Appropriating Jesus... Again
Jesus’ recent Vatican appearance on a keffiyeh is only the latest cancellation of his Jewishness.
Jesus Christ’s real name was Yeshua ben Yosef, and he was born to a Jewish family, most likely in Nazareth between 6 and 4 BC. He grew up speaking primarily Aramaic, is described in the gospels as a “rabbi,” and, if a recent argument by Simcha Jacobvici and Barrie Wilson holds any water, was married to a Jewish woman.
The gospels do not portray Jesus as anything other than a Jewish man. They describe him as being circumcised, going to synagogue on the Sabbath, and to Jerusalem for the pilgrimage holidays.
If you were raised in a predominantly Christian culture this may sound extremely subversive, or even conspiratorial. I know this because I went to a Church of England school and grew up believing that Jesus Christ was a blond haired, blue-eyed Christian. I learned that jealous Jews had sent Jesus to his death, and in all the daily sermons and teachings I sat through was never once told that Jesus was a practicing Jew. For that reason, I remember being slightly wary of mentioning my Jewish heritage to anyone at school. “The Jews killed Jesus,” a friend once told me earnestly. “That’s why my mum doesn’t like them.”
The actual origins of the Bible and the historic life of Jesus came as a great shock to me later in life. It also allowed me to let go of a certain amount of shame I had felt as a child. The Jews hadn’t killed Jesus, and more than anything, he was one of our own. The erasure of Jesus’ Jewish life led to more revelations about what Jews had been subjected to throughout history. My family was only in England because they had been chased out of several European countries, in part for the crime of murdering Jesus. This was something I’d heard repeated in secondary school as a slur, and then as a “joke” from a girlfriend (who clearly believed it).
The truth was that Jesus was far more likely to have been put to death by the Romans for sedition, not because Jewish leaders wanted him punished for blasphemy. Hundreds of years later, the Romans then appropriated Jesus’ life and identity to help popularize Christianity in the Roman Empire.
The Church effectively stole Jesus from the Jews, and, despite modern sensibilities about “cultural appropriation,” continues to show indifference to his true identity.
On December 7th, Pope Francis attended a nativity scene featuring a baby Jesus lying on a keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian scarf. Dubbed the “Nativity of Bethlehem 2024,” the scene was designed by a Palestinian from Bethlehem and approved by the Vatican.
“Let us remember the brothers and sisters who, instead, right there and in other parts of the world, are suffering from the tragedy of war,” the Pope said. “With tears in our eyes, let us raise our prayer for peace. Brothers and sisters, enough war, enough violence!”
While the scarf is regarded as a symbol of resistance by pro-Palestinians and the nativity scene a powerful message of solidarity, many Jews were outraged by it. They view the scarf popularized by former PLO leader Yasser Arafat as a symbol of Palestinian terrorism, and the nativity scene a huge snub from the Vatican.
Four days later, the baby Jesus sculpture, manger, and scarf were removed from the scene by the Vatican without any explanation.
I wasn’t actually offended by the use of the keffiyeh or the idea that Jesus could be a symbol of Palestinian national resistance. I’m sure Jesus would have had a thing or two to say about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and certainly wouldn’t have condoned what is going on in Gaza. I was however struck by how casually the Vatican felt they had the right to change Jesus’ identity, again.
In recent times, “cultural appropriation” has become a buzzword. Broadly speaking it is applied to white people who use “cultural imagery and materials” that are “removed from their cultural context and used in ways they were never intended.”
Modern institutions in the West are extremely sensitive about cultural appropriation and make real efforts to show appreciation for other cultures. This apparently extends to every minority other than Jews.
This double standard becomes particularly apparent when examining how other religious and cultural figures are treated. While there would likely be widespread condemnation if a major religious institution dressed up Muhammad as a Jew, or the Buddha as a blond haired European, Jesus’ Jewish identity can be erased without much in the way of pushback.
The implications of this erasure extend far beyond religious symbolism. It speaks to a broader pattern of how Jewish history and identity are viewed through a Christian lens, even in supposedly secular contexts.
The transformation of a Jewish rabbi into a blue-eyed European Christian figure has become so normalized that questioning it can seem radical. I have brought this topic up with a number of people over the years only to be dismissed or even laughed at. Of course Jesus was Christian, and of course the Church gets to decide how he is portrayed. Jesus’ Jewishness is often acknowledged as a historical fact, but it is treated as incidental—a sort of temporary condition that preceded his “true” identity as the founder of Christianity. That casual scrubbing away of Jesus’ Jewishness is symptomatic of how deeply ingrained anti-Jewish biases remain in our culture, even as other forms of religious and cultural insensitivity have become increasingly unacceptable.
It is worth asking why the appropriation of Jewish religious figures and traditions isn’t controversial. Because the continuing reinvention of Jesus’ identity—whether as a white European savior or a Palestinian revolutionary—speaks to a real unwillingness to respect legitimate Jewish historical and cultural claims.
This isn’t about correcting historical misrepresentations of Jesus’ identity, or taking down artistic representations of his life. It is about recognizing the limitations of narratives of appropriation. The left is constantly on the lookout for cultural appropriation—and, yet, a massive appropriation like the 2,000-year erasure of Jesus’ Jewish identity, with Jesus in the latest iteration transmuted into a symbol of Palestinian resistance, gets a free pass.
The left is, however, right about one thing—that thefts of identity can have real-world consequences. Jews—who have been dealing with the “Christ-killer” label for thousands of years—can attest to this.
Ben Cohen is the editor-in-chief of The Banter Newsletter in Washington D.C. and host of The Banter Roundtable podcast.
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"The gospels do not portray Jesus as anything other than a Jewish man. They describe him as being circumcised, going to synagogue on the Sabbath, and to Jerusalem for the pilgrimage holidays.
If you were raised in a predominantly Christian culture this may sound extremely subversive, or even conspiratorial. I know this because I went to a Church of England school and grew up believing that Jesus Christ was a blond haired, blue-eyed Christian."
Have American churches just been "woker" on this topic for far longer than English churches? I went to a conservative evangelical presbyterian church in the American south (growing up in the 90s) and we all knew Jesus was a Jew. "White Jesus" (referring to the blond blue-eyed guy) was referred to in a joking way, because we all knew he couldn't have looked like that. I have Jewish heritage myself, and I was always super proud to tell my friends at church that, because it carried cachet. The complaint from American jews towards evangelicals is more that they're weirdly fetishized...so problematic but from the opposite direction.
Victimhood mining. Virtually every Christian has known for decades if not centuries that Jesus was a Jew. It is absurd to claim otherwise. So the Palestinians and sympathizers want to sorta borrow him as a symbol of their resistance to their Zionist conquerors, that's predictable and not really a problem.