Question

Hello and blessings, Rabbi, good evening.
My name is Uri, I’m 17, Religious Zionist.
I’m writing to you now at the end of a conversation with a friend of mine who, in short, has really gone deep into the Christian world—like, to the point that his dream is to convert to Christianity. He’s already walking around with a cross, and talking with priests about his baptism into Christianity, he’s gone to prayers in church and stuff like that (I swear to you this is real, he’s completely serious).
I won’t go into everything; in short, I knew about this for the last couple of months, but I didn’t think it was this extreme.
I studied some of their arguments a bit and tried to deal with him, which didn’t really succeed..
Basically, I know you don’t like getting involved in matters of religion, since if I remember correctly you’re kind of a pluralist, but I still want to ask whether there’s any point in trying to give me arguments and stuff, and whether there even are any.
Or maybe there’s no point? I don’t know, I’d prefer that he stay Jewish, but…
Anyway—I’d be happy to ask what your opinion is, and also ask you about answers to his claims, and whether to just leave him alone or actually try to engage with him.
In general, his arguments were these:
1. It says in Jeremiah that God will make with us a new covenant, which will be with the Jewish people and not like the covenant of the land of Egypt / Mount Sinai, and that this is because we did not keep the previous covenant (the 613 commandments, let’s say).
And he says that because, according to his claim, there is one who was crucified to die for our sins and Jesus himself says that he is our atonement, therefore the new covenant will be without practical commandments, since the new covenant comes because we violated the previous one, and it also can’t be different commandments, since we didn’t uphold the previous commandments.
And also because there is no longer any way to atone for sins without a Temple—in the Second Temple period there is nothing on which the punishment can come (there is no offering of the sacrifice).
And Jesus claimed that he is the ultimate sacrifice, so there is no more need for commandments..
 
2. As usual, the matter of the young woman who will bear a son in Isaiah 7,
Daniel at the end of chapter 9, etc..
In short, laying out all the claims here and what he tried to justify is a bit hard, since we had a really long discussion.
Of course, as you said here in the past—in the end the arguments for/against are always mistaken and open to interpretation, and we don’t really, really have much better answers than they do..
I tried to suggest to my friend a thesis like maybe Jesus was a prophet for the gentiles (maybe Rabbi Kook said that?) so that they would stop with idolatry etc., and that he didn’t call at all for canceling the commandments, but according to him the new covenant is with the Jewish people as mentioned in Jeremiah, and it has to be different in essence from the old covenant (he proved it from the verses).
If possible, maybe we could talk another way—that could be nice:)
But if you don’t see importance in matters of religion and who is right and who is mistaken, then I’ll probably drop the matter.
In any case, thank you very much 🙏