Tag Archives: Bible

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Asking Questions

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The RabbiBut of course, it is not advisable for one to pasken for himself by extrapolating from a case discussed in the Mishnah Berurah since he may not discern a simple difference between the cases. He therefore asked (Rav Yosef Shalom Eliyashiv, shlit”a) whether an ill man who must eat on Tisha B’Av must eat less than a k’zayis within the shiur of time.

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“A Small Distinction”
Chullin 35

Without going into great detail, this quote comes from a commentary describing a sick man who is trying to see if he must fast on Tisha B’Av. In studying the relevant halachos on the matter, he was surprised to find that an ill person should eat no more “than a k’zayis in the time it takes to eat half a loaf of bread.” He extrapolated this judgment based on what the Beiur Halachah writes on how people ate on Tisha B’Av to avoid becoming ill during a typhus epidemic.

On the one hand, this man was chronically ill and fasting was dangerous for him. On the other hand, as a devout Jew, he was decidedly uncomfortable with eating on Tisha B’Av and wanted to understand the correct halacha. When he encountered a ruling he did not expect, he could have chosen to let his own interpretation guide him but, as we discover, “it is not advisable for one to pasken for himself by extrapolating from a case discussed in the Mishnah Berurah since he may not discern a simple difference between the cases”.

How does this work in Christianity? A Christian wants to make sure he understands what he should do in a certain situation and reads the appropriate Bible verses. He comes across Scripture that surprises him, at least as far as the plain meaning of the text is concerned, or even two Scriptures that seem to contradict one another. Should he rely on his own understanding, pray to the Holy Spirit for guidance, or immediately consult with his Pastor or Bible teacher?

I think a lot of Christians would pray for guidance from the Spirit, which is quite appropriate, but assuming the person felt he had received such supernatural guidance, his inquiry could stop right there. After all, what could a Pastor or a Bible teacher tell him that the Spirit couldn’t? Effectively, depending on your point of view, the Christian may well end up relying completely on his own personal interpretation of the Scriptures in question. This becomes a problem as you’ll see in a few paragraphs.

Sure, I’m oversimplifying the situation, but I think that’s how it plays out for some believers. When I used to worship in a church, there were plenty of times I’d ask a fellow student in a Bible study, a teacher, or one of the Pastors what something in the Bible meant. When praying, I didn’t always get a feeling or an indication that an answer to one of my questions about the Bible was forthcoming and asking another person, at least as a new Christian with a lifetime of secular thinking behind me, was just easier.

As I’ve grown spiritually and in my studies, I’ve come to know that there are many New Testament scholars out there who continually study, do research, and publish new findings. Bible interpretation is hardly a settled matter in the community of Bible scholars and this is an indication that our understanding of the Bible is far from complete or comprehensive. I wonder if most “average Christians” realize this?

The Phantom BibleI just read a story at CNN called Actually, That’s Not in the Bible which illustrates my point, particularly on, Christian self-reliance on Bible interpretation and how people can make mistakes, sometimes critical mistakes:

Others blame the spread of phantom biblical verses on Martin Luther, the German monk who ignited the Protestant Reformation, the massive “protest” against the excesses of the Roman Catholic Church that led to the formation of Protestant church denominations.

“It is a great Protestant tradition for anyone – milkmaid, cobbler, or innkeeper – to be able to pick up the Bible and read for herself. No need for a highly trained scholar or cleric to walk a lay person through the text,” says Craig Hazen, director of the Christian Apologetics program at Biola University in Southern California.

But often the milkmaid, the cobbler – and the NFL coach – start creating biblical passages without the guidance of biblical experts, he says.

“You can see this manifest today in living room Bible studies across North America where lovely Christian people, with no training whatsoever, drink decaf, eat brownies and ask each other, ‘What does this text mean to you?’’’ Hazen says.

“Not only do they get the interpretation wrong, but very often end up quoting verses that really aren’t there.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve worshiped at a church and I don’t think I ever developed a “traditional Christian mindset” about a lot of this. I’m blogging my “extra meditation” today, more in the way of asking a question. What do you think? Is the example I quoted from the Daf Yomi Digest above bizarre and alien to Christianity, or do we also have a tradition of going to reliable authorities when we have something we need to understand from the Bible? If we don’t have this tradition, as the CNN article seems to suggest, should we?

Gracious feedback is welcome here. Standing by to receive.

Oh, our chronically ill man did get an answer to his question:

When these questions reached RavYosef Shalom Eliyashiv, shlit”a, he ruled that a sick person does not have to worry about this. “One who is ill should eat what he needs and no more. But he is not obligated to eat less than a shiur. The Beiur Halacha discusses one who eats to avoid getting ill. Such a person should wait to eat as late as possible and also eat less than a shiur. But one who is sick does not have to follow these restrictions on Tisha B’Av at all.”

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Children of God

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Children of GodYou foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain – if it really was in vain? So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” –Galatians 3:1-6

Lancaster identifies the influencers in Galatia (called by most Christian commentators “judaizers”, though “judaize” is derived from an intransitive Greek verb – that is, you can judaize [yourself], but you can’t judaize someone else, cf. Nanos, The Irony of Galatians [Minneapolis, Fortress, 2002], 116) as Gentile proselytes to Judaism who are anxious to secure their status in the Jewish community by influencing believing Gentiles to also become proselytes. His thesis makes more sense than Nanos’s (in which unbelieving Jews are the influencers) due to Nanos’s difficulty with Galatians 6:12.

Lancaster writes that the “different gospel that is not really a gospel” being peddled by these influencers is the message that Jewish identity and full Torah observance were necessary conditions for entrance into the believing community and access to the World to Come. This message was attractive for the Galatian Gentile believers because as liminals, they existed between two worlds.

from the review of
D. Thomas Lancaster’s book
The Holy Epistle to the Galatians
from the Hope Abbey blog.

This is the second part of a blog I wrote on Gentiles, Christians, and Noahides. Please read yesterday’s “morning meditation” called The Sons of Noah before continuing here. Things will probably make more sense if you do.

I wrote my own review of Lancaster’s Galatians book about a month ago, but once picked up, it’s hardly a book or a subject that can be casually laid down again. As much as any of his other letters, Paul’s words to the Galatian non-Jewish disciples of Jesus have a great deal to say to those of us who are Christians today.

In yesterday’s “morning meditation”, I introduced the concept of Gentiles and the Noahide Laws. In Judaism, it is understood that all Jews will be “saved” (to put it in the Christian vernacular), however, non-Jews are not expected to convert to Judaism in order to also attain a “saved” status. Jews are obligated to a very high standard of conduct toward God and other people, but the “nations” (i.e. everybody else)  are not expected to comply with these obligations (and in many cases, Gentiles are forbidden to obey the mitzvot as a matter of halachah). According to Judaism, the obligations of the Gentiles are outlined in Genesis 9 as the Divine code God gave to Noah which today are called Noahide Laws.

But who is a Noahide?

At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. –Acts 10:1-2

When Paul and his companions had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,” he said. Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women. –Acts 17:1-4

No, I can’t draw a direct connection between the God-fearing Gentiles of the Second Temple period and the later Gentile Noahides, but I can make a suggestion that they are related and then explore that possibility. Both groups are considered “righteous Gentiles” in the sense that they have abandoned pagan idol worship and polytheism and have attached themselves to the One God; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, without abandoning their Gentile ethnic and cultural identity (that is, by not attempting to convert to Judaism).

That said, the God-fearers in the day of Peter and Paul, though not attempting to become Jewish, did have only one model on which to draw to describe and practice a life of faith in the God of Israel:

Cornelius answered: “Three days ago I was in my house praying at this hour, at three in the afternoon. Suddenly a man in shining clothes stood before me… –Acts 10:30

Cornelius is describing performing the Minchah prayers or the afternoon prayers that are required in Judaism. Observant Jews pray three times a day: morning (Shacharit), afternoon (Minchah), and evening (Maariv). We can infer from this brief passage in Acts 10 that as a God-fearer, Cornelius did the same, though probably not in a manner identical to his Jewish mentors.

But Peter, in his encounter with Cornelius, saw something amazing take place:

While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God.

Then Peter said, “Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days. –Acts 10:44-48

Receiving the SpiritThis certainly recalls the events of Acts 2:1-4 when the core group of Christ’s Jewish disciples received the Spirit on Shavuot (Pentecost) and definitively establishes that both non-Jews and Jews have equal access to God through the Covenant of the Messiah.

Now let’s explore a few ideas. Let’s say that Cornelius and his fellow God-fearing Gentiles were the First Century equivalents of today’s Noahides, that is, they were righteous Gentiles who had a relationship with God but not on the same level as the Jewish people (Noahide Covenant vs. Mosaic Covenant). Now we see these God-fearing “Noahides” undergo a startling transformation by receiving the Holy Spirit in just the same manner as the Jewish disciples of Jesus. The status of the God-fearers changes to become more alike with the status of the Jewish disciples.

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. –Galatians 3:26-29

Paul is saying that in relation to access to God and the love of Jesus Christ, all people of faith are equal. Men are no greater than women in God’s eyes and Jews are no greater than Gentiles in God’s grace and compassion. Does this mean that Jews and Gentiles are absolutely equal in terms of role and function? Of course not, no more than men and women existing in unity as non-gendered, androgynous beings. The Jerusalem Council ruled on this when they issued their now famous edict to the Gentile believers (Acts 15:22-35).

Jewish and non-Jewish equal access does not mean we have identical responsibilities nor identical identities.

It also means that God-fearers or “Noahides” are not equivalent to Gentile Christians. The Covenant of Noah and the Covenant of Christ are not the same, otherwise why would God-fearing Gentiles need to be brought to faith in Jesus by Paul? The non-Jewish people of the world, even those who choose to comply with the Noahide obligations, do not possess the same status as those who take on the greater responsibility of the Messianic Covenant.

2,000 years later, we’re still trying to understand what this all means since, depending on who you listen to, both Noahides and Christians serve God and merit a place in the world to come. I suppose that’s why we have books such as Lancaster’s Galatians and a plethora of blogs on the web such as mine (and of course, in Jewish thought, a Noahide is “saved” by what he does and in Christian thought, a believer is “saved” by what he believes).

So as Christians, if we are no longer simply “Sons of Noah”, who are we?

Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. –John 1:12-13

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. –1 John 3:1-3

Paul said that “Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham” (Galatians 3:7 [NASB]), which does not undo the status of the Jews as Sons of Abraham, but allows the Gentiles who come to faith to attain equal status in terms of access (though not of Legal obligation and ethnic status). Christians are not Noahides and we are not Jews. Christians are both alike and unlike their Jewish counterparts who have come to faith in Jesus as Moshiach. The Hope Abbey blog provided the following quote illustrating this:

What [Paul’s opponents] evidently failed to appreciate is that Paul made a distinction between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians… while he saw it as perfectly legitimate for Jewish Christians to express their faith in Jesus through traditional Jewish practices, he strenuously opposed the imposition of these practices on Gentile Christians either for full acceptance by God or as a normative way of life. (Galatians, WBC 41 [Dallas: Word, 1990], xcviii)

While it may be compelling for Christians who are specifically attracted to Judaism and Jewish studies to pursue the status of Noahide (or in some extreme instances, to convert to Judaism) so that they can better associate with the Jewish synagogue and cultural community, in terms of our relationship to God, it’s a step backward. We have a clear record in the Apostolic Scriptures of God-fearers drawing closer to the Almighty by accepting the Messianic Covenant and placing their trust in Jesus Christ as Lord, Savior, and Jewish Messiah. We have been given the right to call ourselves children of the Most High God.

Raising HandsI don’t think that it’s inconsistent for a Christian to pray the three times daily or to observe a Shabbat rest in a manner similar to the Jewish model. We see these practices in the early (non-Jewish) church. I don’t believe Cornelius gave up the “Jewish” pattern of his prayers after he received the Spirit and perhaps becoming a “Christian” enhanced the meaning of coming into the Presence of God. But keep in mind that as a non-Jew, taking up faith in Jesus, becoming “Messianic”, becoming Christian, enables us to be true children of God and not merely servants. We have a greater duty and intimacy to the Father as sons and daughters. We must not lose that. We must not discard that. Like the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), if we desert our Father, we are throwing away “sonship” but perhaps “servanthood” as well”.

Cling to your faith. He’s coming.

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Light in the Darkness

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Man in the DarknessAs impossible as it sounds, as absurd as it may seem: The mandate of darkness is to become light; the mandate of a busy, messy world is to find oneness.

We have proof: for the greater the darkness becomes and the greater the confusion of life, the deeper our souls reach inward to discover their own essence-core.

How could it be that darkness leads us to find a deeper light? That confusion leads us to find a deeper truth?

Only because the very act of existence was set from its beginning to know its own Author.

As it says, “In the beginning . . . G-d said, ‘It shall become light!’”

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
From the wisdom of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, of righteous memory
“Mandate Unmasked”
Chabad.org

When God began to create heaven and earth – the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water — God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. –Genesis 1:1-5 (JPS Tanakh)

When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 8:12

Yesterday’s morning meditation borrowed from the daf for Chullin 29 in describing a person who has fallen far from the light of God. Yesterday, I also quoted from Rabbi Freeman’s interpretation of the Rebbe’s wisdom in which he says, among other things, that we “only fall down in order to bounce back even higher”. It is said that every descent we must make is for the sake of an ascent. Every fall brings us to the point where we will rise. Drop a heavy chunk of ice into a swimming pool. First, it will sink under the surface, but then it will rise back up.

The words of Rabbi Freeman quoted above are taken from a collection called Meditations on Moshiach (Messiah). Both Christians and Jews long for the coming (or return) of the Messiah and the day when he will heal our injured, bleeding world and us along with it. Put another way, lock anyone in utter and complete darkness and they will search, perhaps in vain, for even the tiniest glimmer of light.

That’s what we’re doing. We are people in the dark, straining our eyes and our spirits, seeking to glimpse a spark of the Moshiach and a sign of his Kingdom come.

Whenever things got worse, Jews would say, “This is a sign! Moshiach is coming!”

But in those days, a messianic era would have meant a radical change in the natural order of things.

Today, though the human soul sleeps a deep slumber of materialism, the material world itself is prepared.

Rabbi Freeman’s Good Signs commentary reminds me of many in the church or even some self-styled “Messianics”. There seems to be an obsession about the “end times” and “end time prophesy”, as if people are looking for secrets and conspiracies worthy of some sort of “spiritual X-Files”. Every earthquake, every flood, every war is “a sign” that vaguely and tenuously points to some scripture confirming that the Messiah’s coming is just around the corner. However, as we see from history, our world is replete with signs and with would-be Messiahs, and yet the world is still here and we’re still waiting in the dark.

Rabbi Freeman’s interpretations of the Rebbe continue:

The final war is not fought on battlefields, nor at sea, nor in the skies above. Neither is it a war between kings or nations. It is fought in the heart of each human being, with the armies of his or her deeds in this world.

Holding onto the lightIndeed, the final battle or in my point of view, our “daily battle”, is not one of great wars, terrible disasters, or supernatural and miraculous events taking place in the larger world or in cosmic realms, but rather, it is fought moment-by-moment, hour-by-hour, in the heart and soul of each individual who professes trust and faith in God.

We are still in the dark, but it is a mistake to look to the future or to the outside, or to mystic prophecies of epic, panoramic events to see the Messiah. To find him, we must look to the light within and be mindful of where we are and what we are doing at this very moment:

At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you ahead of time. –Matthew 24:23-25

While Christians sit passively, seeking signs of his coming in the world outside or in arcane interpretations of scripture, Jews understand that people, all people, have an active part in bringing the Messiah. Not that we can control the day or hour of his coming, but we can prepare the way, by ordering our lives, turning more fully to God, and helping to repair the world, fixing one small, broken piece at a time. The Rebbe knew this when he said:

There is no need to tell a Jew what he or she must do to bring Moshiach. Our job is only to wake them up. Once awake, every Jew knows what he or she must do.

If it is not evil, we must use it for good.
If it can be raised higher, we cannot leave it in the dirt.
For everything He made, He made for His glory.

Do not leave yourself in the dirt, pining for what may be coming outside of your senses. Stand up now. Act in God’s Name to make the world a better place, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant your efforts. Who knows? Even the most humble prayer of a sincere and righteous disciple could make the difference. Your actions may be modest, but the cause you join is magnificent:

When journeying upon the path of wisdom, do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought. –Matsuo Basho

A Jew never gives up. We’re here to bring Mashiach, we will settle for nothing less. –Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh

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Broken

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Broken FaithA certain man was profoundly depressed. He perceived his many flaws and failings and they pained him, but he did not feel confident that he could atone for them. How could he possibly rectify such serious wrongs?

When Rav Yissachar Dov of Belz, zt”l, was asked what someone in this state of mind should do, he offered powerful words of encouragement. “You must understand that God never rejects the Jewish community, as we find in Chullin 29. The halachah is that if an individual is defiled within the community, he can bring his korban Pesach along with them. His personal sacrifice is not rejected because he is part of the community.

“By the same token, someone who takes stock of himself and finds himself riddled with faults should not give up. Although his feelings of inadequacy push him to abandon his efforts to serve God altogether, God forbid, he must take heart and do what he can. It is true that he is defiled, but if he becomes one with the Jewish community, God will enable him to rectify his many transgressions.”

The Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh, zt”l, offered different advice to help fight feelings of spiritual inadequacy, however. “A person may contemplate the many mitzvos in the Torah and say, ‘How can I possibly fulfill them as required?’ Similarly, someone who has transgressed many sins should beware of what his yetzer haram (evil inclination) will surely claim: ‘How can you rectify so many evil deeds?’

“It is for this person that Moshe warns us, ‘And you should know today.’ He was alluding to Shabbos, regarding which the verse states, ‘Today is Shabbos.’ Moshe was telling us to how to answer such discouraging claims. We must say in our hearts: ‘Our sages explain that keeping Shabbos is likened to fulfilling the entire Torah. Through learning the laws of Shabbos and keeping them carefully, week after week, God will help me rectify my spiritual failings.’”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“Joining the Community”
Chullin 29

If you’re a Christian, you may find several things about this commentary that trouble you. For one, it’s addressed to the Jewish people, so how can it apply to you? It also talks about a Jewish person’s difficulty in fulfilling all of the Torah commandments, which doubtlessly, you believe don’t apply to you. Also, the vast majority of Christians either don’t see the relevance of keeping the Shabbat as Jews do, or they believe that going to church on Sunday and then doing “whatever” afterward, fulfills this requirement.

Take a closer look.

While I agree that the commentary was written specifically to apply to Jews and that the 613 commandments Jews believe they are obligated to fulfill do not apply to non-Jewish Christians (or the vast majority of them, anyway), there is a lesson to be learned here. Despite being “saved” by Jesus Christ, a Christian still can feel as if he or she is spiritually deficient. It’s not like it’s impossible for a Christian to sin or even impossible for a Christian to suffer under multiple, habitual sins. It’s hardly impossible or a Christian to feel terrible guilt over having committed many sins and to experience a profound distance from God.

Some Christians in this situation simply give up their faith and surrender to their sins and the values of a fallen world.

The message of the esteemed Ravs we see quoted above is a message of hope that we Christians can look to as well. We are grafted in to the “cultivated olive tree” and “if the root is holy, so are the branches” (Romans 11:16). But while Rav Yissachar Dov suggests that a Jew can draw strength from the larger Jewish community, and the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh states that when a Jew observes the mitzvot applying to the Shabbat, it’s as if he fulfilled all of the Torah commandments, where does that leave us? How can a Christian overcome a profound sense of guilt over committing not just a few, but many sins across a long time period while professing faith in Christ?

The answer really isn’t that different. One of the reasons we gather in groups and worship communally is to gather strength and encouragement from each other:

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. –1 Thessalonians 5:11

But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. –Hebrews 3:13

SorrowYou may not want to open up and expose the full truth of your being to your entire congregation or Sunday school class, but you can find someone on the Pastoral staff whom you feel you can trust, a compassionate Bible teacher, or a close Christian friend, and ask them for help. Yes, turn to God in prayer, repent in the name of Jesus, ask for forgiveness and the strength to stand tall under temptation, but don’t forget the kindness, grace, and support you can receive from a believing neighbor or friend. God provides us human comforters for a reason.

The other point also applies, though it may be more difficult to see.

In yesterday’s morning meditation, I suggested that it is appropriate and even beneficial for Christians to observe and keep the Shabbat in a manner similar to the Jewish people. That is, to keep an entire 24-hour period of time devoted to drawing nearer to God and to separating from the routine and stress of day-to-day life. Christians tend to see keeping a Sabbath in this manner as a list of what they can’t do (can’t go shopping, can’t go out to lunch, can’t mow the lawn), but it’s more about freedom than about restriction. It’s the freedom to put down the load you carry the other six-days of the week and to spend time focusing who you are; putting all of your attention on God, on prayer, on Bible study, on discussing the teachings of Jesus with others.

Christianity doesn’t have a tradition that says fulfilling one set of holy acts somehow fulfills all of them, but we don’t generally look at things that way. We know that Jesus atoned for our sins, so we don’t concern ourselves with all of the separate actions we would have to take to atone for all of the different sins we committed. We aren’t responsible for making the atonement ourselves, only for accepting the fact that Jesus is our atonement.

Still, as Christians, we can be overwhelmed by the amount and the depth of our sins and how we can ever manage to break the cycle of our disobedience. How can we remove all of the darkness from our souls and know that we are clean after leading sinful lives for months or even years? Wouldn’t a lifetime of sin and hypocrisy as a Christian take a lifetime to undo? How can we be forgiven if we still sin? Rather than trying to see the end result, we can take the “a journey of a thousand miles” point of view on the matter. We can start by focusing on just the first step.

Here’s the deal. Your life is a mess. You’ve really screwed up and you’ve been screwing up for a long time. Maybe your married life is worse than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s or you’ve severely “abused” Google’s image search feature on your computer to view women “inappropriately”. Perhaps your business dealings have been less than “open and above board” or you’ve been putting your hand in the boss’s till rather than helping your employer earn a profit.

Maybe you’ve been calling yourself a “Christian” and going to church on Sunday, but behaving no differently than the atheists and agnostics that populate your community, your workplace, and your neighborhood.

There’s hope. There’s always hope. You can turn it around. It won’t be easy and it won’t be quick. I know you’d like it to be. I know it might seem easier to just give up, but that only puts more distance between you and God and trust me, you’ll regret it in the long run. God said, “”Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:22) and please notice that He is addressing “all you ends of the earth” and not the Children of Israel exclusively.

Faith and belief in Jesus isn’t enough to help you. Knowing God exists and leaving it at that isn’t the answer. James, the brother of the Master, said that we must have faith and deeds (James 2:14-24). We must trust that when we turn from sin to God and desire return, that God will be there with open arms waiting for us, like the Father of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). We must not only believe God will accept our repentance, we must actually take the “risk” of returning and abandoning the sins that keep us from Him.

The only mistake you can make that is absolutely fatal is to walk away from God and never look back. Short of that, while you’re alive, you have hope. The world may be broken, but God can heal your brokenness.

There’s no such thing as defeat. There’s always another chance. To believe in defeat is to believe that there is something, a certain point in time that did not come from Above.

Know that G-d doesn’t have failures. If things appear to worsen, it is only as part of them getting better. We only fall down in order to bounce back even higher.

From the wisdom of the Rebbe
Menachem M. Schneerson
as compiled by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman in his book
Bringing Heaven Down to Earth

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Gateway to Eden

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Gateway to EdenNow the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” –Genesis 3:1-4

We are all familiar with the story of Adam and Eve and their sin with the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge (Genesis 3). As the story goes, the Serpent, most “cunning” of all the animals, comes along and tempts Eve to taste of the fruit, promising that it would open the eyes of man, making her and Adam “as gods knowing good and evil” (v. 5). Eve decides that the Tree is tempting to behold and both eats of the fruit and gives her husband to eat.

This, however, presents a difficultly. If Adam and Eve themselves had no evil inclination, how could they have *wanted* to sin? How could they — entirely spiritual beings — desire anything other than goodness and closeness to G-d? Where could a desire to rebel against G-d stem from?

-Rabbi Dovid Rosenfeld
The Primordial Sin, Part I (2006)
Torah.org

Christianity and Judaism see “the Fall of Man” event in Genesis very differently, but there are obvious parallels. “In the beginning”, Adam and Eve are sinless beings, created by God and knowing an incredible intimacy with the Source as completely spiritual yet physical beings. In Judaism, people originally had no internal inclination toward evil but upon disobeying the one commandment given by God, the external temptation, represented by the Serpent, became internalized. Man separated himself from God and the nature of the world became broken.

Rabbi Rosenfeld goes on in Part III of the series to ask some difficult questions:

To this we explained that man sinned in order to make life more challenging. Before the Sin, man had only a single mitzvah (commandment) — not to partake of the fruit of the Tree. There was, it seemed, very little for him to accomplish. Now, as a physical being desiring evil, life would be so much more challenging. There would be so much more potential growth in store for man. Eventually mankind would require the rigorous and demanding 613 Commandments to curb the animal within and redirect him G-dward. Thus, man — *spiritual* man — *desired* the greater challenge that would now be in store for mankind.

This, however, still does not suffice. Why would man desire a greater challenge? So that he would have more opportunities for spiritual growth? But isn’t he basically just backing up in order to reach the same goal? The ultimate goal of life — self-evident to the spiritual person — is closeness to G-d. If man was created close to G-d, why not *stay* there — perform his single mitzvah and perfect himself? What was so enticing about making life more difficult?

From Christianity’s point of view, there was no justifiable reason for Adam and Eve to sin; to disobey God. It was a terrible, ghastly mistake that sent both humanity and the nature of Creation down a dark and dismal path, away from God and into the arms of darkness, requiring that God give “His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Judaism says that, amidst what Christians can only view as a total spiritual disaster, there is something salvageable and even perhaps desirable to be gleaned:

The deepest, most profound desire a human soul has is to feel it exists — to feel it is not just a passive entity, acted upon and taken care of by others. A person needs to feel he is an independent being — what the Serpent called a “god” (and our mishna calls a “king”) — who can accomplish, grow and make a difference in the world. There is nothing more painful — *spiritually* painful — than feeling that one’s life makes no difference to anyone or anything, that he exists only as a person acted upon by others or by natural forces, and that he has done nothing to express his own existence.

This was man’s dilemma in the Garden of Eden. Man at first, as lofty as he was, was an almost entirely passive, “created” being. He was given existence by G-d. He was placed in the Garden of Eden with all his wants and needs satisfied and with only a single mitzvah to perform. Man wanted to feel he truly existed — that he was not just a plaything of the Almighty. He wanted to be a god himself. How could he do it? By forcing upon himself greater challenges. Adam and Eve would no longer be passive beings, practically created in G-d’s presence. They would now have to earn it. Spirituality would come only through the greatest of efforts — *their* efforts. It would be the challenge they would have to face to achieve their purpose — and in order to exist.

From what Rabbi Rosenfeld presents, man faced two options: live life close to God, obeying the single commandment provided by the Almighty, but never having the opportunity to truly carve out his own path and the ability to rise spiritually, or deliberately distancing himself from God, lowering his spiritual status, and then struggling back up the ladder, rung by rung, to drive himself ever closer to God and Eden.

I suppose a challenge like that would tempt the spiritual Sir Edmund Hillarys of the world, but for the rest of us, we see the “downside” to such a decision in terms of the pain, suffering, and anguished death of billions upon billions of human beings across the long march of millennia between the dawn of man and the current age.

And yet, here we are. “Our physical flesh (is) now a confused mixture of good and evil“. We know the passing of the seasons as we age, and we know decay and death. We are separated from the infinite Spirit. The struggle against evil and the abyss is no longer an external enemy, but rather, it is part of who we are inside. Judaism longs for the coming of the Messiah and Tikkun Olam. Christianity looks to the day when Jesus will return and mankind will be redeemed from a fallen world.

But what if we don’t have to wait? Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh says that we don’t:

After the primordial sin, Adam and Eve heard “the voice of God” walking through the garden. They heard God, He spoke to them, and they answered. This is the consciousness of “hearing,” the height of our consciousness of Godliness (God and His Divine Providence) is our lives subsequent to the primordial sin, the consciousness of the weekdays, the workdays (“By the sweat of your brow…”).

But on Shabbat we return to the pristine state of consciousness of God as it was prior to the primordial sin (and as it will be universally in the future). In the terminology of Kabbalah, during the weekdays our consciousness is at the level of understanding (“hearing” in Hebrew means also “understanding”) whereas on Shabbat our consciousness rises to the level of wisdom (direct insight into the mysteries of creation hidden within reality, and into the “mystery of mysteries,” the Creator of reality, the true and absolute Reality).

Throughout the week everything that happens around us, all that we see and hear, “tells” us about God and His Providence. On Shabbat we don’t have to be told about God, we experience Him directly.

ShabbatOne of the mistakes of the early (non-Jewish) Christian church was to casually discard the commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy” (Exodus 20:8). The church alternately says that Jesus did away with Sabbath observance with the rest of the Law or that the “Sabbath” was mysteriously moved over one day, to coincide with the “Day of the Lord” and the resurrection of the Master. I personally think that the 2nd and 3rd century church found it necessary to separate themselves from anything “too Jewish” and simply shifted the “Holy Day” over by 24 hours to achieve this, and then used specific points of Scripture to justify the decision.

Today, Christians miss out on an opportunity, however limited, to return to Eden. For contained in the Shabbat isn’t just a day to go to church or synagogue, but in fact, we discover an opportunity to remove oneself from the other six days of the week, of the toil, of the work, of the worries, of the laboring, and to totally devote ourselves as spiritual and physical beings to the God of the Universe and the King of Righteousness, as in days of old.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. –Exodus 20:9-11

Both Christians and Jews are going to disagree with me here, particularly since this mitzvot was directed at the Children of Israel, but I believe we Christians cheat ourselves terribly out of the experience to turn one-seventh of our lives into a time to walk personally with God. I think Rabbi Ginsburgh has a point to make, not only to Jews, but to Christians as well. But more gateways to Eden exist:

There are two exceptions to the above distinction between Shabbat and the weekdays, two times that we rise to the consciousness of Shabbat during the otherwise mundane time of the week. The Arizal teaches that our consciousness in the times of prayer, every day of the week three times a day, is at the level of Shabbat. The times of prayer, when we turn to God and address Him directly, are the Shabbat as its light shines into and permeates the week.

Also, a true Torah scholar is referred to in the Zohar as Shabbat. Continuously in communion with God through the means of His Torah (which ultimately in one with Himself) he experiences Shabbat-consciousness the entire week.

Whenever we immerse ourselves in the things of God, we are drawing closer. It happens when we pray, when we give to charity, when we help our neighbor with his yard work, when we hold a small child’s hand to cross the street, when we study the Bible, when we turn away from sin and turn, in obedience, to God.

While the mystic aspects of this process may be confusing or even a little frightening, it is clear that we are separated from God by the nature of humanity and the nature of the world, but we don’t have to be that way always. While waiting for the King of Kings to come to us, we do not have to wait helplessly. We can choose, whether commanded to or not, to observe a Shabbat where we are completely devoted to God. We can take one day of our week and separate it from the rest, separate it from the office, from phone calls, from the Internet, from worry, from work, from care. We can pray, study, speak of God and the Bible with others as we break bread together.

We can create isolated pockets of Eden in the Sabbath and even during the week when we pray and beg to come close to the Throne of Heaven. We can be like “little Messiahs”, helping to fix a broken world one dent and crack at a time by performing even one single act of kindness and humility.

Sin happened. Humanity fell. The world is a broken top spinning hopelessly off the table of existence. We can’t go back to fix it but we can choose to go forward toward God. We can choose to visit Eden on Shabbat. We can cross the threshold of the gates of Paradise every day, every time we pray. We can walk with God in the Garden every time we love our neighbor more than we love ourselves.

However you want to interpret these words, observe Shabbat, return to Eden, walk with God. You can never be lost as long as you are seeking God. You can never be lost as long as God wants you to find Him.

“Do not seek greatness for yourself and do not crave honor. Do more than you have studied and do not desire the ‘table’ of kings. For your table is greater than their table, and your crown is greater than their crown. And your Employer can be trusted to pay you the reward for your efforts.”
–Pirkei Avot
Chapter 6, Mishna 5(a)

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Finding Freedom

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CaptureTell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise.

These things are being taken figuratively: The women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother. –Galatians 4:21-26

Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment. –James 2:12-13

So what is it? Does the Law take away freedom or does the law give freedom? Are we even talking about the same Law; the Torah?

I’ve often suspected that Paul and James didn’t see eye-to-eye on many issues. Paul was operating for years at a time in the diaspora, bringing the Gentiles to faith in the Jewish Messiah and teaching them his ways and how to trust in God. There wasn’t a lot of oversight going on from the Jerusalem Counsel, so Paul could have gotten away with re-writing the Gospel message in his own image, diluting or even eliminating the law and replacing it a type of “grace” that is the antithesis of the law (though in reality, they are not mutually exclusive). It’s clear that James wouldn’t have agreed with that message.

However, if you read D. Thomas Lancaster’s new book The Holy Epistle to the Galatians, you’ll see that Paul and James were more alike than unalike (though I still suspect that they had their individual perspectives). For one thing, despite the common Christian tradition of interpreting Galatians 4:21-26 as “anti-Law” (and in the plain English text, it certainly seems that’s what Paul’s saying), the issues are more complex. Lancaster interprets them this way:

The passage contrasts two types of proselytes: the legal proselyte and the spiritual proselyte. The one becomes part of Abraham’s family by conventional conversion, the other through faith in Messiah, the promised seed of Abraham, in whom all nations find blessing. The passage does not contrast the Old Testament against the New Testament or the Old Covenant with the New Covenant. It does not equate Judaism and Torah with slavery, nor does it pit Christians against Jews.

It means that if you are a Jewish believer , you should be proud of being Jewish because you are a child of Abraham, legally, physically, and spiritually. It means that if you are a Gentile believer, you, too, are part of the people, a spiritual son of Abraham, and that is remarkable – miraculous even. You are a child of the promise that God made to Abraham so long ago.

I’ve already written a review of Lancaster’s book and I’m not going to “reinvent the wheel”, so to speak, but I’m presenting this “extra meditation” this afternoon, in response to the following:

No one can say he is free today because yesterday he was granted freedom.

Freedom is a source of endless energy.
Freedom is the power behind this entire universe.
Freedom is the force that brings existence out of the void.

You are free when you take part in that endlessness. When you never stand still. When you are forever escaping the confines of today to create a freer tomorrow.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Perpetual Freedom”
Chabad.org

As an Orthodox Jew, Rabbi Freeman isn’t considering that the Torah is somehow slavery or bondage, even for a single moment. So how are Christians to interpret his words of freedom as well as the apparent conflict between Paul and James, both observant and devout Jews, on how they view the Torah?

It is said that the world was created for the sake of Torah and that, without the Torah, the world could not have been made. The analogous teaching we have in Christianity is this:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. –John 1:1-3

TeshuvahHere, we see a sort of “fusion” or co-identity, in some mystic sense, between the Torah and the Messiah, Son of the living God. Christians know that Jesus gives us freedom from the slavery of sin and Jews know that the Torah is the gateway to God’s endless energy, the power behind the universe, and the limitless, eternal source that creates existence out of nothingness. Through Torah, God does not enslave, but provides the means by which men may know God and understand our relationship to Him. If the same can be said of Jesus, then we can all understand from where our freedom comes.

While non-Jewish disciples of the Jewish Messiah are not obligated to the same “yoke of Torah” as the Jewish people (see Acts 15), we nonetheless are grafted into the root of the Tree of Life and like branches on the vine, we draw our nourishment and the ability to live a life of holiness from an identical source; God.

To do so requires more than just believing and more than just learning; we must do, we must behave, we must live out the values we understand from the Torah and how they were taught to us by the “living Torah”, the Moshiach, Jesus Christ. Part of that living is understanding where we came from, who we are, and our need to separate from sin and embrace holiness and peace. To gain freedom from sin, we must recognize the depth and despair of sin, which is what the Torah aptly defines, and only upon achieving that understanding, can we truly turn away from that sin and turn toward the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob:

The Ohr Hachaim HaKadosh, zt”l, writes that one can only do teshuvah if he first recognizes the gravity of his sin.

A certain person committed a sin. When Rav Mordechai Aryeh Halevi Horowitz, zt”l, gently nudged him to repent the sinner displayed his relaxed attitude towards teshuvah. “Why repent now? Soon enough it will be Elul, the season when the shofar is sounded to remind us to do teshuvah. Can’t my teshuvah wait until then?”

Rav Horowitz rejected this attitude out of hand. “As is well known, the main element in teshuvah is havdalah, separating between what is proper and what is not. It is only by determining which actions lead to darkness and which generate light that we act as is fitting. Even if a person with understanding falls to sin chas v’shalom, he knows to repent and change his ways. But many people wait until Elul to do teshuvah. After all, isn’t that when we are aroused to repentance by the shofar as the Rambam writes?

“We find in the Mishnah in Chulin 26 that whenever the Shofar is sounded we do not say havdalah. Conversely, whenever we say havdalah we do not sound the shofar. Although on a simple level this is a sign for when they would blow the shofar to signify the onset of Shabbos or Yom Tov, this statement also teaches a lesson about teshuvah. When one feels justified waiting to do teshuvah until the shofar is sounded during Elul, this shows he lacks understanding. He does not comprehend the gravity of sins since this leads to havdalah, healthy separation between what is right and what is wrong. One who has fitting discrimination between good and bad doesn’t wait to hear the shofar to repent!”

Dam Yomi Digest
Stories off the Daf
“Time for Repentance”
Chullin 26

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. –1 John 1:8-9

Good Shabbos