Kosher Jesus, Uncategorized

Nothing’s Perfect

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You have to begin with the knowledge that there is nothing perfect in this world.

Our job is not to hunt down perfection and live within it. It is to take whatever broken pieces we have found and sew them together as best we can.

—the Rebbe’s response to a girl who wanted to leave her school for what she thought to be a better one.
as related by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
Chabad.org

Oh, duh! No, that’s not my Homer Simpson imitation, it’s my “light dawns on marble head” moment and the reason I’m writing this “extra meditation.” I’m going to use the above quoted phrase for tomorrow’s “morning meditation,” but as I was doing one of my obsessive reviews of tomorrow’s blog, trying to find all the typos I will invariably miss, it hit me.

Life isn’t perfect.

I suppose that’s obvious to you and really, it’s obvious to me too, but I spontaneously applied it to something specific in my own context and everything suddenly made sense. Let me explain.

I periodically kvetch about how hard it is to find other people who see things in the world of faith that are even remotely similar to how I see them (although my “morning meditation” for today has attracted some very nice comments). I also complain about my desire for a sense of community, particularly with my wife, and how frustrated I am that what I planned (boy, God must be having a good chuckle right now) doesn’t seem to be working out.

But what did I expect?

It’s not so much the statement that the Rebbe made above (as related by Rabbi Freeman), it’s the circumstances around the statement that made something “click” inside of me.

…the Rebbe’s response to a girl who wanted to leave her school for what she thought to be a better one.

I’ve probably said some variation of this a thousand times to relatives and friends when they’ve told me how life isn’t perfect for them, either. I just find it funny that God chose here and now to give me my “light bulb moment.”

It should have come sooner but I wasn’t paying attention.

I was having a conversation with the Missus the other day, again talking about the possibility of taking a class or two with her at one of the synagogues here in town. Somehow, we got on the topic of intermarried couples and, since she knows I’m reading Rabbi Boteach’s book Kosher Jesus, we talked about the very distinct differences in how Christians and Jews see the world, the Bible, the Messiah, and God. As we were talking, I was reflecting to myself on how one of the reasons I left the “Messianic” movement, at least in terms of physical worship and self-identification, was because I perceived it as a barrier to my joining her in a Jewish worship and study context.

I mentioned to her in our conversation, that I know there are plenty of intermarried couples in both the Reform shul and Chabad communities, and then she said something that stopped me cold. She said those couples were all comprised of one Jewish spouse and one non-religious (specifically non-Christian) spouse. They’re all Jew/Gentile intermarried, but not “mixed-religious couples”.

I see.

I suddenly realized where the barrier is located in my wife getting comfortable including me in her Jewish community. It’s located squarely at the intersection of “Jesus Street” and “Christian Avenue”. In other words (taking my tongue out of my cheek), she really doesn’t want to take her Christian husband into a Jewish synagogue to interact with her Jewish community. The real problem wasn’t just the negative perception many Jews have about Messianics. That’s why my leaving the Messianic community didn’t produce the desired result. My being a Christian is the real problem.

Oh.

Did you ever play “Battleship” when you were a kid? Ever have your fleet sunk? Mine ended up soundly torpedoed and sent swiftly to the bottom of the cold, cold Atlantic.

I was pretty grumpy about it initially. In fact, I’ve been pretty grumpy about it until about thirty minutes ago (as I write this). Then I re-read the Rebbe’s words and the context in which he said them, and realized that if I thought I was going to get my way, I was sadly mistaken. I won’t even say that “life’s not fair,” because I don’t think fairness has anything to do with it. It’s not like I have some sort of “right” here. It was more of a desire to join with my wife at the level of worship and perhaps to take my meager level of Jewish learning up a notch.

That’s not going to happen now. Of course, it’s not like it was owed to me or something. Sure, it would have been nice, but it’s not my right to enter into someone else’s world if I don’t belong there. It’s not so much that I wanted in the Jewish world. I wanted in the Jewish world so I could share my wife’s world with her.

But life’s not perfect. In fact, life has never been perfect, even among those who have served God with outstanding faithfulness, which doesn’t exactly describe me. No perfect life. No perfect people.

The king’s primary function is to dispense justice and righteousness in Israel. Second Samuel 8:15 tells us, “David reigned over all Israel; and David administered justice and righteousness for all his people.” The Psalmist says, “The strength of the King loves justice; You have established equity; You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.” (Psalm 99:4) When Israel practiced justice and righteousness, she was blessed, but when she strayed from justice and righteousness under the influence of wicked kings, the prophets rebuked her. “I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the level,” (Isaiah 28:17) the LORD declares through the prophet Isaiah. The Psalmist prays for the Davidic King, saying, “Give the king Your judgments (mishpatim), O God, and Your righteousness to the king’s son. May he judge Your people with righteousness and Your afflicted with justice.” (Psalm 72:1-2)

“Righteousness and Justice”
Weekly eDrash
Commentary on Torah Portion Mishpatim
First Fruits of Zion

Israel was the only nation specifically established by God, and given a personal and corporate set of laws and ordinances by which the Hebrews were supposed to obey their Creator as a people. If any country was to have operated with flawless perfection, it should have been Israel, and yet even a casual reading of the Tanakh (Old Testament) tells us that they experienced dramatic swings, from amazing prosperity to bitter and total defeat…and back again. Life wasn’t perfect for the Children of Israel and it isn’t perfect for the Jewish people today. Life isn’t perfect for the church, and certainly it hasn’t been perfect over the past 2,000 years of Christian history.

Why should even this one thing that I ask for be perfect for me? There’s no reason it should be.

Oh, I know the Christian platitudes: “Go bathe it in prayer” and such, but frankly, I’ve seen some of the most faithful people I know end up disappointed in so many ways and still maintain their faith and trust.

I’m not going to “win” this one, but I guess I can’t say that I mind all that much (well, I mind a little). There’s so much else that is going right. My wife and I are together after almost 29 years of marriage. We both are reasonably healthy, we have three children and one grandson. We are fed, and clothed, and housed. We are gainfully employed and are able to meet our needs and a number of our wants. Life isn’t perfect, but it isn’t horrible, either.

Most of all, both my wife and I are relating to God, each in our own way and in our own manner, as Jew and Christian. I’m a really unconventional Christian and she’s not always the typical Jew, but we get by.

Now that this realization has happened, I don’t know what comes next. I don’t have “a plan” anymore. Maybe I’ll finish out my year long experiment here and then “sink” this blog along with my hopes or maybe I won’t. I’ll have to wait and see if God decides to fill in the blanks in my life with something I haven’t anticipated, or if He’ll just let me have blanks in my life for a day, or a week, or a month, or a year or ten.

Right now, I guess I’ll take the Rebbe’s advice, try to find whatever broken pieces of my aspirations that God has left lying around and see if I can patch them together into something that makes some sort of sense.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

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Rambling on the Trail of the Temple of God

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Shulchan Aruch rules that it is prohibited to tear down a Bais HaKnesses in order to build a new Bais HaKnesses. The reason is out of concern that they will tear down the old Bais HaKnesses and then something will happen that will prevent them from constructing the new Bais HaKnesses. Rather, they must first construct the new Bais HaKnesses and only then may they tear down the old Bais HaKnesses. Mishnah Berurah…presents a disagreement between Magen Avrohom and Taz whether it is permitted to tear down an old Bais HaKnesses if there is a Bais HaKnesses in town that is large enough for everyone to daven so that even if the new Bais HaKnesses is not built they will not be left without a Bais HaKnesses for davening. Taz permits tearing down the old Bais HaKnesses in these circumstances whereas Magen Avrohom prohibits the practice. Biur Halacha…notes that many later authorities cite Taz’s position as halacha and he adds that since tearing down a Bais HaKnesses to build another one is only Rabbinically prohibited one may follow Taz’s lenient position.

Rema rules that it is even prohibited to tear down a single wall in order to make the Bais HaKnesses larger; rather they must first build the new wall and then it is permitted to tear down the old wall. Sefer Tzedaka U’Mishpat…contends that Rema’s ruling is limited to where the construction would make it impossible to daven in the Bais HaKnesses. If, however, they would be able to continue to daven there while the construction
is going on it is permitted to tear down a wall to expand the Bais HaKnesses even before building the new wall. The rationale is that this is no different than having another Bais HaKnesses where they can daven.

Mishna Berura Yomi Digest
Halacha Highlight
“Tearing down a Bais HaKnesses”
Siman 152 Seif 1 (a)

Disclaimer: Everything you’re about to read is provocative and possibly won’t make a lot of sense. I’m engaging in more than a bit of “stream of consciousness” for this morning meditation. Try not to get too offended if I stumble across one of your theologies and describe it differently than you understand it. I’m just chronicling my spiritual journey for today, not telling you what to think or feel. End of disclaimer. Carry on.

I know what I quoted above is applied to the tearing down and building synagogues and not the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, but the “Stories to Share” for the Siman 152 indicates that the ruling for one can be applied to the other.

Shortly after they washed, the rebbe asked, “Chazal tells us that it is forbidden for one to tear down a shul until the replacement has been built. Now, how could Hashem have destroyed the beis hamikdash without building a replacement? This seems to contradict this gemara, which is the basis of the halachah in Shulchan Aruch siman 152!”

I suppose that’s why, when studying this commentary this morning, I was reminded of the following prophecy by the Master:

So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. –John 2:18-22 (ESV)

In spite of the rather detailed prophesy we find in Book of Ezekiel, starting at Chapter 40, describing the Third Temple that is to be built by God and descend to Earth from Heaven, most Christians (OK, probably all Christians) don’t believe another physical Temple will ever be built. They believe that any mention of a Temple in the New Testament is strictly a spiritual reference, rather than describing an actual structure. One of the proof texts they cite for this belief is John 2 while another is this:

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. –1 Corinthians 3:16-17 (ESV)

The logic is that God caused Herod’s Temple to be destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E. never to be rebuilt as a physical structure, both because Jesus declared his body to be raised as a Temple three days after his death, and because the bodies of all Christians are to be considered “Holy Temples”. There’s no need for a Third Temple, because the Temple has been shifted from a physical to a spiritual structure. It’s a simple matter of substitution: the physical for the spiritual; the flesh vs. the spirit.

But if you have been following my blog for any amount of time, you know that it’s not all that simple to me.

On the other hand, if Jesus was to be the substitution for Herod’s Temple, then he was “built” (that is, resurrected) prior to the destruction of that Temple, as required by halacha, so that requirement would seem have been satisfied. In fact, if there is supposed to be a physical Third Temple, according to halacha, the construction should have been started before Herod’s Temple was destroyed. Of course, it’s not like the Jews had a lot of choice in the matter, but if you consider that it was God who allowed the Second Temple’s destruction, then He had all of the choice in the matter. We saw that this question had already been asked in a previous quote. Here’s the answer, according to the Gerrer Rebbe:

The rebbe then answered his own rhetorical question. “This is the meaning of the verse, ‘Hashem has planned to destroy the wall of the daughter of Tzion; He has stretched out a line.’ (Eichah 2:8) This means that from the moment that Hashem decided to destroy the beis hamikdash, He had already laid down the infrastructure of the new beis hamikdash. The beis hamikdash is only waiting for the correct time to descend—it is already built!”

Keeping that in mind, I’ve often interpreted the following as God delivering the Third Temple from Heaven to a mankind desperate to dwell again with their Creator:

And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. –Revelation 21:2

I’m sure I’m going to get a lot of arguments (and maybe some hate mail) about my interpretations here, since I’m stringing together Rabbinic commentary and Christian theology with not much more than imagination and tiny strands of sewing thread, but I’m not trying to create a proof. I’m only trying to start people thinking and asking questions. Could this all be possible? Is Ezekiel’s Temple seen descending from Heaven in Revelation 21 “as a bride adorned for her husband?” Did God “build” it for humanity before Herod’s Temple was destroyed? What’s the relationship between the “temple” of Christ’s body and the Temple from Heaven? For that matter, what is the relationship between all of that and the “temples” of our Christian bodies?

I don’t know.

I realize that’s probably disappointing, but I don’t have some secret, mystical, spiritual connection or explanation to give you. All I have are the little bits and pieces of my understanding of the Bible and this “stream of consciousness” I call a blog to try and express my feelings and experiences. I have Ezekiel telling me there will be a Third Temple, I have Jewish commentary telling me God will build it and deliver it to humanity, and I have Revelation saying (possibly) that John saw the actual “delivery” in his vision. Maybe all that hangs together and maybe not, but it is certainly compelling.

But if all that is true, what about us being Temples with the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, much like the Divine Presence dwelt within the Mishkan in the desert and within Solomon’s Temple? Christianity assumes that, except for specific prophets of old, the Holy Spirit dwelt in no one until Pentecost in Acts 2. Now we believe that the Holy Spirit dwells in every Christian starting at the moment when we declare Jesus as Christ and Lord. But is that really true?

Admittedly, you don’t see a mass indwelling event with the Spirit entering each and every Hebrew at the foot of Mount Sinai the moment the Torah is given, but the idea isn’t unheard of in Judaism:

In 1759, about a year before the Baal Shem Tov passed away, there was an incident that illustrated his immense love for his fellow Jew. At that time there was a heretical sect led by a man named Jacob Frank. These Frankists had begun agitating amongst the Christian authorities against the Jews with specific emphasis against the Talmud. (In a previous “debate” in 1757, the Frankists had succeeded in causing the Talmud to be burnt in Lvov.) The bishop of Lemberg decreed that a debate should be held between the Jews and the Frankists. The Baal Shem Tov was a member of the three man delegation that represented the Jews. They were successful in averting this evil decree, and the Talmud was not burnt. At the same time however, the defeated Frankists were then forced to convert to Christianity. While most of the Jewish leaders were happy at the downfall of these evil men, the Baal Shem Tov was not. He said. “The Divine Presence wails and says, ‘So long as a limb is attached to the body there is still a hope that there can be a cure, but once the limb is cut off there is no cure forever.’ And every Jew is a limb of the Divine Presence.”

-from the Biography of
Rabbi Yisrael Baal Shem Tov (1698 – 1760)
Jewish Virtual Library

Philip Bimbaun in A Book of Jewish Concepts says, “Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidim, is reported to have said: Every Jew is an organ of the Shekkinah [the Divine Presence]. As long as the organ is joined to the body, however tenuously, there is hope; once it is cut off, all hope is long” (609, 610).

-quoted from
Romans (Randall House Bible Commentary) (pg 47)
Randall House Publications (December 19, 1987)
by F. Leroy Forlines

The use of the term ‘them’ rather than ‘it’ has been interpreted as a message that the purpose of the Mishkan sanctuary was to facilitate the dwelling of the Divine Presence within the heart of every Jew. The role of the Mishkan in the wilderness and during the first four centuries of a Jewish presence in Eretz Yisrael was perpetuated by the first and second Beit Hamikdash Temples which spanned a period of nine centuries. All of this is today but a memory to which a visit to the Kotel (Western Wall) gives a special dimension. This does not mean, however, that a Jew cannot build a mini-sanctuary in his heart even today. The Divine Presence is waiting to dwell within the hearts of all Jews if only they will let it enter!

-Rabbi Mendel Weinbach
‘The “Holy Sites”‘
For the week ending 8 February 2003 / 6 Adar I 5763
Ohr Somayach

The obvious objection that a Christian could bring up here, is that these commentaries and interpretations were constructed well after the beginning of the Christian church and could have been “borrowed” from Christianity by the Jews. I can’t say that you’re wrong, if this is your assumption, since I have no way of knowing. I really don’t know if the concept of every Jew being a limb or organ of the Divine Presence predated the birth of Jesus. It would be exciting if it did, and that each Jew at Sinai were a human receptacle for the Divine Presence, but I don’t know.

What I do know is that it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the images of His Spirit, the Divine Presence (which probably isn’t an equivalent concept to the Holy Spirit), the Mishkan, the physical Temples, the Temple of the body of Christ, and the temples of our own bodies as disciples of the Master, are all somehow interwoven in a mysterious and mystical message that has been in the process of being created and developed and expanded for thousands and thousands of years.

I’ve said before that I don’t think of the Bible as this static document containing unchanging, eternal truths. Of course, there are eternal truths to be found between its covers, but it is so much more. There’s a living, breathing experience to be had in the Bible and it changes for each age and each people. Some words, phrases, and books may be more relevant and meaningful now than they were before, while others may not apply in the same way, if at all, as in the time when they were written. Human beings have a tendency to read the Bible, apply a theological meaning to its various parts, and disregard (or completely “spiritualize”) the other bits and pieces that don’t seem to fit. We impose our personalities onto the Word of God and call it the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Far be it from me to deny the Holy Spirit, but it’s not a foregone conclusion that whatever occurs to us in our imagination must be from God. It could be our imagination trying to make the Bible fit the theology we’ve heard from the pulpit, just as a person tries to create a coherent story from the disjointed, hallucinogenic images they experienced in last night’s dreams.

This is very much putting the cart before the horse. We need to try and allow the Bible to tell us its story in its own words and using its own context. This is an enormously difficult task and in fact, it may well be impossible, even with the guidance of the Spirit, if for no other reason, than because of the limitations of the human mind. Add to that our own prejudices and biases, and we even further inhibit the Spirit and our own understanding. I’m just as guilty of this as the next person and I’m just as likely to turn to various commentaries and studies to try and receive an insight into the words God gave to humanity, along with “the Word who became flesh” that God gave to humanity.

By these ramblings, I’m sure you’ve concluded that I’ve been far from successful in acquiring a meaningful insight into the Bible, and you’re probably right. But it’s not the destination that I’m focused upon but rather, it’s the journey. God has scattered these tantalizing little jewels along the path. What do they mean? How can we apply them to our travels? How did those who came before us on the trail understand these shards of treasure? All these questions are like splinters in my mind and if I don’t ask them out loud, they will surely drive me mad. Like Icarus, I must risk destruction by flying too near the Sun in order to find illumination. Like Peter, who utterly failed the Master by denying him on the eve of his execution, I cannot simply tuck my tail between my legs and scurry off into oblivion when confronted with a Holy mystery. I must drag myself back into his presence, humbled and humiliated, begging his forgiveness, seeking his love, and asking to him to appeal to God to give me the strength to do the impossible.

And what seems so impossible? To live in a world with so many questions and so few answers. But God knows what He’s doing. It’s the questions that drive me. If I only had answers, my journey would be done, I would be at peace, and I would “know God” (Jeremiah 31:34, Hebrews 8:11). We are not to “know God” until the Messianic age and beyond. Until then, we are the Temple, and we are disciples of the Temple, and indeed, we also long for the days when the Temple built by God alone, will descend from Heaven to Earth. How is this all possible? The questions are the journey. Someday, God will be the answer, as surely He already is.

Kosher Jesus

Kosher Jesus: The Undivine Savior

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It’s important to acknowledge the obvious. I have called into question the veracity of much that is contained in the holy Gospels. I’ve cast doubt on some of the essential elements of the story of Jesus as they have been handed down by generations of Christians. Obviously, my Christian readers are going to feel somewhat confused or, worse still, offended – which is, of course, not my intention.

-Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
Chapter 19: Jesus, Lover of Israel (pp 136-7)
Part III: What Christians Have to Learn from the Jewish Jesus
Kosher Jesus

That’s an understatement. OK, to be fair, I’m hardly surprised or dismayed at Rabbi Boteach’s illustration of Jesus, Paul, the early church, and Christianity in general. And while I will be writing a full review of this book right after I finish it, I wanted to address this particular aspect of the Rabbi’s writing right now, since it’s been pretty much what I’ve been thinking about for the last 150 pages or so.

I’ve been thinking about what would happen if a Christian actually took everything in this book at face value. I’ve been thinking about what would happen if a Christian reading Kosher Jesus were to get to this point and say to himself, “Oh wow, he’s right.” If Rabbi Boteach wants Christians to “learn from the Jewish Jesus,” what exactly does he expect them (us) to learn?

Paul’s claims about who Jesus was and what he preached are made more tenuous by the sheer scope of his deviations from the lessons of Jesus’ own followers. The leaders of the Jerusalem Church, Peter and James, insisted that Jesus’ message was for the Jews and was dedicated to preserving Jewish law and observance. Paul transformed that message completely.

Paul claimed to know better what Jesus intended than the disciples whom Jesus taught directly – even though Paul never even met Jesus. He said that Jesus meant to abolish Jewish law, that faith is more important than works, and that the sole criteria for salvation is faith in Christ. Not only that, Paul added that Jesus was not mortal, and his claim to be the messiah meant that he was the divine son of God. Finally, Paul, a self-declared Roman citizen, shifts the developing faith of Jesus, Christianity, to be pro-Roman and anti-Jewish. Paul attacks Judaism as antiquated and obsolete, and to cap it all off, he accuses the Jews of killing Jesus, also claiming they attacked him personally on many occasions.

-Boteach, pg 121

Interestingly enough, most Christians reading the paragraph I just quoted, would probably nod their heads in agreement to all of those statements saying that indeed, Jesus really did all of those things…except Rabbi Boteach says they are all patently false. He says that while Jesus may have honestly believed he was the Messiah and desired to free his people from Roman tyranny, he could not have believed he was also God or intended for anyone to worship him, least of all Gentiles. While Boteach paints a picture of Peter as a coward and a hypocrite, the real “villain” of his piece is Paul, who may not even have been a born Jew, and who took the teachings of an innocent Rabbi and would-be revolutionary Messiah, and turned them into the basis for a Gentile religion that was bent on placating idolatrous Rome while “demonizing” Judaism and the Jewish people.

In order to make his points regarding the Jewish identity of Jesus credible, Rabbi Boteach has to deconstruct every single major tenet of the Christian church. Jesus was a man and not God incarnate. He thought he was the Messiah (which is not a crime in Judaism) but obviously he wasn’t since he died rather than successfully establishing Israel’s self-rule. He was not born of a virgin, he did not speak against the Law, he lead a lifestyle that was completely Jewish and totally consistent with the Law of the Jews, and he didn’t want to have anything to do with the non-Jewish peoples. He hated Rome and he loved his people and wanted to free them from their cruel oppressors. Period.

While I agree there is much to learn by rediscovering the Jewish Jesus, I’m not sure what Rabbi Boteach wants his Christian readers to do about it. If a Christian were to read all of this and take every word at face value, questioning nothing, he’d have to conclude that his Christian faith is a sham. He’d have to conclude that everything he had been taught by the church about Jesus and faith and salvation was at best, an elaborate fantasy, and at worst, the most heinous of lies.

I really don’t think most Christians will be taking this part of the book to such extremes. Yes, they may be confused. Yes, they may certainly feel offended. But since Rabbi Boteach says it is not his intent to confuse or offend his Christian readers, how does he expect them to reconcile their faith with his book short of tossing it into the trash can?

In reading this book, I ask my Christian readers not to discard but to expand their existing ideas about who Jesus really was. But what is the impact in doing so? Does this mean we can’t trust the New Testament? Does this mean we’re tinkering with a divine document? Again the answer is no. The writers of the New Testament indeed may have drawn from divine inspiration.

-Boteach, pg 144

If Rabbi Boteach really believes that it’s possible the content of the New Testament was divinely inspired, I can understand why a good many Orthodox Jewish Rabbis are upset with him right now. Also, if he really believes that statement, how can he use the New Testament content to acknowledge his viewpoint of Jesus the Rabbi and political dissident while denying Jesus the Messiah, Prophet, and Savior from God? He can’t have it both ways, or can he?

I believe the Lucan editors made their changes for the reasons enumerated and to hide the subversive details of the revolutionary nature of Jesus. But the changes they made were not total. They didn’t erase the entire original meanings; messages may actually have been intentionally encoded into the Gospels…

This isn’t without precedent. There are plenty of examples of this phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible. In order to comprehend God’s true meaning, we sort through four levels of interpretation…peshat, remez, drush, and sod: peshat being the simple, straightforward meaning; remez, the alluded to meaning of the text; drush, the homiletic meaning of the text; and finally sod, the esoteric meaning of the text.

Beyond the simplest reading of the New Testament, just as in the Hebrew Bible, there remain layers and layers hidden from view.

-Boteach, pg 145

broken-crossIt sounds like, in order to encourage his Christian readers to not “discard but to expand their existing ideas about who Jesus really was,” Rabbi Boteach is encouraging them (us) to still consider the New Testament text as divinely inspired and containing hidden messages, just as the Tanakh (Old Testament; Hebrew Bible) does, from a Jewish point of view.

In making this statement (and I have to be really careful here), Rabbi Boteach does not sound unlike some of those Jews who really do believe Jesus was the Messiah King and who accept that the New Testament has as much validity as a holy book of the Jews as does the Tanakh.

No, I don’t think Rabbi Boteach is some sort of “crypto-Messianic Jew,” but some of what he writes intersects with what the ethnically, culturally, and religiously Jewish people who have faith in Jesus as Messiah and Savior believe.

Rabbi Boteach walks a very fine line here. He must communicate that he, as a Jew, does not believe for a split second that Jesus was of divine origin or any of the supernatural claims about him that are typically made in Christianity, but at the same time, he must convince his Christian readers that he does not think they are a bunch of fools or lunatics for believing everything the church believes about Christ.

I don’t think that’s possible or at least, I don’t think that Rabbi Boteach actually pulled it off. Either Jesus is the Christ as the church says he is, divine in origin, having a place of extremely high merit in the Heavenly court, and is much more than just one of the myriad tzadikim in Jewish history…or he was a great Rabbi, a passionate leader of his people, a revolutionary who desired to free Israel from Rome…and he was a man who died fighting for a worthy cause. It may be possible to overlap those roles and to distill out of them, a portrait of the Jewish Jesus who was Messiah, Prophet, miracle worker; who died and was resurrected but never ever abandoned his people or taught against the Law, but you can’t delete so much of the Christian faith from the Jewish Jesus and have him remain the resurrected King who will return on the clouds to free not only Israel, but the world.

Either Christians, mistaken though they may be in not recognizing the true Jewishness of Jesus, can have faith in their Savior or they can’t. Rabbi Boteach may intrigue his Christian readers, and he may get some of them to consider a somewhat more Jewish perspective on the heretofore Gentile Jesus, but he will never sell the Christians that Jesus had no power to save their souls, and never even wanted to. Any Christian who would choose to completely embrace Rabbi Boteach’s reconstruction of Jesus would be a person completely broken in their faith; crushed under the burden of a salvation lost and a King who never cared about all the Gentiles in need of a Savior.

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Another Chance

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The Ishbitzer Rebbe, zt”l, explains the deeper meaning of yovel and why houses within cities walled since the time of Yehoshua bin Nun do not return during yovel. “Yovel teaches that everything has a time. God doesn’t remain angry at anyone forever. Even if someone’s sins force him to sell his portion or to be sold as a slave, this cannot be forever. Eventually he will be redeemed and his inherited field will return to him. But batei arei chomah are an exception. This alludes to the two chomos, the two barriers—teeth of bone and lips of flesh—that God gave us to rein in what we say, as discussed on Arachin 15…Indulging one’s arrogance by failing to hold back one’s anger at his friend is no simple matter. If the victim remained silent in the face of his rage, the sinner’s merits are transferred to the recipient of his anger.

“Unlike sins between man and his Creator, sins between man and his fellow do not have an automatic limit. These misdemeanors remain until his friend forgives him. One has only limited time to beg his friend’s forgiveness. Failure to do so causes his merits to remain with his friend. His inability to accept his wrongdoing and make it up to his friend causes him losses he would never have imagined.”

But the rebbe concluded with words of chizzuk. “Nevertheless, we find that kohanim and leviim can always sell and always redeem. This teaches that even if one has sinned, if he begins to serve God in earnest, he can always redeem what he has lost. Through the dynamic change he gains through his avodah he always has another chance!”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“The Walled Cities”
Arachin 31

What is being said here? We learn from the construction or organization of the Ten Commandments brought down from Sinai that there are two general classifications of sin: sin between man and God and sin between man and man. Of the first, God will forgive by His own grace and mercy and not necessarily because of the merit of the sinner. We rely on God to give us something we could not possibly earn. However of the second, we will not be forgiven until (or unless) we ask for forgiveness from our fellow. In this, we must take a much more active role, otherwise forgiveness will never occur. We also learn that if we stubbornly refuse to admit our wrongdoing against our fellow, this affects our relationship with God as well, so we have in some sense, doubly sinned.

The commentary concludes that, “even if one has sinned, if he begins to serve God in earnest, he can always redeem what he has lost.” But how can this be? If you sin against a person, ignore your responsibility for that sin, and go on to seemingly “serve God in earnest,” are you really serving God while remaining unrepentant? The answer is in the last sentence of the teaching: “the dynamic change he gains through his avodah he always has another chance!”

I suppose this could be read as saying that by serving God, even though you have not sought forgiveness of the person you sinned against, your service to the Almighty somehow compensates. I don’t think that’s what is being said here, though, since the sin against your friend remains. I think it is much more likely that, by honestly and truly serving God, it will become necessary for your soul to turn to Him and in order to do so, you will have to see the stains on your own character. Once you do, and with your desire to serve God earnestly still intact, as part of that service, you must go back to the one you offended and beg forgiveness. Only then, can you return to God and have your response to Him gain real meaning.

So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. –Matthew 5:23-24

We see that the Master is in agreement with the Ishbitzer Rebbe. Living a life in this world does not detract from living a life of holiness, as long as we keep our perspective.

It is not business, not money, nor career, nor human relationships that tears our souls from us and us from our G-d.

There is as much beauty in any of those as there is in any flower from the Garden of Eden. As much G-dliness as in any temple.

It is the way we lock ourselves inside each one, begging it to take us as its slave, refusing to watch from above, to preserve our dignity as human beings.

As you enter each thing, stay above it.

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

As much as we fail and allow ourselves to become slaves of the world around us or even our own emotions and pride, God provides every opportunity for us to make amends and to succeed in serving God and serving our fellow. If we do not surrender to anger, frustration, and despair, and continue to seek Him, we will always have another chance.

Kosher Jesus

The Uncertain Gospel

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The editing done to purge the crimes of the Romans and to delete references to Jesus’ rebellion against them was an intricate and difficult job. Part of it was left incomplete. Remember, thousands of manuscripts were circulating around. Not all could be completely purged. Flashes of accuracy remain. “We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be the Messiah, a king.” (Luke 23:2 NIV) This statement in Luke indicates that corrupt priests delivered Jesus to his oppressors, the Roman administration, because he was a rebel against Roman rule pure and simple. Because it is so different from other statements throughout the rest of the Gospels, which take great pains to make Jesus non-political, it is an obvious piece of real history that slipped through, contrary to the intent of editors publishing Paul’s concept of a strictly spiritual Jesus.

-Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
“Chapter 8: Jesus Never Claimed to Be Divine” pg 51
Kosher Jesus

This is bound to be a part of Rabbi Boteach’s book that will be a major problem with most Christians. Boteach insists that the Gospels were heavily edited to remove any (or most) traces of not only the “Jewishness” of Jesus, but the “fact” that he was executed by the Romans for being a rebel and attempting to lead the Jewish people in a revolt against their Roman occupiers. The portions of the Gospel that seem to support Boteach’s position, he declares as “real history,” while anything that denies his perspective is considered to have been significantly changed by later editors to make the New Testament more palatable to Rome.

You might easily conclude, as a Christian, that Boteach is writing to support a strictly Orthodox Jewish viewpoint of Jesus and “to heck” with the inerrancy of the Gospels. However, he’s not the only one to suggest that the Bible we have today is not completely consistent with the actual, original texts. Amazing? Unheard of? Consider this:

It was dated by one of the world’s leading paleographers. He said he was ‘certain’ that it was from the first century. If this is true, it would be the oldest fragment of the New Testament known to exist. Up until now, no one has discovered any first-century manuscripts of the New Testament. The oldest manuscript of the New Testament has been P52, a small fragment from John’s Gospel, dated to the first half of the second century. It was discovered in 1934.

How do these manuscripts change what we believe the original New Testament to say? We will have to wait until they are published next year, but for now we can most likely say this: As with all the previously published New Testament papyri (127 of them, published in the last 116 years), not a single new reading has commended itself as authentic. Instead, the papyri function to confirm what New Testament scholars have already thought was the original wording or, in some cases, to confirm an alternate reading—but one that is already found in the manuscripts. As an illustration: Suppose a papyrus had the word “the Lord” in one verse while all other manuscripts had the word “Jesus.” New Testament scholars would not adopt, and have not adopted, such a reading as authentic, precisely because we have such abundant evidence for the original wording in other manuscripts. But if an early papyrus had in another place “Simon” instead of “Peter,” and “Simon” was also found in other early and reliable manuscripts, it might persuade scholars that “Simon” is the authentic reading. In other words, the papyri have confirmed various readings as authentic in the past 116 years, but have not introduced new authentic readings. The original New Testament text is found somewhere in the manuscripts that have been known for quite some time.

Daniel B. Wallace
“Dr. Wallace: Earliest Manuscript of the New Testament Discovered?”
February 9, 2012
DTS.edu

Many Christians don’t realize that there is an ongoing debate over just how accurate our Gospels really happen to be. Do the Gospels you read in your Bible every day tell you the true story of Jesus of Nazareth? Do they accurately capture his teachings to the Apostles and to us? If we could find and read an actual first century manuscript of the Gospel of Mark, for example, would we be shocked and dismayed at how different (assuming we could translate it from the ancient Greek) the Jesus chronicled on the recently discovered 2,000 year old papyri, is from the person we’ve come to know in our 21st century Bibles?

Dr. Wallace seems confident that not only are these papyri valid documents, but that they will confirm to a high degree of fidelity, that the Gospels of today are the Gospels of yesteryear. However, Jeffrey García in his blog post More the First Century Gospel of Mark isn’t so sure.

In a previous post I mentioned that Dr. Daniel Wallace referred to a hitherto unknown first century manuscript (now fragment) of Mark in a debate with Dr. Bart Ehrman. As I noted before, the blogosphere sparked with suspicions regarding the Wallace’s claim. We are currently lacking any announcement as to its discovery, the so-called world renown paleographer who has dated the fragment remains anonymous, and the Brill publication is still, according to Wallace, about a year away. Unfortunately, Wallace’s new post on this has not alleviated any of these concerns. Texts that remain “hidden” texts are regarded with a significant degree of hesitation, especially when the information is disseminated through one person (a bit gnostic if you ask me). If the long history of the Dead Sea Scroll publications is any indication, when texts remain privately held and controlled for so long, some crazy things begin to leak out or are simply invented. Hopefully, the identification of this text is not based on the conjugation “kai” a la initial claims of the some scholars who thought gospel manuscripts were found in the caves. In any event, see the post quoted below (again, hopefully this text will be released shortly for other scholars to chime in)”

García is primarily dubious regarding the validity of this find, rather than whether or not it will substantiate our current understanding of the Gospel of Mark, but New Testament scholars such as Bart D. Ehrman aren’t convinced that our Gospels tell us an accurate story about Jesus. In his book Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and many other of his works), he contends that there are numerous internal inconsistencies contained within the New Testament and that it is no where near a seamless, flawless record of the life of Jesus and the origins of the first century church.

One of the criticisms against Ehrman is that he was a Christian who lost his faith, not based on his studies of the New Testament, but over his inability to understand why there is such terrible suffering in the world created by a loving God. I’ve written several blog posts including Faith and the Book of Bart as a response to Jesus, Interrupted, and find Ehrman to be a gifted scholar and (like the rest of us) a flawed human being. That the Bible or life doesn’t line up with our preconceived expectations or our personal desires, doesn’t mean that Jesus isn’t the Messiah and that God is a fantasy. It more likely means that we suffer from our own human misconceptions and probably are victims of centuries old teachings and interpretations that are at best mistaken, and at worse, deliberately falsified to satisfy an agenda.

This is something I’ve just recently discussed and perhaps may even be part of God’s intricate plan for how history is supposed to unfold between the first and second appearance of the Messiah. I know, it seems cruel. How can God make us struggle, not only in our day-to-day lives, but in our attempts to understand a Bible that is not guaranteed to be completely, totally, and supernaturally accurate?

I’m no Bible scholar, so I can’t comment with any sort of authority on this matter, but I do find it fascinating that within the realm of Christian scholarship, there are questions being investigated that the majority of the people in our churches never, ever hear about. Matters of scholastic contention and mystery are presented as absolute fact from the pulpit, which I suppose is the way most people like it, since dancing on the head of uncertainty is no way to become comfortable with your faith. When I first encountered these sorts of questions, I wondered how my faith could possibly endure, and yet God made it possible. The Bible doesn’t have to be perfect to be inspired. The Bible translations I read from don’t have to represent an absolute fidelity to the original texts in order to mean that the Messiah exists and that faith in God is not in vain.

If I admit to a certain “fallibility” in our current Bible translations, am I then living a fantasy and pretending the object of my faith is real? Not at all, although I can certainly see how an atheist or a person weak in the faith might perceive it that way. God works with human beings using supernatural methods, but it doesn’t mean that the Bible you can purchase in any book store in this country is supernaturally accurate and describes, word for word, every single detail of the life of Jesus with no errors or mistakes whatsoever.

Like so many of my other “meditations,” I’m not writing this to give you answers but to make you ask questions. If faith cannot tolerate a few really hard questions, then its foundation must be sand and not rock (Matthew 7:24-27). No, I’m not being critical of anyone, because when I first met this challenge, I was thrown for a loop, too (which is an understatement). But if we don’t ask these questions, how will we ever know if we can endure the answers, if they exist, or the uncertainty if they don’t? How will we ever know if we really have faith?

Uncategorized

The Return of the Jewish King

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PrayingAside from the vast numbers of Jews murdered during the Holocaust, the scars that the experience left on survivors was unimaginable. One of the champions of the survivors was the Beis Yisrael of Gur, zt”l. He himself had plenty to cry about—he could remember his one hundred thousand chassidim in Europe before the war, virtually all of them murdered, including many of his close relatives—yet he was a beacon of hope to survivors. He always found exactly the right approach to pull downtrodden survivors out of their despair and give them new hope.

“In Arachin 29 we find that a Jew may not be sold as a slave during times when there is no Yovel. This teaches a powerful concept. An eved ivri cannot be sold into slavery unless there is a clearly defined end to his indenture. We see that a Jew is not forced to endure a load of tests that are harder than he can bear. Even when his hardships are decreed, they must have a set end, a clear-cut time when he will be delivered from the adversity. This is the meaning of the principle that God creates the medicine before allowing the blow to fall. There is always a way for every Jew to emerge from despair and begin again, to learn how to live a positive life despite the horrors and trauma he may have experienced. Every exile must have an end!”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“Every Exile Must Have an End”
Arachin 29

The hardships and loss suffered by the Jewish people across the long span of history is just appalling. One can hardly think of this topic and not immediately have images of the horrors of the Holocaust spring forth in our memories. The past 2,000 years of the chronicles of Judaism particularly read like a tragedy worthy of the greatest classical poets and playwrights. And yet that suffering is real. The loss of life, property, and dignity are terribly real. But because of God’s promises to the Jewish people and His graciousness and mercy, the Jews yet survive, against all odds, as a people and a faith, and continue to honor the God who created both the tormented and the tormentors.

Christianity has been hard at work taking from the Jews what does not belong to us.

To be perfectly blunt, I must say the Christians have robbed the Jews! And perhaps what is worse is that this thievery has been encouraged by theologians, pastors, and even Sunday School teachers, where small children are taught to sing the song, “Every promise in the book is mine, every chapter, every verse, every line.”

Every promise in Scripture in some way benefits Christians, but it is not all promised to Christians. Sometimes the thievery has been inadvertent and unintentional. It’s like thinking that the raincoat hanging in the office closet is yours for wearing home because of unexpected showers. Hopefully, you will discover the raincoat belongs to a fellow worker and you will restore it. It is not as if Christians do not have the greatest promise of God, which is I John 2:25: “And this is the promise that He hath promised us, even eternal life.”

-Moishe Rosen
from the Foreward to Pastor Barry Horner’s book
Future Israel: Why Christian Anti-Judaism Must Be Challenged

The irony is that we Christians have not only robbed the Jews, we have robbed ourselves. What was the Christianity taught by Paul, Peter, and the rest of the Jewish Apostles to the non-Jewish disciples of the Jewish Jesus? We don’t really know. We don’t have access to the unedited and unfiltered teachings that underlie the New Testament text we read in our Bibles today. It’s not just the words in the Bible, but what almost 2,000 years of Christian theology and doctrine has taught us what that text is supposed to mean. We take it as a foregone conclusion that “every promise in the book is mine” but we don’t really know. We are taught to believe, so that whenever our assumptions and our standard Christian traditions are challenged, we really think that what we believe is actually fact instead of interpretation.

If circumstances had been different and there hadn’t been a savage separation between Jewish Messianism and Gentile Christianity in the early, formative centuries of the church, what would things be like today? Would there be a thriving Messianic Judaism that stands alongside Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Judaism? Would Gentile Christianity still seek to find its truth from within a Jewish interpretive context? Would we all still cease our toil on Shabbat, and would Christians along with religious Jews, pray at set times to the Maker of Heaven and Earth?

There’s no way to know, of course, and I’m forced to believe that the Christian/Jewish schism is all part of God’s plan and that the “time of the Gentiles” has to become “full” before the Jews are able to recognize the face and identity of the Moshiach. Paul lamented the suffering of his own people in Romans 11 and registered deep regret that some Jews would be temporarily separated from the Messiah for the sake of we Gentiles. I have to believe this “disconnect” was somehow necessary, and yet like so many other parts of God’s plan for humanity, I must confess a gross lack of understanding for almost everything that is going on around me in my world of faith.

And yet faith and trust are the only tools I have to sustain me and without them, I am lost, along with a disbelieving world. Where is God? Why is there such suffering? Why hasn’t Jesus returned yet? Where is the Moshiach? What is he waiting for? If not now, when?

Today is Sunday as I write these words and Christians in churches all over the world smile and sing and pat themselves on the back that they are saved by Grace and not from works. They congratulate each other over being inheritors of all of the promises in the Bible and it never occurs to them that they have missed so much.

At this point, I must stop in my “rant” and recognize the enormous good that has been done in the name of Christ throughout the world and across church history. Many have been fed and clothed. Many have heard the “good news” of salvation for the sake of Christ and the unsaved. Many churches have been built, many homes have been built, many children have received medical care, many grieving hearts have been comforted. There have always been those in the church who have learned the core lessons of the Master and performed them with unswerving love and devotion. There have always been those who have labored and suffered in anonymity, without titles, recognition, or receiving any honors, who give glory to God and not to themselves. For all of the faults in the church, there are many who, though they do not recognize the “Jewishness” of Jesus, carry on the mitzvot he commanded to always do good to others, to pick up their burdens, and to follow Christ where ever he leads them. Praise be to God for their faithfulness and trust.

And yet, the early “church fathers” took it upon themselves to reinvent history and the Bible in the image of the nations, removing any and every trace of Judaism. In spite of their efforts, the faithful in Christ have continued to work as the Master taught in the Gospels. But sadly, we have toiled under many a false teaching as we struggle to live a life, not by man’s doctrine, but in obedience to Jesus. By God’s miracles, many Christians were not blinded by the man-made theology of supersessionism. But we still see the Bible through “Christian-tinted glasses” and absolutely don’t realize that we’re wearing them, imagining instead that our vision is crystal clear and not “through a glass darkly.” (1 Corinthians 13:12) And yet, as long as a single Christian feeds even one hungry mother and heals the wounds of one injured child, there is hope.

The irony for many, is that when Jesus returns, he will not be here to inaugurate an age of Christian domination over the earth, but to restore Israel to her rightful place before the nations and before God. Only then will we all, Israel and the disciples of the nations alike, be able to have the peace that has been prophesied.

…but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken. –Micah 4:4

Only then will we all, Jew and Gentile alike, sit with each other in peace at the table of the patriarchs.

I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven… –Matthew 8:11

May Jesus the Messiah come soon and in our day, and may we truly be prepared to welcome him, not as we imagine him to be, but as he truly is: Yeshua HaMoshiach, the King of the Jews. Then the “exile” of both the Jew and the Gentile from the presence of our Master will come to an end.

"When you awake in the morning, learn something to inspire you and mediate upon it, then plunge forward full of light with which to illuminate the darkness." -Rabbi Tzvi Freeman