Yes, Mary Was Jewish
You can find as many different depictions of Mary, mother of Jesus, as you can find nativity sets or postage stamps. Yet the world goes up in arms when the most realistic depiction—an Israeli Jewish woman—is chosen to play Mary on screen. (Okay, maybe not the whole world, but at least one or two corners of the Internet.)
Today’s controversy is brewing over a new Netflix show simply called “Mary,” which cast Noa Cohen as the mother of Jesus. It seems like the directors were going for accuracy, but their choice has made the “Jesus was Palestinian” crowd angry.
The Jewish publication Aish answered the outcry like this: “The Holy Land was not called ‘Palestine’ until more than a century after Jesus’ lifetime, and Islam itself only came into existence six centuries later. As such, Jesus could never have been ‘Palestinian.’”1
The Jewishness of Jesus is worth defending, not just for Jews, but for anyone who follows him. So, here’s our response to the controversy.
What People Are Saying
Some people have tried to paint Jesus—and hence, also his mother, Mary—as Palestinian.
This obviously sounds reminiscent of old racist claims that Jesus and the people of Israel were not Jewish, but Aryan. That was little more than antisemitic wishful thinking from people who wanted to claim Jesus while justifying hateful views of his people.
The New Testament presents Jesus as the son of Abraham.
A less extreme but still errant version of this in Western culture portrays Jesus as an ethnically Jewish but not culturally or theologically Jewish character who is persecuted by “the Jews” of his time. With very selective reading that ignores heaps of counterevidence, it is possible to read the New Testament like that, but that reading is selective in the extreme.
A straightforward reading of the New Testament presents Jesus as the chosen son of David and son of Abraham from start to finish (Matthew 1:1; Revelation 22:16). And the New Testament fails to be coherent if it is not read as a continuation of the story of the Tanakh.
That old form of ethnic supersessionism has recently resurfaced, where Jesus is painted as a non-Jew oppressed by the Jewish people. The more intellectualized version of that tries to argue that Jesus is Palestinian by virtue of being oppressed. It’s as though Jesus’ story counts as a simplistic “bad guys vs. good guys” story that you’re free to superimpose onto any “them vs. us” story you like.
Miriam: Daughter of Abraham
Jesus and his mother are historical figures. We cannot rewrite their stories or change their ethnicity like a tired outfit any more than we could do to any other historical figure. What’s more, the Jewish identity of Jesus is intrinsic to the New Testament. Removing the Jewishness of Jesus from the story renders it utterly incoherent.
Mary (or Miriam, her Hebrew name) plays her most important role in that story when she becomes pregnant with the Messiah. She composes a psalm in praise to the God of Israel, which is all about what He has done for Israel and the children of Abraham:
My soul magnifies Adonai,
and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.…
He has helped His servant Israel,
remembering His mercy,just as He spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his seed forever.(Luke 1:46, 54–55 TLV)
She knew the promises of God in part because she was living in them. The stories that for us are prologue—like the victory of the Maccabees at Hanukkah—were for her the living backdrop of life. Mary was at home in the land and with the people and customs of ancient Israel. She observed ritual purity laws, went to the Temple, and observed the Sabbath.
Mary was at home in the land and with the people and customs of ancient Israel.
Mary was a young Jewish woman from Israel who loved her people and who understood the coming of the Messiah to be good news for the children of Abraham. Why should it be offensive to anybody when a young Jewish woman is chosen to portray her in film?
Jesus’ Jewishness Is Good for Everyone
Yes, the story of Mary and Jesus is about a Jewish mother and her baby, but their ethnic identity is not a fact that is meant to exclude others. Instead, it makes them part of the story of Abraham’s family that God always intended to be a blessing to all peoples (Genesis 12:1–3).
As an elderly prophet named Simeon prayed over the infant Jesus when Mary brought him to the Temple, he would be “a light for revelation to the nations and the glory of Your people Israel” (Luke 2:32 TLV).2
Endnotes
1 Rabbi Shraga Simmons, “Outcry Against Casting an Israeli Jew to Play Mary in Netflix Film,” Aish, November 18, 2024.
2 See Luke 2:25–35 for the whole story of Simeon.
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