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Fearfully in the Hands of God

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You, Hashem, do not withhold your mercy from me; may Your kindness and Your truth always protect me. For innumerable evils have encircled me, my sins have overtaken me and I am unable to see; they have become more numerous than the hairs on my head and my courage has abandoned me. –Psalm 40:12-13 (The Stone Edition Tanakh)

Were He to kill me, I would still yearn for Him. –Job 13:15 (The Stone Edition Tanakh)

Have you ever been sick or hurt? I don’t mean have you ever had the flu or a cold or hit your thumb with a hammer, but have you every really been sick or hurt? Have you been in the hospital? Have you ever worried that you might not see another day, or that your health and well-being would take a permanent turn for the worse?

Imagine Job, who lost everything and was completely bewildered as to the cause. He had always been steadfast in his faith and virtually walked in the footsteps of God, yet in nearly the wink of an eye, he was laid destitute and at death’s doorstep. His friends all turned against him, blaming him for his own misfortune. Even his wife cried out to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!” Job did not have a happy life during this time and for all he knew, it would all end in his agonizing death. Yet his words recorded in Job 13:15 relate the nature of his faith and trust in God and the character of this man in the face of harsh tragedy.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken at Project Genesis wrote a commentary for Torah Portion Miketz that speaks to this kind of trust and the consequences when we lack it.

We read this week that two years after Pharoah’s wine steward and chief baker had their dreams, Pharoah had one of his own, and as a result, they rushed Joseph from jail.

Obviously Pharoah needed Joseph, but the Torah tells us something deeper: that Joseph was only in jail for the precise amount of time decreed from above. In fact, Joseph would have gotten out of jail earlier, but the Torah tells us that “the wine steward did not remember Joseph, and he forgot him.”

Why did he forget? Rabbi Shimon Yitzchaki quotes the Medrash, which explains that Joseph placed his trust in the wine steward, rather than G-d. For that reason, G-d made sure that the wine steward forgot him.

We celebrate the holiday of Chanukah because Judah “the Maccabee” and his brothers did the opposite. Yehudah may have been strong, but he wasn’t insane. His was a small group, vastly outnumbered by not only the well-trained Greek army, but even by the Hellenized Jews of the era. They went out to wage war, against impossible odds, expressing their trust that G-d would help them.

This, too, drives home the lesson that we discussed two weeks ago — that we are obligated to make our own efforts, but “know that if they succeed, it is only because G-d granted them success.” It doesn’t matter if the person we might trust is a friend or relative or even ourselves… in the end, success comes from a Higher Authority.

Quite some time ago, I wrote about the difference between faith and trust. Faith is knowing God exists. Trust is putting your life literally in His hands. But in spite of the fact that all people of faith desire to have a perfect trust in God, we are frail and mortal; “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41). When we’re alone and afraid, how many of us can sweep away anxiety and terror with a wave of our hand and summon the full might of God as our courage?

I know I can’t. The best I can do is to try and echo the words of Job (Job 13:15), fearfully acknowledging at such desperate moments that my health, safety, and my very life are completely in His hands to do with as He wills. There is no bargaining with God. Paul quotes Moses (Exodus 33:19) to teach us this lesson.

What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses,

“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. –Romans 9:14-16

Rabbi Menken teaches that we are obligated to make our own efforts, but “know that if they succeed, it is only because G-d granted them success,” so we cannot sit passively and expect God to raise miracles for us. We must participate, as best we can, in God’s efforts but knowing that success is not because of us, but because of Him. Yet there are times when we can do nothing for ourselves and must rely totally on God’s mercy and His will. When someone who is having a heart attack or a stroke is in the emergency room, all they can do is to trust in God for their life, even if it should end in death because that is the nature of man in relationship to God. When a person has cancer, they can undergo various therapies and treatments, but their life remains solely in God’s hands. Job also teaches, “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1:21) That we pray for life does not mean that God is obligated to always give life. All people live in His hands and all people die in His hands.

I know this sounds dismal and depressing, especially on the day when the vast majority of the Christian world is celebrating the birth of the King of Kings, but lest we imagine that God is obligated to grant us a perfect, stress free existence, the counterpoint is that we are but dust and ashes; we are grass that is growing today, and tomorrow, is withered and thrown into the fire. In the end, we can try to live healthy lives, lives of faith, devotion, charity, and study; we try take care of ourselves and others, but still, no one knows the hour of his own death.

In those moments of hideous uncertainty or in that final “moment of truth”, we can only summon whatever trust in God we may possess and cry out to Him for His infinite mercy. If he should turn the hand of sickness and death away, we rejoice, and if not, we are with Him.

In His hands are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is His also. –Psalm 95:4 (KJV)

May they rejoice and be glad in You, all who seek You; may they always say, “Hashem be magnified!” those who live Your salvation. As for me, I am poor and destitute, the Lord will think of me. You are my help and my Rescuer, my God do not delay. –Psalm 40:17-18 (The Stone Edition Tanakh)

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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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When We Were Five

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The Rebbe and the ChildIf you want to see the face of the Moshiach, just look at the children!

At Sinai, all men, women and children had to be present. All received the same truth, all at once.

In a simple commentary written for a five year old, great secrets of the Torah can be found. But only once you understand the simple commentary as a five year old does.

From the wisdom of the Rebbe
Menachem M. Schneerson
as compiled by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman in his book
Bringing Heaven Down to Earth

Perhaps in the Rebbe’s words, we find the keys to unlock this 2,000 year old mystery:

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. –Matthew 18:1-5

We sometimes make the mistake of imposing our assumptions when we read this teaching from Jesus. The first thing we imagine when we think of a small child is that, compared to an adult, he or she doesn’t know very much about the world. Children have an extremely simple understanding of how things work. They can see the moon in the sky, but not know what it is. They can play with their favorite stuffed toy and believe it is as alive as they are. They are easily convinced of the most outrageous suggestions and accept them as utter truth. How else could we get a child to believe that there is a fat guy who rides in a sled pulled by flying reindeer, and who delivers presents to every child on Earth in a single night?

Translating all of that back into the words of Christ, we imagine he means that we don’t need to know very much about the Bible, the history of the church, the wisdom of the great Sages, or most anything else in order to be saved and have a right relationship with God. It means that studying the Bible is a waste of time, because it doesn’t change the status of being saved. It means that Bible commentaries, the Talmud, and everyone who reads and tries to comprehend them, are just making your relationship with God too complicated. After all, once you are saved in Christ, the deal is sealed and nothing else matters at all. If you’re a Christian it’s only about you and Jesus.

Right?

That tends to illustrate one of the qualities of small children; the tendency toward being self-absorbed and the difficulty in seeing a world outside of our own small sphere. Being saved and becoming a disciple of the Master is the first step in our journey, not the last.

So what does Jesus mean? What does the Rebbe mean? How are great secrets possessed by little, uncomprehending children that elude perhaps some of the greatest scholars who have ever lived? Is Bible study; Torah study a waste of time? Here’s Rabbi Freeman’s response:

The Rebbe often repeated that through the study of Torah you could conquer the world. And from the way the Rebbe discussed Torah you could see he was doing just that: Every thought, every teaching was a new understanding of the entire universe. A simple story..became in his hands an insight to the workings of time and space.

Rabbi Freeman, who describes the Rebbe as one of the foremost Torah scholars of his age, also tells this story about him:

The child he (the Rebbe) saw as a lucid, glistening crystal vessel in which to find G-d. More than once the Rebbe pointed out how his own thoughts strove to attain the simplicity of those of a child. In that simplicity, he taught, can be found the simplicity of the Infinite.

The Rebbe formed a club for Jewish children called “Tzivos Hashem”. He told the children that with verses of Torah and good deeds they would fight the forces of darkness in the world and bring Moshiach.

The Children began to stand close to the Rebbe at public gatherings. Some went under the table near his feet. Legend has it that occasionally a small band would rise up from under the table to snatch a piece of the Rebbe’s cake.

For me, this really clarifies why Bible study and immersion in the Torah are vital to achieving and retaining the perspective of a small child who is contemplating God.

Remember what I said about how adults can cause a child to have an unswerving belief in the existence of Santa Claus? It’s not the child’s fault that he or she believes in a fantasy, it’s the adults who taught them. Children are open to those they trust and they believe their parents (in most cases) mean them nothing but good. Sure, they get mad at us temporarily when we discipline them for some misdeed, but they know with complete trust that we are the source of all good in their lives. This is how we saw the world when we were five.

We fail them when we don’t tell them the truth and prove unworthy of their trust.

TrustBut now let’s bump that concept up the ladder a bit. We, as adults, can question whether or not something is the truth. We no longer believe in Santa Claus and we can (most of the time) recognize the difference between fantasy and reality. We have a Father in Heaven who is the source of all good in our lives. He wants nothing but the best for us and He does not tell us tales of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, which we later find out are quaint lies. God tells us the truth. In essence, we are like children standing close to the Rebbe and sitting at his feet under the table. Now here’s where the “child” part comes in.

If we choose to believe and to trust God as completely as small children trust their parents, whatever God tells us, we will believe. Whatever He wants us to do, we will do, without questioning why. When we “snatch a piece of cake” (so to speak) from His table, He won’t mind, because He knows we’re going to do it and He put the cake there to share with us. If we want to know how to accept God in the manner He desires to be accepted, trusted, and loved, all we have to do is to look at the relationship between little children and their parents.

For me, one of the lessons I must learn about the little children is what the Rebbe says here:

With Torah, you don’t get all the answers all at once.

Why does the moon only come out at night? Why is the sky blue? How can a fish breathe underwater? How old is God? Have you ever tried to answer these questions? It’s hard to do. Even if you know why the sky is blue or how fish breathe underwater, you can’t always communicate the answer in a way a child will understand. It’s that way for me. I want to know so much. It seems as if there’s so little time. And yet I wait. You don’t get all the answers all at once. Sometimes you have to get older first before you can understand.

In the meantime, you trust and believe, because that’s what small children do best.

Now to finish the story about the children snatching the Rebbe’s cake:

Finally, one of the adults became fed up with this lack of decorum and attempted to escort some children away. The Rebbe turned to him and exclaimed, “You are only a civilian and they are soldiers – and you want to remove them?

As the Rebbe also said, “Wealth is not a mansion filled with silver and gold. Wealth is children and grandchildren growing up on the right path.”

May we all “grow up” on the right path, too.

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Broken

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Broken FaithA certain man was profoundly depressed. He perceived his many flaws and failings and they pained him, but he did not feel confident that he could atone for them. How could he possibly rectify such serious wrongs?

When Rav Yissachar Dov of Belz, zt”l, was asked what someone in this state of mind should do, he offered powerful words of encouragement. “You must understand that God never rejects the Jewish community, as we find in Chullin 29. The halachah is that if an individual is defiled within the community, he can bring his korban Pesach along with them. His personal sacrifice is not rejected because he is part of the community.

“By the same token, someone who takes stock of himself and finds himself riddled with faults should not give up. Although his feelings of inadequacy push him to abandon his efforts to serve God altogether, God forbid, he must take heart and do what he can. It is true that he is defiled, but if he becomes one with the Jewish community, God will enable him to rectify his many transgressions.”

The Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh, zt”l, offered different advice to help fight feelings of spiritual inadequacy, however. “A person may contemplate the many mitzvos in the Torah and say, ‘How can I possibly fulfill them as required?’ Similarly, someone who has transgressed many sins should beware of what his yetzer haram (evil inclination) will surely claim: ‘How can you rectify so many evil deeds?’

“It is for this person that Moshe warns us, ‘And you should know today.’ He was alluding to Shabbos, regarding which the verse states, ‘Today is Shabbos.’ Moshe was telling us to how to answer such discouraging claims. We must say in our hearts: ‘Our sages explain that keeping Shabbos is likened to fulfilling the entire Torah. Through learning the laws of Shabbos and keeping them carefully, week after week, God will help me rectify my spiritual failings.’”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“Joining the Community”
Chullin 29

If you’re a Christian, you may find several things about this commentary that trouble you. For one, it’s addressed to the Jewish people, so how can it apply to you? It also talks about a Jewish person’s difficulty in fulfilling all of the Torah commandments, which doubtlessly, you believe don’t apply to you. Also, the vast majority of Christians either don’t see the relevance of keeping the Shabbat as Jews do, or they believe that going to church on Sunday and then doing “whatever” afterward, fulfills this requirement.

Take a closer look.

While I agree that the commentary was written specifically to apply to Jews and that the 613 commandments Jews believe they are obligated to fulfill do not apply to non-Jewish Christians (or the vast majority of them, anyway), there is a lesson to be learned here. Despite being “saved” by Jesus Christ, a Christian still can feel as if he or she is spiritually deficient. It’s not like it’s impossible for a Christian to sin or even impossible for a Christian to suffer under multiple, habitual sins. It’s hardly impossible or a Christian to feel terrible guilt over having committed many sins and to experience a profound distance from God.

Some Christians in this situation simply give up their faith and surrender to their sins and the values of a fallen world.

The message of the esteemed Ravs we see quoted above is a message of hope that we Christians can look to as well. We are grafted in to the “cultivated olive tree” and “if the root is holy, so are the branches” (Romans 11:16). But while Rav Yissachar Dov suggests that a Jew can draw strength from the larger Jewish community, and the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh states that when a Jew observes the mitzvot applying to the Shabbat, it’s as if he fulfilled all of the Torah commandments, where does that leave us? How can a Christian overcome a profound sense of guilt over committing not just a few, but many sins across a long time period while professing faith in Christ?

The answer really isn’t that different. One of the reasons we gather in groups and worship communally is to gather strength and encouragement from each other:

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. –1 Thessalonians 5:11

But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. –Hebrews 3:13

SorrowYou may not want to open up and expose the full truth of your being to your entire congregation or Sunday school class, but you can find someone on the Pastoral staff whom you feel you can trust, a compassionate Bible teacher, or a close Christian friend, and ask them for help. Yes, turn to God in prayer, repent in the name of Jesus, ask for forgiveness and the strength to stand tall under temptation, but don’t forget the kindness, grace, and support you can receive from a believing neighbor or friend. God provides us human comforters for a reason.

The other point also applies, though it may be more difficult to see.

In yesterday’s morning meditation, I suggested that it is appropriate and even beneficial for Christians to observe and keep the Shabbat in a manner similar to the Jewish people. That is, to keep an entire 24-hour period of time devoted to drawing nearer to God and to separating from the routine and stress of day-to-day life. Christians tend to see keeping a Sabbath in this manner as a list of what they can’t do (can’t go shopping, can’t go out to lunch, can’t mow the lawn), but it’s more about freedom than about restriction. It’s the freedom to put down the load you carry the other six-days of the week and to spend time focusing who you are; putting all of your attention on God, on prayer, on Bible study, on discussing the teachings of Jesus with others.

Christianity doesn’t have a tradition that says fulfilling one set of holy acts somehow fulfills all of them, but we don’t generally look at things that way. We know that Jesus atoned for our sins, so we don’t concern ourselves with all of the separate actions we would have to take to atone for all of the different sins we committed. We aren’t responsible for making the atonement ourselves, only for accepting the fact that Jesus is our atonement.

Still, as Christians, we can be overwhelmed by the amount and the depth of our sins and how we can ever manage to break the cycle of our disobedience. How can we remove all of the darkness from our souls and know that we are clean after leading sinful lives for months or even years? Wouldn’t a lifetime of sin and hypocrisy as a Christian take a lifetime to undo? How can we be forgiven if we still sin? Rather than trying to see the end result, we can take the “a journey of a thousand miles” point of view on the matter. We can start by focusing on just the first step.

Here’s the deal. Your life is a mess. You’ve really screwed up and you’ve been screwing up for a long time. Maybe your married life is worse than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s or you’ve severely “abused” Google’s image search feature on your computer to view women “inappropriately”. Perhaps your business dealings have been less than “open and above board” or you’ve been putting your hand in the boss’s till rather than helping your employer earn a profit.

Maybe you’ve been calling yourself a “Christian” and going to church on Sunday, but behaving no differently than the atheists and agnostics that populate your community, your workplace, and your neighborhood.

There’s hope. There’s always hope. You can turn it around. It won’t be easy and it won’t be quick. I know you’d like it to be. I know it might seem easier to just give up, but that only puts more distance between you and God and trust me, you’ll regret it in the long run. God said, “”Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:22) and please notice that He is addressing “all you ends of the earth” and not the Children of Israel exclusively.

Faith and belief in Jesus isn’t enough to help you. Knowing God exists and leaving it at that isn’t the answer. James, the brother of the Master, said that we must have faith and deeds (James 2:14-24). We must trust that when we turn from sin to God and desire return, that God will be there with open arms waiting for us, like the Father of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). We must not only believe God will accept our repentance, we must actually take the “risk” of returning and abandoning the sins that keep us from Him.

The only mistake you can make that is absolutely fatal is to walk away from God and never look back. Short of that, while you’re alive, you have hope. The world may be broken, but God can heal your brokenness.

There’s no such thing as defeat. There’s always another chance. To believe in defeat is to believe that there is something, a certain point in time that did not come from Above.

Know that G-d doesn’t have failures. If things appear to worsen, it is only as part of them getting better. We only fall down in order to bounce back even higher.

From the wisdom of the Rebbe
Menachem M. Schneerson
as compiled by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman in his book
Bringing Heaven Down to Earth

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Finding Freedom

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CaptureTell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise.

These things are being taken figuratively: The women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother. –Galatians 4:21-26

Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment. –James 2:12-13

So what is it? Does the Law take away freedom or does the law give freedom? Are we even talking about the same Law; the Torah?

I’ve often suspected that Paul and James didn’t see eye-to-eye on many issues. Paul was operating for years at a time in the diaspora, bringing the Gentiles to faith in the Jewish Messiah and teaching them his ways and how to trust in God. There wasn’t a lot of oversight going on from the Jerusalem Counsel, so Paul could have gotten away with re-writing the Gospel message in his own image, diluting or even eliminating the law and replacing it a type of “grace” that is the antithesis of the law (though in reality, they are not mutually exclusive). It’s clear that James wouldn’t have agreed with that message.

However, if you read D. Thomas Lancaster’s new book The Holy Epistle to the Galatians, you’ll see that Paul and James were more alike than unalike (though I still suspect that they had their individual perspectives). For one thing, despite the common Christian tradition of interpreting Galatians 4:21-26 as “anti-Law” (and in the plain English text, it certainly seems that’s what Paul’s saying), the issues are more complex. Lancaster interprets them this way:

The passage contrasts two types of proselytes: the legal proselyte and the spiritual proselyte. The one becomes part of Abraham’s family by conventional conversion, the other through faith in Messiah, the promised seed of Abraham, in whom all nations find blessing. The passage does not contrast the Old Testament against the New Testament or the Old Covenant with the New Covenant. It does not equate Judaism and Torah with slavery, nor does it pit Christians against Jews.

It means that if you are a Jewish believer , you should be proud of being Jewish because you are a child of Abraham, legally, physically, and spiritually. It means that if you are a Gentile believer, you, too, are part of the people, a spiritual son of Abraham, and that is remarkable – miraculous even. You are a child of the promise that God made to Abraham so long ago.

I’ve already written a review of Lancaster’s book and I’m not going to “reinvent the wheel”, so to speak, but I’m presenting this “extra meditation” this afternoon, in response to the following:

No one can say he is free today because yesterday he was granted freedom.

Freedom is a source of endless energy.
Freedom is the power behind this entire universe.
Freedom is the force that brings existence out of the void.

You are free when you take part in that endlessness. When you never stand still. When you are forever escaping the confines of today to create a freer tomorrow.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Perpetual Freedom”
Chabad.org

As an Orthodox Jew, Rabbi Freeman isn’t considering that the Torah is somehow slavery or bondage, even for a single moment. So how are Christians to interpret his words of freedom as well as the apparent conflict between Paul and James, both observant and devout Jews, on how they view the Torah?

It is said that the world was created for the sake of Torah and that, without the Torah, the world could not have been made. The analogous teaching we have in Christianity is this:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. –John 1:1-3

TeshuvahHere, we see a sort of “fusion” or co-identity, in some mystic sense, between the Torah and the Messiah, Son of the living God. Christians know that Jesus gives us freedom from the slavery of sin and Jews know that the Torah is the gateway to God’s endless energy, the power behind the universe, and the limitless, eternal source that creates existence out of nothingness. Through Torah, God does not enslave, but provides the means by which men may know God and understand our relationship to Him. If the same can be said of Jesus, then we can all understand from where our freedom comes.

While non-Jewish disciples of the Jewish Messiah are not obligated to the same “yoke of Torah” as the Jewish people (see Acts 15), we nonetheless are grafted into the root of the Tree of Life and like branches on the vine, we draw our nourishment and the ability to live a life of holiness from an identical source; God.

To do so requires more than just believing and more than just learning; we must do, we must behave, we must live out the values we understand from the Torah and how they were taught to us by the “living Torah”, the Moshiach, Jesus Christ. Part of that living is understanding where we came from, who we are, and our need to separate from sin and embrace holiness and peace. To gain freedom from sin, we must recognize the depth and despair of sin, which is what the Torah aptly defines, and only upon achieving that understanding, can we truly turn away from that sin and turn toward the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob:

The Ohr Hachaim HaKadosh, zt”l, writes that one can only do teshuvah if he first recognizes the gravity of his sin.

A certain person committed a sin. When Rav Mordechai Aryeh Halevi Horowitz, zt”l, gently nudged him to repent the sinner displayed his relaxed attitude towards teshuvah. “Why repent now? Soon enough it will be Elul, the season when the shofar is sounded to remind us to do teshuvah. Can’t my teshuvah wait until then?”

Rav Horowitz rejected this attitude out of hand. “As is well known, the main element in teshuvah is havdalah, separating between what is proper and what is not. It is only by determining which actions lead to darkness and which generate light that we act as is fitting. Even if a person with understanding falls to sin chas v’shalom, he knows to repent and change his ways. But many people wait until Elul to do teshuvah. After all, isn’t that when we are aroused to repentance by the shofar as the Rambam writes?

“We find in the Mishnah in Chulin 26 that whenever the Shofar is sounded we do not say havdalah. Conversely, whenever we say havdalah we do not sound the shofar. Although on a simple level this is a sign for when they would blow the shofar to signify the onset of Shabbos or Yom Tov, this statement also teaches a lesson about teshuvah. When one feels justified waiting to do teshuvah until the shofar is sounded during Elul, this shows he lacks understanding. He does not comprehend the gravity of sins since this leads to havdalah, healthy separation between what is right and what is wrong. One who has fitting discrimination between good and bad doesn’t wait to hear the shofar to repent!”

Dam Yomi Digest
Stories off the Daf
“Time for Repentance”
Chullin 26

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. –1 John 1:8-9

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What God Has Joined Together

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MarryToday’s “extra” meditation.

Tens of thousands of Jews have married non-Jews with similar worthy intentions, only to realize when it is already too late that raising a Jewish family with a non-Jewish partner is a near impossibility.

You are my sister. I want to dance at your wedding. I want my daughters to be your flower girls. I want to cry tears of happiness at your chuppah.

I love you. I admire and am very fond of Mike. But if you marry Mike, as difficult as it will be for me as well as for you, I will not be able to attend your wedding. I could not attend your wedding because, as Jews, what would happen on your wedding day would not be a happy event. It would be a tragedy of historic proportions.

I wish that this was not a letter that I had to write. I wish that I could just keep on smiling and acting as though everything is all right, like everybody else in our family. But I feel that, as painful as this is, because I care about you as much as I do, I must tell you the truth.

from “Dear Rebecca: A Letter on Intermarriage”
found at Chabad of Mineola

This is part of a very poignant letter from one Jewish sister to another on the announcement that the other sister “Rebecca” is marrying a non-Jew. As you can see, this is no small thing for many Jews and, in this circumstance, the sister writing the letter feels so strongly that, if her sister “Rebecca” insists on marrying “Mike”, the letter-writer won’t be attending the ceremony.

I know this sounds cruel and heartless. After all, if this woman has found her “soulmate” and that man happens not to be Jewish, is it really so bad?

Let’s go back a step.

The 52nd prohibition is that we are forbidden from marrying heretics.

The source of this commandment is G-d’s statement, “do not intermarry with them,” which then explains what kind of intermarriage is referred to – “do not give your daughters to their sons, and do not take their daughters for your sons.”

Tractate Avodah Zarah states clearly, “the Torah prohibition applies where there is marriage.”

-from Chabad.org

Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. –Deuteronomy 7:3-4

This is the Biblical and Talmudic basis for prohibiting intermarriage between a Jew and a non-Jew. We also see a dramatic example of what happens when Jews are tempted to intermarry in Genesis 34. However, you might say that Christianity also has a similar “commandment”:

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God… –2 Corinthians 6:14-16

However, for a Christian, Paul provided a “loophole”:

To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. –1 Corinthians 7:12-14

Traffic ConesI have a personal stake in this matter because I’m intermarried to a Jewish woman but with a twist; neither of us was religious when we first married. My wife wasn’t raised in a religious home and her own parents were also intermarried (her mother was Jewish). Only one of my wife’s Jewish relatives (a cousin) was at our wedding, but the matter of intermarriage never came up.

Since then, my wife and I have both come to faith, albeit different faiths, and I’ve been actively exploring what all this is supposed to mean. I’ve read a lot of books, including Rabbi Kerry Olitzky’s Making a Successful Jewish Interfaith Marriage, but the materials available on the market always address people who are already religious or observant and who are about to be married. I’m not 25 anymore and just starting out, and in fact, my wife and I have been married for almost 30 years. It’s only in the past five years or so that “intermarriage” has become a factor in our relationship. As our paths continue to diverge in our individual journeys with God, what will that mean?

Dr. David Rudolph published a paper on intermarriage statistics which states that Jewish-non-Jewish intermarriages are pretty much going through the roof. It’s considered an “epidemic” by more conservative sects of Judaism and a threat to Jewish survival. Not only is there a tangible fear that if a Jew marries a non-Jew, that the Jew will be drawn away from their faith, but that the children will have no definitive Jewish identity, thus effectively eliminating a large population of Jews from the next generation.

There’s also the threat of divorce to contend with:

In a paper published in 1993, Evelyn Lehrer, a professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, found that if members of two mainline Christian denominations marry, they have a one in five chance of being divorced in five years. A Catholic and a member of an evangelical denomination have a one in three chance. And a Jew and a Christian who marry have a greater than 40 percent chance of being divorced in five years.

-Naomi Schaefer Riley, Interfaith Marriages Are Rising Fast, But They’re Failing Fast Too, Washington Post, 6 June 2010

The Chabad of Mineola website also published a response by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman to a Jewish woman asking if she should marry her Muslim boyfriend. Here is part of Rabbi Freeman’s response:

I don’t know where this man stands, whether he is a secular Muslim, a literalist or a mystic, or has beaten his own path. But it is not possible that there will not be conflict over these issues. On the one hand, as his wife, you will need to defend him before family members and other Jews. Yet it’s not possible that in all issues you will agree. After all, if you did, where would the “other” be? The conflict could be deeply painful, destructive of family ties and friendships for both of you. Rather than leading to self-discovery, it may lead instead to a sacrifice of your own identity to save the marriage.

In the end, if you truly love this man, direct him on the right path. Let him realize that for him, a happy marriage will be union with a mate to his own soul, and raising children within his own community, without confusion, with a clear message, “This is who we are and this is what is expected of you.” There he can find happiness, and so too the family he will raise.

May you too find a soulmate of your people and build a family within your people. That is the Jewish concept of the messianic world: not a mush of blended egos, but a magnificent panorama of colors and textures, each individual, family and people playing its part, each contributing its own part in the symphony that is humankind.

Rabbi Freeman gives a measured, compassionate, and kind reply to this woman but it is also a firm reply. A Jewish soul should marry another Jewish soul.

That however, doesn’t address the vast army of married couples who are “unequally yoked”, who have been married for years or decades, and who are well into raising children or have even raised children into adulthood. What of them? What of us?

Since part of this blog has to do with exploring the world of Jewish-Christian intermarriage, I thought it was high time I blogged about it. While there isn’t significant friction between my wife and I on our different religious viewpoints, there isn’t a great deal of agreement either. I suppose it isn’t an issue most of the time because we don’t discuss it most of the time. I let pass the occasional disparaging remarks about “what Christians believe” that come from my wife or daughter, but it’s at those moments when I am acutely aware of the barrier that exists between me and them. I choose to remain silent about it for the sake of peace in the home. I’m not here to “convert” them, nor would I ever try, and the Christians reading my words are free to criticize me for this.

Yet, God made us “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24; Mark 10:8) and one flesh we remain. We have “forsaken all others” and are united as man and woman before God.

In spite my previous quotes from Rabbi Freeman, he also published a different kind of commentary on love and marriage:

Even if all your complaints about your spouse are well-founded and valid – show her your love, nevertheless. Show her unconditional love.

It is said that all our exile is due to the sin of unmitigated hatred.
When each one of us will start with unmitigated love in our own domain, from there it will spread to all else that we do, and from there to the entire world, speedily in our days, Amen.

Yes, he’s probably addressing Jewish married couples or married couples who are both alike in faith, but is an interfaith marriage an exception to “unconditional love”? If, as the Rabbi says, we start with “unmitigated love in our own domain”, and it spreads out from there, can’t that love expand between a spouse of one faith to the spouse of another?

What now, God?