I’m afraid you have misunderstood. Allow me to clarify:

Of course, Jews can and do believe that Jesus existed.

But no Jew can *worshiip* Jesus as divine, without violating core Jewish beliefs.
No Jew can affirm belief in a ‘virgin birth’, without violating core Jewish beliefs.
No Jew can accept that a man ‘died for the sins of others’ without violating core Jewish beliefs.
No Jew can affirm belief in Jesus as ‘maschiach’, without violating core Jewish beliefs.

Does that make it clearer?

To put it another way: just as nobody can declare ‘Jesus never existed’ and STILL claim to be a Christian, so too, nobody can worship Jesus and STILL claim to be a part of Judaism.

Now to clarify about being a Jewish Atheist:

Granted, Atheism is not the ideal path for any Jew. But – whether you like it or not – it IS entirely possible, according to JEWISH religious law, to be both Jewish AND an Atheist.

A person who is born into the Jewish family *remains* part of it unless they adopt ANOTHER RELIGION.

Now, I’m sure you would agree that Atheism is *not* a ‘religion’. Thus a Jewish Atheist is merely a non practising Jew.

They tend not to be former JWs in fact, but rather a distinct and bizarre Christian movement that is condemned by virtually all mainstream Christian leaders.

Messianics have been around for decades so I’m not surprised you encountered one thirty years ago They used to call themselves ‘hebrew christians’ and of course, the most well known is the ‘jews4jesus’ group. Then they rebranded and now pose as ‘messianic jews’. They are Christians though – every single one of them. There’s a few EX Jews among them.

And yes, you are totally right – Jews never, ever try and convert others

Thanks for your comment

-Let’s clarify about the Septuagint.

Only the Torah part of this – the five books of Moses – was translated by Jews into the Greek. The rest was translated by non Jews. That’s possibly why you find that in the Septuagint, it says ‘worship’ rather than ’serve’

In fact, later on, all of the Septuagint was revised and other books added to it that are not part of Jewish scriptures. In general, the Septuagint has never been regarded as a ‘Jewish’ text, in fact.

Let me know if you research the ’son of man’ further, I’ll be interested to know your conclusions

I’ve just read up a bit more about that particular phrase ‘the son of man’ and apparently, even in several Christian versions of the OT it doesn’t appear. Rather:

In other translations (NIV, NASB, AMP, ESV, CEV, ASV, RSV, YLT, and DARBY) it is interpreted as “A son of man” or even more simply (NLT) as “A man”. Thus, the phrase like others in the book refers not to a particular person but to someone in general.

- source: http://www.progressiveu.org/132214-skeptical-bible-study... target=”_blank”>http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:a_N5id6njFcJ:...” target=”_blank”>http://www.progressiveu.org/132214-skeptical-bible-study...