The Torah is a code which assumes a community tradition to fill in its gaps. That is, the Torah does not spell out how to carry out many of its commands. The details of procedure are often left to the people. And the intention of Torah is clearly not to arrive at a situation like that in the book of Judges, where “every man did what was right in his own eyes.”

In matters of legal judgment, the Torah’s gaps were to be filled in by judges and by a sort of high court (Deut 17:8-13) and the people are not to turn to the right or to the left from the rulings of Israel’s judges. In matters of worship procedure and liturgy, the Levitical priests are the ones who determine the practice of the community.

-Derek Leman
“Torah Fundamental #2”
Messianic Jewish Musings

The Toras HaNefesh learns an important message about when to temper one’s avodah from a statement on today’s daf. “When a person ascends in understanding, he should also develop greater empathy for the pain of others. This is even true regarding fulfilling a mitzvah. If one is overzealous in fulfilling mitzvos, he can sometimes insult another Jew undeservedly. Usually this kind of person has forgotten his friend’s feelings and doesn’t even realize that he has sinned. He might have insulted another Jew, or he might have treated his fellow with less than the honor that he deserves, or he might have forgotten to consider the ramifications of his actions on his friend’s livelihood.

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“Send Her Away – No Matter What”
Chullin 141

For yesterday’s morning meditation, I wrote something that is a reversal from my usual theme and asked if a Christian should limit his or her Jewish learning. I know I typically advocate for Christians pursuing the traditional Jewish texts in order to discover the “Jewishness of Jesus”, but obviously this has pitfalls. For one thing, it may not be easy or even possible to really deconstruct Mishnah, Talmud, and Gemara back to that very special first century Rabbi in order to learn what he was teaching within its intended context. I must admit that much of the material I study seems to resemble what Jesus has taught to his disciples, but I know I have probably been deceiving myself. I hope I wasn’t deceiving you.

Wait. Let me explain.

I’m not “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” and I still think there is value in a Christian studying Judaism. I’m still here and I’m still studying, so it’s still important to me. But maybe I’ve been generalizing information beyond reasonable bounds. I quoted that small piece from from the “story off the daf” to illustrate that this information was written by and for Jews. Sure, some of what is presented in Jewish literature can be applied to a larger, non-Jewish audience but a lot of it can’t. Here’s another example:

In any case, since virtually all Jews with an interest in proper practice – lay preachers, priests, pietists, scribes – will have appealed to the Torah for support, the scriptural origins of mishnaic law will tell us nothing about the social group or groups from which the Mishnah derives. Nor can such derivation tell us whether a given law is a pre-mishnaic tradition or a mishnaic creation, since Jews read Scripture both before and after 70 C.E. If a mishnaic law can be shown to derive from a specific mode of reading Scripture, and if that mode of reading can be shown to derive from a specific group or a specific period, then of course the origins of that law would be established. But, as far as I know, convincing examples of this have yet to be adduced.

-Shaye J.D. Cohen
“The Judaean Legal Tradition and the Halakhah of the Mishnah”
Published in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature
Edited by Charlotte E. Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee

Also, as Derek Leman says on the blog post I previously quoted:

The problem with Torah Fundamental #2 is that modern readers of the Bible tend to prefer the “every man does what is right in his own mind” ethic of our time. Tradition is a bad word. Authority in the hands of a group of people, such as the rabbis, is deemed oppressive and false. The Bible means what it means to me and no one should dictate procedure or tradition. How does Israel’s tradition work and how can those who want to know Torah respect the tradition?

Here is a problem that occurs often in our time: a person discovers Torah coming from a free church tradition and becomes “Hebraic” or “Messianic” and they read Torah as a free thinker descended from the Enlightenment. The people who fall into this trap generally don’t realize that they are reading Torah in a modernist mode. They think they are being true to the Bible.

Even if we look at the same texts as Jewish people, we don’t always see the same things. In fact, to the degree that Gentile Christians lack a Jewish conceptual framework, we are guaranteed not to see the same things. When a Jewish teacher tries to explain this to us, we are likely to reject his comments out of hand, because they go against how our Gentile perceptions construct God, Jesus, and the Bible. I try very hard to avoid falling into this trap and in my own limited way, I think I am successful. But not entirely.

I struggle with how far I can take my present course and whether or not I’ll go sailing off the edge of the world and into the infinite abyss (I’m being overly dramatic) in my zeal, but the other option is to censor myself and limit what I read and study. I don’t like that idea, either. What I require ideally is the context I lack because I was not born Jewish, not raised in a Jewish home, and not educated as a Jew. No, I don’t regret who I am, how I was raised, and what I have learned in my life as it has been, but my “identity” automatically restricts my abilities and perceptions in terms of studying Judaism.

Some Christians have overcome this barrier, but only after many years of study, usually in a Jewish context such as classes offered at a synagogue, Jewish Community Center, or similar environment. For reasons too lengthy to explain, those options are not currently available to me. Still, I cannot simply let this go. I just have to try to be more careful.

Of course, I’m still going to make mistakes, I just hate making them.

I found something interesting at Chabad.org yesterday.

Wisdom lives in the future, and from there it speaks to us. There is no such thing as wisdom of the past.

Wisdom preceded the world and wisdom is its destiny. With each passing moment, wisdom becomes younger, as we come closer to the time when it is born and breathes the air of day.

Our ancient mothers and fathers, the sages, all those from whom we learn wisdom—they are not guardians of the past. They are messengers of the future.

The truth can never be old-fashioned. It was never in fashion to begin with.

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

I’m used to thinking of wisdom as being locked up in the works of the past and the minds and hearts of people long gone from this world. When I think of “wisdom” as a goal, it never occurred to me to consider wisdom as something we are longing for in the same way we are longing for the Messiah. I know that the path toward wisdom, like living a life, cannot be experienced without making mistakes. Making a mistake is sometimes more helpful in learning something revolutionary than making 1,000 correct decisions. It’s also more painful.

The conclusion I’m approaching is that limiting my access to Jewish educational materials isn’t going to help me, but attempting not to stretch them too far outside of their original form and substance might. That still goes against my nature, because stretching or bending information and concepts more often leads to revolutionary or evolutionary learning than playing it safe.

As you can see, I’m still arguing with myself about what I should do and where I should go from here. I just gave a piece of advice to another Christian blogger not to make a change just to reduce anxiety or just for the sake of changing something. In that same vein, I don’t think I’ll change to much around here in the near future. I’ll try to be more careful in how I apply what I’m learning, but to tell you the truth, I learn more when someone comes in here and explains what I said wrong and why it was wrong, than when people come around and say that I got it right (not that I mind complements).

I don’t think I’m really in danger of falling off the edge of the world (and based on the lack of comments in that blog post to date, other people don’t think so, either). However, I do need to verify that my footing is a little more sure sometimes. Perhaps someday, wisdom will lend me her wings so I can fly across the edge and discover the other side.

Why do I do this? Why am I on this rather problematic path? I feel driven by something I can’t explain and I feel that it’s important to try to understand certain things. I believe this trail, for me, is the right one, even though I walk it very imperfectly. I stumble, stagger, and fall like a drunken student on the floor of my school house that keeps tilting and twisting under me. But I’m waiting for something. I’m waiting for someone. Is wisdom coming from the future, tracing a backward path toward humanity like the coming of Messiah?

The great song traveler passed through here
And he opened my eyes to the view
And I was among those who called him a prophet
And I asked him what was true
Until the distance had shown how the road remains alone
Now I’m looking in my life for a truth that is my own

Well I looked into the sky for my anthem
And the words and the music came through
But words and music will never touch the beauty that I’ve seen
Looking into you

And that’s true

-Jackson Browne
“Looking Into You” (1972)

Sometimes the sages tell us, “This wisdom is out of bounds. This contains truth for which you are not yet ready.”

If the soul is intact, it will thirst all the more to attain that wisdom. In truth, that is the inner reason we are told such things.

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

When someone asked the Korban Nesanel, zt”l, whether he should make a brochah when doing shiluach hakein, he replied that he should not. “The reason why is obvious: maybe the egg or eggs are inedible. As we find in Chullin 140 there is no mitzvah to do shiluach hakein on such an egg. It follows that we cannot make a brochah on this mitzvah.”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories off the Daf
“Blessing the Mitzvah”
Chullin 140

Generally in this blog, but especially in the last two blog posts, I’ve been trying to filter Jewish Rabbinic learning through a Gentile Christian understanding. Most of the time, I believe that Christians must struggle with Judaism in some manner or fashion in order to gain a better insight into our faith and our Savior. I believe there is a dimension to be explored that, if we dare enter, will provide a form of illumination into who we are as disciples of the Master that otherwise would completely escape us.

Of course there is the other side of the coin. As Rabbi Freeman suggests, perhaps there is a “wisdom…out of bounds” for us, a boundary that we should not cross, a road that we should not travel, even though it cruelly beckons us.

I don’t know.

Part of my frustration is that I lack the essential educational and cultural foundation to truly do justice to the path I’ve selected. As has become abundantly clear, there is so much I do not know, not only at the level of education, but of experience and identity. Although I seriously doubt I see the world the way most other Christians see it, I also am incapable of seeing the world the way most Jews see it. I deliberately inserted a small paragraph from the Daf on Chullin 140 to illustrate this point.

But if the story of religious Judaism as transmitted in the Bible cannot be comprehended by Gentile Christians, then what the heck are we doing here and why are we reading it? Most churches and Christianity as a whole have refactored the Bible to make it transmit a wholly non-Jewish message and that message, for the most part, is extremely comfortable to most Gentile believers. It speaks our language which is certainly not Hebrew or Aramaic and it offers us a picture we can conveniently wrap our brains and feelings around with little or no effort.

Once you start deconstructing the story of the Bible back to its original language, context, and people, that message becomes increasingly alien to us. We blink our eyes a few times and discover once familiar terrain has become unrecognizable, incomprehensible, and even frightening. A 21st century Gentile Christian suddenly caught on the other side of the Bible, hundreds or thousands of years in the past, among a foreign people, trying to cope with strange customs, and a virtually encrypted language is totally removed from understanding the people of the Bible and hasn’t the vaguest idea how to approach God. Even the safe and loving Jesus Christ becomes Yeshua ben Yosef, whose face, voice, and demeanor are completely at odds with our “meek and mild” Savior. Just how strange would he appear to us and, to the degree that he rarely spoke with non-Jews, if we could understand him, what would he say to us, if anything at all?

So what are we doing here, why do we read the Bible, and especially, why do we attempt to understand where it came from and who the people inhabiting its pages really were as flesh and blood human beings? Should we attempt to know them? Can we really know them?

Isaac then brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he took Rebekah as his wife. Isaac loved her, and thus found comfort after his mother’s death. –Genesis 24:67 (JPS Tanakh)

Isaac took his bride into his mother’s tent. All this time Sarah’s tent had been empty and forlorn, symbolizing the absence of the eishet chayil (virtuous wife). The Torah portion began the story of Rebekah by telling us of the death of Sarah. Since his mother’s death, Isaac had been in mourning. He keenly felt her absence. Isaac taking his bride into Sarah’s tent symbolizes Rebekah stepping into Sarah’s role as matriarch over the house of Abraham. In the language of the rabbis, Rebekah became the house of Isaac.

“Love and Marriage”
Commentary on Parasha Chayei Sarah
FFOZ.org

This is where a Christian can intersect with the ancient Jewish universe, understand what is going on, and learn what it is for a person to interact with God. Who couldn’t understand grief at the loss of a mother, loneliness, and the need to be comforted? How many of us who depend on God have come to realize that we also need to hold onto a living, breathing human being when we are troubled or in distress? In this, is it so hard to understand Isaac and what he was going through at that moment?

But there is that rather mysterious and puzzling question about “whether a person should make a brochah when doing shiluach hakein.” Attempting to force some of the very human lessons of the Bible into a framework made up of Mishnah, Talmud, and Gemara may be a case, at least for me, of my reach exceeding my grasp. I may long to understand the “Jewish condition” and believe that it can be applied to the much larger context of human beings and our desire to encounter God, but longing for a thing does not make it occur nor does that longing even make it possible.

I’ve mentioned this before, but my wife has told me on several occasions that there is a perspective and thought process shared by people who were born and raised in a Jewish cultural, religious, and ethnic context that is fundamentally different from how people operate who come from other contexts. In that sense, it’s amazing any Jew and Christian can talk to each other at all, even though we may have the English language in common. I suppose I’m overstating my point, but with good reason. While I still think that shared knowledge is good and that there is a wisdom Christians can glean from Jewish education on some level, I’m starting to wonder where the limit of that journey lies. In ancient times, people believed that there was an edge to the world and mariners who sailed too far away from safe and familiar shores risked being lost forever as they fell endlessly down into the mists of the unknown. While we now know this “danger” is completely untrue, in a past centuries gone, those otherwise brave and daring men would experience fear and horror while contemplating that part of the map that declared, “Here there be dragons!”

I’m sure there are Jewish people in the world who, from their perspective, rightfully desire to limit Gentile access to Jewish learning. Should a Ger Toshav study the laws pertaining to the Kohen Gadol? Is it proper for a Christian who worships oto ha’ish as God and man to sit in at a “Talmud 101” class taught by a Rabbi at the local Chabad? From my point of view, if there is a line I should not cross or a barrier I should respect and not transverse, I don’t know where it is. In the violent mists and roar of the waters pouring over the vastness of the world’s edge, I cannot see it or hear it. One can only find “world’s end” by sailing across it and then, when it’s finally too late, declaring, “I’ve gone too far.”

Or we can simply turn our tiny wooden vessel around and head for safe harbor.

I’m not inclined to do that right now, but the day may come when I will have to revisit that option. Until then, I’m letting the wind take me to places not on my map and trying to draw a chart of currents, islands, and shoals I don’t always recognize. Even imagining they seem familiar, I am sometimes told by those who live there that I have my map upside down and my picture is askew.

Each pull at the oars takes me someplace I’ve never been before and each gust of wind pushes me into mysterious territory. What will I find and will I even understand what I’m looking at when I arrive? I don’t know, yet I’m driven to continue the journey, dangerous though it may be, until I either finally understand this strange book I hold in my hands or admit that it was written by and for men who are from a different world and always will be. Then I’ll either return to more familiar environs, where ever they may be found, or let myself sail over the edge of the world and discover if I will fly or drown.