Tag Archives: One Law

An Invitation to Keruv

December 5, 2012 James Pyles 29 Comments

Though there are an estimated 175,000 to 250,000 Messianic Jews in the U.S. and 350,000 worldwide, according to various counts, they are a tiny minority in Israel — just 10,000-20,000 people by some estimates — but growing, according to both its proponents and critics. Messianic Jews believe that Jesus is the Jewish messiah, and that the Bible prophesizes that God’s plan is for him to return to Jerusalem, prevail in an apocalyptic battle with the Antichrist, and rule the world from the Temple Mount. Unlike Jews for Jesus, which focuses on bringing Jews into churches, Messianic Jews seek to make Jews believers in Jesus while still maintaining congregations that identify as Jewish and observe Jewish customs and holidays.

While these Messianic Jews are derisive of Orthodox Jewish fundamentalism (particularly what they call its “legalism”), they pick and choose some of the practices of traditional Judaism, such as weekly Torah readings — although they add New Testament verses to it.

They import to Israel many of the worship practices and the political agenda of the American Christian right. They are tightly knit with an American-born global revival movement that holds that modern-day prophets and apostles receive direct revelations from God, forming an elite army of prayer warriors on a mission to carry out God’s plans to purify Christianity, “restore” Israel, and bring the Messiah back.

-Sarah Posner
“Kosher Jesus: Messianic Jews in the Holy Land”
An article written for
the Atlantic

In a previous blog post, I mentioned that it’s helpful to take a look at that entity we call “Messianic Judaism” from outside the Messianic Jewish and Hebrew Roots contexts. We have a tendency to see our arguments through a very narrow tube that significantly limits our vision, not only of who and what Messianic Judaism is (along with Hebrew Roots and its variants such One Law, One Torah, Sacred Name, and Two-House), but how the rest of the world perceives it and them.

The above-quote from a recent online magazine article was apparently written by a Jewish reporter who, in all likelihood (but I can’t know for sure), is not religious (I say this based on the overall content of the full article). Her description of Messianic Jews in Israel was either so biased as to make the Jews she interviewed seem overly Christian (and certainly not Jewish in a cultural or halakhic sense) or indeed, the Jews she spoke with were very “Christianized.” But if the latter is true, then did this reporter choose a representative sample of the Messianic Jews in the Land or did she bias her research to only select the most “Christian-like” Jews in the Israeli Messianic environment?

In other words, are there any authentically, halachically, and culturally Jewish Messianic Jews in Israel, and can Messianic Judaism be fairly assessed by a Jewish reporter who may have “issues” with whether or not the Jewish participants in Messianic Judaism are actually Jewish?

When I write about Messianic Judaism as a Judaism (as opposed to “a Christianity”), I’m usually criticized, typically from Hebrew Roots proponents, saying that the majority of people involved in what I term as Messianic Judaism are not Jewish. True enough. As I’ve said before, Messianic Judaism as it exists today is a goal or an ideal. It is not a fully realized movement among the other Judaisms of our era.

And that’s probably Christianity’s fault.

Granted, “ownership” of the Jewish Messiah passed from Jewish to Gentile hands nearly 2,000 years ago and it’s only within the past century or less that any Jews at all have even considered the possibility that Jesus is the Messiah and that it’s “Jewish” to honor him. Tsvi Sadan in his article “You Have Not Obeyed Me in Proclaiming Liberty”, written for the Fall 2012 issue of Messiah Journal, says of past and present Messianic Judaism in Israel:

In the past, leadership was largely in the hands of Christian missionaries. Today leadership is predominately held by American Jews, American “wannabe” Jews, and American Christians. Where Jewish Israelis are in leadership, they have received their education – if they have any – from Christian institutions either in North America or Great Britain. In addition, with the influx of immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, Russian speakers began to establish new churches and assume leadership positions in existing churches (congregations). Yet though some of the people and organizations have changed, the present-day leadership is essentially operating in the same way as their missionary predecessors did. While Hebrew is now the spoken language in most Israeli churches, modes of operation and models of leadership which grew mostly out of evangelical worldviews still dominate the scene.

So perhaps Ms Posner’s report on Messianic Jews in Israel wasn’t particularly inaccurate or biased after all. However, Posner ends her article with a chilling pronouncement:

In the meantime, Messianic Jews are assiduously attempting to, essentially, redeem Israel from its Jewishness. That seems to be the task at hand at the Jerusalem Prayer Tower, another 24-7 prayer meeting place located on the top floor of an office building on the bustling downtown thoroughfare Jaffa Street. At the “Restoring Jerusalem” prayer meeting, an American Christian woman read about Jezebel from the Book of Revelation, and exhorted the half dozen people in the room to pray to “purify” and “cleanse” Jerusalem.

Another woman prayed for the Jews “to change their mind, to feel you, Lord, to convert to you, Lord.” The first woman resumed her prayers, hoping that Jesus will give Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a great understanding of who you are.” She seems to earnestly believe this is a plausible scenario. “Help him, Lord,” she implores. “Bring him to Messiah.”

I was especially taken by the statement, “Messianic Jews are assiduously attempting to, essentially, redeem Israel from its Jewishness.” This comment clashes incredibly against what most of the Jewish Messianics I interact with tell me. In the article “Messianic Judaism: Reconsidering the One-Law, Two-House Trajectories” written by Boaz Michael, also for Messiah Journal, in addressing Gentile and Jewish roles, Boaz states:

In rejecting the right and responsibility of the Jewish people to define what it means to be Jewish and to practice Judaism, One-Law theology strikes directly at the core of authentic Judaism. One-Law replaces the Jewish rabbis and sages with self-appointed Gentiles who believe that they are divinely sanctioned to interpret the Torah outside of a Jewish context: whatever conclusions they come to are given greater weight than those of Jewish halachic authorities.

There is a struggle to define Messianic Jewish practice as Jewish and some of the Jews in the Messianic Jewish movement are caught between two forces: Evangelical Christianity and Hebrew Roots. Both groups of non-Jews are vying for the opportunity to define the Jewish worshipers of Christ in some manner that removes significant parts of what it is to be a Jew. In the vast majority of cases, this isn’t done from the malicious desire to harm Jews or Judaism, but intentions aside, the results are obvious. Even many Jews in Messianic Judaism believe that to accept Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, they must reduce or eliminate their Jewish identities. Those Jews who accept the One Law proposal are required to surrender their unique Jewish identity to any Christian demanding an equal share in the Torah.

The latest discussion (as I write this) in the “Messianic blogosphere” on this struggle is Derek Leman’s article, CRITIQUE: Tim Hegg’s Article on Acts 15. By the time you read this “morning meditation,” the comments section of Derek’s blog will most likely have heated up to the temperature where lead melts (621.5 degrees F or 327.5 degrees C). There is a great deal of tension in this communications dynamic largely because each group, Evangelical Christianity, Hebrew Roots (One Law, Two House), and Messianic Judaism, have “turf” to defend. But while both Evangelical Christianity and Hebrew Roots see themselves as pro-Judaism and pro-Israel, it has been strenuously asserted by Messianic Jews that their impact is otherwise.

Boaz Michael says:

These movements damage and diminish Jewish identity in several ways. In one way, a very practical and real diminishing of Jewish identity occurs when people who are not Jewish begin to dress and act like they are Jewish (particularly like Orthodox Jews). When Jewish customs and Jewish apparel are taken on outside the context of a Jewish community and authentic Jewish identity, it diminishes real Judaism and real Jewish life. It sends a message to the Jewish people: “All of the things that make you unique and identifiably Jewish are mine too.”

Tzitzit are a prime example. In a traditional Jewish context, tzitzit have real meaning. They send a specific message: “The person wearing these is shomer Shabbos. They keep a high standard of kashrut. They are serious about traditional Judaism.” To see a person with tzitzit, for example, eating a cheeseburger or driving on the Sabbath actually diminishes the Torah and casts Messiah (and Messianics) in a negative light. It is application without understanding. It strips tzitzit of their meaning and significance.

That final statement could be extended to say that such a person “strips Judaism of its meaning and significance.”

Again, the large portion of the blame for this mess is Christianity, not in its intent but in its approach. Sadan stated that many Jews in Israel have come to know the Messiah, not through Jewish people or contexts, but through Evangelical Christians or Jews who have an Evangelical mindset. In the United States, many Jews come to know the Messiah, either through the traditional Church or through Hebrew Roots churches, and particularly One Law groups. My wife and I were introduced to “Messianic Judaism” through a local One Law congregation and for quite some time, we thought this was the only expression of Messianic Judaism. It was our introduction to “Judaism” without having to actually enter into a Jewish community (the vast, vast majority of people present were Gentiles). Jewish customs and practices were very poorly mimicked and an understanding of even the prayers was only elementary.

It wasn’t until my wife joined first our local Reform-Conservative shul and later the Chabad, that we both began to understand actual Judaism. From my wife’s point of view, it was in the form of a real, lived experience, and for me, it was largely by observation.

But I got to observe a lot.

Tsvi Sadan’s article presents an alternate method of introducing the Jewish Messiah to Jewish people in Israel:

Instead of this traditional Mission approach with its “proclamation of alienation,” Messianic Jews should consider the “proclamation of Keruv,” not as a tactical maneuver but as a state of being. Keruv is a Hebrew word that comes from “near” (karov). Essentially therefore, Keruv is a mission to call Jews to draw nearer to God and one another, first and foremost through familiarity with their own religion and tradition. The Jewish people, as taught by Jesus, cannot comprehend his message apart from Moses (John 5:46). Talking about the significance of Jesus apart from the everlasting significance of Israel is that which renders evangelism ineffective. Keruv on the other hand is all about reassuring the Jewish people that Jesus came to reinforce the hope for the Jews as a people under a unique covenant.

It’s impossible to change the past but we have the power to summon the future. We have the ability to change directions and to correct our mistakes. In order to introduce the Jewish Messiah to Jewish people without damaging Jewish identity, either by removing it or co-opting it from Jews, it must be communicated that Judaism and the Jewish Messiah are mutually confirming and supporting. Instead of Messianic Judaism being seen as trying to “redeem Israel from its Jewishness,” it must behave in a manner that is totally consistent with restoring Jewishness to Israel and the Jewish people. This is not to say that Israel and Jewish people aren’t currently Jewish, but that the Messiah affirms, supports, and restores the rightful place of Israel and the Jewish nation as the head of nations and as a people called out by God to be completely unique from among the nations and peoples of the earth, including Gentile Christians.

This doesn’t diminish the Christian in the slightest. Even non-Messianic Jews assert that Jews are not better than Christians or any other group of Gentiles, just different and unique. I’ve said many times before that we Christians have a responsibility to support Jews, both materially and in their return to the Torah of their Fathers, all for the sake of the Kingdom and the return of the Messiah. As Boaz Michael said in a recent blog post, “The completion or resolution of Israel’s story does not and will not occur until she is redeemed from her exile, planted firmly in the land God has promised to her, and returned to a state of loving obedience to the Torah under the leadership of the Son of David, Yeshua the Messiah.”

We serve One God and we have one Messiah King who will return to rule over all of Creation. As servants and sons, we each have our roles and duties. We can’t afford to let our limitations, biases, and human ambitions restrict who we are and who God created us to be…both the Jew and the Gentile. Christian support of Israel does not mean taking control of the process of defining Israel. It’s allowing the Jewish people and nation the space to define themselves, and supporting them in this effort through whatever means are at our disposal. That is a Christian’s unique role and purpose in life. It’s time we start living it.

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The Early Christian According to Cohen

November 27, 2012 James Pyles 6 Comments

In order to maintain their distinctiveness and identity, most Jews of the ancient world sought to separate themselves from their gentile neighbors. In the cities of the East, they formed their own autonomous ethnic communities, each with its own officers, institutions, and regulations. Some cities, notably Alexandria and Rome, had neighborhoods inhabited mostly by Jews. (These were not “ghettos” but “ethnic neighborhoods.”) Following the lead of Ezra, the Jews of the Second Temple period grew more and more intolerant of marriages with foreigners.

Shaye J.D. Cohen
Chapter 2: Jews and Gentiles
Social: Jews and Gentiles, pg 37
from the book
From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, 2nd Ed

I quoted this portion of Cohen’s book in a recent extra meditation and I want to continue discussing the theme of early Jewish and Christian (and Gentile) identity as we can apply it to today’s community of Jewish and Gentile believers. As I also mentioned in my previous missive, there is a group within Hebrew Roots that is invested in believing that for a time, both the Jewish disciples of the Messiah and the non-Jewish disciples brought into the faith, primarily by Paul, were completely of one accord and shared a completely uniform identity as “Messianics,” being “neither Jew nor Greek” (Galatians 3:28), but rather “one new man” (Ephesians 2:15) in Christ, with all distinctions of cultural, ethnic, national, and covenant identity as established by God, completely obliterated.

In traditional (supersessionist) Christianity, this takes on the form of Jews no longer being Jews but rather, “converting” to Christianity. Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time knows that I reject this suggestion and I do not believe it can be sustained from even a casual reading of the Bible. The chronicles of the Jewish disciples recorded in the early chapters of the book of Acts clearly shows them continuing to live lifestyles completely consistent with the other Judaisms of their day. There is nothing to say that Peter, James, or Paul ever surrendered being Jewish and while the Temple stood, ever forsake the festivals or the sacrifices.

However, the aforementioned movement within Hebrew Roots, sometimes referred to as “One Law” takes the same approach from the opposite end of the spectrum. Instead of demanding that Jews stop being Jews, they demand that Gentiles have the right and obligation to be “Jews” in all but name (sometimes referring to themselves as “Israel” or “Spiritual Judaism”). They cite a number of passages in the Bible to support their claim, primarily the “one law for the Jew and the Stranger” in various parts of the Torah (for example, see Leviticus 24:22, Numbers 15:16, and Numbers 15:29) as well as Acts 15:21 to establish the suggestion that God and the Jerusalem Council required the Gentile disciples to more or less “convert” to a form of Judaism without actually converting to Judaism. Further, assuming these suppositions are correct, they state that this practice must be carried forward and established among Gentile Christians today, using the modern synagogue worship model as the template for Gentile practice of what they refer to as “Messianic Judaism.”

In reading Cohen, I’ve become more convinced than ever that the foundation upon which One Law is built is a soggy sandcastle rather than a rock. One Law, by definition, must require the ancient Israelite to share national and tribal identity with the (non-Israelite) “ger” (stranger, alien, sometimes convert) among them and also, that the Second Temple era Jews must surrender their halakhic, ethnic, cultural, national, and covenant identity to the Gentile disciple due to their grafted in (see Romans 11) status. In both cases, the unique people group established by God must become “un-unique.” For this to be true, it must mean that God lied to the Jewish people when He established them as His splendorous treasured people (Exodus 19:5) among all the nations of the earth.

I know there’s a danger is relying on a single source of information (Cohen) for doing any sort of research, so I’ll say right now that my conclusions can’t be considered definitive. On the other hand, I think Cohen’s work does indicate that a number of historical factors related to the ancient Israelites and the Second Temple era Jews have been ignored by One Law proponents and I’d like to briefly bring some of those factors into the forefront.

Let’s take ancient Israel and the status of the “ger” first. According to One Law supporters, the various “one law for the native, etc…” passages indicate that God originally intended for Israelites and non-Israelites (who have attached themselves to the God of Abraham) to operate identically in terms of covenant and identity.

When discussing Conversation to Judaism in Chapter 2 of his book, Cohen states:

In preexilic times, conversion to Judaism did not yet exist because birth is immutable. An Ammonite or an Aramean could no more become an Israelite in preexilic times than an American can become a citizen of Liechtenstein in our own. Mere residency in the land does not confer citizenship, and a social system that defines a citizen solely as a child of a citizen has no legal mechanism by which to assimilate a foreigner.

This seems to support the general supposition of One Law, that Gentiles did not “convert” to Judaism in preexilic times (before the Babylonian exile), and if taken out of context, may be construed as meaning that Gentiles who lived in the land would be under the same law (Torah) and have the same legal status as the native of the land…even though they didn’t have citizenship. But does that make sense?

Biblical law frequently refers to the “resident alien” (ger in Hebrew) who is grouped with the widow, the orphan, and the Levite. All of these are landless and powerless, and all are the potential victims of abuse. (An American analogy to the ger is the Chicano (specifically, undocumented alien) farmworker; a European analogy is the Turkish laborer in Germany.) The Bible nowhere states how a ger might ameliorate his status and become equal to the native born, because there was no legal institution by which a foreigner could be absorbed by a tribal society living on its ancestral land. Resident aliens in the cities of pre-Hellenistic Greece fared no better.

Cohen soundly torpedoes the suggestion that “one law” gerim were equal to the native Israelites in the Land in all aspects of Torah and other covenant status. There was no legal avenue that would allow a non-member of an Israelite tribe to enter into a tribal society that was established by heredity and covenant. There was no way for the ger to become equal to the Israelite in terms of the Mosaic covenant, at least according to Cohen. Any legal requirement for the ger to become circumcised or to not eat from an animal killed by a wild creature was not an indication that the ger was in anyway equal to the native of the land in covenant status, anymore than an undocumented immigrant in the U.S. shares equal status to U.S citizens.

After the exile of 587 BCE, the Israelite tribal structure was eliminated and the Jews who returned to Judea from Babylon were organized as clans, according to Cohen, not tribes. The ritual organization was specifically “Priest,” “Levite,” and “Israelite.” Further, it became possible to consider the idea that foreigners could somehow be “joined” to Israel and to God. Cohen continues:

But these centuries saw the creation of an institutionalized method for the admixture of gentiles. Ezra was still unfamiliar with the notion of “conversion,” but some of his contemporaries were discussing the idea. One prophet assured the “foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants” that they would not be excluded from the rebuilt temple but would be gathered to God’s people (Isa. 56:6-8). Several prophets predicted that in the end of days foreigners would join in the worship of the true God in Jerusalem, either as servants of the Israelites or as independent worshipers.”

The mechanism by which all this would occur was not spelled out as far as Cohen is concerned, but Christians believe that it is through our being brought into the New Covenant through faith in the Messiah, Jesus Christ, that we are joined to the God of Israel. Of course, that still doesn’t mean we become identical to the Jewish people in every conceivable detail, particularly if, as we’ve already seen, Gentile residents of ancient, tribal Israel were not included equally in citizenship or covenant, but rather, relegated to the status of alien residents with few, if any rights.

However, as the history of Israel progressed, the concept of conversation to Judaism for the Gentile began to become more formalized. Cohen cites three essential elements of conversion to Judaism: belief in God, circumcision, and joining the house of Israel. Again, this is a definition of a convert to Judaism, not conditions required for the Gentile to join “the Way” as disciples of Christ. Cohen even references the difference:

For Paul, circumcision represents subjugation to the demands of the Torah (Gal. 3-5).

In other words, while Paul did not see circumcision and thus full obedience to the mitzvot as a requirement for the Gentile Christians, he did see it as a necessary step for full conversion to Judaism. The natural conclusion then is that a Gentile becoming a disciple of the Jewish Messiah in the time of Paul was not the same as a Gentile converting to Judaism.

If we take the message of the Book of Galatians as a unit, then we must conclude that Paul is arguing for the sufficiency of faith in Christ for the Gentile. The non-Jew does not have to convert to Judaism in order to be justified before God.

We tend to take the concept of God-fearers as they existed in the late Second Temple era as a sort of stepping stone between Gentile paganism and Christianity, but according to Cohen, these Gentiles were just as likely to be attracted to another form of Judaism (one without the involvement of the Messiah) and perhaps to even convert to one of the many Judaisms of the day.

Even more numerous, however, were those gentiles who accepted certain aspects of Judaism but did not convert to it. In polytheistic fashion, they added the God of Israel to their pantheon and did not deny the pagan gods…In the city of Rome, many gentiles observed the Sabbath, the fasts, and the food laws; in Asia Minor, many gentiles attended synagogue on the Sabbath. Although these gentiles observed any number of Jewish practices and venerated in one form or another the God of the Jews, they did not see themselves as Jews and were not seen by others as Jews.

Cohen does not specifically state that any of these God-fearers were associated with “the Way” nor do we have any indication that the Gentile God-fearers saw themselves as obligated to the Torah or having “rights” of observance. Just as they would have observed any number of other religious practices associated with other “gods,” these God-fearers also observed a number of religious practices associated with the God of Israel. Cohen goes on:

They resemble the polytheists of the preexilic period who feared the Lord but who never changed their identity.

For One Law proponents, the good news is that there is a record of early first century C.E. gentiles observing some of the mitzvot. The bad news is that they were polytheists who did not truly “convert” to any form of Judaism (or necessarily what we now think of as “early Christianity”) nor did they forsake polytheism, which is in direct opposition to fiercely monotheistic Judaism.

Cohen does reference the New Testament (specifically sections of Acts) in further describing these God-fearers.

The book of Acts calls these people “those who fear” (phoboumenoi) or “those who venerate” (sebomenoi) the Lord (Acts 13:16, 26; 16:14; 17:4, 17; 18:7). Modern scholars call them “sympathizers” or “semi-proselytes,” but these terms lack ancient attestation…After all, how can a gentile become a “little bit Jewish?” And why would he want to?

The explanation goes back to Cohen’s description of God-fearers as polytheists who considered the God of Israel as “just another god.” But there may have been other reasons.

Rather than look upon God-fearers as gentiles interested in Judaism, perhaps we should see in the phenomenon the contribution of Judaism to the cultural mix we call Hellenistic. Greco-Roman culture provides various analogies to Jewish ideas and practices.

In other words, gentile interest in Judaism was not for Judaism’s sake per se, but for the sake of multi-culturalism within Greek society, the way that many different religious and cultural practices are integrated into modern Japanese life. My daughter lived in Japan for almost a year with a Japanese family. At one point, she attended the wedding of a Japanese couple who practiced Buddhism but who were married by a Swedish Catholic Priest. When my daughter tried to find out the reason for such an interesting mix, about the best answer she could get was, “In Japan, it’s all good.” Maybe that was also true in some corners of Greek society.

Continuing to read Cohen, I began to wonder if, from the Gentile point of view, converting to Christianity was viewed in the same light as how Gentiles were converting to other forms of Judaism.

Josephus insists that Judaism has no mysteries, no secrets that it keeps hidden from curious observers. This claim may not be entirely true (note, for example, how secretive Jesus is according to the Gospel of Mark), but it is essentially correct. Some Jews even engaged in missionary work. The Pharisees travel about land and the sea in order to make even one proselyte (the Greek word for convert to Judaism; Matt. 23:15). Josephus narrates that in the middle of the first century CE, the royal house of the kingdom of Adiabene became Jewish under the tutelage of itinerant Jewish merchants…

Some scholars have suggested that much of the Jewish literature written in Greek had as its goal the propagation of Judaism among the gentiles, since the literature often emphasizes those elements of Judaism that would make it attractive to outsiders.

Seen from this perspective, Paul and his mission to convert the Gentiles to faith in the Jewish Messiah may have well been just one Jew among many who were attempting to mine the same population of Gentiles and convert them to one of the various forms of Judaism that existed in that era. So it wouldn’t be unusual at all for “Christian” Gentiles to practice various Jewish religious and cultural behaviors in the same manner as other “converts” to Judaism, although as I previously stated, a Gentile converting to Christianity was not converting to Judaism. But at that point in history, the “Judaism” we consider “early Christianity” was considered a Judaism and it had not yet adopted a trajectory that caused it to deviate from Jewish practice and finally to not be considered a Judaism at all.

Apparently that took some time.

Many Christians, generally called “Judaizers” by modern scholarship, were drawn to Jewish practices. For some of these Christians, Judaism was attractive because of Christianity. Through Christianity they learned the Jewish scriptures and became familiar with Jewish observances. Many Christian groups, for example, insisted that Easter must coincide with the Jewish Passover and that it be celebrated with rites similar to those of the Jewish Passover.

It’s interesting that Cohen, although acknowledging a close Christian association with Judaism, continues to differentiate between the Gentile Christians and the Jewish people, presumably even those Jews who followed Jesus as Messiah. Note that early on, the concept of Easter was born and was to be treated in a similar manner to the Passover, but not as if they were the exact same festival or celebration. Nevertheless, according to Cohen, the Jewish-Christian connection endured for a number of centuries, even through the schism began most likely within the lifetime of Paul and John.

In Antioch in the late fourth century, John Chrysostom was shocked that many Christians were doing what pagan God-fearers had been doing in other parts of the empire three centuries previously: they were attending synagogues and observing the Jewish festivals.

It seems as though Christianity and Judaism maintained a “mix” for hundreds of years after the fall of Jerusalem but were never quite “in synch,” making Christianity a unique experience for the Gentile disciples, since they never adopted an actual Jewish identity the way that other proselytes did when they completed an actual conversion to one of the other Judaisms. This seems to indicate a bond between Gentile and Jewish disciples of the Master but not a fused cultural, national, or ethnic identity.

What may have driven a further wedge between Gentile Christianity and the Jewish “Messiah” movement was this:

What did change after 70 CE was that Jews, or at least the rabbis, were no longer as eager to sell their spiritual wares to the gentiles.

There is also some indication that post-Second Temple, Gentile Christianity began to gain some traction independent of the other Judaisms, possibly including the Judaism of “the Way.”

Perhaps (and this is the common explanation) the rabbis saw the growing power of Christianity and decided not to try to compete with it. Outside of rabbinic circles, perhaps some Jews still actively attempted to interest gentiles, especially Christians, in Judaism, but the evidence for this activity is minimal.

The picture Cohen paints of Gentiles in relation to the Judaism most of us call “Christianity” is incomplete, but we can draw some conclusions. First, the historical figure of the “ger” in ancient, preexilic times, is not a model for modern One Law Christians in adopting equality with Messianic (or any other sort of) Jews. The ger’s observance of Torah was for the purpose of having them obey “the law of the land” the way that even an undocumented alien worker would obey some or most of the laws in the U.S., but it didn’t make them citizens of a tribal nation nor did it confer anything even approaching equality between the gerim and the native-born Israelite. There were laws to protect the gerim in the manner of widows or orphans, but they were most definitely “second-class inhabitants” in Israel. The final blow to the “gerim” argument of One Law is that in post-exilic times, the status of the ger ceased to exist because Israel had shifted from a tribal-driven to a clan-driven society.

We see that in the time of Jesus and following, God-fearers were in evidence and they did practice synagogue worship and a number of the other mitzvot but primarily in the manner of polytheists who practiced the religions of multiple Gods. They did not forsake all other gods for the sake of the One God or become equal to the Jewish people in any covenant sense. As far as a Gentile converting to “Christianity” goes, they were not actually converts to Judaism in that they did not enjoy the full covenant benefits of converts to the other Judaisms and full obligation to Torah (which required circumcision as a covenant sign). It is acknowledged that the Gentile disciples of the Way did practice many of the Jewish religious customs including Shabbat and the festivals, even into the fourth century C.E., but the Roman authority never recognized these “Christians” as having legitimate legal rights to these observances the way that the Jews did and Cohen indicates that Gentile observance, particularly of Easter, was similar to but not identical with Passover.

And as the centuries passed, the trajectories of Christianity and Judaism continued to diverge until any “quasi-Jewish” observance by Gentile Christians simply ceased to exist.

Today, Christianity can be said to have its origins in Judaism but it has not been even remotely associated with Judaism for nearly 2,000 years.

I am not saying that there are not Christians today who maintain an attraction to Jewish practices, theology, and philosophy, but there is nothing that we can pull forward across from the time of Paul, and absolutely nothing we can draw forth from the time of Moses, that would suggest that a Gentile Christian today has any right or obligation whatsoever to observance of any aspect of the Jewish Torah mitzvot, except perhaps those that are common with kindness, compassion, and decency toward other human beings (feeding the hungry, and so forth).

While Cohen cannot be considered the final word in the history of Gentiles in the early movement of “the Way,” he certainly gives us a perspective we must pay attention to, and he helps us to realize that whatever the early Christians were in the days of Peter, Paul, and John, we are not the same as they were. They never were Jewish and neither are we.

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Returning the Torah

October 10, 2012 James Pyles 27 Comments

“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.

Now 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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The Jesus Covenant, Part 7: Sampling Ephesians

October 1, 2012 James Pyles 6 Comments

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands — remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 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, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

–Ephesians 2:11-22 (ESV)

I suppose this is something of a detour from the recommended reading list for the New Covenant I presented in Part 6 of this series, but a person named “Zion” (presumably, not his real name) suggested I put it at the top of my list in a comment he made on another one of my blog posts:

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.

Really? That only sort of lines up with the path I’ve been following thus far. On the other hand, I do want to be fair, and hence, my taking a small detour into Ephesians 2 and sampling the relevant verses in that part of Paul’s letter.

I feel that after reading the relevant portion of Paul’s aforementioned letter, my original response to Zion on the previously referenced blog post will do quite nicely as my analysis of this scripture’s relationship (or not) to the New Covenant.

The quote begins here (I’ve edited my original comments somewhat to make it more relevant)—

I read Ephesians 2 (ESV) and particularly verses 11-22 which are supposedly the ones that should lead me to believe that Jews and Gentiles in Christ have both been made “one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances.” (vv 14-15)

So Christ made Jews and Gentiles one by abolishing the law, which is how most traditional Christians read it. Sorry, but I disagree. Being “one” doesn’t necessarily mean we’re a single, great, homogeneous mass of humanity (but I know you don’t believe this because of our past conversations).

However, if you don’t believe in the absolute obliteration of Jewish and Gentile distinctions, then “one new man” can’t possibly mean to you what it means to a lot of traditional Christians. For all I know, the law of “commandments expressed in ordinances” that was abolished was the halakhah of Paul’s day that erroneously stated that a Jew even entering a Gentile’s home made the Jew unclean (see Acts 10). That’s just a guess of course, but it’s as good as any.

I’ll assume (though I’ve been wrong before) that you’re focusing on vv 19-20:

“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, (or sojourners) but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone…”

I suppose another way of saying it would be that “you are no longer strangers and God-fearers…” meaning that the non-Jewish disciples entered into a covenant relationship with God through Israel and specifically the living embodiment of Israel, Jesus Christ.

Verse 22 is interesting: “In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”

In fact, this whole sequence of verses reminds me of an argument I once made relative to the Good Shepherd:

“And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” –John 10:16 (ESV)

I once tried to make an argument that Gentiles and Jews are equal in the Messiah across all theological attributes because we are two pens that have been merged into a single flock with Jesus as our good shepherd. Nearly two years ago, I wrote about the results of a conversation between Gene and I which I called Lamb Chop. You can read the whole blog rather than have me copy and paste all the text over here. You should know that Ovadia’s blog no longer exists (that info will make sense when you read “Lamb Chop”) and I can only find “Shelters and Housing for Sheep and Goats” at issuu.com now, which is not the ideal interface for reading the document (but it’s better than nothing).

The core statement from “Lamb Chop” is this:

“Farmers have many sheep pens on a farm for the same flock. When it’s time to lead the flock to pasture you let them all to lead them to pasture. After they return from feeding, a shepherd separates each sheep into their respective pens.”

You can be part of the same flock but for various reasons, still be kept in different “pens”. That’s how I consider myself as being “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God…” (Eph. 2:19) We can be fellow citizens of the household of God as covenant people, and I believe we all are, Jews and Christians alike, but trying to either eliminate our covenant distinctions or “shoehorning” the Sinai covenant into the Gentile sheep pen (forgive the mixed metaphor) seems a bit of a stretch given the text available.

—That was the entirety of my blog comment response but not of my thinking on the matter.

So what were we before we came to God through Christ and what are we now? Consider something from last week’s Torah Portion:

They provoked Me with a non-god, angered Me with their vanities; so shall I provoke them with a non-people, with a vile nation shall I anger them.

–Deuteronomy 32:21 (Stone Edition Chumash)

This compares well with both of the following:

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience – among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

–Ephesians 2:1-3 (ESV)

Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

–1 Peter 2:10 (ESV)

The commentary for Deut. 32:21 in the Chumash states:

Israel angered God by worshiping deities that had no power or value. Measure for measure, God will let them be defeated and subjugated by nations that have no cultural or moral worth…

All of that describes us, the nations of the earth before coming to Christ and through him, being reconciled to God.

Not a pretty picture, but it gets worse.

Not for our sake, Hashem, not for our sake, but for Your Name’s sake give glory, for Your kindness and for Your truth! Why should the nations say, ‘Where now is their God?” Our God is in the heavens; whatever He pleases, He does! Their idols are silver and gold, the handiwork of man. They have a mouth, but cannot speak; they have eyes, but cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear; they have a nose, but cannot smell. Their hands – they cannot feel; their feet – they cannot walk; they cannot utter a sound from their throat. Those who make them should become like them, whoever trusts in them!

–Psalm 115:1-8 (Stone Edition Tanakh)

That’s us, or rather, that was us before turning away from our sins, repenting, confessing Christ, and coming to God. That was the state of Paul’s audience in his letter to the Ephesians before they too became disciples of the Master and worshipers of the God of Israel.

But what did they become and indeed, what do we become when we start calling ourselves Christians; when we choose to escape our fate as people of “nations that have no cultural or moral worth?”

Did we become “Jews” and convert to “Judaism?” It would appear not, even though it seems possible that some non-Jews did convert to Judaism in Paul’s day. In fact, the formerly-pagan Gentiles couldn’t have automatically converted to Judaism when they first became disciples of the Jewish Messiah. Here’s why.

Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.

–Galatians 5:2-3 (ESV)

So when we stopped being pagan idol worshipers, if we didn’t become Jews and start practicing Judaism, what did we become and what did we start doing? Did we become “Israelites” and convert to some sort of “Israelism”. I’ve recently discovered a term and a movement called Adonaism, so did we convert to that and become “Adonai-ites?”

For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.

–Acts 11:26 (ESV)

According to traditional Christianity, it was the Jews who surrendered their Judaism and converted to Christianity, but my long-term readers know I reject this claim. Rather, the Jews who came to faith in Jesus as Messiah became one of the number of sects of Judaism that existed at that time, in this case, a Judaism referred to as “the Way” or “the Nazarenes.” Christianity is just another way of saying “Messianism” or “Messianic,” so I suppose we could render Acts 11:26 as saying in part, “And in Antioch, the disciples were first called Messianics.”

But that still doesn’t appear to provide any differentiation between the Gentile and Jewish believers. We only know that prior to coming to Christ, the Gentiles were totally lost, separated from God and from His covenant people Israel. In entering into covenant with God through Christ (through the Abrahamic and New Covenants, though they are not specifically mentioned in Ephesians 2), we, along with Israel, have entered into closeness with our God.

But Israel was a covenant people long before the coming of the Messiah as recorded in the Gospels. We Gentiles depend totally and completely upon Christ to enter into any kind of relationship with God at all. The Jews, on the other hand, have had such a relationship with God since Moses and arguably, since the days of Abraham. We have not. That does not mean that the Jews do not need the Messiah. Far from it. In Judaism, it is well-known that the Messiah will restore all of Israel; all of the people; all of the Jews, to national and personal redemption and reconciliation with God, restoring them as the most honored among all nations; bringing to them the full measure of the promises.

And if their nation is not restored and their covenants are not all upheld, we Christians have no hope, because it is through those covenants; through Israel itself; through her firstborn son, the Jewish Messiah alone that we are also saved. It is in our own best interest as Christians to uphold and support the Jewish return to Torah as their birthright as a people, and to claim all of Israel as their national heritage.

So who are we?

We are sheep. We are sheep from a certain pen, a really, really big pen. The Jews are also sheep in a pen but a different pen from ours. Yes, we were all brought together in the same flock and indeed, we all answer (or someday will answer) to the voice of our one “good shepherd.” We Gentiles were once far off but have been brought near (which is not the same as being fused into) the people of Israel. We have commonality with the Jews in that we enjoy covenant relationship with God, but this does not change or diminish the specialness and the uniqueness of the specifically Jewish covenant responsibilities they alone must discharge for Hashem.

But why should we complain? We have been grafted into the root and from its sap, we are given life; eternal life with God through Jesus Christ. What more could we want?

Part 8 goes back to the roots of this series and takes a closer look at Abraham and why the covenant he made with God is so important to Christians.

Update, October 18, 2012: I found a rather interesting interpretation of Ephesians 2 and the “one new man” passage that quite clarifies my position. Go to a comment made by someone named “benkeshet” on Gene Shlomovich’s blog for the details.

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Jesus, Halakhah, and the Evolution of Judaism, Part 5

September 27, 2012 James Pyles 48 Comments

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.

-from “Standards of Observance”
Messianic Jewish Rabbinical Council (MJRC)
Section One: Halakhah and Messianic Judaism
1.1 Halakhah: Our Approach (pg. 2)
OurRabbis.org (PDF)

This series isn’t taking the direction that I thought it would. At the end of Part 4, I really thought I’d return to a high-level view of the evolution of Judaism, perhaps lightly going over the development of the Talmud. This would mean doing a bit of reading and probably delaying Part 5 (this part) of the series for a while.

Then, on a whim, I decided to read “Standards of Observance,” which is the MJRC’s treatment of “Messianic Jewish halakhah;” certainly a controversial subject given the responses I’ve been fielding in Part 3 and Part 4. Thus, another “meditation” was born.

As I’m writing this, I haven’t gotten past page 2 of the 39 page MJRC document, but when I read the portion that I quoted above, I got to thinking. I generally consider halakhah to be a matter of how Jewish people operationalize their observance of the 613 mitzvot, which is how contemporary Judaism codifies the commandments to Israel in the Torah. But if “the Book of Acts and the Apostolic Letters provide crucial halakhic guidance for…Messianic Jews,” by definition, it must also provide relevant halakhah for the non-Jewish believing community as well.

This is complicated by two potentially competing positions: the halakhah as it is presented in the New Testament (NT) Gospels, book of Acts, and Epistles, and how the MJRC chooses to conceptualize, organize, and apply that halakhah. Actually, even within the context of the New Testament, how we view the relative authority of this halakhah upon the daily lives of non-Jewish Christians depends on whether or not we see this NT halakhah as fixed, static, pronouncements that were intended to be inflexibly binding on all Christians everywhere across time, or whether at least some of this halakhah was specific to individual congregations, situations, and other contextual factors, and was meant to be adaptive across time, to the point in some cases, of not applying significantly or at all to Christianity in the 21st Century.

I’ll give you an example.

Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. –1 Corinthians 11:4-7 (ESV)

Taken literally and in its simplest form, Paul would seem to be saying that when men pray, our heads should not be covered, but when a woman prays, her head must be covered (presumably in a public setting such as communal worship). According to the notes for vv 5-13 at BibleGateway.com, “the Greek word gunē is translated wife in verses that deal with wearing a veil, a sign of being married in first-century culture.” This adds some context to what Paul is saying that we would miss by reading it in English. The head covering that is to be applied to women is specific to their marital status in specific cultures as they existed nearly 2,000 years ago. There are no immediately available notes for why a man’s head must be uncovered, but this would seem to go against the later tradition that men wear kippot when in the synagogue, although, of course, Paul is addressing non-Jewish believers in this case (keep in mind that any blanket declaration of halakhah forbidding men to cover their heads in prayer directly contradicts the modern practice of Gentile men in Messianic, One Law, and Two-House congregations to wear kippot).

My example seems to show us that it is certainly possible and likely that not every single pronouncement of halakhah that flowed from Paul’s pen was supposed to apply generally across all churches everywhere and “everywhen.” That is, we can believe that some “Messianic halakhah” as it applies to non-Jewish believers was never originally intended to be permanent, fixed, static standards of practice religious practice.

Which means we’re going to have an interesting time trying to figure out which portions of the halakhah in the NT continues to have force today and how we are to observe said-halakhah in our local communities in the present age.

I want to make certain that I communicate the following clearly. Whatever definitions that the MJRC has produced relative to “Messianic halakhah” can only apply to Messianic Jews who are members of congregations affiliated with the MJRC. This is certainly in keeping with halakhah in any other Jewish community, regardless of scope, since, for example, how halakhah is applied within the context of Chabad is most likely different from its application within Conservative or Reform Judaism. For all I know, there may be variations within specific local synagogues that are “contained” within the same sect of Judaism.

That means that not only does the MJRC understanding of halakhah not apply to wider Christianity (and you wouldn’t expect it to, since it seems to be written specifically for its Jewish members), but it doesn’t apply to any other organizations of Messianic Judaism and clearly not to any of the groups contained within “Hebrew Roots.”

(Arguably, and I haven’t read the entire MJRC document yet, any halakhah developed by the MJRC would have some sort of impact on the non-Jewish membership of each affiliated congregation, but I don’t know yet what the scope of that impact might be. However, if you are a non-Jewish believer and you choose to attend an MJRC affiliated congregation, you agree to become subject to their authority. Keep in mind that even in the most “Jewish” of Messianic Jewish congregations, the majority of members and perhaps a few folks in leadership, are non-Jews).

The next question is whether or not it is appropriate and desirable for groups of non-Jewish believers to also attempt to organize a sort of “Christian halakhah” from the NT that would apply to churches and Hebrew Roots groups.

I suppose Christians have been doing that ever since the invention of movable type and the first mass printing of the King James Version of the Bible (probably well before, but availability of the Bible prior to that time was severely limited, and the common man had no ready access to the written Word). In other words, developing “Christian halakhah” is an old story for Christianity, they (we) just don’t call it “halakhah.”

Of course, the result is what we see before us…about a billion (I’m grossly exaggerating) different Christian denominations covering the face of the earth, each with their own special take on what the Bible is trying to tell us, at least at the level of fine details of practice. Hebrew Roots organizations are no different, they just re-introduce the word “halakhah” into the mix. Viewed at in this light, it is understandable that the various Gentile expressions of Hebrew Roots including One Law/One Torah and Two-House, either formally or informally establish a set of accepted religious and lifestyle practices based on various parts of the Bible including the New Testament “halakhah.”

However, where it might get a little strange is when/if such Gentile organizations access the larger body of Jewish halakhah that extends well beyond the pages of the NT and into the writings of the Mishnaic Rabbis. While I can understand why organizations that are formed by Messianic Jews as a resource for Messianic Jews and Messianic Jewish congregations would want to delve into the accepted body of Talmudic thought, it’s puzzling why a Gentile would choose to do so. And yet, we see Gentile groups forming “Beit Dins,” wearing tzitzit and laying tefillin in accordance with traditionally accepted Jewish halakhah, and performing other Jewish religious practices that cannot be found in the NT and indeed, practices that weren’t codified (such as wearing kippot) until many centuries after the writers of the NT books and letters had died and their bones had turned to dust.

I made an observation in the previous part of this series that was never answered by any of the relevant parties:

My final note for this missive is one of irony. If written Torah, the Christian Bible, and Jesus are the only valid authorities for religious practice and lifestyle in the Hebrew Roots movement (including One Law/One Torah, and so on), then why do all of their groups and congregations follow a modern Jewish synagogue model when they worship? Why do all the men where kippot? Why do all the men wear tallit gadolim with tzitzit that are halalically correct? Why do they daven with modern Jewish siddurim? Why, in less than a week, will they construct their sukkot according to Rabbinically prescribed specifications?

It is completely understandable why any Christian church or congregation of Gentile believers in Jesus, regardless of their emphasis, should want to carefully study the NT documents and to derive whatever practical knowledge it contains for Christian religious practice in the modern era. On the other hand, it’s rather mysterious what some Hebrew Roots groups believe they will get out of studying the extra-Biblical Rabbinic texts and applying practices and concepts related to a Beit Din, Farbrengen, Ritual purity, Shmita, and so on.

If halakhah has the ability to evolve over time within the Jewish context, we can expect Jewish communities to practice one of the current forms within their local boundaries. The same can be said for Christian religious and lifestyle practice relative to the various Christian churches and denominations. I would never expect a Christian church to borrow significantly or at all from any Jewish halachic source in establishing accepted Christian religious behaviors. Why then, as I’ve asked before, should Gentile Hebrew Roots organizations desire to borrow heavily or almost exclusively from post-Biblical Jewish halachic practices, especially if said-groups only recognize the “written Torah” and New Testament as their only legitimate authoritative documents?

I know all this sounds like I’m trying to pick a fight, but given all of the “resistence” to the Talmud registered by Hebrew Roots people and how they say they don’t consider Talmud as an authoritative guide, the fact that virtually all such groups model their worship practices on modern Jewish synagogue services is truly baffling.

This series continues in the blog post: Messiah in the Jewish Writings, Part 1

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Jesus, Halakhah, and the Evolution of Judaism, Part 4

September 25, 2012 James Pyles 53 Comments

Her unifying thesis is that modern Jewish thinkers invented the notion that Judaism is a religion in response to the distinctive challenges of European modernity. In the pre-modern period, “it simply was not possible…to conceive Jewish religion, nationality, and what we call culture as distinct from one another.” This was because Jewish communities were corporate entities whose authority over their members was recognized by the state. The community collected taxes, adjudicated civil disputes through rabbinic courts, and enforced halakhic norms by punishing religious deviants through fines, corporal punishments, or excommunication.

-Michah Gottlieb
“Are We All Protestants Now?”
from his review of Leora Batnitzky’s book
How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought
at Jewish Review of Books

Why Native American religions, when scholars acknowledge that Native American tribes do not traditionally distinguish between religion and the rest of life?

-William T. Cavanaugh
Chapter 1: “The Anatomy of the Myth”
The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict

When I was reviewing Part 3 of this series, (which inspired a very spirited conversation) I realized that there were actually two overlapping topics involved. The first I’ve already attempted to address, which is whether or not Rabbinic authority is Divinely sanctioned or inspired. The second is implied but you have to be paying attention to see it. Is Judaism a “religion?”

Gottlieb’s review presents Batnitzky’s understanding of “the Protestant conception of religion” this way:

“Religion denotes a sphere of life separate and distinct from all others” such as “politics, morality, science and economics.”
Religion is a “largely private affair, not public.”
Religion is “voluntary and not compulsory.”
Religion is about “personal belief or faith,” which she contrasts with the view that religion is primarily about ritual practice or “performance.”

This very much reminds me of a significant point Cavanaugh made in his book about the problem in defining religion as a separate entity from other social, political, and cultural realms. Prior to the rise of the modern, western culture, it was impossible to separate religion (Christian, Jewish, Islam) from those other entities. More specifically, for the Jewish people historically, being “Jewish” wasn’t just a matter of what you believed but rather, it was an individual’s full, lived, experience and identity, biologically, culturally, ethnically, nationally, and communally.

The fact that Judaism has multiple expressions, both in ancient and modern times doesn’t change this understanding. Each community established and maintained its own local, internal standards across the boundaries of politics, social norms, morality, legality, spirituality, and more. Most likely, before a certain point in human history and development, so did Christianity, at least according to Cavanaugh.

While none of this speaks to the idea that the Rabbinic sages ever had “Divine authority” to establish binding halakhah for their communities, it does address strongly the right of Judaism to define itself biologically, conceptually, ethnically, culturally, educationally, communally, and behaviorally.

In Part 3 of this series, I presented a challenge to the Divine authority of the Rabbis as offered in a paper written by Tim Hegg: What Version of the Mishnah did Paul Read? (PDF). Hegg doesn’t specifically address the Jewish right to self-definition or self-government, but, for the Messianic Jewish believer, he does say that “there is no historical nor biblical case for accepting oral Torah as divinely sanctioned. Nevermind that all that encompasses the Talmud cannot simply be reduced down to the concept of “oral Torah,” as the initial writings of the Talmud (Babylonian and Jerusalem) and their subsequent commentaries, arguments, and judgments cross multiple expressions and sects of Judaism over nearly 2,000 years and are incredibly vast and complex. The question isn’t whether or not ancient oral Law is Mishnah. The question is whether or not the Mishnaic Rabbis have Divine authority to write Mishnah.

But setting aside the Biblical implications and matters of “Divine inspiration” for a moment, let’s take a look at Talmud in a different manner (I’m going to be compressing a lot of history into just a few sentences, so please be forgiving). After the destruction of the Second Temple and the exile of most (but not all) Jews from “Palestine,” Jews, as a people, were at dire risk of dissolving and assimilating into the surrounding cultures. The very heart of Judaism up to that point, the Temple in Holy Jerusalem, had been leveled and pillaged. The majority of the Jewish people had once again been exiled; barred from the Land that was the home and lifeblood of every Jew. What most defined Judaism and Jewish people was now gone and within a few generations, everything that history had once recognized as Jewish would follow.

The “salvation” of the Jewish people was that compilation of texts, wisdom, and rulings that we consider the Talmud. No, it was not an immediate “fix” and in fact, it would be centuries before the Talmud would become the central feature in Jewish life.

But it did become that central feature, replacing, in some manner, the Temple and the sacrifices with prayers and charity. Instead of Jews making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover or Sukkot, they fervently beseeched God to bring the Messiah and to restore all that was lost. Judaism was functionally reorganized to exist and in many instances, to thrive, as locally internal communities which both adapted to historical and environmental imperatives and preserved the essence of Judaism, the practice of the Torah and the mitzvot, and the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, both as individual and communal faith.

But as we’ve seen, it was impossible to separate the religion from the people. The definition for everything that was (and is) Jewish was (and is) encapsulated in that expansive collection of tomes known as the Talmud.

No one in their right mind is going to dispute the Jewish right to self-identification and self-definition. No Christian is simply going to walk into a synagogue and start lambasting the Rabbi, the Cantor, and the worshipers for following “man-made traditions” while ignoring the Bible.

However, the world of Messianic Judaism is unique. There are few halalaic Jews currently occupying Messianic Judaism, but their number is growing. Imagine being Jewish in that fully lived, experiential, educational, cultural, communal, ethnic (and so on) manner I previously described. Now imagine that fully lived Jew coming to faith in Jesus (Yeshua) as the one, true Messiah of God. This is not a Jew, like so many in the past, who has converted from Judaism to Christianity, leaving Mishnah and Torah in the dust. This is a Jew who has come to faith in the Jewish Messiah and who sees no dissonance in remaining fully and completely Jewish and acknowledging that the “Maggid of Natzaret” is the prophesied Moshiach.

Why can’t this Jew continue to live out the same Jewish experience he or she always has? Why can’t this person remain a Jew in every sense of the word, including all those words I used above to define a Jew? The Talmud, the historic and ancient Rabbis, the judgments, rulings, experiences, and everything else that is wrapped up in what is Jewish, cannot be separated out and compartmentalized for observant Jews (yes, different Jewish religious traditions do minimize certain aspects of that identity and Jews who are atheists may remove major portions of it altogether). For a Gentile and/or Christian individual or entity to demand that a Jew remove, discount, eliminate, or modify Talmud, halakhah, the mitzvot, and so on would result in removing Judaism from the observant Jew (Messianic or otherwise). What defines Judaism as Judaism would be gone.

Now, why in the world would Christians, including One Law, One Torah, and Hebrew Roots Christians, want to tell a Messianic Jew that, in order to be accepted by them and (in theory) by God, they had to do away with everything that made them Jewish?

If the Gentile Christians in these varied “Hebraic” Christian congregations and movements choose not to employ the Talmud or halakhah into their worship practices or lifestyles, it is probably for the best since they are not Jewish. But it is the height of presumptive arrogance to declare that any Jew who has faith in Yeshua as Messiah must dispense with the Talmud, and thus their Jewish identity, as well.

Whether the Talmud is an expression of the Divine will or not, it is illogical, unreasonable, and perhaps even a little cruel to demand that a Jew stop being a Jew in order to worship the Jewish Messiah. But by requiring that Messianic Jews devalue the Talmud, that’s exactly what many Gentile Christian pundits in the Hebrew Roots space are doing.

I’ve been accused of being overly concerned with the issue of Supersessionism, (I think “supersessionoia” was the term that was coined to describe me) but if you look at the dynamics I’ve been illustrating in this blog post, it seems rather plain that, even unintentionally, certain elements in the Hebrew Roots (One Law, One Torah, Two-house, etc…) movement are suggesting that the “Jewishness” of Jews in the Messianic movement be diminished in order to fulfill a Christian imperative.

My final note for this missive is one of irony. If written Torah, the Christian Bible, and Jesus are the only valid authorities for religious practice and lifestyle in the Hebrew Roots movement (including One Law/One Torah, and so on), then why do all of their groups and congregations follow a modern Jewish synagogue model when they worship? Why do all the men where kippot? Why do all the men wear tallit gadolim with tzitzit that are halalically correct? Why do they daven with modern Jewish siddurim? Why, in less than a week, will they construct their sukkot according to Rabbinically prescribed specifications?

In other words, why are you guys trying so hard to look and act Jewish when you’re not?

How can you disdain the authority of Jewish halakhah and Talmudic practice when virtually every religious act you diligently perform comes from the rulings and decisions of the Talmudic Rabbis?

Part 5 will continue with investigating the concept of “Messianic halakhah” and whether or not any of it apply to non-Jews within the various contexts of Messianic Judaism and Hebrew Roots.

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