No matter how much you distrust your own sincerity or question your motives, there is no trace of doubt that at your core lives a G-dly soul, pure and sincere.
You provide the actions and the deed—just do what is good.
She needs no more than a pinhole through which to break out and fill those deeds with divine power.
-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“The Promise Inside”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org
Would that it was so simple. I guess it should be that simple to serve God. Really, I outlined the basic core of it a few days ago in my blog post Being Heaven on Earth. More than anything, if we want to serve God, we have a duty to serve other people in whatever way we can, great or small. It’s a very simple concept. No wonder people get it messed up all of the time.
I sometimes contribute to the confusion. In yesterday’s morning meditation I introduced a discussion of the relationship between the laws of Noah as chronicled in Genesis 9 and how they interact with the Mosaic and Messianic covenants (Sinai and the Cross respectively). While, as my friend Derek Leman pointed out to me, the concept of being a Noahide is post-New Testament, I still think the “theme” of a non-Jew, non-Israelite, non-Hebrew being able to have a covenant relationship with God in the post-diluvian world says much about God’s compassion for humanity.
Of course, I could be wrong.
Then again, there are still those in the Christian/Messianic world who insist that Christians are grafted into Israel to the degree that they become Israel. That is, they become Jewish in all but name only and are obligated to perform the identical 613 commandments as the Jewish people. This very much takes a long stick and stirs up the muddy, murky waters of “Judeo-Christian” (I use the term in quotes because it doesn’t exist in reality) religion.
It all seems so much easier when you look at it as just dedicating your life to performing 1000 mitzvot or feeding and caring for (video) people who can’t do these things for themselves.
We make religion out to be quite a mess when it doesn’t have to be.
I recently read a review of Talya Fishman’s book Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures which describes how the Talmud became a completely integrated element in the religious life of every observant Jew. It seems that integration wasn’t as seamless as I originally thought, nor is its acceptance completely uniform across all different populations of Jews (not to mention what non-Jews think of the Talmud). However, if you look at Judaism from a fundamentally Jewish perspective, you can’t really have Jewish religion without the Talmud.
But it contains all of these mind-bending puzzles, conundrums, and debates!
Christianity doesn’t have anything to compare to the Talmud so it would seem that Christianity, if you want a “simple” religion, would be the way to go, but that’s somewhat deceptive. At least in the west, Christianity is a religion of individuals. I’m oversimplifying here to make a point, but it’s as if becoming a Christian and developing your faith is as easy as declaring Christ as Lord and Savior, praying to God to give you discernment through the Holy Spirit, and then reading the NIV Bible while “allowing the Spirit” to tell you what it all means.
I was puzzling through something about the Seven Noahide Laws when I realized that Judaism conceptualizes these requirements for non-Jews in exactly the same way as it views the Torah for Jews. The view is that the requirements are imposed on a people rather than on individuals. To be sure, a Jew responds individually to commandments such as praying with tefillin and a tallit (although praying with a minyan requires 10 Jews), giving to charity, visiting the sick, and so forth, but it is obedience to the mitzvot that identifies the individual as belonging the the Jewish people (there’s debate here since there are a lot of secular Jews who feel no attachment to the Torah, but I digress).
Gentiles in the western nations don’t identify in the same way in terms of religion. We see religion as a personal responsibility only and we just happen to be loosely associated with a church where we agree on the theology being taught. This doesn’t make sense when a Jew looks at a Gentile. Here’s an example.
One of the Noahide commandments requires establishing courts of law. An individual doesn’t do this. I can’t personally obey this commandment. Only cities, counties, states, and nations establish courts. Political entities establish courts, not individual human beings. That means being a “righteous Gentile” to some degree, requires that you belong to a nation that establishes courts. That’s the personal part of the decision, but you still have to belong to “a people” or “nation” that obeys this directive to be said to have obeyed it yourself.
But it seems so involved and so much of the governmental establishment of justice is out of our control. This may be a fallacy in the Jewish application of the Noahide concept on Gentiles. We are not a people of God the way the Jews are a people of God. The Israelites (and an assorted group of non-Israelite freed slaves) stood at Sinai “as a single man” and accepted the Law of God He had designed and established for them. While the cross of Christ stands for anyone who accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior, there is no ” nation of Christians”. Thus, in respect to the concept of “peoplehood”, Jews and Christians are fundamentally different “things”.
I’m getting a headache.
What was I saying again? Oh yeah. Why is worshiping God so complicated. Why are there so many disagreements? What is the problem?
Theologians and philosophers have been debating those questions since man’s first awareness of God but the easiest answer I can come up with is that people are gumming up the works. Sure, God is hard to understand, the Bible isn’t exactly like a first grade reading text, and the Talmud doesn’t add up as easily as “two plus two”, at least not to me.
While I enjoy a good challenge and I delight in digging “deeper into the text” so to speak, it is too easy to lose myself in the complexities of religion while forgetting why I am here in the first place. It should be as simple as Adam and Eve standing in the Garden.
Anxieties, worries, feelings of inadequacy and failure — all these smother and cripple the soul from doing its job. You need to find the appropriate time to deal with them. But don’t carry them around the whole day.
During the day, you are Adam or Eve before they tasted the fruit of good and evil.
-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Out From Under the Blanket”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org
We may argue and fuss with each other until the coming of the Moshiach and we may never see eye to eye on many issues but at the end of the day, if you managed to feed one hungry person, visit one sick person in the hospital, or even smile at a stranger you pass on the sidewalk, you’ve made the world a better place. God said it all here:
And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God? –Micah 6:8
“The rest is just commentary, go and study.” -Hillel
Morning Meditations 
Nice, but don’t you think we should start an argument about something here on Morning Meditations? You pick the controversy and I will start the argument.
Wow, you’re fast!
Actually I wrote this yesterday (I always have to write these a day ahead). It’s not just about yesterday’s conversation on your blog Derek, but obviously the blog comments were one of the catalysts. What we do really should be as simple as Micah 6:8. In the end, that’s all that will really matter to God and not all of the debates we’ve had about minutiae.
I wish I had the time to devote to all the thoughts that this blog provides! But I do want to respond to some things. And I’m hoping my “bullet” approach will get my points across without being obnoxious. More could be said, and I wish I had the time to say it.
* How does this fit in with the “New Covenant” of Jeremiah 31:31-33? I will write my law upon their hearts. How does a person live if the law is written on his/her heart?
* There is a racial aspect to being Jewish that doesn’t exist in Christianity. However, the being aspect applies to both peoples. Remember that Christians are “born again” they are a “new creation” . No we didn’t stand at a mountain as one people, we couldn’t. But as Paul points out in Galations, there are two mountains, Sinai, and Zion (Gal 4:24-30). And in Ephesians 2, once we were without Messiah, without hope, not citizens of Israel, we did not know G0d. But now we are brought near through Messiah. The wall of partition is broken down. We are one people with respect to our ability to have a relationship with G0d.
* There is both a simplicity and complexity to the scriptures that is amazing. It is simple enough that a 3 year old can understand them well enough to become a new creation. However, they are also so complex, that the greatest nerd (or mind if you will), can find a lifetime to explore. G0d gave us an amazing mind to explore. Then He gave us an entire universe to explore, and He gave us His word to explore. They are both impossible to completely understand (at least in our current state).
* No Christian that I know of, believes that they should interpret scripture by themselves. There is an aspect that is individual, but there is an aspect that is called “the Body of Messiah”. We are very much a people, but our nation is not on this earth. The Jewish nation is in both heaven and earth.
Now I must go and feed the chickens. Hopefully, I will get a chance to read Derek’s blog. It’s very wonderful that you folks take the time to study the scriptures and write about them. It’s such a blessing to me.
Hi Dree,
I’m glad my blog is inspiring lots of thoughts and responses from you. I always appreciate your input. I addressed some of the issues of Christianity as a “people” in a previous blog post, but we do operate at something of a different level because, unlike the Jews, we don’t have a shared ethnic (although you have Jews representing many “ethnicities”) and national heritage. So if Sinai is for the Jews, then the Cross is for the rest of us who are disciples of the Master.
I do believe there are Christians out there who interpret the scriptures based largely on their personal perceptions. CNN ran a story a few months back that included this quote from Craig Hazen, director of the Christian Apologetics program at Biola University in Southern California:
“You can see this manifest today in living room Bible studies across North America where lovely Christian people, with no training whatsoever, drink decaf, eat brownies and ask each other, ‘What does this text mean to you?’’’ Hazen says.
“Not only do they get the interpretation wrong, but very often end up quoting verses that really aren’t there.”
Nice post, and without getting into details I basically agree.
On my blog I ask a question about progressive revelation which I think ties in to this. Check it out.
http://fllowheirs.blogspot.com/
Hi, Dan. Thanks for stopping by and commenting. Welcome back to the blogosphere.
James said there can be no Judaism apart from Talmud. In case anyone is wondering how Karaite Judaism fits into this:
– Medieval Karaites engaged with rabbinic writings much more than today’s Karaites, or most Messianics for that matter. In some cases, like for anti-missionary material, Rabbis even relied on Karaites.
– The full yoke of Karaite observance is far more stringent than many realize. Probably there is no such thing as a Messianic that adheres to the same stringencies as traditional Karaites.
– There are only a few thousand Karaites left, down from 10% of the world Jewish population at some point in the middle ages. And revered rabbis like Ovadia Yosef permits intermarriage with the remaining Karaites to bring them back into the Orthodox fold. If Karaism represents pure and undiluted Torah, why is its extinction so likely?
– Karaism flourished in the medieval period probably due in no small part to the naivety with which it approached the Tanach as a unified, untarnished and perfect whole. In light of what Biblical criticism tells us about how Torah really developed (hint: it didn’t fall out of the heavens all at once), the ideology is untenable.
I had a feeling that comment would inspire a response.
Actually, I said, “…if you look at Judaism from a fundamentally Jewish perspective, you can’t really have Jewish religion without the Talmud.” Obviously there are a lot of Jews out there who are completely non-religious while maintaining an ethnic and cultural Jewish identity, so the Talmud may be moot for them.
You said yourself that only a tiny portion of the worldwide Jewish population is Karaite, which means the vast majority of religious Jews would consider the rulings of the sages as having authority to one degree or another. You are also correct in that the medieval Kararites did have a greater connection to the Talmudic writings than modern Kararites. Obviously religious Judaism isn’t completely impossible in the absence of the Talmud, it’s just highly unlikely.
While I don’t doubt that the “full yoke of Karaite observance is far more stringent than many realize”, I seriously doubt whether “Karaism represents pure and undiluted Torah.” You said yourself that “it didn’t fall out of the heavens all at once” so the written Torah may not be “carved in stone”, so to speak, as far as its “perfection” goes as a stand-alone document.
At some point, if a person even takes a casual reading of the Bible, they’re going to ask a question about one of the commandments that says, “how do you do that?” If the text doesn’t contain the answer, someone is going to have to make a ruling, which means there is no such thing as the “pure” Word of God. We interpret it. Rather than have about a jillion different competing interpretations, we decide to rely on some authority to provide a standard. That’s probably a description of the Talmud in a nutshell.
Messianics are generally attracted to the Kararites because Kararites are A. Jewish and B. don’t accept Talmudic authority. They accept the written Torah only. That creates the illusion that Gentile Messianism and Jewish Karaism are more alike than they really are. That creates the impression that Gentile Messianism is more Jewish than it really is. In the end, Kararites are Jews and Gentile Messianics, for the most part, are Christians.
Just my two cents.
One thing I don’t like, though, is attempts like Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah and Joseph Caro’s Shulkhan Aruch to provide a codification of the many disparate opinions in Talmud into one dead letter that all must conform to. That transforms healthy open dialog into take-it-or-leave-it dogmatism. That move toward codification (under the influence of Greek thought) would be the biggest change in normative Judaism until the haskalah.
The codifiers had good intentions, though, and probably a lot of positive influence on Judaism mixed with bad. Somebody would have codified it eventually.
Yes, James, you did put your foot in your mouth with this statement. Paul did not think like you when he wrote to Timothy: ” and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Yeshua Hamashiach.”
There was no Talmud at that time….And no Kabballa
True, Dan. But the Tannaitic period of Jewish learning is traced back to 70 CE and if you look at the learning and teaching patterns from that period, there are remarkable similarities to how Jesus taught. I think the very beginnings of Jewish mysticism can be traced back to that point in time as well (I feel another blog coming on).
James,
you are falling into the trap that FFOZ fell into…Mysticism….What does it have to do with the plain text of the Scriptures? Go ahead, write a blog and I will comment.
I have no doubt you will, Dan. Actually, Ezekiel, John, and Revelation all employ “mystic” imagery to tell their stories. Even Paul said he new a man (probably himself) who was caught up in the “third heaven” (2 Corinthians 12:2). When we come to faith in God, by definition, we take onboard a belief in the supernatural; in things we can’t explain or understand. The mystic attempts to explore these unknown realms. Also, there are just some concepts in the Bible that I can’t make heads or tails of any other way, such as how Jesus can die for the sins of all mankind past, present, and future and still not be a human sacrifice.
There’s a precedent for this in Judaism, but only in Jewish mysticism. I wrote about it in this blog. Is it absolutely correct? I don’t know. I think of mysticism the way people think of weather models. Modeling weather and climate patterns in order to make long range predictions is problematic, but it’s one way of envisioning and understanding something that we can’t always experience.
The problem is that one does not know if his vision or understanding is correct and that causes people to stumble. Kabballa went so far away from Scriptures that it became a separate religion, and for people who holding to the centrality of Messiah to espouse this is beyond me….
Dan, there’s a difference between reading and gleaning a bit of information and there from the mystic traditions and swallowing it all hook, line, and sinker. If, for instance, you look at the mystic Chassidic tales, not as literal events, but as metaphor and allegory, there’s a lot to be learned.
Well, tell me what is there to learn concern my salvation? And why should I as a teacher try to tell this to the people I want to reach, A-LA FFOZ……
Now you sound like a typical Christian, Dan. It’s not just about you and your salvation. If it were, then why study and teach? You already know everything you need to know to be saved.
The tradition of a disciple is that he or she learn as much as possible about their Master. No detail is too irrelevant or too esoteric. If your interests lie along a different path than mine, that’s not surprising. We’re different human beings. I still find the topic of mysticism compelling. You don’t have to agree. I’m not trying to convince you otherwise.
Dan, for your information, FFOZ neither teaches nor promotes Kabbalah. Note now, not ever. Even in traditional Judaism, Kabbalah was reserved for an elite and cloistered few. True, FFOZ has published Paul Levertoff’s “Love and the Messianic Age,” which applies Chassidic ideas to Christianity, but even in that book, Levertoff made a clear distinction between the Chassidic way and his own.
See: http://ffoz.org/_php/download.php?file=Mystical_Hermeneutics_Kabbalah.pdf
But at any rate, your Karaite-like concern with only the plain meaning of the Bible is problematic. God is so much bigger, deeper, and more beautiful than that. True, one must drink milk before learning to eat solid meat, but eventually, mysticism becomes useful. Oh wait, didn’t I get that teaching from a highly mystical, plain-meaning-surpassing discourse called the Epistle to the Hebrews? Wink wink.
You also repeat the awful Christian mistake of caring only about salvation. Even Paul didn’t think that way. Yeshua had much more to say about how to be a good, Godly person about what one needs to do to “get saved.” Remember: Your kingdom come, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
James,
The Rabbinic tradition needs to be taken with a grain of salt, as the rabbis were fallible men and frequently disagreed. But Judaism’s mystical tradition ought to be taken with a heaping helping of salt, and in general, is best avoided altogether except by those very advanced in Torah. There is nothing funnier than somebody that believes every word of Zohar. Even the authorship is forged, after all.
The Apocalypse of John’s inclusion in the NT canon was highly disputed by the early community, precisely because the text is so mystical and oblique, easily confounding the believer. Heck, there are crazy people today that extrapolate from it something that it doesn’t even remotely allude to (the Rapture).
But in any event, saying “what does this have to do with my salvation” when encountering a teaching is a cop-out. Yeshua was clear: not all who say “Lord, Lord” will merit salvation. Feed the poor, care for the sick, clothe the naked; these are the markers of one who has been born anew. That is the way of his sheep. And walking such a path is a lifetime endeavor. Most Christians do not really do it. I personally feel like I’ve barely begun to do it.
This makes me sound like a “heretic,” but I’ll say it regardless: Christianity is wrong to focus so much on salvation. If you actually read the New Testament without an axe to grind, it becomes clear that it’s about way, way more than salvation. But the Church truncated the beauty of these teachings early on into a narrow dogma. I would argue things panned out this way because the Church wanted to be everything that Judaism isn’t. Then Luther and his reformers took the existing teaching and radicalized it further. MJ has carried on this dogma and few in the movement have been weaned from it. Well, I won’t go along with this. I want to embrace the Apostolic Writings for the organic convocation of differing voices that it is. It is not monochromatic and it is not monolithic.
I don’t know how somebody could read the synoptic Gospels, James, or the epistles of Peter with an open heart and come away thinking that the study and practice of this-worldly sanctification (i.e. mitzvot) is unimportant. In Acts, the Apostles never told their fellow Jews “convert or you are damned.” It was always a matter of how best to glorify God. And even Paul never said that acceptance of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice in this life is the sole prerequisite for salvation, or else you are damned. I know Paul well enough to say that if he really believed that, he would have taught it at some point. He was more nuanced than this, and it is a crime to try to make his round peg fit in a theological square hole.
James, where’s my amen corner? 🙂
Andrew, if I gave the impression that I read the Rabbinic and mystic texts believing that every word is completely factural, I’m sorry. Of course I read and study with a critical eye and I’m not advocating simply reading and swallowing the rulings hook, line, and sinker. The book I’m reading now is very instructive regarding the origins of the Talmud, how it developed over time and indeed, how acceptence of the rulings and commentaries evolved across the centuries.
However, all of this is part of the larger Jewish cultural and religious mosaic. We can’t just read the Bible and say, “This is all there is to Judaism and God and there’s nothing more” and leave it at that. Not even the Rabbis equate Rabbinic rulings with Torah Law, but they are both considered to have differing levels of authority. Part of what kept the Jewish people distinctly Jewish is a time honored set of standards and traditions that they adhered to and that separated them from the general world population. If you read my “morning meditation” for tomorrow (Thursday the 3rd), you’ll see a little more how understanding Jesus relies, to some degree, on understanding the very early Talmudic (specifically the Tannaitic) period.
Nothing in what I’ve studied suggests that we blindly should read the Sages as holders of all truth. The Talmud is a study in debate, disagreement, and critical analysis, not a book of facts to be memorized. Learning is in the struggle to learn and in the wrestling with time, history, opinion, and revelation. It takes faith to explore these realms and not fear getting lost. That said, we must always be anchored to the Rock of God and the Word revealed in the Bible, though even that Word can be studied, interpreted, and actively debated.
Andrew,
Good morning,
“Our writers have taken the time to explain Levertoff’s concepts and to bring additional insights from the world of Jewish literature. More than that, they drew out intriguing parallels from the Gospels and Epistles. the final result is more than simply commentary on another book; it is a plunge into the deppest waters of NT mysticism and apostolic theosophy. the short, bite-size commentaries will also serve as TYPE OF DAILY DEVOTIONAL (emphasise mine). I hope you will find the commentary on ” Love and the Messianic Age as INSPIRING and REVOLUTIONARY as I have.”
Guess who wrote this?
” a plunge into the deepest waters of NT mysticism and apostolic theosopy?” Did you check the word “theosophy” in the dictionary? “Any Number of philosophies maintaining that the knowledge of God may be achieved through spiritual ecstasy, direct intuition, or special individual relations.” (Oxford American Dictionary). So for FFOZ, we gain our divine knowledge through a philosophy of mystical experience and esoteric text…Thanks, but no thanks….
Andrew, it does not make you sound like an “heretic,” it makes you sound like one who speak from both side of his mouth….
James,
When you read the book on the Talmud you need to understand that all the material and the knowledge we have on the development of Rabbinic literature, comes from Rabbinic literature.
For our knowledge on the development of rabbinic Judaism we are almost totally dependent on the Rabbis own testimony. A literature of single group within Judaism without any other sources. The Rabbis self understanding shaped all traditions within Judaism.
When you read the book on the Talmud you need to understand that all the material and the knowledge we have on the development of Rabbinic literature, comes from Rabbinic literature.
That’s my understanding, by and large. Seth Schwartz in his essay “The Political Geography of Rabbinic Texts” written for The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature says:
“Rabbinic literature itself identifies the editors of some of the texts but – apart from the fact that these identifications are questionable – it reports next to nothing about the ways the editors worked…In cases of midrash collections and the Bavli, even the approximate dating of redaction is highly controversial…” (p. 75).
Interestingly enough, Schwartz goes on to say (p. 88):
“Indeed, there is an abundant and ever-growing scholarship attempting to describe the impact of Christianity on the aggadic midrash (either it is implicitly responding to Christian claims or appropriating Christian ideas, or both)…it is also possible that the Christian writers borrowed the Jewish form.”
Research is ongoing but we are not that sure of our facts regarding early Talmudic development. None of this makes the Talmud unworthy of study and I find the history and development of the early Rabbinic period and its impact on diaspora Judaism fascinating. If you want to wait 24 hours or so, I’m planning on reading Steven Fraade’s essay “Rabbinic Midrash and Ancient Jewish Biblical Interpretation” tomorrow over lunch. We could discuss subject this more then.
Let me recommend to you the writings of Shaye Cohen, and Jacob Neusner, Both wrote extensively on post-distruction Judaism and the development of rabbinic Judaism.
I will wait 24 hrs. Do I have a choice?….LOL!
Dan, are you trying to tell me that the prophets of Israel knew God only through adherence to pat doctrine and not through any level of “spiritual ecstasy, direct intuition, or special individual relations”? If Moses didn’t know God on the deepest, most intuitive level, what does that make of the Torah? Where did Daniel get his prophecy of 70 weeks, or Isaiah his prophecy of the Suffering Servant? From a book they read? Was the John that wrote the Apocalypse allowed to be mystical, but not us believers today? Don’t you see the problems with a thoroughgoing rejection of mysticism?
Mysticism is not everything, but it is not worthless. Sometimes, yes, it can be dangerous. But most likely a healthy mysticism, as an alternative to dead-letter literalism, has saved many of today’s believers from atheism.
Andrew,
You are not Moses or a prophet…..Enough said….
Actually, that’s a good question. We’re not prophets certainly but do “ordinary” human beings have the ability to have an “information exchange” with God? I don’t mean a conversation the way we see Abraham or Moses talking with God, but can we make “contact”? Are our prayers in vain or does God hear us? Are our requests to hear from Him in vain or does God, in some manner or fashion, “speak” to us? Can we hear Him?
James,
This si a subject for a new post…..
I tell you what, Dan. How about you write it, and I’ll come over and comment. 😉
You asked so nice so I wrote it. Go ahead and check it out. Thanks.