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Obeying God

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May He Who knows what is hidden accept our call for help and listen to our cry.

-Siddur

The Talmud states that a person may be coerced to perform a mitzvah even if it is required that the mitzvah be done of one’s own volition (Rosh Hashanah 6a).

But are not coercion and volition mutually exclusive? Not necessarily, explains Rambam. Inasmuch as the soul of the Jew intrinsically wishes to do the Divine will, and it is only the physical self – which is subject to temptation – that may be resistive, the coercion inflicted upon the person overcomes that external resistance. Thus, when one performs the mitzvah, it is with the full volition of the inner self, the true self, for at his core, every Jew wishes to comply with the mandates of the Torah.

There is a hidden part of us, to which we may have limited access, yet we know it is there. When we pray for our needs, said Rabbi Uri of Strelisk, we generally ask only for that which we feel ourselves to be lacking. However, we must also recognize that our soul has spiritual needs, and that we may not be aware of its cravings.

We therefore pray, said Rabbi Uri, that God should listen not only to the requests that we verbalize, but also to our hidden needs that are very important to us – but which He knows much better than we.

Today I shall…

try to realize that there is a part of me of which I am only vaguely aware. I must try to get to know that part of myself, because it is my very essence.

-Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski
“Growing Each Day, Tishrei 26”
Aish.com

The commentary of Rabbi Twerski will no doubt seem strange to most Christians. How can one be forced to obey God and why split your personality into two parts, the one tempted by the physical world, and the “true self” who “wishes to comply with the mandates of the Torah?” Of course, Christianity commonly splits life into the secular and the spiritual and recognizes that the believer constantly struggles between human desire and obedience to God.

But in our heart of hearts, as children of God, we do want to please our Father and obey our Savior in Heaven. It’s just a matter of what that means. For a Christian, devotion to God is largely an internal process. Sure, Christians go to church and commune with their fellows, but prayer and belief are at the core of the Christian faith. For Jews, it seems almost the opposite. Performing the mitzvot and obedience to the commandments are at the heart of Jewish devotion to God. Of course, prayer is a very important mitzvah, but in religious Judaism, faith is not so much what you believe but what you do.

Torah and mitzvot encompass man from the instant of emergence from his mother’s womb until his final time comes. They place him in a light-filled situation, with healthy intelligence and acquisition of excellent moral virtues and upright conduct – not only in relation to G-d but also in relation to his fellow-man. For whoever is guided by Torah and the instructions of our sages has a life of good fortune, materially and in spirit.

“Today’s Day”
Tuesday, Tishrei 27, 5704
Compiled by the Lubavitcher Rebbe
Translated by Yitschak Meir Kagan
Chabad.org

I read Psalm 119 on Shabbat from the Stone Edition Tanakh (Jewish Bible) and was particularly taken by the psalmist’s devotion to God and the Torah:

Praiseworthy are those whose way is perfect, who walk with the Torah of Hashem. Praiseworthy are those who guard His testimonies, they seek Him wholeheartedly. They have also done no iniquity, for they have walked in His ways. You have issued Your precepts to be kept diligently. My prayers: May my ways be firmly guided to keep Your statutes. Then I will not be ashamed, when I gaze at all Your commandments. I will give thanks to You with upright heart, when I study Your righteous ordinances. I will keep Your statues, O, do not forsake me utterly.

–Psalm 119:1-8 (Stone Edition Tanakh)

I find these words and their meaning to be very beautiful, and they weave for me, a life of study, contemplation, and devotion to the Words and ways of God. And yet, they seem (apparently) at odds with how Christians see obedience to God:

But 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…

–Ephesians 2:13-15 (ESV)

The Jewish psalmist builds up and praises God’s “righteous ordinances” and “statues,” while Paul (apparently) in his letter to the Ephesians declares that “by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances” the psalmist holds so dear, Christ obliterates the “dividing wall of hostility” between Gentile and Jewish believers, in order to create “one new man in place of two.”

However you choose to interpret that portion of Ephesians 2, it seems as if the traditional viewpoints of how to cherish and obey God between the Jew and the Christian are at odds (and aren’t the Psalmist and Paul also at odds?).

I periodically converse with and debate (click the link and scroll down to the comments section) with Christians (mostly Gentiles and a very few Jews) who attempt to reconcile these two perspectives into one, combining Christian faith through belief in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ with an attempt to obey the mitzvot as a response to that faith, thus imitating the Jewish Messiah in his Judaism, though with 21st century rather than 1st century Jewish methods. There is a great debate between Messianic Judaism (and probably other forms of Judaism if they would choose to enter the online discussion) and what is commonly referred to as “One Law” Christianity, regarding how proper this approach is, but I’m not here to discuss those matters today…at least not exactly.

I’ll take it for granted that all servants of the Master want to obey God. The question then becomes how is this done. For the traditional Jew, it is through the mitzvot. For the traditional Christian, it is through belief and prayer. Messianic Jews tend to take on the practices of the other Judaisms, and we see that the Messianic Jewish Rabbinical Council (which represents a sizeable portion of American Messianic Jews but cannot speak for the entire movement), according to their Standards of Observance (PDF), is strongly aligned with Conservative and Reform Judaism in terms of halakhah, however, as a Jewish body who has accepted Jesus Christ as the Jewish Messiah within a Jewish conceptual and practical context, there are other considerations:

In addition to Tanakh, we as Messianic Jews have another authoritative source for the making of halakhic decisions: the Apostolic Writings. Yeshua himself did not act primarily as a Posek (Jewish legal authority) issuing halakhic rulings, but rather as a prophetic teacher who illumined the purpose of the Torah and the inner orientation we should have in fulfilling it. Nevertheless, his teaching about the Torah has a direct bearing on how we address particular halakhic questions. As followers of Messiah Yeshua, we look to him as the greatest Rabbi of all, and his example and his instruction are definitive for us in matters of Halakhah as in every other sphere.

In addition, the Book of Acts and the Apostolic Letters provide crucial halakhic guidance for us in our lives as Messianic Jews. They are especially important in showing us how the early Jewish believers in Yeshua combined a concern for Israel’s distinctive calling according to the Torah with a recognition of the new relationship with God and Israel available to Gentiles in the Messiah. They also provide guidelines relevant to other areas of Messianic Jewish Halakhah, including (but not restricted to) areas such as distinctive Messianic rites, household relationships, and dealing with secular authorities.

If all that looks complicated, it’s important to remember that even traditional Christians struggle to understand how best to obey God and where we fit into His Holy plan.

But is it really so hard to understand at its core. Even for the non-Jewish Christians who are drawn to the Torah, is there such a great distance between them and their brothers and sisters in the church? For that matter, is there such a great distance behaviorally between religious Judaism in any of its forms and the body of Christian believers who also desire to obey God with all their hearts?

Let’s take a look at some of those behaviors of obedience. I’ll be using the list of the 613 mitzvot Jews believe God gave to Israel at Sinai which were (much) later codified by Maimonides. I’m specifically referencing the list found at Judaism 101.

It should be noted that exactly how one is to obey the mitzvot isn’t always a straightforward affair. Particularly in Orthodox Judaism, a large, documented body of rulings, judgments, and interpretations collectively known as the Talmud defines the methods and procedures whereby a Jew can fulfill the various mitzvot (most of which cannot be performed without the Temple in Jerusalem, an active Levitical priesthood, a Sanhedrin court system, or outside of the Land of Israel), but I won’t be going into those details as they are far outside the scope of this humble blog post. I should almost mention that the various Judaisms (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and so on) have differing approaches to halakhah and the mitzvot, so their prioritization and interpretation of how, when, or if to perform various acts of obedience will not be the same among all the modern “Judaisms”.

Naturally, I can’t list all 613 commandments so I’ll take just a few examples to examine.

To know that God exists (Ex. 20:2; Deut. 5:6)

Exodus 20:2 in the Stone Edition Tanakh states:

I am Hashem, your God, Who has taken you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery.

That doesn’t sound like a command or a mitzvot (something you can do) to most Christians, but for a Jew, it’s the first of the Ten Commandments. If you think about it for a second, you really can’t obey God at all unless you know that He exists and you know that He is God. Once you accept those things, then the rest of the commandments can follow.

While God didn’t bring the Christians out of the Land of Egypt and the “house of slavery” (except in a metaphorical sense when Jesus delivered us from the slavery of our sins), He is just as much a God to us as He is to the Jewish people. In fact, whether the rest of the world chooses to believe or not, God is God to all of humanity since we were all made in His image. If this is a commandment of God, then by definition, both Jews and Christians must obey.

To give charity according to one’s means (Deut. 15:11)

Deuteronomy 15:11 states in the Tanakh:

You shall surely open your hand to your brother, to the poor, and to your destitute in your Land.

The last portion of this verse, within its context, seems to be a commandment specifically on how Jews should treat the poor within the ancient Land of Israel, but it is an enduring commandment among Jews to this very day. Giving tzedakah (charity) is a great virtue in Judaism and there are a large number of Jewish organization dedicated to providing for the needy, both among Jews and also the rest of the world. Christianity also has this value.

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

–Matthew 25:34-40 (ESV)

This great virtue of providing for the needy and suffering exists in modern Christianity. At every disaster, you will find Christian professionals and laypeople volunteering to render aid to the suffering by providing medical treatment and supplies, food, water, clothing, and other needs. There are Christian missions all over the world building churches, sheltering the persecuted, comforting the dying, and offering time, money, and material goods to anyone in need.

To love the stranger (Deut. 10:19)

Deuteronomy 10:19 in the Tanakh states:

You shall love the proselyte for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Based on this translation and within its context, this specifically means that the native-born Israelite is to love the non-Israelite who has bound himself to the Laws of Hashem with the intent of having themselves and their descendents become full members of the community. Ultimately, the proselyte’s descendants (third generation and later) would fully assimilate and intermarry within Israel and history would “forget” whose ancestors were from among the proselytes and whose were from among the native-born Israelites.

Because “strangers,” “aliens,” or proselytes had no tribal affiliations, they could easily be victimized or treated as “second-class citizens” within Israel. God is commanding that they be loved by Israel in the memory of how Israel was treated as “strangers” (and slaves) in Egypt, not to replicate victimizing the stranger in the way that Israel was victimized in Egypt.

Today, this mitzvah is most commonly expressed in how Jews treat a Gentile who is in the process of converting or who has converted to Judaism. They are not to be treated differently within their community than the “native-born” Jew. This could, particularly within Reform synagogues, also be generalized to the Gentiles in their midst. There are a fair number of Jewish/Christian intermarried couples in Reform communities. At my own local Reform-Conservative shul, Gentiles even sit on the synagogue’s board of directors, so they are quite integrated into the Jewish community in that respect. A Gentile is still very unlikely to be called up for an aliyah to read the Torah on Shabbat or to lead the service when the Rabbi is unavailable, but in most other ways, they are equal in the community (perhaps this is the model for how non-Jews are treated in Messianic Jewish synagogues as well). This would be less true in Conservative Judaism and not even possible among the Orthodox, but even then, Gentiles who were intermarried to Jews in those communities would be treated (ideally) with respect and courtesy (and probably the best example of this is within Chabad synagogues).

This is a mitzvah that is looked at differently in Christianity since, by its very nature, no one is born a believer, even people who are born and raised in Christian families. We were all “strangers” to God and to Christianity at one point in our lives. Our duty is not to shun the non-believer but to welcome him and her into our midst in the name of the Christ who welcomed us.

OK, that was only three commandments out of 613, but it’s a nice start. We can see that in many important ways, how Jews and Christians obey God are identical or very similar. Know God. Give to the needy. Love the stranger among you. Both Christians and Jews do this. Identity is all but irrelevant in these cases. A Christian can as easily and as effectively give food to a hungry person as a Jew. You don’t have to bend yourself into an alternate identity to accomplish this. Really folks, it’s not rocket science.

I suppose you noticed that the list includes a great many items that Christians don’t address, such as “To circumcise the male offspring (Gen. 17:12; Lev. 12:3)”, “To put tzitzit on the corners of clothing (Num. 15:38)”, “To bind tefillin on the head (Deut. 6:8)”, and so on. These are behaviors that are typically associated with Jewish identity. That is, you perform these commandments specifically because you are Jewish and anyone who performs them, whether it’s their intent or not, will very likely appear Jewish to anyone who sees them.

In certain small religious circles, the question of whether or not Christians should perform these mitzvot as an act of a disciple imitating their Rabbi and Master Jesus is an ongoing debate. For the vast majority of Christianity, obeying the mitzvot of feeding the hungry and visiting the sick seems much more substantial and possesses a greater quality of imitating Jesus than (purposefully or otherwise) appearing overtly Jewish. How you choose to obey God must be within your understanding of Scripture and as it exists within your conscience. However, don’t disregard the “weightier matters of the Law” for the sake of your perceived devotion to the more superficial signs. Filling a hungry five-year old’s tummy will always trump whether or not to lay tefillin during morning prayers, at least within my conscience.

 

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78 Days: Peace and War

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Boaz says that you are like the heretic Korach if you question the Mosaic authority of the Rabbis…

This is how he scared those former One Law guys into reverting to racially-classed M.J. He tells the gentiles they are heretics on par with Korach if they go against the Rabbis. So they got scared and gave in. Good ol’ scare tactics.

But guess what, folks? If you believe Yeshua is G-d then you’ve already gone against the “Mosaic” authority of the Rabbis. You want you should be a more acceptable heretic to them? A more pleasing apostate?

-from a comment on Gene Shlomovich’s blog

…their view in simple terms is not only a form of apartheid, it is demonstrably anti-biblical. Folks like some of those in UMJC and in leadership at FFOZ may try, but they simply cannot smother the Torah lifestyle movement among HaShem’s elect. How sad for them.

-from a comment on Judah Himango’s blog

I’m tired. My daughter had to be at work at five this (Sunday) morning so I had to get up at about a quarter to four so I’d be available to drive her. So as I write this (between 6:30 and 8 a.m.), I’m tired. Coffee doesn’t seem to be helping and I’ve got a full day ahead of me between watching my grandson, doing the lawn, including winterizing the trees, and hopefully being able to get to the gym.

But that’s not the only reason I’m tired. I’m tired of all the fighting in my little corner of the religious blogosphere. I’m tired of the backbiting, the demanding attitudes, the self-righteous attitudes, the “I have my rights” attitudes, and those people who think Jews are being racist because they feel that Gentiles (including Christians) aren’t Jewish.

So much for the united and loving body of Christ. So much for John 13:34 and 1 Corinthians 13. If we are supposed to be loving because God so loved the world, then obviously, we’ve failed miserably.

Regardless of whatever branch or variant of Christianity to which you find yourself attached, there always seems to be those people who can’t stand other Christians in different types of churches, who can’t stand people in their own congregations who disagree with them personally, and who barely can stand to live inside their own skin. It goes without saying that they can barely stand Jewish people or can’t stand them at all. And yet Paul said that Christianity is grafted into (in some manner or fashion) Judaism (see Romans 11:11-24).

In spite of that, I see (One Law) Christians calling Jews racist, which brings them frighteningly close to the old, lamented, historical church and its vitriolic supersessionism and anti-Jewish rhetoric that I hoped was rapidly fading from our ranks.

Boy was I wrong.

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

–Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky

That’s where we should be. Sadly, I find few of my fellow Gentile Christians who even aspire to be like Rav Levi Yitzchok.

I recently read another One Law Christian’s commentary (I don’t dignify the source by linking to it) who accused the Chabad of “brainwashing” someone (probably a Jewish someone) into rejecting Jesus. From a Christian point of view, that’s probably what it looks like and how it seems functionally, but from the Chabad’s point of view, they are “evangelizing” to the secular and apostate Jewish population (from their point of view) in a manner similar to how Christians see their mission to offer Christ’s salvation to the world.

I’m reasonably sure this is what convinced my wife to accept a more standard Jewish theology and what caused her to believe that Jesus couldn’t be the Jewish Messiah. I’m not happy about this turn of events because it places a wedge between how my wife and I see and understand God, but I can’t deny her the choice of understanding and accepting her Judaism on her own terms. I certainly don’t think she’s any more “brainwashed” as a Jew than I am as a Christian. I don’t see her as a racist because she believes that the Torah is for her and not for me. It’s not always an easy peace I’ve come to as far as this dynamic in my marriage is concerned, but it is a peace.

But every time I visit the blogosphere, I don’t find peace at all, but war.

Long has my soul dwelt with those who hate peace. I am peace; but when I speak, they are for war.

–Psalm 120:6-7 (Stone Edition Tanakh)

I’ve been debating within myself about what I should do, if anything, in response. More and more, the topics on my “meditations” have been in reply to this “war” I see happening within the confines of the Messianic Jewish and Hebrew Roots sphere of communication. I understand that the larger Christian community is not a peaceful one (in spite of John 13:34) but this is ridiculous.

While I’ve been trying to decide, in recent weeks, whether or not to return to a traditional Christian church to foster a sense of fellowship with other believers, I’ve come to the conclusion that going back to church won’t make things better at home or in me. I left my previous religious community because (in part) of the negative impact it caused on my wife and the embarrassment my being “One Law” caused her as a Jew. I had hoped that my departure would ease things enough so that I could participate with her in synagogue life, but I recently learned this was a vain hope. I have chosen to proceed hopefully forward anyway for the sake of cherishing her yiddisher neshamah, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences to my decisions.

My original intent for this blog was to record my transition in theology and to learn to find my faith in a more traditional Jewish setting. But the anticipated outcome never happened, and now I realize, it never will. I’ve mentioned before that I will need to chart a new course, but while in an ultimate sense, Jesus is still the goal, the path to reach him, from where I’m standing, has become increasingly indistinct. It’s like realizing that I’m stranded in a forested valley and completely shrouded by a dense fog. I can’t see well enough to even tell which direction the trail leads. I can’t see how to climb out at all.

But in the dark all around me, I hear the sounds of battle, fighting, growling, and hostility. That would be the people who are backbiting, the “believers” with demanding attitudes, self-righteous attitudes, “I have my rights” attitudes, and those people who think Jews are being racist because they feel that Gentiles (including Christians) aren’t Jewish.

Is this all I’ve got to look forward to by continuing to participate in this online community? If so, where the heck can I find the Jewish Messiah in it? Among people who say they love Israel but who (seemingly) hate Jews; who accuse Jews of racism and brainwashing?

This blog was never intended to be an endless stream of my thoughts and feelings without a goal or destination in mind. It was intended to be a chronicle of my journey of faith, not a “war journal” describing battle after meaningless battle between people who supposedly all share the same Messiah and the same God.

Maybe I’m just tired and maybe I’ll see this all differently if I manage to get some rest, but these thoughts have been plaguing me for some time now.

I found a site that uses a simple bit of JavaScript to display a countdown from the present date and time to New Year’s Day 2013. 78 days seems as good as any time limit to give this journey of mine to reach a conclusion. I’m giving myself (I guess I can’t really give it to anyone else) 78 days from today, Sunday, October 14, 2012, to either find a way to come to terms with the baloney I’ve been describing or to pull the plug on this blog and possibly any public participation in Christian faith. I’m really tired of the fighting and I’m not Running out of timegoing to contend with any sort of anti-Jewish Christian (whether you call yourselves “One Law,” “One Torah,” “Two House” or anything else) “baloney” (imagine I’m using a much stronger term) for much longer.

Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or the morning of December 31st (a Monday), and feel that I can go on writing meditations regardless of the fog or the clanging of sword and shield resounding in the mist surrounding me. Maybe I’ll wake up and find the fog has lifted and the din has ceased or at least traveled a good distance from me…or I’ll discover that the weapons of hostility and war simply don’t affect me anymore, and everyone else can just knock themselves out in their need to fight, while I can pass safely among them.

And maybe not.

There are infinite worlds beyond ours and beyond the worlds of the angels, all full of divine light, beauty and oneness.

But know also that all this was brought into being with a single purpose: G‑d desires to be at home within your mundane world.

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

This is what I’m looking for or close to it.

Anyway, I’m giving myself 78 days to find it or to figure it out. I’ll continue writing “meditations” as I always have during that time period, but I’ll also continue to contribute to this “time-limited series” as a commentary on this branch of my journey of discovery. Where will I end up when January 1, 2013 rolls around? Stick around and see. I don’t even know the answer yet myself.

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Who Let The Dogs Out?

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And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And he said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

–Mark 7:24-30 (ESV)

Since the assigned lection a few Sundays ago on Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30), I’ve intended to comment on what appears to me a surprisingly widespread mis-reading of the passage. Essentially, the “dogs” (who Jesus says here must wait till after the “children” have eaten before they can be fed) are taken with an extremely pejorative connotation as feral mongrels, and the scene is read as if Jesus is pictured insulting the woman and treating her with contempt. I am embarrassed to find this basic take on the passage even in the learned commentary on Mark by a scholar I deeply admire: Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: Hermeneia (Fortress Press, 2007), 366-67. But for several reasons, among them prominently the specifics of the Greek term used (unusually) in this passage, I think it pretty clear that this take is wrong.

–Dr. Larry W. Hurtado
“Dogs, Doggies, and Exegesis”
Lary Hurtado’s Blog

Disclaimer: In using the title of the song Who Let the Dogs Out? written by Anselem Douglas and originally covered by the Baha Men, I am in no way attempting to be insulting to any individual or group of people, either those addressed within the context of this blog post or otherwise. Given the core statement made by Jesus in the Mark 7 quote, it just seemed like a “clever” title for my missive. That is the complete extent of my intention for using the song title.

Note: I’m taking an interpretation written by well-known New Testament scholar Larry Hurtado and using it as a springboard to make a suggestion of my own. I certainly don’t expect Hurtado (should he ever read this) to agree with me and frankly, what I’m doing in today’s blog post is something of an “experiment.” Just so you know.

Was Jesus a racist? This question doesn’t come out of thin air. There have been several recent conversations in the blogosphere in relation to Messianic Judaism (click the link to see my rather specific definition for the term) and whether or not proponents of Messianic Judaism as a form of Judaism, rather than an all-inclusive “Christianity,” is racist. (See Judah Himango’s blog post Two Church: Defining Bilateral Ecclesiology in Simple Terms for the latest discussion) The suggestion is that, by insisting that the modern Jewish disciples of the ancient Jewish Messiah are a Judaism and, like all other Jews, are the sole inheritors of the Mosaic covenant because they are the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that Messianic Judaism and Messianic Jews are being racist. That is, Messianic Jews, by overtly excluding non-Jewish Christians from the conditions of the Mosaic covenant (the Torah), are denying people access to being obligated to the full weight of the Torah mitzvot based on race.

The topic is extremely rich and can be taken in a lot of different directions, but since I had recently read Dr. Hurtado’s above-quoted blog post and it’s companion article, I thought I’d use them as the focus of my investigation. They really are quite fitting since they directly address Christ’s interaction with the (non-Jewish) Syro-Phoenician woman in Mark 7 and he appears to treat her rather badly because she’s not Jewish. But is that really the case?

This sense of a domestic scene ought to be obvious simply in reading the passage. Jesus is pictured as responding to the woman’s request by saying, “Let the children be fed first, for it isn’t right to give the childrens’ food to the dogs.” The point of the statement is the temporal priority of the “children”, of course in this case, referring to Jesus directing his ministry to fellow Jews. The metaphor presumes a setting in which the household dogs are fed the leftovers after the family has eaten (not custom-produced dog-food). (I know the practice well, having grown up in a rural setting in which the household dogs ate what we ate, only after we had eaten.)

The woman’s clever reply confirms this, respectfully pointing out that “the dogs under the table eat from the portions of the children.” “Wild” dogs and “scavenger dogs of the street” aren’t typically allowed “under the table” and around the children! And anyone with both children and household dogs will know how it goes at mealtime: If allowed, the dogs hang about the children’s chairs, knowing that children love to “drop” morsels to their pets.

Finally, we also have to ask ourselves how likely it is that the authors of Mark (writing for a Christian readership at least largely made up of converted gentiles) would have inserted a scene in which supposedly Jesus insults a gentile woman in the harsh terms imputed by some modern readers. She is “put in her place” as a gentile, but it’s a temporal place. The scene functions to explain that, although Jesus’ own ministry was confined to his Jewish people (apparently, a tradition that Mark couldn’t deny/ignore), the subsequent mission to gentiles was (Mark wants to imply) on the agenda, only it had to wait its time, and Jesus is pictured as anticipating that gentile-mission in responding positively to the woman’s respectful but clever response.

Was Jesus racist? Seemingly not, according to Dr. Hurtado, at least not in a way where he was being “cruel” to the non-Jewish woman. What Hurtado describes is a situation whereby Jesus seems to order his overall ministry, with the Jews (“the children”) “served” first, and only afterwards are the domesticated “dogs” under the table (non-Jews) fed. According to Hurtado, Jesus wasn’t being insulting or racist and in fact, he was certainly “inclusive” (using a modern term appropriate for such discussions) of non-Jews, but he did not see them on the same lateral plane at that point in time. They (we) wouldn’t be served until after his death, resurrection, and ascension. During his first coming, Gentiles didn’t occupy the same “space” or the same roles relative to his mission to the Jews as the Jewish redeeming Messiah and Savior. Nevertheless, he did take the time to “feed the dog under the table” so to speak.

This is made a bit more clear by Dr. Hurtado’s subsequent blog post:

One further observation about the little scene between Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician woman in Mark 7:24-30 is that the initial response ascribed to Jesus is not a derogatory reference to the woman, or a simple misogynist or racial put-down, but is instead a parable-like saying specifically appropriate to the woman.

The part about the “parable-like saying specifically appropriate to the woman” could stand some examination. If I say that the sequence of events we see in Mark 7:24-30 represents how Jesus saw the prioritization of his ministry in relation to Jews and Gentiles, and if I say that, based on these verses, it was Christ’s intent to “feed” both the “lost sheep of Israel” and the non-Jews living among Israel, but giving a later temporal priority to the non-Jews, then can I generalize this as Christ’s intent to maintain some sort of distinction for the disciples among the nations that he would later (after the resurrection) command his Jewish disciples to make? (see Matthew 28:18-20).

Hurtado doesn’t directly address this issue and he would probably disagree with how I’m using his material. He seems to say that the only difference between Jewish disciples and Gentile disciples is that the Jews would be brought in first. The Gentiles would enter discipleship later on. But is the only distinction temporal?

Based on the Last Supper narratives (Matthew 26:17-30, Mark 14:12-26, Luke 22:7-39 and John 13:1-17:26), Jesus intended on bringing all of his followers, Jewish and Gentile alike, into covenant relationship with God via the New Covenant (see Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36), a covenant which confirmed and expanded upon the previous covenants God made with Israel. Prior to this point, the non-Jewish nations did not have direct access to God through covenant (unless they converted to Judaism). Only through the blood and bodily death of Jesus and his subsequent resurrection could we be brought in and placed on a level plane in the Kingdom relative to access to God and experiencing God’s love for us. This fits quite well with what Hurtado wrote.

But would that make a difference in how Jesus saw the Gentile disciples made after his ascension to how he saw the Syro-Phoenician woman? Was it his intention to elevate the “dogs sitting under the table” to the status of “children sitting around the table?” Given that Mark was writing his Gospel primarily to non-Jewish disciples, I believe I can make a case for the answer “no.” Otherwise, Mark’s description of this transaction becomes wholly anachronistic to the disciples from the nations (i.e. non-Jewish Christians).

I’d like to suggest that the distinction between the Jewish and Gentile disciples wasn’t necessarily temporal, but sequential and derivative. In fact, the way I understand how Gentiles manage to be injected into a relationship with God through the covenants (specifically Abrahamic and New) made with Israel, it would have to be.

Paul appears to echo Mark’s theme and suggest one that mirrors my suggestion in his famous letter to the church in Rome:

There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.

–Romans 2:9-11 (ESV)

PaulThis short verse tells us several things. First, Paul, in speaking to a “mixed congregation” of Jews and non-Jews, continues to draw a distinction between them (he calls them “Jews” and “Greeks,” not “Christians” or some other all-inclusive term designed to negate any distinction between the two groups). He also says two things that seem to be contradictory. He says that God shows no partiality” between Jews and Greeks, but he also says “the Jew first and also the Greek,” which dovetails very nicely into Hurtado’s analysis of the Mark 7 passage where he describes a “temporal” prioritization, but also a sequential prioritization, where the Jews would always be considered before the non-Jews regardless of circumstances, good or bad.

Since Paul at this point, is addressing Jews and Gentiles who are all covenant members under the Messiah, it is reasonable to say, in my opinion, that the relationship between Jews and non-Jews remains distinctive. The non-Jews are not considered before the Jewish disciples, and their (our) relationship with God derives from the Jews after the non-Jews have entered into covenant relationship with God through Jesus Christ. We are equal, because God shows no partiality, but the distinction between Jew and Gentile is maintained as is the rather (on the surface) unflattering relationship between the Jewish “children” and the non-Jewish “domesticated dogs,” though a kinder metaphor such as parent to child (no, it’s not a perfect metaphor) might be more fitting.

There’s a strong tendency to try to understand the relationship between believing Jews and believing non-Jews in terms of 21st century western cultural, social, and legal definitions. America and the other nations of the west, are based on a strong imperative to treat all people of differing races, cultures, ethnic groups, languages, and nationalities as equal in terms of law and access to resources. Our system of equality is flawed, but the principle exists and it’s a good one.

But we can’t seem to get around the fact that first Jesus (as described by Mark) and later Paul both differentiated between the Jewish and non-Jewish followers and disciples of the Messiah. The Jews were brought in first but they continued to be first, even after the Gentiles were brought into covenant. The Jews were directly descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and as such, were the beneficiaries of all of the covenants God made with Israel. The people of the other nations would not be able to enter into covenant with God except through Jesus and the New Covenant (the original blessings can be traced back to the Abrahamic covenant) and thus, Jesus and later Paul, order their priorities differently depending on…yes, on race. They order them differently based on whether or not a person is physically a descendent of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob or not. Everybody except for the Jewish people, are not.

Was Jesus a racist? Not in the sense we understand the term today. He did however, differentiate based on racially associated covenant relationships. Being Jewish was one thing. Being non-Jewish was something else. Through Jesus, we Christians enter into a relationship with God, think of it as going from wild, scavenging dogs, to domesticated dogs. Not very flattering, as I said before, especially if we (to extend Mark’s metaphor) continue to consider the Jews as “children” by comparison. On the other hand, maybe we’re much newer additions to the family and must continue (as in many families) to pay deferential respect and have differing privileges than the older members of the family.

But setting aside the uncomfortable literal interpretation of this language, the difference between the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers is not one of God’s love or access to our Creator, but of older vs. younger or, who we are as non-Jews in the family is directly derived from the older Jewish members. Jews are “served first.” The dogs eat what the children eat but the children will always come first. Or the younger family members eat what the older members eat, but the younger eat later, waiting first for the older members to be served. Perhaps we even eat only because the older members of the family, the root, provides the nourishment.

I don’t think I’ve “solved” the “are Messianic Jews racist” debate. I admit that I’ve taken liberties with the text and explored alleyways Hurtado would likely not approve of. I’ve also probably raised more questions than I’ve answered,  but I wasn’t actually trying to answer questions. I’ve been trying to introduce the possibility that Jesus never intended to eliminate any of the “specialness” of the “Children” of Israel when he, through God’s grace and mercy, made a way possible for the people of the nations to also enter God’s Kingdom. I think our connection will always be through Israel and we will always be dependent on Israel (and Israel’s firstborn son Jesus) for our access to God.

Something to think about anyway.

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Genesis: Learning Beginnings

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And G-d said: “Let there be a firmament…”

–Genesis 1:6

It is written: “Forever, O G-d, Your word stands firm in the heavens.” (It is written: “Forever, O G-d, Your word stands firm in the heavens.” (Psalm 119:89) Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, of blessed memory, explained the verse thus: “Your word” which you uttered, “Let there be a firmament…,” these very words and letters stand firmly forever within the firmament of heaven and are forever clothed within the heavens to give them life and existence. As it is also written, “The word of our G-d shall stand firm forever” (Isaiah 40:8) and “His words live and stand firm forever.” (From the morning prayers) For if these letters were to depart even for an instant, G-d forbid, and return to their source, all the heavens would become nought and absolute nothingness, and it would be as if they had never existed at all, exactly as before the utterance, “Let there be a firmament.”

And so it is with all created things, down to the most corporeal and inanimate of substances. If the letters of the “ten utterances” by which the earth was created during the six days of creation were to depart from it for but an instant, G-d forbid, it would revert to absolute nothingness.

This same thought was expressed by the Ari (Famed kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria, 1534-1572), of blessed memory, when he said that even in completely inanimate matter, such as earth and stones and water, there is a soul and spiritual life-force – that is, the letters of Divine “speech” clothed within it which continually grant it life and existence.

-Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi

One year, following the Rosh Hashanah prayers, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi asked his son, Rabbi DovBer: “What did you think of during your prayers?”

Rabbi DovBer replied that he had contemplated the meaning of the passage, “and every stature shall bow before You” (From the “Nishmas” prayer received on Shabbos) – how the most lofty supernal worlds and spiritual creations negate themselves before the infinite majesty of G-d. “And you, father,” Rabbi DovBer then asked, “with what thought did you pray?”

Replied Rabbi Schneur Zalman: “I contemplated the table at which I stood.”

-Rabbi Yanki Tauber
“Wooden Thoughts”
from the “Once Upon a Chasid” series
Commentary on Torah Portion B’reisheet

“I contemplated the table at which I stood” seems an odd way to begin a commentary on Genesis and the beginning of a new Torah cycle, but it tells us something about how Jews see life and, to some degree, the differences in generations. Maybe it also teaches us something about different levels of learning. Rabbi Zalman’s son, who was undoubtedly at a relatively early stage of his education, was focused on “the most lofty supernal worlds and spiritual creations negate themselves before the infinite majesty of G-d,” which is not such a bad thing to contemplate during prayers. But why then, would his father contemplate the table at which he stood?

What was God creating at the beginning of all things?

“Firmament” has also been translated as “expanse” (JPS Tanakh, NIV Bible, ESV Bible) or “space” (New Living Translation Bible) and can also be rendered as “canopy.” Although we may think of this as “sky” or “heaven,” there is an apparent “physicality” and “permanency” to God’s creating of everything. And why should God have to create the physical and permanent? For us.

Neither Rabbi Zalman nor his son was wrong about what they were contemplating during their prayers, but this also tells us something about the nature of God, man, and this week’s Torah Portion. Heaven and Earth aren’t necessarily the separate things we consider them in Christian thought. Everything, the physical and the spiritual, are from God, so we should consider them equally as eternal (or at least extremely long lasting) gifts from our Creator.

But I mentioned before about the differences between generations and the different levels of learning. The younger learner strives to reach up to God and the spiritual realm, and the older, more experienced Rabbi, has learned to see Him, even in a wooden table. I guess that tells us to relax a little when we think we can’t see God. He’s all around us anyway and in many ways. Even in the humble wooden table we’re standing next to when we pray. However, this isn’t always the traditional experience parents, Jewish or otherwise, have when trying to pass their traditions and culture from one generation to the next.

I also am not scoring high on the Jewish parent scale these days: my older daughter, who turned 9 in August, recently decided she hates all worship services and doesn’t want to go to Hebrew school. Even though she likes her teachers. My response, for now at least, is that she doesn’t have a choice about Hebrew school, so she might as well try to enjoy it. (Yes, I know, that sounds like the horrifically insensitive comment some clueless people make about rape.)

From toddler-hood until now was like a Jewish identity honeymoon; Ellie loved Hebrew school and her only complaint about services — they are a regular part of Hebrew school each week — was that she didn’t always get called up to the bima to read.

In fact, the first year we belonged to the temple it was my younger one — then 4 — who put up a fuss about Hebrew school, wanting instead to hang out with me on Sunday mornings. But after a few months of conflict, Sophie decided she adored her teacher and the teenage assistant teachers. Two years later, she has nary an objection (although I fear I’ll jinx that now), but Ellie complains constantly.

-Julie Wiener
“Tweens and Torahs”
from her “In the Mix” series
TheJewishWeek.com

Wiener’s experience is probably more “normal” in terms of religious parents trying to make sure their children receive a “proper education.” I imagine Christian parents have similar struggles getting their “tweens” to go to Sunday school or some Wednesday night Christian kids meeting.

Last year, for this Torah portion, I talked about rerolling the Torah scroll as, in part, a way to reset the clock and turn everything back to the beginning. In the beginning, we not only find the familiar, but we look at it in new and different ways. That’s why I can write a commentary on Genesis from one year to the next and have them be quite different from one another.

But that’s a mature attitude. For a child, it might be, “Not Genesis again,” as if they were having meatloaf for dinner the third time this week. At a certain age, when children are in-between independence and childhood, they navigate a difficult course between parental priorities and their own.

For Jews, the additional layers aren’t just the religious but the cultural. While Julie Weiner is a Jewish agnostic and thus does not transmit a strong religious tradition down to her two daughters, the fact that she is Jewish means she must transmit a strong Jewish cultural identity to her two daughters. The fact that she’s also intermarried adds another wrinkle to the fabric, but that’s what her blog is all about.

It’s also what my blog is all about. It is sometimes incredibly interesting to be intermarried. There was a time when I attended Shabbat services at the local Reform-Conservative synagogue with my wife and kids (who are all Jewish). I felt pretty out of place at the time, but in my heart, I was worshiping the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If I had it to do over again, I would have become much more involved in the synagogue community, but I wasn’t in the right place mentally and spiritually back then.

I had no intention of evangelizing or making a nudnik (pest) out of myself. I tried to fit in as best I could but it wasn’t my culture or my identity. I followed the service and spoke to God, but none of that made me a Jew and really, I wasn’t practicing Judaism. I was worshiping alongside the Jews in the congregation (and since it was Reform, I wasn’t the only non-Jew present). I was “in the mix” to borrow from Weiner’s blog, in a group fraught with “mixes,” but I still was and am a Christian.

Rolling the Torah ScrollI mentioned quite recently that I see the mission of Christianity, and particularly those Christians who have an affinity for Judaism, is to support, promote, and encourage a return to the Torah for the Jewish people in our midst. An extension of that mission is to communicate to other Christians what our mission means and how we see it fitting in to the expansive plans of God.

Julie Weiner is trying to pass down Jewish identity from her generation to her children’s. That presupposes Weiner, as a Jew, having ownership over her Jewish identity. That would seem like a no-brainer for the vast majority of people including the vast majority of Christians and Jews, but as I said before, there are some Christians out there who seem just a little confused about who is Jewish and who isn’t. That question extends outward into the larger, “What is Judaism?” which includes What is Messianic Judaism?

The answers aren’t easy, but we can start at a basic foundation. We can see that being Jewish isn’t just a “religious” thing. Wiener (remember, she’s agnostic) can take her two daughters to Simchat Torah with encouraging results.

For Simchat Torah, I dragged the whole family to services, because I remembered how much fun it had been two years earlier (we had to miss it last year), and both girls love dancing. When I was invited to carry one of the Torah scrolls around the sanctuary, I asked Ellie if she wanted to join me, assuming she’d roll her eyes and say absolutely not. To my surprise, she not only came along (eagerly trailed, of course, by Sophie) but then, when offered a small Torah scroll of her own to carry, proudly took it. To her delight, someone took a picture of her marching around the temple with the Torah. (Yes, it’s a Reform temple, we take pictures on Jewish holidays. Go ahead and judge, judgmental reader.) And she danced with gusto for the rest of the night.

There are a lot of Jews in my area who attend Erev Shabbat services at our local Reform-Conservative shul largely for social, cultural, and community reasons as opposed to “being religious” (the Saturday service is thought as “too religious” by many of the Friday night folks).

Those of us who find Jewish cultural and religious practices attractive for whatever reasons, must strive to remember that attraction does not equal ownership. Julie Wiener and her daughters own their Jewish identity, religious and otherwise, because they’re Jewish. Chances are, most of you reading this blog are not. Chances are, most of you reading this blog have no problem with not being Jewish and thus not claiming Jewish identity, either conceptually or by behavior.

We are at a beginning point in the Torah reading cycle. Jewish children are at a beginning point in understanding and establishing a Jewish identity at the levels of religion, culture, ethnicity, and spirituality. It can be very hard to grant someone something that you don’t understand. How can we give the Torah and Jewish identity back to Jews and Judaism? We may think the Bible has told us all we need to know to comprehend what it is to be a Jew, but unless we grew up in a Jewish home and were raised by Jewish parents, in a lived, experiential sense, we don’t have a clue. We just have a little knowledge and a lot of imagination.

In Genesis, God creates the world and its various components and life forms and He creates man and woman. In Abraham, He created the first Hebrew by covenant relationship. At Sinai, by covenant relationship, He created the people and the nation of Israel, who were separated in perpetuity from the rest of the nations; the rest of humanity, in order to serve God in a very, very specific way.

While we Christians were also “created” in covenant relationship to God through the blood and death and life of Jesus Christ, and we are equal in God’s heart and God’s love to the Jewish people, we are not the same as the Jewish people. How all that will work out after the Messiah comes and after all things that are supposed to come to pass, have long since come to pass, I don’t know. I just know that right now, I’m a Christian. People like Julie Wiener and my wife are Jewish. Being Jewish means a whole lot of things and maybe not exactly the same things to all Jews. On the other hand, when you’re not Jewish, it’s pretty obvious, or it should be. For kids in intermarried families, it can be confusing, but the world has done away with enough Jews over the last 3,500 years or so and we need to stop. We need to make it easier for Jewish kids with intermarried parents to recognize what it is for them to be Jewish and not “muddy the waters” for them, so to speak.

Let the Jewish children have their beginning and discover who they are. We Christians should be busy discovering who we are and then teaching that to our children. May the Jewish and Christian children one day find out who they are in relationship to each other, and may all of our generations on that day, stand before the Throne of God and worship the One.

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Returning the Torah

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“I didn’t know what to say, but I certainly appreciated his incredible gift. I realized that this was a Torah that had been basically homeless for the past 50 years. There was no one to read it, hold it or keep it properly, and now God gave the Torah a home, and would hopefully bring this lonely Jew back in the near future as well.

“Now, what about an ark? That’s a story of its own. I found an online ad for an old Jewish artifact, a Jewish chest. The sellers weren’t Jewish, but they had bought it from a priest who told them it was of Jewish origin.

“When I opened the online pictures of the chest, I saw before me what seemed to be a beautifully crafted ark. It was small, so it wouldn’t be able to hold a regular sized Torah, but would be perfect for the Torah we had. But when I viewed a picture of the top of the ark, I almost fainted. There was a large cross attached to it. All of a sudden, I was not at all sure that this was an item of Jewish origin.

Suddenly I noticed a small plaque at the bottom of it. I asked the sellers to send me a photo of the plaque which appeared to have Hebrew writing on it. They sent me a picture where there was a clear inscription in Hebrew that said “Behold, the guardian of Israel neither sleeps nor slumbers Psalms 121), which proved that the item must be Jewish.

-Rabbi Binyomin Pruzansky
“The Lost Torah Scroll”
Commentary on Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah
Aish.com

Rabbi Pruzansky tells a story about regularly hosting 30 or 40 young Jews in his home for Shabbos meals. These are young people who are Jewish but who have never experienced a Shabbat in their own homes. They would be uncomfortable in a traditional synagogue setting, but feel comfortable as guests of Rabbi Pruzansky. So he set out on a quest to acquire a Torah scroll and ark for his home to give these young Jews an opportunity to make aliyah in a Jewish environment where they could feel more at ease.

While the scroll he eventually acquired was purchased from a Jew, although one who had fallen away from practicing Judaism for many years, the ark was another story.

The cross upon closer examination, they said, was a separate piece that had been attached. I realized that the priest who bought this ark must have made that addition. I was deeply moved, and was certain that the hand of God was clearly guiding me.

“I bought the ark and had it delivered to my home. The cross was removed and I marveled at the verse that was inscribed. I have never seen this particular verse inscribed on an ark before. And I realized that there was a message here. It was as if God were saying that although this ark was lost for many years, He would never forget about it. He didn’t rest until it finally was brought home to Jewish hands.

“My dear friends, look at what we have here. A Torah that was neglected for so many years was finally given a home in an ark that had been used by a priest. Yet the message was clear that God would never give up on them. He had not forgotten about this lost ark and Torah scroll, and finally the two of them were brought together and can now be used to bring young men and woman back to their Father in Heaven as well.

In reading Rabbi Pruznasky’s “adventure,” I couldn’t help but be reminded of another tale of the struggle to return Torah scrolls to Jewish hands:

Another thing happened as a result of Saddam’s demise. Iraqi mobs looted his crown jewel of culture, the national museum. The majestic Iraq Museum is still on Nasir Street but it’s under new management – the elected Iraqi government. A museum director, Dr. Donny George, was appointed to restore the museum in 2005.

Soon after, Canon White was invited for a private tour.

Dr. George and Canon White strolled through the grand halls. Eventually the priest was led down to the basement level. Dr. George opened the heavy doors of a vault.

Canon White couldn’t believe what he was looking it – rows and rows of Torah scrolls.

“There are 365 of them,” declared Dr. George.

Canon White’s surprise turned into horror. “The Torah scrolls were all at risk. Rats were eating some of the parchment. They were not properly preserved or displayed, just stacked up on the dirty floors,” he says.

Canon White wanted to rescue them, but he decided to try to obtain just one. He had a destination in mind.

-by Ari Werth
“Struggle for the Scrolls”
Aish.com

As I wrote in my blog post Hope and Love, “Andrew White is an Anglican priest risking his life helping Christians in Iraq. Even more dangerous, however, is what he volunteers to do – protecting the last few Iraqi Jews.”

He is also a Christian who is dedicated not just to protecting the Jews and Christians in Iraq, but to returning to the Jews that which rightfully belongs to them: the Torah scrolls held in Iraqi possession.

But there’s another way of looking at this. Although supersessionism is slowly declining in the Christian world, there is a very small subset of Christianity where a rather odd form of replacement theology is apparently on the rise. A group of non-Jewish believers holds to the theory that all of the contents and conditions of all of the covenants God made with the Children of Israel also belong to them. That means, except for a small strand of Jewish DNA, these Christians believe they are just as “Jewish” as Jewish people.

That’s an oversimplification of their beliefs, generally referred to as “One Law,” but I’m rather struck by the odd parallel (or “anti-parallel”) between their stance and the stories of Rabbi Pruzansky and Canon White. Both of these men, within their differing contexts, have worked very hard to return to the Jews something of the Torah, whether it’s hundreds of scrolls in danger of being destroyed in a sub-basement of a museum in Baghdad, or a Torah ark that had once belonged to a priest.

Traditional Christian supersessionism effectively recast the Jewish Torah into a dying or dead Law that had been replaced with Christ’s grace and “nailed to the cross”. Subsequent generations of Christians have been guilty of incinerating Torah scrolls, siddurim (Jewish prayer books), volumes of Talmud, and actual synagogue buildings.

While thankfully, the church has abandoned such heinous acts against God’s covenant people, a very tiny group of them (us) have taken on a different tactic. The tactic is subtle and for the vast majority of “One Law believers,” it is completely unconscious and innocent, as their leaders insist to them that God wants and even requires that they possess the full yoke of the Torah mitzvot as their very own. It’s not a matter of stealing it from the Jews and saying that the Torah is now “Christian.” Rather, it’s a matter of saying (in effect) that Judaism and everything that is distinctly Jewish is completely irrelevant, because Jesus made us all exactly the same. It’s the ultimate expression of equality and political correctness as applied to this minority Christian viewpoint.

(At this point, I want to say that for many years, I was a One Law believer and in my heart of hearts, I honestly believed I was doing God’s will by (poorly, in my case) imitating Jewish religious and identity practices. I still have many “One Law” friends, both locally and on the web, and they are doing what they believe they must in obedience to God. I pray that God will show them one day that while their desire to obey God is very sincere, a course correction is required. For some One Law Christians though, in spite of being presented with evidence and arguments to the contrary, they insist, as a matter of pride, that the Torah belongs to them. More’s the pity.)

In my blog posts Redeeming the Heart of Israel, Part 1 and Part 2, I tried to describe that a large part of our duty as Christians to the Jewish people is to help them return to the Torah. To bend that last sentence to fit the theme of this “meditation,” we Christians should be returning the Torah to the Jews, not claiming it for our own.

If Jesus had intended to include the rest of the world in covenant relationship with God using all of the conditions of all of the covenants God had made with Israel, in Matthew 28:18-20, he would have just commanded his Jewish disciples to make converts of the nations, not disciples. While one possible interpretation of this command would be for the non-Jewish disciples to directly imitate their Jewish mentors in all of their behaviors, including those that uniquely identify Jewish people as Jews, we don’t actually ever see that happening.

We do see, as in the example of Cornelius in Acts 10, how we non-Jews receive the Spirit the same as the Jews, and we’re baptized in water, the same as the Jews, but while many of the “God-fearers” of Peter’s and Paul’s day did pray three times daily, keep some or all of the dietary laws, and perhaps even keep a weekly Shabbos, they likely did not see becoming carbon copies of their Jewish teachers or (at that point in history) view becoming greater than the Jewish inheritors of Sinai as the desired result of their reconciliation to God.

Jesus and his Jewish Apostles lead and the Gentile disciples followed.

Now, we have a greater purpose. Rabbi Pruzansky’s story is just one small example of how modernity, moral relativism, intermarriage (and I say that as an intermarried Christian husband), and assimilation have grievously depleted the ranks of Jews who are culturally and religiously Jewish. There are so many people (my wife was once one of them), who are halachically Jewish but estranged from the synagogue, the siddur, and the Torah. We Christians who find ourselves drawn, often inexplicably, to Judaism have a great opportunity to, after our own fashion, do what Rabbi Pruzansky and Canon White are doing. We can return the Torah to the Jews or more accurately, we can encourage Jews to return to the Torah.

There is an idea in some corners of Judaism that says the Messiah will only come (or from a Christian point of view, “return”) when all Jews everywhere observe a single Shabbat. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I believe that God will find favor in His Jewish people, as increasing numbers of them return to Him in obedience to the mitzvot. For a Jew, this means returning to the Torah. For a Jew, it means the Torah is returned to him. It does not mean, “the Torah is now for we Christians but we’re willing to share it with the Jew.” It does not mean, “the Torah is now for everyone and, strictly speaking, it isn’t Jewish anymore.”

Speaking to my Christian brothers and sisters who are not Jewish, whether you or I observe the Torah commandments that specifically identify Jewish people as Jews won’t make much of a difference to God, in my opinion. After all, the vast majority of the Torah speaks of those things that we Christians already do, such as feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, and comforting the grieving. We already do everything that our Master and Savior Jesus commanded his disciples to do.

But in a world that has always been opposed to the Jewish people, we can do something for them and for God. We can give them back what we have taken from them. We can allow them, without resisting any further, to be Jewish and to do Jewish. At Sinai, God created a unique and treasured nation that was never intended to be “xeroxed,” diluted, or deleted.  But through repeated acts of disobedience by the Israelites, God (temporarily) dispersed that nation to the four corners of the earth.

Rolling the Torah ScrollNow He is bringing them back to their peoplehood, to their Land, and God is bringing the Jewish people back to Himself. The mission of the Christian church is to serve God and to obey our Lord, and part of that service is to return the Torah to the Jews and to recognize that Israel will one day (I pray soon) be restored as the head of all nations.

Boaz Michael, the President and Founder of the educational ministry First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) has written a soon-to-be published book called Tent of David (available January 2013) which outlines this mission for us from a Messianic Jewish perspective. These are exciting times for the church and we all have vital roles to play in the plan of God.

We just need to remember our roles. We just need to remember that our job is not to take, but to restore.

May the Messiah come soon and in our day.

Amen.

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Where Did the Last Mentor Go?

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In grammar school, you had a new teacher every year. Just when you became familiar with one teacher, it was time to move up a grade and meet the next one. As adults, we need to take a different approach. Ideally, you should find one mentor to use throughout your life.

To find the right mentor, don’t just take the nearest expert, the one on the block. “Shop” intelligently. Get references. Check credentials. See if he lives honestly and consistently with his knowledge. Test his wisdom with questions. Find out who his own mentors are. Make sure he’s part of a respected community.

The key to a good mentor is to develop strong trust and communication. Criticism is difficult to swallow, but it’s a less bitter pill when it comes from someone you trust, someone who has insight and wisdom, someone who you believe is only out for your own good. Choose someone who understands you, and who knows your background and family history.

Above all, make sure the mentor is available. Because you can have the greatest mentor in the world, but if you can’t speak with him/her, what good is it?

If you can’t find the right person, make an “interim mentor” to bounce ideas off of and be accountable to. King Solomon was the wisest person who ever lived, yet he still had a mentor. Tradition says that as long as Solomon’s mentor was alive, he never made a mistake; once the mentor died, Solomon erred. Having an objective advisor is so crucial that even if you choose someone who is “less wise” than yourself, it’s still worth it.

Always be on the lookout and don’t give up until you find the right one.

-Rabbi Noah Weinberg
“Honor the Wise Person”
Way 10 of 48 Ways to Wisdom
Aish.com

Who is wise? One who learns from every man.

-Pirkei Avot 4:1

That doesn’t help.

OK, let’s look at this suggestion.

The idea is that, rather than expecting to learn what you need to learn about life, God, and everything by some sort of trial and error process, you should seek out one or more (ideally one) SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) in your fields of interest and consult them. More accurately, you should serve them in some capacity, observe them, listen to them, and learn from them.

That’s a short description of a discipleship process, but how many of us are in a position to dedicate a few decades (or more) to disciple under a Master of some sort?

(To get a better idea of what discipleship means in both Christianity and Judaism, see Jacob Fronczak’s excellent blog post, Discipleship in Christianity and Judaism, expanded edition.)

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I very often refer to us, to Christians, as “disciples of the Master,” meaning disciples of Jesus. You’re right, I do. But we don’t actually have the opportunity to sit at our Master’s feet and absorb his wisdom as did the original Apostles nearly 2,000 years ago.

The discipleship model usually requires that the Master’s wisdom is passed from teacher to student across multiple generations. Students of a Master become teachers themselves and eventually gather disciples of their own, teaching them in their own Master’s name.

That didn’t happen in Christianity because of the break between the Gentiles and the Jewish mentors of old. Christianity, as we understand the term today, has experienced a distinct disconnect from the original method, style, and interpretation of the teachings of our Master. We certainly do not have an unbroken line of teachers extending from the present all the way back to the founder of our faith, to Jesus Christ.

So what do we do?

Rabbi Weinberg also said:

Human beings like independence. We hate to admit that we need others. Most people would rather learn from their own mistakes, than learn from others. We imagine we’ll just “figure it all out” as we go along. “I know I’m smart. I can work it out.”

It is an American value to be self-reliant (that is coming under question in the current political and social climate, but I digress), independent, and to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, so to speak. If we want to learn something, we buy a self-help book or take a class. I suppose the author or teacher could be considered a mentor, but not in the way Rabbi Weinstein suggests. A mentor is more than just a temporary teacher, he or she is a guide to life, a source of not only knowledge, but of wisdom, which I would take to mean the proper application of information and experience.

A Rabbi TeachingIt’s not really a bad idea, it is just a difficult model to find actually being practiced in the modern, western world.

In the world of the Chassidim for instance, it is probably a lot more common. A Jewish yeshiva student may consider the Rosh Yeshiva or one of the other Rabbis to be their mentor. However, a life of learning in that particular context is foreign to most of us, including the vast majority of Christians. Even if we wanted to find a mentor, where would we go and who would we seek out? I doubt most Christian Pastors would want such a role. Yes, they teach, but the teaching model is more akin to the modern school classroom and is limited in time, scope, and relationship. Teaching is time-limited, on a specific subject, and the students don’t achieve anything like the intimacy required in a mentorship or discipleship relationship.

On top of that, it’s been suggested recently that religious instruction doesn’t really change human beings.

“Religion,” novelist Mary McCarthy wrote, “is only good for good people.” Weigh the violence of the Inquisition against the humanity of Martin Luther King or homicidal fanatics against Oxfam, and you have to suspect that religion supplies a context for justifying or motivating moral choices rather than a reason for them.

-Philip Ball
“Morals don’t come from God”
Nature.com

If we are believe that statement, then a good person in a religion would have been just as good in either a different religion or no religion at all. That would mean religious teaching imparts the specific mechanics of the religion (doctrine, dogma, and such) but not the underlying moral fabric that induces fundamental human change.

Ball’s article continues:

Thousands of people — varying widely in social background, age, education, religious affiliation and ethnicity — have taken the tests. Pyysiäinen and Hauser say the results (mainly still in the publication pipeline) indicate that “moral intuitions operate independently of religious background”, although religion may influence responses in a few highly specific cases.

The authors’ paper may annoy both religious and atheistic zealots. By taking it as a given that religion is an evolved social behaviour rather than a matter of divine revelation, it tacitly adopts an atheistic framework. Yet at the same time it assumes that religiosity is a fundamental aspect of human psychology, thereby undermining those who see it as culturally imposed folly that can be erased with a cold shower of rationality.

Of course, this scientific investigation discounts any possibility that a supernatural influence could be involved, and so can hardly claim that “the leading of the Spirit” is, in any way, related to the moral behavior observed within any religion’s framework. People are good or not good, not because of what they’re taught, but because of who they are, perhaps because of an evolutionary imperative.

That would mean, by extension, that mentorship also would not be a significant factor in imparting moral change in disciples or students. So even if you find a mentor, it won’t really matter. You’ll learn a great deal about the “nuts and bolts” of your religion or philosophy, but that’s only information, not wisdom and not moral instruction and guidance.

Do you believe that?

As a person of faith, I can’t really go for it, but I certainly have to consider that it’s a possibility for a certain collection of people who only take their faith so far. We like to think that our faith makes us, not the other way around, but for some, entering a religious life is just a matter of confirming who they already are as people. In that case, they (we) don’t really want to learn anything, at least anything that would contradict their (our) already established basic moral understanding.

PrayingBut what if we really could find a true mentor, one who could take us beyond the perceptual world and into one where we are actually challenged on a fundamental level. At my age, finding a mentor is an increasingly diminishing probability, but for a much younger man or woman, it is at least still a possibility.

I know some of you Christians reading this will say that “the Lord is my mentor” or “I am guided by the Holy Spirit,” but chances are, those experiences aren’t the same as actually talking to another human being. You don’t really hear an audible voice outside of your head telling you specific information and providing concrete answers to discrete questions.

What if acquiring a mentor as Rabbi Weinberg defines the person (please read the entire article for all of the details) were indeed a possibility and even a likelihood? Let’s assume the person has to be alive today and reasonably accessible (I suppose email and instant messaging would do, but face-to-face meetings would be preferable). Who would you choose and why? I don’t mean as far as a temporarily set of interactions to learn a single topic, but an extended relationship to learn not knowledge, but wisdom, to learn about life from someone who has lived, to experience God through a true tzadik or saint.

Who would you go to? Where would you find this person? Is there anyone left who is so wise, honest, and honorable, and also who is accessible?