Tag Archives: FFOZ

Learning God

June 20, 2013 James Pyles 2 Comments

In the early period of his leadership the Alter Rebbe taught: “The footsteps of man are directed by G-d.”(Tehillim 37:23) When a Jew comes to a particular place it is for an (inner Divine) intent and purpose – to perform a mitzva, whether a mitzva between man and G-d or a mitzva between man and his fellow-man. A Jew is G-d’s messenger.

Wherever a messenger (shaliach) may be, he represents the power of the meshalei’ach, the one who sent him. The superior quality that souls possess, higher than the angels (who are also “messengers”), is that souls are messengers by virtue of Torah.

“Today’s Day”
Tuesday, Tamuz 10, 5703
Compiled by the Lubavitcher Rebbe; Translated by Yitschak Meir Kagan
Chabad.org

If you know something worthwhile, share it. By reaching others, you will reach yourself.

Whatever you learn – from books, lectures, or life experience – do so with the goal of sharing with others. If it was fascinating, how did it change you? What did it teach you about living? And how can you transfer that insight to others?

-Rabbi Noah Weinberg
“Way #46: Learn In Order To Teach”s
Aish.com

Sharing life experiences? Rabbi Weinberg is talking my language.

The past two “morning meditations” were my commentary on a teaching given by First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) President and Founder Boaz Michael called Moses in Matthew. One of the essential points I tried to get across is that not all of the information “encoded” in the gospels (or the rest of the Bible for that matter) can be accessed and understood apart from a Jewish context. That context includes not only understanding the original languages and the cultural and historical framework of the time in which the Bible writers were operating, but the philosophical, religious, and midrashic material that would have been in the minds of those writers and their immediate audiences.

While the Bible is truly the inspired word of God, the Bible writers most likely had no idea that what they penned would be translated into hundreds of languages and consumed by nations and cultures all over the planet, two-thousand or more years into the future. In their intent, they were writing to people like them, people they knew or knew about, a specific and contemporary readership.

Localization, when applied to language, is the process of writing a document in one language with the specific purpose that it be (more or less) easily translated into other languages. That requires the original document be written as “generically” as possible, employing no slang, idiom, or other language forms that are difficult to translate literally into other languages.

But one of the things we know or should know, is that the Bible writers used a lot of word play, symbolism, imagery, idiom, slang, and nicknames that were extremely specific to not only the original languages but to the time and culture in which these writers were living. To make matters worse, the Greek of the New Testament can seem extremely awkward at communicating thoughts and ideas that the Hebrew thinking/speaking writers were attempting to communicate.

My Pastor, who is fluent in Hebrew, agrees that some of the New Testament phrases written in Greek are worded in a very difficult manner, but they become much clearer when “retro-translated” into Hebrew (which is one of the reasons why the Delitzsch Hebrew Gospels are extremely helpful).

The quote from “Today’s Day” at the top of this blog post says in part that “A Jew is G-d’s messenger. Wherever a messenger (shaliach) may be, he represents the power of the meshalei’ach, the one who sent him.” That’s quite true but as disciples of the Jewish Messiah, even we Gentiles are messengers of God and we also represent the one who sent us.

Rabbi Weinberg says that the purpose of learning is to teach, not that we must all take on the role of a formal teacher, but any time we communicate something we have learned to another, we are teaching them what we learned. That’s what I’m doing with this blog.

The interesting thing is that, based on everything I’ve written over the past several days (and long before that), as Christians, we can’t really learn the Bible beyond a certain point until we learn to read it “Jewishly.” Therefore, we can’t really teach what we’ve learned about the Bible beyond a particular limit until we’ve learned to teach it “Jewishly.”

This isn’t to say that we Gentile Christians will ever learn to conceptualize the world in the same way as someone who was born into a Jewish home, raised and educated within a fully cultural and religious Jewish context, and as someone who lives a life that is halachically Jewish. I live with a Jewish wife and have three Jewish children and I don’t come anywhere near understanding my world from the Jewish perspective, let alone writing from that perspective.

But hopefully I’ve learned enough to add a bit of an “accent” to my language…to communicate from a different perspective, presenting my understanding of the Bible (limited though it may be) in a way that appears new or at least different from what most Christians teach and comprehend.

According to Rabbi Weinberg, you don’t have to be perfect to teach. That’s a lesson I know all too well:

The best teachers make mistakes; more at the beginning, less later on. It’s like riding a bike or driving a car – the more you do it, the easier it becomes. Nobody ever became a great teacher without flopping a few times.

The first time, you’ll probably be laughed at. But don’t be discouraged. (Be glad they didn’t curse you!) Try again. The second time they’ll argue with you. That’s a good sign already; you’ve got them engaged. The third time they’ll thank you. That makes all the previous efforts worth it.

The same way a budding artist needs to study under the masters, a teacher needs to study the methods of great educators. If you have a favorite teacher (or journalist, actor, etc.) be conscious of their techniques for communicating the message.

But don’t wait until you’re perfect – because that’s a long way off! Just get started and teach as best you can. It will do wonders to help clarify your own viewpoint.

Of course, no one will ever become a perfect teacher and some people are more naturally gifted in that role than others. One of the reasons I write is to clarify what I’m learning within myself. Sometimes presenting that to others helps me learn as well. If the Jewish people were called to be a light to the nations, then Messiah has taught us that we need to be a light, too. We are learning things from our Master that are well worth sharing, but as he said, a light cannot shine if it is hidden under a basket.

Learning and teaching is a living, organic process. We know we’re alive when we are interacting, not only with other human beings, but with God. We are fulfilling the purpose of our existence. We are exercising the reason for our design.

We don’t have to be perfect and we don’t even always have to be all that good. We do have to do, though. If we are sincere, and motivated, and acting in His Name, we will move forward, we will learn, we will teach, and with the help of God, a few people will actually understand, then learn, and then teach too.

People think that to attain truth you have to pulverize boulders, move mountains and turn the world upside-down. It’s not so. Truth is found in the little things.

On the other hand, to move a mountain takes some dynamite and a few bulldozers. To do one of those little things can take a lifetime of working on yourself.

You do what you can: Learn and meditate and pray and improve yourself in the ways you know how—and He will help that what you do will be with Truth.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Small Truths”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe, Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”

-Helen Keller, American writer and political activist

The Master said (Luke 21:15), “…for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” While that may not always seem true given the amount of ridicule believers receive from various members of our society, we are not abandoned and alone, either. Learn and keep on learning, but information kept to yourself only helps you. You are only serving God when you share it and Him.

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The Jewish Gospel, Part 2

June 19, 2013 James Pyles 8 Comments

But the way Boaz teaches this lesson teaches us something about Biblical sufficiency. The idea of sufficiency is that the Bible is all that we need to understand the Bible. That’s not exactly true. While the plain meaning of the text does teach us something about Jesus and who we are as Christians, an understanding of early Jewish thought, writings, and midrash, shows us that the text contains a deeper meaning, one that would elude us if we ignored the extra-Biblical understanding of how an early Jewish audience would have comprehended these verses and associated them with other parts of the Bible. Sola scriptura isn’t quite the beginning and end of how we can understand the Word of God.

We may call the Bible “sufficient” and it is, but it can be more “complete” only when we reinsert the Jewishness of its overall context and include both Jewish perspective and Jewish midrashic thought into our understanding.

That is some of my commentary from yesterday’s morning meditation (If you haven’t done so already, please click the link and read part 1 before continuing here) based on First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) founder and director Boaz Michael’s “Moses in Matthew” presentation. The original lecture series is a couple of years old, but it was recently released on audio CD and I’ve had the opportunity to listen to this teaching. I learned a few things from this lecture and by sharing some of it, I hope you can learn a few things, too.

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

–Mark 12:28-31 (NRSV)

It’s interesting that Matthew’s rendition of this event (Matthew 22:36-40) doesn’t include a more direct reference to the Shema. Many Christians imagine that Jesus replaced the 613 commandments of the Torah (though the Torah wouldn’t be formally codified in this manner for many centuries after the resurrection) with just two, thus substituting grace for the law. But that’s not how it would have sounded to Messiah’s original Jewish audience.

In yesterday’s blog post, I related the part of Boaz’s teaching illustrating how the Master (or any Jewish teacher in those days) could quote from just a single verse in a Psalm or other portions of the Tanakh (Old Testament), and his audience would immediately recall the full text of the part of scripture to which he was referring, connecting the teaching to the much wider body of words and imagery. When Jesus taught about the two greatest commandments and in Hebrew said, “Shema Yisrael” (Hear O Israel), the people listening wouldn’t have just thought of Deuteronomy 6:4-7, but to the rest of the content of that chapter as well as Deuteronomy 11 and Numbers 28 which also are part of the Shema. The reason the Pharisee who was an expert in the law agreed with Jesus so strongly is because he not only agreed with the interpretation of the immediate text under discussion, but the wider implications of how Jesus was presenting and teaching the Shema and Torah as good news and hope to Israel.

And again, Christians tend to miss this point, especially since we are (most likely) reading the text in English and not viewing it with a Jewish mindset. But the further importance of the Delitzsch Hebrew Gospels being presented at the same time as Boaz’s teaching is that “retro-translating” the Greek back into a “Hebrew voice,” allows for a more “Jewish” reading of this lesson, giving us a closer look at how the ancient Jewish listeners were hearing and understanding Jesus. Even reading the Gospels in Greek would still “miss” what the ancient Jews were hearing when Jesus taught.

We can see a further connection here:

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.

–Matthew 7:24 (NRSV)

The two greatest commandments do not replace the Torah nor do they really condense the Torah. This teaching actually unpackages the meaning of the Shema and defines any Jewish person who has faith in God and who is zealous for the Torah to be both hearers and doers of the Word and will of God.

That’s a lot to pull out of a short discussion between Jesus and a legal expert.

But Boaz’s teaching is called “Moses in Matthew” and in referencing Matthew chapters 1 and 2, he says that it was the Apostle’s intent to mirror the birth and childhood narratives of Jesus with Moses. That may not be immediately obvious to the Christian reader, which is why lectures such as this one are so important.

I won’t go into all of the details (since my notes are limited) but making the connection requires some knowledge of Jewish midrash (Maybe books such as those written by Daube and Lachs would help) about the early life of Moses and his parents, information that isn’t available in the Bible (and Bible sufficiency proponents will likely struggle at this point). But Jesus’s audience would have been aware of some form of the midrashim connected to the early life of Moses, and when reading how Matthew wrote about the early life of Jesus, Boaz believes Matthew’s audience would be saying to themselves, “I’ve heard this story before.”

As an aside, I just read Dr. Michael L. Brown’s review of David Klinghoffer’s book Why the Jews Rejected Jesus in which Dr. Brown writes the following:

Klinghoffer fails to grasp the depth of Matthew’s hermeneutic (along with the hermeneutic of other NT authors), noting, “Pointing out the imprecision of proof texts like these, one feels almost unsporting. It’s too easy” (66). To the contrary, as top Matthew scholars have observed, “Matthew was not above scattering items in his Greek text whose deeper meaning could only be appreciated by those with a knowledge of Hebrew. Indeed, it might even be that Matthew found authorial delight in hiding ‘bonus points’ for those willing and able to look a little beneath the gospel’s surface.”3 At times it is clear that Klinghoffer simply failed to get the NT author’s point (see again 66, citing Matt 2:23 and Isa 11:1).

Boaz Michael’s perspective on Matthew’s Gospel is not in isolation. Now to continue with the main portion of my missive.

Please keep in mind that the point isn’t whether or not midrash is literally true. It probably isn’t. But the cultural context of the midrashim and what it means to a Jewish audience is what connects and binds the interpretive stories about Moses to the stories Matthew was telling about the young Jesus and his family.

Boaz went on in his teaching to compare the temptation accounts in Luke 4 and Matthew 4. They’re not the same. Matthew includes specific details that Luke leaves out, such as the Master fasting for forty days and forty nights. That specific time period (as opposed to just forty days) is mentioned only four times in the Bible, and three of those events are related to fasts (Elijah’s fast is one of them). How could Matthew’s readers not associate Jesus’s fast in the wilderness with that of Moses on the Mountain with God. It is further said in midrash that Moses dined on the bread of angels on the Mountain (somewhat contradicting that he was fasting) and in Matthew’s account of the temptation, the Adversary said that Jesus could command stones to become bread.

The order of the temptations is reversed from Luke to Matthew, with Matthew’s account presenting Jesus being taken to a high mountain and shown all the nations as the last temptation. Just before Moses’s death, God took him to a high mountain and showed him all of the nation of Israel.

(You might be thinking that these comparisons aren’t very strong, but it’s the way Matthew is writing his entire Gospel that provides the complete illustration of Messiah and Moses. The Gospels differ from each other, not because the Gospel writers were inconsistent, but because they each had a different emphasis on Messiah to present, like four different artists each painting a different portrait of Messiah. Same guy but different styles and interpretations.)

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain…

–Matthew 5:1

When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed him…

–Matthew 8:1

In between these two events, Yeshua (Jesus) delivered what has come to be called “the Sermon on the Mount.” It might surprise you to hear that Boaz believes Jesus going up the mountain and then coming back down can be compared to Moses going up to receive the Torah and coming back down. That probably sounds a little thin to you, but consider the function of the sermon itself. It’s been called the greatest distillation of the Torah. Moses ascended the mountain to receive the Torah and descended to deliver it to Israel. Jesus ascended the mountain to teach the Torah and descended when he had finished.

Also, when Moses descended, he encountered the faithless Children of Israel worshiping the Golden Calf. When Jesus descended, he encountered a leper (actually, a Jewish man with a form of “spiritual skin disease”) who through faith was made clean of his disease. There’s a “mirror effect” being created between Moses and Jesus by Matthew for his readers.

Now here’s something really interesting.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.

–Matthew 5:17-18

Anyone involved in either the Messianic Jewish or Hebrew Roots groups for more than five minutes will recognize this passage as the core message of those two movements. Yes the Torah will pass away, but not until Heaven and Earth pass away. Now here’s the really cool part.

Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

–Matthew 24:34-35

The words of the Torah will pass away at some point in the future, but Messiah says that his words will never pass away.

The Torah is greatly praised both in the Tanakh (Old Testament) and in the New Testament but if you study the Torah, a great deal of its content has to do with daily living in Israel, daily human living on earth. All of that will eventually fade away after a long, long period of time.

I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

–Revelation 21:22-27

With no temple currently existing in Jerusalem, most Christians think the Torah has already been done away with and been replaced by Christ’s grace, but I believe another temple will be built. It would be impossible to observe the laws related to the temple without the Torah being in effect for the Jewish people. We know that the Gentile nations will be required to send representatives to Jerusalem to observe Sukkot every year in the Messianic Era. Again, observing the festival requires a temple in Jerusalem and the laws of the Torah for temple worship. Jesus said the Torah will be with us as long as there are a heaven and earth. Eventually there will be no Torah and no Temple, but we aren’t there yet. But even when we get there, the words of the Lamb will remain, for they are eternal.

All the nations you have made shall come and bow down before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name.

Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart to revere your name.

–Psalm 86:9, 11

I’ve said in today’s “meditation” as I’ve said many times before, that the Torah remains and functions. It remained and functioned after Christ’s ascension and in the days of James, Peter, and Paul. In order for prophesy to be fulfilled, the Torah needs to remain in force for the Jewish people until all has been completed and as long as there is a heaven and an earth.

But if you’re a Christian reading this, you’re probably wondering what that means to you. Even if you’re willing to accept the continued authority of the Torah for the Jewish people (a big “if” for many Christians), what does it have to do with a believer who isn’t Jewish?

There’s a great deal in even a surface reading of the Torah that has to do with a Christian living a holy life. All of the principles upon which we live a life of faith are from Torah; caring for the disadvantaged, feeding the hungry, comforting the widow, helping a neighbor, visiting the sick…these are all from Torah and they all apply to Christians today.

Boaz said that the heart of discipleship is to study the teachings of our Master and to apply those parts of the teachings that directly connect to us to our daily living. Remember, Jesus primarily taught to Jewish audiences who were perceiving his teachings from a Jewish worldview. Paul was the primary agent responsible for taking those Jewish teachings and crafting them in a manner “digestible” to a God-fearing Gentile audience.

The first discourse Paul gave at the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:13-43) was a teaching of Jesus the Messiah as the culmination of Jewish history condensed (and most likely summarized by Luke) by the Apostle and presented to Jewish and God-fearing Gentile listeners. Their response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic.

But as time passed, the message of the good news of Messiah became increasingly “Gentilized” and eventually divorced from its Jewish context. Even those Christian scholars who can read the New Testament in the Greek can easily miss the “Hebrew voice” of the Apostles and thus lose a great deal of their intent and meaning.

Which is why teachings such as this one given by Boaz Michael are important. It’s why studying midrash and Jewish thought are exceptionally helpful in augmenting our understanding of the Bible.

The value of the Messianic Jewish and Hebrew Roots movements for non-Jewish believers is to teach us the Torah and how to read it in relation to the New Testament scriptures. It’s to help us filter the Bible through the eyes of Jewish thinkers, writers, and sages. It’s to encourage us to think outside the traditional Christian “box,” not to turn us into quasi-Jewish people, but to define and illuminate the Christian relationship to the Jewish people, the chosen ones of God, and thus to Messiah himself, the first-born son of Israel.

If you are intrigued but unfamiliar with the perspectives I’ve been discussing in yesterday’s and today’s blog posts, I encourage you to go to First Fruits of Zion and see what else they have to offer. As a fellow Christian and student of the Bible, I’ve found many of their materials invaluable in my own exploration of my faith.

Who is the Jewish Jesus and how does a “Jewish” understanding of the scriptures make us better Christians? It’s a journey I hope you’ll join me on as we investigate this “undiscovered country,” including the Jewish Gospel of Matthew.

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The Jewish Gospel, Part 1

June 18, 2013 James Pyles 3 Comments

Last night, the new MJTI Interfaith Center in Beverly Hills hosted a seminar on the Gospels with special guest, Boaz Michael, the founder and director of First Fruits of Zion.

The two-hour seminar introduced many of the typologies throughout Matthew to Yeshua’s “Moses-like” fulfillment. The Gospels are composed in a thoroughly Jewish manner and need to be understood within that context to fully see what and why things take place and are said. The Moses in Matthew seminars are currently being offered at various locations and if you have the opportunity to attend one of these seminars, definitely do it! I found myself not only intellectually engaged and enlightened, but spiritually encouraged by this discussion.

-Rabbi Joshua Brumbach
“Moses in Matthew”
Yinon Blog

I acquired an audio CD of this presentation from First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) through the FFOZ Friends program and have been meaning to review it for awhile now. It’s hard for me to sit still and listen to a recorded audio lecture, but I took my wife’s portable CD player outside and, as I weeded in the back yard, allowed my mind to be illuminated by Boaz Michael’s teaching while my body took care of the home that God has graciously provided. I learned a few things. I’d like to pass them along to you (and I apologize if I got anything in Boaz’s presentation not quite right…it’s tough to take notes while weeding).

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.

–Deuteronomy 18:15 (NRSV)

According to Boaz’s teaching, the Gospel of Matthew was written specifically for a Jewish audience and was probably the only one of the Gospels originally written in Hebrew (although the Hebrew original is lost to us). The words of Moses quoted above foretell of a prophet greater than Moses who would one day rise up from among Israel. This prophet would be Messiah and he would also be a King and do many great signs and wonders. Messiah would be known by the prophesies he would tell and he would lead Israel back to faithfulness in the Torah.

In Matthew and the other synoptic gospels, it was asked if Yeshua (Jesus) was the prophet, but in John’s gospel, it was declared that he was (and is) the prophet.

Boaz tied his teaching to the release of the Delitzsch Hebrew Gospels (this was a few years back) and he described at length the history of Franz Delitzsch and his mission to “retro-translate” the Greek language of the Gospels back into Hebrew. This doesn’t restore the “Hebrew text” but it does provide the “original voice,” the Hebrew voice of the gospels and the gospel writers.

That’s an important point to get because the focus of Boaz’s “Moses in Matthew” teaching is to be able to read Matthew the way a Jewish person would have read it during the early days of the Jewish religious movement “the Way.”

Boaz said something I consider very important (paraphrasing): “Every translation is really a commentary.” I know my own Pastor has said that we need to be able to understand the Bible in its original languages and within its own context in order to gain an objective understanding of what God is trying to say. My counter argument is that any translation imposes a certain set of assumptions being made by the translator so that interpretation doesn’t begin after translation but during translation. It’s at this point when we also start making connections from one text in the Bible to another and deciding what those connections mean.

And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a twig shall grow forth out of his roots. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord; and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither decide after the hearing of his ears.

–Isaiah 11:1-3 (JPS Tanakh)

The people of Nineveh will stand in judgment of this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the call of Yonah. But look! One greater than Yonah is here. The queen of Teiman will stand in judgment of this generation and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Shlomoh. But look! One greater than Shlomoh is here.

–Matthew 12:41-42 (DHE Gospels)

These verses tell a Jewish audience (and hopefully the rest of us) something about the Messiah. The prophet Isaiah tells us that the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon the Messiah, Son of David, and he shall be wise and understanding and knowledgeable, more so than Solomon. The idea is that Messiah isn’t just like Moses the Prophet, David the King, and Solomon the Wise, but he is greater than all of those. The Hebrew word translated as “delight” from the passage in Isaiah actually is better translated as “sense,” giving the idea of sense of smell, so it is like Messiah can sense, almost “smell out” the truth.

While a general audience can “get” the meaning of all this, it would, according to Boaz, have been quite a bit more obvious to a Jewish audience in the days of Matthew and in fact, it was Matthew’s intent to write in a manner that would demonstrate Messiah to them in a uniquely Jewish way. The gospels, and especially Matthew’s, are considered the greatest Jewish story ever told, if we just know how to properly read it.

Here’s another Jewish story:

During the fourth watch, Yeshua came to them, walking on the surface of the water. His disciples saw him walking on the surface of the sea and were terrified. They said, “It is the appearance of a spirit!” and they cried out in fright. Yeshua called to them, “Be strong, for it is I. Do not fear!”

–Matthew 14:25-27 (DHE Gospels)

The full text of this event is in Matthew 14:22-33. You probably think you know everything there is to know about this story, including Peter’s brief ability to also walk as long as he kept his eyes on the Master.

But to an ancient Jewish audience, it says so much more.

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…

–Genesis 1:1-2 (JPS Tanakh)

The Hebrew word translated as “wind” can also be translated as “spirit,” thus we understand that it was the spirit from God that was hovering over the water.

This is the part where you have to “think Jewishly” and moreover, to have access to popular Jewish writings and teachings that are now collected in a large number of written works but at the time Matthew was writing his gospel, were more likely conveyed through oral tradition in less refined forms.

Boaz states in his presentation that according to Midrash Rabbah, it was the spirit of Moshiach (Messiah) that hovered over the waters. We know (and Matthew’s Jewish audience would have known) that from Isaiah 11:1-3 the spirit from God rested upon Moshiach. We know from Matthew 3:16-17 that the spirit came from God “like a dove” and rested on Jesus.

According to midrash, whose spirit hovered over the water? The Spirit of Moshiach. Putting all this together, the Messiah “hovering” or “walking” over the water would have summoned an immediate connection between that event and Moshiach’s Spirit hovering over the waters at creation.

This is also an indication that Messiah is greater than Moses. Moses’s name indicates one who was saved or drawn from water. We also know of Moses, through the power of God, splitting the Reed Sea (yes, that’s “Reed Sea.” “Red Sea” is a poor translation) and walking at the bottom of the sea with the water over him. Yeshua is greater because he is over the water as was his spirit at creation.

Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen.

–Psalm 77:19 (NRSV)

This verse seems to reference Moses but it is also Messianic because footprints are “unseen” when someone is walking on top of water. Also water, in ancient Jewish thought, represents chaos. In the story of creation, God “binds” and limits the great waters with shores. Yeshua is above the chaos and Matthew telling this story as he does, is declaring to his Jewish audience that Jesus is the Messiah from creation. For the rest of us, his message is that the good news of Moshiach is “first to the Jews.” It is the story of Jewish good news.

There’s another message here according to Boaz. In his presentation, he was addressing a traditionally Christian audience, one who was just becoming involved in FFOZ’s HaYesod program. Historically in the Messianic Jewish and Hebrew Roots movements (and I can attest to this personally), there’s been a tendency for Gentile believers to become enamored with the Torah to the exclusion of the rest of the Bible. It has tended to “defocus” Gentile believers involved in either of these movements from the Gospels and from the Messiah. Just as the Gospels don’t replace Moses and the Torah, Moses and the Torah don’t replace Jesus and the Gospels. The Gospels require the Torah to illustrate and validate the message of Messiah but always remember, the Messiah is the Prophet, the one who is greater than Moses.

But there’s more in Matthew that teaches us about Messiah:

They remained there until the death of Hordos, fulfilling the word of HaShem through the prophet, sayings, “Out of Mitzrayim I called my son.”

–Matthew 2:15 (DHE Gospels)

This is a direct reference to the following:

When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son.

–Hosea 11:1 (JPS Tanakh)

Modern Jewish commentators cry “foul” at Matthew’s application because Hosea is clearly referring to Israel the nation as God’s son, not the Messiah. But the heart of Jewish interpretation and application is taking scripture and applying it differently to other circumstances. This also does something special that I completely agree with. Matthew is creating a one-to-one equivalency between Israel and Messiah. Messiah is not only the Son of God, but the living embodiment of the nation of Israel; the Jewish people. Moshiach is Israel’s first-born son.

Yeshua spoke all these things in parables to the crowd of people, and other than parables, he did not speak to them at all, fulfilling what the prophet spoke, saying, “I will open my mouth with a parable; I will utter riddles from ancient times.”

–Matthew 13:34-35 (DHE Gospels)

This compares to the following:

I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old.

–Psalm 78:2 (NRSV)

But here we learn something else. Typically, a Christian will understand that Matthew 13:34-35 is relating back to Psalm 78:2. In a Bible study on the verses from Matthew, a Christian teacher would probably include a reference specifically to Psalm 78:2 rather than the entire content of that Psalm. But from a Jewish writer’s point of view, he intends for his audience to read or hear that portion cited from Matthew and to recall all of the Psalm.

Psalm 78 as a whole, describes the repeating cycle of Jewish faithfulness and unfaithfulness, faithfulness and unfaithfulness to God. Matthew wants his audience to “get” this point and associate it with Yeshua as Messiah and that Messiah has come to restore Israel’s faithfulness to God.

Again, if we just isolate and link Matthew 13:34-35 and Psalm 78:2, we miss the larger message Matthew is transmitting to his Jewish readership. We may call the Bible “sufficient” and it is, but it can be more “complete” only when we reinsert the Jewishness of its overall context and include both Jewish perspective and Jewish midrashic thought into our understanding.

I’m going to split this teaching into two posts for the sake of length. There are other important parts to what Boaz Michael spoke that I don’t want to miss or gloss over. Part 2 will be in tomorrow’s “morning meditation.”

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The Undiscovered Continent of God

June 10, 2013 James Pyles 6 Comments

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.
–2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NRSV)

Wisdom that can only be accessed by the angels or by enlightened sages is limited wisdom. Torah is said to be G-d’s wisdom and as such must be boundless. Just as G-d is everywhere and in all things, while at the same time entirely transcendent of all things, so His wisdom must be a wisdom that is equally accessible to a five-year-old child as to a great scholar–as long as there is a mind there to receive. Stories about two brothers fighting, rules about splitting an article of disputed ownership–these are simple matters that everyone can relate to. And yet, in the way Torah deals with them, you can find a well of infinite wisdom.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“G-d in the Talmud”
Chabad.org

This will probably get me in a lot of trouble, but I’ve been thinking about part of the conversation Pastor Randy and I had last Wednesday night. We had gotten together to discuss chapters 6 and 7 of D. Thomas Lancaster’s book The Holy Epistle to the Galatians, but one discussion inspiring comment in this book often sends Pastor Randy and I down unanticipated trails.

We were talking about the “nature” of the Bible. Pastor Randy is a self-proclaimed literalist and rests the core of his understanding of the Bible on being able to read the text in its original languages, factoring in the context, history, and “personhood” of the writing and the writer. On that level, you should be able to understand 100% of the Bible’s content as long as you have a sufficient background in the ancient languages, cultures, histories, and in some cases, biographies involved in the authoring of the various books and chapters.

But we both acknowledge that it doesn’t seem to work out that way. While some parts of the Bible seem to be understood in the same manner by most people, others elicit wild disagreements, sometimes even by people within the same church, let alone between different Christian churches, between different denominations, and certainly between Christianity and Judaism.

The other part that came up, as noted by Rabbi Freeman above, is that the Bible can be accessed on a variety of conceptual levels, from that of a five-year old child, to an aged, wise, and highly educated scholar. Pastor and I agreed that the Bible contains “depths” such that we can continue to explore forever and we will never comprehend all that there is this side of the Messiah.

I tried to introduce the idea that there might be a “mystic” side to all this built into the Bible itself but that statement came into conflict with Pastor Randy’s view of the Bible as an “object” that God deliberately caused to be written in human languages by human beings. In other words, God wants us to understand the Bible as a revelation…

…doesn’t He?

In my opinion, yes and no.

An atheist can look at the Bible and compare it with other religious, mystical, and philosophical texts. The Bible is sometimes studied in universities as literature rather than as a sacred text. If only viewed at the level of an object containing words on paper, it should be ultimately knowable, and if it wasn’t uniquely inspired by God, it should be ultimately known. After almost two-thousand years of intense study, you’d think we’d have the Bible pretty much “mapped” by now.

Except we don’t. We haven’t reached the “limits” of the Bible. In plumbing its depths, we haven’t reached the bottom of its Mariana Trench. Those people who feel there’s nothing left to learn from the Bible either gave up too soon or they are choosing not to take the Bible seriously and meet it at where the Bible “lives.”

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

–Genesis 1:1-5

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

–John 1:1-5

God spoke and the world was, and yet that spoken word is somehow also the living Messiah and if every word in what we call “the Bible” is also God-breathed, then the Bible we hold in our hands, though it is a printed book, is also something much more. So what do we find in the Bible when we actually try to read and understand what God is trying to tell us and how do we find the deeper message?

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.

–John 14:26

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.

Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny.

“For who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ.

–1 Corinthians 2:12-16

We seem to require a unique set of tools beyond the usual hermeneutics, at least if we want to get past a certain level of comprehending the Bible. We actually seems to require some spirit-breathed help, since the Bible is as much a spiritual entity as it is a physical document. Perhaps those depths I’ve been discussing cannot be understood or even discovered without a competent guide, much like Indiana Jones following an ancient map in order to find an even more ancient and elusive treasure.

Or as Rabbi Freeman writes:

Similarly, Torah is not just about “what G-d thinks about” but also about “how to think like G-d.” G-d can choose to think about whatever He wishes to think about. The issue is not the subject but its treatment. That’s why Torah learning, as distinct from typical academic studies, is much more about process than about content. More about “how you got there” and less about “where you got to.”

Certain streams of Judaism have no problem at all understanding the Torah as associated with and even equivalent to God’s own wisdom and thoughts, not just the content of His mind, but the process of God’s thinking. And didn’t Paul say “we have the mind of Christ?”

Almost a month ago, I said that the Bible is water, but from a Chasidic point of view, this is more true than you might think:

When the sages compared the Torah to water, Rabbi Schneur Zalman explains, they had this quality in mind: Just as water descends from the highest place to the lowest without change, so the Torah descends from its place in the highest realms to become invested in mundane, material issues so that every person can grasp it–without any essential change in that wisdom.

It is true that God wants us to know Him from the Bible, but that may be a greater truth than we realize. The Bible is designed to be accessible and knowable to just about anyone, and yet it is not so knowable that it can ever completely be known, even by the greatest sage or scholar in any tradition across the vast span of human history.

The Bible is at once a book that can be read in its simplicity and an amazingly vast and unknown continent that has never been visited by people before. And it is all good, it is all very good.

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes;
the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever;
the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.
Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.

–Psalm 19:7-11 (ESV)

But as accessible as the Bible is supposed to be to anyone and everyone, beyond a certain point, it’s best not to “go it alone.” When exploring unknown or uncertain territory, in addition to a map, it never hurts to have one or more experienced guides.

I’m convinced that it is the viewpoints of men like Paul Philip Levertoff and their uniquely Jewish view of the teachings of Messiah that will help open up the unknown continent to us. It is true that said “lost continent” will never be completely known, but it is completely knowable, and that is the challenge is before us (I’m hardly discounting the Spirit of God as our guide, but scholars and theologians are also men of the Spirit who can teach us).

I heard Daniel Lancaster recently say that we must examine the New Testament within its native environment: Judaism. In the case of most Christians, I don’t think it would hurt to have a guide who is Jewish and who knows the lay of the land.

It’s books like Levertoff’s Love and the Messianic Age and its accompanying commentary, as well as the soon to be released The Everlasting Jew by Rabbi Isaac Lichtenstein that will be our traveling companions.

Ultimately the Spirit of God and the mind of Messiah will be our guides but we are the explorers. We are the men and women putting on our expedition hats or strapping on an Aqualung to our backs, getting ready to stride into the antediluvian forests or dive into the prehistoric oceans in search of secrets that have only been whispered since the Spirit of the Word moved over those waters who knows how long ago.

Looking at the Bible as a book with words and language and history and context makes it approachable by human beings and thus not so intimidating. Looking at the Bible like mystery novel and mysticism helps us realize how far beyond humanity is the wisdom and words of an infinite God.

This is only the beginning of the adventure.

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Gifts of the Spirit: Pursuing the Mystery

June 2, 2013 James Pyles 7 Comments

Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.

–Romans 11:25

For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles—assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly.

–Ephesians 3:1-3

To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

–Colossians 1:27

What is this “mystery” of which Paul speaks? In all three of my examples from scripture, it seems directly related to the Gentiles being brought into the Jewish movement of “the Way.”

(I have to say before going on that you’re probably going to think I’m a little crazy for writing this. I don’t have some big theological point to make and I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I just have this rattling around in my head and I need to put it out there. OK, that’s done. Continue reading).

I’ve been rather slow in my reading this past week for a variety of reasons, but I managed to squeeze in a chapter from John Sanford’s book Mystical Christianity: A Psychological Commentary on the Gospel of John. In Chapter 3: Christian Disciples, the First Disciples – John 1:35-51, he says (pg 32):

The call to the disciples is a call to initiation into the mystery of Christ. The idea of initiation is all but lost in our present culture, but it was an important one in the time of the inception of Christianity, for in the Roman Empire at that time there flourished a burgeoning number of “mystery religions.” The Greek word translated in English as “mystery” did not mean to the ancient Greek-speaking person what it means to us. A mystery for us is a puzzle to be solved. A mysterion for the ancients was “a matter to the knowledge of which initiation is necessary.” There are some things that can be known only by experiencing them; all in-depth spiritual or psychological understanding falls into this category. For this reason the word mysterion (mystery) is very important in the New Testament.

That statement reminds me very much of the recent First Fruits of Zion Shavuot conference which was held at Beth Immanuel Sabbath Fellowship in Hudson, Wisconsin. The focus of the conference was Gifts of the Spirit and by definition, a spiritual encounter can only be perceived through a direct experience, and is certainly one that reveals something of God. Yet the receiving of the Holy Spirit by those who repent and turn toward God is something that can only be understood by the person receiving the Spirit (unlike in ancient days when outside observers could actually see “tongues of fire” descending upon those whom the Spirit encountered and rested upon).

It also reminded me of something that happened a week ago when I was having coffee with my friend Tom. I won’t tell you all of the details, but at one point, Tom was telling me how important it was to him to be able to communicate to others his unique personal message of encountering God. Tom closed his eyes and a change came over him. I can’t explain it except to say that it reminded me of this:

Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.

–1 Corinthians 12:3

I actually can’t find in the Bible where it says something like “and then the Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he spoke…” but that’s what it reminded me of. At the conference, some of the presenters were discussing the folks who stand up in church and say stuff like “And thus says the Lord” or “The Lord gave me a word of wisdom to speak…” and then they go on to say whatever it is that they think God told them to say.

But actually, the people who are really speaking “in the Spirit” don’t typically make a preamble statement, they just speak in the Spirit.

That’s what I think was going on with Tom.

OK, I can’t prove it and maybe he was just being very passionate at that moment. He certainly didn’t report anything unusual happening to him during our conversation. But that’s what it looked like. That’s what I experienced in listening to him. It was a mystery. It was an initiation of sorts into another perspective. As Sanford states in his book (pp 32-3), “this is, one who leads the initiate into a deeper revelation of himself and God.”

I don’t want to get too mysterious here and I certainly don’t want to give you the impression that I’m selling you some sort of spiritual bill of goods. I’m not claiming to have “gotten a word from the Lord” or anything like that. I’m just saying that there’s a point at which we encounter God that doesn’t translate well into human language. It isn’t easy to articulate. Nevertheless, it’s something I believe God shares with those He chooses as He wills.

These experiences are not random. They happen for a reason, though that reason isn’t always apparent.

The experiences that now came to the disciples in their association with Jesus were deeply meaningful and exciting. They had found the Master and they followed him happily, growing in consciousness and enthusiasm as they did so. But their full initiation was not complete. Before they could really truly know, deep within themselves, they would have to undergo two more crises even more painful than the first.

-Sanford, pg 36

For the Jewish disciples of the Master, they endured his death, rejoiced at his resurrection, watched him ascend into the Heavens, and then waited. But in Acts 2 we see that their wait had ended and something miraculous happened to them. They were initiated into the Spirit of God in order to fulfill the purpose of spreading the Gospel message to Israel, Samaria, and to the world beyond. The message of Spirit and salvation. The message of repenting and bringing near the Kingdom of Heaven.

Just looking at Peter when he denied the Master and then seeing him later, after Acts 2:2-4, we encounter a totally changed man.

“Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”

–Acts 2:36-39

Do you feel changed? Have you been “initiated into the mystery of Christ?” For that matter, do I feel changed?

Those who give priority to their physical selves and make the soul subordinate cannot achieve sincere brotherhood.

-Tanya, chapter 32

Rabbi Schneur Zalman states that a thorough unity is achieved between friends when their neshamos (souls) are permitted to fuse. Since all neshamos are part of God Himself, and inasmuch as God is the Absolute One, all souls can similarly be one. Separation and divisiveness among humans do not derive from the soul, but from the physical self.

The needs and desires of the physical self – the quest to satisfy one’s earthly drives – are the causes of divisiveness. The neshamah does not seek pride nor wealth, is not offended, and does not seek to berate others. All these are traits of the physical self. To the degree that one recognizes the neshamah as one’s true essence and subordinates the physical self thereto, to that degree one can eliminate the divisive factors and achieve true unity and brotherhood.

We thus see why spirituality is of such overwhelming importance. Hillel said that the essence of the Torah is “love your neighbor as you would yourself.” To achieve such love, one must eliminate the impediments to sincere love of another, and as Rabbi Schneur Zalman stated, these impediments are the non-spiritual aspects of life. The greater the degree of spirituality one achieves, the more perfect can one’s love of another person be.

Today I shall…

…seek to establish the primacy of spirituality in my life.

-Abraham J. Twerski
“Growing Each Day, Sivan 17”
Aish.com

Particularly in Judaism but also in Christianity, we can become very focused on studying. There’s nothing wrong with studying, with learning the Word of God, and in fact, as responsible believers, we have a duty to familiarize ourselves with the Bible and, to the limits of our abilities, to delve into its depths.

But it is going to take more than the capacities we have within ourselves, our “wetware” and programming, so to speak. In truly learning to know God we must start with the Bible, but we must continue in the Spirit. This isn’t something we can turn on and off like a light switch, and I think it’s pretty much up to God to initiate such a contact, but we have to be open to it.

True, in Acts 9, Paul was nowhere near desiring such an encounter when the Messiah came upon him in a light and a voice. Messiah “happened to” Paul whether Paul wanted him to or not.

But in our material world with our material problems and our material worries, it’s far too easy for us to put aside the spiritual reality of our relationship with God. I imagine that even some other believers reading this blog post will think I’m some sort of “religious nut” for talking about the Spirit of God. And yet, what else can I do? A.W. Tozer says that “I would emphasize this one committal, this one great volitional act which establishes the heart’s intention to gaze forever upon Jesus.” All we can do is look up, to gaze at Him, and like the apostles, we wait.

Messiah will one day walk among us again in our world, but his journey of return begins in the clouds.

This is the actual time of the “footsteps of Mashiach.” (The final age prior to Mashiach’s advent.) It is therefore imperative for every Jew to seek his fellow’s welfare – whether old or young – to inspire the other to teshuva (return), so that he will not fall out – G-d forbid – of the community of Israel who will shortly be privileged, with G-d’s help, to experience complete redemption.

“Today’s Day”
Monday, Sivan 18, 5703
Compiled by the Lubavitcher Rebbe; Translated by Yitschak Meir Kagan
Chabad.org

As Rabbi Twerski might say, today I shall strive to be open to the mysterious movement of God’s Spirit in my life through love of Him and so that my love of my neighbor is more evident in the world.

Am I pursuing the mystery or is the mystery pursuing me?

This will be the last blog post where I’ll directly reference presentations from the First Fruits of Zion Shavuot conference. I’ve pretty much exhausted my notes, the ones I can still read, anyway. I may, from time to time, refer to the conference or some of the speakers or attendees again, but not in any depth. I hope you enjoyed what I shared from my experiences. I sincerely meant to present my own point of view about the conference and do not represent First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) in any way. At some point FFOZ will no doubt produce an audio CD of the presentations given at the conference. I encourage you to acquire a copy if my renditions of the events there has piqued your interest.

Was it something I said or something I did
Did my words not come out right

-Lyrics by Bret Michaels
Every Rose Has Its Thorn (1988)
Recorded by Poison

The Road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

115 days.

Torah Portion

Shelach: Going Up

May 31, 2013 James Pyles Leave a comment

But the men who had gone up with him said, “We cannot attack that people, for it is stronger than we.” Thus they spread calumnies among the Israelites about the land they had scouted, saying, “The country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers. All the people that we saw in it are men of great size; we saw the Nephilim there — the Anakites are part of the Nephilim — and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.”

–Numbers 13:31-33 (JPS Tanakh)

Then the two men came down again from the hills and crossed over. They came to Joshua son of Nun and reported to him all that had happened to them. They said to Joshua, “The Lord has delivered the whole land into our power; in fact, all the inhabitants of the land are quaking before us.”

–Joshua 2:23-24 (JPS Tanakh)

Have you ever wondered about these two events? What set apart one generation from the next? There’s actually an involved set of sociological, psychological, and experiential factors that come into play about why the generation who came out of Egypt couldn’t conquer the Land but their children could.

However, according to Rabbi Kalman Packouz’s commentary on Torah Portion Shlach:

The Kotzker Rebbe said that the mistake of the spies was in the words “and so we were in their sight.” It should not bother a person how others view him. (Otzer Chaim)

A person who worries about how others view him will have no rest. Regardless of what he does or does not do, he will always be anxious about receiving the approval of others. Such a person makes his self-esteem dependent on the whims of others. It is a mistake to give others so much control over you. Keep your focus on doing what is right and proper. Work on mastering the ability to have a positive self-image regardless of how others view you.

The Chofetz Chaim commented, “When you view yourself as inferior, you will assume that others also view you in this manner. The truth could very well be that the other person views you in a much higher manner. As the Yalkut Shimoni states, “The Almighty said, ‘Who says that you were not in their eyes as angels?’ ” (HaChofetz Chaim, Vol 3, p. 1060)

It has been said that “you are what you think,” or in other words, your “attitude” about a person or situation tends to dictate how you’ll respond. If you believe you are a “grasshopper” in the sight of others, often it’s because that’s how you see yourself in comparison to those others (or anyone). The result is what you do or what you fail to do.

Here’s another comparison:

And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.

–Mark 10:13-16

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”

–Mark 10:17-23

I suppose another way of putting it is how can a child be compared to a rich man when they attempt to enter the Kingdom of Heaven?

But what does that have to do with the generation with Moses who failed to enter the Land and the generation with Joshua who did?

It’s all a matter of perspective. What is the world a child sees as opposed to someone who is quite wealthy when confronted with bringing the Kingdom of Heaven near?

What did the rich person have to lose and what were the children being brought to Jesus experiencing? When we become secure in our situation for whatever reason, there’s a tendency not to want to leave that security. But children don’t worry about jobs, income, and wealth. They take it for granted that the adults in their lives who love them will take care of them. They focus on the matter at hand which for them is just being a child.

When Jesus said ‘whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it,” he wasn’t saying that maturity or education had no value. He wasn’t even saying that having wealth or material comfort was such a bad thing. He was saying that we must learn to trust and value the Master and the “gifts” of the Kingdom of Heaven most of all.

The first generation of Israelites who left Egypt in some sense never really left. Whenever they encountered trouble, they responded by longing to return to the only home they ever knew: Egypt. The fact that they lived as slaves and endured terrible hardships was what they found familiar. No matter how much more beneficial it was to be free and to be protected by the King of Heaven, that life was unfamiliar and frightening. They never really learned to trust God at the core of their beings, regardless of how many miracles they witnessed.

But their children grew up trusting God and Moses rather than the Egyptians. They learned to love God as children and continued that “child-like” trust into their adulthood as they faced the Land of Canaan across the Jordan.

No, they weren’t perfect people, but the Biblical record shows us that no one who obeyed God and followed His precepts was a perfect person. Noah wasn’t, Abraham, wasn’t, neither were Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, and so on.

And yet, some part of those people who spoke with God “face-to-face” and who were called people after God’s own heart all had a quality in common with the children who were being brought to Jesus. Those who did not obey thought they had too much to lose by following the Master, even if what they were clinging to was actually degrading, humiliating, and even agonizing.

In my Torah commentary for last week, I discussed my hesitancy at attending the First Fruits of Zion Shavuot conference at Beth Immanuel Sabbath Fellowship in Hudson, Wisconsin. As much as I wanted to just step through the doors of the synagogue and immediately feel at home, I didn’t. I mainly live in a Christian world now, so re-entering a traditional Jewish prayer service was a rough transition. I eventually adjusted, but it was the people I encountered at the conference that finally made me feel at home.

But looking back, I understand that it was the story I told myself about who I am now and what attending a Jewish festival in a traditional setting means. In order to feel more “at home” in church and even to be comfortable in calling myself a “Christian,” I’ve had to put a lot of other stuff away and change my attitude about what it all means.

I was cleaning out my closet recently and came across the box where I have stored my tallitot, tefillin, and other items I previously used when I had adopted a more “Jewish” worship style. I’ve become more comfortable not employing those holy objects in my prayers but I’d be lying if I said that part of me didn’t miss them.

“One who romanticizes over Judaism and loses focus of the kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a carpenter who is infatuated with the hammer, rather than the house it was meant to build.”

–Troy Mitchell

At the conference, someone at the synagogue asked Rabbi Carl Kinbar to let them know if their services could be improved in any way. As I recall (so this is hardly word-for-word), Rabbi Kinbar had no complaint and indeed, had a compliment. He said he’s been in other synagogues and the services were technically very correct, but the prayers were horizontal. That is, the services seemed “flat.” There was excellent form but no substance or quality that ascended to Heaven.

Rabbi Kinbar said that the prayers at Beth Immanuel were “vertical.” They ascended up to the Throne of God.

In my own life (and probably in the lives of most people of faith), we have a tendency to let the context in which we worship define who we are as servants of the Most High. That first generation out of Egypt allowed their slavery to define themselves, even after they were free, and slaves cannot conquer a nation. The only difference between them and their children, was that they knew their master was God, not an Egyptian slaver.

Children tell themselves one story about life and rich people tend to tell themselves a different story. As a result, it is easier for the former to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than the latter. The story I tell myself about who I am, at its core, cannot be a “Jewish” story (and certainly not, since I’m not Jewish) or a “Christian” story (even though I am a Christian). Who I am must be based less on religous ritual and context than on a child’s trust and faith that regardless of circumstance, knows God is always there, providing, protecting, and loving, just like any good Father.

I can be praying in church, in synagogue, at home, or even in a desert, but it is not where I am that defines me, but who I am in Messiah. And then, like sweet incense, my prayers go up.

Children live in a natural state of awe. To reclaim that energy, identify what fascinates you the most about life. Set goals for living and pursue them with relentless fascination.

–Rabbi Noah Weinberg

When G‑d told Noah to build an ark before the world would be destroyed, Noah built an ark.

But when G‑d told Abraham He was about to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah—cities corrupt and evil to the core—Abraham argued. He said, “Perhaps there are righteous people there! Will the Judge of All the Earth not do justice?”

Abraham felt a sense of ownership for the world in which he lived. If there was something wrong, it needed to be changed. Even if it had been decreed by the will of G‑d.

Moses took ownership of the dark as well as the light. He argued not just for the righteous, but also for those who had failed.

When the people angered G‑d with a golden calf only 40 days after the revelation of Absolute Oneness at Mount Sinai, Moses had to admit they had wronged. Yet he did more than plead for them: he put his entire being on the line for them.

“Forgive them!” he demanded. “And if you do not forgive them, then wipe me out from Your book that You have written!”

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
Noah and Abraham…and Moses
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe, Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Good Shabbos.

117 days.

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