Tag Archives: Judaism

Uncategorized

Paul the Christian Pharisee

16 Comments

paul-the-phariseeNow when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees.

–Acts 23:6

Paul used the present tense, “I am a Pharisee,” not “I was a Pharisee.” Christian commentaries are uncomfortable with the statement, and they usually try to dodge the implications by explaining that he used to be a Pharisee prior to becoming a Christian.

Did Paul perjure himself before the Sanhedrin (a grave sin) by saying, “I am a Pharisee” instead of saying, “I was a Pharisee”? If so, none of his accusers had the wherewithal to challenge him on it. If he was no longer a Pharisee at the time of the trial, his testimony would be easy enough to discredit.

-D. Thomas Lancaster
Torah Club, Volume 6: Chronicles of the Apostles
from First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ)
Torah Portion Tazria (pg 711), Commentary on Acts 23:1-24:27

I suppose you could say this is a continuation of my previous “meditation,” Paul the Apostle, Liar, and Hypocrite and earlier commentaries. As I continue to read through Lancaster’s “Chronicles of the Apostles” Torah Club study, I continue to follow Paul through his various “legal problems” and his journey that will eventually lead to Rome, Caesar, and death. I also continue to watch as Paul repeatedly defends himself against the charges brought against him by the Jewish authorities of the Sanhedrin. From Paul’s point of view, he did nothing wrong to the Jewish people, to the Torah, to the Temple, or even to Rome.

Paul argued in his defense, “Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar have I committed any offense.”

–Acts 25:8

In verse 7 of the same chapter, Luke records that “…the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood around him, bringing many serious charges against him that they could not prove.”

As we’ve seen in earlier chapters of Acts and in my earlier commentaries on those chapters (thanks to Lancaster and the Torah Club), there simply was no evidence to support the wild accusations that had been made against Paul. He should have been set free, and except for various political reasons, finally including Paul’s appeal to Caesar and Rome, he never was.

Not only do I want to pursue the scriptures and commentaries that support Paul’s innocence, but I want to continue to illustrate how Paul never imagined that being an apostle of Jesus required in any sense, surrendering observance of the Torah mitzvot and the lifestyle of a Jewish Pharisee, nor did he expect this of other believing Jews.

All believers could claim to adhere to Pharisaic doctrine, but not all of them could claim to actually be Pharisees. Paul concluded his testimony with the declaration, “Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees; I am on trial for the hope and resurrection of the dead!” (Acts 23:6).

-Lancaster, ibid

That statement might come as a shock to you if you’ve been taught that all Pharisees were horrible, legalistic monsters and hypocrites. After all, Jesus had some pretty rough things to say to the Pharisees.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

–Matthew 23:27-28

On the other hand, Jesus also said this:

The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do.

–Matthew 23:2-3

Do what they say but not what they do. What do they say?

And when he had said this, a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all.

–Acts 23:7-8

For Paul, the Pharisaic belief in the resurrection of the dead and a life in the world to come was lived out by his faith in Yeshua (Jesus) as the risen Messiah King.

That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

–Romans 4:22-25

The doctrine of “the Way” was generally Pharisaic and in believing in the resurrection, so is modern Christianity.

I know, that’s probably a stretch for most of you, but if you follow the logic of Paul’s defense as recorded by Luke, it is very compelling. Lancaster comments further on this point.

The teaching and beliefs of Yeshua, Paul, and all the apostles echo the theology of the Pharisees. A Pharisee could become a disciple of Yeshua and still be a Pharisee…

-Lancaster, pg 713

Not so the Sadducees or any other branch of Judaism that did not believe in resurrection.

Even though the Master sometimes disagreed with the specific priorities of the oral law, He and the apostles practiced and transmitted Pharisaic, rabbinic tradition and interpretation. Their teachings and methods of biblical exegesis mirror those of the Pharisees. The Sadducees, on the other hand, were the first-century equivalents of Karaite Jews and sola-scriptura Protestants. They rejected most Jewish tradition, oral law, and rabbinic exegesis.

-ibid

paul-in-chainsFrom a modern Christian’s point of view, we almost want to make the Sadducees the heroes of the story because they rejected Jewish oral law and traditions, and Jesus heavily criticized the Pharisees for some of their traditions. But while many of the Pharisees far exceeded the Torah’s intent by creating enormous burdens from their rulings that weighed heavily on the Jewish people, Jesus did not criticize their core teachings. Being a Pharisee wasn’t the problem. Being a hypocrite and a liar was. Paul was the former but never the latter.

But Paul had a “confession” to make.

But this I confess to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets, having a hope in God, which these men themselves accept, that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust. So I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man.

–Acts 24:14-16

Paul admitted to the charge of belonging “to the sect of the Nazarenes,” but he rejected any implication that the teachings of the Way deviated from normative Jewish expression. To Paul, faith in Yeshua was not simply one more sect of Judaism, it was “the Way of the LORD,” a spiritual restoration and redemption of all Israel that transcended sectarian divides. He admitted to “believing everything that is in accordance with the Torah and that is written in the Prophets.” He declared his hope in God, a hope which his accusers also cherished.

-Lancaster, pg 723

There’s one sentence in my last quote from Lancaster that I hope you caught. Here is is again:

To Paul, faith in Yeshua was not simply one more sect of Judaism, it was “the Way of the LORD,” a spiritual restoration and redemption of all Israel that transcended sectarian divides.

This is as true today as it was the moment Paul said it. Faith in Yeshua the Messianic King is not just a way for the world to be saved (which, of course, is no small thing) but it is the way to spiritual restoration and redemption of all Israel. That is the critical piece of knowledge both Jews and Christians must understand. Jesus doesn’t stand in opposition to the Jewish people, he stands for their redemption as a people and their restoration as a nation.

The good news of forgiveness from sins, salvation, and a life in the world to come is what we focus on as Christians, but most of the time, we miss why Jesus is uniquely special to the Jewish people. He doesn’t just save the individual Jewish soul as he does the individual Gentile soul, he saves Israel, he restores their nation to the head of all nations, he gathers his people back to him and to their Land, and he is their King, the King of the Jews, even as he is also the King of the World.

Paul, the “Christian” Pharisee knew all that, and the evidence of his innocence is also a shining lamp for every Jew and Gentile who turns away from darkness and to the light. To turn toward the light, we Gentiles must surrender a life of disobedience and learn to love, listen, and obey God. For a Jew to turn toward the light of the world in Messiah, they also must learn to obey, but Torah observance for the Jew is part of that obedience. We in the church are obedient, not only when we refrain from sin, but when we act to encourage our Jewish brothers and sisters in the faith to continue to live wholly Jewish lives in accordance with the commandments.

Paul lived his life enthusiastically as a disciple of Jesus Christ…and as a Pharisee.

162 days.

Uncategorized

Introduction to Messianic Judaism: The Silo Invasion

8 Comments

silosA synagogue is above all a sacred community of Jewish people who gather for worship, prayer, study, benevolence, social justice, lifestyle events, outreach, and other Jewish community activities. What distinguishes Messianic synagogues from mainstream synagogues is the centrality of Yeshua, the prominent place of the New Testament, and the presence of Gentile followers of Yeshua who come alongside Messianic Jews to build a congregation for Yeshua within the house of Israel.

-David Rudolph and Elliot Klayman
“Chapter 2: Messianic Jewish Synagogues” (pg 37)
Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations

Let’s look at part of the above-quoted paragraph again.

…and the presence of Gentile followers of Yeshua who come alongside Messianic Jews to build a congregation for Yeshua within the house of Israel.

For a long time, I’ve been hearing some Messianic Jews describe the relationship between themselves and we Gentile Christians (whether we call ourselves “Christians,” “Hebrew Roots,” or “Messianic Gentiles,” in this context, it’s all the same) as two groups who come alongside each other, or more commonly expressed as “Christians coming alongside” Messianic Jews.

What does that mean?

I know the Messianic Jews who make this statement have an internal conceptualization about what it means, but I’ve never had access to that conceptualization. As someone on the outside looking in, this whole “alongside” thing has reminded me to two silos standing next to each other on a farm somewhere. Sure, silo B is standing “alongside” silo A, but otherwise, what do they have in common? They’re both silos, but let’s assume they hold different contents. Let’s also assume that there is no conduit (tunnel or other direct link) that attaches one silo to another and allows the contents of each silo to freely flow from one to another.

That’s how I’ve imagined the whole “alongside” thing.

Then I read the introduction to the Rudolph/Willitts book (pg 15) written by David Rudolph and received a revelation.

One of the main purposes of this book is to give Gentile Christians vision for the dialogical relationship they share with Messianic Jews so that they will come alongside the Messianic Jewish community and assist it. Coming alongside can take many forms, including (a) praying for the Messianic Jewish community, (b) sharing the good news of Yeshua in a way that affirms the calling of Jews who follow Yeshua to remain Jews and to become better Jews, (c) encouraging Jews in churches to be involved in the Messianic Jewish community, (d) supporting Messianic Jewish education, (e) contributing to the welfare of Messianic Jews in Israel, (f) helping local Messianic synagogues, (g) collaborating with Messianic Jewish ecclesial leaders and scholars, (h) preaching and teaching the Scriptures in a way that affirms God’s covenant faithfulness to the Jewish people and the bilateral (Jew-Gentile) nature of the church, and (i) including Messianic Jews in Jewish-Christian dialogue.

In reading Rudolph’s definitions for “coming alongside,” I seem to fit several of those points, at least as I perceive myself. Thus being alongside doesn’t mean just standing there next to, but actually being directly involved on numerous levels with the Messianic Jewish community including, as we saw in the quote at the top of the page, worshiping with Messianic Jews in a synagogue setting (and I’ll be coming alongside a number of Messianic Jews next month at the First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) Shavuot conference).

Now, some people are going to take exception to this next part:

The demographic reality of Messianic Gentiles, including a second and third generation, raises a number of questions that the Messianic Jewish community is currently engaging. Many of these questions relate to time-honored traditions in the Jewish world concerning the participation of non-Jews in Jewish life. In mainstream synagogues, for example, Gentiles are not generally permitted to have a bar/bat mitzvah, wear a tallit, or read from the Torah because these are all activities in which a Jew affirms his/her covenant responsibilities as a member of the people of Israel, something a non-Jew cannot do. Some Messianic synagogues believe that these normative standards should be maintained for reasons of conscience and to avoid blurring the distinction between Jew and Gentile in the body of Messiah, a differentiation that the New Testament upholds (1 Cor 7:17-24; Acts 15; 21:24-25). Other Messianic synagogues contend that these customs should be modified so that Messianic Gentiles may participate more fully in Jewish community life.

-Rudolph/Klayman, pp 48-9

mens-service-jewish-synagogueI remember taking my three Jewish children to the local Reform – Conservative synagogue a number of years ago. As a Gentile I felt somewhat uncomfortable in reading from those portions of the siddur where I was supposed to refer to myself as “Israel” or to the patriarchs as my “Fathers.” Since it’s a pretty liberal place, the Rabbi once offered me an aliyah (to go up and read from the Torah) but I was incredibly intimidated and turned it down. In retrospect, and given my current values, I am glad I refused the honor because in a synagogue setting the honor is not mine. My children, once past bar/bat mitzvah age, were the ones accepting the aliyot because they (and their mother) are Jewish.

But as we’ve just seen within the Messianic Jewish community, the struggle continues regarding how to include and incorporate those Gentiles who have come alongside their Messianic Jewish brothers and sisters. Messianic Judaism is still in the process of creating itself and a “silo” containing both Jewish and Gentile components.

And that’s good. There should be a struggle. There was a struggle in Apostolic times, which was the whole point of Acts 15, but the Jerusalem letter didn’t define the specific halachah for Gentile participation in Jewish worship and ritual within the synagogue setting, at least not with any detail. In other words, we don’t have a Biblical model for how to include Gentiles in Messianic Jewish communities today.

At least not a good one.

And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. And the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region. But the Jews incited the devout women of high standing and the leading men of the city, stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and drove them out of their district.

–Acts 13:48-50

And he said to me, ‘Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’

Up to this word they listened to him. Then they raised their voices and said, “Away with such a fellow from the earth! For he should not be allowed to live.” And as they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air…

–Acts 22:21-23

paul-editedAs you can see, many Jews didn’t have a problem with Paul’s message about the Messiah, but they had a really big problem with including non-Jews into a Jewish worship and ritual community. At that point in history, James and the Council of Apostles were the highest authority in our world for the Messianic community. Today, we have reversed the order, with Gentiles being the largest single body of people who worship the Jewish Messiah and Messianic Jews being only a tiny minority.

So should Gentile believers have control over the Messianic Jewish community? Common sense says “no” but that won’t stop some Gentile Christians from trying. Now keep in mind that for nearly twenty centuries, Gentile Christians have been treating Jewish people and Judaism with less than kindness and courtesy. It’s understandable that Jewish people should feel a little “standoffish” when approached by Christians since historically, Christians have been responsible for inquisitions, pogroms, and burning synagogues, Torah scrolls, volumes of Talmud, and occasionally bunches and bunches of Jewish human beings.

Remember those two silos I mentioned before? Now imagine that “coming alongside” wasn’t sufficient for a subset of Gentile believers. They want inside the Jewish silo and to take possession and control of the covenant identity and responsibilities assigned by God to Jews. Frankly, it doesn’t matter to this population of Gentiles if the Jews want them to do this or not.

Which is crazy, because based on my quotes of Rudolph, both in this blog post and in yesterday’s, Gentile Christians are not just welcome in Messianic Jewish communities, but we are an integral part of the body of Messiah. Messianic Jews and Gentile Christians must be united elements in a single body in order for the body to live and thrive, just as the human body must contain a heart, lungs, and liver in order to be alive. Yeah, they’re radically different organs with different functions, roles, and purposes, but they all work together.

For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

–1 Corinthians 12:14-20

I know Paul wasn’t necessarily talking about differences in Jewish vs. Gentile roles, and he was likely talking about the differences between prophets, preachers, teachers, and the guy who has to take out the garbage at church, but the principle and analogy holds up, at least to a degree. There are aspects to Jewish worship and community life that confirm the covenant identity and responsibility of a Jew as a Jew. Should Gentiles in the community also claim that identity, especially by force or demand? In First Century CE Jerusalem, the Jewish Council of Apostles had the authority to issue halachah that impacted both the Jewish and Gentile believers in Messiah. Shouldn’t Messianic Jewish communities in the Twenty-First Century CE have the right to issue halachah just for themselves and whoever attends their synagogues?

I know this gets into arguments that involve “flesh” and there are accusations of bigotry and even racism that fly about the blogosphere, but Gentiles aren’t being excluded from the Messianic community. The Messianic community is just in the process of defining itself and how it is supposed to work, something that was never made clear in the letters of Paul (and who better than Paul to have known such a thing?).

Both Judaism and Christianity are communities with unique cultures and characteristics. Some Gentile believers, for whatever reason, desire or fit better within the Messianic Jewish community than the Christian church community and that’s fine. Some Gentile Christians such as myself, take pieces of that Messianic culture, identity, and conceptualization and live it out within a church setting to support and encourage an understanding of Messianic Judaism in the church. I think that’s part of coming alongside, too.

going-to-church-sketchesBut I don’t tell my Pastor or the congregation what to do, what rights I have, how they aren’t being Biblical, or otherwise “storm the gates” of their community with my ideas and my personality just because I think the Bible tells me that I should (and I don’t think it tells me that I should). I respect the community and only speak my mind freely when invited (and Pastor Randy has been abundantly gracious with me in this area). I would never dream of going into the local Conservative – Reform shul or the local Chabad and telling the respective Rabbis that they’re doing it wrong and I’m there to straighten them out (although some local Hebrew Roots people have done exactly that in the past). Why would I do such a thing either in a church or in a Messianic synagogue? What would give me the right, even if I thought they had erred in relation to the commands of God?

In some ways, I’ve “come alongside” the church by going back to church since culturally, I’m not a “typical” Christian. Being part of a community isn’t about individual rights or making demands. It’s about being an active part of the community, making a contribution, benefiting the whole. Sure, the community gives back, but the community is about the community. We all benefit each other. I’m not there just to have my needs fulfilled, especially if that results in causing others in the community pain or discomfort.

One of the traditional songs sung at the Passover seder is Dayenu or “It would have been sufficient…” One portion of the traditional song goes:

If He had brought us before Mount Sinai, and had not given us the Torah – Dayenu, it would have been sufficient!

Part of my personal version goes:

If He had given us His only begotten Son so that the world might be saved, and had not given us the Torah – Dayenu, it would have been sufficient!

God has given us so much. What more do we want besides grace and mercy…and for believing Jews and Gentiles to come alongside each other and together bring honor and glory to King Messiah? It is sufficient.

I don’t share my thoughts because I think it will change the minds of people who think differently I share my thoughts to show the people who already think like me that they’re not alone.

-Anonymous

163 days.

Uncategorized

The Unsimple Truth

16 Comments

einstein_simplyIf you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

-attributed to Albert Einstein

According to Rashi, the question is directed against Rav Yirmiyah who had said that the basket in the tree does not actually have to be within ten tefachim of the ground to be valid. We are dealing with a long basket where it could be tilted and emptied even without being brought below into the reshus harabim. In contrast to this, Rav bar Sh’va brings a Baraisa where an eiruv is not valid unless it is actually brought to where it must be situated. Here, we do not take into consideration the fact that the eiruv should be valid due to the potential that it could
theoretically be brought during bein hashemashos to its destination.

Daf Yomi Digest
Distinctive Insight
from “Rabbinic injunctions and Bein HaShemashos
Eruvin 33

I’m a failure. More to the point, I don’t understand God, Jesus, faith, and spirituality well enough. I can’t explain it simply. I’m not sure I can explain it at all. Certainly the fact that I have posted nearly eight-hundred articles in this “morning meditations” blog (not to mention other blogs) about these subjects and have hardly scratched the surface must mean I don’t understand all this well enough. I can’t explain what I believe simply. I certainly can’t explain it briefly.

I quoted from a commentary on an excerpt from Talmud above to illustrate the level of complexity of the halachot related to Orthodox Judaism. Although I read from the Daf Yomi Digest daily, I scarcely comprehend what I’m reading and what I understand most clearly is that the Talmud is an enormously complex set of works. I don’t know how observant Orthodox Jews manage to obey all of the minute details involved in daily living. I can only imagine that Einstein would have contended with the sages based on his above-quoted statement (though it is unsure if Einstein or Richard Feynman actually said those words).

I can hardly be said to live anything close to an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle in my “observance” as a Christian, but as I write and write and write, and then read back what I’ve written, I realize that I am no closer to truly comprehending God and faith than I was when I first accepted Jesus Christ as Lord. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve even gone that far.

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

–Romans 7:15-19

If we’re honest with ourselves as Christians, then I suppose we all have to admit that this statement of Paul’s is also true of us. How can we live a life we call “holy” and yet still struggle with the mundane, the common, and even the evil within us? If God’s Word is written on our hearts, how can we defy that word and pursue what we know isn’t right? I can only imagine that atheists have moral struggles as well, though as I recall myself from before I came to faith, they didn’t seem as dire.

Is a life of faith really that hard or that hard to explain? It certainly seems that hard to live. But then again, is Einstein’s quote the litmus test we should be using against ourselves? After all, he also said this:

If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn’t have been worth the Nobel Prize.

Einstein made that statement in response to being asked to give a brief quote on why he won the Nobel Prize. That’s the problem with taking quotes out of context. It’s easy to make a person seem completely inconsistent. How much more difficult it is to analyze “chunks” of the Bible and find consistency and comprehension?

My conversations with Pastor Randy (which are on hiatus for the month of April and for several weeks in May) about D.T. Lancaster’s book The Holy Epistle to the Galatians aren’t hugely complex, but they do get detailed…and we’ve barely covered one chapter in Galatians! How about the book of Romans?

mystery-in-midtownI know that Mark Nanos is popular in Messianic circles, but some years ago, when I tried to read his book The Mystery of Romans, I gave up, not getting very far in his book. Maybe I’d be better able to comprehend his writing now, but Paul’s letter to the Roman church is extremely dense with meaning that I wonder if I’ll ever truly understand either Paul or Nanos. I know the Nanos books on Romans and Galatians should be on my “required reading” list, but who knows if they’ll do me any good? I’m tasked to understand a scholar and author in order to understand the mystery of “letter writer.” Are these reasonable goals?

In some ways, trying to comprehend a life of faith is a fool’s errand. While the concept of Christian salvation is supposed to be simple enough for a small child to understand, the fact remains that the Bible contains depths that if plumbed, would make even explorers such as Jacques Cousteau bolt for the surface as if hotly pursued by Leviathan.

Maybe it’s not quite that bad, but I feel that way sometimes.

Of course there’s a difference between understanding a life of faith and living it. Well, maybe not for the Orthodox Jews since behavior and conceptualization are largely interwoven, but certainly for Christianity, where one can live a basic Christian life without having to know much of the Bible at all. You can feed the hungry, visit the sick, remain faithful to your spouse, give to charity, pray to God, and fellowship with other believers without having to spend even a single day in seminary. Of course studying the Bible gives such a life context and meaning, but you don’t really have to know all of the arcane debates about the doctrine of Divine Election, for example.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy reading. I enjoy studying. I enjoy discussing all of these little details. But at what point do you turn it all off and just spend time with God? What’s the point of all of our debates on the web? Why do you try to convince me you’re right about something and why do I try to convince you that I’m right about something? What difference does it make? OK, probably a pretty big one, depending on what we’re talking about, but we can’t all be right? Can we all be wrong? That seems far more likely.

If we believe God exists, then He must exist separately from what we believe and from the web of theology and doctrine we’ve spun for ourselves. God must be an “objective” God. If the world’s population stopped believing in God totally and completely, God would continue to exist and His plan for the universe would continue to move forward toward its ultimate conclusion. We spend all our lives examining the Bible trying to uncover the clues to that plan and what it means in our lives, but we only get bits and pieces, and much of the time, we can’t really be sure we understand what we think we’ve got in our hands.

This theologian espouses one particular theory and another theologian opposes him or her. More theories spring up, more debates occur. But God is God. Our theories and debates don’t affect him in the slightest. He exists as He exists regardless of our “religious orientation.”

We’re all seeking truth but even with the help of the Holy Spirit, who is supposed to guide us in all truth (John 16:13), we all come up with different conclusions. You’d think if there were one Spirit and He was guiding us to One truth, we’d all arrive at the same conclusion.

But we don’t.

I’m most of the way through Carlos Castaneda’s book The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. It’s not really what I expected, but I appreciate Castaneda’s honesty in saying that he didn’t quite succeed either in his field study or as a disciple of don Juan. I decided to read this book because I hadn’t read any Castaneda before and felt I owed it to myself to have the experience.

letting-goMaybe I should just let go and move away from religious and spiritual reading altogether and just read for pleasure (not that reading books on religion and spirituality aren’t pleasurable). I used to read a lot of science fiction and mystery back in the day, with a few of the classics thrown in just for giggles. Maybe that would be more satisfying. Nothing I know or don’t know affects God. I’m not sure it even affects me. I can probably explain simply Castaneda’s book, but how could I possibly explain even one letter of Paul’s? Many have tried, including Nanos and Lancaster, but what does it matter if you end up with a body of work about the Bible that is fraught with disagreement?

I guess there’s a reason people pursue truth all their lives but either never find it or find only what some people (but not all) call “truth.” Maybe we never find it at all. Maybe we just delude ourselves and say what we have is “truth” because living a life of existential uncertainty is too difficult to bear.

Maybe that’s why there are so many atheists. There are no mysteries to the universe beyond what they can see. It’s all nuts and bolts with no colors, textures, or moods. There’s only light and darkness. More’s the pity.

One who returns from the darkness must bring of it with him and convert it to light. He must exploit his experience to surge higher and higher with greater strength.

Therefore, the one who returns from a distance is greater than the one who was always close. What matters is not so much where you stand, but with what force you are moving in which direction.

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

So which direction should I move in next in pursuing truth or God or whatever?

Uncategorized

Lost Beyond Eden

3 Comments

Inner light“Do not despise any person and do not disdain anything for there is no person who does not have his hour and there is no thing without its place”

-Ben Azzai
from Pirkei Avot 4:3

Just as the soul fills the body, so does G‑d fill the world.” Our bodies are vitalized by our souls, but our souls themselves are invisible. Yet, through seeing the life in the body, one can appreciate the soul within. G‑d enlivens and creates the worlds, yet He is invisible. But He is evident in every creation.

-Talmud, Berachot 10a.

I don’t know what to write about for today. I know that’s pretty strange for me, since it seems that most of the time I can’t “shut up” in the blogosphere, but as I reviewed my “resources” for today (as I started to write this) and looked for inspiration, I didn’t find any.

Well, that’s not exactly true, hence the quotes above. But what do they mean and how can we apply them to our lives as people of faith (or as people in general)?

A few days ago, I related another problem I have with religious people. I lamented how hard-hearted we can be, some of us at least. How can anyone call themselves a disciple of Christ, and yet deliberately and with malice, kick a father when he’s down over the recent suicide of his son?

Yet in reviewing the comments on Dr. Michael Brown’s article Enough With the Mean-Spirited Words Against Rick Warren (And Others)!, I found both the good and the bad.

The good:

Thank you Michael Brown, thats maturity talking. I dont understand why people cannot have compassion. When Jesus saw the people he was moved with compassion. We can agree to disagree but personal attacks especially in an emotional time like this is horrible.

The bad:

While I agree with most of your article, I suppose that vitrolic “bashers” are thinking it is pay back time for Warren; not that I support this idea or their behaviour. Rick Warren has assumed the limelight and as any celebrity is exposed to the dangers of that. While the behaviour is indeed unmerciful, Rev. Warren must have expected it and must know how to insulate himself. He is after all a professional.

Well, the bad wasn’t horrible, but the comment writer still assumes that Pastor Warren should “suck it up” so to speak, since he’s a professional.

He’s also a father, a fellow Christian, and a human being, and he, like the rest of us, was created in God’s image. When we desecrate another human being, we desecrate the image of God.

Lakanta (played by Tom Jackson): What do you think is sacred to us here?
Wesley Crusher (played by Wil Wheaton): Maybe the necklace you’re wearing? The designs on the walls?
Lakanta: Everything is sacred to us – the buildings, the food, the sky, the dirt beneath your feet – and you. Whether you believe in your spirit or not, we believe in it. You are a sacred person here, Wesley.
Wesley: I think that’s the first time anyone’s used that particular word to describe me.
Lakanta: You must treat yourself with respect. To do otherwise is to desecrate something that is holy.

–Star Trek: The Next Generation
from the episode Journey’s End (broadcast date 26 Mar. 1994)

That’s probably one of my favorite quotes from any Star Trek TV show, both because it expresses a rare spirituality for modern television, and because it speaks a rare truth. Each of us is sacred to God and we should be sacred to each other (most of the time, we’re not). If we could see all other human beings, including ourselves, from God’s point of view, we would see a planet populated by sacred, holy people; all of us being in God’s own image.

The statement that we are created in the image of G‑d means that we were formed as a reflection of our Creator’s attributes and characteristics. This cannot be taken to mean that we literally look, feel or think like G‑d does, because He has no form and is not limited in any way. Rather, we are like a one-dimensional reflection of a real object. From the reflection we can have an inkling of the original, but the reflection is literally nothing in comparison to the original.

-Rabbi Menachem Posner
“What is the ‘Divine Image’ in Man?”
Chabad.org

This week’s double Torah Portion Tazria–Metzora relates an important lesson about how we treat God’s image.

“He (the person afflicted with tzora’as) shall be brought to Aharon the priest or unto one of his sons the priests.”

–Leviticus 13:2

The Dubno Magid said that many people speak loshon hora because they are not fully aware of the power of the spoken word. How often people rationalize, “I didn’t do anything to him, I only said a few words.” The metzora, who has been afflicted with tzora’as because of his speaking loshon hora, is taught a lesson about the power of a single word. He must go to a priest who will decide if he is a metzora or not. Just one word by the priest (“Unclean!”) will completely isolate him from society. No more will the metzora minimize the destructive capability of words.

Words can destroy. They can destroy someone’s reputation. They can destroy friendships. They can destroy someone’s successful business or someone’s marriage. Therefore, we must be careful with them as we would be with explosive material.

-Rabbi Kalman Packouz
“Shabbat Shalom Weekly”
Commentary on Torah Portion Tazria-Metzora
Aish.com

Adam-and-Even-Expelled-from-ParadiseYou must go no further than the religious blogosphere or Christian discussion boards to find the worst examples of loshon hora (the “evil tongue”) among us. Periodically, most of us who write religion-based blogs are victims of such behavior, almost always from our fellow believers. I’m rarely “picked on” by atheists or people from other religious disciples. It’s always from the people with whom I share a nearly identical view of God, Jesus, and the Bible.

More’s the pity.

Adam trudged past the gates of Eden, his head low, his feet heavy with remorse and pain.

Then he stopped, spun around and exclaimed, “Wait a minute! You had this all planned! You put that fruit there knowing I would eat from it! This is all a plot!”

There was no reply.

Without failure, Man can never truly reach into the depths of his soul. Only once he has failed can he return and reach higher and higher without end. Beyond Eden.

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

The irony is that the minute we lower ourselves to claim superiority over a brother or sister of Christ, we have failed. Participating in gossip and “badmouthing” others drags us down…it never lifts us up. While, according to midrash, Adam “trudged past the gates of Eden, his head low, his feet heavy with remorse and pain,” most people committing loshon hora hold their heads up high and feel superior in “bringing down” a “false teacher” or some Christian who they perceive (within their own imaginations sometimes) has “fallen from grace.”

News flash: blowing out someone else’s candle doesn’t make your burn any brighter and in fact, the very light you are extinguishing is your own.

We all fail. By even in pointing out how Christians fail, in some sense, I’m failing. I’m being critical of my fellow believers. I am speaking ill of them. I should be trudging past the gates of Eden, my head low, my feet heavy with remorse and pain.

And I do. I do, even if I’m not personally guilty of misusing my tongue or, in this case, my fingers, because I am a Christian. I am a member of the body of believers. One of the other parts in the body I share has failed. That means the body I inhabit is tainted and since the outside world can’t tell the difference between one body part and the next, that means we’re all tainted. Christianity (or whatever you call your version of the disciples of the Messiah) is disgraced whenever even one of us behaves poorly. God’s Holy and Sacred Name is dragged through the foul mud and muck. In trying to bring down “false teachers” by criticizing them over the untimely death of their children, we actually bring down God and bring down ourselves.

The Image of God is sullied and soiled, all thanks to us.

walking-home-to-edenBut as Rabbi Freeman also says, “Without failure, Man can never truly reach into the depths of his soul. Only once he has failed can he return and reach higher and higher without end. Beyond Eden.” Like the prodigal son from Luke 15:11-32, we too must fail completely before the path of repentance and return is open to us.

Rabbi Freeman also speaks of this:

Return is the ultimate act of self-expression.

Nobody returns because he is commanded to do so. The ability to return comes from you alone.

And that itself is the evidence that you were never truly torn away: The outer garments of the soul may have been severed, but the core remained at every moment in intimate union with its Source. And from there came the message to return.

It is possible to redeem the Name and Image of God, but we must be willing to admit when we fail. We must be willing to return to God humbled and even humiliated. If men like Pastor Rick Warren have faults, they are completely beside the point right now. The Christians who have truly failed are those who took advantage of the suicide of his son Matthew to attack Pastor Warren and his family. They (we) are the prodigal sons. If we are wise, we will return to God in submissiveness. There is a way back.

Or we can continue to walk away from Eden and away from God forever, even as we operate under the illusion that we are His and He is ours through Messiah.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

–Matthew 7:21-23

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

–Proverbs 16:18

We can remain arrogant and lose ourselves in the darkness beyond Eden, or return and walk back home in humility and to the service of the King. Which choice will we make?

“Saints are sinners who kept on going.”

-Robert Louis Stevenson
Scottish novelist, poet and essayist

Uncategorized

The Broken Soreg

17 Comments

0 RBut now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

–Ephesians 2:13-16

Paul states that the Messiah abolished the “enmity” between Jew and Gentile. This is not the same as saying he abolished the Torah. Instead, the Messiah abolishes the requirement for Gentile believers to undertake circumcision and the covenant signs of Israel (the Law of commandments contained in ordinances) before they may be regarded as one body with the Jewish people.

-D. Thomas Lancaster
Commentary on Acts 21:15-22:30 (pg 689)
First Fruits of Zion’s Torah Club
Volume 6: Chronicles of the Apostles
Reading for Torah Portion Shemini (“Eighth”)

I’m sure most Christians will find Lancaster’s interpretation of Ephesians 2 to be very creative but not very convincing. The traditional Christian interpretation is that Jesus took down the wall by abolishing the Torah. Jews and Gentiles are identical in Christ and there are no distinctions based on Jewish observance of the Torah of Moses.

I’ve looked into Ephesians 2 before, but at the behest of someone who had the exact opposite opinion of this scripture. He said:

Ephesians 2 establishes gentiles as now part of the covenants, which I wonder how you deal with such, as I have never seen you address Ephesians.

This interpretation is probably just as startling to most Christians as Lancaster’s, since it declares that all believers, Jewish and Gentile alike, are obligated to the full observance of the Torah. In discussing the Hebrew Roots interpretation of Acts 15, Lancaster has this to say:

Hebrew Roots teachers often claim that the apostles only gave the four essentials to Gentile believers as a starting point. After that, the Gentiles were expected to learn the rest of the Torah in the synagogue every week. Eventually, they would be responsible for keeping all the laws of the Torah in the same manner as their Jewish brothers and sisters.

Acts 21:25 indicates that the apostles understood their ruling differently…Instead, the apostles viewed the four essentials as a standard for the God-fearing Gentile believers. They did not require a gradual process by which the Gentiles adopted the rest of the commandments.

-Lancaster, pg 686

I covered Acts 15 and its implications in much more detail in my multi-part Return to Jerusalem series so I’m not going to revisit that material here. I just wanted to briefly provide the different interpretations that could be applied to Ephesians 2 and where Lancaster stands on the matter of Jews vs. Gentiles and Torah observance.

But what about this “dividing wall of hostility” Paul mentions? I’m about to suggest something a little radical.

In the course of his massive remodeling of the Jerusalem Temple, Herod the Great extended the Temple Mount platform significantly by constructing a retaining wall and adding fill. A balustrade made of stone lattice work (soreg) marked off the original holy precinct. The balustrade functioned as a perimeter fence that kept Gentiles from straying into the sanctified area. The Mishnah reports the lattice work wall stood ten handbreadths (three feet) high. Josephus recalled it as slightly taller at three cubits (five feet) height. The people referred to the courtyard outside of the barrier as the Court of the Gentiles because Gentiles were allowed to congregate and worship in that courtyard, but they could not draw nearer than the balustrade. The Levitical guard posted plaques on the balustrade forbidding Gentiles from trespassing beyond that point.

-Lancaster, pg 688

middle-wall-partitionTo the best of my knowledge, there is nothing in the written Torah that mandates such a wall or a “Court of the Gentiles” on the Temple grounds, however especially during the days of Jesus and afterward, until the destruction of the Temple, there was much existing halachah that kept Jews and Gentiles apart. We see evidence of such in the vision Peter had in Acts 10 when Jesus makes clear to Peter that the halachah requiring that a Jew never enter a Gentile’s home was incorrect. God did not make the Gentiles an “unclean” people.

But the voice answered a second time from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, do not call common.’ This happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven. And behold, at that very moment three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea. And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction.

–Acts 11:9-12

Could Paul be using the idea of the soreg metaphorically in Ephesians 2?

I told you it was a radical idea. I’m not saying that this is even a valid interpretation of the text, but it is an interesting idea. In order for Paul’s mission to the Gentiles to be successful, one of the things that had to be broken down was Jewish hostility toward Gentiles. In the diaspora, by necessity, Jews had to interact, at least to a degree, with Gentiles, but in Israel and especially in Jerusalem, this was not the case (with the exception of forcibly having to “interact” with the Roman military occupation).

We see recorded in Acts 21:37-22:21, Paul apparently successfully defending himself against his Jewish accusers after the near riot he endured at the Temple when he was falsely accused of speaking against the Jewish people, the Torah, the Temple, and bringing a non-Jew past the Court of the Gentiles and into the Temple (Acts 21:28-29). It’s only when he mentioned the Gentiles, did his Jewish listeners go quite berserk:

And he said to me, ‘Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’” Up to this word they listened to him. Then they raised their voices and said, “Away with such a fellow from the earth! For he should not be allowed to live.” And as they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, the tribune ordered him to be brought into the barracks, saying that he should be examined by flogging, to find out why they were shouting against him like this.

–Acts 22:21-24

I’d certainly call that a “wall of hostility.”

So one interpretation of having “broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances” is doing away with all Jewish Torah observance, which was apparently what was causing the separation and bad feelings between Jewish and Gentile believers. Except the Torah doesn’t say that. First century Jewish halachah said that and the lesson Peter learned was that such separation was incorrect halachah.

Another interpretation is that the wall being broken down was the wall that kept Gentiles out of membership in national Israel, and once broken down by their being “grafted in” (Romans 11:11-24), Gentiles gained full covenant relationship with God and Israel by essentially becoming Israel and thus, required to observe all of the Torah mitzvot. The only thing they didn’t have to do was convert to Judaism, but otherwise, they certainly looked like converts. That makes even less sense if the wall was broken down by “abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances.” Nothing is abolished, the Gentiles are just added into the “law of commandments expressed in ordinances.”

Lancaster suggests that what Jesus broke down in his flesh when he was executed was how Gentiles were prevented from covenant relationship with God and the Jewish people without converting to Judaism. The legal requirement for conversion was the law that was abolished. This makes a bit more sense because it is through Messiah that we among the nations can become disciples and we are not required to convert to Judaism. But then, where does all the hostility come from that was preventing Gentiles from entering into covenant?

If what went away was a faulty interpretation and application of Torah that promoted an extreme hostility of Jews against Gentiles (which is not too hard to understand given that the Jewish nation was at that time being occupied by a harsh and cruel Gentile imperial army), Ephesians 2, especially when compared to Acts 10, begins to make more sense.

I’m sure my amateur interpretation can be criticized on a number of levels and again, I’m not saying that my little theory has much, if any, weight of evidence to support it, but I want you to think about it. I want you to consider the possibilities, especially in light of how Jewish audiences took less exception to the message of Jesus as the Messiah, and much more exception to the idea that such a message required doing away with the Torah, the Temple, and including unconverted Gentiles as equal covenant members.

infinite_pathsPaul was fighting an uphill battle and he was never entirely successful during his lifetime. In fact, after his death, the hostility between Jews and Gentiles continued to grow until Christianity was no longer a branch of religious Judaism, but instead, represented an entirely new theological discipline…one that was actually opposed to Judaism.

To the degree that Judaism and Christianity are still separate religions, with neither one wanting to have anything to do with the other for the most part (there are noteworthy exceptions), that wall of hostility still exists today. Part of why I write this blog is to offer avenues at, if not deconstructing the wall, punching a few holes in the “soreg” so we can see each other more clearly and even have a bit of a conversation.

When the Messiah returns, I believe he will finish what Paul started. I believe he will finish removing the wall we continually rebuild. I believe he will show us how to live with each other in peace. And Jews will remain a distinct people and nation as Jews. And Gentile believers will remain distinct from the rest of the world as non-Jewish disciples of the Master. And the different parts will truly act as one within a single body.

Uncategorized

Yom HaShoah: A Day to Remember

1 Comment

Rav Moshe Teitelbaum, zt”l, the previous Rebbe of Satmar, went through the living inferno that those who survived the Holocaust endured. After some time in Auschwitz, he was moved to Tröglitz, a camp in Rehmsdorf. Despite the danger, the inmates of the camp arranged to pray kol nidrei and they invited the rebbe to lead the prayers.

Of course, it was unthinkable to eat on Yom Kippur. But since the meager evening meal was served after nightfall, it at first appeared as though those who wished to fast would have to go without food before the fast as well. After much wrangling, the head of their block, Dr. Kizaelnik—who had been the rosh kahal in Sighet before the war—finally managed to arrange with the kitchen staff that the evening meal would be served before nightfall.

An eyewitness later recounted, “Before kol nidrei we went back into the block and fell onto our beds, crying bitter tears the likes of which I hope I never hear again. Then the good doctor announced that kol nidrei would soon begin and that any who wished could join the minyan. Still weeping, we went to the part of the room set aside for davening, and the rebbe began to speak.

“The rebbe commenced, ‘Rabbi Akiva said: Ashreichem Yisrael! Before Whom are you purified, and Who purifies you? Just as a mikveh purifies the defiled, God purifies Yisrael. We must recall that Rabbi Akiva was one of the ten martyrs—killed for sins he did not commit. He saw all the terrible travail which would befall Yisrael. Yet he chose to give a message of chizzuk to us for all generations. Although a mikveh literally alludes to a ritual pool, it can also allude to the word tikvah, hope. This
teaches that when we hope to Hashem, and do teshuvah—even if we are in the worst situation—God will uplift us. Even from this present darkness, which no nation has ever experienced, such bitterness and cruelty, God will deliver us. Amen.'”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“The Hope of Yisrael”
Kereisos 23

Originally posted on April 18th, 2012 with some adaptations.

Holocaust Remembrance Day or Yom HaShoah begins in the evening of Sunday, April 7, 2013, and ends in the evening of Monday, April 8, 2013. Do not forget. Do not let your children forget. As long as we remember and repent, there lies our hope in God.

As I edit this blog post, it’s early Sunday afternoon before Yom HaShoah. At Sunday school class earlier, when the teacher asked for prayer requests, an older gentleman named Charlie told us all that tonight at sundown, Holocaust Remembrance Day begins and encouraged us all to pray for Israel and the safety of the Jewish people. I believe it is the duty and honor of all Christians to continually pray for Israel and especially at this time, that never again will the Jews be rounded up and slaughtered like cattle. Pray for King Messiah’s return and for the shalom of all Jews everywhere.

(Click the image below to see a larger version)

According to Dr. Michael Schiffman’s blog, “over 50,000 elderly Holocaust survivors living in Israel, and many thousands of holocaust survivors living in the former Soviet Union (are) living in abject poverty right now.” You can help make a difference. Learn how at Dr. Schiffmans’ blog and then make a donation at chevrahumanitarian.org.

There’s always hope, as long as you repent, remember, and then act out of kindness and compassion.