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Any other Christians celebrating traditional Jewish holidays?
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We are Christians who observe a Saturday Sabbath and celebrate the traditional Biblical (Jewish) holidays rather than Christmas and Easter. I’m wondering if there are any others like us on this board. If so, do you have any children’s Bible study resources you can recommend? I find many children’s Bibles and Bible study resources to place interpretations into their writings that don’t line up with our beliefs.
I know of Heart of Wisdom, but that’s about it.
We do not celebrate those but I want to do some. I just missed the Hannuka window this year. If you have any good books about the Jewish holidays I would love some recommendations.
We don’t observe Sabbath (sometimes, we do a meal on Friday evening, but that’s about it) but we enjoy Passover and Hanukkah. We added the Feast of Trumpets this year (I wanted to do all of the feasts this year since we are studying The Books of Moses, but the other two fall feasts didn’t work out.) My go-to resource is Celebrate the Feasts by Martha Zimmerman. I also have a book called The Feasts of the Lord which does a really good job explaining the significance of the feasts and the traditions that go with them in light of Bible Prophecy.
I have found this website to be a good resource: http://heartofwisdom.com/blog/
I have the ebook from that site called A Family Guide to the Biblical Holidays. It’s a good introduction to celebrating all of the feasts and festivals with children and from a Christian perspective. It has some kids activities included, and it explains a lot of the symbolism, which is so very rich, within the practices of the feasts and festivals.
I also saw this woman, Renee Ellison, speak at the big homeschool convention here in Houston in June. She gave a lot of good, practical advice, and when I visited her website I found out that she is also a 7th day Sabbath keeper and observer of the OT feasts and festivals. She has some good, free info about these things here: http://homeschoolhowtos.com/store/list/category/holidays
Our family has had a gradual move toward this way of faith over the past 5 years or so. I have to say that of all of it, the practice of keeping the Sabbath has blessed our family more than any other. Not just the resting part, but the special meal we share together every Friday evening. We have built a lot of tradition around it, bringing in traditional Jewish traditions and adding many of our own. It is now a really treasured time of the week for all of the family.
I find resources on the Holy Days to be easier to find than just your standard day to day Bible resources – like family devotionals or children’s Bibles – that embrace this faith practice. For example, The Child’s Story Bible, by Catherine Vos that is recommended by SCM and many others in the homeschooling world, evidently (according to Amazon review) has changed ‘Sabbath’ to ‘Sunday’ and says that Jesus was born on Christmas. I don’t have to agree with every bit of a resource to be able to use it and find it helpful, but I would love to find something to support and encourage what we are teaching our children. I guess I should just read them the real Bible and forget all the rest!
Oh, another place that has wonderful, wonderful material for understanding Scripture from this perspective is First Fruits of Zion (http://ffoz.org/). There is not much for kids there, but we have read many of their books, done their HaYesod Bible study, and listened to lots of their audio teachings and we love almost everything they put out.
Hi! I don’t post here too often but just wanted to say it is so nice to find other fellow Christian families celebrating Jewish holidays as our family does. We just finished celebrating Hanukkah and it was a wonderful experience. My husband handmade the Menorah with our daughter’s help. We also celebrated Pesach this year. Our goal is to add one or two holidays per year.
It is nice to know we are not the only ones 🙂 Shalom!Yea! I’m so glad you posted. It can get very lonely. I am very glad to know there are others out there like us as well.
I would love to share resources and ideas.
Heather, we also keep the sabbath and are more and more learning and taking part in the holy days that are Biblical. We own the resource from Robin Sampson that you mentioned as well as one written by John Hagee for adults. I would also like to find more resources to use with children. If you find anything please keep me posted. 🙂
I wanted to add that we find The Child’s Story Bible by Voss to have a bit of additions that we didn’t feel comfortable with. I am pretty particular about saying it’s a “Bible” and read things to my children that are not in the Bible. The only story Bible we have liked is The Egermeier Story Bible. The only other option is to simply read from the Bible and maybe paraphrase yourself. 🙁
Also, if you or anyone else for that matter would like to email to keep in touch or discuss resources or ideas my email address is jessa_316@yahoo.com .
I hope it’s ok with you all if I ask a question. I’m not meaning to be disrespectful or anything, but I’ve never heard of Christians celebrating Jewish holidays. Would you mind taking a minute or two to explain that? Do you then not observe Christian holy days? Or do you observe both? I’m genuinely interested in the answer – I hope you don’t mind my asking. Thank you. 🙂
We do Christian holidays and a few Jewish ones. When we do Passover, it’s to show our children the truth that Jesus is the Passover Lamb. If we do a Sabbath meal, it is in hopes that our children will make the connection that Jesus is our Sabbath rest.
We don’t do any of them to keep the law or be Jewish in any way. We just wanted our children to understand the significance of the feasts and felt like actually doing them a few times would make them come alive.
But, I think we are the exception. We aren’t messianic, don’t circumcise and occasionally keep the feasts. 🙂
Interesting! Thanks for your answer. 🙂 I like what you said about wanting your family to know that Christ is the Passover Lamb. In our tradition (Eastern Orthodox) we call Easter Pascha, which means Passover. And we have a hymn that calls Christ “our saving Passover, a living sacrifice, a sacred Passover, a Passover new and Holy, a joyous Passover, the Passover which sanctifies all the faithful”.
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