews affirm the doctrine of the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit as three representations of the same divinity.

    God the Father—Messianic Jews believe in God and that he is all-powerful, omnipresent, eternally existent outside of creation, and infinitely significant and benevolent. Some Messianic Jews affirm both the Shema and the Trinity, understanding the phrase "the LORD is One" to be referring to "a differentiated but singular deity", and "eternally existent in plural oneness".

    God the Son—Most Messianic Jews consider Jesus to be the Messiah and divine as God the Son, in line with mainstream Christianity, and will even pray directly to him. Many also consider Jesus to be their "chief teacher and rabbi" whose life should be copied.

    God the Holy Spirit—According to some Messianic Jews, the Spirit is introduced in the Old Testament, is the inspirer of prophets, and is the spirit of Truth described in the New Testament.

God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit

1. God the Father Some Messianic Jews profess only a strict view of monotheism, rejecting Trinitarian doctrine  and Arian doctrine.

2. Jesus the Son of God Some Messianic Jews, who reject Trinitarian doctrine and Arian doctrine, believe that the Jewish Messiah is the son of God in the general sense (Jewish people are children of God) and that the Jewish Messiah is a mere human, the promised Prophet. Some Messianic Jews believe Jewish Messiah is the pre-exist Word of God, the mighty God Isaiah 9:5 CJB, and the only begotten God John 1:18 NASB . Some congregations do not directly ascribe divinity to Jesus, considering him a man—yet not just a man, fathered by the Holy Spirit, who became the Messiah. Even others consider him "Word made flesh" and the "human expression of Divinity".

3. Holy Spirit in Judaism Holy Spirit (Hebrew: ruach ha-kodesh) refers to the divine force or to God Himself since God is Spirit and not to a distinct 3rd person.

Scriptures and writings

The Bible

Both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are usually considered to be the established and divinely inspired Biblical scriptures by Messianic Jews. With a few exceptions, Messianic believers generally consider the written Torah, the five books of Moses, to remain in force as a continuing covenant, revised by Jesus and the Apostles in the New Testament, that is to be observed both morally and ritually. Jesus did not annul the Torah, but its interpretation is revised through the Apostolic scriptures.

Jewish oral tradition

There is no unanimity among Messianic congregations on the issue of the Talmud and the Oral Torah. There are congregations which believe that adherence to the Oral Law, as encompassed by the Talmud, is against Messianic beliefs. Similarly, there are congregations which deny the authority of the Pharisees, believing that they were superseded, and their teachings contradicted, by Messianism. There are adherents which call rabbinic commentaries such as the Mishnah and the Talmud "dangerous", and state that followers of rabbinic and halakhic explanations and commentaries are not believers in Jesus as the Messiah. Other congregations are selective in their applications of Talmudic law, and may believe that the rabbinic commentaries such as the Mishnah and the Talmud, while historically informative and useful in understanding tradition, are not normative and may not be followed where they differ from the New Testament. Still others encourage a serious observance of Jewish halakha.

Messianic Bible translations

Messianic Jews generally consider the entire Christian Bible to be sacred scripture. Theologian David H. Stern in his "Jewish New Testament Commentary" argues that the writings and teachings of Paul the Apostle are fully congruent with Messianic Judaism, and that the New Testament is to be taken by Messianic Jews as the inspired Word of God.

Messianic publications

There are a number of Messianic commentaries on various books of the Bible, both Tanakh and New Testament texts, such as Matthew, Acts, Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews. David H. Stern has released a one-volume Jewish New Testament Commentary, providing explanatory notes from a Messianic Jewish point of view. Other New Testament commentary authors include Arnold Fruchtenbaum of Ariel Ministries, who has written commentaries on the Epistles, Judges & Ruth, and Genesis, and 7 systematic doctrinal studies.