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Something New

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When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he rent his clothes. Returning to his brothers, he said, “The boy is gone! Now, what am I to do?” Then they took Joseph’s tunic, slaughtered a kid, and dipped the tunic in the blood. They had the ornamented tunic taken to their father, and they said, “We found this. Please examine it; is it your son’s tunic or not?” He recognized it, and said, “My son’s tunic! A savage beast devoured him! Joseph was torn by a beast!” Jacob rent his clothes, put sackcloth on his loins, and observed mourning for his son many days. ALL his sons and daughters sought to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted, saying, “No, I will go down mourning to, my son in Sheol.” Thus his father bewailed him. The Midianites, meanwhile, sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, a courtier of Pharaoh and his chief steward. –Genesis 37:29-36 (JPS Tanakh)

Beginnings are hard. For good reason. If they were easy, we would prowl into each new venture like a snug fat cat.

When you begin pent up in an iron cage, a tiger comes out. A tiger that breaks through the door of its cage and pounces with a vengeance.

Bless those cages, those impossible brick walls, those rivers of fire that lie at the outset of each worthwhile journey. Without them we would be only as powerful as we appear.

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

As we see in the example from this week’s Torah Portion Vayeishev, making a new beginning, even in something that will ultimately turn out to be very worthwhile, can be very hard. Of course, when Joseph was stripped and thrown into a pit by his brothers, then kidnapped and sold into slavery, he hardly thought this was a good “new beginning”. In fact, it was the lowest point of his life up until then. He had no idea of the grandeur he would eventually attain as Viceroy in Egypt and savior of the civilized world.

I can hardly compare myself to Joseph, but I know what it’s like to make a new beginning. We all do, really. Anyone who has gotten married, who has had a child, who has moved to a new city, who has taken a new job knows what it is like to make a new beginning. Even when what you are achieving is ultimately good and desirable, it can still be difficult and stressful. Change always is.

I also know what it’s like to make a new beginning spiritually. I’ve done this more than once. Of course there was the moment when I came to faith in Jesus. I like to “joke” that almost immediately afterward, my life fell apart. I went through some very difficult times after coming to faith which is the exact opposite of what I’d expected, but then, God had to step in and help me make some significant changes once I declared my faith and was baptized. He’s still doing that work and sometimes, it really hurts.

During the past couple of years, I put myself through another significant spiritual change. For a year, starting in the summer of 2010, I started challenging all of my long-held religious assumptions, began studying new materials, and ultimately, at the end of that year, took my religious worship life in a very different direction. It wasn’t easy. I had to leave a congregation where I had been a trusted leader and teacher and where I had many friends (they’re still my friends) because of the new convictions at which I had arrived. I started a journey that still has no definitive destination and where I encounter uncertainty often. I believe this is the right thing to do for me, but doing the right thing is often disturbing and disconcerting.

Sometimes, even when you know that a new beginning is required, you don’t know what to do first. In fact, right after I had come to faith, the first question I asked my Pastor was, “What do I do now?”

Today’s daf discusses teaching Torah. Rav Moshe Shapira, shlit”a, explains that today’s world of kiruv is a new chapter that needs to be understood in its own context. For example, although the Shulchan Aruch writes that a rebbe must instill fear in his students—for this purpose he may not eat with them or be overly familiar with them—today is very different. When dealing with young people who need to be drawn closer, following such halachos will only cause an unhealthy distance between student and rebbe.

Another example of a complex kiruv issue was faced by a certain maggid who would travel around Eretz Yisrael encouraging our estranged brothers to draw closer to God. He wondered what to do with those who are distant but could be persuaded to take on some new religious practice. Most would only be willing to take on a single mitzvah, and pushing for more would only serve to destroy any willingness to advance. The question was: which mitzvah comes first?

When he brought this question to Rav Yosef Shalom Eliyashev, shlit”a, he replied concisely. “It doesn’t matter too much what they start with. But try to find a d’oraisa mitzvah that you think will make the greatest impact on them. Speak and encourage them to take on this mitzvah.”

The heads of Hidabrut, the famous Belzer kiruv organization in Eretz Yisrael, also had a kiruv conundrum. When a person is at the point where he will either take on wearing a kippah or tzitzis, which is more important?

Rav Eliyashev’s response will surprise many. “It is better to convince him to begin wearing a kippah. Although tzitzis is obviously a Torah commandment, wearing a yarmulke is superior since a man who wears a yarmulke feels especially Jewish since he publicly associates himself with religious Jews.”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“New Students”
Bechoros 29

Truth be told, one of the reasons why some Christians are attracted to the “Messianic” movement is that worship and faith is demonstrated in so many physical ways. The wearing of a yarmulke and tzitzit is very compelling and even a little addictive. I tend to believe that non-Jews in the movement go through a set of developmental steps, not all of them beneficial, but all of them seem to be necessary. One of the first steps is to become enamored with all the “Jewish stuff”. Sometimes the “stuff” is so seductive, that the non-Jewish participants never get past the “physicality” of their worship and dig into the spiritual context and meaning. They also get “sucked into” the idea that their “stuff”, because much of it can be found in Bible commandments, is better than the “Christian stuff” (and Christians don’t have nearly as much symbolic physical paraphernalia so they don’t seem as “cool”). Fortunately most people get past this stage. Some sadly, don’t.

However, if you’re immature in your faith, often the very first step onto a path of maturity is a material object, such as giving a child their very first Bible or cross necklace. The object takes on a transitional value, if seen and used properly, to escort the newly spiritual person into a faith that doesn’t require material objects to validate their relationship with God.

For an observant Jew, a siddur, talit gadol, kippah, and tefillin all are a part of daily prayer and worship and only under unusual circumstances will a Jew pray without obeying the mitzvot attached to these holy artifacts. But for a Christian and especially for the Gentiles in the Messianic movement, sometimes it’s helpful to put all of the “stuff” away, go off someplace where you can be alone, and just let it be you and God.

Try something uncomfortable and new. See how it works out. When Joseph did it (although it wasn’t his idea), it turned out pretty well. But it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t quick.

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Fragmentation Dilemma

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At first all existed as a single whole in a single thought. Then it fell below, shattering into tiny fragments and fragments of fragments. Now Man picks up the pieces and says, “This seems to belong to this, and this relates to that,” until he reaches back to the whole as it was in primal thought.

It is not the cause and why of things that we find. Things are the way they are because that is how their Maker decided they should be. That is beyond the domain of intelligence. The beauty of intelligence is that it finds the harmony and elegance of the whole as it was originally conceived.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Re-piecing”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

I really thought I’d write just one blog post about Christmas and the anxiety it produces in the Christian, Jewish, and Messianic communities, and then I’d be done and move on. Wrong. The giant panic attack over “Christmasphobia” seems to be (you should pardon the expression) snowballing in the religious blogosphere and social media space, and I can’t leave it alone. There are so many “teachers” and “experts” who keep hammering on the points of “I’m right and you’re wrong” and “Christmas is evil!” that it makes me wonder if the community of faith is about serving God and other people or about establishing the “rightness” of various individuals and sub-groups in our little corner of the religious world.

I suppose I’m not immune since I still feel the need to blog about all this, and I hope I’m communicating, not the need to be “right”, but the message of tolerance and understanding. I know that there is an absolute God who has absolute standards in the Heavenly realm, but if you’ve been a human being and religious for more than just a few days, you should know that trying to distill an absolute right and wrong in every single matter of living existence is no easy task. In fact, it’s probably not even possible.

Look at what Rabbi Freeman might be saying. Here’s my picture.

It’s as if we all woke up one morning to find ourselves in a fog-enshrouded field. We aren’t quite sure who we are, who all these other people are around us, and what we’re doing here. We notice tons and tons of very small fragments of “something” lying all over the field and we realize that we can figure out who we are and learn to understand each other if we just start to pick up the pieces and put them back together again. This is an enormous effort and requires that everybody work together. As our pieces begin to take some sort of form, we start arguing over how the pieces are supposed to fit and what shape they’re supposed to build. Depending on the person or group of people doing the building, the pieces all fit together differently and take on many different shapes. There are pieces and shapes that are impossible to make, which defines “wrong”, but we are all surprised that there is more than one way to make a “right”.

Derek Leman recently wrote A Sermon on Belief and Intelligence which illustrates as much as anything how faith and human intelligence must go hand-in-hand. To quote from the blog post, “Unexamined faith is cowardness” and “intelligence alone can’t explain the mystery.” Since human faith and human intelligence are not the same universally across all people groups or across all individual human beings, we end up with a high degree of variability in how we use faith and intelligence to “understand” God and “understand” the Bible (and I’m not even including any other faith groups outside of Christianity, Judaism, and their variants). Given all that, it is the height of arrogance to say that any one tradition is the one right tradition (I know, I keep hammering on this point in blog after blog, but it’s important and almost nobody “gets it”).

Within you as an individual and within your particular religious group (and I suppose even secular humanism qualifies as a “religious group”), you settle on standards and principles and things you “know” are right and wrong, but try to realize that other groups have their standards and principles, too. Even when we depend upon the same Bible or, to return to my metaphor, we are working with the same pieces, we use our traditions to fit the pieces together differently and to create a shape that’s different from the shapes of other groups, even when we’re using almost exactly the same pieces (i.e. Bible).

I like one of Julie Wiener’s quotes from her In the Mix article on Christmas especially well and as far as I’m concerned, she has more credentials as a Jewish woman in an interfaith marriage to make such a commentary than most of the “pundits” in the religious blogosphere who are using their points to stick it to their brothers and sisters in faith.

A few years ago, the sight of my offspring engaging in tree trimming might have made me squeamish, but this year, while we don’t (and won’t) have our own tree, I’m on a bit of a crusade, so to speak, against Christmasphobia. By which I mean the attitude many Jews (even some intermarried ones) have that Christmas and all its trappings must be avoided at all costs lest we assimilate into nothingness — and that we must be offended when clueless but well intentioned Christians wish us a merry Christmas or offer us gifts wrapped in red and green.
Like intermarriage itself, the presence or absence of a Christmas tree in one’s home is often used as a shorthand pulse check of Jewish identity — and both are rather flawed, simplistic measurement devices.
The fact is that many interfaith families, and in-married families with Christian relatives, do live full Jewish lives yet also partake in Christmas celebrations.

Although Judaism obviously struggles with the “Christmas dilemma”, that struggle doesn’t come in the form of a vicious attack on those people who put together the pieces of their puzzle into the shape of a Christmas tree. We universally fail to work together as people to put the pieces together into their original, single, unified shape. As human beings, this seems to be an insurmountable goal. But while we work in our own groups to build our own shapes and see how the pieces fit together for us, let us also fail to criticize, attack, revile, and humiliate the other groups simply because they use their own tradition to put their pieces together differently than we do.

He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God? –Micah 6:8 (NASB)

Only God can put together the pieces back into the original, perfect whole. The Messiah will come again to show us that pattern. For now, we are here and we have been given the job to do justice as we understand it, to love kindness as we have been shown it, and to walk with God along the path we see before us. How we do this will be different, depending on the path we walk. Why is that so hard to understand?

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The New Testament is Not in Heaven

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It is taught: On that day R. Eliezer brought forward every imaginable argument, but the Sages did not accept any of them. Finally he said to them: “If the Halakhah (religious law) is in accordance with me, let this carob tree prove it!” Sure enough the carob tree immediately uprooted itself and moved one hundred cubits, and some say 400 cubits, from its place. “No proof can be brought from a carob tree,” they retorted.

And again he said to them “If the Halakhah agrees with me, let the channel of water prove it!” Sure enough, the channel of water flowed backward. “No proof can be brought from a channel of water,” they rejoined.

Again he urged, “If the Halakhah agrees with me, let the walls of the house of study prove it!” Sure enough, the walls tilted as if to fall. But R. Joshua, rebuked the walls, saying, “When disciples of the wise are engaged in a halakhic dispute, what right have you to interfere?” Hence in deference to R. Joshua they did not fall and in deference to R. Eliezer they did not resume their upright position; they are still standing aslant.

Again R. Eliezer then said to the Sages, “If the Halakhah agrees with me, let it be proved from heaven.” Sure enough, a divine voice cried out, “Why do you dispute with R. Eliezer, with whom the Halakhah always agrees?” R. Joshua stood up and protested: “The Torah is not in heaven!” (Deut. 30:12). We pay no attention to a divine voice because long ago at Mount Sinai You wrote in your Torah at Mount Sinai, `After the majority must one incline’. (Ex. 23:2)”

R. Nathan met [the prophet] Elijah and asked him, “What did the Holy One do at that moment?” Elijah: “He laughed [with joy], saying, ‘My children have defeated Me, My children have defeated Me.'”

Baba Tetzia 59b as quoted at jhom.com

If you’re not an observant Jew or otherwise don’t have the benefit of a classic Jewish religious education, the comments I’ve just quoted may seem completely alien to you. If you are a Christian and understand the implications of what is being said, you are probably offended right now. Why would you be offended? Because this teaching from the Talmud justifies the Rabbinic authority to interpret Torah. “The Torah is not in Heaven” means that the Torah was revealed but not interpreted by the Prophets or even by God and His miracles, but by learned study, decision-making, and legal rulings.

Within this context, that seems to mean that man’s word trumps God’s authority. What a shocking thing to say, but it explains much about Judaism and why the Jewish understanding of God and the Bible is fundamentally different than Christianity.

Is this just some colossal conceit on the part of Judaism to dare override the word of God and to impose man’s wisdom and authority over the Creator? From a superficial point of view, I’m sure it seems that way. And yet, though Christianity, including many factions of the “Messianic” movement, believe they are following the pure and uninfluenced “Word of God” and the teachings of Jesus Christ by shunning Talmudic principals, in fact, the vast majority of what Christians consider God’s unalterable truth was established by the so-called “church Fathers” in the first three centuries of the Common Era. Unfortunately, this coincides with the rejection of Jewish leadership from the early church and the ghastly birth of supersessionist theology, with the non-Jewish believers commandeering all of God’s covenant promises to the Jewish people for the church alone.

If God spoke from heaven (Bat Kol) to the Christian church, explained to us that our treatment of the Jewish people has been terribly wrong during the past 2,000 years, and demanded that we make immediate reparations to His chosen people, would not the church respond with its own version of “the New Testament is not in Heaven?” Would we not say that, according to our own interpretation of the Bible and the rulings of our “judges and fathers” that how we Christians have persecuted and maligned the Jews throughout the history of the church has been correct? Would we attempt to “defeat” God in that manner? In fact, that’s exactly what Christianity has done.

In this instance, I’m not so much arguing for Rabbinic authority as against Christian hypocracy. We Christians say that the Jews have no right or authority to interpret God’s Torah as they do and yet the church does exactly the same thing. We just dress it up differently and pretend we’re obeying the Word of God rather than our own willful judgments. We quote scripture to back up our claims, all the while knowing that even the Adversary has done this to justify his causes (see Matthew 4:1-11).

An anonymous person on Judah Himango’s blog was deriding the celebration of Christmas by believers recently and said the following:

It’s not about what I think or you think as mush [sic] as it is about what YHWH’s word says and what Yeshua did. Yeshua is the Living Word, it is in His Way we want to follow…

The fallacy expressed here is that the commenter believes he or she doesn’t interpret the Bible but literally follows its instructions. I’ve already written my Christmas blog (OK, I wrote it twice), so I’m not going to debate that whole thing again, but I want to make the point that we all interpret the Bible and that (in my humble opinion) no one has the inside track and the complete lock on what the Bible does and doesn’t say to Judaism, Christianity, and mankind. We’re all dancing madly on the head of a pin trying not to fall off or get skewered. We read the Bible, we study, we pray, we go to classes, we search the Internet, we attempt to glean wisdom and understanding, but in the end, even within the church, we are hopelessly fragmented about the overarching message of the scriptures. We Christians don’t even realize that, when we incorporated the Jewish Tanakh into our Holy Book as the “Old Testament”, we accepted the placement of sentences, capitalization, punctuation, and for the most part, organization of chapters and verses, and all of that was not determined in the original scrolls but by Jewish Rabbinic tradition!

At some point, just because we don’t want to go insane or leave our faith in disgust and dispair, we make a decision based on tradition, what our family did, what our family didn’t do, or the passion we see in a particular branch of one religion or another, and we say to ourselves, “this is it!” We say, “this is what God wants me to do!” Of course, that’s what everyone tells themselves when they make a spiritual decision, regardless of what denomination of Christianity they settle into, or into what branch of Judaism they subscribe.

I remember reading somewhere that when the Third Temple (see the Book of Ezekiel) is built, God will build it Himself and then deliver it to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem from Heaven (not unlike Revelation 21:1-3)…all except the doors. I read somewhere that in ancient times, hanging the doors on a structure was a legal act and determined ownership of the place. Hanging the doors was usually the last act in construction and even if a person built an entire house by himself, if someone came in the night and hung the doors, that person owned the house, not the builder.

I can’t remember where I read all this but bear with me. This is important.

When God delivers the New Temple from Heaven (I know this is midrash and events may not actually happen this way, but let’s go with it for now), it will be complete, except the doors will be missing. Why will the doors be missing? Because God will require man to hang the doors. Man must take ownership of his relationship with God and his duties to God as expressed in the Temple. If humanity, with the Jewish people administering Temple worship “as in days of old and as in former years” (Malachi 3:4) don’t take ownership of their relationship with God, then we have no relationship with God. We’re just wind-up toy soldiers playing a part in some lifeless version of The Nutcracker Suite (which by the way, my wife and daughter saw again just the other night and adored); robots acting out the will of God but taking no “partnership” role in that will.

I’m not talking about rebelling against God or attempting to override His authority or sovereign will, but behaving as participating junior members of Creation with God. I’ve mentioned the principle of tikkun olam (repairing the world) many times before and in order to fulfill this mandate, we have to take an active role with God in this work. To do that, we must take a form of ownership over our role as agents of God and over our understanding of His Word to us. That means taking the risk of being wrong, but doing our best anyway, to understand the infinite and unique One God, and to proceed with faith and courage.

If we are honest with ourselves and God, we should have already admitted that we’ve gotten something wrong and misunderstood God’s intent in many areas of our lives. That shouldn’t stop us from doing our best to live as holy people, but it should stop us from judging others. It should also absolutely stop us from believing that our particular brand of religion has it right while everyone else has it wrong.

It is said that God has two attributes: the attribute of Justice and the attribute of Mercy. If God created the world with more Justice than Mercy, no one would survive since no one is righteous (Romans 3:10). If God created the world with more Mercy than Justice, then we would all literally get away with murder and there would be no Judge. If He created the world with absolutely equal parts, we would all have only one chance to “get it right” the first time and then no more. God’s solution was to create the world with just a tiny bit more Mercy than Justice and that’s the world we live in today (though we’ve managed to break it since Creation). There will be a final judgment in the end, but God also allows us to make foolish mistakes, as a patient father allows a small child to stumble while trying to walk. He doesn’t expect perfection and knows we are far from capable of achieving His perfect expectations, but He does desire that we struggle with the questions about our relationship with the Divine that are always on the verge of driving us mad.

But if He is so merciful to us, why do we dare judge our fellows so harshly against our own limited and miserly standards (and make no mistake, when we judge others by our interpretation of the Bible, we are almost always using our standards and not God’s)? Have we not heard that He will forgive our transgressions in the same manner as we have forgiven those who have transgressed against us (Matthew 6:12)? Do we not believe that if God were to judge us the way we judge others, we would all be lost forever? Have we not asked ourselves “when the Son of Man returns will he find faith (Luke 18:8)?”

And yet some of us choose to employ the celebration of Christmas by others as a iron rod to beat our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ into a bloody pulp. Even if God were to judge those who adhere to the celebration of the birth of the Savior as “wrong”, it is His right to do so, not ours. Even if God were to judge those Jews who adhere to the rulings of the Rabbnic sages as “wrong”, it is His right to do so, not ours. If God has truly ruled that the Torah (and the New Testament) is not in Heaven, but was given to man to administer, then what we loose here on Earth is also loosed in Heaven (Matthew 18:18). In this, we are doing our imperfect best to join with God in being good stewards of Creation by influencing, with God, both Heaven and Earth.

If you get nothing else from this morning’s meditation, please, please take a pair of tweezers, go to your bathroom mirror, and practice pulling that huge piece of lumber out of your eye, before attempting to perform major optical surgery to remove the virtually microscopic speck in your neighbor’s eye.

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Christmas Trees and Panic Attacks

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There are many quaint customs that get passed on from father and mother to son and daughter. Some of these practices are minhag Yisrael which developed for various reasons. Others are firmly based on halachah. Still others are sometimes misapplications of both.

A new school is always an adjustment. Especially if one commutes, it is hard to know just how much food one needs for his grueling day. One commuting student was somewhat hungry and had nothing left from his lunch. A kindly student—an Israeli of Sefardic descent—shared an apple with the new student. To the recipient’s surprise, there was a bit cut away from the apple. “Why is some cut away?” he asked his friend.

“My parents do that to all of the produce which comes through our house,” the boy explained. “It is a way of fulfilling the mitzvah of tithing produce.”

“What, in chutz l’aretz?” wondered the surprised boy.

“That is our custom,” was his friend’s simple reply.

In addition to a snack, the recipient had also received much food for thought.

When he got older he learned the probable source of this custom was a misapplication of a practice during the times of chazal which is not relevant in most places today. In the word of the Beis Yosef, zt”l,: “Since the custom is not to take terumos and maasros in these lands, I do not wish to discuss these halachos at length. Although we find in Bechoros 27—and other places in the Talmud—that they used to take terumos and ma’asros outside of Israel, the Ri, zt”l, explains that this only applies to lands which are close to Eretz Yisrael. Tosafos in Avodah Zarah writes the same, as does the Rambam in the beginning of Hichos Terumah…”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“A Family Custom?”
Bechoros 27

I read this and immediately thought of the continuing discussions in social media on the pros and cons of celebrating Christmas. These discussions reach the level of a “spiritual panic attack” in some corners of the Messianic world while the topic is all but ignored by the majority of folks in traditional Christianity and Judaism.

I was talking to my wife about traditions the other night and so much in the Judaism is driven by tradition. The interesting part is, there isn’t just one Jewish tradition. For instance, if there is a general ruling applied in the Talmud, but your local Rabbi has a differing opinion, a Jew is obligated to follow their local Rabbi’s ruling. Ashkenazi Jews have a tradition of considering beans and rice as leavened during Passover while Sephardic Jews do not, so if you are Ashkenazi, you are obligated to follow your own tradition (whether you personally agree with it or not) rather than choosing the Sephardic tradition. And as we see from the quotte above, there can even be family traditions within Judaism that are considered binding.

No wonder Judaism is confusing for most non-Jews.

I’m writing this to say that there can be more than one right way to behave as a person of faith and more than one tradition that is correct, depending on who you are and how you are identified. I don’t mean to say that there aren’t wrong things for a person of faith to do, but I am saying that there may be multiple streams of “correctness” or “acceptability”, depending on your traditions. The celebration of Christmas is a tradition. It’s attached to an actual event, the birth of Christ, but there’s nothing about the timing of Christmas or how it is observed, particularly in the modern era, that is really tied in to the birth of a baby boy to a young Jewish couple in first century occupied Israel. It certainly isn’t a celebration that the disciples of Jesus followed, either during his lifetime or after the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. I can’t imagine Paul showing the Gentile disciples in Antioch or Rome how to put up “Christmas” decorations.

But it’s a tradition that, in one fashion or another, the church as been celebrating for a very long time. How it is celebrated as changed over the years and the Christmas that we have now is just a few centuries old. For all those nations where Christmas is celebrated, it is observed with different types of traditions, and some are very different from what we have in America. There are even different ways to celebrate Christmas in different churches in the same city and even between different families who go to the same church.

And then there are corners of the Messianic movement that go absolutely bonkers at this time of year if anyone even breathes the suggestion that celebrating Christmas might be “OK” and not automatically “pagan” and “evil”.

I read a recent commentary on Facebook that was “shared” and originally written by a Messianic teacher I’ve never heard of before (I won’t mention names but the commentary got my attention, though not in a good way). This person compared the Christmas tree to the Tower of Babel, directly applied the prohibitions against idols written in Jeremiah 10 to the Christmas tree, and made an absolute statement that celebrating Christmas leads to (spiritual) death.

Oh my!

One of the reasons I left “the movement” was because of some of the more outrageous teachers that are attracted to “Messianic Judaism”. As in many other religious traditions, there are a number of different branches to “Messianism” and some are more “interesting” (I’m trying to be polite) than others. I have many friends in different branches of the movement, both in person and on the web, and I’m not trying to offend any of them, but I need to try to remind everybody that none of us has the secret keys to the truth and any of us can go off half-cocked given a good enough reason.

It’s OK to disagree with someone’s religious practice and to believe their understanding of the Bible is wrong. However, it is not OK to pass judgment on others to the point where you state unequivocally that those folks with whom you disagree are “going to hell in a handbasket.”

Interestingly enough, my family and I went out to dinner tonight and afterward, we stopped off at a confection shop in the Boise North End called Goody’s. The place was completely decked out for Christmas and while we were waiting for our order to be filled, my son told me there were some things about Christmas that he kind of misses. He lives in his own place and I told him he could decorate it for the holidays if he wanted, but he said it wouldn’t make much sense to do it just for him. He also said that he didn’t doubt he’d celebrate Christmas in the future when he had a family of his own. I was just a little surprised, but he was probably referring to the significant likelihood that he wouldn’t marry a Jew (just how many eligible Jewish young women are there in Boise, anyway?). Michael self-identifies as Jewish and has a spiritual component to his life, but he isn’t particularly religious. It occurred to me that in addition to community traditions and family traditions, sometimes there’s the evolution of the traditions of the individual. Like I keep saying, we all make decisions and we all manage the consequences in one way or another. We all have different ways in which we relate to each other and to God.

We need to keep it together, gang. Faith in God is about listening to and being supportive of others, even if they are different from you. Disagree on principle if you must, but do not condemn, especially if you aren’t that sure of how God views our traditions and particularly when you realize that how we understand the Bible and God may not have absolute fidelity to the original. For tomorrow morning’s “meditation”, I’m posting a blog called “The New Testament is Not in Heaven”. I hope I can further illuminate the role of tradition in our lives for both Christians and Jews, and just how much of what we believe comes from God is actually based on traditions.

Addendum: For more on this topic, go to Kabbalah Christmas and The New Testament is Not in Heaven.

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The Rabbi and the Flood

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Although many prosperity churches hold seminars on financial responsibility, Catherine Bowler of the Duke Divinity School alleges that they often offer poor advice. Rosin argues that prosperity theology contributed to the housing bubble that caused the financial crisis of 2007–2010. She maintains that home ownership was heavily emphasized in prosperity churches and that reliance on divine intervention caused people to make unwise choices.

Prosperity Theology page at Wikipedia

Once, I asked Garay how you would know for certain if God had told you to buy a house, and he answered like a roulette dealer. “Ten Christians will say that God told them to buy a house. In nine of the cases, it will go bad. The 10th one is the real Christian.” And the other nine? “For them, there’s always another house.”

-Hanna Rosin
“Did Christianity Cause the Crash?”
the Atlantic

As our forefather Yaakov (Jacob) prepared to encounter his brother Esav again after 34 years, he did three things: sent presents, readied for war, and prayed. He balanced his prayers and trust in G-d with appropriate “worldly” efforts. He neither trusted in his own efforts, nor expected G-d to protect him with open miracles.

Not everyone knows how to strike this balance correctly. At one end of the spectrum are the people who believe that everything is up to them, who panic when they encounter a challenge or pat themselves on the back when things go well. At the other end of the spectrum, perhaps, is the rabbi of a town seated downstream from a dam that was about to break.

-Rabbi Yaakov Menken
“Balanced Trust”
Commentary on Torah Portion Vayishlah
Project Genesis

I suppose there are Christian Pastors who preach a balanced approach to a life of faith, but I more often find such a lesson taught by Rabbis. It seems like, in our current and rather dismal economy, that the poorly-considered Prosperity Theology promoted at some of the rather famous megachurches, is just power-surging through Christianity these days. This phenomena reminds me of how some Christians believe people get sick and even die, just because they don’t have enough faith. After all, if you have enough faith, God will heal you of any injury or disease, right? The mother who died of breast cancer or the father who perished from a sudden heart attack just weren’t “real Christians”, right? There have been “men of God” such as Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Benny Hinn, and Joel Osteen who have, at one time or another, preached the basic message that God wants all Christians to be wealthy in this lifetime and if we have enough faith, money and prosperity will drop in our laps like proverbial “pennies from heaven.”

That’s hardly the reality of the Bible. A quick look at any of the Prophets in the Tanakh (Old Testament) and the lives of the Apostles, including Paul and Peter, shows us that often a life of extraordinary faith is also one of extraordinary hardship. No, I’m not saying that a life of faith always results in hardship, but it’s ridiculous to believe that being a “true Christian” means always being “filthy rich”. God has a wide variety of paths for each of us. Some people are “rewarded” (seemingly) in this life and some, by faith, live in financial difficulty and believe they have a reward in the world to come (Matthew 6:19-21). Rabbi Menken uses Jacob as an example of a man who, through a lot of hard work and faith, did well materially, though not without sacrifice. Jacob was a man who, in spite of success, continued to struggle with the world around him and with the Divine, but who was balanced sufficiently to make his own best effort, to pray, and then to trust God.

Most of us aren’t that well-organized and, as people of faith, we forget many of the lessons God has taught us.

People, despite their wealth, do not endure;
they are like the beasts that perish.

This is the fate of those who trust in themselves,
and of their followers, who approve their sayings.
They are like sheep and are destined to die;
death will be their shepherd
(but the upright will prevail over them in the morning).
Their forms will decay in the grave,
far from their princely mansions.
But God will redeem me from the realm of the dead;
he will surely take me to himself.
Do not be overawed when others grow rich,
when the splendor of their houses increases;
for they will take nothing with them when they die,
their splendor will not descend with them.
Though while they live they count themselves blessed—
and people praise you when you prosper—
they will join those who have gone before them,
who will never again see the light of life.

People who have wealth but lack understanding
are like the beasts that perish. –Psalm 49:12:20

We cannot rely only on our faith nor only on our own efforts; rather it is a combination of both that God expects of us (James 2:14-26). But sometimes we get lazy and jump at the sort of message that says God will “do it all” as long as we “bathe it in prayer” and have enough faith. Lack of prosperity, in this particular spiritual framework, means it’s our fault when we don’t prosper, and we haven’t prayed hard enough or prayed some sort of “magical” or “secret prayer” someone wrote a book about, as if God could be manipulated to give us our wishes like a genie in a lamp.

The flip side is when we have success and attribute it entirely to our own efforts, ignoring the graciousness of God. We look at our own magnificence and tell ourselves that people who are destitute are just lazy slackers who want the Government to give them everything rather than really working hard, like we did. The examples of people who are out of balance in one way or another are just endless. Here’s the end of Rabbi Menken’s story to illustrate my point (and I’m sure you’ve heard this joke before):

The sheriff found the rabbi sitting calmly on his front porch, studying. “Rabbi!” yelled the sheriff, “it’s a flood, we have to evacuate!”

“Don’t worry,” said the rabbi, “G-d will help me. I don’t need to go.”

Soon the water flooded the town, and firemen in motorboats were picking up the stragglers. One of them noticed the rabbi, and called him to come with them.

“Don’t worry,” said the rabbi, “G-d will help me. I don’t need to go.”

But the waters rose, and rose, and by the time a helicopter was sent to find the last residents, the rabbi was calmly sitting on his roof. Yet once again, the rabbi refused to go.

Once in Heaven, the rabbi demanded an explanation. “I followed Your ways, I learned Your Torah, I did Your will… why didn’t You help me?!”

“What do you mean?” came the response. “I sent a car. I sent a boat. I even sent you a helicopter, but you refused to be helped!”

The reason the joke is so well-known is because it tells something true about people of faith who only have faith. We look for supernatural miracles as the only answer to prayer, but often God sends us very real-world solutions to our dilemmas which require that we take some sort of definitive action. God opens the door, but we still have to get up off of our rear ends and walk through it.

Rabbi Label Lam at Torah.org quotes the pre-World War II treatise of Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman ztl, “The Epoch of the Moshiach” as an example of how many of the Jews in Europe trusted in the powers of the world around them for safety and prosperity and instead were led into the Holocaust.

“Before the redemption, the Jews will err after various forms of idol- worship… “Any matter which appears to man as a controlling factor independent of HASHEM’s will, and as capable of doing good or evil is included in the definition of idolatry. (Sanhedrin) …

He writes, “Let us now review all the “idols” which were worshipped in the last one hundred years. The Enlightenment of Berlin promised a great salvation. As soon as the breeze of liberalism began to blow, the Jews hastened to stand in the ranks of the foremost exponents. After Liberalism had made its exit, they turned to Democracy (worship of public opinion), Socialism, Communism, and to other “isms”… To these idols they made sacrifices of blood and money- and were betrayed by all of them. Not even one justified the faith that was pinned on it…”

Anything can become an idol if we depend on it beyond God’s will, even faith itself. Having faith in a “system” of Government or economic strategy can and has led to tragic consequences, but walking out in the middle of a busy street, standing directly in the path of a speeding truck, and expecting God to send His angels to rescue us from our own folly is also a kind of idolatry. Whether it’s some corrupt “holy man” telling us what we want to hear or we are telling ourselves the same foolish message, we are not so strong that we do not need God, nor can we neglect the responsibilities God has given us and not expect to collide with the consequences. Like Jacob, we must do the equivalent of “sending gifts, praying, and preparing for war” in every challenge we face. Only then are we fully equipped and worthy children of our Father.

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Vayishlah: The Running Shliach

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That same night he arose, and taking his two wives, his two maidservants, and his eleven children, he crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After taking them across the stream, he sent across all his possessions. Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he wrenched Jacob’s hip at its socket, so that the socket of his hip was strained as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for dawn is breaking.” But he answered, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” Said the other, “What is your name?” He replied, “Jacob.” Said he, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.” Jacob asked, “Pray tell me your name.” But he said, “You must not ask my name!” And he took leave of him there. So Jacob named the place Peniel, meaning, “I have seen a divine being face to face, yet my life has been preserved.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping on his hip. –Genesis 32:23-32 (JPS Tanakh)

As he prepared to face Esau, Jacob experienced a strange mystical encounter with God. He had sent his family, his servants and his possessions across a river ahead of him. He was about to follow when he was suddenly attacked by an assailant. Jacob wrestled the man through the night. The attacker turned out to be none other than the angel of the LORD.

“A Life-Changing Encounter”
First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) commentary on
Torah Portion Vayishlah

I know. Everybody teaches and writes on Jacob wrestling with the angel. It gets a little cliche’ after awhile. Who was the angel? Was it Jesus? Was it God? Was it Jacob’s “evil inclination?” Was it the angel embodying the spirit of Esau? All of the above, some of the above, none of the above? Who knows?

And what does it have to do with us?

The FFOZ commentary goes on to say that the name change of Jacob to Israel, as a result of the patriarch’s encounter with the Divine, altered the course of his life, changing his nature from “trickery and deceit” to one who is “authorized to receive the blessing.” The commentary concludes with this:

A genuine encounter with God is life-changing. It is a sort of wrestling match. The apostles teach us that, through faith in Yeshua, we are born again as new creations. In Messiah we have a whole new identity. Paul speaks of our old identity as the “old self.” He declares that, for the believer, the “old self was crucified with [Messiah], in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin” (Romans 6:6). “Therefore if anyone is in Messiah, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

The commentary assumes, like Abraham before him (Genesis 17:5), that Jacob’s name was changed immediately and permanently and that “Israel” would never be referred to as “Jacob” again.

So Israel set out with all that was his, and he came to Beer-sheba, where he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. God called to Israel in a vision by night: “Jacob! Jacob!” He answered, “Here.” And He said, “I am God, the God of your father. Fear not to go down to Egypt, for I will make you there into a great nation. I Myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I Myself will also bring you back; and Joseph’s hand shall close your eyes.”

So Jacob set out from Beer-sheba. The sons of Israel put their father Jacob and their children and their wives in the wagons that Pharaoh had sent to transport him; and they took along their livestock and the wealth that they had amassed in the land of Canaan. Thus Jacob and all his offspring with him came to Egypt: he brought with him to Egypt his sons and grandsons, his daughters and granddaughters — all his offspring.

These are the names of the Israelites, Jacob and his descendants, who came to Egypt. –Genesis 46:1-8

As you can see here, the names “Jacob” and “Israel” seem to be used interchangeably. Unlike Abraham who was never called “Abram” again after his name was changed, Jacob seemed to exist as both “Jacob” and “Israel” depending on the situation or the role he was playing. Someone once told me that the patriarch was called “Jacob” when he was being referred to as an ordinary person and “Israel” when he was fulfilling his prophetic and “national” role. I have no idea if this is correct or not, but it seems to fit what we read in the Torah.

But what does this have to do with us and encountering God as if we were meeting a stranger along our path? How are we changed by that meeting and what is the nature of the change?

From a personal point of view, I feel the “aftermath” of my personal encounter with God (coming to faith) is more like Jacob’s than Abraham’s. I feel like my “name change” isn’t quite permanent, and that I toggle back and forth between one nature and the other. I know you probably think that’s a terrible thing to say. After all, who can deny that once we come to faith in Jesus, that we are changed to a “new man” (2 Corinthians 5:17) and that we’ve left our old sin nature completely behind us. Of course, my struggle could be an indication that I’m “double-minded” (James 1:8) which is certainly not a good thing.

But do we abruptly change? Really?

Poof! All at once, you came to faith and transformed into a completely new human being that has absolutely no resemblance to the person you were ten seconds before? Really?

It didn’t happen that way for me. Not by a long shot.

After I came to faith and even after I was baptized in the Boise River, I didn’t suddenly feel like an emotional and spiritual stranger to my “former self”. In fact, I was disappointed to discover that I felt and thought in exactly the same way as I did the day before. What a let down. I was expecting this mystical transformative experience, but it didn’t happen that way.

In fact, over many, many years, my life has gone through various twists and turns, some of which were extremely unpleasant, and looking back, I can see that my way of looking at things and reacting to my surroundings and to people has very gradually begun to change. In fact, the process is still going on today, although at a pace that would make a glacier’s movement seem like the electric speed of “Lightning McQueen” in the Pixar film Cars (2006).

There are times when I experience my life as truly different than it was before I came to faith. Sadly, there are times when I still feel like that flawed and limited human being I was before I even considered the idea that there is a God. In fact, I don’t ever think I’ve felt “perfect” in anything (Matthew 5:48).

What happened?

I don’t think “perfection” is something we achieve and then rest on our laurels but rather, I think a life of faith and unity in God is a goal was always strive for. Some days are better than others. Some days can be just lousy. Occasionally, we are magnificent, but I think for most of us (especially me), those days are rare.

There are times when I just want to know it all and to be it all but it’s sort of like my goals at the gym. No matter how much I psych myself up for a workout, when I actually hit the machines, I can only lift so much weight so many times, and then I run out of gas. Sometimes I exceed my expectations, sometimes I fail miserably, and most of the time, I break even. Kind of disappointing to shoot for the stars and to land in the mud.

Tear off a piece of your bread before you eat. You cannot fit it all into your mouth.

Do the same with wisdom. For Truth does not begin with Mind.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Wisdom and Bread”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. –1 Corinthians 9:24

I’ve always been such a terrible runner. I don’t know if that means I’m not really “in Christ” and thus I never transformed into that mystical, magical “new creature,” or if this is what most believers experience (or would admit to if it is their experience) most of the time. From where I sit in the mud, having fallen down in my race in the rain for the ten-thousandth time, a life of faith is lived one day at a time and the bread is eaten one chunk at a time. In the end, God will make the judgment about whether or not I’m good enough for what comes next. All I can do is drag my sweaty, out-of-shape body out of the mud hole one more time, and try to force my dead, lead-heavy legs to run for one more mile. As I rise to run the race again, I strain to see if the sages understand this puzzle.

As we apply ourselves to our mission, we also internalize it. Not only do we effect changes in the world, we ourselves change. Just as an agent must be identified with his principal, we must give ourselves over to G-d’s will and identify with it.

There are tzaddikim, righteous men, whose commitment to G-dliness dominates their personality; every aspect of their being is permeated with G-dliness. Their thoughts and even their will and their pleasure reflect G-d’s.

This, however, is a rung which most people cannot attain. But the second level in which each person remains an independent entity although his deeds are not his own is within the reach of more individuals. For the mitzvos we perform are not human acts; they are G-dly, so a person who performs them selflessly expresses their inner G-dly power.

There are individuals at an even lower level; they are not concerned with the G-dly nature of the mitzvos they perform. Nevertheless, they perform mitzvos for even “the sinners of Israel are filled with mitzvos as a pomegranate is filled with seeds” and the consequences of the deeds they perform represent an expression of G-d’s will. Thus they also contribute toward the transformation of the world.

Regardless of the differences between individuals, all mankind possesses a fundamental commonalty: we are all G-d’s agents, charged with various dimensions of a shared mission. The setting in which each individual functions, the task he is given, and the intent with which he performs it may differ, but the goal is the same.

This is the message of Parshas Vayishlach : that every one of us is a shliach, an agent of G-d.

-Rabbi Eli Touger
Commentary on Torah Portion Vayishlach
“Changing Ourselves as We Change the World”
Adapted from
Likkutei Sichos, Vol. IX, pgs. 323-324;
Sefer HaSichos 5748, p. 138ff;
Sichos Simchas Torah, 5748
Chabad.org

We are each an agent of God. We are sent. We run. We fall. We get up and run again.

Addendum: Rabbi Joshua posts a more conventional interpretation of this Torah reading at Yinon Blog.

Good Shabbos.