Tag Archives: God

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Shoftim: A Sanctuary in Time and Space

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MourningYou shall set up judges and law enforcement officials for yourself at all your city gates that the Lord, your God, is giving you, for your tribes, and they shall judge the people [with] righteous judgment. –Deuteronomy 16:18

On the personal level, “your gates” refers to the seven sensory gates of the small city that is the human body, its seven points of contact with the outside world. A person should appoint mental “judges and law-enforcers” over his eyes, ears, nostrils and mouth, to judge, weigh and filter the desirable and constructive stimuli from the negative and destructive ones.

-Rabbi Shabtai Hakohen (the “Shach”)

In the Torah section of Shoftim (Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9) we read of the cities of refuge, to which a man who had killed accidentally could flee, finding sanctuary and atonement. The chassidic masters note that Shoftim is always read in the month of Elul—for Elul is, in time, what the cities of refuge were in space. It is a month of sanctuary and repentance, a protected time in which a person can turn from the shortcomings of his past and dedicate himself to a new and sanctified future.

-by Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Dr. Jonathan Sacks
From Torah Studies (Kehot 1986), an adaptation of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s talks
“The Judge and the Refugee”
Chabad.org

What do the cities of refuge, described in this week’s Torah Portion and the month of Elul have in common? In a sense, as Rabbi Sacks describes, they are both sanctuaries. They provide us with a place to be safe from the consequences of our sins and an opportunity to reflect, experience true regret over our failures to obey God, and to repent by returning to Him and making amends.

Rabbi Sacks points out that although Judges and Officers were appointed to any place where Jews might live, only is the Land of Israel were there cities of refuge. If you inadvertently caused someone’s death in the diaspora, you would have a long trip to find refuge while avoiding the “avenger of the blood”.

Sifri interprets the opening verse of our Parshah, “You shall set judges and officers in all your gates,” to apply to “all your dwelling places,” even those outside Israel. It then continues: One might think that cities of refuge were also to exist outside the land of Israel. Therefore the Torah uses the restrictive expression “these are the cities of refuge” to indicate that they were to be provided only within Israel.

Nonetheless, Sifri says that someone who committed accidental homicide outside the land of Israel and fled to one of the cities of refuge would be granted sanctuary there. It was the cities themselves, not the people they protected, that were confined to the land of Israel.

This seems more than a little unfair for, according to Rabbi Sacks, a Jew living outside of the holiness of Israel was more prone to sin and therefore, in much greater need of access to a refuge. Nevertheless, this was the command of God. What meaning can we take from such an arrangement?

This is the deeper significance of the law that the city of refuge is found only in the land of Israel. For a man could not atone while clinging to the environment which led him to sin. He might feel remorse, but he would not have taken the decisive step away from his past. For this, he had to escape to the “land of Israel,” i.e., to holiness. There, on its sanctified earth, his commitment to a better future could have substance.

Setting aside the literal meaning of this Torah for a moment, we find that when we fall into sin, we cannot seek a solution in the environment that lead to and nurtured sin. It would be like an alcoholic seeking sobriety in a bar or a thief trying to repent while left alone in a bank vault full of loose cash. To truly make teshuvah, one must enter into a state of holiness; a personal “Land of Israel”.

Elul is called the month of preparation. To quote Rabbi Joshua Brumbach:

Elul…is the month preceding Tishrei – the month the High Holidays fall in. Traditionally it is known as a month of preparation. This preparation, called Cheshbon HaNefesh, is a time we begin to take an accounting of our soul. We recall our thoughts and actions over the past year and begin to seek t’shuvah (repentance) for those things, and with those we may have wronged.

One does not face the Throne of God lightly, particularly when He opens His books and dispenses judgments for your deeds. When preparing for an audience with the King, it is best to take as much time as you need to become ready to enter into His majestic and fearful presence. But how can any man become worthy to enter into the Courts of God?

…as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one”. –Romans 3:10

How dare we even hope to enter into a state where we could possibly be forgiven by God? And yet we know that God does not desire that any should perish, “but for all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Elul is a refuge provided by God whereby we can have the opportunity to prepare, to reflect, to make amends for our wrongdoing, and to cleanse ourselves.

For Christians, all of these preparations and the events of the High Holidays themselves aren’t thought to be particularly significant. After all, through the blood of Jesus, we have been cleansed of our sins once and for all. Why do we need to go through an annual cycle of repentance such as the Jews do? Our salvation is assured.

But wait!

ElulDoes that mean, once forgiven and saved, a Christian never, ever sins? Well…no. Oh. Then what do we do about it? The answer is probably to keep our “list of sins short”, and to approach God in trembling prayer and beg for His forgiveness through Jesus. I hope we all do that. But aren’t there those lingering sins, those habitual faults we tend to brush aside and (deliberately) overlook? Aren’t we all human? Don’t we sometimes leave things in our lives undone for months or even years at a time?

There’s no reason why we too can’t take advantage of an opportunity God offered to the Children of Israel thousands of years ago. We can enter into a sanctuary of the spirit, we can take the time to seriously explore our unrepented sins, our hidden and shameful faults, and prepare our souls for the act of total rejection of our errors and completely return to Him.

In Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 2:4, it states, “Do not judge your fellow until you have stood in his place. Fortunately, we have an intecessor and a High Priest who has stood in our place.

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. –Hebrews 4:15

That should wipe away all of our excuses. Like the previous example of the Jewish man in the diaspora, sin has called and we have answered. Now we are desperate to return to holiness and to God, but like the Jewish traveler, we must journey long, we must escape the place of our sin. We must strive to return to where we can be safe and secure in time and space to delve into the depths of who we are and explore the wine-dark abyss. It is only there that we can see the repulsiveness of our sins, be repelled by our acts of rebellion, cry out in mercy to God, and as a prodigal son, return to him expecting nothing, and yet receiving everything from our Father.

A refuge is a place to which one flees—that is, where one lays aside one’s past and makes a new home. Elul is the sublimation of the past for the sake of a better future. And it is the necessary preparation for the blessings of Rosh Hashanah, the promise of plenty and fulfillment in the year to come.

I’m taking a small break from writing “morning meditations” to do some traveling. I’m not sure what sort of Internet access I’ll have, but definitely I’ll be back online and writing sometime early next week (sooner if I can manage it).

Blessings.

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Wonder

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WonderWonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man’s attitude toward history and nature. One attitude is alien to his spirit: taking things for granted, regarding events as a natural course of things. To find an approximate cause of a phenomenon is no answer to his ultimate wonder. He knows that there are laws that regulate the course of natural processes; he is aware of the regularity and pattern of things. However, such knowledge fails to mitigate his sense of perpetual surprise at the fact that there are facts at all. Looking at the world he would say, “This is the Lord’s doing, it is marvelous in our eyes” (Psalms 118:23).

Abraham Joshua Heschel
God in Search of Man : A Philosophy of Judaism
pg 45

Astronomers have combined two decades of Hubble observations to make unprecedented movies revealing never-before-seen details of the birth pangs of new stars. This sheds new light on how stars like the Sun form…The movies reveal the motion of the speedy outflows as they tear through the interstellar environments. Never-before-seen details in the jets’ structure include knots of gas brightening and dimming and collisions between fast-moving and slow-moving material, creating glowing arrowhead features. These phenomena are providing clues about the final stages of a star’s birth, offering a peek at how the Sun behaved 4.5 billion years ago.

“Hubble movies provide unprecedented view of supersonic jets from young stars”
Physorg.com

How do you combine these two quotes together? Can you see the hand of God in “energetic jets of glowing gas traveling at supersonic speeds in opposite directions through space?” I can. It’s not always easy, though. Building somewhat on yesterday’s morning meditation, we live in a world that strives to explain everything in terms of naturally occurring events. Nothing is amazing or astounding anymore, it’s just stuff that can be explained by science. But according to Heschel, just because you can explain something takes nothing away from the wonder of it being a creation of God.

Religious people and particularly “fundamentalist” Christians tend to take the opposite approach. They find wonder in all of God’s creation but see science as the enemy of God. Any scientific analysis of observable phenomenon is considered a denial of God’s existence. It’s only a miracle if it remains unexplained in terms of it’s physical, chemical, or electrical properties. Of course, by that thinking, we wouldn’t have the study of medicine which saves so many lives. We wouldn’t have the existence of the Internet which gives us virtually instantaneous access to information that would otherwise take weeks or months for us to locate. We would probably still think the Sun circled the earth and that God made the world as flat as a pizza.

Science is a tool and like any tool, it can be used and misused. In the post-modern era, scientific inquiry is often used as a tool to “prove” that everything in existence has a “natural” origin and that the universe doesn’t require a supernatural agent to explain its formation (and never mind that no scientific inquiry can adequately explain how the universe came into being in the first place). Yet science as a method of investigation, is amoral. It’s neither good nor bad. It simply is (at its most basic level) a set of steps that tells us how to look at something with as much objectivity as possible so we can learn what it is without tainting the conclusions with our own intervention and personality.

That’s of course, if it’s used correctly and with its original intent. Human beings have a tendency to abuse tools in order to acquire the results they believe fits their best interests, the truth not withstanding.

Even if used correctly though, scientific inquiry can have an unintended side effect. It can dull wonder, as Heschel states (pg 46):

As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.

What a hideous way to exist. Nothing is amazing. Nothing is fantastic. No event leads us into the presence of sheer awe at the glory of God’s works. That is such a sad and sorry way to live.

OceanThere are atheists who are proud to call themselves by that name and who marvel at mankind’s genius as it progresses toward a higher and enlightened scientific and social order. As the last gene becomes identified and mapped and the last star in the galaxy becomes classified and planets made of diamonds are cataloged, it all is taken in stride and in self-satisfaction. But it’s all so empty without God, for whose glory creation exists.

Heschel wonders why a “scientific theory, once it is announced and accepted, does not have to be repeated” but observant Jews continue to pray the Shema twice daily saying “He is One”. The reason this is done is because the “insights of wonder must be constantly kept alive. Since there is a need for daily wonder, there is a need for daily worship.”

Heschel continues (page 49):

The sense for the “miracles that are daily with us,” the sense for the “continual marvels,” is the source of prayer. There is no worship, no music, no love, if we take for granted the blessings or defeats of living…Even on performing a physiological function we say “Blessed be Thou…who healest all flesh and doest wonders.”

Where is your sense of wonder? Perhaps it is doing well each day but if not, there is a way to inspire yourself. You don’t have to wait. Just start “doing” wonder. It’s like praying twice daily. Even if you don’t “feel” like it, the feeling doesn’t have to come before the doing:

People are not changed by arguments, nor by philosophy. People change by doing.

Introduce a new habit into your life, and your entire perspective of the world changes.

First do, then learn about what you are already doing.

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

Do you need help? It’s available, in fact, no one can develop a true sense of God alone because God didn’t create us to be in the world alone. As Rabbi Freeman writes:

Each of us has deficiencies, but as a whole we are complete. Each one is perfected by his fellow, until we make a perfect whole.

What we have, we were given by God. The environment around us, our intelligence, our sense of wonder, others among us to complete us and encourage us. We need only take advantage of God’s gifts including the gift of prayer. We need never lose our sense of wonder in the universe or our awe in God. I suppose it’s why Jesus said this, for who but a child has the greatest sense of wonder at the world and beyond?

Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. –Matthew 18:3 (ESV)

Later today, I’ll post my commentary on this week’s Torah Portion Shoftim. Stay tuned.

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Small Stones on the Path

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Stone PathIn future generations, people will find difficulty in understanding how at one time generations existed who did not regard the idea of God as the highest concept of which man is capable, but who, on the contrary, were ashamed of it and considered the development of atheism a sign of progress in the emancipation of human thought.

Walter Schubart
Russia and Western Man (1950)
p. 62f.

Moreover, the sublime in the Biblical sense is found not only in the immense and the mighty, in the “bold, overhanging, and, as it were, threatening rocks,” but also in the pebbles on the road. “For the stone shall cry out of the wall” (Habakuk 2:11). “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone” (Psalms 118:27).

Abraham Joshua Heschel
God in Search of Man : A Philosophy of Judaism
pg 40

I was almost astonished when I came across the quote of Schubart in Rabbi Heschel’s book, if only because it is such a completely accurate prediction of what we experience in the world today. I had to read it over again to make sure I understood the phrase correctly. We live in an age where belief, faith, and trust in God is considered at best anachronistic and at worst, ignorance and bigotry. Religion, more than any other organized structure, is blamed by the prevailing secular world for all manner of human ills including war, famine, disease, and race-hatred. This is considered especially true if you are a Christian or a Jew (for social and political reasons, modern western culture treats Muslims as exempt from this group).

Yesterday morning, my wife sent me a link to an article written by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman (we both appreciate his writing very much) called What is Chutzpah? The following caught my attention:

Citing the words of the Mishnah, “Be fierce as a leopard,” the code tells us that this means that when you go about doing all those Jewish things that Jews do, you shouldn’t feel the slightest embarrassment before those who ridicule you.

I’m not Jewish, but anyone who is openly religious will give the appearance of being an “oddball” in the culture we live in, and certainly I am considered an “oddball” even among other Christians (read any of my blog posts to find out why). Rabbi Freeman reminds me that to live a life of faith unashamedly, you must have chutzpah; the unabashed courage to make every action and every statement an expression of who you are in God and who He is in you.

One of Rabbi Freeman’s articles, related to the one on chutzpah, addresses Emunah, which is sometimes translated as “faith” or “belief”. It’s not an entirely equivalent term to either of those English words, and contains the sense that it “is an innate conviction, a perception of truth that transcends, rather than evades, reason.” That’s something of a radical concept, because the secular world sees faith as the lack of logic and reason while emunah is described as a sort of “meta-reason” and in fact, “wisdom, understanding and knowledge can further enhance true emunah.”

Several months ago, I wrote a blog article called Getting in the Wheelbarrow which describes the difference between faith (or at least belief) and trust. In short, faith is believing in the existence of God. Trust is “living out loud”, so to speak, a life with the certainty that God will always support you in all circumstances. This means being faithful to God in all things regardless of what people say or think about you and your rather unpopular lifestyle.

It’s not easy.

Almost two weeks ago, I wrote in another blog post that “What’s more important is to realize that we have that importance in the eyes of God no matter what anyone else thinks or feels about us.” That includes our family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and anyone whose thoughts, feelings, and opinions matter to us.

It’s not easy.

I’ve been following some conversations on a couple of blogs lately. One blog is written by Dr. Stuart Dauermann who believes that Jews who have faith in Jesus (Yeshua) should live a completely Jewish ethnic, cultural, and religious lifestyle. The other is maintained by Judah Gabriel Himango who believes that “Spirit-Life-giving” worship elements such as singing “Messianic” songs and performing “Davidic” dancing (this is an oversimplification..see his blog for more details) shouldn’t be sacrificed for the sake of traditional Jewish worship practices (which are somehow not “Spirit-Life-giving”). I’ve alreadyJacob's Pillar commented in the conversations on both blogs and don’t want to re-hash the arguments here, but it’s commentaries like these that remind me how much of a struggle it can be to make the simple choice to worship and honor God in a particular manner without attracting someone’s ire.

Chutzpah and Emunah are partners by necessity because living a life of the latter absolutely requires possessing the former, that is unless you choose to live in a cave or on a mountain top far away from other human beings. Isolation for the sake of faith however, is not what God had in mind.

And now the LORD says—
he who formed me in the womb to be his servant
to bring Jacob back to him
and gather Israel to himself,
for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD
and my God has been my strength—
he says:
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” –Isaiah 49:5-6

You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. –Matthew 5:14-16

In seeking God, we seek the sublime, the exalted and elevated, the most mighty of all Kings and the greatest of all Lords, the One God of all creation. However, Heschel says that the sublime isn’t always found in the highest heavens (pp 40-41.)

The sublime is revealed not only in the “clouds piled up in the sky, moving with lightning flashes and thunder peals,” but also in God’s causing the rain “to satisfy the desolate and waste ground, and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth” (Job 38:27); not only in the “volcanoes in all their violence and destruction,” but also in God’s “setting up on high those that are low” and in frustrating “the device of the crafty” (Job 5:11-12); not only in “the hurricanes with their track of devastation” but also in “the still small voice” (I Kings 19:12); not only in “the boundless ocean in the state of tumult” but in His setting a bar to the sea, saying, “Thus far shalt thou come, but no further; here shall they proud waves be stayed” (Job 38:11).

I might add that not only is the sublime found in the majestic Courts of Heaven and on the awesome Throne of God, but also in the lowliest servant of the Most High, trembling in fear and awe as he kneels before his King.

Rabbi Freeman writes that Abraham and Moses had enough chutzpah to question even God and that David’s chutzpah wouldn’t allow him to be afraid of the giant Goliath who was screaming terrible insults at the Jewish people.

The Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Chassidic movement, had no sense of fear of anyone or anything other than G-d Himself. Those who knew him said that if a lion would jump out at him, he wouldn’t flinch.

Rabbi Shmuel of Lubavitch defined the kind of chutzpah that the leaders of Chabad implemented in their fight against Czarist oppression and later Bolshevik anti-religious persecution: “Just go over it.” Meaning, no matter what they do, no matter how ominous it looks, just keep your locomotive steaming straight ahead as though there’s nothing in your way.

How much less should you and I fear those around us who believe we are ignorant and failing to uphold a proper “political correctness”, all for the sake of an ancient God who they have long since concluded is a myth created by a middle eastern tribe far removed from modern enlightenment and progressiveness. In the face of an “enlightenment” that has darkened the corridor leading to true wonder and awe, we believers and disciples of the Master, small and humble though we may be, are also his only lights in the world of men. We are serving as guides through the fog and pathfinders to the confused and dazed of humanity who are wandering blind in a lost and troubled world.

We associate chutzpah and emunah with the Jewish people and it has served them well, but these tools are essential for any person who professes faith and trust in God and it is by these qualities that we shall endure, though we are only “small pebbles on the road” and stones crying “out of the wall”.

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For God So Loved

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HumbleWhen this question reached the Alter of Kelm, zt”l, he explained quite decisively. “Two nations were forever distanced from Hashem due to their lack of hakoras hatov for the kindness of Avraham towards Lot, as the Ramban explains. Consider this, my brothers. Is there anyone in this generation who acts kindly to the grandchildren of a person who helped them? Surely so many years have passed, and most will surely have forgotten such an old obligation? We would be surprised to find even one such person in a city!”

Rav Yechezkel Levenstein, zt”l, recounted that the Alter’s rebuke did indeed bear fruit. “Boruch Hashem, I knew people in Kelm who truly knew how to express their appreciation towards those who had shown them—or their parents—kindness. I even knew people who bestowed kindness on the grandchildren of those who helped them. They did their utmost to do whatever good possible to those who had been kind to them and even their descendants. This is the level of truly pious and upright people who know their obligation in the world.”

The obligation for hakoras hatov itself is clearly explained in the Mishnas Rabbi Eliezer, “There is nothing more serious in God’s eyes than one who lacks proper appreciation. Adam HaRishon was banished from Gan Eden only because he lacked proper appreciation. God got angry at our forefathers in the desert only because they lacked hakoras hatov.”

Yomi Daf Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“The Need for Gratitude”
Chullin 62

“I gratefully thank You, living and existing King
for restoring my soul to me with compassion.
Abundant is your faithfulness.”

–Modeh Ani

Gratitude is a quality that isn’t always well demonstrated in the modern world of the west. In many other cultures, including the middle east, hospitality and the expression of gratitude is still highly prized (at least among the older generation). What about those of us who are attached to the God of Israel and who are disciples of Jesus?

Every morning, before getting out of bed, I silently bless God with the Modeh Ani for preserving my life for another day. I’m not telling you this because I think it makes me a better person or anything, but to illustrate the point that we depend on God for literally everything in our lives, regardless of what it is or how we think we’ve acquired it. If God is so gracious to us that he “opens His hand and satisfies the desires of every living thing” (Psalm 145:16), how can we fail to acknowledge that before Him or not proceed to pass that graciousness on to others.

Despite the terrible shortages, the Imrei Emes always put the needs of the poor first. A certain chassid once brought him a little challah for Shabbos. This challah was made of the finest flour—a danger for the baker since this flour was set aside for soldiers—so the rebbe could avoid using coarse bread for hamotzi on Shabbos. This challah was considered very valuable since it was of much better quality.

To the surprise of all, the rebbe gave out this precious bread to his chassidim who came for shiyarim. The rebbe explained his generosity with a statement on today’s daf. “In Chullin 63 we find that the chasidah bird is called this since it does kindness exclusively with its own kind—they only share food with each other. Interestingly, we find in the Yerushalmi that mice are called wicked because when they see a lot of fruit they call their friends to join them. We may well wonder the exact difference between the two. After all, aren’t both kind to their own species exclusively?”

“The answer is that mice only call their friends when there is a lot. A chasidah shares even when there is not so much to be shared…”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“The Rebbe’s Chessed”
Chullin 63

It’s not that we don’t do this, but we all need a reminder that we have a duty to share what God has provided with others, not just when we have plenty, but when we are in want. That’s why I recite Modeh Ani in the morning…as a reminder that I am grateful to God for my life and what I have and that what I have should be shared. But what we share shouldn’t be just what we have, but who we are. Ultimately, they should all be the same thing.

The Rebbe wept profoundly as he spoke these words:

The entire being of Moses was the Torah he brought to his people. The Torah was more than something he taught. It was what he was. It was his G-d within him.

Yet when it came to a choice between the Torah or his people, he chose his people. He said, “And if you do not forgive them, then wipe me out from Your book that You have written!”

His whole being was the Torah,
but deep into his essence, at the very core,
was his oneness with his people.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
Bringing Heaven Down to Earth
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
“The Ultimate Sacrifice”
Chabad.org

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. –John 3:16

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Seeking the Awe of Heaven

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Gates of HeavenThere are two approaches to the Bible that prevail in philosophical thinking. The first approach claims that the Bible is a naive book, it is poetry or mythology. As beautiful as it is, it must not be taken seriously, for in its thinking it is primitive and immature. How could you compare it to Hegel or Hobbes, John Locke or Shopenhauer?

The second approach claims that Moses taught the same ideas as Plato or Aristotle, that there is no serious disagreement between the teachings of the philosophers and the teachings of the prophets. Aristotle, for example, used unambiguous terms, while the prophets employed metaphors.

Abraham Joshua Heschel
God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism.
pp 24-25

Everything is within the power of Heaven except fear and awe of heaven. –Berachot 33b

Although I may have left the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute’s lesson on Toward a Meaningful Life behind with yesterday’s morning meditation, the Christian search for God in the Torah, Tanakh, and Talmud still occupies me. I’m sure reading Heschel’s classic only provokes my interest.

The quote from his book which I just posted presents a more interesting dilemma than the one Heschel considered. He was presenting how Jews view God through the lens of the Torah as compared the perspective of the Greek (and later) philosophers and their “more rational” position on God. From a Jewish way of looking at the issue, it’s a matter of Jewish religion vs. non-Jewish, secular philosophy. Now let’s toss a monkey wrench into the spinning machinery.

It is said that much of how Christianity understands and interprets the Bible stems from the study and adherence to Greek philosophy. I’ve known more than one believer who has left the church because they came to realize that the Christian tradition had “Helenized” the Bible, stripping it of its original Hebraic meaning and intent. If they are right, then a Christian studying the Jewish perspectives will either discover something precious or lose something essential in their faith.

Almost two months ago, I read a blog post warning Christians that to study Judaism and Jewish writings was an invitation to apostacy and the abandonment of Christ himself. The danger was that becoming too attracted to Judaism would result in a person who would eventually lose their Christian faith and perhaps even decide to convert.

That concern doesn’ t particularly worry me. There’s something else to consider. I wonder if the Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible even speak the same language. Ponder this statement from Heschel’s book (page 25):

The central thought of Judaism is the living God.

That begs the question, “what is the central thought of Christianity?” The most obvious answer is “Jesus Christ”, but is that the same answer, a related answer, or does this represent two completely different answers? When a Jew thinks of God, he isn’t thinking of the Messiah because nothing in Judaism presupposes that the Messiah must be God. We imagine because the Jewish Bible makes up the first two-thirds of the Christian Bible, that there must be a significant overlap in how Christians and Jews think of, understand, and approach God, but that isn’t particularly true. As my (Jewish) wife keeps telling me, Jews conceptualize God, faith, and the world around them in a fundamentally different way than everyone else, particularly Christians.

But is there no common meeting ground? Don’t both Jews and Christians seek God? Doesn’t the yearning to walk in His Presence stir in both the Jewish and the Christian heart?

The Bible has several words for the act of seeking God (darash, bakkesh, shahar). In some passages these words are used in the sense of inquiring after His will and precepts (Psalm 119:45, 94, 155). Yet, in other passages these words mean more than the act of asking a question, the aim of which is to elicit information. It means addressing oneself directly to God with the aim of getting close to Him; it involves a desire for experience rather than a search for information. Seeking Him includes the fact of keeping His commandments, but it goes beyond it. “Seek ye the Lord and His strength, seek His face continually” (Psalms 105:4). Indeed, to pray does not only mean to seek help; it also means to seek Him. (Heschel page 28)

Hasid AlleywayI certainly can’t see why this couldn’t be the basis of searching for God for both the Jew and the Christian…or any person seeking the God who calls to them in their pain and their dreams.

There’s a certain irony in the fact that, while I as a Christian am seeking God through a Jewish understanding, there was once a Jew who did quite the opposite…and yet remained Jewish:

He read the Gospels in German. Then he obtained a Hebrew version and reread them. Though he was in the midst of a Gentile, Christian city where Jesus was worshiped in churches and honored in every home, Feivel felt the Gospels belonged more to him and the Chasidic world than they did to the Gentiles who revered them. He found the Gospels to be thoroughly Jewish and conceptually similar to Chasidic Judaism. He wondered how Gentile Christians could hope to comprehend Yeshua (Jesus) and His words without the benefit of a classical Jewish education or experience with the esoteric works of the Chasidim.

Taken from Jorge Quinonez:
“Paul Philip Levertoff: Pioneering Hebrew-Christian Scholar and Leader”
Mishkan 37 (2002): 21-34
as quoted from Love and the Messianic Age

Paul Philip Levertoff, born as Feivel Levertoff first encountered a page from the Gospels as a nine-year old Chasidic Jewish boy in the late 19th century. He found a scrap of paper in the snow one day written in Hebrew and assumed it was from a Jewish holy book. He took it home to his father to see what should be done, but when the man realized what was written on the paper, he threw it in the stove to burn. But while that scrap of paper was reduced to ashes, a different kind of fire was kindled in Feivel Levertoff that day and that fire never left him for the remainder of his life.

Levertoff couldn’t believe that anyone not schooled in the Zohar, the Tanya, or other mystic and Chasidic Jewish wisdom could ever understand the words such as are written in John’s Gospel. As much as anything, Levertoff’s experience lets me anticipate that someone with an essential faith in Jesus can hope to allow that faith, understanding, and worship to grow and expand when nurtured with some of the same fertile Jewish prayers and readings (see my review of Levertoff’s Love and the Messianic Age for more).

Returning to Heschel (page 31):

There are three starting points of contemplation about God; three trails that lead to Him. The first is the way of sensing the presence of God in the world in things; the second is the way of sensing His presence in the Bible; the third is the way of sensing His presence in sacred deeds.

What Heschel is describing as three starting points are what he later defines as worship, learning, and action. In my reading and subsequent review of Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, I noticed that it was not recommended for each to person take the same path to God. It seems that not everyone is cut out for the “mystic approach”. Rather, some people are best suited to approaching God through deed, others mainly through study, and still others, primarily through prayer and worship. How interesting that Heschel should offer the same three options, mapped to different scriptures:

  • Worship: “Lift up your eyes on high and see, Who created these? –Isaiah 40;26
  • Learning: “I am the Lord thy God.” –Exodus 20:2
  • Action: “We shall do and we shall hear.” –Exodus 24:7

The human race is a people seeking God. Many don’t understand that His face is the one they long to see and if you ask them about it, they’ll deny it vehemently. And yet, mankind thirsts for justice, cries out for mercy, begs for forgiveness, and pleads for their wounds and sicknesses to be healed. Who are they crying out to if not God?

How much more can this be said of those of us who understand that we are seeking the face of God and yet, there seems to be more than one road to His Throne (not contradicting John 14:6). Even in narrowing these methods to worship, study, and actions, there are still so many choices to consider. I continue to make my choice in one particular direction. Hopefully, Rabbi Heschel wouldn’t have minded.

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A Christian at the Gates of the Temple of God

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Toward the light“Yes, religion consoles us for our fate, but it also moves us to believe that with God’s help, we can change it. Hence the Christians, Jews and others who fought to abolish slavery then, global poverty now.”

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
from “When People Lose Faith in God, They Lose Faith in Humanity Also”

“To the Jewish mind, the understanding of God is not achieved by referring in a Greek way to timeless qualities fo a Supreme Being, to ideas of goodness or perfection, but rather by sensing the living acts of His concern, to His dynamic attentiveness to man.

Abraham Joshua Heschel
God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

“Why would the Jewish people ask for G-d’s name?”

from the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute lesson book
Toward a Meaningful Life

This is the last in my series of blogs based on this Rohr JLI course but probably not the last thing I’ll write about the significance of people and how we can have a relationship with God, which after all, are rather universal questions. Also, the question I’m asking today is really at the heart of just about every article I’ve written on this blog: “Can I apply Jewish wisdom, teachings, mysticism, and folk tales to Christians and our relationship with God through Jesus Christ?”

Gee, that’s quite a mouthful. Here’s what I mean.

Take another look at the link to the Toward a Meaningful Life course work. Notice the title of the course says, “Toward A Meaningful Life: A Soul-searching Journey for Every Jew”, That’s “for every Jew”. Does that mean I’ve been wasting my time going over this material because I’m not Jewish? Has it been written and presented in such as way that it cannot apply in any aspect to a person who isn’t a Jew and specifically can’t apply to a person who is a Christian?

Just about every quote I borrowed from the material I’ve been reading, when it refers to people at all, refers to people; human beings, not necessarily just Jews. Here are a few examples:

The Holy One, Blessed be He, has any number of names. All of these names, however, designate only various aspects of divine manifestation in the world, in particular as these are made known to human beings.

-Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
“Divine Manifestation”

A human being should feel the same sense of warmth and security when he or she comes home.

-Simon Jacobson
“Why is Home Life So Important?”

The Biblical view of marriage is unique among the many extant religious, philosophical and sociological views. The Bible sees a married couple as two people who have made a contractual agreement…

-Rabbi Pinchas Stolper
“The Man-Woman Dynamic of Ha-Adam: A Jewish Paradigm of Marriage”

Every one of these references can easily be applied to people in general and not just Jews specifically, so it seems as if this material can have meaning for a wider audience. Of course, it is marketed to a Jewish groups rather than to churches, mosques, and corporate management seminars, so I may be wrong in my assumptions here. Also, looking at the quote from Rabbi Stolper’s article, even the title says, “A Jewish Paradigm of Marriage” and he points to the “Biblical view of marriage” being different than other religious perspectives (presumably including Christian perspectives) on the topic, so again, I may be reading too much into his content.

I’m not picking on any of these teaching materials or the contributing authors, but I do want to examine just how far we can generalize concepts and teachings that were originally written for Jewish people living in a completely Jewish ethnic, cultural, and religious context into a much broader population. OK, this material is also for Jews who are not well connected to religious Judaism and designed to help re-connect them to who they are, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we can extend all this to the rest of us, does it?

I spend a lot of thing wondering if I’m taking everything I’m reading too far. I can read something by a Jewish author and see how it might connect to something in a Christian context (at least “Christian” as I understand the term), but that doesn’t mean there’s anything causal going on. To put it another way, just because Rambam wrote something in the 12th century that seems to connect to how I understand the words of Jesus doesn’t necessarily mean the two are related in any sense. It certainly doesn’t mean that the source of what Rambam wrote in any way shape or form, can be traced back to any of Christ’s teachings.

I can’t explain why Jewish teaching materials, commentaries, and lessons call to me in a way that Christian books and blogs never do. Derek Leman recently published a blog post called The Message of Jesus via Scot McKnight (Leman is something of a “fan” of Scot McKnight), After scanning Leman’s blog post, I found that I didn’t have a great deal of interest in what McKnight had to say at the moment. Some of the quotes from McKnight’s materials posted in the comments of Leman’s blog seemed to confirm that McKnight’s opinion of Jews, in relation to the church, weren’t any different than many other Christians: that the Jews are “done” as far as God is concerned, and it’s now all about the church and Jesus. Here’s an example:

“The book stands on four arguments: that the gospel is defined by the apostles in 1 Corinthians 15 as the completion of the Story of Israel in the saving Story of Jesus; that the gospel is found in the Four Gospels; that the gospel was preached by Jesus; and that the sermons in the Book of Acts are the best example of gospeling in the New Testament.”

“The completion of the Story of Israel”? Guess the fat lady has sung.

I suppose I’m being unfair and maybe I should spend some time on McKnight’s blog to see more of what he’s all about, but I really, really get tired of “big shot” Christians saying, “we Christians are so cool and the Jews are toast”. On top of that, Antwuan Malone mirrored a lot of my frustrations with the church in his recent blog post 7 Things Getting Old in the Church…Fast!

I feel like I’m caught between two worlds but I don’t belong in either of them. I don’t belong in a church because of how commercialized and secular most of them have become and frankly, because my perspectives are just too “un-Christian” (if you can’t tell that from reading my blog, you haven’t been paying attention). I don’t belong in the synagogue because, frankly, I’m not Jewish. That is, I’m not connected culturally and ethnically to the Jewish community. I wouldn’t fit in. I’d be too “Christian”.

River of LifeWhere do I go from here?

I’ve just spent the past week or two spewing my angst on whether I can have a relationship with the Creator of the Universe all over the Internet, so that’s the only place I know where to go. Even then, my relationship with God is far from perfect. I struggle every day with the simplest of ideas, concepts, feelings, or efforts to make the most ephemeral of connections.

Can I apply Jewish themes to a Christian life? I don’t know, but in my case, I’ll probably keep doing it anyway, just because nothing else makes sense to me. Do Jews intend for their themes to be applied to a Christian life? Probably not.

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok of Lubavitch was famed for both his selfless devotion to the needs of every Jew and for his steadfast stand on the integrity of the Torah. The Rebbe maintained that to deal with the growing danger of assimilation and Jewish rootlessness by compromising on the Torah’s principles will only serve to repel those whom one is seeking to “accommodate”. Deep down, said the Rebbe, the Jew wants the truth; offer him a watered-down quasi-truth and you will drive him even further away from his identity.

Once, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok was asked: “True, under ideal conditions, one wants his water to be pure. But when a fire rages, is this the time to be particular? The fire must be put out by any and all means at one’s disposal, including polluted or tainted water. The current crisis of identity among the Jewish people is threatening our very existence. Surely it is a time to be more flexible and accommodating.”

Replied the Rebbe: “What you say is true, so long as one battles fire with water. But if one rushes to pour any liquid on the flames, without realizing that his bucket contains say, benzene instead of water, the result is the exact opposite of what one is seeking to accomplish.”

-Rabbi Yanki Tauber
“The Accommodating Firefighter”
Once Upon a Chasid: Parshah Re’eh
Chabad.org

What did Rabbi Tauber’s commentary say? “The current crisis of identity among the Jewish people is threatening our very existence. Surely it is a time to be more flexible and accommodating.” Here’s Rabbi Yitzchok’s response to that suggestion: “What you say is true, so long as one battles fire with water. But if one rushes to pour any liquid on the flames, without realizing that his bucket contains say, benzene instead of water, the result is the exact opposite of what one is seeking to accomplish.”

Expanding that to the current conversation, Judaism can’t extend itself very far outside its own sphere without risking the danger of losing its identity and cultural integrity. Trying to “marry” traditional Jewish and Christian viewpoints and concepts will either water things down too much or, like tossing benzine on a fire, cause an explosion.

Yet, there’s a certain beauty in many of these things I read and then write about, that provides me with a unique way to approach God that wouldn’t be available to me any other way. Even if I’m climbing the proverbial “wrong tree” from everyone else’s point of view, it still seems like the “right tree” to me. It’s the tree that, in the climbing of it, seems to lead to God more than any of the others in the forest.

I came across something at AskNoah.org a few weeks back that I’ve wanted to share: Will Gentiles be permitted to worship at the Third Temple in Jerusalem? When I first read the title, I really wanted the answer to be “yes”. The article answers the question in part, quoting from Isaiah 2:2-3:

“And it will come to pass at the end of days that the mountain of G-d’s House will be firmly established, even higher than the peaks, and all the peoples will flow toward it as a river. And many nations will go and will cry, ‘Let us go up toward the mountain of G-d’s House, to the House of the L-rd of Jacob, and we will learn from His ways and walk in His paths, for out of Zion goes forth Torah and the word of G-d from Jerusalem.’ “

That sounds very much like this:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. –Revelation 22:1-5

I doubt that I’ve answered my own question. I don’t feel very satisfied with my answer. I feel like I’ve just asked more questions, but right now, this is the path that’s calling me, so this is the path I will walk. A year from now, I can’t say where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing, but with God’s providence and grace, I’ll be where He wants me to be. Someday, Jews and Gentiles will sit down together at the feast of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matthew 8:11) and all of these questions will be answered. Until then, it’s the questions, not the answers, that drive me.

“If a foreigner who is not of Your people Israel comes from a distant land for the sake of Your name – for they shall hear about Your great name and Your mighty hand and Your outstretched arm – when he comes to pray toward this House, oh, hear in Your heavenly abode and grant all that the foreigner asks You for. Thus all the peoples of the earth will know Your name and revere You, as does Your people Israel; and they will recognize that Your name is attached to this House that I have built.” –I Kings 8:41-43

The road

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