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Is It Better to Rule?

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This week’s reading describes the miracle of the Mahn (Manna), the miraculous bread which G-d gave to our ancestors to eat in the desert. The people said they were hungry, they complained, and they were given an open miracle in return — along with instructions. They were told to gather only what they needed for the day, except on the sixth day, when they were told to gather a double portion for the Sabbath. So almost everybody did exactly what they were told to do. But the Torah tells us that “they didn’t listen to Moses, and men left it over until morning, and it became wormy” [Ex. 16:25]. Who didn’t listen? The Medrash tells us: Dasan and Aviram.

You just have to ask, who were these guys? In modern language, what was their problem?

We first meet Dasan and Aviram much earlier. Moses goes out and sees an Egyptian beating a Jew, and in order to protect his brother from death, he kills the Egyptian. The next day, he finds Dasan and Aviram fighting with each other, and he says to the attacker, why are you hitting your friend?

He answers back, “who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you saying you’re going to kill me like you killed the Egyptian?” The Medrash says that what Moses found so frightening about this exchange is that there were wicked people, informers among the Jews.

-Rabbi Yaakov Menken
Director, Project Genesis – Torah.org
Challenging Authority “for its own sake”
Commentary on Torah Portion Beshalach
ProjectGenesis.org

Some people just aren’t satisfied with what they’ve got. That seems to be the premise of the midrash for Dasan and Aviram, according to Rabbi Menken. I have a tendency to give the newly freed slaves of the Egyptians a break because after centuries of servitude to a corrupt and idolatrous kingdom, they are suddenly thrust into a world they could hardly have imagined and after all, learning to wait for God’s provision isn’t something they really understood. But Dasan and Aviram are a different case. Midrash states that they questioned authority, not because they didn’t understand and desired to comprehend the will of God, but just because they could.

But they weren’t simply informers, they were troublemakers at every opportunity. They finally met their end during the rebellion of Korach, which they joined. Korach was jealous of Moses and Aharon for the honor they received. But if Korach had become the leader instead, Dasan and Aviram would still have been simply members of the tribe of Reuven. What did they stand to gain from getting involved in the argument?

They were obviously sincere to a certain degree, because they merited to be part of the Exodus. But they could not get over their desire to challenge authority, apparently simply for its own sake. Even on something so trivial as gathering extra Mahn, they couldn’t resist seeing if they could find a flaw in the orders Moses gave them. And that was the same trait that eventually led to their deaths in Korach’s rebellion.

But that’s not really relevant to us today, is it? I mean after all, we don’t find people today, apparently well-meaning in some way, but acting out, against authority, just “because,” do we? Or perhaps it is more common than ever.

Rabbi Menken’s last paragraph obviously communicates more than a little irony, and he points to last time we see such rebellion against authority from these two Reubenites, just because they were jealous and had a desire to rebel.

Now Korah, son of Izhar son of Kohath son of Levi, betook himself, along with Dathan and Abiram sons of Eliab, and On son of Peleth — descendants of Reuben — to rise up against Moses, together with two hundred and fifty Israelites, chieftains of the community, chosen in the assembly, men of repute. They combined against Moses and Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! For all the community are holy, all of them, and the Lord is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above the Lord’s congregation?” –Numbers 16:1-3 (JPS Tanakh)

The two same malcontents who insisted on disobeying Moses in regards to the manna are also backing up Korah in his opposition against Moses and Aaron. They are nothing if not persistent, but as the subsequent verses in this chapter and Rabbi Menken’s commentary tells us, they finally came to a bad end.

Unfortunately, as Rabbi Menken suggests, discontent within the community of faith isn’t exactly a rare occurrence. In fact, it seems to happen all the time. Jewish blogger Shmarya Rosenberg even suggests (incorrectly) that Jesus broke from the traditional sects of Judaism in the late Second Temple period, and formed his own branch because he too was rebelling against religious authority which, in that place and time, had become corrupt and laden with many superfluous, man-made rulings.

A student of one of Hillel’s students attacked these rabbis’ extremism: “You blind guides!” he said, “You strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!”

That student, fed up with the growing halakhic extremism that dominated Israel from the last few years of Hillel’s life until the Destruction, did what many other disgruntled Jews did with regard to the rabbis or to the Temple cult – they walked away and formed their own version of Judaism or joined one of the many sects that began at that time.

His sect, known in history as the Jerusalem Church, grew. An offshoot from it – one the student’s brother, who was then the sect’s leader, opposed – is Christianity.

This is a completely distorted view of Jesus and the early formation of Christianity, but it does illustrate that when the Messiah walked among his people as a man, there were many branches of Judaism in existence which often zealously disagreed with each other on many basic tenants of Jewish belief and practice.

Progressing only slightly forward into history, we are keenly aware that the Gentile disciples of the Jewish Messiah would eventually turn against their Jewish mentors and by the second and third centuries of the Common Era, would create a religion that was completely distinct from and excised of any traces of its Jewish origins. This could be viewed as a historical extension of a “Dasan and Aviram” type of rebellion against the Jewish authority which was established by God through the Messiah.

Why do we have people like this among us? As Rabbi Menken previously pointed out, it wasn’t as if Dasan and Aviram were completely evil and beyond redemption. After all, they merited leaving the “enthrallment” of Egypt along with the rest of the Israelites, so they couldn’t be “that bad,” could they? This example may tell us that the “rebels” in the community of faith today aren’t necessarily “all that bad” but then again they aren’t necessarily all that good, and can still be really annoying nudniks. Maybe they’re just people who will never be satisfied with anything that even slightly disagrees with their own personal desires.

In the past couple of days, the Messianic blogosphere has been alive with passionate discourse about one such “extremist nudnik.” In an opinion piece at the Huff Post called Eddie Long Is Not a King, Rev. Wil Gafney, Ph.D, an Associate Professor of Biblical Hebrew and Jewish and Christian Scripture, posts a commentary on the extremely controversial YouTube video of “troubled pastor” Eddie Long, of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta GA, being “apparently crowned king with the ritual use of a Jewish Torah scroll.” The real “nudnik” of this sad and sorry tale though, is a fellow named Ralph Messer, as Rev. Gafney states:

The unidentified man who, (in the YouTube video to which I had access he is identified subsequently as Ralph Messer), represents himself as a Jew. He may well be some sort of Messianic Jew, a person who claims Jewish heritage and recognizes Jesus as the Son of God, but who is not part of one of the major Jewish movements: Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform, Renewal. He does not, however, represent recognizable Jewish thought or practice in his (mis-) representations of the Torah and other Jewish sancta — or for that matter, New Testament and Christian biblical interpretation and theology.

I won’t present any more details about this story since I would end up just duplicating what’s been thoroughly covered in much more worthy blogs, such as the one maintained by Dr. Rabbi Michael Schiffman, however, I would like to suggest that one of the motivations for such bizarre and unBiblical behavior on the part of men like Long and Messer is the same motivation Dasan and Aviram had in rebelling against the authority of Moses, Aaron, and ultimately God. This desire lead them, like Nadab and Abihu, to offer, “unauthorized fire” or in this case, to misuse a holy sefer Torah for unholy purposes.

Some people just have a problem with legitimate authority and having such a problem, do what Korah did and rebel by attempting to recreate that authority within themselves. This is at the heart of the theological arguments that have supported supersessionism in the ancient and modern church. I can’t truly say that the Christian church stands in total opposition and rebellion against the authority of God, since it is abundantly obvious that God has been using His Christian church to perform His will for centuries. I can say that the seeds that were planted 2,000 years ago which resulted in the weed that opposed the Jerusalem Council and denied the Jewish foundations of the church, were born of rebellion, but it was perhaps a “necessary” rebellion (Romans 11) so that the Gentiles could find a place within their Messianic covenant relationship to God.

That doesn’t make it any less painful or harmful and I believe the time for that “rebellion” is coming to a close.

People like Long and Messer seem to be establishing themselves as “authorities” simply because they can draw a following and they can magnify themselves by creating the illusion that they are “anointed” by God. But what do the people who follow these “rebels” want? Perhaps they are looking for whatever the rest of us are searching for, too.

Where was the knowledgeable one who wove his spell to bring his familiarity with the Atman out of the sleep into the state of being awake, into the life, into every step of the way, into word and deed? Siddhartha knew many venerable Brahmans, chiefly his father, the pure one, the scholar, the most venerable one. His father was to be admired, quiet and noble were his manners, pure his life, wise his words, delicate and noble thoughts lived behind its brow – but even he, who knew so much, did he live in blissfulness, did he have peace, was he not also just a searching man, a thirsty man? Did he not, again and again, have to drink from holy sources, as a thirsty man, from the offerings, from the books, from the disputes of the Brahmans? Why did he, the irreproachable one, have to wash off sins every day, strive for a cleansing every day, over and over every day?

from the novel Siddhartha (1951 U.S. publication)
by Hermann Hesse

This may seem like an odd source to quote within a Christian (and tangentially Jewish) context, but take one giant step backward from your religion and consider what human beings are looking for in general. What does the praying Christian have in common with the Jewish man davening in a minyan or a Muslim kneeling on his prayer mat? What do they have in common with the Buddhist, the Wiccan, and the New Age mystic? Aren’t we all, in our many and diverse ways, seeking God, in whatever way we may conceive of Him (or “Her”)?

I’m not saying that each and every one of these religious paths is equal in its validity or potential to arrive at the true “destination” of God, but the need to strive for that destination is the same in each of us. Some of our paths are legitimate and worthy, and many, many other paths lead to dead ends, darkness, and many ghastly conclusions in the spiritual travels of such seekers.

There are paths that lead people who desire a sincere and simple relationship with God to people like Ralph Messer, more’s the pity. Messer took the true message found in our Bibles and twisted it into a horrible distortion of God, misusing and desecrating the holy Torah of the Jewish people in order to glorify a misguided and selfish man. There is a legitimate path that allows man to understand God through the revelation of Torah, but Messer chose not to take it, perhaps because he would have to become a humble student and not an exalted “teacher.”

Milton, in his classic Paradise Lost, allows the “character” Satan to utter the famous line, “It is better to rule in hell than to serve in Heaven.” That seems to sum up anyone who would usurp the authority of God and the Bible (and Torah) for their own purposes rather than submit to the legitimate authorities God has established and to humbly serve under them. Jesus taught the exact opposite (John 13:1-17)  of Milton’s “adversary” when he washed the feet of his disciples and explained that “a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him” (v. 16). It is terrible to forget the words of the Master and to seek to rule over yourself and others, thinking you are better than those who came before you.

It is better to serve in Heaven than to rule in hell. Seek out those who are truly appointed by God and repudiate those who aren’t, so that the others who seek God just as you do, will be saved. Do not take such actions out of the desire to glorify yourself or whatever group or religion you serve but to glorify God only, lest you become like Dasan and Aviram and surrender to the temptation to serve only yourself. Should you feel that temptation within you, as if being who God made you to be isn’t good enough to satisfy you or Him, consider the parable of the Stonecutter by R’ Abraham Twerski MD. Perhaps it will add some perspective and even a hint of wisdom.

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Beshalach: Waiting for the Bread of Heaven

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The purpose of the manna was to uplift those who ate it and heighten their spiritual consciousness. As a result of this spiritual boost, the Jews were able to “follow My teaching”—to receive the Torah, as it is indeed stated in the Midrash: (Mechilta ad loc) “The Torah could only have been given to those who had partaken of the manna.” (Sefer HaMa’amarim Melukat, vol. 1, pp. 238-239.)

-From the Kehot Chumash
Chassidic Insights for Parshah Beshalach
Chapter 16
Based on the works of the Lubavitcher Rebbe
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of righteous memory
Chabad.org

And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. –Deuteronomy 8:3 (ESV)

And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written,
“‘Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” –Matthew 4:3-4 (ESV)

It may be strange to think of us today as waiting for our bread from Heaven, but I think that’s exactly what we do at times. Think about what it meant to the Children of Israel in the wilderness to wait on God for their bread. Although they had vast herds of livestock with them, they still have no reliable source of “daily bread,” especially enough to feed millions of people, morning, noon, and night. In this, they were completely reliant on God for their food and drink and without Him, they could do nothing.

As slaves, the Israelites depended on the Egyptians for their food and drink (and housing and everything else), and even though life was hard and often brutal, they were used to it, as a convict becomes used to a long term in prison. There was a routine. There were expectations that were fulfilled day in and day out. Breakfast would come tomorrow from the Egyptians because it came yesterday, and the day before, and last year, and in the days of their fathers and grandfathers.

But they weren’t used to waiting on God. They were together as a people, but they felt alone. They were free, but they were in a strange and unpredictable environment. The Egyptians were men and the Israelites understood how men could provide bread, but God is not a man and who can possibly understand manna?

So they were afraid, and they doubted, and they complained, and they tested God. This was a mistake, but it was a completely understandable one. But did God understand?

“You shall not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah. –Deuteronomy 6:16 (ESV)

Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” –Matthew 4:7 (ESV)

It certainly doesn’t sound that way, but then again, how could God possibly misunderstand His creations? How can He possibly misunderstand us, when we too are waiting for our “bread from Heaven” and we feel alone, and afraid, and uncertain?

It’s even more confusing when God sets up a schedule and then creates an exception:

Interestingly, Moses does not tell the Jews that the manna will not be in the field, but only that they will not find it there. And indeed, the manna was esoterically present on the Sabbath as well. The Sabbath is the source of all blessings, including those of material sustenance. In this sense, the manna of the other six days descended as a result of the “spiritual manna” that was produced on the Sabbath. (Zohar 2:63b, 88a.)

The physical manna gathered during the week “materialized” out of this spiritual manna. It therefore had to be acquired through physical effort: it had to be gathered, cooked, and so on. In contrast, the Sabbath manna was not manifested physically and therefore could not be “accessed” by any physical means.

Similarly, our physical livelihood is spiritually “produced” by our observance of the Sabbath. During the ensuing week, we have to gather the material blessings of the Sabbath by engaging in our weekday work. But on the Sabbath itself, we must refrain even from thinking about our livelihood. (Likutei Sichot, vol. 16, pp. 181-182.)

-Chassidic Insights commentary continued

This is certainly a very mystic interpretation, but it teaches us something beyond the literal telling of the tale of manna in the desert. Whether we believe we provide for ourselves through the work of our hands and our minds, in reality, everything we think belongs to us was produced by and belongs to God. Beyond that, it shows us that in some manner or fashion, the Shabbat rest results in producing what we need from God and ourselves for the other six days of the week. That’s why we give thanks to Him for everything.

But what about when we ask and we don’t receive, at least right away? But what about when we ask and we don’t receive, at least in the manner we expected to receive? But what about when we ask for a fish and God gives us (seemingly) a snake instead?

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. For which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! –Matthew 7:7-11 (ESV)

There’s a difference between what we need and what we want. God knows what we need, even as He knew what the Israelites in the desert needed. They didn’t ask for manna, but God knew they needed it. At first, they didn’t even know what to do with the manna, but God told Moses and Moses told the people. Eventually, the people got sick and tired of eating manna every single day, but God knew they still needed it on a regular basis and the gift that God gave continued to be His gift, regardless of whether or not it was received with gratitude.

We know that our purpose in a life created by God is not to be served but to serve. Jesus illustrated this very clearly here:

When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. –John 13:12-17

And yet, we are weak, and we need so much, and we depend on God, or we try to. There are times when we must act in order to receive from God, but there are other times when we are utterly helpless, and we can do nothing but wait.

And waiting on God to deliver His bread from Heaven is very hard. Even when it arrives, we may not recognize it for what it is, since His blessings may not come in a form we will understand. Even when we realize He has delivered His blessings, because they are not as we wanted them to be, we may be ungrateful, or hurt, or even feel betrayed that God didn’t give us what we wanted, when we wanted it, in exactly the way, shape, and form we asked for. But as difficult as it is for us, we must strive to trust God and not to question our Sovereign.

But Moses said to the people, “Have no fear! Stand by, and witness the deliverance which the Lord will work for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again. The Lord will battle for you; you hold your peace!” –Exodus 14:13-14 (JPS Tanakh)

“Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!” –Psalm 46:10 (ESV)

We can trust in God, if only we will wait.

You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing. –Psalm 145:16 (ESV)

His hand is opening. He’s about to help you. Wait.

Good Shabbos.

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The Alleyways to Eden

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The objective of all man’s toil in this world is to reach higher than his own mind, higher than mind at all. Not to a place where the mind is ignored, but rather, to its essence, to the inner sense of beauty and wonder that guides it.

“A river went out from Eden to water the garden.” The garden is Mind, where all worlds begin. Eden is a place of delight beyond the garden, far beyond. Yet its river nurtures all that grows there. Adam is placed in the garden to discover the Eden flowing within.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“The River From Eden”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

And the Lord God said, “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and bad, what if he should stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever!” So the Lord God banished him from the garden of Eden, to till the soil from which he was taken. He drove the man out, and stationed east of the garden of Eden the cherubim and the fiery ever-turning sword, to guard the way to the tree of life. –Genesis 3:22-24 (JPS Tanakh)

Ever since the expulsion from Eden, man has been trying to get back to paradise and to God. We haven’t been doing a very good job along the journey and we’ve taken many detours. The idea of “paradise” means many different things to many different people. I think there’s something inside of us that “remembers” the freedom we had to explore and to master our world, and we mistakenly try to recapture that freedom along a lot of poorly chosen routes. Some of those back alleys and rough streets lead to drugs, sex, booze, money, and other activities we somehow think will give us what we once had and then lost. The irony is that we try to recover paradise by the very acts that caused us to lose Eden and to lose our intimacy with God in the first place. We try to find God by making service to self as paradise and sin as our “god.” Notice the shape the world is in. We haven’t been doing a very good job along the journey.

But with a lot of wrong decisions, we’ve also made a few right choices, or at least choices that point us in the right direction. Sometimes we do so only by stumbling along, half perceiving the light along the path that God has provided to show us the way. Most of the time, even when we see the light, we don’t really know what to do with it and how to follow where it leads. And yet, God said the answer is there.

I do not turn aside from your teachings,
for you have taught me.
How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Through your precepts I get understanding;
therefore I hate every false way.
Your word is a lamp to my feet
and a light to my path. –Psalm 119:102-105

The way back to Eden is along the path that God has illuminated for us with the power of His Word. His Word is what we have in the Bible but He also caused His Word to “become flesh and live among us” (John 1:14) in a manner we cannot fully understand. God has provided many different ways we can become aware of Him and to come to know Him. As we become aware of God, we join with Him and put our “thumbprint” on His plan for us, in our own humanly imperfect way, declaring that we are involved with Him and with the ways of Heaven. Those of us who love God and who seek Eden have many and varied methods of revealing ourselves to the world. In walking along our different paths, we somethings encounter each other. When we do, we don’t always recognize that we are connected or if we do, we don’t always agree with how someone else is walking their own path.

Ever hear of Women of the Wall? I hadn’t either until just a few days ago. In their own words, they are…

a group of Jewish women from around the world who strive to achieve the right, as women, to wear prayer shawls, pray and read from the Torah collectively and out loud at the Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem, Israel. The Western Wall is Judaism’s most sacred holy site and the principal symbol of Jewish people-hood and sovereignty and Women of the Wall works to make it a holy site where women can pray freely.

They started as seventy Jewish women who gathered at the Kotel on December 1, 1988 to pray aloud with each other, which is the first time in history this has ever happened. Later, they gathered again to read from a sefer Torah at the Kotel.

However, it’s illegal for women to pray together at the Kotel in such a manner, and Anat Hoffman, the leader of Women of the Wall, was even arrested in July 2010, according to a Haaretz.com news story.

Anat Hoffman, the women’s prayer group leader, was arrested and taken in for questioning after she was caught holding a Torah scroll in violation of a High Court ruling prohibiting women from reading the Torah at the Western Wall.

While the desire of Jewish women to pray at the Kotel wearing talitot and tefillin runs counter to the Orthodox authorities, is it really wrong for them to do so? From the point of view of the Orthodox, it may be, but in this case, I must question whether or not the intent of these women really runs counter to the desires of God. They are walking their own path, created by their awareness of God, and the path is defined by their devotion to God as Jewish women. This isn’t the first time I’ve been critical of something regarding Jewish practice, such as in the treatment of converts wishing to make aliyah to Israel or some of the barriers synagogues place in front of Jews who wish to worship on the High Holy Days.

I want to honor the right of Judaism to define itself in terms of God as well as in terms of culture, custom, and lifestyle, but I am also aware that halacha doesn’t necessarily reflect the will of God with perfect clarity (and sometimes that can be an understatement). Paul said that we see “in a mirror dimly” but someday, it will be face to face (1 Corinthians 13). Whether you think it’s right or wrong for women to pray at the Kotel, they are seeking what we are all seeking; a way to walk along the path that leads back to a “paradise lost” and to return to the “lover of our souls.” According to the vision of John, one day we will arrive at our goal.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. –Revelation 22:1-5 (ESV)

Until that day, we search the free mountain trails and rough back alleys of our lives and our world for that one slender thread of light amid the darkness that guides us to an illumination beyond human expression. Day by day, we follow the thread, that lamp for our feet, and we walk the steps, which are different for each and every one of us, enduring hardships and being misunderstood. We will continue to travel until that one day when we will look up into his face, and he will wipe away our tears, and “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4 ESV).

Amen and amen.

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Uncomfortably Serving God

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No person can know his own inner motives.

He may be kind because kindness brings him pleasure.

He may be wise because wisdom is music to his soul.

He may become a martyr burned in fire because his nature is to defy, his nature is to be fire.

When can you know that your motives are sincere? Only when it is not within your nature to do this thing.

And how do you know that it is not within your nature? Only when you travel two opposite paths at once.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Real Motives”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

This is exactly how I can tell God is working in my life; by how uncomfortable He makes me. I’ve always found it very interesting that some Christians “confirm” the wishes of the Holy Spirit in their decision making process by how much “peace” they feel after praying about a decision. Their peaceful emotional state somehow tells them that they’ve made a decision (regardless of the situation) that is in accordance to the will of God. And yet we see from Rabbi Freeman’s statement above, that people can feel “at peace” with various decisions or actions, not because their motives are pure and perhaps not even because what they are doing lines up with God’s wishes, but just because those decisions and actions are “natural” for that person.

You could argue, probably successfully, that God created us with natures that allow us to serve Him within the activities associated with our natures, but that seems somehow limiting, especially when the needs of the world are so great and so varied.

Here’s an example.

I hate going to hospitals. They kind of creep me out (I think I’ve mentioned this somewhere before). So it’s not easy for me to go to a hospital and visit a sick person. And yet, it’s a commandment of Jesus that we visit the sick. It’s far easier for me to obey the commandment to feed the hungry, because I have no emotional resistance to donating a bunch of canned goods to my local food bank. But would I volunteer to work the kitchen at my local homeless shelter once a week? Gee, I dunno.

And that’s my point. Not that we have to make ourselves serve God only in ways that trigger our discomfort, but we also need to keep in mind that those uncomfortable opportunities God plops directly in our paths to help people, are the very ones we need to do if we want to be called disciples of Jesus (as opposed to “believers” whose only fruit is to “believe”). That makes serving God a lot less approachable for many of us. I’ve heard Christians praying to Jesus to help them be more like him and wondered what would happen if God really gave them the opportunity to do so. I’m sure some people would rise to the occasion, but how many others, when it actually happened to them, would say something like, “Hey wait! This isn’t what I had in mind!”

Sure. We all want to serve God. We just want to serve Him our way and to be really cool and comfortable while doing so.

Uh-huh. Let me know how that works out for you.

Here’s another perspective:

Teshuvas B’tzeil Hachochmah suggests that our Gemara is a proof to Gaon Chida’s position. The Mishnah teaches that one who made an erech vow while wealthy and before fulfilling his vow lost his wealth remains obligated to fulfill his vow as someone who is wealthy and he is not appraised by the kohen as one who vowed when poor whose obligation is discounted in accordance with his means. Tosafos Yom Tov asserts that they will take from the person what he has towards his vow and the remaining amount will remain a debt that he will fulfill when he acquires the necessary funds. The question is how they could collect from him only part of his obligation if it may turn out that he will never have the necessary funds to pay off this debt. If that were to happen he will have never fulfilled his pledge and there was no reason to have taken funds from him in the first place. It must be that even partial fulfillment is considered fulfillment of the mitzvah and that is why they will collect from him what they can even though they may never collect the remainder.

Daf Yomi Digest
Halacha Highlight
“Fulfilling only part of a mitzvah”
Arachin 17

OK, all that might be difficult to understand, so let me boil it down a bit. If you decided to serve God out of your strengths, such as having a lot of money, and something should happen unexpectedly to make that service a lot more difficult, are you still obligated to fulfill your commitment to God? After all, you said you’d do it and presumably, you made a commitment. Are you absolved of your commitment because you misunderstood how God wanted you to satisfy the requirements of the task or because you realized that you didn’t have enough money in your bank account to cover costs?

The Rabbinic sages debate the matter and conclude that you only have to do the best you can. If you promised to donate $1,000 to the food bank but you only have $500, then you pay the $500 and it’s as if you paid the full amount. If you promised to pray for the sick each morning without fail for the next week, but you woke up late for work two days out of seven and had to rush off without praying, then praying for the sick for only five days fulfills your promise.

Gee, you can see why Jesus said this.

“Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. –Matthew 5:33-37 (ESV)

Of course, that doesn’t cover those unanticipated “requests” from God to serve Him that you never saw coming across the horizon. What about those areas when you want to serve God as a “prayer warrior” for an hour each day just after lunch, but instead, on your commute into work, He wants you to help a mother trying to get her sick baby to the doctor’s office by changing her flat tire? The answer is you do the best you can, and if you can’t change a flat tire, you use your cell to call your brother-in-law who works for a tow truck company to drive over and help out.

You do the best you can, which doesn’t have to be perfect. You do the best you can, even though you are really uncomfortable doing it. You do the best you can, even though sometimes God asks you to do things that make you want to crawl out of your skin.

At least you know that when you’ve served God under those conditions, it wasn’t because you were serving yourself.

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Why I Don’t Go To Church

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This dialogue can happen over the Internet. God forbid that I should disparage the Internet as a means of communication; the irony would be a bit sickening. But realistically, all the activity out here is nothing – nothing! – compared to what is going on in real churches, with real people talking face to face. Real, honest dialogue with other people who bear God’s image and are trying just as hard as we are to understand and interpret the Bible.

I have seen so much good come out of the church I am in. Depending on how far you want to stretch the idiom, I have seen “the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is being preached to the poor.”

Have people left? Yes. Have people gotten hurt? Yes. Welcome to communal life…

-Jacob Fronczak
“Why I Go to Church”
Hope Abbey blog

For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. –1 Thessalonians 5:9-11 (ESV)

I read Jacob’s latest blog post this morning before I went to work and responded to him that I’d probably have to write a “counter-point” blog from my perspective. I don’t write this to disagree with or to oppose Jacob. In fact, I have the greatest admiration for his writing and the message he has created for today. He’s one of the few people who blog, especially about religion, who consistently presents an attitude that is sane and calm. I always hope that I present myself as sane when I blog, but anyone who has followed my “morning meditations” for any length of time knows that I am not always calm.

Jacob makes some very good points about why a person who is aligned with the “Hebrew Roots” movement can still attend and even thrive in a traditional church setting. I’ve said this in the past and I have also said that a great deal of good is done by the church in pursuing the commandments of Jesus to feed the hungry, visit the sick, and to provide comfort to the widow. In fact, I experience that sort of lovingkindness more from the church and the traditional Jewish synagogue than I do from many of those groups who call themselves “Hebrew Roots” or “Messianic,” usually because those groups are more focused on establishing and maintaining their “rightness” than in actually doing “rightness” to others in the Messiah’s name.

On the other hand, I have reasons for not attending church. None of this is new and I’ve spread “my story” over many different blog posts and various comments in the blagonet, but after reading Jacob’s message this morning, I felt I should collect all of that here today. This also, by coincidence (if I can even believe in coincidence in a created universe), dovetails nicely into today’s morning meditation where I spend several paragraphs summarizing my “witness” or my history in the world of faith.

Up until last May, I was regularly attending and teaching at what you would call a “One Law/Messianic” congregation. I left after much prayer, study, and investigation of the assumptions that had originally attracted me to that movement because of two basic reasons: I no longer felt the One Law proposition, which states that both Jews and non-Jewish Christians are obligated to the full 613 commandment in the Torah (minus Jewish halacha and Talmudic judgments and rulings) was Biblically valid. Also, I didn’t want to worship in a religious venue in which my wife, by her very nature as a (non-Messianic) Jew, would be unable to attend, and which would prevent me, due to my “reputation” as “Messianic,” from fellowship with her communities in Reform and Chabad Judaism.

So for the past nine months, I have been unaffiliated with any specific house of worship or formal denomination or sect, and for nine months, I have not engaged in any form of communal prayer or worship.

I kind of miss it.

The idea was to join with my wife at some point, in her communal religious life, but she doesn’t really have one at this point. She very occasionally attends shul, usually for a bar or bat mitzvah, or to help in some event held at one synagogue or the other, but not for Shabbat services and not to go to any of the classes being offered. I’ve suggested that perhaps we could do something together at one of the synagogues, and after a number of conversations on the matter, she said, “we’ll see.”

So why don’t I attend a church in the meantime? One of the reasons I left “One Law” is that the Rabbis at both synagogues in town are generally “OK” with Christians visiting for worship and classes, but they have an extremely difficult time even tolerating the presence of “Messianics”. Certainly, if I attended a church, even regularly, I would be no more or less offensive to them than any other Christian who walked through their doors, and certainly there are other intermarried couples who attend both synagogues, so how out of place could I be? Church attendance shouldn’t be a barrier to synagogue worship as such.

Traffic ConesThe other reason I left “One Law” was because I didn’t want to worship alone. I don’t mean without fellowship, which I had in abundance, but without my wife. She would no more step one foot inside a church than she would inside a “Messianic” congregation and for pretty much the same reasons. I would be just as “isolated” from my wife in a church service as I ever was in a “Messianic” service. I might eventually gain fellowship with other Christians, but it would still be completely hollow without my wife.

I know what some Christians out there are probably thinking right now.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. –Matthew 10:34-39 (ESV)

You could reduce that down to, “the heck with your family, Jesus is more important” or words to that effect. You could even attach my desire to attend synagogue services with my wife to what the Master said in Matthew 10:33 (ESV): but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. So much for loving my wife, eh guys? But what about this?

…and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” –Matthew 19:5-6 (ESV)

It’s not so easy now to simply dispense with my “other half,” even for the sake of my faith in Jesus, unless you can come up with some handy way to reconcile the dissonance created by juxtaposing those two teachings of the Master (and I’m aware that theology has come up with some rather creative ways of making discordant verses “fit” for the sake of “smoothing over” theology when rationally, they otherwise shouldn’t reconcile).

And then there’s supersessionism in the church.

I recently wrote an article for Messiah Journal called Origins of Supersessionism in the Church, which is the first of a four-part series on this topic. While I generally oppose this theology, my writing and research has made me particularly sensitive to the extraordinary harm this teaching of the church (not teaching of Jesus and Paul) has done to the Jewish people and to the worship of the Messiah within the framework of Judaism over the past 2,000 years or so. I admit to living with a certain amount of apprehension that if I ever started attending a church again, someone, a Pastor or Bible Teacher or just one of the parishioners, would spout off something about the church replacing Jews. Then I’d feel my blood pressure rise along with my temper, and I’d either just walk out, or I tell that person what I thought of their ill-considered “theology” (and then walk out or be thrown out).

Not that it would really be their fault. After all, the church has been teaching supersessionism as Biblical “fact” ever since the days of the early Gentile “church fathers.” That still doesn’t make it right nor does it mean I have to tolerate a way of understanding the New Testament that requires Judaism and every living, breathing Jew (including my wife and three children) to be deleted from religious, spiritual, and historical significance, not to mention permanently removing them from God’s love and, in at least a historical sense, removing the Jews from their very lives.

I told you I was sensitive to this stuff just now.

So that’s why I don’t go to church.

I understand what Jacob is saying and he’s right. Internet relationships are something of an illusion. I have managed to turn one or two into “real” friendships, but it always involves meeting in real life and doing stuff together. Pretty difficult for most web connections, particularly when those contacts span the globe.

Jacob ended his blog post with an invitation to those of us who are disaffected in relation to the Christian church:

If you believe in Jesus, you’re a Christian. We’re all brothers. We can be distinctive without being destructive. We can worship together. We can live together. We have to.

And maybe, just maybe, you could drop in at church sometime. We’d love to have you.

Thanks, Jacob (where ever you live…which according to his About page, is thousands of miles away from me). I’m not sure how that would ever work out, but I guess we’ll see what God has in mind.

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Repairing the Turbulent Suffix

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A certain sofer wrote a sefer Torah and was checking it over carefully for any possible errors, when he finally found one…Although with most errors he would only have to erase the problem and rewrite, he was unsure whether he could do so in this case. As is well known, it is forbidden to erase the Name of Hashem. In this case, the problem was not the name per se, but the suffix… Since he did not want to rewrite the entire amud, he wanted to fix the error but only if this was permitted by the halachah.

When this question reached the Taz, he ruled that the sofer could not erase the suffix…It is obvious to me that it is forbidden to erase a suffix to one of the Divine Names. Here is the proof: although we find in Maseches Sofrim that if a drop of ink fell on one of the Divine Names it is permitted to erase the ink in order to correct the blot, the Mordechai explains that this may only be permitted if letter wasn’t yet formed properly. However, if ink fell on a complete Name it would be forbidden to erase the ink. Similarly, if the letter were accidentally connected this would also be forbidden and the same is true regarding a suffix.”

When the Chut Hameshulash saw this response, he presented a different view, however. “In my opinion, although the Beis Yosef brings this Mordechai and it is l’halachah, there is room for leniency regarding a suffix. The proof to this is from Menachos 48. There we find that Rav Yochanan asks if we may do a sin in order to gain something with regard to sacrifices. From the Rambam there it is clear that we hold like the opinion of Rav Yochanan.

He concluded, “Since rectifying the shem Hashem is like saving a sacrifice, it is clear that in this case we may erase to rectify, especially since erasing a suffix is only a rabbinic prohibition.”

Mishna Berura Yomi Digest
Stories to Share
“Erasing to Rectify”
Siman 143 Seif 4(a)

I know that the information imparted in the quote above won’t make a great deal of sense to most Christians and probably even to a good many non-Jews in the “Messianic” movement. However the halacha that relates to the creation of a sefer Torah or Torah scroll is extremely specific if, for no other reason, than to avoid violating the commandment not to take the Name of God lightly or in vain (Exodus 20:7). I’m not going to attempt to provide a commentary on the ruling in this Daf, but I do want to use it as a metaphor.

A few days ago, I created a blog post called Debating Fulfillment Theology for the purpose of inviting polite debate regarding the pros and cons of the Christian theology that states the grace of Christ has wholly replaced the law of Moses. Even under the best of circumstances (and the debate is continuing as I write this “mediation,” so you are free to join it if you haven’t done so already), such dialogues rarely arrive at a unified conclusion. That is, I don’t expect that those who support fulfillment or replacement theology will “repent” and agree that it is a dangerous and unsupportable position, nor to I expect that those who disagree with replacement theology will eventually agree that the Jews must surrender their dedication to Torah and God and submit to the grace of Jesus Christ in a manner that completely denies Jews and Judaism (and I’m sure you can detect my bias based on how I worded that last sentence).

My goal for the debate is to engage in and encourage open, honest discourse with the hope of not resolving this conflict, but presenting alternate points of view. I am disturbed that the church sees replacement theology or supersessionism (though sometimes more politely cloaked as “fulfillment theology”) as concrete fact and the only possible way that the New Testament scriptures can be understood. After all, New Testament scholars have been debating for centuries (and continue to debate today) over the meaning of many portions of Paul’s letters and some of the more “difficult sayings of Jesus.” If a certain amount of scholarly disagreement remains in these interpretations, how can Christianity as a whole believe that replacement theology is such a “done deal?”

In quoting part of the Daf for Siman 143 Seif 4(a), I want to introduce an idea. I’ll use myself as an example (and I’ll try to keep this as short as possible and still form a complete picture). I was an agnostic/atheist until my early 40s as was my Jewish wife. Then I came to faith in Christ in a local Nazarene church (long story). My family and I attended for some time, but we found that many of our questions about God and Jesus weren’t being answered, especially as they related to the Jewish people.

My wife came into contact with a “Messianic/One Law” group in our community and she was immediately “hooked” (it took me a little longer to warm up to this sudden change in perspective). She strongly suggested that I attend with her and eventually, my family and I shifted our worship context from the Nazarene church to the One Law congregation. Years passed and many transitions took place. Eventually, we left the One Law congregation, and then my wife went back while the children and I attended the local Reform synagogue (another long story). Then my wife left One Law and joined the Reform shul, while I eventually went back to One Law and stayed for a number of years, proceeding from attendee to board member and teacher.

I was happy there for a time but my wife continued to explore her Judaism with the Reform synagogue and later with the Chabad and for the first time in almost 20 years of being together, we became a “mixed marriage”. My wife now identifies with the traditional Jewish community and is not “Christian” or “Messianic” in any sense.

As I watched my wife explore what it was and is for her to be a Jew within a cultural, ethnic and religious Jewish context, the basic tenants of the One Law movement seemed so discordant with what I was discovering (through my wife’s eyes) is actually Judaism (most One Law groups refer to themselves corporately as “Messianic Judaism” thus identifying themselves as a “Judaism”, even if the majority of their leaders and members are not Jews). Questions about assumptions I had made years before started coming to me and I entered into a year long investigation of who I was and what I was doing in my walk of faith (if you like reading a lot, that entire year is chronicled on my now defunct blog, Searching for Light on the Path).

Finally, I did what most religious people (or even what most people in general) don’t do. I changed my perspective, my theology, and my approach to being a disciple of the Master. In essence, I repaired what I saw as a damaged “suffix” in my understanding of God. That required great sacrifices on my part and I entered into more than one serious “crisis of faith” which resulted in quite of bit of emotional distress. These crises resolved into a new framework, the one from which I am now operating on this blog. I still take “heck” occasionally from people who don’t agree with my decision, however it’s a decision I found necessary to make for me and my relationship with God.

Why am I telling you all this and why should you care?

People can change. It’s not easy and it’s not common, but it’s possible. People can make significant and even extraordinary shifts in their theological perspectives if presented with enough evidence, but evidence is not enough. It takes the ability to admit that you can be wrong (not that God can be wrong, which would amount to actually erasing the Name of Hashem) and the courage to make changes (fix the suffix) once that admission has occurred.

No one likes change which is why a couple who is planning their wedding is stressed to the max, even though getting married is what they want to do more than anything. Any change creates stress and crisis, especially if it involves making major alterations to fundamental emotional, cognitive, and spiritual structures such as how you comprehend your trust and faith in God.

That means it is possible, however unlikely, that someone might really change as a result of this conversation. OK, I’m not holding my breath, but I am making a suggestion. As we see from the Daf above, change and correction of perceived flaws is not easy and there are times when it is necessary and times when it isn’t. Changes should be made with the utmost care and only after a great deal of deliberation, prayer, and consultation with trusted advisers.

But if change weren’t possible, no one would become a Christian in the first place, since no one is born into that state, not even people who are raised in a Christian family.

Rabbi Dr. Michael Schiffman recently made a comment on the aforementioned blog post that speaks to what I’m trying to express:

Scripture is scripture, but quoting a verse in or out of context says what the scripture says, but doesn’t tell us what you think it means. If you are going to quote scripture you have not achieved your goal until you tell us what YOU think it means. What you think it means is actually what you are basing your argument upon, so just say what you think it means or you have proven nothing.

Scripture is Scripture and the Bible is the Bible. It exists. It says what it says. But what does it mean? That depends on how we interpret it and what that interpretation means in our lives. Not everyone relates to the Bible and to God in the same way based on how we interpret the scriptures and how we interpret who we are. When presented with the challenges and crises in our life of faith and understanding, we need to keep going, no matter what the obstacles and no matter what the cost, even if the cost is that we must change or be forced to admit that we will always live a life at odds with God and in conflict with His Word.

On their exodus from Egypt, towards Mount Sinai, the Jewish people arrived at an obstacle – the Red Sea.

They divided into four parties.

One advocated mass suicide.

One said to surrender and return.

One prepared to fight.

One began to pray.

G-d spoke to Moses and said, “Why are you crying out to Me? I told you to travel straight ahead. Keep going and you will see there is no obstacle!”

The Jewish people kept going
and the obstacle became a miracle.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Keep Going”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Keep going. Like Nachshon, plunge into the turbulent seas. When you find them, you can fix mistakes. Miracles are possible.

My God, guard my tongue from evil, and my lips from speaking deceitfully. And to those who curse me, let my soul be silent and let my soul be like dust to everyone. Open my heart to Your Torah, then my soul will pursue Your commandments.

-from the Elohai N’tzor