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Understanding the Infinite Scroll

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One year there was a drought and the price for food rose exorbitantly. In Frankfurt, some Jews literally could not put bread on their table. Rav Avraham Avish, the Av Beis Din of Frankfurt, zt”l, literally gave every penny he owned to help the destitute during that year. One student wondered how this could be halachically permitted. “Didn’t we learn that it is forbidden to give over twenty percent of one’s property to charity?” he asked.

Rav Avraham Avish rejected this claim out of hand. “Although you have learned you still do not grasp how to understand a sugya in depth. It is true that in general one who gives over a fifth of his property to tzedakah violates a rabbinic prohibition, but that is irrelevant in a year where there is no food and people are endangered. To save a life, we even desecrate Shabbos which is much more stringent than any rabbinic decree!”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“Not more than a Fifth”
Arachin 28

For the Christians reading this, and perhaps for some Jews, the meaning of my quote “off the Daf” today may not seem very relevant, but I posted it above for a single, important reason. There’s a sentence that teaches us something we need to constantly keep in the forefront of our thoughts:

Although you have learned you still do not grasp how to understand a sugya in depth.

It means that you can be smart and even well educated, and still not be able to look at something in the way that’s necessary or in sufficient depth to be able to understand it. We see this all the time in the various sciences, especially as we examine the history of scientific discoveries and knowledge. First the Earth is flat and now it’s round. First the Earth is the center of the universe, and all heavenly bodies revolve around us, now Earth revolves around a mediocre star off to one side of our huge galaxy. First you cure a fever by applying leeches to drain bodily fluids, now you give the person antibiotics to cure their infection.

As we investigate our world, we learn, but at each point in our journey of discovery across the long stretch of history, we thought we knew exactly what we were doing and what was going on. We couldn’t have possibly imagined that the world wasn’t flat or that applying blood-sucking parasites to our bodies really wouldn’t cure a fever or other types of ailments.

And although a student of Rav Avraham Avish understood that the general principle is to give only up to one-fifth of your income to charity to avoid bankrupting yourself and failing to support the needs of your own family, he still didn’t understand the underlying foundation behind the principle that would allow the Rav to contribute his very last dime to starving people, and still not violate halacha.

But what’s all that got to do with us?

Has it ever occurred to you that you could be wrong?

It probably has, especially on those occasions when you were sure you were correct in some matter of judgment, or thought you could spell the word “Mediterranean” without looking it up. OK, we’re human and we can make mistakes. It happens to the best of us and most people have learned to admit it.

Almost.

The conversation in my extra meditation from yesterday turned into a mini-debate on the letter to the Hebrews found in the New Testament. Since this letter has always been a bit of a puzzle to me, I’ve found that I’ve been at sort of a loss as to how to respond to the traditional supersessionist interpretation of it. Fortunately, many people have responded to me, both in blog comments and via email, to suggest different references, and even have sent me information to help illuminate my path in this particular direction. One such piece of illumination is as follows:

Unique among all the scholars I consulted, Charles P. Anderson sees Hebrews in a Jewish communal context. It is as if all the other commentators have been wearing sunglasses, and only he is wearing clear lenses. All the others see the recipients of Hebrews as Christian individuals of Jewish background rather than as a group of Jews who see themselves in the context of their community with each other, with the wider Jewish world, and with their people throughout time. His perspective is in my view the right one, his argument convincing and illuminating. Throughout my research on Hebrews I was longing to find someone who saw things this way. Finally, toward the end of my research, I found Anderson’s brief chapter.

Charles P. Anderson is Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I am reproducing here a large body of quotations from his article ” Who are the Heirs of the New Age in the Epistle to the Hebrews?” Especially when read against the background of common assumptions concerning the Letter to the Hebrews, his perspective stands out as something fresh, and to me, thrilling. I would hope that all who read his article and these quotations from it would be moved to say, “Why didn’t I see this before?” The answer to that question is “Because of the Christian exegetical tradition.”

-from a paper presented by Stuart Dauermann
commenting on Charles P. Anderson’s article
“Who are the Heirs of the New Age in the Epistle to the Hebrews?”

Carl Kinbar was kind enough to send me a PDF of the appendix to Dauerman’s paper which includes the above-quoted statement. This is the point I’m trying to drive home, both about understanding Hebrews and understanding the broader Biblical context.

It’s not that easy.

We may think it is easy because we’ve got hundreds and hundreds of years of traditional Christian interpretations to fall back on, and we’ve concluded that the correct way of understanding Hebrews is to say (gasp) that the Law of Moses was replaced by the Grace of Christ.

Period.

But like anyone who gets into a particular habit that may once have been helpful, we have to ask ourselves if the “habit” of our traditional way of understanding Hebrews (or any part of the Bible) really the best way we’ve got right now?

That’s a tough one. It’s difficult for me to say there is one and only one correct way for to understand the Biblical text. True, from God’s point of view, there probably is one correct, objective understanding, but we are mere humans and don’t enjoy God’s infinite wisdom and vision. It’s also possible that at least some parts of the Bible were never intended to mean the same things to all populations across all generations. After all, the Jews don’t keep slaves any more, so are the laws in the Torah about slavery still “eternal truths?”

This is what bothers me a little about blog posts that are titled Reading Acts 15:21 Correctly. While Derek Leman no doubt believes how he interprets this passage in the New Testament is the correct interpretation (and I don’t necessarily disagree with him), it’s obvious from reading the different comments in response to his blog post, that not everyone sees the same thing in that single verse of the Bible. If we can disagree about a the meaning of a single sentence in the Bible, how much more do we all disagree on the letters of Paul and the product of our dear letter writer to the Hebrews? How can any one person say, “this is what such-and-thus means in the Bible, forever and ever?”

Adding to this puzzle is the concept in Judaism that the Bible can only be interpreted correctly using accepted tradition. Sure, as the Daf above explains, there are endless ways to “dig deeper” into the text, but you don’t just “shoot from the hip” as far as understanding Biblical or Rabbinic halacha is concerned. I suppose Christians could say the same thing about their (our) standard interpretive traditions, but we have a problem (technically, so does traditional Judaism, but I’ll set that part aside for another time). Our problem is that our entire perspective on interpreting the Bible completely ignores the viewpoint and mindset of the original writers, who were first century Jews, steeped in “the hashkafah of the Tanakh.” Without said-viewpoint based on a first century Jewish worldview, it is likely we may have missed a step or two over the past 2,000 years in terms of New Testament scholarship.

The deal is, we who call ourselves Christians might need to stop and consider for a moment what we believe about the Jews and why. If our perspective on Jews and Judaism includes the necessity to declare Jews, Judaism, and the Torah of Sinai obsolete, and results in us believing that Jews who continue to worship and live within a classical Jewish framework are being rebellious and sinful, we should think about the possibility of a reasonable alternate explanation. The explanation should be one that would make sense to our first century writers and scholars and should not require that God abrogate His promise that the Hebrews would be a “peculiar people” before Him forever.

I say “reasonable” because there are just billions of “pop” theologies out there on the web that “tickle the ears” but have little substance or validity (although they can weave a multi-layered tapestry of mashed up Biblical cross-connections confused enough to “cross a Rabbi’s eyes”). They’re like cotton candy for the brain; tastes really sweet and initially invigorating, but containing zero nutritional value. However, as my little snippet from the paper written by Stuart Dauermann shows, solid Biblical research, although unconventional from a traditional Christian viewpoint, exists and provides a valid and compelling alternate interpretation to understanding the New Testament text, including the Book of Hebrews.

Obviously, I’m in no position to present that alternate interpretation of Hebrews in any detail at the moment, but I just wanted to show that it exists and should be seriously considered by any Christian who has an honest desire to place truth and a correct understanding of the intent of God and the Apostolic writers ahead of our old, comfortable, Gentile-friendly theologies. I’ll be writing on this topic again in the months that follow.

Oh, in case you were curious how our “Story Off the Daf” ends up, here’s the rest. It’s also an interesting “test” in terms of determining the identity of the Messiah.

In Yemen nine centuries ago, life was especially hard due to harsh decrees. In the middle of these challenges to the community one man secretly claimed to be Moshiach, soon to bring the longawaited redemption. Although many Jews were convinced, others were unsure and put the matter to the Rambam, zt”l. The Rambam sent students to test this man and discern if he could possibly be Moshiach. When they returned they began to tell the Rambam everything that they had observed. “This man disburses every cent he has on charity.”

The moment the Rambam heard this he immediately interjected that this man cannot be Moshiach. “It is clear that a person who violates our sages’ command not to give more than a fifth to charity is not our redeemer. Although it is permitted to give more to redeem one’s sins, Moshiach should not have any sins to redeem!”

I’ll wrap this up by quoting from Rabbi Tzvi Freeman’s interpretation of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, which illustrates an additional challenge we encounter in understanding the Word of God.

This Torah we were given is not of the world, nor is it something extraneous to it. Rather, it is the hidden essence, the primal thought from which all the cosmos and each thing within it extends. It is not about the world, it is the world—the world as its Creator sees it and knows it to be.

The sages of the Talmud told us that the Torah is the blueprint G-d used to design His creation. There is not a thing that cannot be found there. Even more, they told us, G-d and His Torah are one, for His thoughts are not outside of Him as our thoughts are.

But He took that infinite wisdom and condensed it a thousandfold, a billionfold, and more, into finite, earthly terms that we could grasp—yet without losing a drop of its purity, its intimate bond with Him. Then He put it into our hands to learn, to explore and to extend.

So now, when our mind grasps a thought of Torah, thoroughly, with utter clarity, we grasp that inner wisdom. And at the time we are completely absorbed in the process of thought, comprehension and application, our self and being is absorbed in that infinite wisdom which is the essence of all things. We have grasped it, and it grasps us. In truth, we become that essence.

studying-talmudThis is a very mystical understanding of the “life” of the Torah and how in Chasidic Judaism, it transcends the physical scroll and exists as both the blueprint of the Universe and the means of its creation. Since we in Christianity understand that “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14) and that through the living Word, “things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made,” (John 1:3) we also have a mystical understanding of the Bible, the Messiah, and creation, so perhaps the simple text on paper we see when we read our Bible and try to interpret it is not so simple after all. More than that, perhaps we cannot allow ourselves to limit that Word or that Messiah to what our Christian tradition says it all means, even if it makes us uncomfortable and stretches our understanding.

To drink “new wine,” we must prepare “new wine skins.”

Good Shabbos.

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Yitro: Servants of the Lessons of Peace

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And so the explanation of why the Exodus is given as the reason for G-d becoming the G-d of the Jewish people is obvious – G-d’s liberation of the Jews from slavery is what made it possible for Him to give us His Torah and mitzvos on Sinai.

Moreover, the fact that G-d took the Jews out of Egypt in order for them to serve Him was already mentioned several times in the Torah; in none of those places did Rashi find it necessary to explain that this “is sufficient reason for you to be subservient to Me.” What difficulty is there in this particular verse?

The difficulty which Rashi addresses is related to this very issue: Since the Jews were already well aware that the ultimate goal of the Exodus was the receipt of the Torah and submission to G-d, what was the need to mention yet again that G-d’s declaration: “I am G-d your L-rd” is the consequence of His being the One “who brought you out of the land of Egypt”?

Rashi therefore explains that “who brought you out of the land of Egypt” is neither a reason nor an explanation for “I am G-d your L-rd.,” Rather, it is a wholly distinct matter – “Taking you out of Egypt is sufficient reason for you to be subservient to Me.”

“I am G-d your L-rd” implies the acceptance of G-d’s reign. The Jews accepted G-d as their king and ruler, and thereby obligated themselves to obey all His commands. G-d then added an additional matter – merely accepting G-d as king does not suffice; Jews must be wholly subservient to Him.

Accepting a king’s dominion does not preclude the possibility of a private life; it only means doing what the king commands and avoiding those things which the king prohibits. However, being “subservient to Me” means a Jew has no personal freedom; all his actions and possessions are subservient to G-d.

Performing Torah and mitzvos is unlike heeding the commands of a flesh-and-blood king, since it is done in a state of complete subservience. Every moment of a Jew’s life involves some aspect of Torah and mitzvos.

Commentary on Torah Portion Yitro
Based on Likkutei Sichos Vol. XXVI pp. 124-128
and the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe
Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

On the third day, as morning dawned, there was thunder, and lightning, and a dense cloud upon the mountain, and a very loud blast of the horn; and all the people who were in the camp trembled. Moses led the people out of the camp toward God, and they took their places at the foot of the mountain.

Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke, for the Lord had come down upon it in fire; the smoke rose like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled violently. The blare of the horn grew louder and louder. As Moses spoke, God answered him in thunder. The Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mountain, and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain and Moses went up. The Lord said to Moses, “Go down, warn the people not to break through to the Lord to gaze, lest many of them perish. The priests also, who come near the Lord, must stay pure, lest the Lord break out against them.” But Moses said to the Lord, “The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai, for You warned us saying, ‘Set bounds about the mountain and sanctify it.'” So the Lord said to him, “Go down, and come back together with Aaron; but let not the priests or the people break through to come up to the Lord, lest He break out against them.” And Moses went down to the people and spoke to them.

God spoke all these words, saying… –Exodus 19:16-20:1 (JPS Tanakh)

I cannot even imagine what it must have been like to stand at the foot of Mount Sinai and to be a part of this amazing, awesome, terrifying, wonderful experience of standing in the physical presence of the manifestation of God. Just to glimpse it from afar would have been an honor beyond imagination. This was and is truly the pivotal moment in all of Jewish history: the giving of the Torah. Nothing else would so uniquely define the Jews as a people and as the chosen nation of God. No other people have any experience that could compare to this pinnacle moment in the history of Israel. Or do we? I’ll get to that.

In the Chabad commentary I quoted from above, we see that there is an interesting comparison between serving a human King and serving the King of the Universe. As the Rabbis point out, serving an earthly King entails only obeying the specific orders of your monarch. Except for rare individuals, a subject of a King would still have a private life and individual pursuits that were apart from the King’s commands and laws.

This is not so when serving the King of Kings.

The Torah defines every single aspect of a Jew’s life, how he prays, how he works, how he eats, how he is to treat his wife, his neighbors, his animals, everything…every little detail. When the Children of Israel said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do,” (Exodus 19:8), they were pledging their very lives to God down to the tiniest action and thought. Yes, I know someone out there is going to tell me that according to the record in the Tanakh, the Hebrews were not always very successful in obeying God, but what’s important is the amazing scope of the promise, of the commandments, of having a God who so cared for you and your people that we was involved in every aspect of your existence, not just what you did in synagogue on Shabbat (or church on Sunday). You gave everything you were, are, and ever will be to God.

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” –Matthew 22:34-40 (ESV)

We see here that the Son of God, Jesus, the Messiah, God’s Lamb, demanded nothing less of his disciples as well, but that’s to be expected.

But that brings me to an interesting question. Every Jew who has ever lived can point to Sinai and say, “that’s where we began…that’s who we are as a people forever.” In fact, each Jew is to behave not just as an inheritor of the Sinai covenant, but as if he or she had personally stood at the foot of Mount Sinai and accepted the Torah!

Where do we Christians find such a moment in our lives? Do we have a “Sinai?”

When the day of the festival of Shavuot arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. –Acts 2:1-4 (ESV)

Note: I substituted “day of the festival of Shavuot” for the actual text which reads “day of Pentecost” to preserve the perspective of the Jewish Apostles.

Since Pentecost and Shavuot are essentially parallel occurrences, it’s not surprising that the empowering of the Holy Spirit came upon the Jewish Apostles on the same day as the anniversary of the Sinai event.

I have to admit to being somewhat let down. Christians are not encouraged to consider the Pentecost experience as literally their own (I suppose because Christians see salvation as an individual “accomplishment” rather than becoming part of the “body of Christ” and the “commonwealth of Israel”), as if they (we) were “all together in one place” with the Apostles as the “mighty rushing wind…filled the entire house where they were sitting.” We are to consider (sort of) the moment when we accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of our lives as the moment when we have out Acts 2 experience, although no Christian I have ever met has described that moment in terms of “tongues of fire” appearing from heaven and resting upon them. Some people have described being able to suddenly “speak in tongues”, but I do know a person who, at an altar call at a local church some years ago, was encouraged by the Elder with him to “make something up” if the ability to speak in an “angelic language” didn’t manifest itself in him.

So much for majesty and awe.

For that matter, we don’t really know how Peter could tell that “the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word” while he was visiting the Roman God-fearer Cornelius in the Centurion’s home? (Acts 10:44)

However, this is as close to a “Sinai event” as we who are the non-Jewish disciples of the Master can achieve in the modern era. I don’t know what it means or doesn’t mean and maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I don’t think things have been explained to us very well. I don’t think we’ve been told that one of the responsibilities we have in common with our Jewish brothers and sisters is the command to surrender our entire lives, every action, every word, every thought, to God, our King.

It’s not like we should be ignorant of this responsibility, since it’s all over the New Testament.

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ… –2 Corinthians 10:5 (ESV)

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. –James 3:1-5 (ESV)

If we look at the words of the Master as recorded by Matthew and add the letters from Paul and James, we see that we too must surrender all that we are to God in everything, including our words and our very thoughts. How like the covenant at Sinai in this one very important dimension in the lives of we Christians.

Christianity prizes Grace over the commandments of the Law, but we tend to miss the fact that we have serious responsibilities and that freedom from sin doesn’t mean we can literally do whatever we want with our lives, pursuing the same matters in practically the same way as the secular people around us. We must be more in our actions, which we aren’t always taught matter as much as faith and having a “warm and fuzzy” feeling inside for Jesus. We are servants. With almost no exceptions, the original Jewish Apostles suffered for a long time and eventually died terrible deaths as the commitment to the Messiah required. This is the lesson they learned, not just as disciples of the Master, but as Jews who, like all of their people, personally stood at the foot of Sinai as the fire and the thunder and the sound of the great shofar sounded, and before their King declared, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do!”

Can there be peace between the people who stood at Sinai and we who inherit the Spirit of Pentecost? We are disciples of the Master, but where is the unity? Where is peace?

Peace refers to harmony between opposites. In an ultimate sense, it refers to a resolution of the dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual, the forward movement enabling a world in which G-d’s presence is not outwardly evident to recognize and be permeated by the truth of His Being.

Moreover, true peace involves more than the mere negation of opposition. The intent is that forces which were previously at odds should recognize a common ground and join together in positive activity. Similarly, the peace which the Torah fosters does not merely involve a revelation of G-dliness so great that the material world is forced to acknowledge it. Instead, the Torah’s intent is to bring about an awareness of G-d within the context of the world itself.

There is G-dliness in every element of existence. At every moment Creation is being renewed; were G-d’s creative energy to be lacking, the world would return to absolute nothingness. The Torah allows us to appreciate this inner G-dliness, and enables us to live in harmony with it.

-Rabbi Eli Touger
In the Garden of the Torah
“Ripples of Inner Movement”
Adapted from
Likkutei Sichos, Vol. XI, p. 74ff; Vol. XV, p. 379ff;
Vol. XVI, p. 198; Sichos Shabbos Pashas Yisro, 5751
Chabad.org

The portion of the Torah event we who are grafted in may take away with us, is that there is a path to peace, not only between Christian and Jew, but for all of mankind. We aren’t there yet. There is not even peace between all Christians or between all Jews. But someday, “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 [ESV]).

Good Shabbos.

Kosher Jesus

The Moshiach and Christianity: My Personal Dilemma

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On today’s amud we find the proper seating order in shul.

Rav Raphael of Barshad, zt”l, was a very well known and respected personage, but this did not make him feel any arrogance at all. On the contrary, his every motion was filled with true humility. Every time he would enter a shul or gathering, he would sit in a common seat that was very distant from the coveted eastern wall.

One person felt that this was very strange and decided to ask him what was behind this odd practice. “With all due respect, I cannot fathom what is behind the rebbe’s custom. Either way—if the Rebbe sits in the back because he has true humility, why not sit in the front? Surely, one can retain a feeling of broken-heartedness even while sitting in an honorable seat. And if the rebbe has problems with thoughts of arrogance, chas v’shalom, what does sitting in the back help? Clearly it is possible to be filled with self-inflated feelings while sitting in the back as well as in the front. On the contrary, it is possible to fathom how one would be filled with more thoughts of arrogance because he acts humble…”

Rav Raphael replied, “Listen to me, my brothers. In Kiddushin 59 we find that although action nullifies the intent in one’s thoughts, mere thoughts cannot nullify action. If I, who is unworthy for the honor, were to sit in the mizrach, I would be doing an action of arrogance while trying to overcome this with thoughts of humility. But
we see that this is an exercise in futility. However, sitting in the back is an action of humility which overcomes any thoughts of arrogance. Isn’t it clear that this is the only option that gives me a chance of overcoming thoughts of arrogance?”

Mishna Berura Yomi Digest
Stories to Share
“Action Overrides Thought”
Rema Siman 150 Seif 5

Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” –Luke 14:7-11 (ESV)

I always worry about “getting into trouble” whenever I post quotes from Talmud and the Gospels in parallel. I realize that the Talmud was written and compiled centuries after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, so he couldn’t have known about “Rabbinic Judaism” as such, though he probably did know about the teachings of Hillel and Shammai. And yet, again and again, it seems as if much of what the Master taught in some manner or fashion, is carried on in how Jews continued to teach and in how they continue to teach today. I know the connection is tenuous at best, but for some reason, I find it comforting on a purely visceral level.

And yet, someone completely unexpected seems to hold an opinion similar to mine. Frankly, I was more than surprised when I read this.

Not only was Jesus a rabbi, he was a deeply learned, well-versed student of Jewish holy texts. Almost all his teachings derive directly from the Torah. The lessons he articulated line up squarely with Jewish morality and statements of rabbis found in the Talmud. Some of Jesus’ most famous and recognizable teachings are taken directly from earlier Jewish sources.

…Jesus was equally familiar with Talmudic sayings. When Jesus instructs his listeners, “First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye,” he alludes almost word for word to a Talmudic teaching of Rabbi Tarphon: “If someone urges you to remove the speck from your eye, he must be given the answer, ‘Take the plank out of your own.'”

-Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
Chapter 4: Jesus the Rabbi (pg 24)
Kosher Jesus

Although, as an Orthodox Jew, Rabbi Boteach’s perspective on Jesus is quite a bit different than the one held by Christianity (and when I finish reading his book, I’ll post a complete review), he does recognize that many of the teachings of Christ recorded in the Gospels are indeed teachings that resonate very strongly with what Jews understand from Torah and Talmud (though as I said, the Talmud didn’t exist during the time of the Gospels).

This is how I can draw parallels from the following:

Sadly, there is always a need for charity, especially while we are in exile. The Ohr HaChaim, zt”l, explains that a wealthy man has been entrusted with more money so that he will support the poor and worthy institutions.

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“Consecrating One’s Wealth”
Arachin 27

For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. –Matthew 25:29 (ESV)

However, there is a 2,000 year old “disconnect” between the teachings of the Jewish Rabbi from Nazareth and his almost completely non-Jewish followers all over the earth. In one sense, Jesus was remarkably successful in delivering his message, but according to Boteach, it was Paul’s fault that it was totally stripped of its Jewish origins and recreated in the image of the Goyim.

I have to strongly disagree with Rabbi Boteach here, since I don’t believe Paul is the “culprit” but rather, subsequent non-Jewish church leaders who, when they saw that Judaism was universally reviled in the Roman empire after the fall of Jerusalem and the exile of the Jews from Israel, decided to change horses in mid-stream (and this part, Boteach does agree with), creating a faith that would eventually become the state religion of the Roman empire.

I know. I’m probably being unfair and the history of the early church is a lot more complicated than that, but how many Jews have suffered and died because the non-Jewish disciples of Christ forgot that he was also Jewish? However, I must say here that many good non-Jewish disciples loved God and did their best to live out the true principles taught by the Master, so the core of what it is to be Christian has endured, at least as a remnant. But here we are, 2,000 years later, still trying to pick up the pieces of shattered human lives and relationships like tiny bits and shards of Herod’s Temple after the Romans got through with it.

I admit to being discouraged lately. Ironically, it’s mostly to do with Christianity. As much as I’d like to think that the church is getting past its attitude of blaming the Jews for not converting to Christianity, something or someone comes along and shows me that I’m wrong. Then there are some folks who are more or less associated with the Messianic or Hebrew Roots movement who, in their own way, are trying to do the same thing: minimize the Jews in their own faith, not by replacing Jews with Gentiles the way some churches have attempted, but by saying there is absolutely no difference between Gentiles and Jews, as if God “unchose” the Jewish people and then reapplied the same “Sinai choseness” upon all of believing humanity.

Yeah, I’m discouraged. It’s why I wrote my lament on the value and validity of church community and why I know more than ever that it would be completely intimidating for me to go to a church. If someone said to my face the things they feel free to say to me on the Internet, I would have to walk away and regain my composure before deciding if I should respond or not. That’s easy on the web, but harder to do in an in-person encounter, especially when you’re supposed to be “safe” within the encouraging arms of the “body of Christ.”

There are other, even more personal reasons why life as a Christian is becoming depressing and although I am mostly transparent here, this part I’ll reserve to myself. No, I’m not talking about a lack of faith in God or any sort of desire to abandon my discipleship under the Master. However, my faith in some of the people of the church is sorely being tested.

Frankly, I don’t know how God manages to put up with some of his followers, sometimes especially me. No wonder Gandhi said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

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Counting Down

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Torah at SinaiOn the sixth day of the third month (Sivan), seven weeks after the Exodus, the entire nation of Israel assembles at the foot of Mount Sinai. G-d descends on the mountain amidst thunder, lightning, billows of smoke and the blast of the shofar, and summons Moses to ascend.

G-d proclaims the Ten Commandments, commanding the people of Israel to believe in G-d, not to worship idols or take G-d’s name in vain, to keep the Shabbat, honor their parents, not to murder, not to commit adultery, not to steal, and not to bear false witness or covet another’s property. The people cry out to Moses that the revelation is too intense for them to bear, begging him to receive the Torah from G-d and convey it to them.

The Parashah in a Nutshell
Yitro in Nutshell
Exodus 18:1–20:23
Chabad.org

Starting the second night of Pesach, we begin counting seven weeks, 49 days, until the holiday of Shavuos. This counting is called Sefiras Ha’Omer, The Counting of the Omer. (For more information on Sefiras Ha’Omer, see I:16, I:18)

-Rabbi Yehudah Prero
“The Counting of the Omer – A Count of Anticipation”
YomTov, Vol. IV, # 7
Torah.org

We see the events of the Torah reflected in current Jewish practice. According to the commandments (Ex. 12:16, Ex. 23:14, Lev. 23:7) the Jewish people commemorate the Passover every year in order to remember the Passover in Egypt and the great exodus of the Israelites from slavery to freedom. Then comes the Omer count, whereby Jews are commanded to count the Omer for 49 days in anticipation of the festival of Shavuot, which commemorates the giving of the Torah at Sinai. The events we see displayed with such grandeur and majesty before us when we read the Torah portions that relate these times, are part of the lived experience of every religious Jew and any Gentile who is attached to the Jewish community for various reasons.

But there’s one other event that we Christians must consider.

And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid. –Mark 15:42-47 (ESV)

According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus was crucified on the same day as all of the representatives of the Jewish families in Israel were presenting their Passover lambs for sacrifice at the Temple in Jerusalem, in obedience to the commandment. He should have died right before sunset; right before the eating of the Passover lamb by each Jewish family, again, in obedience to the commandment.

But not all of the Gospel versions of the death of Jesus line up chronologically and we cannot be sure of the exact date. Was the “Last Supper” a true Passover seder or some other meal that occurred the evening before? We don’t know. We do know that Jesus died at about the time of the Passover, and we are fond of referring to Jesus as our “Passover lamb”. And three days later, Jesus rose from the tomb and he was with his people again for forty days. And then he ascended.

In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God…And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. –Acts 1:1-3, 9 (ESV)

It would be nice if things lined up neatly but forty days does not equal the forty-nine day count of the Omer. Maybe this is one of the reasons why Christians don’t also “count the Omer” from the day of the crucifixion, which the church calls “Good Friday” to the day of the giving of the Holy Spirit, which Christians call “Pentecost”, but which also was the day of the festival of Shavuot commemorating the Sinai event.

So the Bible and our celebrations don’t line up into nice, neat, perfectly ordered events and holidays. I also understand that, during the schism between Gentile Christianity and Jewish Messianism, most or all of the Jewish connections to the Christian faith were summarily erased, along with the Jewishness of Jesus. Christians were not taught to count the Omer and in fact, were likely forbidden to perform any celebration of their faith that even vaguely resembled the worship of the Jews.

But wouldn’t it be great if, after the return of the Messiah, the Jews and the Gentiles counted the Omer together, in commemoration of the Passover and the gift of the Messiah to humanity? For just as death passed over the obedient Israelites in Egypt, so has eternal death passed over all who are faithful and obedient to Jesus, the lamb of God, who gave his life for the sake of the world and yet lives. And the giving of the Torah and the giving of the Holy Spirit nourishes all of the Master’s disciples, in accordance to our covenant relationship with God.

But for this tearing down of the wall of enmity to happen, we Christians must not be careless or dismissive of the things that God has created for the Jews and for the good of everyone.

As a young boy, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak (the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe) would go with his father on walks through the woods. One time, as they talked, the boy absent-mindedly plucked a leaf off a tree and began to shred it between his fingers. His father saw what his son was doing, but he went on talking. He spoke about the Baal Shem Tov, who taught how every leaf that blows in the wind—moving to the right and then to the left, how and when it falls and where it falls to—every motion for the duration of its existence is under the detailed supervision of the Almighty.

That concern the Creator has for each thing, his father explained, is the divine spark that sustains its existence. Everything is with Divine purpose, everything is of concern to the ultimate goal of the entire cosmos.

”Now,” the father gently chided, “look how you mistreated so absent-mindedly the Almighty’s creation.”

”He formed it with purpose and gave it a Divine spark! It has its own self and its own life! Now tell me, how is the ‘I am’ of the leaf any less than your own ‘I am’?”

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Purpose of a Leaf”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Do not shred a “leaf” too quickly, for you may not correctly understand why God created and sustained it. So it is with the Jewish people. So it is with counting the Omer. So it will be one day when a few, and then many, and then all of Israel sees the Divine spark, the “I am” in the Messiah; in Jesus of Nazareth.

Kosher Jesus

Why Don’t the Jews Convert to Christianity?

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In my neighborhood, we did not even mention his name. We said “Yoshke,” a Hebrew play on his name, or some children learned to say “cheese and crust” in place of “Jesus Christ.” In a synagogue sermon, rabbis might refer to Jesus – exceedingly rarely – by saying “the founder of Christianity.”

Fundamentally, we understood Jesus as a foreign deity, a man worshiped by people. The Torah instructs us never to mention the names of other gods, as no other god exists except God. We also understood Jesus to be as anti-Jewish as his followers. Was he not the Jew who had rebelled against his people? Was he not the one who instructed his followers to hate the Jews as he did, instigating countless cruelties against those with whom God had established an everlasting covenant? Was he not also the man who had abrogated the Law and said that the Torah was now mostly abolished?

-Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
from the Preface (pg ix) of his new book
Kosher Jesus

I’m just beginning Rabbi Boteach’s latest and most controversial book and will write a full review when I’m finished. However, in reading the Preface and Introduction sections of the book, I find myself thinking that much of what I’ve consumed so far would be good material for every Christian to read and absorb. Look at what Rabbi Boteach is saying about how he understanding Jesus when Boteach was a young Jewish boy growing up in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. A Jew’s understanding of Jesus from earliest childhood is as a person who hated his own Jewish people, who taught his Jewish (and later, Gentile) followers to also hate Jews, and who founded a religion based on the idea that Jews must be eradicated.

And Christians wonder why Jews aren’t standing in line waiting to convert to that form of Christianity. Gee whiz!

But there’s more:

Until the deeply anti-Semitic Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE) directly addressed the subject centuries later, early Church leaders held that Judaism would never survive. Even the powerful Roman Empire couldn’t resist the Christian juggernaut – eventually capitulating and adopting Christianity as state religion. It wasn’t a stretch for Christians to surmise that all remaining Jews would eventually convert, wiping out the ancient religion. But against all odds, Judaism survived and flourished.

-Boteach
Introduction, pp xiii-xiv

That last sentence reminds me so much of this:

Then Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation. But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. –Exodus 1:6-7 (ESV)

Even as Pharaoh, King of Egypt enslaved the Israelites and the Egyptians treated the Hebrews with terrible cruelty, under the harshest conditions, the Children of Jacob survived, multiplied, and flourished. Of course, Pharaoh had no intention of exterminating his population of slaves. They were much too valuable to him alive, so their continued survival was no mystery to him. However, for the early church, according to Boteach, the continuation of Jews and Judaism was inexplicable.

This makes me ask a few questions.

I wonder if the continuation of the Jews and Judaism today is what frustrates some Christians? It would explain something my brother-in-law said to me many years ago. He’s my wife’s younger brother and a born-again Christian. He denies that his mother was Jewish (even though we have ample evidence that she, her siblings, and cousins, and parents, and grandparents are all buried in Jewish cemeteries). I can’t remember how we got on the topic, but at one point, in a fit of emotion, he exclaimed, “Why can’t the Jews just accept Jesus?”

Maybe I should send him a copy of Rabbi Boteach’s book.

I think that the survival and flourishing of Judaism in the modern age is frustrating to some Christians. Rabbi Boteach goes on in the Introduction of his book, to illustrate how there has been much restoration of the relationship between Judaism and both Catholicism and Evangelical Christianity, so I can’t paint a terribly grim portrait of the Jewish/Christian interaction today. But there are still plenty of Gentile believers who seem to wish that Judaism would just plain “go away” and who are at a total loss as to why God would allow the Jewish people to continue as a distinct group on the face of the Earth.

My other question has to do with “Rabbinic” or “Talmudic” Judaism. In any real sense, this is the only valid form of Judaism in the post-Second Temple world (and I’m including significant portions of Messianic Judaism in this group), since without a Temple, functioning priesthood, and functioning Sanhedrin, much of the Judaism of the Torah cannot be observed, even in Israel. I’ve said before in a few blog posts that the Talmud and the traditions of the Sages are a major reason why Judaism survived in a hostile post-Temple world and across the long centuries after 70 CE and after the majority (but not all) of the Jews were exiled from Israel by the Roman conquerors.

Throughout the history that followed the last Jewish exile, on many occasions, Christian religious authorities tried to destroy the Jews by burning their synagogues, their Torah scrolls, their siddurim (prayer books), and their Talmud. Sadly, Martin Luther, near the end of his life, reversed any good he did to bring Christ closer to the Christians by advocating the destruction of the Jews:

…set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly ­ and I myself was unaware of it ­ will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.

…I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them….

From “Martin Luther: The Jews and Their Lies” (1543)
as quoted by Jewish Virtual Library

If some Christians, both historically and currently, experience frustration at the continued existence of Judaism, they might also experience frustration at and hostility toward the mechanisms by which the Jews have survived: Jewish prayer, synagogue worship, Torah readings, and particularly Talmudic study. If you destroy a people’s lifestyle and culture, you destroy the people, perhaps not in body, but in spirit and identity. As an example, allow me to present the Native American peoples who were all but wiped out by European expansion across this continent over the past several centuries. There are tribes who no longer know their own written and spoken languages, who have lost many of their traditional ceremonies and history, and who are hanging on to any remaining shred of their identity as a people by their fingernails.

This is what could have happened to the Jewish people and to Judaism if the Talmud had successfully been destroyed. But is this why some Christian and Hebrew Roots groups oppose the study and authority of Talmud among Jews today? Does it somehow diminish those who say they follow the cause of Christ if the Jews continue to adhere to that which has allowed them to survive and to flourish as Jews?

I suppose you could say I’m being a little hard on Christianity and some parts of Hebrew Roots for their opposition to the Talmud of Judaism, but frankly, even if their intentions are “benign” from their own point of view, if they had gotten their way, there would be no Jews walking around today or at best, the “Jews” we’d recognize would be a shell rather than a thriving Jewish culture. Their identity would be shattered, and all that would be left of the people established by God Himself at Sinai through the Torah, would be the tiny sparks and shattered fragments that somehow survived in the whitewashed and “Gentilized” teachings of the modern, refactored “Jesus Christ,” who started out well as Jewish Rabbi and Messiah, but who was turned into a non-Jewish icon symbolizing the extinction of his own people.

Having read my wee missive now, if you’re a Christian, if you’re a Pastor, if you’re a Bible teacher, if you’re a Church Choir Leader, if you’re involved in the church in any capacity whatsoever, take a moment and look at yourself in the mirror. Now ask yourself, why don’t the Jews convert to Christianity. You may not understand it yet, but I think you have the answer.

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The Inaccessible Interface

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the-joy-of-torahTorah is the interface between the Infinite and creation. On the outside, it speaks the language of humankind. On the inside, it is depth without end.

Grasp either end and you have nothing.

Grasp both and you have G-d Himself.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Interface”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson of blessed memory
Chabad.org

In yesterday’s morning meditation, I suggested that the Torah functioned as a ketubah or “marriage contract” between God and the Children of Israel. This brings up many “uncomfortable” ideas if we consider that God is still “married” to the Jewish people and that the church is the “bride of Christ.”

But I’m not going to talk about that today.

I’ve previously said that religion and ritual serve as an interface between people and God. Human beings cannot directly access God, at least not most of the time, so we have a set of conditions, or faith statements, or in the case of the Jews, mitzvot that allow us to have some sort of connection to God based on what we do to worship Him. According to Rabbi Freeman, the Torah is an interface specific to the Jewish people and their interaction with the Creator. The Torah is considered to be made up of 613 individual commandments and has a sort of mystic life of its own, since the sages say it existed before creation and it was used to make the universe. This makes Torah more than a document and it becomes a sort of “force” or even a “personality.” In certain theological circles, we sometimes call Jesus “our living Torah” since nothing was made without him and he is “the Word made flesh” who once upon a time lived among his people.

But if the Torah is an interface allowing Jews access to God, what does that make Jesus? An interface allowing everyone to access God?

That could be a little confusing if the Torah is supposed to be only for the Jews but Messiah is for everyone. Or is it that Messiah is for the Jews and Jesus is for everyone? It depends on who you ask. If you believe that God doesn’t intend on abandoning anyone based on ethnicity or the exclusivity of the Sinai relationship, then somehow, He has to reconcile “the rest of us” to Him. Christianity has no problem with this part, but they experience difficulty in allowing Jews to keep their original Abrahamic and Mosaic interfaces, demanding that the Jewish people “ashcan” what they have that is special to them, and substitute it with a “one size fits all” interface. It’s sort of like asking people who habitually use a Mac to switch to a Windows PC. Just try it and see the reaction you get.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Windows when compared to a Mac (although Mac users might have a comment or two on the subject), but they are different interfaces. They present a different user experience to Mac and Windows people, even as they both allow the two different user types to perform the same tasks (writing documents, surfing the web, sending emails, and so on). Maybe that’s how we can look at the two separate interfaces used by Jews and Christians.

Or we can continue to push at each other and then push back and then push again. This happens particularly between Christians and some parts of the Messianic Jewish world (including those parts that aren’t really “Jewish” such as One Law, Two House, and Hebrew Roots). Each group says they have a better interface than all the other groups, and some people in the debate may secretly suspect that the other group’s interface works better, resulting in jealousy and a “put up your dukes” response.

So much for peace and unity within the body of Christ. I guess that’s why I’m inspired (if I’m inspired by very much anymore) by some of the Rabbinic tales.

On today’s amud we find the halachos regarding replacing the sefer Torah to the aron hakodesh.

During his last years, the Tchebiner Rav lived in Shaarei Chessed. At that time, there was a certain very broken, lonely man who would collect tzedakah in the neighborhood shuls. This person was well known—if not well liked—by all on account of his bizarre dress and strange behavior. He had his own unusual way to sing when the Torah was being replaced into the aron kodesh. Since his voice was cracked and he could not hold a tune, this was very annoying to the other people in shul. Nevertheless, if there was a chosson, he would always belt out his tune, often accompanied by bored children who immediately flocked to him and did their utmost to “help him along.”

Once, when this man was collecting in the Tchebiner Rav’s minyan, the Tchebiner Rav gave him a princely donation before they had replaced the Torah into the ark. “I am not giving you this merely as a gift,” he proclaimed. “I give this to you on condition that you make the minyan happy with your unique tune.”

The man was thrilled to his core and began to sing his special tune. But this time, since the Rav had asked for it, everyone joined him and it was actually a fitting way to replace the Torah. The broken man was overjoyed at his triumph and would tell everyone he knew about the admiration for him that the Tchebiner Rav had for him. Not only had he given him a big sum of money, he had even asked for his special nigun!

Mishna Berura Yomi Digest
Stories to Share
“How to Empathize”
Siman 148, Seif 1-4

Here, even the “oddball” in the community is given honors in spite of how most of the community doesn’t really understand him. I suppose that the church has many such heartwarming stories, but my experience with organized religion…anyone’s organized religion lately…is that even well-meaning oddballs aren’t particularly tolerated, and you either need to blend in or get out.

For the Christian, Jesus is the interface that allows us to access God. You can be an oddball and still God loves you. He even sent His only begotten Son for you…even if you’re a oddball. Jesus is the interface that provides access to God

People and religious congregations, as an interface for access to community however, are another matter.

"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