Question: In reading the Qur'an, I noticed this passage:

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> [**Qur'an 9:30**](http://quran.com/9/30) **The Jews say, "Ezra is the son of Allah** "; and the Christians say, "The Messiah is the son of Allah ." That is their statement from their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved [before them]. May Allah destroy them; how are they deluded?
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Is there any basis for the claim? Did Jews believe Ezra to be the son of God when the Qur'an was written?

Answer: 
I had never heard of this claim before. It certainly doesn't fit with everything I understand about Judaism.

The Wikipedia article on [Uzair](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzair) (Qur'anic Arabic for Ezra, apparently) contains a great deal of interesting information about this claim in the Qur'an, including why it's incompatible with actual Jewish beliefs and some suppositions about how it got into the Qur'an anyway. I think the following quotation from Exodus Rabba 29 makes the former point pretty ably:

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> 'I am the first and I am the last, and beside Me there is no God' I am the first, I have no father; I am the last, I have no brother. Beside Me there is no God; I have no son."
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[Rabbi Tovia Singer](https://youtu.be/IaK87QIhJI0), in response to this claim, said that some Jews in Egypt probably did believe Ezra was the son of G-d but that everyone has their “crazies,” and that this should not be attributed to mainstream Judaism which is strictly monotheistic.