What Did Jesus Change: Ritual?

The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were "unclean," that is, unwashed. (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.) So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, "Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with 'unclean' hands?" -Mark 7:1-5

This is bound to be another "unpopular" blog post of mine, but I feel it really needs to be addressed.

In Christian tradition, the scripture I've just quoted is the beginning few sentences of the sequence of events in which Jesus would "declare all meats clean". A careful reading of the context reveals that he did no such thing, but it's hard to buck tradition.

However, it does appear that what Yeshua (Jesus) is doing, at least in part, is calling the Pharisees out on a man-made tradition that doesn't have its basis in the Torah. That's how most One Law groups read this, but there's a problem from a strict Messianic Jewish (MJ) point of view. The problem is that much of MJ believes in the validity of both the written and oral Torah, in which case, the ritual of hand washing would be perfectly valid.

My wife, who's been attending classes given by our local Chabad Rabbi, was trying to explain all this to me last night. She was saying that there are three types of "law" in the Jewish world (I'm doing this from memory, so please forgive me if I get the exact wording wrong): Torah, derived, and legislated.

Torah can be considered both written and oral. Remember, Moses was on Sinai with God for 40 days, so they must have talked about something. Actually, the oral law makes a certain amount of sense, once you realize that many of the commandments in the written Torah don't explain how to obey them (just how does one wear fringes on the four corners of a garment?). In that, the oral law modifies the written law so that it is "operationalized", describing the mechanics of how to perform the various commandments.

After Torah, there are the derived rulings, which is like how the U.S. Supreme Court interprets the U.S. Constitution. Originally, the Sanhedrin, in the days of Moses, was charged with interpreting the Torah for people, particularly in disputes, clarifying its meaning in difficult to understand situations. Also, over time, laws have to be understood in the light of new technological and social changes. For instance, laws previously passed in our country that addressed telegraph and telephone communications, some over a century old, have to be reinterpreted in light of the Internet.

Let's apply this to the Torah. When the laws dictating proper behavior on the Shabbat were first codified, automobiles and microwave ovens didn't exist. Once they were invented and put in popular use, the Shabbat laws had to be interpreted to render a judgment relative to whether or not these devices could be used lawfully on Shabbat. The directive to not drive on the Shabbat (at least in the Orthodox community) was derived from the original Shabbat commandments based on not igniting a flame on the Sabbath.

After this come legislated rulings. These can actually be local customs and can differ between, say the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. For instance, among the Ashkenazi, it is prohibited to eat or possess rice and beans during the Passover season as they are considered "leaven". You might wonder why, since these items are never used to leaven bread, but in centuries past, these food items were sometimes mixed with flour. It wasn't always easy to tell which ones were and which were not mixed with flour, so the Beit Din (Rabbinic Court) ruled that all rice and beans were to be considered leaven in order to resolve the conflict. Although the original problem has probably long since vanished, the ruling is still binding.

I know it all sounds confusing, particularly from a Christian point of view where it's believed that grace replaced the law and all of these details are now simply moot. However, if you're an observant Jew and obeying God is uppermost in your mind and heart, these details are of vital importance.

Now, back to hand washing. First let's continue with the transaction from Mark that we begin at the top of this post:

And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.' But you say that if a man says to his father or mother: 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is Corban' (that is, a gift devoted to God), then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that." Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.' " -Mark 7:9-16

As you can see, Yeshua isn't really talking about food but about a matter of paying lip service to the Torah while making a big deal over a minor procedure. In other words, blowing off your parents so you can seem more holy by giving money that could have supported them to the Temple, and then turning around and hassling a bunch of Jewish guys for not performing the ritual of hand washing before a meal. Yeshua is calling this group of Pharisees hypocrites, and rightly so, but is he also nullifying the ritual of hand washing? Consider this:

"Blessed are You, LORD, our God, King of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us concerning washing of hands."

That's the English translation of N'tilat Yadayim or the blessing of the ritual washing of hands, which is performed to this very day among observant Jews. Are we to say that Yeshua directly contradicted this practice which is observed by at least some present day Jews including perhaps some Messianic Jews?

He doesn't actually say so (though he calls it a tradition that you have handed down), but he does say this:

After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. "Are you so dull?" he asked. "Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him 'unclean'? For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body." He went on: "What comes out of a man is what makes him 'unclean.' For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man 'unclean.' " -Mark 7:17-23

Yeshua largely seems to be saying that making a big deal over such a small thing as hand washing is relatively meaningless as compared to sins such as "evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly", so he may have just been using this situation to make a point, rather than doing away with the ritual of hand washing among Messianic Jewish believers. On the other hand, Yeshua's Jewish disciples weren't practicing the tradition of hand washing in the first place, so they must have gotten the idea that they didn't have to as part of leading a life holy to God. Yeshua, of course, would have been the person to override this "commandment" with his disciples and, to the degree that they don't seem bothered by not performing the ritual, it couldn't have been too earth-shattering for them to give it up.

In Christianity, Jesus came, in part, to do away with the law...all of it, and replace it with grace. From a Christian point of view, it's no big deal if Jesus taught his disciples to violate every last tenet of Torah, written, oral, and whatever, and Christianity doesn't expect the disciples to have batted an eye at surrendering all of the beliefs they had considered part of obeying their God and had observed all their lives (though just look at how Peter reacted when it seemed God was telling him to eat non-kosher foods in Acts 10). Put back into context, Yeshua couldn't have revolutionized or abandoned Jewish practices and it's more likely that he clarified the interpretation of what Moses brought down from God at Sinai.

After all, it's not like Yeshua told his disciples to go fishing on the Shabbat or to take money from the poor; acts that would have horrified them in their blatant violation of Torah. Yeshua couldn't possibly have taught his Jewish disciples anything that would have gone against traditional Jewish belief in such a bald-faced manner. Perhaps hand washing was indeed a tradition that operated outside of the legitimate structure of Torah living and was truly made up by the Rabbis.

Today in Judaism, the rulings of the ancient Sages are revered and although there can be disagreement between different commentaries, they all are considered to operate within the boundaries of Torah and no judgment of a Sage is believed to be "made up".

However, if ritual hand washing is considered a valid expression of Jewish lifestyle and faith today and, as a ruling of the Sages, is believed in Judaism to be within the boundaries of Torah, how can we reconcile this with Mark 7 and the deliberate lack of observance of this ritual by Yeshua's disciples?

For Christianity, this simply means that all "man-made" rituals in Judaism were done away with (although Christianity and yes, every other faith practice, has plenty of man-made rituals in place), but for those of us who believe that once God established the Torah it was never to be reversed, how are we to understand this? Did Yeshua actually rule against certain Jewish rituals? If Mark 7 is an example of this, can we believe other rituals considered to be "holy" in their day were just made up?

If all that is true, can we extrapolate to the present and dare ask the question: Are some of the traditions kept by rabbinic and even Messianic Jews today "made up"? If so, which ones and how are we to tell?

The One Law movement largely disregards all of the oral law as well as the derived and legislated practices of Judaism as "made up" which tends to be one of the criticisms the Bilateral Ecclesiology branch of Messianic Judaism levels against OL, but the issue isn't entirely clear cut. If OL considers all believers, Jew and Gentile alike, bound to Torah obedience, we have to determine how far that obedience extends. MJ/BE says that more or less, Acts 15 is the limit of Gentile Torah requirements. OL considers the written but only the written Torah as having authority over their lives, thus imposing limits on their own observance. Did Yeshua muddy the waters in Mark 7 for Jews and Gentiles by suggesting that at least some parts of oral law and tradition were not really from God?