Firstly, you must remember that there are about as many types of Messianic Jew as there are types of Protestant. Messianic Jews tend to make no distinction between "Jew" and "Israel" as though the whole of Israel was Judah instead just a twelfth part. Israel and Judah have become synonymous to them. More serious than this, though, are the racial implications of what being a "Jew" means as I have discussed above. For most Messianic Jews aren't Judahites.
Messianic Israelites recognise, broadly-speaking, that all the tribes matter, and not just Judah. They believe that the northern Ten Tribes, which were taken away into captivity by the Assyrians and who never returned to the Holy Land, are co-inheritors with Judah.
Some Messianic Israelites (probably the majority) make the same error as Messianic Jews and some Evangelical Protestants by making no distinction between "Jews" and "Judahites" - they thus treat modern "Jews" as the descendants of the Patriarch Judah, which they aren't.
Most Messianic Israelites believe that what is known generally as the "Church" is "Ephraim", the tribe which stands at the head of the northern Ten Tribes and which biblically is viewed synonymously with (northern) Israel. We often speak of Judah and Israel, the two halves of the divided nation, though combined they are both called "Israel" too.
It's complicated, isn't it? But that's because of the use of words that have multiple meanings. Hence the need to sit down and carefully untangle them so we know exactly what we're talking about.
Most Messianic Israelites believe that the prophesied joining together of the sticks of Judah and Ephraim mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel (Ezek.37:15ff.) refers to the joining together of Messianic Jews with Gentile Christians who have accepted Torah. (The Mormons have twisted this to mean something completely different, viz. the "stick" of Judah is the Bible and the "stick" of Ephraim their Book of Mormon - trouble is the Bible isn't just "Judah", "sticks" don't refer to books but to rods representing nations, and the Book of Mormon itself claims to be written by someone from Manasseh - work that mess out if you can). I believe this to be too simplistic for the following reasons.
Firstly, there never were two different types of church or assembly as Messanic Jews claim existed in New Testament times in order to justify their existence - one "Jewish" and one "Gentile". Yahweh has not given us a choice of two different types of congregation based, respectively, on Talmudic Jewish and gentile culturism. There is one Church/Assembly, one Lord Yah'shua (Jesus), one Faith, one Baptism (Eph.4:5). They wrongly interpret the fact that the first gentile believers were only required to "abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled, and from blood" (Acts 15:20, NKJV) and not to observe any other aspects of Torah (ironically, most Christian churches don't even do this). There are thus two classes of believer for them: (1) Messianic Jews who are expected to carry on observing Torah; and (2) Gentiles who are not (at least not beyond what the Jerusalem Council said).
But this is manifestly false. Everyone who believes is grafted into Israel, everyone becomes an Israelite. The only reason the Jerusalem Council required so little of the first Gentile believers was because imposing the whole Torah on them would have choked them to death. A little at a time was the message. After all, the Jews had been observing Torah for generations and it was second nature to them.
We are all supposed to be observing Torah but not any old "Torah". Some Messianic Jews believe that all Christians should join them, others that they should remain separate but can join if they like the "Jewish ways", but all of them are errecting a wall of partition. Much of it is snobbery and a desire to be different and to lord it over gentile believers. There is a culture (cult) of superiority amongst many Messianics who regard themselves as a kind of "master race" within the fold of those who accept Yah'shua/Jesus. And there are plenty of gentile believers who are more than willing to idolatrously look up to "the apple of God's eye" and do obeisance to them. All of this is wrong. For you will find few Messanic Jews who do not insist upon physical circumcision as a requirement of Torah when the apostle Paul made it perfectly clear that physical cicumcision was spiritually useless: "Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters" (1 Cor.7:19-20, NKJV). Obviously being circumcised is not a commandment any longer. Circumcision was a requirement of the Old Covenant but in the New it has no spiritual significance whatsoever. The outer sign of the New Covenant is water baptism for those who have reached the age of accountability, not circumcision of infants who are in no position to make any kind of choice.
Perhaps this why so many Messainics hate the apostle Paul, just as Luther hated the the apostle James who contradicted some of his cherished theology, and whose Epistle he tried to remove from the canon, mockingly calling it the "Straw Gospel".
So, sadly, there are many "Messianic Israelite" ideas as to what joining the Two Houses of Ephraim and Judah actually means.
My own belief is that Messianic Judaism is no more or less an abberation than Protestantism. The latter holds on to its pagan traditions (like Christmas, Easter, etc.) and the former holds onto its Talmudic ones, perpetrating the "Judaising" heresy that Paul had to fight and afflicting the Body with legalism.
The truth, I believe, is that Yahweh wants the truth of both Messianism and Protestantism welded together in their proper proportions to make the end-time Israel. It's for this reason that I am alligned with Mishpachah Lev-Tsiyon (MLT) which I believe has found the right balance - for it is both Torah-observant as well as rejecting the extremes of Messianism. It can comfortably call itself, therefore, both Messianic Israelism and Hebraic-roots Christianity. And though for now it seems to be a "pig-in-the middle" and opposed by Messianics and Protestants alike, the truth is that more and more people are being attracted to it because it harmonies all the scriptures and possesses that genuine love and peace which Yah'shua's (Jesus') people are supposed to be known by.
