Some eighty years ago, theodor Raphael Patao, the leader of Judaic proselytizing in America, said in his book “The Jewish Communal Religious Minority” that the Judaic concept of Ishmael (the father of Abraham) was the same as the Christian concept of Christ. In fact, he claimed that the Sephardi fathers had even greater beliefs in Christ than the Jews because they believed that Christ was amessiah coming to redeem mankind from its sins. And he insisted that the Jews were merely following the example of their ancestors, the Sephardis.
Theodor Patao claimed that the main characteristic of Judaic thought and practice was Ahab, the book of Nineveh written by one of the last of the ancient kings of Israel, whose name was Ahab ben Yairh, that God had raised up a messiah, or messiah-one who would restore the Jews to their glory and take back Jerusalem from the Gentiles. And he added that unlike the Christians, the jews did not follow a creed, but they followed a practice, the traditions that kept the religion and faith of their ancestors alive in order that their posterity would not be destroyed. It should be noted that the messiah may not be a Christian, and he may not be a Jew either. And he may not even be a human being at all, but rather some sort of spiritual being sent to save the Jews from the Gentiles.
In modern times many jews believe that the messiah does not come from Israel, but from heaven. And there is no need for a religion, any religion at all, to have a central holy text of any kind. And that is part of the brilliance of judaism, the brilliance of a simple belief system, and it has survived throughout the years. Many rabbis do not believe that a person born into the Jewish nation, that is to say a citizen of a state with a Jewish majority, can be saved from the pagans or the Jews since the Jews are not a people of religion and their God is not God. But in Judaic thought, the concept of God can be understood and applied to a person only when he makes a personal choice, and that choice can be sanctified and made into a new life by turning to the torah, the book of God.