messianists are not jews and messianist priests can call themselves rabbis (or chopped liver, or fred) if they want but they're incorrect. they're christians. celebrating sabbath friday night to saturday night and avoiding pork do not a jew make. i, an atheist, am actually a jew. the rules of judaism say the only thing that gets you kicked out, so to speak (there is no excommunication; there isn't that kind of hierarchy anyway) is taking on another god. that would be, in this case, jesus. that makes a jew who becomes a messianist an apostate. but most messianists never even were jews, so they're not apostates; they are christians who decided to be messianist. "jews for jesus" was created by a baptist minister, with the stated intention of eradicating judaism by converting all jews to christianity with the ploy of calling it a kind of judaism. ironically, that makes it a kind of antisemitism. no wonder pence embraces this so-called rabbi.

g