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43 Days: A Failing Grade in Community

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Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

–Matthew 25:37-40 (ESV)

I just came back from a very interesting Sunday school class discussing Pastor’s sermon on Acts 7:44:53 and in fact, I really think I embarrassed myself.

I didn’t mean to, of course.

We were talking about how Christians might limit God and put Him, and our faith, “in a box,” so to speak. It was an extension of what we had learned about the Tabernacle and the Temples from today’s sermon (Pastor does believe that Ezekiel’s Temple will literally be built, which was a relief to hear). One woman in the class was discussing how our true duty as Christians is to believe, quoting from parts of John 6 and Christ’s “bread of life sermon.” I jumped in (and it wasn’t the first time I shot off my big mouth in class today) and said something about feeding the hungry, giving the thirsty something to drink, and visiting the sick, as evidence of our faith.

Then Charlie, the class teacher said something that stopped me cold.

He basically told me that he thought the “final judgment”section of Matthew 25 (specifically Matthew 25:31-46) has been misunderstood. He reminded me of something I had mentioned just a few minutes before; that Jesus was a Jew talking to other Jewish people. He said he understood from the passage that we Christians have a special duty to love the Jewish people and that how we Christians treat the Jews is how we shall be judged.

Wow.

He didn’t put it exactly in those words but like I said, it stopped me cold. I was being very gently rebuked for applying to humanity something that should only be applied to the Jewish people.

Like I said, wow! Really?

I still don’t think that we’re supposed to ignore the needs of a desperate world around us, but I suddenly saw those verses in a new light. I’ve never heard that interpretation before and I don’t know if anyone shares it, but it makes a sort of sense, particularly in light of some of what the “strict: form of Messianic Judaism teaches about the church’s duty to Israel and the Jewish people.

I feel like I really missed something and frankly, I feel pretty humbled (and not a little humiliated) by the whole experience. I have to admit that after some of the conversations I’ve had lately about how certain corners of Messianic Judaism tend to treat Christians like red-headed, left-handed, ne’er-do-well, mentally deficient, step-children, that I also fell into the trap of thinking I had a “leg up” on a few things, given my background. I failed not only at community but especially at humility.

But it’s so confusing because there seems to be such a mix of ideas, opinions, and interpretations going on, and a lot of it seems very traditionally Christian. Then I hit a major speed bump in my assumptions about the church environment I’m in and came to a complete halt. I guess this is something about me God wanted me to learn…and He chose a pretty public spot in which to teach it to me.

Fortunately, it happened near the end of class and I could beat a hasty retreat back to my car and home.

I had intended to write about how the Pastor interpreted the role of the Temple in Judaism, and especially his rather unique understanding of what Stephen was accusing the Sanhedrin of, relative to “putting God in a box.” But then my own failure in putting Christianity “in a box” took precedence, not just in failing to consider the consequences of the Matthew 25 teaching, but in daring to think I actually had something to contribute that might be new and interesting to the class. I was arrogant and I was wrong.

Oops.

When I was anticipating going to church this morning, I got a feeling of boredom, like I’d have to put up with a bunch of “Christianese” for the sake of reconciliation and community. Now I wonder if I should even go back, having stubbed my toe that badly. Maybe I have nothing to contribute at all. Maybe my personal, internal template just can’t be adjusted sufficiently to integrate with these people.

It’s 43 days until my self-imposed time limit, which seems like a goodly amount of time, but it also translates into a maximum of six more Sundays until the end of the year. Let’s figure that I won’t be going to services on December 23rd for obvious reasons, and that takes me down to five Sundays, each a maximum of three hours of exposure to this community. Fifteen more hours total. So far, not including my interview with Pastor Randy, I only have nine hours under my belt.

I took a risk today. I spoke my mind again in class. I really tried to keep quiet and self-contained in services, even sitting in the very back for fear of taking up someone else’s seat, but in class it’s harder because it’s interactive. Things seemed to be going well or at least “neutral” until that last string of words that came out of my mouth.

Like I said…oops.

Anyway, I have a week before I have to face my embarrassment again. We’ll see how it goes. After nine hours, I don’t feel any closer to this community than I did when I first walked in the door, apart from recognizing a few faces. Fifteen more hours to go until I have to make a decision. I might not go back at all except I set a time limit and I am determined to see it through. Maybe it would have been better if I knew nothing at all. Maybe it would have been better if I had a personality that was so shy that I could never speak in a group.

But if I keep my commitment to those last fifteen hours, will it really do any good? I just don’t seem to “do” community very well. There’s a saying attributed to Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens):

“It is better to have people think you a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

Today, I removed all doubt.

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75 Days: A Little Help, Please

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All over people are fighting. Religious fighting, national fighting, family fighting. Some are even ready to die because they think they’re right. How are we ever going to put this world back together?

Way #11 is dik’duk chaveirim – literally “cut if fine with friends.” See the importance of sitting down, of reasoning together. Don’t assume your viewpoint is correct. Open yourself to the ideas of others. “You don’t have to kill me. If you persuade me that you’re right, then I’ll join you.”

We need real friends – someone you can trust, to discuss plans, feelings, ambitions. With a friend, you don’t worry about scoring points or winning ego contests. A good friend will listen to the pros and cons and give you straight, honest feedback.

This is especially important with decisions like: Should I marry so-and-so? Should I accept this job offer? Should I move into this neighborhood? Everyone has different insights. Amongst many people you’ll find many solutions.

Some roads can be traveled alone, but the road of life shouldn’t be one of them. Go with a friend.

-Rabbi Noah Weinberg
“Way #11: Work It Through With Friends”
From the “48 Ways To Wisdom” series
Aish.com

So James, have you thought in terms that you’re robbing people of your fellowship? You have something that is vitally needed to be heard by the Christian community. Not to mention your sweet and gracious nature that is a great example.

I will also respectfully say you’re limiting God. I find that if I trust Him enough to obey and not focus on all the reasons I can’t, shouldn’t, it’s too hard too, then He is faithful to work out the details that I have no control over (the heart condition of others). After all, he doesn’t ask me to control others, only to obey Him.

-Lrw in a recent comment on my blog

What do I do when my love is away
Does it worry you to be alone?
How do I feel by the end of the day
Are you sad because you’re on your own

No, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends

-Lennon and McCartney
With a Little Help from My Friends

I suppose that’s how we all get through things…with a little help from friends. As you can see, it’s been suggested to me that not only might I benefit from fellowship with like-minded believers, but that they might benefit from fellowship with me. Sounds egotistical of me to say it like that, but I think I know what Lrw is saying. This is especially true when, as I’ve been describing in this series, there seems to be so much fighting and feuding and jockeying for position in the religious blogosphere and particularly within the Hebrew Roots movement.

But I must say that religious fighting and religious “haters” aren’t limited to the small corner of cyberspace I happen to occupy. Here’s two examples. First, from the Jewish side of things:

Question: I recently stumbled on an anti-Semitic website and they had a whole list of Talmud sayings that sound very non-PC. One example was: “It is permitted to marry a 3-year-old girl,” which they said means that Judaism condones sexual abuse of a young child. Another example was: “The best of the Gentiles, kill.” Does the Talmud really say this stuff?

The Aish Rabbi Replies: Misquoting Talmudic texts or taking them out of context is an age-old method used to incite anti-Semitism.

In the example that you cite, that a Jew may marry a 3-year-old girl, it simply means that under the age of 3, a “marriage” contract has no validity. Beyond that, any “marriage arrangement” made at above the age of 3 must be accepted and validated by the girl herself at such time that she attains maturity. The Talmud is discussing a technical legal point, not condoning abhorrent sexual activities.

As for: “The best of the gentiles, kill,” the context here is very crucial. The question was raised, how could there be any horses chasing after the Jews with chariots (in Exodus 14:7), when they were all killed in the plague of hail (Exodus 9:19). The Midrash (Tanchuma – Beshalach 8) answers that the horses were owned by those who heeded God’s warnings and locked his animals indoors (Exodus 9:20).

The Midrash concludes that these God-fearing Egyptians — the best Egyptians — turned out to be the ones that gave their horses to chase the Jewish people. In other words, in this particular instance, even the best Egyptians turned out to be oppressors, too. Yet even they – “the best of the gentiles” – were deserving of death.

The Torah states unequivocally that ALL men were created in the image of God (Genesis chapter 1). In fact, the Talmud emphasizes that Adam was created from the dust of all four corners of the earth (so to speak), so that no one nation could claim superiority. And of course, it is forbidden for a Jew to kill a Gentile. (source: Talmud Sanhedrin 57a; “Taz” Y.D. 158:1).

So you see, one can change the meaning of anything by taking it out of context. And better not to waste time refuting these points one by one. God’s Torah is morally perfect, and if something ever sounds otherwise, it is because it is not understood properly.

“Misquoting the Talmud”
from the “Ask the Rabbi” series
Aish.com

Christianity in general has an issue with the Talmud and how it is used in Judaism, believing that it is of no value and that it is the “wisdom of the elders” being placed higher than the Word of God. The Hebrew Roots movement also tends to disdain the Talmud and thus, the last 2,000 years or so of Jewish culture and philosophy as well as Jewish art, literature, lifestyle, and just about anything else Jewish that isn’t, strictly speaking, “Biblical.” And yet, it’s impossible in virtually any sense, for anyone, Jew or Gentile alike, to observe the Torah mitzvot without referencing Talmud and granting the ancient Jewish sages the right and ability to render authoritative halakah. In fact, the very structure of the books, chapters, and verses in the Tanakh (Old Testament) was created by those self-same sages. Try to avoid that if you can.

However, this isn’t just a problem on the Jewish side of the equation:

If you want to see a good example of what be-devils any scholarly analysis of practically anything to do with Jesus and early Christianity, have a read of the postings of the Canadian TV self-promoter, Simcha Jacobovici here.

Jacobovici (who styles himself “the naked archaeologist” on his self-produced TV programmes, and offers no competence in anything relevant to the analysis of the fragment) notes that various scholars (particularly Coptologists and specialists in ancient Greek palaeography) have raised questions about the authenticity of the fragment (announced to the scholarly world in Prof. Karen King’s paper presented at a conference in Rome several weeks ago), and simply trashes all the scholars and queries as “sleeper agents of Christian orthodoxy”.

He claims that they give no basis for their hesitations, which is patently incorrect and misleading. The several scholarly analyses that I’ve seen all in fact present in considerable detail reasons for wondering about this fragment. I’ve seen none, not a one of the scholarly analyses in question, that raises any issue about “Christian orthodoxy”.

-Larry Hurtado
from “The ‘Jesus’ Wife’ Fragment: Self-Promoting Personal Attacks”
Larry Hurtado’s Blog

I suppose I was being rather self-centered or myopic in believing this problem was confined to the wee online community in which I participate. As you can see (and I have discovered), these sorts of problems exist elsewhere and probably everywhere. The only way to avoid them is to be completely disengaged from community, even online community which is as easy to take or lose as opening and closing a web browser.

On the one hand, the thought of facing such vitriolic commentary either online or face-to-face isn’t appealing in the slightest. On the other hand, I have to remember that there are some “religious people” who don’t use God like a blunt instrument with which to beat others repeatedly about the head and shoulders:

Rav Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev was known for his love and good will toward his fellow Jews always trying to assess the good in people rather than expose the bad.

Once on the Fast of Tish’a B’av he saw a Jew eating in a non-kosher restaurant. He tapped lightly on the window of the establishment and summoned the man outside.

“Perhaps you forgot that today is a fast day?” Rav Levi Yitzchok queried.

“No, Rebbe,” the man replied.

“Then perhaps you did not realize that this restaurant in not kosher.”

“No, Rebbe, I know it is a traife (non-kosher) eatery.”

Rav Levi Yitzchok softly placed his hands on the man’s shoulders and looked heavenward. “Ribbono Shel Olam, Master of the Universe,” he exclaimed. “Look at how wonderful your children are. They may be eating on a fast day. In a non-kosher restaurant to boot. Yet they refuse to emit a falsehood from their lips!”

-Rabbi M. Kamenetzky
“Eve of Life”
Commentary on Torah Portion Beresheet
Torah.org

As much as I lament the few rather vocal and hostile nudniks (pests) on the web, there are a lot more people who represent the spirit demonstrated by Rav Levi Yitzchok who continue to be an encouragement to me.

However, the next step, if I understand what is being asked of me correctly, will be a lot harder.

 

 

Torah Portion

Chukat: The Chutzpah of Entering Fire

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This is the Torah (law): A man who dies in a tent…

–Numbers 19:14

The Torah is only acquired by those who kill themselves for it in the tents of study.

-The Zohar

It happened in the winter of 1798 or 1799, when Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch was a child of eight or nine. Every Friday night Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi would deliver a discourse of chassidic teaching to a select group of disciples. Little Mendel begged to be allowed in, but his grandfather refused.

The dwelling of Rabbi Schneur Zalman consisted of two two-room buildings, joined by a connecting passageway. In one of the wings, a large wood-burning stove, used for heating and occasionally to bake bread, was set in the wall between the two rooms. The stove opened into the outer room, and also protruded into the inner room which served as Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s study.

One Friday night, the Rebbe was delivering his weekly discourse in his study. It was an exceptionally cold night, so a gentile was summoned to heat the oven. For some reason, he found it difficult to push the logs all the way in to the oven, so he built the fire near the opening of the stove. As a result, the outer room soon began to fill with smoke. Once again, he tried to push the burning logs further in, but they wouldn’t budge. The poor man had to start all over again. He put out the fire, pulled out the logs, and peered into the stove to see what was preventing the logs from going in.

His shouts and shrieks summoned the entire household. The session in Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s room was disrupted; those in the second building also came running. Inside the stove lay a young boy.

-Rabbi Yanki Tauber
“The Path of Fire”
Commentary on Torah Portion Chukat
Once Upon a Chasid series
Chabad.org

Chassidic tales are very compelling but it’s impossible to know how much some of them represent actual events. I’ve come to look at these tales as stories that have been crafted to communicate important moral and religious thoughts to a specific audience. Since I’m obviously not part of that audience, it’s rather puzzling that I should be drawn to them at all. Certainly most of my fellow Christians are at best, indifferent to the stories of the Chassidim and prefer moral commentaries from the ancient or current Christian scholars and commentators.

So what’s wrong with me?

I don’t know.

According to Rabbi Eli Touger’s commentary on this Torah Portion:

The term Chukim refers to those mitzvos whose rationale cannot be grasped by human intellect.

I find my own “rationale” for pursuing the writing of a blog focused on not only Jewish, but specifically Chassidic teachings, to be just as difficult to grasp by my intellect. As I’ve said in the past, the content that I discover in Chabad sources talks to me with my metaphors, but it doesn’t make sense that it should. This is not only because I’m not Jewish (and certainly not Orthodox), but that I am not particularly learned either. I should be just as put off by what I’m reading as most people in the church. I have no explanation for why I return to this particular pool daily to drink and seek refreshment.

But then not all of my meditations are particularly refreshing.

I mentioned just the other day that we are all seeking out a greater imagination, particularly when our own well becomes dry. I’ve also said that there are times when I feel as if I’m in a wilderness waiting for God to do something, but in truth, it is God who waits in the desert for me. Like a dunce in the corner of the classroom, I may have asked God too many stupid questions but I just can’t figure out how else to talk to Him.

But it’s not just me and God. If it were, I suppose life wouldn’t seem so complicated. Being married to the girl with the Jewish soul has taught me that Judaism isn’t really accessible to me, but then Christianity isn’t exactly an open door, either. I call myself a Christian as a matter of intellectual honesty, but I’m the weirdest Christian I know. If I ever entered a church and actually said what I really think, feel, and believe in a completely unfiltered manner, I’d most likely get thrown out on my ear.

I’ve talked about “not fitting in” before and I suppose this missive is just the latest incarnation of that personal state. Judaism is, by definition, community and in theory, so is Christianity (though “salvation” is personal and not corporate) but I’ve gotten just too “strange” to fit into anybody’s community, at least for more than a tiny march of days. Not only that, but I have to consider how my joining any particular community would affect my family. My being married to a Jewish woman, and being dedicated to ensuring the safety of her being a Jew takes an obvious toll on my being a Christian. She can tolerate my meeting with a couple of guys once a week, but church would be pushing the envelope a little too hard…for the both of us.

So I have a mystery and no answers. While I share my perspectives with the Internet, it’s a wholly impersonal environment. People respond to me, but it’s “virtual” and only on rare and brief occasions does the virtual transcend into reality.

I know what I’m writing has virtually no connection to Chukat, but this is who I am and where I am right now. How about we finish the story as told by Rabbi Tauber and see what turns up.

A small lamp was the only source of light in the smoke-filled room, so it took some time until the child was identified as the Rebbe’s grandson, little Menachem Mendel.

For some weeks now, the child had discovered that he could hear his grandfather’s words through the thin wall of the stove. Every Friday night he would clamber deep into the large stove, and listen to the profound and lofty words of the Rebbe’s teachings. And now, because of the bitter cold, his listening post had been discovered.

Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s daughter-in-law, Rebbetzin Sheina, who was present at the time, related:

“When they pulled the child out of the stove, he was paralyzed with fright. My mother-in-law, Rebbetzin Sterna, cried to my father-in-law, the Rebbe: ‘See what could of happened! A tragedy! Strangers you allow to enter, but when your own child begged you, you wouldn’t let him in!’ Father-in-law replied: ‘Sha, sha. Moses reached Mount Sinai only by beholding fire – only then did he merit that the Torah be given through him. Torah is acquired only through self-sacrifice.’ “

One way to deal with not fitting in is to have the chutzpah to fit in anyway. In little Menachem Mendel’s case, he fit himself into a stove, but unfortunately, he didn’t anticipate that on a cold night, he could end up being part of the fuel used to warm the room. Rabbi Tauber relates a childish error in judgment to the willingness to die for the sake of Torah learning, but clearly in the real world, the little boy wasn’t willing to burn nor were his elders willing to incinerate him for the Torah’s sake. The real lesson (at least according to the Rebbetzin, since the Rebbe disagreed) is that if someone wants in badly enough and they show a willingness to make sacrifices, you should let them in.

That doesn’t really work in my case since I’ll never be Jewish enough (or rather, I’ll never be a Jew at all) to learn as a Jew and I’ll never be Christian enough to fit into the church culture. I don’t know what I’d have to be to fit in with my wife religiously. I don’t think there is an answer to that one except, as I said before, to be a “low profile Christian at home.”

But what about God? I guess I can be a Christian at home in terms of behaviorally displaying my morals and ethics without being overtly “Christian” (openly praying or invoking Christ’s name, for example). In this case, chutzpah won’t get me anywhere except in hot water, so I’ve nowhere else to go except into the privacy of my own thoughts, which gets turned into very public blog posts…and to turn to God.

I’m seeking out a greater imagination, but I’m putting some pretty harsh limits on it.

Solomon couldn’t comprehend the mitzvah of the Red Heifer and I can’t comprehend my own existence. If God didn’t require that Solomon understand, I guess I don’t have to, either. I can only continue living and to see what happens next.

The irony is that I don’t know what to do, and yet I feel as if God is waiting for me to make the next move. I guess that’s what faith is…acknowledging God and proceeding forward, even when it doesn’t make sense, for what alternative do we have?

Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your fathers put me to the test
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known my ways.”
Therefore I swore in my wrath,
“They shall not enter my rest.” –Psalm 95:7-11 (ESV)

Good Shabbos.

 

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Struggling with the World, Part 2

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From the anthropological perspective on the problem of evil, therefore, the prime concern is not so much to defend the notions of divine justice and power. It is rather, as in other personal relationships, to determine what measure of continuity, stability, and predictability can enable the relationship with God to survive all shocks. It is to identify the cluster of beliefs that supports a person’s will to persist in the face of tragedy and suffering. If the world I live in requires that I become overly vigilant because of the threat of danger striking at any moment, then how can I sustain commitment to a way fo life predicated on God’s covenantal love and justice?

How do we respond to events that can call into question our whole identity as God’s relational partners?

-Rabbi David Hartman
Chapter 8: “Rabbinic Responses to Suffering”
A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism

Note: If you haven’t read Part 1 of this “meditation” already, please do so before proceeding here.

An atheist can dismiss such questions by dismissing God. The presence of tragedy, suffering, and evil can be accepted as conditions of a natural world filled with imperfect human beings. It can also be a world that, while imperfect, is struggling to develop toward a higher moral and ethical reality as indeed, progressivism strongly believes. Human beings then, establish and revise the foundations of our own morality, sometimes radically, as time advances and the concepts of rightness, mercy, and justice continue to evolve in societal consciousness.

The covenantal Jew on the other hand, perpetually wrestles with God as did Jacob (Genesis 32:22-32) before his confrontation with the (supposedly) murderous Esau. But it’s in that battle that a Jew struggles not only with God but with himself.

A covenantal religious consciousness is always vulnerable to self-doubt and to feelings of rejection and guilt. When suffering and tragedy have struck without any explanation once, twice, and repeatedly, individuals in the community no longer know what kind of world they are living in. Like Job, they may ask: “Why do You hide Your face and treat me like an enemy?” (Job 13:24)

-Hartman

But in Rabbi Hartman’s viewpoint, a Jew is not simply a conduit for the cosmic forces of an Almighty Being to use to manipulate the course of history or even personal events.

The acceptance of that responsibility therefore need not entail that paralyzing sense of guilt alleged in Paul’s criticism of the law. Nor does mitzvah demand unconditional obedience without rational discernment, since the halakhah expects from Jews not just a dedicated will to serve God but also a reflective, sensitive, and critical moral disposition.

This takes away the motivation for a covenantal Jew to say that “God told me to do it” when facing a moral decision or in responding to personal disaster. The Torah is not a static set of rules carved in stone but rather a moral imperative written on the living and beating heart of every Jew. Each situation must be examined and evaluated not only against the yardstick of tradition and the mitzvah, but as potentially a wholly new phenomenon that may require a completely unique and unanticipated response, framed within the organic, evolving Jewish moral and historical tapestry.

Returning to Rabbi Freeman’s commentary on Judaism and its response encountering the demands of a progressive culture, the Rebbe felt that modernity didn’t present a set of obstacles but only “challenges. Challenges chiding you to show your stuff. Show that stuff and do what a Jew has to do, and those challenges themselves lift you on their shoulders, carrying you high.”

To continue:

Every talk, every letter, every teaching of the Rebbe must be understood in that context: We are not prisoners within an ominous world; we are the agents of its Master. We are not here to placate the world, but to repair it; not to reform ourselves to its tastes, but to reform it to the tastes of its Creator; not to conserve Judaism, but to be an organic part of its flourishing growth; not to reconstruct it, but to use it to reconstruct our world. Because ours is not a Torah of the past, but one that beckons to us from a magnificent future.

The Rebbe’s response to the challenges of a world and its developing, progressive morality is to move one giant step backward and to take a “metaview” of that world. Human advancement and even human history is transitory. Modern liberal progressive thought acknowledges that morality is not a fixed entity and adapts across time and the needs of the human spirit. While the Rebbe no doubt had a more established sense of moral and ethical standards, he also understood that the world is not ownerless or that, human beings are not the only “landlords” of reality. The world has a Master and we are His agents.

The world of human events wasn’t something to be avoided, but to be encountered and wrestled with. Rabbi Freeman characterises the Rebbe’s response by saying that “he grabbed it by its horns and harnessed it to plow his field.” For the Rebbe, each Jew stands in this place:

When you stand in a place of enlightenment, the Rebbe so often taught, you may have boundless, infinite light—but you do not have G‑d Himself. In the void of light where this world was made; in the darkness of Jewish exile, where we must choose life from the depths and create our own light to find it; in a society that forces us to wake up, take the reins of our own lives and challenge everything—there we touch G‑d at the very core.

A Jew may be surrounded by darkness but he stands in a place of light and it is from that light, regardless of how hopeless the circumstance, he must proceed, carrying with him not only the strength of the traditions of the past, but the infinite hope of a future from which the Moshiach will emerge and where God will rescue His people. Atheism, progressivism, secular humanism are conditions to be wrestled with, to be “grabbed by its horns and harnessed,” but they are not defining, either of a Jew nor the world that is ultimately owned by God.

My understanding of all of this is that Judaism may wrestle with itself, with the demands of society, and ultimately with God, but it is the Jewish identity that remains the one constant that enables them as a people, to move forward, to survive not only challenges, but horrors, and that will see them finally standing at the foot of the throne of God, receiving His promises of life and peace.

As I’ve been writing this, I’ve been seeing a few elements that can be adapted to Christianity and those promises we expect to be fulfilled by our Master at the end of this age. But we must also learn to establish an identity that can engage our environment without fear or despair. Our “liability” as such, is that we Christians are commanded to not only encounter our neighbor and love him, but to attempt to convince him to adopt our faith and our worldview (which is something no Jew must face). In that, we present ourselves as agents of the world’s greatest benefactor while being perceived by many in the secular world as humanity’s greatest enemy.

We are ridiculed and reviled by atheists and humanists and in response, we struggle with our own doubts, retreat into concrete bunkers of inflexible dogma, or attack the inhabitants of an unbelieving world, thereby abandoning our evangelical imperative. But we can neither ignore the world nor hate it. We are commanded to live in it and to live with faith in God. Like the covenantal Jew, we must be anchored to our legacy who, for us, are the Apostles and disciples of ancient times, and also look to the hope of the future when Jesus returns.

In the meantime, like the Rebbe, we need to seize the world around us and live in it, though we are not of it. We must treat each person we encounter with love, respect, and dignity. Our values do not require that they respond in kind, only that we are consistent in imitating the example of our teacher and Master by being involved and by being a light.

We are not trapped between a hostile and violent army and a vast and unconquerable sea. We can move forward. The sea will part. But first, we have to get our feet wet.

Don’t be afraid.

Addendum: Just found an article at Commentary Magazine on liberal intolerance of religious folks (in this case, Jews) called Liberal Prejudice Against the Orthodox Crosses a Line. I can see we have a long way to go.

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Spilled Out

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The rabbinic approach to prayer, rather than pointing to the collectivization of Jewish religious consciousness, encourages individuals within the community to discover the personal dimension of Judaic spirituality within the communal life of the halakhah. In prayer and the Shema, the rabbis sought to allow the personal to be present in the framework of halakhic practice by joining individual initiative to structure, discipline, and order. They insisted that habit not triumph in the life of prayer, and they constantly admonished the community that prayer must not be a gesture that one repeats unthinkingly. They insist that one must not pray today just because one prayed yesterday. Personal supplication must be brought within the fixed framework of the petitional benedictions of the Amidah. One must even strive to bring novel elements into daily petitional prayer.

-Rabbi David Hartman
A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism
Chapter 7: “Individual and Community Prayer”

Actually, there are days when I’d do almost anything if I could just flip my brain, heart, and soul into automatic pilot and be able to belong to the “collectivization of…religious consciousness” and turn what some religious Jews refer to as tefillat nedavah (voluntary prayer) into “structure, discipline, and order.” Sometimes my relationship with God, or at least the thoughts and feelings associated with that relationship, is too chaotic and scrambled to be of much use to either me or Him.

But as Rabbi Hartman describes it, there is a greater responsibility and intention (kavvanah) in Jewish prayer than most Christians tend to understand. There are exceptions, such as Pastor Jacob Fronczak’s love of liturgy, but I think you have to be wired a certain way as a non-Jew in order to love liturgical prayer. For me though, on those days (or weeks) when it is just too much for me to summon up the necessary energy and passion to take aim at God through my “prayer antenna” so what I want to say to God will reach Him, a structured set of benedictions would do quite nicely.

I don’t know where we learn to pray. I guess it’s different for everyone. For Rabbi Hartman, it came from listening to his mother pray during the synagogue service when he was a child.

I could hear her asking God to ensure that her adult sons would find good brides and that her husband would be able to support his family with dignity. Her prayers gave expression to her personal yearnings as a wife and mother. Her language was in no way inhibited or stunted. As I listened to her prayers, I did not sense that she felt unworthy to approach God with “petty” personal needs. She would have been astonished if someone had told her that the significance of prayer is to manifest an Akedah consciousness and asked how she dared feel so relaxed and easy before God. My mother, a deeply traditional Jew, prayed in the manner of generations of Jewish mothers. She continued a tradition that she received from her own family.

I’m compelled to think of the prayer of Hannah when reading about how Rabbi Hartman heard his mother’s prayers:

As she continued praying before the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was speaking in her heart; only her lips moved, and her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli took her to be a drunken woman. And Eli said to her, “How long will you go on being drunk? Put your wine away from you.” But Hannah answered, “No, my lord, I am a woman troubled in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for all along I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation.” Then Eli answered, “Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to him.” And she said, “Let your servant find favor in your eyes.” Then the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad. –1 Samuel 1:12-18 (ESV)

It’s funny. In the moments when I was typing the previous quote from Rabbi Hartman’s book, I also couldn’t help but think of my wife. As a child, she would never have heard her mother pray as a Jew because her mother had long since abandoned any vestige of cultural, let alone religious Judaism. I can only feel compassion for my wife as I picture her first entering into the Jewish community in middle age, determined to reclaim what God intended for her from the first breath she took after birth, but could never live out until decades later.

The only prayer I can remember from my childhood is the one that begins, Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep…” While I don’t doubt that it’s comfortable for most Christians to keep formalized and liturgical prayer down to a bare minimum, I think they rob themselves and their children of something special when they dismiss it altogether. There’s a fabric of tradition, history, community, and belonging in those prayers. I’ve never been part of a purely Christian congregation that has employed a traditional prayer structure (although it could be argued that the small, “One Law” group with whom I once “fellowshipped” and continue to remember with affection, were more Christian than anything else), but in relation to Jewish prayer, the attraction for me to be part of that dynamic is substantial.

But more often than not, I find that serious time in prayer eludes me. I don’t know if it’s because I previously declared I would forego worship practices that even appear to be Jewish (with some rare and recent exceptions) or it it’s something more endemic to my soul, but lately, God seems to be rather “standoffish,” or perhaps it’s me. I used to think that a “crisis of faith” would be singular and rather brief since, by definition, a crisis is a dramatic event or set of events that occur very quickly and result in non-trivial change, but now I’m not so sure. I’m beginning to believe, maybe just in my case, that this “crisis of faith” is an evolutionary process that is leading me to some newer (and hopefully higher) realization of who I am in God.

In commenting on Maimonides, Hartman states:

I believe, however, that Maimonides’ understanding of prayer as avodah she-be-lev is an invitation to individuals to discover their own personal and individual mode of worship within a system in which common practice and community are so heavily emphasized.

She-be-lev or service of the heart is the individual operating of personal worship and devotion to God within the larger community of Judaism. It’s the unique part of space and time where a man davening during morning prayers with a minyan can still be an individual Jew with an individual heart and soul given up like an incense offering to God.

Traditional Jewish prayer is like a container holding a liquid. The container defines the shape of the liquid but not its characteristics, substance, and behavior. The liquid can freeze, boil, or steam within the container and still be held and kept “safe.” Without the container though, all it can do is spill into a puddle on the counter top and dribble onto the floor, becoming fodder for the mop and destined for the drain and sewer.

When I try to pray or even think about how to get back to, let alone closer to God, I’m poured all over the ground. It would be nice if I could consider myself Paul’s proverbial “drink offering” (Philippians 2:17; 2 Timothy 4:6), but I know in fact, that I’m just making a mess.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. –2 Corinthians 4:7-10 (ESV)

Does anyone out there have a sponge to soak me up with and a handy jar to squeeze me into?

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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.