Tag Archives: Talmud

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Serving God

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The Rebbe of Sanz-Klausenberg, shlit”a, gave a very inspiring talk based on a statement on today’s daf. “The Rokeach writes that one should prepare himself with cheshbon hanefesh and teshuvah before fulfilling a mitzvah; he should beg God that he merit to do the mitzvah as is fitting, without feelings of self-aggrandizement. Some would even fast before fulfilling certain mitzvos. The reason for these extra exertions is that a mitzvah done with genuine feeling as it should be makes huge rectifications in the upper worlds. Obviously there are many barriers that block the way of the person who wishes to reach this pinnacle. The least we can do before performing a mitzvah is to beg God for help.

“Now we can understand why, although it was a printer’s decision, every tractate in the Talmud begins with a shaar blatt, a page with a gateway, and then starts on a page marked as number two. Tzaddikim always petition God for help to learn and do mitzvos. They plead with God: ‘I know in my heart that I am not as I should be. I have done much wrong. Nevertheless, You God are gracious and merciful. I therefore plead with You to help me serve You in truth.’ The first page is the gateway: we enter into the gates of learning Torah lishmah by begging God for His aid. Only after entering this gateway can we begin the actual tractate on page two.

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“Seeking the Laws of Pesach”
Bechoros 58

According to Rabbi Daniel Gordis in his book God Was Not in the Fire (pg 132), most people understand the word “mitzvah” to mean “good deed” when the better translation is “commandment”. He states that, “Doing a mitzvah might well be nice, but – perhaps surprisingly -Judaism values it not only for its “kindness” but for its “commandedness” as well.” This might go some of the distance in explaining how we can understand the Jewish value of asking; in fact, all but begging for God’s help in performing a mitzvah, even to the point to fasting and praying beforehand. For a Christian, this may seem way over the top and far too formal a process. If you feel moved to donate canned food to the local food bank, volunteer at the homeless shelter, or visit a sick friend in the hospital, can’t you just do that without all the preliminary activity suggested by the Rebbe of Sanz-Klausenberg?

Rabbi Gordis says that many Jews feel this way, too and resist “what they see as Judaism’s tendency to regulate too many elements of life.” I think that’s one of the reasons Christians and many “Messianics” are critical of the “man-made rules” contained in Talmud and the principle of halacha. After all, does this vast collection of minute details really matter to God? Isn’t He pleased if we just do His will without all the ceremony involved? Rabbi Gordis offers one possible answer.

Yet as much as it sounds reasonable to wonder whether God really cares about the details, these specific elements of Jewish life are often important not necessarily because God cares about them, but because we need them. It is through our attention to detail, tradition claims, that we express what Judaism called a sense of “commandedness,” a sense that we behave in a certain way in order to construct a relationship with God. Mitzvah is designed not to make unnecessary limitations on our privacy and autonomy, but to express the idea that if we wish to feel God’s presence, we need to evoke that feeling in action.

This is what Christians would probably call “works-based religion”. A Christian “believes” and “feels” God through faith while a Jew “obeys” and “acts” on their faith. I suppose this is as good a place as any to (again) invoke James 2:14-26 including the very famous verse 17: “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. “ The specific formalities of Judaism in preparing to perform a mitzvah and then the specific manner in which the mitzvah is accomplished may not actually matter to God, but that ritual and ceremony provides meaning and structure in the life of a religious Jew (and this isn’t the first time I’ve talked about how important ritual and tradition is in a life of faith).

I suspect that one of the primary reasons why many “Gentile Messianics” resist Talmud and halacha when attempting to emulate a Jewish lifestyle, is not that the traditions were constructed by human beings, but that the traditions were constructed by Jews for Jews for the specific purpose of Jewish performance of Torah “commandedness”. Many non-Jews are attracted to Torah as a means of having a closer walk with God through the commandments, but they resist a fully Jewish experience with those commandments (because it is too Jewish).

Derek Leman wrote a multi-part series called Not Jewish yet Drawn to Torah (the link goes to part 1) addressing this dynamic in much detail. Leman doesn’t criticize Gentile attraction to the mitzvot but rather the approach that allows Christians (including “Gentile Messianics”) to approach the Torah with a casualness that Judaism doesn’t understand and finds offensive. Christians, particularly in the West, tend to think of their faith as only involving Jesus and the individual (“Just me and Jesus”). Judaism, though acknowledging the individual relationship, is much more about community and being a people under God, rather than an individual under God. Leman presents “Lessons Learned from Past Mistakes” illustrating some of this problem:

You should know that many have walked the path before you. And many have found some unhelpful paths and can warn you not to try them.

The major problem many Torah-seeking gentiles have run into is very similar to the problem of shallowness in much evangelical Christianity: individualism run amok.

EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN SHALLOWNESS = “The gospel is about me and my salvation.” Read some N.T. Wright, like Justification or Surprised by Hope or After You Believe.

TORAH-SEEKING GENTILE SHALLOWNESS = “The Torah is about me and my status with God.” Read some medieval commentators and Jewish theologians, would you? Learn the depth.

A BETTER PATH = Learn slowly and carefully. Think before jumping into things. Consider that God has a plan for the whole world, through Israel, to redeem. How does Torah fit into that? What is your place in God’s plan?

While Christianity doesn’t share an equal and identical covenant identity with the Jews, we do operate from the same “core values:”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” –Matthew 22:37-40

If we, as Gentile believers, feel drawn to perform some additional mitzvot on a voluntary basis, and beyond what is required by Jesus, in order to further honor God, we need to respectfully approach how best to prepare for the experience of offering that service. While there is no mandate to flawlessly imitate a Jewish person, we can still attempt to take our actions a little more seriously and inject more formality into the process, not because God needs it, but because we need to be reminded that any action performed in His Name should invoke respect and awe of God.

Christianity and Judaism do share mandates to perform some of the same mitzvot, the actions I typically quote in many of my blogs, to feed the hungry, visit the sick and the prisoner, clothe the unclothed, and to welcome the stranger. In doing those deeds, why shouldn’t we as Christians, allow ourselves to perceive the incredible responsibility God has placed in our hands to serve Him and to serve others? Doesn’t that deserve a little formality and ceremony? Shouldn’t we ask for God’s aid in performing duties done in His Name? Aren’t these types of details there to help us, too? Let us remember these words and say them in truth to God:

I know in my heart that I am not as I should be. I have done much wrong. Nevertheless, You God are gracious and merciful. I therefore plead with You to help me serve You in truth.

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Fighting Words

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Teshuvas Minchas Yitzchok was asked about people who daven in the summer in a field, how far apart they could be spread and still constitute a minyan. Does the matter depend upon whether they could see one another, whether they could all hear the sh’liach tzibbur or perhaps they have to stand within four amos of one another since the pasuk (Devarim 23:15) indicates that a person’s camp is four amos. He responded that combining for a minyan depends upon two factors. The first prerequisite is that everyone must be able to hear the sh’liach tzibbur. This is based on Shulchan Aruch’s ruling that if nine people do not listen to the sh’liach tzibbur it may be that the berachos recited by the sh’liach tzibbur are berachos l’vatalos. The second prerequisite is that the participants in the minyan have to be capable of seeing one another. This is based on Pri Chadash’s ruling that when two groups of people are in different rooms they combine to make a minyan if some of them could see one another. Although there are authorities who disagree, in the case of an open field all opinions would agree since there is no wall dividing the group into two that seeing one another is sufficient for them to combine.

Our Mishnah teaches that animals combine for tithing if they are in an area “as large as an animal’s grazing range.” This is defined by the Mishnah as an area of sixteen mil. Rashi explains that this refers to the size of an area in which animals could spread out but still be watched by a single shepherd. Sefer Imrei Devash also wondered whether the discussion in our Mishnah has bearing on the question of how far apart a group of people may be spread out and still constitute a minyan. Perhaps they can be as far apart as sixteen mil since they should be able to see one another but perhaps forming a minyan follows a different set of rules. He leaves the matter unresolved.

Daf Yomi Digest
Halacha Highlight
“Forming a minyan in a field”
Bechoros 54

I recently wrote an article about tradition and how our religious traditions add context and meaning to our worship of God. This is true in any religion I believe, but especially true in Judaism. Perhaps for that reason, Christianity tends to give Judaism a really hard time because of all its “man-made traditions.” The problem for most Christians, even those who otherwise find great beauty in Jewish religious practice and study, is that Jewish traditions are given the weight of authority and even appear to override the plain meaning of the Torah text, seemingly positioning the Rabbinic sages above God. While Judaism doesn’t have this perspective, the ability of most Christians to see from a Jewish point of view is extremely limited, which produces a lot of misunderstanding and, to my way of thinking, unjustified criticism.

I’ve been involved in conversations regarding tradition and Talmudic rulings at a number of blogspots recently including those written by Judah Himango and Derek Leman. Derek especially has been vocally dynamic in this area, writing two subsequent blog posts answering specific questions posed by individuals: Answering Dan and Answering Peter. Although most if not all of the people involved in the discussions on these blogs are in some way attached to the Messianic Jewish and Hebrew Roots movements, there is a great deal of difficulty in understanding and accepting how tradition and rabbinic authority work in the Jewish world and particularly within Orthodox Judaism.

For some people, it’s not enough to understand that, if you don’t belong to an Orthodox community (and especially if you’re not Jewish), you do not have to consider yourself bound by their rulings and traditions. You can choose your own traditions and make them as flexible and non-binding as you’d like (though you probably shouldn’t imagine that your own traditions create a formal “Judaism”). For some of these individuals though, it is important to prove that Jewish tradition is “wrong” and goes against God. The presumption for the other side of the coin is that their own interpretation of the Bible is “right” and can be used to manufacture a “true” Jewish or Hebrew Roots religion more in line with God. Scriptures such as Mark 7:1-23 are often cited to support how Jesus disdained Jewish man-made traditions and supposedly taught only from the “pure” Word of God (although we have a good indication in John 10:22 that Jesus celebrated the tradition of Chanukah).

I specifically quote the “Halacha Highlight” above because of the following line:

Perhaps they can be as far apart as sixteen mil since they should be able to see one another but perhaps forming a minyan follows a different set of rules. He leaves the matter unresolved.

The collection of talmudic rulings and judgments and their associated commentaries are vast and it literally requires years of study to become even somewhat proficient at understanding their wisdom and meaning. Here we also see that these rulings and commentaries are not always definitive. That is, they don’t always take the force of “thou shalt not” or “thou shalt” and many discussions on halakhic matters are left “unresolved.” In fact, the validity of judgments and how (or if) they are to be enacted can be hotly debated to this very day in Rabbinic circles. There is not always absolute agreement about how these “man-made traditions” are to be lived out in everyday Jewish existence. Local authorities often contradict more historic and global sages and typically, a Jew will form their religious practice around the decisions of their Rebbe or local synagogue Rabbi.

So why should you care?

If you’re not Jewish, you don’t have to. Even if you are Jewish, if you don’t consider any rulings of any Rabbis anywhere, including what we have recorded in Talmud, as authoritative, then you don’t have to care either (unless you suspect that somewhere inside those rulings is the will of God). There are plenty of atheist Jews who work on Saturday, eat ham sandwiches and shrimp scampi, and who have never worn a tallit (let alone prayed to God). They apparently don’t care about what the Talmud says and if you are a Jewish person who is religious but not in a traditional Jewish manner, then you can also decide not to care.

That doesn’t mean the Rabbinic sages don’t have authority within their communities, it just means you choose not to consider them having authority over you and your community. God will sort all that out at some point and then we’ll know for sure. Right now, there’s enough doubt to result in their being many different ways to live as a religious Jew let alone as a religious Christian (including Gentile Messianic and Hebrew Roots). Either God accepts the variations we have created with the patience of a kind Father toward small and confused children or He’ll show us all where we “got it wrong” in the end of days.

However, human nature says we’re going to continue to jockey for position, so to speak, and attempt to establish our own authority and “correctness” relative to the people and groups with which we disagree. We see that happening all of the time, even within the context of the Talmud itself. Judaism isn’t always about “getting it right” but rather, it’s sometimes about struggling with the Torah, other Jews, and God. It’s not a crime to disagree in Judaism (but don’t try it in Christianity or the “Messianic” worlds unless you want to get into the spiritual equivalent of a bar fight), it’s expected, and on just about any subject.

A few days ago, I was talking with my wife about a topic on which I was emotionally sensitive and she started arguing with me. I have to admit, I got kind of put out by her attitude and started to walk away when she stopped me. She reminded me that we’ve been married for almost 30 years and that she’s always argued. She then said something like, “I’m Jewish. I argue. That’s what we do.” In other words, she was saying, “Don’t take it personally.” I like a good debate every now and then (though obviously, not on every possible occasion) and one of the things I try to promote is being able to disagree without personalizing conflict. This is quite possible, even outside of a Jewish context. I’ve seen a prosecuting and a defense attorney practically come to blows in open court during a trial only to become best friends and make dinner plans together after the trial was over and the jury left the courtroom.

It’s tough not to take religious arguments personally because our faith is the most personal thing about who we are. When someone disagrees with how we perceive our faith, we hear that disagreement as “them’s fightin’ words”, to employ an old, Western TV show phrase. In fact, they aren’t “fightin’ words” unless we choose to make them such. Still, the best many of us can do is “agree to disagree” and drop the conflict as “unresolved” (see my opening quote at the top of the page). Like it or not, that’s the way we are going to have to leave many of our questions and disagreements…until the time of Messiah’s return.

Until then, may we all find the ways of peace with each other, no matter how differently we see ourselves and God.

The blessing Jacob gives Judah concludes with the words: “his eyes will redden from wine, and his teeth white from milk.” Rabbi Yochanan says homiletically (Kesubos 111b) that you can read it as “teeth whiter than milk” — to give a smile to a friend is even greater than giving him nourishment.

When someone comes collecting charity, it is a difficult and often thankless job. Rejection can break a person’s spirits and keep him or her from continuing, no matter how important the cause. So, as it happens, a smile may be one of the most important things you can give — you can brighten that person’s spirits and enable him or her to persevere.

Closer to home, there is no one who doesn’t have a “hard day” now and then. There are great people who have tremendous internal reserves of happiness, so that no matter what, it seems like they are always happy. Even people like that need an encouraging word now and then — much less the rest of us, who sometimes just want to crawl back into bed and start over tomorrow, if not next week!

To be generous of spirit is at least as important as being generous with money — and when it comes to smiles, the more you give, the more you have!

-Rabbi Yaakov Menken
“Brother, Can you Share a Smile?”
Commentary on Torah Portion Vayechi
ProjectGenesis.org

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Tradition!

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Because of our traditions, we’ve kept our balance for many, many years. Here in Anatevka, we have traditions for everything… How to sleep, how to eat… how to work… how to wear clothes. For instance, we always keep our heads covered, and always wear a little prayer shawl that shows our constant devotion to God. You may ask, “How did this tradition get started?” I’ll tell you! I don’t know.

But it’s a tradition… and because of our traditions… Every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do.

-Tevye
Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach answered, “Although there is no source in the poskim, this is the custom and it has been the custom for quite a while.”

Mishna Berufa Yomi Digest
Stories to Share
“A Sign of Mourning”
Rema Siman 131 Seif 2

Powerful and moving as study can be, Judaism has to do more than challenge us intellectually. If it is to help us search for spirituality and quest for a sense of God’s closeness, Jewish life has to give us opportunities to express hope and fear, joy and grief. It has to connect us not only to tradition and to our history, but to family and community. It has to create moments in which we touch the innermost parts of who we are, when we can appreciate the miracles of everyday living and when we can reconnect to the dreams we have for ourselves, our families, and the world. Judaism, if it is to provide Jews with something that will truly shape their lives, has to make room for the soul no less than for the mind. That is why in addition to the world of words and text, Jewish life also revolves around ritual.

-Rabbi Daniel Gordis
“Ritual – Creating Space for Spirituality” (pp 102-3)
God Was Not In The Fire

As I make my way through Rabbi Gordis’ book, I find myself falling in love with Judaism all over again. I know people can stab and poke at Jews and Judaism and find fault, but I suppose that’s because Jews are human and not perfect and the rest of us are human and not perfect. But there’s something so beautiful and calming about the traditions in Judaism. There’s an order and a “centeredness” about a devout life, from saying the Modei Ani upon awaking to reciting the Bedtime Shema before retiring. People, whether secular or religious, who do not have a tradition from which to draw and add meaning to their lives, must experience existence in such a colorless dimension. It seems rather sad when religious people disdain tradition, because it’s part of what gives context and meaning to a life lived for God. Tradition and ritual also provides direction and form to trust and faith because without them, the Bible does not say in precise detail how we are to even worship.

Shabbat is not the only ritual in Jewish life that fosters relationship and connection. While each life-cycle ritual (the bris, naming ceremonies for girls, weddings, funerals, and the like) has its own symbolism and its own message, and each holiday on the annual calendar cycle (Rosh Ha-shanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Passover, Shavuot, and the others) celebrates a different value or event, what ultimately makes them powerful is the sense of community that they provide. Sharing many of these holidays and life-altering moments together somehow creates the connectedness that many modern Jews desperately want but have not found elsewhere. When they finally find that connection, they find spiritual richness, a sense of intimacy. They find meaning (Gordis, pg 108).

I think this is part of what makes Judaism so attractive for some non-Jews. I know it’s what attracts me but I recognize the inherent limits as well. Ritual does not a community make, at least not right away. It’s not as if I could simply enter a synagogue on Erev Shabbat and gain an immediate sense of belonging. I would have to stay, perhaps for many years, and allow my life to be molded by the rituals and ceremonies of the community. I would have to allow myself to become connected and the community would have to be willing to allow that connection. Rabbi Gordis wrote this book primarily for a Jewish audience longing to return to or to discover the spiritual meaning in their Judaism. I think Goyim like me just get hooked and taken along for the ride without the author’s full intention.

After all, it’s not like other religions don’t have traditions and rituals, even if they don’t recognize their behaviors by those names. Consider the rituals and traditions of the church. We’ve just finished the Christmas season and many believers in the church find deep meaning, both personal and as families, in celebrating the birth of Christ. It’s not important to them that Jesus was probably born no where near December 25th or that the origins of the modern celebration are attached to ancient, pagan festival practices. The meaning is found in tradition, not the history books. This is true for the other important Christian calendar events and rituals such as Easter, but also includes marriages, funerals, the ritual of communion, baptisms, and a myriad of other activities that define Christian living and life. People outside those traditions may not agree with how the church constructs its rituals and some folks are even vehemently opposed to Christian traditions, but traditions are the structure and the building blocks from which we construct our faith and relationship with God and our fellows.

But there are so many traditions, both within the church and the synagogue. I remember, many years ago, sitting in the local Reform shul when a woman asked the Rabbi (I’m paraphrasing, since I can’t remember what she said word-for-word), “Why do we have so many traditions? It’s like every country we were kicked out of, we took their traditions with us. We have so many. I can’t remember them all.”

It was kind of humorous, and kind of frustrating, and kind of sad the way she asked (you had to have been there…her vocal inflections and pacing gave a wealth of meaning). All of those traditions and rituals are what makes Jewish living uniquely “Jewish”. Not that there’s just one way of being “traditionally” Jewish, as Rabbi Gordis relates (pg 104):

As we examine the world of Jewish ritual, we should not anticipate one authoritative reason for each ceremony or custom. Just as each Jew who studies classical Jewish text reaches different conclusions about its meaning and is touched in profoundly personal ways, so, too, each person drawn to Jewish ritual is drawn by something slightly different. The wisdom of Jewish ritual is that it works on many different levels. Often, it functions in different ways for even the same person.

Particularly for a Jew, ritual and tradition connects them to the study of the sacred texts (Talmud torah), to other individual Jews, to the larger Jewish community, and to the wonder of God. It also connects the Jew to himself and his own personal identity as a Jew beyond an ethnic definition. When a Jewish man davens in the morning wearing a kippah, talit gadol and laying tefillin, feeling the siddur in his hands, singing prayers that are hundreds and even thousands of years old, how can he not feel inside of his soul that he is a Jew?

I, of course, am looking in from the outside, but even to me, this is abundantly apparent. It is no wonder that those who chose to try and destroy Jewish life over the long march of time have burned thousands of copies of the Talmud and siddurim, and forbidden Jewish families from lighting Shabbos candles or praying in synagogue. Even with the threat of certain death, under the most horrible conditions possible, Jews have refused to give up the rituals that say to the world that they are Jewish.

Consider the testimonies of Jews who survived the Nazi death machine and who told of Shabbat in the camps. They spoke of inmates who violated the Nazis’ law, risking immediate death by hoarding their bread from Thursday so that they could have two pieces on Friday (symbolic of the two loaves of challah that tradition requires on Friday evening and Shabbat afternoon). Why would people on the verge of starvation, in which Shabbat could scarcely be celebrated, take this risk? What was to be gained?

What they stood to gain was a chance to reassert their denial of Nazi Europe as an ultimate reality. Honoring Shabbat, even in a murder camp, was their way of saying, “I believe in the possibility of a better world. I deny that you are the real ruler. Despite you, I insist that I am human, that I am created in God’s image, and that one day, a world will arise when good will triumph over evil, when God will triumph over you.” (Gordis pg 120)

I know of no other religion or religious people, not even those Christians who have suffered terribly for their faith, who have something so powerful in their lives that they could be inspired to defy death for the sake of honoring the Shabbat and God.

Some non-Jews are so turned toward the delight of Judaism in their hearts that they convert and make being Jewish their life, adopting the rituals and traditions as their own. There are others who do not convert but who attempt to integrate at least some of what they see as precious in the Jewish life into their own as a form of worshiping Jesus or Yeshua as Savior and Messiah. This gets a little dicey when you start making decisions about which traditions you want to keep and which you want to discard, and the Gentile Christian (who may not even believe he still is a Christian) finds himself in the uncomfortable position of actually re-defining Judaism to suit his personal and religious requirements. It’s sort of like a person who has lived in Los Angeles all his life deciding to move to a small rural town in Colorado because he is attracted to the beauty of the Rocky Mountains, clean air, and simple living. Then, upon his arrival, he rebuilds Los Angeles all around him, brick for brick, car for car, freeway for freeway, because it makes him feel more “comfortable” with “country living”.

If you are going to change your lifestyle, you must come to the realization that you are the one who must change, not traditions and rituals. You accept them and change, or you reject them and admit that you do not want to live as a Jew (the latter being the wiser course of action for most non-Jews).

There is one “Jewish” ritual Rabbi Gordis describes that I think belongs to all human beings, though. There’s a blessing a Jew says upon seeing a rainbow in the sky.

Blessed are you O’ Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who remembers the Covenant, is trustworthy in His Covenant, and fulfills His promise.

Praying with TefillinHowever, this covenant was made with Noah who fathered not only Shem (the Semitic people including Jews) but all of humanity after the flood. The covenant spoken here is with mankind and all human beings can bless the heart of God in this gentle tradition.

But the vast majority of Jewish traditions are…well, Jewish. If you are going to adopt any of them for whatever reason (and keep in mind, some Jewish people might take exception if you end up imitating or “characterturing” Jews), please try to understand what you are doing and why you are doing it. Lighting the Shabbat candles honors God as Creator but it doesn’t make you a “spiritual Jew” nor does it say that you are now co-owner of Judaism because you are grafted in (Romans 11). It also doesn’t mean that you can declare yourself “Messianic” as if you are totally divorced from Christianity, and redefine the Torah, Talmud, halachah, and ritual, throwing into the trash whatever doesn’t suit you, and believe that you are in a “Judaism”. You may be doing something, but it probably isn’t very “Jewish”.

One of the “Thou shalt not covets” should be not to covet thy neighbor’s religious practices or his covenants unless you convert to your neighbor’s religion or have another compelling reason to take some on them on board, such as being intermarried. I previously wrote another meditation called Dayenu with that in mind.

Tradition is what gives our faith experience a structure and meaning but what attracts us to a certain tradition may defy logic. Most people love their traditions because it’s what they grew up with and their traditions provide a reminder of childhood comfort, safety, and simplicity. However there are those of us who are drawn to traditions completely alien to our parents for reasons only God knows. Where ever your heart goes and whatever traditions you find yourself practicing, if they belong to someone else, be polite, try to ask permission to join in, and treat the rituals and blessings gently. They may be new to you, but they’ve been precious to others for a hundred lifetimes.

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Forgetting God

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Praying with tefillinChumros are not a simple matter at all. Rav Pinchas of Koretz, zt”l, points out that a person can easily get so wrapped up in chumros that he forgets about Hashem. His hyper-focus on the minutiae makes him forget the goal.

As the Sichos HaRan, zt”l, pointed out two hundred years ago, there are those who spend inordinate amounts of time in the bathroom to ensure that they are clean for davening. Meanwhile, they are obsessively pursuing a goal that wastes a great deal of time and risk missing the zeman tefilah. Is this to the purpose when the only halachic requirement is that one check himself for a short time in the bathroom to ensure basic cleanliness before prayer?

Although chumros can propel someone on a high spiritual level even higher, they can be counterproductive for someone not really on the level. The entire idea of “levels” can be confusing, though, since sometimes a person chooses the path of chumrah not from genuine piety, but because he wants others to see him as such.

The Chazon Ish, zt”l, was known for his chumros, yet he did not advocate taking on extra chumros unless one is on the level. Interestingly, he once illustrated this rather common imbalance of priorities with a statement on today’s daf. “How can one who is not holding by them assume extra chumros? This can be compared to the statement in the Mishnah in Bechoros 40. There we find that having one eye bigger than the other is a halachic blemish. Similarly, one who acts like someone of great spiritual stature in certain regards but is not in others has a skewed view of reality. It would be better if he were to act in accordance with his real level!”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“Balanced Vision”
Bechoros 40

This sort of behavior may be difficult for many Christians to understand. I believe that the Catholic church has a tradition of taking on greater acts of penance to draw closer to Christ, but I don’t believe this is something common among mainstream Protestants except perhaps for fasting and offering additional prayers. However, as noted above, we can become so involved in our “religious practices” that we can forget all about actually serving God. This is a case when our actions take on a life of their own and become divorced from the underlying motivation. It would be as if you took it upon yourself to give to the needy, but your acts of charity became the driving force of your life, along with the thanks and praise of men, rather than the God who commands you to have compassion for the poor.

Of course, regardless of motivation or even if you consider God at all, the poor are fed and cared for by your charity, so it’s not a complete loss. But let’s look at something else for a moment that also isn’t clearly understood by many Christians.

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the Israelites and say to them: If anyone, man or woman, explicitly utters a nazirite’s vow, to set himself apart for the Lord, he shall abstain from wine and any other intoxicant; he shall not drink vinegar of wine or of any other intoxicant, neither shall he drink anything in which grapes have been steeped, nor eat grapes fresh or dried. Throughout his term as nazirite, he may not eat anything that is obtained from the grapevine, even seeds or skin.

Throughout the term of his vow as nazirite, no razor shall touch his head; it shall remain consecrated until the completion of his term as nazirite of the Lord, the hair of his head being left to grow untrimmed. Throughout the term that he has set apart for the Lord, he shall not go in where there is a dead person. Even if his father or mother, or his brother or sister should die, he must not defile himself for them, since hair set apart for his God is upon his head: throughout his term as nazirite he is consecrated to the Lord. –Numbers 6:1-8 (JPS Tanakh)

This is the beginning of the conditions for an Israelite who has taken a Nazarite vow, the purpose of which was to bring the person closer to God. It’s an interesting condition at the end of the vow (which could last for several months) that the Nazir would bring a sin offering. One interpretation of this is that, since God had provided sufficient means in the Torah for any Jew to draw near to Him, there was an actual component of “sin” in becoming a Nazir, as if God’s Torah wasn’t good enough. And yet the Torah itself provides the conditions by which one may become a Nazir. Further, we know that both the Prophet Samuel and Samson the Judge were life-long Nazirs. We also know that the Apostle Paul took upon himself a Nazarite vow (Acts 18:18) and paid the price at the end of the Nazarite vows for four other Jews (Acts 21:20-26).

Today, it’s impossible for a Jew to take a Nazarite vow because there currently is no Temple in Jerusalem and no active Levitical priesthood. We see that taking such a vow has many benefits and perhaps a few liabilities, but one of the dangers of such a vow is that the conditions of the vow may become more important than God Himself. Again, Christianity doesn’t understand this, but maybe we can understand something else.

I remember being in Christian Bible studies. At some point during some of these studies at church, the teacher would ask the class to all close our eyes and to offer up prayers for one reason or another. Knowing that you’re going to speak your prayer to God out loud in front of a bunch of other Christians creates a strange situation. At least for me, I considered what sort of prayer would sound acceptable or even meritorious to the people around me. It was very hard to actually talk to God without worrying what my fellow believers might think. I can promise you that my public prayers were somewhat different and perhaps really different when spoken aloud in front of witnesses than they would have been if it were just God and me.

There are non-Jews who choose to take some of the Jewish mitzvot upon themselves and even a little halachah as they understand it. I’ve known many of these people and while most of them are sincere in their motivations and have hearts sincerely turned toward God, some of them have become diverted by their practice and have all but lost sight of why they are performing the various commandments. I’ve heard such people argue about the proper way to tie tzitzit, whether or not a blue cord should be included, the pronunciation of some of the Hebrew prayers, whether or not a minyan can include women, and on and on and on. The irony mixed in with this tragedy, is that these people who are so consumed with obeying what they see as their obligations to God, have no true understanding of how and why Jews perform these mitzvot. Further, they reject the Jewish traditions associated with the mitzvot and substitute their individual interpretations for the commandments. Somewhere in the shuffle, God becomes forgotten.

The Mishna Berura Yomi Digest for Siman 128 Seif 24 explains that drawing near to God doesn’t have to be all that complicated and that God desires both the scholar and the “simple” man of the earth to have the opportunity to come closer. Judaism provides a solution that might seem unusual to the Christian.

On today’s amud we find that even those simple people who are not present during birchas kohanim are also included in the blessing. Perhaps one of the most important contributions of the Baal Shem Tov was to build up the downtrodden masses. The simple folk who couldn’t learn much are also an integral part of the chosen people. They, too, have a spiritual mission here on earth.

During one of the many times that Rav Meir Arak, zt”l, met with the Imrei Emes, zt”l, of Gur, he asked the rebbe a question that was troubling him. “I do not understand why our sages draw a distinction between the wine libations and other sacrifices. Regarding other sacrifices our sages teach that anyone who learns the laws of the sin or guilt offering is considered to have brought that sacrifice. Clearly the same is true regarding other sacrifices. And presumably, this is also the case regarding one who learns the laws of the libations.

“Strangely, when the sages mention a person who wishes to bring nesachim they do not recommend studying the halachos.

“Instead, they say that one who wishes to pour libations on the altar should fill the throats of Torah scholars with wine. Why is this second point necessary?”

The Imrei Emes replied in an inspiring manner. “Telling people that learning the laws of sacrifices is likened to bringing a sacrifice is only helpful to those who can learn. What about the simple folk who are unable to delve into the complexities of kodshim? It was for them that our sages said that one who supports Torah scholars by providing them with wine is considered to have poured libations on the altar. Doesn’t a simple person also need a way to draw near to Hashem while there is no beis hamikdash?”

Again, the solution presented here probably seems unnecessarily complicated to most Christians, but in a religious world that’s driven by tradition and specific acts crafted to comply with what is believed to be the desires of God, this process works quite well. A man who is no scholar and whose Hebrew is just so-so can still fulfill the mitzvot equivalent to offering the sacrifices and learned study of Torah. Please keep in mind though that any religious activity that involves a sufficient amount of complexity can, if allowed to do so, become more important than the reason for performing it. The solution for the church is to do away with this danger by doing away with the Law. No Torah, no halachah, no complexity equals just you and God, right?

Maybe. Maybe not. It all goes too far in the opposite direction if you believe God does not expect you to change anything in what you do and how you do it in daily and religious living. On the other hand, with the Law completely absent, Christians have found other ways to stray.

I’ve seen Christians focused intently on pleasing God who completely lost their path and who became enamoured with things such as how to teach the best Bible study, how to offer the best public prayers, how to dress with just the right amount of modesty for church services, and just how often to invite the Pastor over for dinner. The activities themselves aren’t bad, but when they take the place of a simple desire to connect to God through behavior, then these acts become almost meaningless. If God is not there in what you do, what’s the point?

The Mishna Berura Yomi Digest for Siman 128 Seif 26-29 provides a different point of view of drawing nearer to God, this time, not from the perspective of the less learned Jew, but from the position of exalted Torah scholars.

We find on today’s daf that sometimes it is preferable to refrain even from saying pesukim.

When the Imrei Emes of Ger, zt”l, returned from his first voyage to Eretz Yisroel, the Rav of Kalish, zt”l, tried to elicit some details about his journey. The Imrei Emes, however, did not seem to be willing to engage in conversation.

“Nu?” prodded the Kalisher Rav. “How does the rebbe feel after his visit to the holy land? Don’t chazal say that even the air of Eretz Yisroel makes one wise?”

The Imrei Emes nodded. “Yes, it’s true,” he answered. “And chazal also said: the protective fence for wisdom is…silence!”

This can also mean that silence is sometimes the best defense, because with it, one can avoid an argument altogether.

A delegation of sefardic rabbis once came to visit the Maharil Diskin, zt”l, the illustrious Rav of Brisk.

As soon as they arrived, the group of sages began to weave a number of intricate arguments about certain Torah subjects, while the Maharil simply sat quietly and did not participate.

Eventually they tired of this, and decided to take their leave. As they left, the members of the delegation shook their heads in dismay and lamented to one another, “What a pity—to see such a great scholar who has gotten old and forgotten his learning!”

What the group didn’t realize was that the gaon of Brisk was just as much a master of silence as he was a master of Torah!

Maybe your religious study and practice is devoted solely to the glory of God or maybe you have accidentally strayed into an area where you glorify yourself above your Master. It’s all too easy to wander away from the true path in the face of fulfilling the minutiae of the various commandments and obligations you believe are important to you. However, if you realize one day in the middle of your prayers, or while reading a Bible commentary, or in the process of delivering a devastating retort to someone’s argument on religious blog comment, that what you are doing is more important to you than to God, please stop. This is like driving your car down the freeway at 80 mph and suddenly realizing you’ve forgotten how to operate a motor vehicle. Under such circumstances, the safest thing to do is to slow down, pull over, come to a stop, and exit the vehicle.

Then wait for help, because you really need it.

It’s like a man who wakes up one morning and discovers that he’s forgotten how to read. He feels fine otherwise, but books, magazines, and newspapers now contain only these cryptic markings that yesterday were words, sentences, and paragraphs. What can be done? In this person’s case, he can go back to the basics of learning his ABCs, then learning to read from a simple primer, and then working up from there. What do we do when our religion has become more important than God? We can stop our religious practice temporarily, return to a simple reading of the Bible and extemporaneous prayer, and learn to love God all over again. I’ve heard many Christians in public prayer saying, “We give you all the glory, Jesus.” I don’t doubt that most of these people are sincere, but if they were to stop suddenly and listen to their own voice, would any of them realize that they were giving more glory to how they sounded in front of a group?

Take time occasionally to unplug from the way you try to connect to God and just connect to God.

If you play for your own glory and not for God’s you have no place here. -A Maggid

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Working Out Love

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The 251st prohibition is that we are forbidden from verbally wronging another person by telling him things that will distress and humiliate him, and make him discouraged. For example, when a person has sinned in his youth, but changed his ways, and someone tells him, “Thank G-d who has taken you away from that path to this good path,” or similar indirect references to faults that cause him pain.

The source of this prohibition is G-d’s statement (exalted be He), “V’lo sonu one another and you shall fear your G-d.” Our Sages said that this refers to verbally causing him pain (ona’as devarim).

Sefer Hamitzvot in English
“Hurtful Words”
Negative Commandment 251
Translated by Rabbi Berel Bell
Chabad.org

I receive daily emails on the commentaries of Maimonides on the 613 commandments as outlined in his classic work Sefer Hamitzvot, but I rarely use them as the basis for any of my “meditations”. The simple reason for this is that the vast, vast majority of these commandments aren’t considered to be applicable to the lives of non-Jewish people. Traditional Christianity considers the “Law is dead” and thus would tend to disregard these lessons in any case, and only some non-Jews in the “Messianic” movement feel that they share an equal obligation with the Jewish people to fulfill the full “yoke of Torah”. However, I’m not writing to address that issue, but because I believe we do have a parallel commandment in Christianity.

“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector. –Matthew 18:15-17

You may be wondering why Jesus suggests that you go through all of these steps in trying to reconcile with a fellow believer who has sinned against you. Let’s review the process again. First you go to the person alone. If they don’t listen, take two or three witnesses (referencing Deuteronomy 19:15, which suggests that there is a legal component to these actions). If all else fails, bring the matter before the entire congregation and if the situation still can’t be resolved, only then must the offender be expelled from the body of believers.

The way I learned how to interpret this passage (you may have heard this before, too) is that you first go to the person alone so you don’t embarrass them. If you can take care of the problem just between the two of you, without bringing anyone else into it, you can avoid the other person digging their heels in, so to speak, because you have publicly humiliated them. Even if you can’t resolve it in that context, your next step is to bring in just two or three other trusted (that’s my interpretation) brothers and sisters to help mediate the problem. It still doesn’t have to be dragged in front of the entire congregation. The offender can still “save face”.

Why is this important? From a “common sense” point of view, we know that people are more likely to listen to criticism about themselves in a private rather than a public setting. An old adage in management says to “praise publicly and criticize privately.” If you’ve ever been yelled at by your spouse for something you did or gotten a good “dressing down” by your boss, you know it isn’t quite as painful if it’s just the two of you than if it’s in front of family, friends, or co-workers. People are more likely to listen to criticism privately and are more open to discussing their “issues” in a private setting than if it’s all happening in front of a crowd.

Is the “common sense” approach Biblical? I think it is.

If a person commits a sin punishable by death and is executed, and you hang the corpse on a tree, his body must not remain all night on the tree; instead you must make certain you bury him that same day, for the one who is left exposed on a tree is cursed by God. You must not defile your land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. –Deuteronomy 21:22-23

The idea behind the phrase cursed by God seems to be not that the person was impaled because he was cursed but that to leave him exposed there was to invite the curse of God upon the whole land. Why this would be so is not clear, though the rabbinic idea that even a criminal is created in the image of God may give some clue (thus J. H. Tigay, Deuteronomy [JPSTC], 198). Paul cites this text (see Gal 3:13) to make the point that Christ, suspended from a cross, thereby took upon himself the curse associated with such a display of divine wrath and judgment (T. George, Galatians [NAC], 238-39).

Commentary from net.bible.org

The phrase we need to key in on is “the rabbinic idea that even a criminal is created in the image of God may give some clue.” I tend to agree with the Talmudic interpretation of Deuteronomy 21:22-23. We are all created in the image of God, great and humble alike. On a very basic level, we are all entitled to a certain amount of care and dignity befitting the image of our Creator and in that sense, we should avoid going out of our way to embarrass or humiliate a person, even if we think “they deserve it”.

This brings me back to a “meditation” I wrote a few days ago called Considering Replies. Maybe you’re thinking that I’m beating a dead horse, but the Internet is a “rough neighborhood” and a lot of people get hurt out here. It’s not enough to say that we’re “telling the truth in love” when telling the truth can have devastating results. This is like embarrassing a “former sinner” by saying you are so glad they gave up their horrible lifestyle to come to Christ. If you make a person feel like dirt by “telling them the truth in love” you probably didn’t consider “love” before you opened your mouth or typed something on someone’s blog and then pressed “Publish”.

According to Rabbi Berel’s commentary on Maimonides, the Sages taught that uttering hurtful words is a worse sin than defrauding someone of money. I know someone out there will say that this teaching means we can never confront someone who is doing wrong for fear of embarrassing them, but look back at Matthew 18:15-17. There is a process for confronting a fellow believer if it’s necessary that is still compassionate and respectful. 1 Timothy 5:19-20 even describes how to address a church or congregational leader who has sinned, so your leaders are not “criticism proof” (I’ve seen congregational leaders falsely use the example of Korach and the “evil report” against Moses and Aaron in Numbers 16 as “proof” that no one is allowed to criticize a leader) but can be approached in a way that addresses the problem and truly shows respect and love.

The truth isn’t enough, even when we have a “loving” intent. Long before speaking the truth, we must bring love into the picture and make love and truth work together. We must consider the teachings of the Master and his close disciples before launching into any sort of action, especially if we’re emotionally involved in the conflict. The so-called “love passage” in 1 Corinthians 13 (which has nothing to do with weddings and marriage as such), is a very good map to consider when we need to talk to someone about any of their shortcomings. It’s also the guide I’m sure you’d like someone to use if or when you need to be confronted.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. –1 Corinthians 13:1-7

Love does not dishonor others. It always protects and always trusts. Christians can choose to interpret the lights of Chanukah as representing the light of the world. As I’ve mentioned before, Jesus said that we are also supposed to be lights to the world. Christ gave us a new command to love each other (John 13:34). Let’s start there and then work out way out.

Happy Chanukah. Follow the light. Pass it on.

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The New Testament is Not in Heaven

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

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

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

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

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

Baba Tetzia 59b as quoted at jhom.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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