Searching for the Light on the Path

Moving Day

2011-05-26T18:00:00.003-06:00

This is a little sooner than I thought it would happen but I've been pondering creating my "next-phase-of-life" blog, I read a quote this morning from Rabbi Freeman titled Morning Meditation and then suddenly, I was on WordPress.com creating my new blog.

Welcome to Morning Meditations.

I hate "hello world" first blog posts, so I replaced the generic WordPress "verbage" with a blog thanking God for His abundant faithfulness to me and to all of us.

Although I'm not formally leaving my congregation and the life it represents until June 18th, my transition is happening in stages. Moving from the blog you're on now to my new blog is one of those stages.

At first, my content on the new blog will probably be fairly close to what you're used to reading here, but eventually, as my transition progresses, those changes will be reflected in what I write. I've already changed the wording of the "about me" page at the new blog to illustrate my evolving perspective:

I’m just a guy humbly walking a path of faith and trying to understand my relationship with God. I’m a Christian husband married to a Jewish wife. Part of this blog has to do with the joys and challenges of being intermarried. A lot of this blog has to do with how a Christian can look through a Jewish lens and get a better perspective on life, love, and the God who made us all.

How things will look after a month or a few months or a year, I can't say. All I can say is that I'm slowly closing the door on one part of my life and at the same time, opening the door on another. That doesn't mean I'm closing the door on the people. I want you to come along. I want you to participate. If we are friends (and I really want my friends to continue to talk with me and share my experiences) or if you just consider me kind of interesting, please, follow me along the path and see what happens next.

I decided to leave the current blog up rather than deleting it. I won't post any new content here. This is the very last post for "Searching". However, there are quite a few blog posts that receive a lot of hits, so apparently folks out there are interested in some of the things I've written. As long as those stories are useful, then they should remain available.

Leaving this blog active does bother me a little, since I've changed since last July and some of the ideas and angst I expressed in my early writings no longer quite tell the tale about who I am. On the other hand, they are mileposts along the road, marking my progress from who I was to who I am becoming in faith, grace, and trust.

For those of you who are following this blog via blogger and for anyone who just peeks in occasionally or happens to surf in, if you're interested in what I'm going to be doing or how my journey is progressing, please bookmark Morning Meditations or put the URL in your favorite RSS reader.

Feel free to comment here on my last blog post if you like or better yet, comment on my Meditations blog, since that's where I'll be "living" from now on.

Thank you. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read what I've written. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time, the energy, the thoughtfulness, and the passion to comment about something I've chronicled. As a writer, what I put in a blog doesn't mean much unless someone reads it, though I do get some benefit from the writing. Of course, feedback is like gold, even if it's to say "I think what you said is totally wrong". I'm not here just to spew out thoughts and feelings, I'm here to communicate, interact, and learn.

Thanks most of all to God who is faithful and who has been with me, even when I've felt alone, traveling in the dark. May He continue to travel with me on my journey to draw closer to Him and may He be with you all.

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

Are you looking for me? Find me at Morning Meditations.

The Mysteries of Truth and Faith

2011-05-26T09:16:00.003-06:00

There is no Truth without Faith. There is no Truth unless first there be a Faith on which it may be based.

-Milton Steinberg
As a Driven Leaf

The Torah was given to us in the barren, ownerless desert to emphasize that no man may claim any superior right to the word of G-d. It is equally the heritage of every Jew, man, woman, and child, equally accessible to the accomplished scholar and the most simple of Jews.

-Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, of righteous memory
As related by Rabbi Yanki Tauber at Chabad.org

Ben Hei Hei would say: According to the pain is the gain.

-Pirkei Avot 5:21

What is truth and where do you find it? I suppose the answer to that depends on the individual. In Yossi Halevi's book At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for Hope with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land, we learn that holiness can be found in many unexpected places. It was certainly surprising to Halevi, the son of Holocaust survivors and an Israeli (he made Aliyah from New York in 1982) journalist to find holiness equally displayed among Muslim sages and Christian monks. Each of us, in our own way, searches for the Divine, some by gazing into the cosmos and others by searching the core of our souls.

I am seeking the part of God that dwells in me. Each person is created in the image of God and encapsulates a mystic spark from beyond the limits of Creation. It's as if that spark is continually trying to return to its Source. Jewish mystics believe that when we die, the animal or earthly part of our souls dies with us but the spark of the Divine flies upward and rejoins God.

Milton Steinberg says that we can find no truth unless it is based on faith. This crashes head-on into the typical secular understanding of "truth" based on facts and the belief that faith is irrelevant (or at least unspoken), but there can be no relationship with God without faith. Only God holds the truth of our existence in His hands.

When Rabbi Schneerson says that the Torah was given to us in the barren, ownerless desert to emphasize that no man may claim any superior right to the word of G-d, he is specifically speaking of the Jewish nation and that the Torah belongs equally to the Prince and the pauper; to the Priest and the woodcutter, yet it is also said:

Many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. -Isaiah 2:3

Listen to me, my people;
hear me, my nation:
Instruction will go out from me;
my justice will become a light to the nations. -Isaiah 51:4

If we can believe the words of God as related through the prophet Isaiah, then we can add another meaning to Rabbi Schneerson's comments and say that the giving of the Torah in the desert may apply also to all of humanity. I'm not contradicting my position on how the Torah applies in a different manner to the Jew and the non-Jew, but I am saying that God is One and His Word is One. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and He is the God of Adam and Noah, too. He is the God of the Jewish Messiah, of the Apostle Paul, and of all the Jews and non-Jews to whom the Apostle taught the way of salvation and the path of Jesus.

How the Torah is applied to the Jewish people may seem obvious, depending on your viewpoint and tradition, but how the nations are supposed to understand the Torah as it "goes forth from Zion" isn't always clear. Certainly not all of you reading this blog will agree on how or perhaps even if the Law or any part of it is accessible to the non-Jewish nations:

Any dispute that is for the sake of Heaven is destined to endure; one that is not for the sake of Heaven is not destined to endure. Which is a dispute that is for the sake of Heaven? The dispute(s) between Hillel and Shammai. Which is a dispute that is not for the sake of Heaven? The dispute of Korach and all his company. -Pirkei Avot 5:17

While discussions between Jews and non-Jews over matters of Torah may not be accurately compared to the debates between Hillel and Shammai, I will be so bold as to say that our exchanges are still "for the sake of Heaven". While many Jews will agree that Hashem is the God of both Jews and Gentiles, they will apply the Noahide Laws as the obligation the nations are bound to in relation to God. Yet as I confirmed recently, from the teachings of the Jewish Messiah, we can allow the non-Jewish disciples to access more. How much more is a point of conjecture, but part of my personal journey is to pursue these questions and to attempt to live out the answers.

To paraphrase Ben Hei Hei, "it won't be easy".

Yet I don't believe my interest in the wisdom of the sages or the teachings of the man some have called "the Maggid of Nazeret" is the result of a random collision of interests. God is purposeful and His Creation is designed; nothing is truly irrelevant.

You ask me, “Why did G-d allow it to happen?”

You recognize that everything in this world has purpose and meaning. Examine any aspect of His vast Creation, from the cosmos to the workings of the atom, and you will see there must be a plan.

And so you ask, where does this fit into the plan?
How could it?

I can only answer, painfully, G-d alone knows.

But what I cannot know, I need not know.

I need not know in order to fulfill
that which my Creator has created me to do.

And that is, to change the world
so this could never happen again.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
Chabad.org

Tragic events, such as the horrible effects of the recent storms in the midwest, the ongoing nuclear reactor crisis in Japan, and the struggle to serve the needy in Haiti are all a part of God's plan that completely eludes us. We live in a broken world where people are scared and hurt and dying.

My modest seeking of God's "face", so to speak, from the writings of such men as Maimonides and Steinberg and Schneerson is just as much a part of God's plan, perhaps just as mysterious, and completely purposeful. I live a human life in a broken world, but I'm seeking the means by which I can repair my small corner of it.

Soon, I will launch a new blog (I'll provide a link) and begin a new journey. I invite you all to join me.

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought." -Matsuo Basho, Japanese poet

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Searching for Trust on an Empty Sea

2011-05-25T09:58:00.000-06:00

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these." -Matthew 6:25-29

Perhaps the most difficult middah to acquire is bitachon, real trust in Hashem that is expressed in action. The Mishnah Berurah writes that we recite the Torah portion detailing the arrival of the manna every day, “so that one should believe that all of his sustenance comes from Hashem’s providence. As the verse writes regarding the manna, ‘And the one who added did not gain, and the one who depleted did not lack.’”

from Daf Yomi Digest
Stories off the Daf
The Thanksgiving Offering
Menachos 76

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog post called Getting in the Wheelbarrow, which pointed to the significant difference between having faith in God and having trust in God. Most religious people have the first but that is no promise that they practice the second.

After a journey that ultimately started two years ago and particularly ramped up last year, I have finally tendered my formal resignation from the congregation where I've worshiped and taught for over five years. I previously mentioned my intention to do so and explained my reasons a number of times on this blog, including in the post A Far, Far Better Thing. That intention is now a reality. My last day in my current worship group is on Shabbat, June the 18th. After that, I will be "unaffiliated", at least in terms of a specific group membership.

What does this mean? My congregation (soon not to be "mine") were relieved when I told them that I was not abandoning my faith in Jesus. I think they assumed I would automatically transition into worshiping with my wife every week in synagogue on Shabbat. The latter isn't true, at least in the short run, and I have no idea what's going to happen next. On the one hand, I could be acting foolishly as a sort of "bird in the hand vs. two in the bush" example. On the other hand, I could be learning to trust God.

Trusting God isn't easy. Don't believe me? Read the rest of "The Thanksgiving Offering" from the Daf for Menachos 76:

Yet the Zohar uses the manna as a paradigm of an even higher level of bitachon - the person who is so aware that everything he has is from Hashem that he doesn’t keep food in his possession from one day to the next. It is well known that the Baal Shem Tov, zy”a, never kept any extra money in his possession overnight. He would give it all away to the poor on the day that it came to his hands, relying on Hashem that he would have enough for the next day. Although this is a very great level, the Meorah Shel Torah writes that there was a time when a similar level was demanded of one who brings a sacrifice.

He wrote, “We may wonder why the breads of the korban todah may not be left over to be eaten the next day. One who brings a thanksgiving offering must be emotionally moved to closeness to Hashem since the todah is an admission of His amazing providence. One who truly appreciates that Hashem has made a miracle for him must redouble his bitachon. It is not appropriate to leave over from this sacrifice because this shows a lack of faith that Hashem will provide for him the next day. This is forbidden; holding over the todah breads is a demonstration of a lack of bitachon that contradicts the very meaning of the offering and blemishes it.”

Now pause a moment and before reading on. Go and check your refrigerators and pantries to see how they're stocked for food (assuming you're at home). Now open your wallets to make sure your credit and debit cards are still there. Unless you're an unusual person (or someone who doesn't live in a "developed" country), chances are you have food to spare and there is an abundant amount of "plastic" in your wallet.

Does this mean you don't trust God for all of your needs? Probably not. Most of us would consider it foolish to live from day-to-day and from hand-to-mouth without having some reserves. Most of us wouldn't be considered wise unless we maintained some sort of savings account or investments to meet our future needs. So does this mean the statement, "the most difficult middah to acquire is bitachon, real trust in Hashem that is expressed in action" is correct?

Absolutely.

I'm working on trusting God. I don't know what's going to happen next. I don't even have a plan about what I want to happen next, at least not a really firm plan. I'm like a man who has stepped off of a ship at sea wearing a life vest and who then casts himself away from the ship, leaving everything behind. All I have is the ocean, the life vest, and myself.

And God.

Of course, I still have my wife, my children, my home, my job, and a bunch of other stuff, so it's not like I'm absolutely isolated, but for the first time in a long time, I'll be functioning without a faith community. I am trusting that God will see my need, that He will see and understand what I did and why I did it, and that He will act upon my decision because He realizes that I'm trying to do the right thing (using what is most likely flawed human reasoning).

What will God do now? I don't know. I have faith that God is there and that He hears me. I have trust that God will respond to me and take care of me. Until He acts, like Jonah, I'm adrift at sea and waiting for a miracle.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

The Anointed One Hanging on a Yod

2011-05-24T08:47:00.001-06:00

Our Hebrew Bibles represent the Massoretic Text (MT), a traditional rabbinic text deriving from certain scholarly families who lived in the Galilee, in Tiberius on the shores of Lake Galilee, from the sixth to the tenth centuries CE. The oldest extant codices of their traditions are the Aleppo Codex (ca. 930 CE) and Codex Leningradenisis (1008 CE).

To step from the tenth or early eleventh centuries CE back to the first or even second centuries BCE is truly amazing. Among this astounding discovery are some twenty-one partial copies or fragments of the book of the prophet Isaiah, as well as a scroll of the entire book, called the Great Isaiah Scroll or 1QIsa. 1QIsa denotes Cave One near Qumran and the first manuscript of the book of Isaiah that was found.

from Isaiah's Exalted Servant in the Great Isaiah Scroll
by Steven P. Lancaster and James M. Monson
for Messiah Journal 107

The discovery of what we refer to as the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1946 near the ruins of Qumran has revolutionized our thinking about the Bible we have today and even now is rewriting our understanding of many things including God and the "suffering servant" in Isaiah. While Christianity believes Isaiah's suffering servant was the Jewish Messiah, Jesus, modern Jewish thought considers this servant to be all of Israel. For the purposes of this review, we will be assuming the traditional Christian understanding, though other material in this issue of Messiah Journal addresses the Jewish understanding.

Throughout this special supplement to First Fruits of Zion's (FFOZ's) Messiah Journal, Lancaster and Monson present a detailed analysis and comparison between the Massoretic texts (MT), which form the current basis of our Old Testament (Tanakh) including the Book of Isaiah, and the equivalent material found in 1QIsa, known otherwise for our purposes as "the scroll".

I'm not quite halfway through the 65 pages of the supplement which is comprised of a series of articles that make up this analysis, but in general, what I am getting from this presentation thus far is a new understanding of the "servant" not as "suffering", but as "the Appointed One". You see, in some ways, it all hangs on a yod.

For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished. -Matthew 5:18 (ASV)

One jot - The word "jot," or yod (' y), is the name of the Hebrew letter I, the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. -Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The significance of the Hebrew letter "yod" as it applies to this blog post will become apparent in a bit. For now, let's compare the common translation of Isaiah 52:14 which we get from MT to the same phrase found in 1QIsa 44:2:

So His appearance was marred more than any man and His form more than the sons of men.

This is where we get our picture of Jesus as the "suffering servant". I don't mean to say that he didn't suffer. We know he certainly did. But are we reading what Isaiah actually intended to say? Remember, we're working from the oldest existing text which is from the late tenth or early eleventh century C.E. In the world of Bible scholars, older is considered better or more accurate when working with source material, and 1QIsa dates back to before the birth of Christ. Was Isaiah's intent to communicate the disfigurement or repugnant appearance of the "servant"?

Here's the 1QIsa 44:2 rendition:

It is certain! I have appointed! -from a man his appearance, -and his figure from the sons of "the Adam".

What changed?

This isn't just a different translation of the same text. The actual Hebrew (OK, the Great Isaiah Scroll was written in the square, Aramaic script) is subtly different. However those small changes result in a significant shifting of meaning.

Scholars debate the MT form above (without the yod), but most claim that this unique occurrence is a noun based on the root shachat ("go to ruin") and means "disfigurement" or "being marred." For many this reading sets the tone of much of the song, focusing on how repugnant the servant appears, but doing so forces incorrect interpretations throughout. On the other hand, the additional yod points to a well-known verbal form from the root mashach ("to anoint with oil"). The verb appears in the "perfect" aspect, often interpreted as a completed action.

In short, the small yod solves the difficulty encountered in the MT and makes the passage read, "I anointed with oil."

Our "disfigured" or "suffering" servant becomes a servant "anointed with oil" "for a specific task which he will achieve with great wisdom", as the article continues to read.

This not only presents a radically different picture of Isaiah's description of the Messiah, but it allows us to see how the 1QIsa version connects more completely with many of the Apostolic scriptures describing the Messiah, including the following:

Prophets searched diligently and inquired about this salvation, the very ones who prophesied about this grace for you were inquiring about whom or what time the spirit of the Anointed One within them was indicating when he predicted the suffering of the Anointed One and the glory after these things. It was revealed to them that they did not serve themselves but you. -1 Peter 1:10-12 (translation by the article's author)

This review cannot do justice to even the single article from which I'm working, let alone the entire Messiah Journal supplement on the Great Isaiah Scroll, but I hope I have whetted your appetite for more. Messiah Journal issue 107 will become available soon. I encourage you to have a closer look at this, and the other materials it contains. You never know when your whole understanding of the Jewish Messiah may be turned to a different direction by virtue of a simple yod.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Radiating God

2011-05-23T10:20:00.000-06:00

Though the prophets, the greatest of whom was Moses, achieved a superior understanding of God, this understanding does not concern God as He is in Himself but His consequences or effects. In the Middle Ages, philosophers like Maimonides claimed that God's consequences or effects emanate from Him. It is as if God were like an eternal and inexhaustible source of light whose energy is so vast that it nourishes and illuminates everything around us. But even the best scientific theories cannot explain how that light is generated. All we know is that the light makes it possible everything we see and do. On the other hand, the light is so brilliant that no person can look at it directly.

Kenneth Seeskin
from Maimonides: A Guide for Today's Perplexed

Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” -Exodus 33:18-20

I don't believe in philosophy. I believe in ideas that change people.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
"Real Ideas"
Chabad.org

Rambam (Moses ben Maimon or Maimonides) was a superb philosopher and theologian and his writings are considered classic among Jewish scholars and lay people to this very day. I recently reviewed Seeskin's book Maimonidies: A Guide for Today's Perplexed (and am posting the link here so you can be a little background about the topic of today's blog) and through Seeskin's book, gained a greater insight into how this amazing Jewish scholar perceived God.

Rambam, a consummate rationalist, did not believe people could experience God in any manner or fashion but rather, thought we could only experience the results or effects of God. This is like saying that a person cannot look at a solar eclipse with the unaided eye but instead, must use a device to see an approximation of the effects. I also previously used the analogy of experiencing a fire by the effects or results, such as ash and smoke, rather than knowing the fire as it truly is.

We see in the above-quote from Exodus 33, that Moses "knew" or "experienced" God as the Divine Presence or the Shekhinah, God's manifestation in our universe, in a manner as close as possible to experiencing God's effects without actually experiencing God (seeing His "face"). But what did God "emanate" or "radiate" that Moses could "see"?

What did Jesus radiate?

I know that making a comparison between Seeskin's description of Rambam's understanding of experiencing the "effects" of God and the life of Jesus may seem like quite a conceptual leap, but stay with me here because I think the connection exists:

And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.

“Who touched me?” Jesus asked.

When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.”

But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.”

Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.” -Luke 8:43-48

Look at one small bit of this narrative recorded in verse 46:

But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.”

We generally think that when Jesus performed a healing or a miracle, there had to be some sort of intent on his part. That is, he had to want to perform a miracle and had to have an intention as to what form the miracle would take. However we see in the case of the "woman with the issue of blood", that Jesus had no intention of healing whatsoever and in fact, didn't even know about the woman until the moment when she touched the hem (tzitzit?) of his garment and "power went out of him" to heal the woman.

Maimonides believes that we can only observe and benefit from the effects of God as they radiate from Him. Here we see an example of a person benefiting from the effects of what "radiates" from Jesus. Neither effect necessarily requires a specific intent of the "radiator" and this brings up an incredibly interesting question.

Do we benefit from the good effects of God upon our lives because God intents good toward us or do we reap these benefits simply because God is good and what He radiates (unintentionally) is good?

If we answer "yes" to the latter, we have to answer an additional question such as we see illustrated in the following:

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. -Genesis 50:20

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. -Jeremiah 29:11-12

Here we see that not only does God specifically intend to do good but that good will result from our prayers to God for aid and assistance. The Master said the same thing:

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” -Luke 11:11-13

Maimonides still doesn't have to be wrong here. God can intend to "radiate" what he radiates and direct His actions along intended lines. But how does this explain what we read in Luke 8:43-48? Of course, if you discount that Jesus and God have to be identical in the "mechanics" of how they "work", then you don't have to explain it, but when I was reading Seeskin's description of how Maimonides viewed God, the comparison between God and Jesus seemed a natural one.

There may be one other factor though. Let's go back to Luke 8 for a moment and specifically verse 48:

Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”

Jesus said something like this on more than one occasion. He didn't say I have healed you. He said your faith has healed you, even under circumstances where Jesus was aware of the person's request to be healed and he intended to heal them (in Matthew 12:13, he heals the withered hand of a man who hadn't asked to be healed, but presumably the man wanted his hand healed and, in the larger context of the event, the man knew Jesus was discussing healing on the Shabbat with the Pharisees).

God can do good for us even if we don't ask Him (and even if we are not aware of Him), but we know that He will respond to us (though not always as we imagine) when we ask. Yet perhaps an effect of God is that He radiates His goodness throughout Creation so that we experience His benefits, just as the rain falls on both the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45). There's no reason why God can't specifically intend to do good to a person and then that good happens and that God's very existence causes beneficial effects within His creation that we experience. There's also no reason why Jesus, during his time on earth, couldn't have intended to do good to others, but that his very nature, being a Divine representation of God's on earth, couldn't also have affected his environment, even to the point of healing a woman who touched his garment and who had faith that she would be healed.

At the beginning of this blog post, I quoted Rabbi Freeman when he said, I don't believe in philosophy. I believe in ideas that change people. This seems to draw a distinction between thinking and philosophy as represented by Maimonides, and a specific intent or set of ideas that result in a demonstrable change in human beings, but there may be no difference. We tend to get a picture of Maimonides as a cold, unfeeling thinker who spent his life in an ivory tower pondering arcane thoughts about God and the Torah, but he was also a physician who healed people and who advocated for justice, kindness, and mercy. In the case of the Rambam, his thoughts, feelings, and actions were all connected to living out the life God designed him to live. There was intention of both God and Maimonides and there were observable effects of the existence of both.

I do believe, like Maimonides, that we cannot experience or observe the totality of God as He exists objectively in what mystics describe as the Ayn Sof (although some people may have mystically encountered more of God's nature than we can within the limits of Creation), but I do believe that God has an intention for us and that He demonstrates that intention on an ongoing basis in ways we can experience. I also believe that people can benefit from God's existence and intentions, both the righteous and unrighteous, but the righteous in their awareness of God through faith and trust, can struggle to draw nearer to God and to do His will and reap additional blessings. This doesn't mean that we have more money, or trouble-free lives, or are smarter and wiser than other people, but it does mean we can be deliberately aware of God and what He is doing in the world and as a result, we can be a part of what He is doing. We can have faith and learn to trust God as we "see" what He does and more over, we can be a reflection of what He "emanates" in what we say and do and in some small way, we can show the rest of the world our how we experience a real and living God.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Small Chasidic Insights into God

2011-05-22T13:33:00.000-06:00

Why has God created the world and mankind, and for what purpose? Why has the soul descended into the body? (The preexistence of the soul was assumed in Chasidism.) Is there a more ideal world than the divine world in which the soul previously existed? Is there a greater joy than when man rejoices in God?

-Paul Philip Levertoff
as published in "The Love of God"
Messiah Journal issue 107

I previously reviewed Love and the Messianic Age written by early 20th century Chasidic sage Paul Philip Levertoff and as I am sure you can tell, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Levertoff's insights into the teachings of the Jewish Messiah as written in the Gospels and filtered through Chasidic mysticism are fascinating. I am pleased that Vine of David is publishing installments of Levertoff's classic study Die religiose Denkweise der Chassidim (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs 1918) translated into English.

However, a plain reading of Levertoff isn't always sufficient to comprehend the underlying concepts and history swimming below the surface of his text. In the footnotes to this very brief section of Chapter 1 of Levertoff's work, we discover several things that might not be apparent, including the association between the "birth pangs of the Messiah" (Matthew 24:8), the present age being like a pregnancy, the unborn child being like the "congregation of God", and the Messianic Age being the day of the child's birth.

We also get a glimse in the footnotes, of "Moses the Mystic":

The Prophet Isaiah saw God, when he was being ordained as a prophet (Isaiah 6), yet only according to his revelation of himself in the creation, but not in his true essence (how God actually is in himself, independent of his creation). Only Moses had a vision of God's essence.

We don't normally think of Moses in mystic terms, but he did see God in His "glory" in a manner no other man has beheld (Exodus 33:12-23). Also, in the mystic view of the Chasidim, we see that God's greatest ability is His being able to lower Himself to the level of a human being. This is no more evident than in the projection of the Divine Presence into the existence of the Jewish Messiah among men (John 1:1-18).

This brief taste of Levertoff and the equally fascinating footnotes accompanying the article, are only one small sample of the spring issue of First Fruits of Zion's (FFOZ's) Messiah Journal.

Over the course of the next week or two, I'll post other reviews and comments about Messiah Journal, which includes a special supplement on Isaiah's Exalted Servant in the Great Isaiah Scroll. I've read everything in the current issue except the special supplement and I haven't been disappointed yet.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

The Bridge Between Heaven and Earth

2011-05-20T09:45:00.002-06:00

In Pesachim, Rashi points out that the opinion of R’ Meir and R’ Yehuda is that the people of Yericho did not pause during Shema, meaning that they did not allow a break between the end of the sentence of Shema (the word "va-ed") and the beginning of the paragraph of V'a-hav-ta. The halacha is that one must pause at this point, in order to allow a break between the first sentence, which is one’s acceptance of the yoke of heaven, and the next paragraph, which is one’s acceptance of the yoke of mitzvos.

from Daf Yomi Digest
Distinctive Insight: "Improper reading of the Shema"
Menachos 71

Some would like to be like the sun, aloof from this world. Whatever material matters they accomplish during their stay occur as if by chance, with no real involvement of their own.

Others become entirely wrapped up in all the fetters and chains of life. They suffer its scars and bruises, delight in its offerings, thirst for its rewards and tremble at its pain.

True tzaddikim emulate their Creator. To them, every detail of life has meaning and purpose - every step is a decision, every move is deliberate. And yet, they remain above it all.

What is their secret?

They remember they are not the body, but the soul.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
"Better Than the Sun"
for Chabad.org

I know the two quotes from above might not seem connected, but bear with me, their association will become apparent.

I was talking with my wife this morning before I left for work. Like me, she appreciates the writings of Rabbi Freeman at Chabad.org and we both gain illumination from his insights as we receive them in our email inboxes each day.

We were talking about the differences between Christian and Jewish viewpoints concerning the purpose of human beings and why we are here. Often, I encounter Christians who are very future-oriented and who can't wait to "go home to Jesus". By contrast, Judaism produces almost nothing in terms of commentary regarding the World to Come and I've never heard an observant Jew say that they can't wait for the arrival of the World to Come.

What's the difference? Weren't we born for a reason? Is our life on earth a meaningless prelude to a heavenly joy? If what we do here doesn't matter, why didn't God just "cut to the chase" and create our existence in Heaven immediately?

I know I'm being unfair. There are a great many Christians who dedicate their lives to the service and well-being of others, yet this doesn't always seem to be the emphasis of the church or the "average" Christian. It seems like, as Rabbi Freeman writes, some folks "would like to be like the sun, aloof from this world. Whatever material matters they accomplish during their stay occur as if by chance, with no real involvement of their own". Christians say they want to become more like Jesus which is very much in line with Freeman's statement that true "tzaddikim emulate their Creator". Yet if "every detail of life has meaning and purpose - every step is a decision, every move is deliberate", then the "fruit" of every Christian in the here-and-now should be sweet.

Is it always?

In my previous quote from the Daf, the commentary describes a pause between the formal Shema and V'ahavta which signifies the transition between accepting the "yoke of heaven" and accepting the "yoke of mitzvos" or the commandments. The Master put it like this:

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” -Mark 12:29-30

As human beings, we act as a "bridge" between heaven and earth. We perceive the will of God for through our faith and trust in the Creator and then we act out that will in the world with our minds and our hearts and our hands. Our service to God is not just in the contemplation or Him and not just in the doing good to others, it is in the marriage of one to the other. In the "Stories off the Daf" commentary for Menachos 71, The Shem MiShmuel, zt"l offers this analysis:

“To explain, we must first understand that every human being is a microcosm, as we find in the Midrash. Our heads parallel the upper world while our bodies mirror the lower world. One’s intellect alludes to the sun, while his heart is like the moon which receives its light from the sun. Like the sun, one’s intellect should be used to illuminate proper conduct. His heart should only desire that which his intellect knows is fitting.

“It is impossible to be a whole person without these two faculties working in concert. If the intellect knows what is good but the heart is drawn in the opposite direction, it would be better for him not to have intellect at all. In Mishlei we find that such a person is compared to a pig with a golden nose ring - a valuable adornment graces an unworthy object. The same is true when the heart follows the directives of the mind when that mind is crooked. This is why in ancient times people clung to idolatry. Their hearts followed their intellects, but their minds confused light for darkness and darkness for light. This is worse than those whose intellect is straight but their hearts do not follow its directives.”

The Shem MiShmuel then explained the connection with the practice of the people of Yericho. “The first verse of Shema straightens the intellect, since the very word Shema means to listen carefully and understand. V’ahavta clearly refers to the heart, as the verse continues, ‘…upon your heart.’ The people of Yericho didn’t pause at the juncture in order to deepen their awareness that the heart must follow after the well-guided mind. The sages, on the other hand, would pause to remind themselves that without toil it is easy to disconnect the heart from the intellect.

He concluded, “Although the way of Chazal was more correct, the sages did not protest against the practice of the people of Yericho because, in essence, their meaning was the same.”

The key to this teaching, at least as far as I see it, is captured with these two phrases:

Our heads parallel the upper world while our bodies mirror the lower world. One’s intellect alludes to the sun, while his heart is like the moon which receives its light from the sun. Like the sun, one’s intellect should be used to illuminate proper conduct. His heart should only desire that which his intellect knows is fitting.

The first verse of Shema straightens the intellect, since the very word Shema means to listen carefully and understand. V’ahavta clearly refers to the heart, as the verse continues, ‘…upon your heart.’

This is what warms me when I hear the Shema and perhaps why reciting the Shema is required of every Jew twice daily. It reminds us of who we are in the here-and-now and how we are to set our purpose in life. We're not here just to sit around and wait for the bus to Heaven. We are to emulate our Master as worthy disciples and to do the will of our Father in Heaven with every living moment of our existence. This is why we were born and why God "chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless" (Ephesians 1:4).

I recently quoted from the Prophet Micah, but it seems a fitting way to end today's blog post:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God. -Micah 6:8

Good Shabbos.

Rabbi Yaakov would also say: A single moment of repentance and good deeds in this world is greater than all of the World to Come. And a single moment of bliss in the World to Come is greater than all of the present world. -Pirkei Avot 4:17

Book Review of "Maimonides: A Guide for Today's Perplexed"

2011-05-19T09:20:00.004-06:00

Maimonidies' philosophic reputation rests on his masterpiece, The Guide of the Perplexed, published in Arabic in 1190 and quickly translated into Hebrew. Unfortunately, it is difficult for the average person living in the twentieth century to read The Guide with any degree of comprehension. First, there is the difficulty of its length: three volumes and a total of 178 chapters. The second difficulty is the learning the author presupposes. Maimonides did not intend the book to be read by a general audience. He assumes his readers are familiar with the sacred literature of Judaism, the classics of Greek philosophy, and the later medieval commentaries. The last difficulty is that the book was written during the twelfth century, and since then our view of the world has undergone numerous changes.

from the Introduction to Maimonides: A Guide for Today's Perplexed
by Kenneth Seeskin

Behold, I have taught you statutes and ordinances, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the midst of the land whither ye go in to possess it. Observe therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, that, when they hear all these statues, shall say: "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people." -Deuteronomy 4:5-6

The quotes from Seeskin and Deuteronomy provide excellent reasons to read Maimonides: A Guide for Today's Perplexed, for both Jews who want to gain a greater understanding of the Rambam's (Moses ben Maimon or Maimonides) classic insights into the Torah, and Christians who are trying to grasp the significance of Judaism and a deeper meaning of "the Law" beyond a plain reading of the text. Seeskin's book can also be thought of as "an introduction to Maimonides", since we learn a great deal about how this exalted Jewish sage conceived of the Torah, what it told him about God and what it told him about being a Jew.

To say that Rambam was primarily a philosopher and a thinker is almost an understatement. He seems to be an archetypal intellectualist and rationalist of the Jewish world and his perspectives and teachings are as relevant in Judaism today as they were 800 years ago. His intellectual viewpoint, in and of itself, makes him difficult to comprehend, at least for most people, since his unique perspective is grasped only by others operating at his level. For the "average" person, his insights and the degree of detail which he uses to pursue the holy writings could easily seem like "over-analyzing".

In a scant 141 pages, Seeskin manages to tell his audience how Rambam conceived of God, God's unique "radical Oneness", Rambam's views on polytheism and idolatry, the cognitive qualifications necessary for a Prophet, and much more.

I must admit, after reading Seeskin's book, I find myself a little less enamored with Maimonides than I have been previously. The Rambam was obviously a highly intelligent and educated man and his conception of the world around him, his God, and his Jewishness were defined by those qualities. Everything he wrote was filtered through the values of philosophy and an almost extreme rationalism, to the exclusion of all else. Even love of God was considered a rational process in Rambam's view.

This isn't necessarily bad and it provides a good counterbalance to the emotionalism we find in many Christian churches where all you are expected to do is "feel" the Holy Spirit in order to experience God. For Maimonides, to truly grasp a Jew's purpose and meaning in life, you absolutely had to take on the role of scholar and devote significant resources to the deep study of the Torah and the classic Jewish and Greek philosophical literature.

The Rambam, in considering the commandments, believed that it was possible to understand the purpose behind all of them, not only the ones that seemed to make "obvious" sense, but those that seemed obscure, such as the reason one does not consume pork. He didn't accept the simple answer of "because God said so" and made great efforts to comprehend what most of us would consider incomprehensible. Yet he also believed we needed to love God especially when His commandments and requirements went "beyond reason". He was careful though, to say that what seems like it is beyond our reason does not mean God is unreasonable or irrational, and we may be able to understand Him in terms of His effects, given additional time and study.

God is needed only when we go beyond reason, when we are asked to perform or refrain from acts which we would not think of on our own. Only then can we truly claim that our actions are holy.

It is Rambam's highly rational point of view that puts him at odds with Jewish mysticism. Mystics believe it's possible to extend a human being beyond the rational and physical world and to know God in a way that isn't possible within the limits of our normal experience. Maimonides believed that we can only know God through His effects on the world and that there is no way to access Him as He truly is. I suppose a mystic would liken the difference to God as Ayn Sof vs. God as the Shekhinah or Divine Presence, but Rambam would view even the apparent visible and tangible Shekhinah only in terms of how it impacted the physical world, much like a person believing you can only "experience" fire by examining burnt wood and ash rather than the flame itself.

While Maimonidies did not believe that the majority of Torah commandments applied to the peoples of the world, he didn't believe that the wisdom of the Torah was exclusively a Jewish possession. Much to the dismay of his critics (and he had many) he believed that knowledge and philosophy had universal applications, including knowledge of the Torah.

In our day, Maimonides' position is often ignored. We put so much stress on the concept of peoplehood that it is hard not to conclude that ethnic considerations come before philosophic ones. The dangers of making ethnicity paramount are: (1) People will become so enamored of he ceremonies, rituals, and folklore that they will neglect the intellectual growth which is supposed to follow and forget about the idea of monotheism; and (2) In the cases where intellectual growth does follow, it will over look the universality of Judaism and focus on its cultural and religious peculiarities.

Rambam did believe in preserving the Jewish identity and uniqueness and acknowledged that the Torah was the means by which this was and is achieved. However, for him, Jewish identity is understood as participation in a spiritual community. He considered the customs, ritual, and ceremonies..worth preserving because they allow the community to propagate a defensible doctrine. He also believed another set of "rituals, ceremonies, and customs" could be applied to other people groups (i.e. non-Jews), allowing them to "propagate the same doctrine", acknowledge the unique and radical Oneness of God, enact compassion on strangers, widows, and orphans, promote social harmony, and generally espouse the values that have been the hallmark of the Jewish ideal for thousands of years.

This has profound implications for Christianity and other monotheistic religious groups and provides additional motivation for Christians to entertain a study of Maimonides and his works. Through his understanding of the Torah, which he did not consider the exclusive property of the Jewish people, we can understand our God, our purpose, and ourselves. We can also understand what Judaism has to teach us as God's creations since the Torah has been the keeper of God's wisdom, knowledge, and desires for humanity since the days of Moses.

Many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. -Isaiah 2:3

Listen to me, my people;
hear me, my nation:
Instruction will go out from me;
my justice will become a light to the nations. -Isaiah 51:4

Published well over a decade ago, Kenneth Seeskin's Maimonides: A Guide for Today's Perplexed continues to show us a truly relevant and educational view of not only Maimonides and his Guide, but the significance of the Torah and Judaism, not only to the Jewish people, but to the rest of us.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Who is My God?

2011-05-18T08:58:00.002-06:00

One of the reasons for the destruction of ancient Jerusalem was that fellow Jews held to the letter of the law. Furthermore, they tried to get whatever they could out of each other legally. As the Talmud states (Bava Metzia 30b), we were exiled because fellow Jews failed to raise their standard of behavior "lifnim mishurat hadin" - beyond the letter of the law. In other words, people wouldn't cut each other any slack. This is something that God cannot tolerate among His children for very long. Focusing on technical legalisms can destroy a society. Adherence to halacha (Jewish law) is extremely significant, but it cannot become the be all and end all. Something can be legally justifiable and not morally correct.

from "Halacha is Not Enough"
at the Lev Echad blog.

I have a deep appreciation for the Jewish teachings and often find more wisdom and inspiration in them than in the standard Christian commentaries. I also sometimes find remarkable parallels between the wisdom of the Jewish sages and the teachings of Jesus. Consider this:

Then the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But now as for what is inside you - be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.

“Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone. -Luke 11:39-42

Jesus was teaching toward the end of the Second Temple Era, within mere decades of the Temple's destruction and the mass exile of the Jewish people from what was then Roman Judea. It's not surprising that he should teach on the very topic that we see in Bava Metzia 30b. And when Jesus was supposedly "making all foods clean" (Mark 7:1-13), he was actually teaching again on the tyranny of the "letter of the law". He was teaching how we must live out the morality that the Torah represents, rather than blindly serving words and letters on paper.

The writer of the blog I quoted above cites a modern example of this:

I know a man who helped bring a secular Jewish woman back to the faith. When they bumped into each other some time later, she told him that she was no longer ritually observant. Surprised, he asked her what had happened. She explained that shortly after becoming Orthodox, she was attending synagogue on Shabbat with her young child, who happens to be mentally handicapped. After the services were over, she walked outside with her son in her arms. A rabbi who passed by told her that there was no eruv in the neighborhood and that she could not lift her child. She was deeply offended by his lack of sensitivity. Was the rabbi halachically right in his observation? Yes. But was he morally right in his conduct? Absolutely not.

This "letter of the law" without a lived moral expression may be what Peter was trying to say here:

Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? -Acts 15:10

This can be interpreted not as a condemnation of Torah but of Naval Birshut HaTorah which is living within the confines of Torah without courtesy, compassion, and civility toward other people. You can be technically and "religiously" correct and still deeply hurt other people without any moral justification.

Christianity often has the opposite problem in that the church tends to enjoy a "freedom from the law" by allowing a rather liberal interpretation of the Bible and holding to very few (if any) behavioral standards of morality or ethics. Being "covered by the blood of Jesus" tends to be an excuse for Christians to sin now and repent later. Of course, that's not what Paul taught:

The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? -Romans 5:20-6:2

You'd think that Christianity would know better (and a lot of churches do) than to play fast and loose with grace. It seems though, that you can find two different kinds of churches out there (besides the occasional ones that are fairly well balanced): the "loose grace" churches and those that have their own version of a strict "halacha". Churches such as the Westboro Baptist Church go about displaying their bizarre and extreme "standards" that have no association whatsoever with morality and Godliness, but there are congregations not registering quite as high on the radar, yet still holding an unhealthy amount of control over their parishioners and insisting on a strict "halacha" of their own.

There was a man in his 60s in the class I just finished teaching who was raised a Catholic. He had always been taught that God was a harsh and strict taskmaster who punished every little infraction or sin. He left the Catholic church decades ago and refused to have anything to do with religion. His wife coaxed him into attending some of my classes and just last week, he said he appreciated what I taught (not that I'm such a great teacher) because I showed him a God who truly cares for people and who wants the best for us; a God who is like a just but patient father (Numbers 14:18, Psalm 86:15, Psalm 103:8) and who is compassionate to His children.

The Christian church in all its expressions is sometimes full of inconsistencies. Judaism in all of its expressions is sometimes full of inconsistencies. That's because human beings in all our expressions, varieties, and incarnations are inconsistent. God is not inconsistent.

Yet the Word of God and the will of God is filtered through human interpretations and human frailty. The Rabbi who said that the mother couldn't carry her handicapped child on Shabbat because "there was no eruv in the neighborhood" wasn't being evil and in fact, he believed he was saying the right thing. According to halacha, he was, but according to the moral will of God, he was absolutely wrong.

Who is God? What does He want? The answer seems like it should be simple. It seems like all the answers should be in the Bible. I wish it was that simple, but if it was, we wouldn't struggle all our lives to try to find the answers to all of our questions. Yet, in some sense, the core of who and what God is and what He wants out of us is staring right at us:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God. -Micah 6:8

Asher, who wrote the Lev Echad blog article I've been referencing, ends his blog post with a quote from the book This is My God (First Edition, 1959) and it seems appropriate that I should do the same:

"The sensible thing is to use hard thinking to find the right way to live and then to live that way, whether many other people do or few do. If a Jew concludes to enter upon his heritage and make it part of his life, he does an obviously reasonable thing. The chances are that–at least today–he will seem a mighty freakish non-conformist in some neighborhoods; but that is changing too, and anyway, what does it matter? What matters is living with dignity, with decency, and without fear, in the way that best honors one's intelligence and one's birth."

Update: I just finished reading Kenneth Seeskin's Maimonides: A Guide for Today's Perplexed and the following quote from his book seems to dovetail nicely into today's topic:

On the surface, a person obsessed with ritual may seem to take a demanding approach to religion; but ritual, too, can be a shortcut, a mechanical way of courting favor with God. For some people, it is easier to participate in highly regimented activities than to engage in reflection and study, easier to cook milk and meat in separate pots than to consider alternative accounts of creation. If a person lacks the aptitude for philosophy, Maimonides sees nothing wrong in obeying the commandments and living a traditional Jewish life; the problem arises when we look on such a person as an ideal, suggesting that nothing further needs to be attempted.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Descent

2011-05-17T09:46:00.000-06:00

I say to God my Rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?” My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, “Where is your God?”

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. -Psalm 42:9-11

There is only one thing that can put you further ahead than success, and that is surviving failure.

When you are successful, you are whole and complete. That is wonderful, but you cannot break out beyond your own universe.

When you fail, you are broken. You look at the pieces of yourself lying on the ground and say, “This is worthless.”

Now you can escape. The shell is broken, the shell of a created being. Now you can grow to join the Infinite.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
"Getting Ahead with Failure"
Chabad.org

I admit to struggling with seeing the glass as half-full as opposed to half-empty. In part, the search for God is the search for significance and meaning in life. Who am I? What am I doing here? Does my life mean anything beyond the immediate needs I fill? Is there nothing more than this?

The Psalmist says to put your hope in God when your soul is downcast, but it's not always that easy. There's sometimes a difference between faith in God and trust in God. I realize that's a horrible thing to say. After all, who doesn't trust God? Who is afraid that God won't take care of us in all of the troubles in the world?

Both the Master and Paul commented on this:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? -Matthew 6:25-26

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. -Philippians 4:6-7

So, you never worry, right?

Right. Sure.

And yet, when our lives are the biggest mess is the time when we call upon God the most. When everything we do turns to mud and all of our circumstances and problems threaten to overwhelm us, is when we manage to crawl up to our hand and knees and call upon the Name of the Lord with fear and trembling.

After one of his greatest failures, David poured out his heart, "Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice" (Psalm 51:9). But sometimes, after we have an encounter with God, we still feel crushed. Relying upon God doesn't always mean God will make you "feel better", as if you are a small child who fell down, scraped your knee, and went running to Mommy so she can make it all better.

Sometimes God makes it all better but sometimes he does not.

In the Jewish mystic tradition, it is said that God created the universe in a dark void from which He had withdrawn, and then sent in ten vessels containing a "primordial light" (Let there be light -Genesis 1:3), but the vessels could not contain such a Holy light and they shattered. Divine sparks scattered across the entire cosmos like sand thrown across a glass table, falling all over our world.

It is said that our mission as human beings is to gather the sparks and repair the broken vessels, restoring the brokenness of the universe. This is a mystic meaning to the Jewish concept of tikkun olam or "repairing the world". Yet in repairing the world, we also repair our broken selves:

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. -2 Corinthians 4:6-12

In our pain, despair, and brokenness, Rabbi Freeman says there is a unique opportunity to become more than who we are. Our vulnerability is also our openness to greater intimacy with God. In shattering our souls, we also shatter the wall between our world and the presence of the Divine.

When dining on ashes, we can dine with the Creator. If God goes down into exile with Israel (Genesis 46:3-4), then He goes down with us into our darkest abyss as well. The taste of the meal is bitter, but in that bitterness, we do not dine on the bread of our affliction alone.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Flames Rising

2011-05-16T04:43:00.003-06:00

And from the day on which you bring the sheaf of elevation offering - the day after the sabbath - you shall count off seven weeks. They must be complete: you must count until the day after the seventh week - fifty days; then you shall bring an offering of new grain to the Lord. -Leviticus 23:15-16

After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. -Acts 1:3-9

I've been trying to decide if the Lag BaOmer celebration on the 33rd day of the Omer count has any application in Christian worship. I have previously asked the question, Why Don't Christians Count the Omer? and determined (in my humble opinion) that the Omer count can, or at least should, have great meaning in Christianity.

But Lag BaOmer doesn't seem to fit in. At least not exactly.

If you clicked on the Lag BaOmer link I provided, you've read that the events being commemorated are of post-Biblical origin and, strictly speaking, can't be considered a commandment in the same manner as the Omer count. I had been considering the timing of Christ's ascension into the heavens after the resurrection and, while the exact number of days the ascension occurred before Shavuot (the culmination of the Omer count) is ambiguous, I can't find any way at all to make "ascension day" and Lag BaOmer to occur on the same day.

On the other hand, the period of time of counting the Omer, between Passover (Pesach) and Shavuot (Festival of Weeks and also Christianity's Pentecost) does have a great spiritual and mystic significance:

Rav Zalman Sorotzkin, zt”l, offered a deep explanation of why we count the omer. “The first sefirah was after the Jewish people left Egypt. Its purpose was to purify the Jewish people from spiritual defilement so that they would be fit to receive the Torah. Kabbalists and the standard commentators both explain why we could not receive the Torah immediately after leaving Egypt. We first needed to count seven weeks to purify us from the defilement of Egypt.

“But Hashem knew that we would fall into the sin of the golden calf soon after we received the Torah. He therefore commanded us to celebrate Pesach for all generations. The day after Pesach we are to bring the omer which is composed of animal feed. We then count forty-nine days and bring the two loaves which are food for humans on Shavuos.

He explained, “We bring the omer to symbolize the first step of purity: recognizing in what manner we are still drawn after animal desires that compel us to act without understanding. We then begin to prepare ourselves to receive the Torah through deep contemplation and by rectifying our actions. Since the time we left Egypt, the days between Pesach and Shavuos have become a special period to fix negative character traits, attain purity and ascend to ever higher levels. Perhaps this is why, according to Rav Yochanan ben Nuri, the main judgment in Gehinom is between Pesach and Shavuos. Since this time is set aside for deep change it is also the time when souls are punished for failing to use this time properly.”

He concluded, “Chassidim and anshei ma’aseh live lives of completion; not one instant of their day is wasted. During this time even regular people work on themselves. We are adjured to recognize our lowliness and use these days for elevation. We count each day, considering how we have used our time and how many of these precious days remain until kabbalas haTorah. We must make a plan and set goals that we will work to attain during the remaining days so that we will be worthy of receiving the Torah.”

from Daf Yomi Digest
Stories off the Daf
The Omer and the Breads
Menachos 66

There must have been a reason why the core disciples of the Messiah could not receive the special empowerment of the Holy Spirit immediately upon either the resurrection or the ascension. There must have been a reason why they had to wait. Perhaps the idea of prayer and purification, making themselves ready for such a gift was part of the plan, as much as the period between being released from Egyptian slavery and receiving the Torah at Sinai was part of the plan. The Jewish disciples of Jesus (Yeshua) couldn't have been unmindful of the connection, but most non-Jewish Christians would miss it.

No, I can't connect Lag BaOmer to the ascension of the King of Kings in the same way as I can fold the Omer counting into a Christian anticipation of Pentecost. But if you are an observant Jewish disciple of the Jewish Messiah, perhaps you can allow your Lag BaOmer celebration to have a double meaning. Perhaps, when you watch the flames of your bonfire rise into the heavens, you can let yourself be reminded of the rising of the Messiah to the right hand of the Father; the mystic meaning of Divine sparks leaving earth and seeking where they came from with God. If you are a non-Jewish disciple who chooses to honor Lag BaOmer, you may want to silently cherish these thoughts and meanings as well.

This year, Lag BaOmer is celebrated from sundown from Saturday, May 21st to sundown on Sunday, May 22nd.

Blessed are You, O' Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this time.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Did Jesus Teach One Law?

2011-05-12T09:27:00.000-06:00

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” -Matthew 28:19-20

I don't normally create a blog post just to draw attention to another blog post, but this one is different. I just finished teaching a 15-week course at my congregation called Discipleship and the Torah. The course is based on a series of blogs I posted here called What Did Jesus Teach the Gentiles to Obey. I thought that running the blog material through a live class with interactive students (including people accessing the class via mp3 recordings) would come to at least some different conclusions or perhaps present some different insights.

The class didn't disappoint and I think it was a rewarding experience for those who participated.

I shared the class conclusions on my congregation's blog and wanted to make sure that the people who follow my personal blog didn't miss out. Click the link to read Did Jesus Teach One Law for the Jew and Gentile.

Feel free to comment, but be polite.

Getting in the Wheelbarrow

2011-05-11T09:16:00.000-06:00

There are two words often lumped together and commonly perceived as synonymous, when in reality they are not.

The two are Faith and Trust. In Hebrew, emunah and bitachon.

One way of explaining the difference between these words is that the former is the belief that G-d exists. The latter is the knowledge thereof, or, more accurately, the result of that knowledge, in mind, heart, and deed.

Rabbeinu Bechaya (in his book Kad Hakemach) puts it this way: "Anyone who trusts has faith, but not anyone with faith trusts."

-Mendel Kalmenson
"The Real Answer to the Question, Who Moved My Cheese?"
Chabad.org

This could be a useful answer to a lot of people's difficulties in their relationship with God. It could be a useful answer to your relationship difficulties with God. It could be a useful answer to my relationship difficulties with God. We tend to think of having faith in God and trusting God as the same thing, but they're not. Because they're not, we're expecting certain things to happen in our lives that aren't going to happen. It's like being married. If we believe in our spouse but don't trust him or her, what kind of a marriage is that? Is it even a relationship at all?

Here's another example from the same source:

This point can be further illustrated by a parable:

Long before the entertainment industry boomed, tightrope walking was a common form of amusement and recreation.

Once, a world-famous master of the sport visited a particular region. Word spread quickly, and many people turned up for the show. All was quiet as the master nimbly climbed the tree from which he would begin his dangerous trek.

But just before beginning his routine he called out: "Who here believes I can make it across safely?"

The crowd roared their affirmation. Again he asked the question and was greeted by the same response.

He then pulled out a wheelbarrow from between the branches and asked, less boisterously, "Which of you is willing to get inside the wheelbarrow as I cross?"

You could hear a pin drop.

Faith is the roaring response of the crowd; trust is climbing into the wheelbarrow.

It's easy to have faith in God but not to trust Him. It's easy to say "God exists and I believe in Him" as long as we don't have to become personally involved in performing the weightier matters of Torah. We can have an incredible faith that the tightrope walker will make it to the other end of the rope as long as we don't have to climb into his wheelbarrow.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that - and shudder.

You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone. -James 2:14-24

When James (Ya'akov) says "that a person is considered righteous by what they do", he's talking about trust or bitachon. Our problem, is that we "think" about God, and we "feel" all warm and fuzzy about Jesus, but we don't "do" anything about changing our lives to conform to our thinking and feeling. Here's another example:

Maimonides is one in a long line of Jewish commentators who have proposed rationalistic interpretations of Scripture. Thus, words denoting place, sight, hearing, or position (of God) are interpreted as mental properties or dispositions. In our own vocabulary, it could be said that Maimonides has attempted to demythologize biblical narrative.

from Maimonides: A Guide for Today's Perplexed
by Kenneth Seeskin

Maimonides tends to see Biblical interpretation as either literal or allegorical and his strength as a theologian, philosopher, and sage is in his rational approach to the Tanakh (Jewish Bible). However there is a significant gap in his vision. We can also interpret the Bible and God through a mystic and experiential lens. The mystic seeks to encounter God in an extra-natural realm; meeting Him outside the boundaries of our physical universe, but we can also experience God in our day-to-day life by experiencing ourselves. We can "do" God and not just "think" or "feel" God. We can be the answer to prayer. We can have and live out faith and trust.

We can get in the wheelbarrow.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Seeing God

2011-05-10T09:52:00.004-06:00

Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one. -Deuteronomy 6:4

Many people, without realizing, end up with two gods:

One god is an impersonal one, an all-encompassing, transcendent force.

But then, at times of trouble, they cry out to another, personal god, with whom they have an intimate relationship.

Our faith is all about knowing that these two are one. The same G-d who is beyond all things, He is the same one who hears your cries and counts your tears. The same G-d who is the force behind all existence and transcends even that, He is the same G-d who cares about what is cooking in your kitchen and how you treat your fellow human being.

G-d cannot be defined, even as transcendent. He is beyond all things and within them at once.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
"Two Are One"
Chabad.org

Observant Jews say the Shema twice a day in obedience and devotion to God. In saying the Shema, a Jew declares that God is One and there is no other God but the God of Israel. This can be a bit of a challenge for some Christians who relate to God the Father as God, but also relate to Jesus, the Son of God as God, and to the Holy Spirit of God as God. Jews tend to see Christianity's conceptualization of the Trinity as polytheism; worshiping three "gods".

Yet, as Rabbi Freeman points out, even strict ethical monotheists can fall into the trap of worshiping two gods. Rabbi Freeman is talking about people who tend to conceptualize the One God in two different ways, depending on their needs, but Jewish mysticism also relates to more than one aspect of God.

As in Freeman's analysis, we tend to conceive of two "gods"; the God who manifests Himself to us in our universe, which we think of as the Shekhinah, and the invisible, eternal, immortal, infinite, all-powerful, Creator God who is far, far beyond all human understanding, which we call Ayn Sof. In doing this, is mystic Judaism creating polytheism?

I seriously doubt it. The problem isn't God, it's us. God isn't something we can subdivide or compartmentalize as we would any other thing in our experience. God is One. We just don't have the means by which to comprehend, let alone experience the "oneness" of God. Rabbi Freeman makes this point thus:

Faith is not the result of experience.

On the contrary, faith is an act that comes from within and creates experience.

Things happen because you trust they will.

The world, the universe, all of Creation simply exists. It doesn't have categories or types or organizations as such...not until we apply an order upon things. We do this to try and understand our world and our experience. God even approves of this activity when we perform it:

And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them; and whatsoever the man would call every living creature, that was to be the name thereof. And the man gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field... -Genesis 2:19-20

Part of humanity taking dominion over the world God created for us was to impose our organization upon everything in that Creation.

But God is not part of Creation. God is unique and He presents a unique challenge and puzzle for human beings. What do we think of God? How do we relate to Him? How do we use our human senses, and our human brain, and our human feelings, to understand and connect to God?

In Christianity, the answer is simple (or so it seems): love Jesus Christ as lord and savior. He lived, died, and lived as a human being, so the Jewish Messiah makes God a much more relatable "object" than God the Father.

Oops. Now we're back at "God is Two": God the unknowable, unreachable, Father, and God the Son, who we have imagined to be ultimately reachable, relatable, connectible, and all too human.

Really?

I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. -Revelation 1:12-17

Not exactly the warm and fuzzy teddy bear many churches have turned the King of Kings into in modern times. Sure, the rest of verse lets Jesus tell John to not be afraid, but as we see, John had every reason to be afraid.

So can we relate to God as God? Do human beings have the "equipment" to even perceive God as He is and to honor and worship God as One. Jewish mysticism and just about every other mystic tradition is devoted to connecting to God in His realms as He is, but there's also a more straightforward and simple approach, again, as presented by Rabbi Freeman:

Belief is not enough - you need Trust.

A believer can be a thief and a murderer.

Trust in G-d changes the way you live.

James says it this way:

You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that - and shudder. -James 2:19

Normally, you get to know someone through a series of experiences and eventually learn to trust them. We can't do that with God because we can't experience Him as we experience a human being. Both James and Rabbi Freeman tell us that faith and trust are the doorway by which we must reach God. We don't need to understand Him, although we may want to. We don't need to conceive of Him in all his eternal and majestic glory, although we may desire it. We need to have faith and to trust Him. This isn't blind trust. We can see. Our eyes are wide open. It's just that, like John in his Revelation, like Ezekiel in his vision, and like those others who have been privileged to have a mystic encounter in a world beyond our own, we don't always comprehend what and who we see. However, He is God and He is One and we can trust in Him, though He is as far beyond us as the heavens are beyond the earth.

Trust is how we can see God.

In the early part of the twentieth century, another Jewish philosopher, Hermann Cohen, suggested that the essential feature of monotheism is not that there is only one God but that the one God is unique. By unique he means that God is unlike and therefore not comparable to anything else in the universe; in short, God is and will always remain in a category by Himself. As Isaiah says in 40:25, "To whom then will you liken Me, that I should be equal?"

from Maimonides: A Guide for Today's Perplexed
by Kenneth Seeskin

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Looking for Myself

2011-05-09T09:10:00.005-06:00

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it - not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it - they will be blessed in what they do. -James 1:22-25

James (Ya'akov), the brother of the Master, provides us a lesson that seems simple and straightforward. At it's core, he is telling his audience that the Torah, the teachings of God, defines who we are as believers. More to the point, the Torah, it's commandments and ordinances, define who is a Jew.

Ok, it's not that simple. In a practical sense, a Jew is anyone who has a Jewish mother, even if they don't study or observe the Torah. A Jew is a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. A Jew is the inheritor of the Torah and the covenant promises as given by God through Moses at Sinai. For non-Jews, simply obeying the Torah commandments in some manner or fashion, all by itself, does not make us Jewish.

So what does the Bible define for "the rest of us"? Look at what James is saying.

No matter who you are, it's not enough to read or to listen to the word. That doesn't tell you who you are. You might as well be anonymous and faceless if that's all there was to it. No, it's doing what the word says that defines you. Kind of like this quote from a popular movie:

It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.
Batman/Bruce Wayne (played by Christian Bale)
Batman Begins (2005)

Even the entertainment industry understands that "actions speak louder than words". However, while obeying the Torah commandments does not turn a Gentile into a Jew, following the directives to love God with everything we've got and loving our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:29-31 quoting Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18) does tell us, and the rest of the world, who we are as Gentile disciples of the Jewish Messiah. That is how we find ourselves.

But there's a catch:

On today’s daf we find that the minchas kenaos clears up the sin by identifying the wrongdoer absolutely or by exonerating her of suspicion. Perhaps, in its own way, this is the hardest test for every Jew: to own up when we have failed so that we can really change our ways. Rav Yaakov Galinsky, shlit”a, points the challenge inherent in this with his usual biting humor. “In Novardohk they would tell a story of a certain young man who was always late for cheder. Day after day this child was punished, only to be tardy yet again the following day. One day the melamed asked the boy directly. ‘Why are you late every day?’

He answered, ‘Rebbe, my problems are that I am disorganized and forgetful. When I go to sleep each night I drop my clothes wherever and go to bed. The next morning it takes me a long time to get dressed. Is it any wonder that I come late?’

“The melamed offered practical advice. ‘All you need to do is to write a list of precisely where you dropped each article of clothing. The next morning when you wake up, consult the list and you will know exactly where you left your clothes the night before.’ “The boy went home with a lightened heart. The next day the child didn’t come at all. As soon as he was able, the melamed rushed to the young man’s house. He found the boy at his house, fully dressed but obviously very bewildered.

“What happened?” he asked.

“’I did exactly what you said. I wrote down that my tzitzis were in the garden, my shirt on the chair, my pants on the floor etc, I said hamapil with great joy and went to sleep. This morning I woke up and got dressed quickly but I still cannot locate the final item. It says clearly that I am in bed, but I checked my bed - and everywhere else - many times and cannot seem to find myself…’ ”

Rav Yaakov concluded, “This is obviously a joke, but it is so sad. How many of us are looking to find ourselves but cannot seem to do so! The very first question we will be asked in the next world is, ‘Ayekah?’ Where did you go and what did you do? Where did you plant yourself and what happened with you?”
from Daf Yomi Digest
Stories off the Daf
Identify the Problem
Menachos 60

For observant Jews, the Torah and Talmud define who they are, where they are from, where they can "look for themselves", and what they must do in this world to serve God and to love their neighbors. The Bible, and particularly the New Testament, provides a similar function to someone who self-identifies as a traditional Christian. Jews and Christians usually attend synagogues and churches that are affiliated with well-established movements in their respective religions. If a Jew goes to an Orthodox shul, that synagogue is affiliated with a larger organization of synagogues and there is a higher organizational accountability. If a Christian goes to a Baptist or Pentecostal church, that church also has certain affiliations and there is also an organizational accountability. Each house of worship teaches and offers worship services consistent with the larger groups with which they are affiliated. They do not make up their own "rules". Everyone knows who they are based on established standards.

In "Messianic Judaism", there are any number of "umbrella" organizations, but the vast majority of them are oriented around providing a Jewish religious context to Jews who believe that Jesus (Yeshua) is the Jewish Messiah. Of course, Gentiles are allowed to attend these synagogues, but there is no real focus on the duties, responsibilities, and purpose of non-Jewish disciples of the Jewish Messiah.

On top of that, a large number of "Messianic synagogues" are completely unaffiliated, particularly those that fall in the "One Law" category, which means they create their own standards, establish their own interpretations of the Bible, and define their own methods of being "Torah-observant." There is no higher accountability until you get to God and for a number of these congregations, their leader tells his "flock" that he reports directly to God and cannot otherwise be held to any standard of responsibility.

My own congregation is affiliated with the International Federation of Messianic Jews (IFMJ) but it's not a very effective organization. In the years I've been involved in the leadership and teaching duties in my group, I've never once heard from any member or authority (although they periodically make contact with another board member) and they provide nothing in the way of support or oversight. Besides accepting our "tithes" every quarter, they might as well not exist, relative to the day-to-day operations of our congregation. They certainly have no impact on what I write on the congregation's blog or teach to the congregational members.

As an individual, I probably fall within Derek Leman's definition of a Judeo Christian believer. I'm a Gentile person who is a disciple of the Jewish Messiah, but my theological and educational understanding is oriented in a more "Jewish" manner. I tend to see the Jewish teachings and text as the window into the understanding of the Messiah and of God, rather than a traditional Christian theological framework. People like me create and operate Bible study groups, fellowships, and congregations all of the time, but to the degree that there are no "parent" organizations specifically devoted to addressing my population group, most people like me are unaffiliated. We are making up our stories as we go along, not only for ourselves, but for other groups of people.

That's not a good thing. It's far too easy for unaffiliated individuals and groups to make up stories about who they are that don't reflect what God is saying to us. Alone, it's far too easy for us to introduce error and mistakes into our understanding and our practice.

That's both the reason I must leave the One Law movement and the danger I face in leaving the movement (or at least in not immediately joining some other religious group). Right now, I don't have a support group or authority to respond to beyond the board of the congregation but in leaving, I won't have even that. Of course, I won't be teaching anyone else either, so I won't run the risk of messing up other people if I make a mistake (and people who read my blog do so at their own risk...I'm just one guy and I can make mistakes).

Every morning I look in the mirror when I shave and I wonder who that person is looking back at me. In praying, and studying, and living what I hope is a "Godly" life, like the "certain young man" in the story from Novardohk, I am looking for myself. Yet, in all the places I'm looking, where am I to be found? When he turned up missing, the young man's Rebbe went looking for him. Is there anyone else looking for me?

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Book Review: The Way of Kabbalah

2011-05-06T19:04:00.009-06:00

Everyone is searching for something. Some pursue security, others pleasure or power. Yet others look for dreams, or they know not what. There are, however, those who know what they seek, but cannot find it in the natural world. For these searchers many clues have been laid by those who have gone before. The traces are everywhere, although only those with eyes to see or ears to hear perceive them. When the significance of these signs is seriously acted upon, Providence opens a door out of the natural into the supernatural to reveal a ladder from the transient to the Eternal. He who dares the ascent enters the Way of Kabbalah.

from the Way of Kabbalah
by z'ev Ben Shimon Halevi

You could call this book "timeless" in the sense that it was first published in 1976 and yet, presents in a manner totally accessible to the reader 35 years later. Halevi offers his audience a guided tour and an introductory lesson into the world of Kabbalah.

Structurally, the book is quite linear. It starts off with a basic introduction and definition of what Kabbalah is and what it means at it's core. It then proceeds to lead the reader through a series of chapters on personality and social theory. This part of the book reads like many of the texts I studied when I was in graduate school and pursuing my Masters degree in Counseling Psychology. There are a number of different theories or models of how a human personality is structured and Halevi offers yet one more as conceptualized by Kabbalah. This is important to understand because Kabbalah is the journey of taking a person as they enter into the discipline and, through the guidance of a maggid in a structured group, assists the person in achieving higher spiritual and mystic levels of functioning and awareness.

From understanding the individual personality, the book proceeds to describing the dynamics of a study group in Kabbalah. Beyond that, different but equally valid approaches to accessing the higher levels of existence and accessing God are described. The last chapter being simply "Ascension"; the ultimate goal of the mystic.

Most people seem to believe that Kabbalah is the Jewish Mystic tradition, but as I said in my review of Gershom Scholem's Major Trends of Jewish Mysticism, Kabbalah is only one of those traditions, albeit, the most well-known.

Kabbalah uses a diagram model called the Sefirotic Tree of Life. This isn't really a static diagram because a number of different concepts can be illustrated using the basic tree structure including the seven levels of heaven, the seven levels of teaching, and interestingly enough, the seven deadly sins (and as you can see, Kabbalah isn't afraid of borrowing from other traditions and religious conceptualizations).

When I was asked to read this book, I was expecting a fully Jewish treatment of the topic, since Kabbalah is a Jewish mystical discipline, but the author makes good use of Christian symbols, including that of Jesus, in expressing different ideas. Halevi refers to Jesus as "Joshua ben Miriam" the "Maggid of Nazeret" as a great Kabbalist in his own right and offers up a number of his teachings from the Gospels as Kabbalistic in nature, this despite the fact that Kabbalah is thought to have originated in 13th century Spain. I don't criticize the author for this, since most Jewish mystic forms can trace at least some of their history back to earlier eras and practices and Halevi isn't the only one to state that the Gospels read like Jewish mystic writings.

The caveat to my last paragraph is that the author also compares Jesus and Buddha as equals and at once recognizes Jesus as a renowned maggid or religious teacher while denying he is the Messiah. Given that Halevi is rather liberal in quoting from the Christian Bible and attributing the quotes to a "maggid", I wonder if, as a Jew, he is really that generous with his praise toward the "Christian Messiah" or if he is casting his net, so to speak, to catch the largest number of "fish" (readers and potential neophyte Kabbalists, in this case)? There's no way for me to tell if inclusion of "Joshua ben Miriam" in Kabbalistic teachings is common or unique to this author, at least not without reading other Kabbalah related books or sources, so don't draw too much from the appearance of Jesus here.

If I had to pick a textbook for a course called "Introduction to Kabbalah", I might consider Halevi's book. The chapters are short, the book is short (only 216 pages), and the content, which could easily be extremely complex, is fairly easy to take in. I'm not enthralled with the book, although by reading other reviews, I can see others are, but it did give me a concise introduction into "the way of Kabbalah." If you're looking for a similar introduction, Halevi's book is can give you that.

Remember though, this is only an introduction. Actual techniques and practices, while mentioned, are not described in detail. The book recommends group study of Kabbalah under a qualified maggid. This is not a guidebook for a "do-it-yourself" mystic journey to discover the higher realms.

This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
Morpheus (played by Laurence Fishburne)
The Matrix (1999)

Mystic Wonder

2011-05-06T10:08:00.000-06:00

People were also bringing babies to Jesus for him to place his hands on them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” -Luke 18:15-17

This can probably be misunderstood. For some folks out there, this can be considered something of a justification that you don't really have to "study" the Bible, since it's simple enough for a child to understand. After all, Jesus said that anyone who is not "childlike" cannot enter the kingdom of God. This verse can even be used as a non-so-subtle criticism against the Jewish tradition to study Torah and to honor such study.

Of course, there's more than one way to look at the Master's teaching:

If you want to understand something to its depths, first approach it with the mind of a five-year-old. Ask the innocent and obvious questions and make things clear and simple. Through that clarity, you will perceive the depths.
-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
"Start Simple"
Chabad.org

That's certainly one way to interpret this teaching of the Jewish Messiah and it fits with the theme of studying the Word and approaching it as a small child would. You start at the surface or in the shallow end of the pool, like a child first learning how to swim. Eventually, depending on the amount of time and effort you put into your swimming though, you could end up in the Olympics or as an oceanographer exploring the ocean's depths.

However, there's yet another perspective to consider:

Amazement never ceases for the enlightened mind. At every moment it views with amazement the wonder of an entire world renewed out of the void, and asks, "Why is there anything at all and not just nothing?"
-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
"Wonder"
Chabad.org

This is how I tend to understand the words of Jesus (Yeshua). He wasn't necessarily saying that only the young and unsophisticated mind can approach the wisdom of God, but rather, that we should continually strive to see the world around us with fresh eyes, as if experiencing all of Creation for the first time.

The world, indeed the whole universe, is a beautiful, astonishing, wondrous place. -Derek K. Miller (1969-2011)

Derek Miller died after a long struggle with cancer, just a few days ago at the age of 41.He leaves behind a wife and two young daughters. He didn't have faith in God and expected, when he died, that would be the end of all things for him. Blackness. Emptiness. Non-existence. No meeting with God.

Yet, in the face of suffering and anguish, he was able to write those incredible words and to see his environment with the eyes of wonder; the eyes of a child. These are the eyes and the heart that Jesus speaks of when he asked that the children be brought to him. If Derek Miller can see the world this way and yet seemingly not know God, how much more should we experience God's Creation as a child, seeing it every day through the lens of faith?

You cannot separate the mystical from the practical. Each thing has both a body and a soul, and they act as one. Neither can contradict the other, and in each the other can be found.
-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
"Mystical and Practical"
Chabad.org

Very young children unreservedly believe in the mystical, the magical, the impossible, in just the same way as they believe in the existence of their parents, their favorite breakfast, and the bed in which they sleep. They accept God and His mercy in exactly the same manner as they accept their father's and mother's love.

That kind of experience gets lost somewhere along the way, but it doesn't have to stay lost. The mystery of the universe is the fabric by which God weaves our very existence. What we experience with our senses and what we experience as a matter of faith are the same thing. There is no difference, nor should there be a difference.

We can enter a mystical perception of the Creation of God at any time. All we have to do is open our eyes and our hearts the same way a two-year old opens his arms for a hug.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

The Moon is Torn

2011-05-05T09:18:00.003-06:00

"I'm all out of faith, this is how I feel
I'm cold and I am shamed lying naked on the floor
Illusion never changed into something real
I'm wide awake and I can see the perfect sky is torn
You're a little late, I'm already torn"
-Natalie Imbruglia
"Torn"

"If God had a name what would it be?
And would you call it to his face?
If you were faced with him in all his glory
what would you ask if you had just one question?"
-written by Eric Bazilian
"What If God Was One Of Us?"

Go out on a clear night and see the moon reflected in the water of a lake. Then see the very same moon reflected in a pond, in a teacup, in a single drop of water. So the same essential Torah is reflected within each person who studies it, from a small child to a great sage.
-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
"Multiple Reflections"
Chabad.org

If you believe in God or at least if you believe there is something more to the universe than what you can detect with your five senses, sooner or later you're going to encounter an existential question. Who am I? Is this all there is? Is there nothing more? What does it all mean?

Conversely, there are so many people inhabiting the various faith groups, theologies, and philosophies on the earth who are perfectly satisfied and content regarding who they are and what it all means. Certainly, there are many in the church who have no doubt that Jesus loves them, they are saved by grace, and they are free from sin and the law. There are many Jews in the synagogues who are absolutely secure they are sons and daughters of Abraham and Sarah and that in the merit of the Patriarchs, they have a place in the world to come. It seems like one of the primary functions of any faith community is to provide its members with a safe and secure environment in which they are protected from existential questions and the horrors that they bring.

I found this person's comment in response to Judah Himango's blog post Is it a sin for Christians to break the Torah indicative of this function (and all the errors in the following quote belong to the original commenter:

I like your blog and all, and have learned a few good things however from time to time it just digresses into pure nastiness. I go to a very stable Baptist church where the fruits of the spirit are evident we have a deep love for Israel, the Jewish people and each other. What do you have to offer that would better my life as a disciple of Christ? Seriously all I see is fighting and division Paul warns harshly to expel those who cause division..

Also why are some people on this forum so vile? I noticed in the disagreement between Gene and Dan Dan calling Gene a Shmuck? (a word I found out means penis in Yiddish) is this what your idea of serving Christ looks like? Out of the mouth the heart speaks.

I think for now I will just stick with my church it's stable, dynamic and we are all trying to serve Christ the best we know how. I feel much safer there.

I'm kind of envious and it kind of bothers me. Everyone wants to feel "safe" from whatever threatens or bothers them, both in the environment and within the confines of their own spirits. I want that. You probably want that, too. Yet, when you're safe and protected, what are you experiencing and what are you learning? If we always feel safe and reassured that nothing is wrong, the world is an OK place, and everyone loves us, does that really mean anything? Does that bring us closer to God? Do we find out anything about why we are who we are if we stay in the comfort zone?

When I was reading today's missive by Rabbi Freeman online, I saw the following comment in response:

I am not a Jew, yet I have and still do enjoy reading the Daily Dose. I find a lot of the daily messages have a similar aspect in other religions. This one, I felt, this one was very Zen in its statement-as soon as I read it.

The "Messianic" movement is full of non-Jews like this person; people who have no real reason to be attracted to the Torah or the wisdom of the Jewish sages, but who nevertheless are irresistibly drawn in to something that transcends the ethnic and covenantal boundaries that isolate our various groups from one another; boundaries that in part exist so that we can feel safe.

I wrote yesterday that the purpose of the nation of Israel is to protect Jews in a hostile world and there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, God mandated the Jewish state as the inheritance of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so it is not only enlightened self interest that prompts the Jews to build a nation of their own, but it is a mitzvah for them to do so. However, there is another mitzvah from God to consider:

Many nations will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”
The Torah will go out from Zion,
the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. -Micah 4:2

It's clear from this that the Torah, or at least some part of it, was not meant to be entirely and eternally contained just within the boundaries of Israel and Judaism. Some of this wisdom of God was meant for mankind. When we hear it; some of we who are not Jewish respond as if the Word of God is the missing piece to the puzzle of our lives.

I'm standing on the path looking toward the horizon about six weeks into the future, when I will end one part of my life and begin another. I have no idea what will happen. I have no idea if I'm doing the right thing or not. I think I am, otherwise I wouldn't do it, but how can I be sure?

I'm looking at the reflection of the moon in a cup of cold coffee. I'm awake and I can see the perfect sky is torn. I'm looking for something real. I'm a little late. I'm already torn.

If you were faced with God in all His Glory, what would you ask if you had just one question?

Why We Need Sheep Dogs

2011-05-04T09:11:00.003-06:00

Here’s one of Aesop’s fables: One day, the wolves sent a delegation to the sheep and asked to make eternal peace with them. “The dogs are at fault for the conflict between us,” the wolves told the sheep. “They are the source of dispute. They bark at us, threaten us, and provoke us. Banish the dogs and there will be nothing to prevent eternal friendship and peace between us.” The foolish sheep believed this and banished the dogs. And so, without the protection the dogs used to offer, the sheep became easy prey for the wolves. -As quoted by Guy Bechor
at Ynetnews.com in his story A Middle Eastern Lesson

You can compress the fable into the sentence, "when one lives with wolves, keep dogs for protection". Bechor is using the fable to illustrate the need for Jews in the middle east, who live among many wolves, to keep "dogs". The primary "dog" kept for protection is the Land of Israel itself and of course, the Land's chief defense force, the IDF. Much of the world, such as the United States and the particularly the Obama administration, believe that the sheep should send away their dogs (the nationhood of Israel and the Israeli army) in order to ensure peace between sheep and wolves. However, if you've been paying attention to a number of terrorist events as I recorded them in a recent blog post, you can see that sending away the dogs is a very bad idea. Especially in light of the so-called unity pact forming between Hamas and Fatah as well as the emphasis that such a pact does not need to recognize Israel as a state. No, Israel needs to keep the dogs.

Bechor says what you'd expect him to say from his perspective, and I agree with him, but he did make one unexpected statement:

When one observes the fate of the Christians in the Middle East, one realizes what would have happened to the Jews had they been defeated, heaven forbid, or remained without protection. Christians are being butchered in states that experienced “democratic change” such as Iraq, Egypt and Tunisia; their churches are being burned, they’re prompted to escape, and their property is looted.

The Christians were misfortunate enough not to establish a state with a clear Christian identity, unlike the Jews. Naively, the Christians believed in partnership with other ethnicities, and now they’re paying the price – in Lebanon, where they’re becoming extinct, in the Palestinian Authority, and very soon in Syria as well.

Bechor amazingly compares Christians and Jews and more or less suggests a "Christian state" in the middle east as a means of protection. He compares the motives behind Zionism and Jewish statehood to what Christianity should have done in the middle east and, having "naively" assumed they (Christians) could live in peace among their Muslim neighbors, are now paying the price, even in so-called "democratic" Arab nations.

I recently read a commentary of Menachos 52 that re-enforced Bechor's point very successfully:

Shortly after the Holocaust, when Rav Yisrael Grossman, zt”l, paid a visit to the Abir Yaakov of Sadigura, zt”l, he was surprised to find him in an exceptionally joyous mood. When the rebbe noticed Rav Grossman’s surprise, he used a parable to explain why he was filled with joy despite the recent tragedy. “Imagine a poor Jew, beaten down and sickly, who has nowhere to even rest his head. If people have mercy and open their homes to him, he will surely be filled with boundless joy from gratitude.

“The Jewish people today are likened to this poor man. Although we endured such cruelty which resulted in the murder of millions of Jews, we must never lose sight of the positive. Now that we have entered Eretz Yisrael, which is our homeland, we are exactly like a poor displaced man who has finally found a home.”

He added, “You might argue that the spiritual level here is not exactly optimal. Nevertheless, the very fact that Hashem has brought us back home after such a tragedy is also enough to make us joyous!”

The Kaftor VaFerach, zt”l, learns the greatness of Eretz Yisrael from a statement on today’s daf. “The Midrash Rabbah explains that the verse (Bereshis 2:12) - 'the gold of that land was good,’ refers to the spiritual gold of Torah. ‘There is no Torah like the Torah of Eretz Yisrael and there is no wisdom like the wisdom of Eretz Yisrael.’ In Bava Basra (158b) we find that the very air of Eretz Yisrael imparts understanding of Torah. In Menachos we see that when Rav Avin told over a teaching to Rav Yirmiyah, his hearer criticized those who live in Bavel saying that they were fools who lived in a place of darkness. This is in contrast with Eretz Yisrael, whose very air is the breath of Hashem.”

Menachos 52
Stories off the Daf
The Land of Light and Wisdom

It's commentaries like this one that warms my heart and makes me long to visit the Holy City and to breathe the air, but this isn't an option for me for a number of reasons, not the least of which is financial. Some Christians, when they describe "going home" are talking about going to Heaven when the die. Other Christians believe that the Jews are just "holding" Israel for them and, when Jesus comes, the Jews will be marginalized, and all of the covenant promises involving Jews and the Land will be transferred to the Christians.

I don't believe that, but then, as a Christian, as Bechor points out we have no place to go. Or do we?

In Rabbi Hershel Brand's book On Eagles' Wings: Moshiach (Messiah), Redemption, and the World to Come, he makes his various points using a fictional conversation between a Rabbi and a young student. At one point, when the Rabbi is describing Gentiles in the world to come, the student is incredulous and asks if there will even be Gentiles in the world to come. The Rabbi answers in the affirmative and assures his student that there are actually some "righteous Gentiles" who have merited a place the world to come. Despite the book's generally anti-missionary tone and its less than Christian-friendly presentation, it's nice to know from Rabbi Brand's point of view, that a few of us will "make it".

But where do we Christians belong? Today, the Jews have a land: Israel. Although the rest of the world is fighting as hard as it (we) can to take it away from them and to exterminate the Jews once more (didn't we just finish commemorating Yom HaShoah?), the Land is God's and He gave it to the Children of Israel as their perpetual inheritance. Some say that, as grafted in non-Jews, we also have a stake in the physical land, but Israel isn't very big, even in terms of its Biblical borders, and it's hard to imagine the worldwide population of Christians and Jews (at least in today's world) being able to fit. Also, you have to examine the idea of whether or not Christians are "Israel" in the sense that Israel is Israel.

In any event, a Christian has as much chance of making aliyah (emigrating) to Israel today as a wolf does of winning a popularity contest among the sheep...that is to say, none.

Jews have a mandate to establish and maintain a Holy Land that goes all the way back to Abraham. Although all nations will be blessed through Abraham's offspring (Genesis 22:18), that blessing doesn't translate into an inheritance such as the one provided to Israel by God.

Gentile disciples are blessed through Abraham's seed, Jesus (Yeshua). As disciples of the Jewish Messiah, we have belonging to each other and to God and salvation in the world to come. As far as I can tell, we also have a part of this:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. -Revelation 22:1-5

The wolves are savaging the Christian sheep in the middle east. They want to do the same to the Jewish sheep, but the Jews were smarter and built a strong pen for themselves (I can't help but be reminded of the three little pigs and houses made of straw, sticks, and bricks). God was the prompt for the Jews to build that pen. The rest of us have our individual nations and it would behoove the Christians in the middle east to find safe haven in countries that will not try to kill them. We don't have a "Christian nation" (America never was and it especially isn't in the current era). Assuming Revelation 22 includes the Gentile disciples of the Jewish Messiah as "his servants" then our inheritance, as such, isn't available in any tangible sense. Until the Messiah comes, we continue to live in the various nations of the world and to live inside our faith and our hope...and we continue to wait.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Unintended Goodness

2011-05-03T08:58:00.009-06:00

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. -Matthew 7:9-12

When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. -James 4:3

Sometimes it happens that you set out to do something with the best of intentions - and you end up with what appears the opposite.

Know with absolute certainty - because this is a tradition of our sages - that if your true intent is good, then from it only good can emerge.

Perhaps not the good you intended - or care for - but good nevertheless.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
from "Detoured Good"
Chabad.org

I read Rabbi Freeman's words yesterday, which I quoted above, and thought about my own situation. I've recently commented on both Judah Himango's and Derek Leman's blogs regarding my intention to formally leave the world of "Messianic" worship, and specifically the "One Law" branch of this movement. I no longer believe that God intends for Gentiles and Jews to live absolutely identical lifestyles, with Christians performing all of the mitzvot in every detail, precisely like their Jewish brothers and sisters, thus obliterating any covenant difference between Jew and Christian.

My intent, among other things, is to do good. My purpose, or at least one of them, is to honor the chosen people of God (not that we all can't be chosen in our own ways); the Children of Israel. My motivation is not just Jews in general but my Jewish wife in specific. She has been very patient with me, but I can only imagine how she sees me, her Christian husband, when I go to worship with my congregation on Shabbat, knowing that I will be praying with a tallit, using a siddur, and reciting the Shema.

My intention is to do good in the action of leaving my congregation, but Rabbi Freeman makes me wonder. If my intention is good, can only truly good things result? After all, we have a common saying that goes, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" (thought to have originated with Saint Bernard of Clairvaux who wrote, "L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs" or "hell is full of good wishes and desires").

Could bad things come from good intent? They probably do all of the time, but if Rabbi Freeman and the Lubavitcher Rebbe are right, I can hope for a good, but not necessarily expected outcome from my intentions and actions. I sometimes think of prayer that way. I'd like to think that my intentions in prayer are always good ,but as James (Jacob), the brother of the Master, says, I can mess that one up, too.

However Jesus (Yeshua) also seems to say something we find echoed in Rabbi Freeman's teaching. Even though we are evil, we know how to give good gifts. If prayer is like an incense offering; a gift to God (Psalm 141:2, Revelation 5:8, Revelation 8:4), then maybe even my attempt to extend myself outside of my own skin and my own thoughts and to connect, however tenuously, with God, will yield something of His goodness, even though I can't anticipate the exact result of my "offering".

I haven't tendered my resignation to my congregation yet, but the time is coming all too soon. We are small and our resources are limited. I'm a significant resource for my community, not only as a teacher, but as a blog writer, and the person who maintains our website. In soothing my conscience and attempting to reconcile the faith portion of my relationship with my wife, what do I do to the congregation?

Another saying we have is "He who hesitates is lost". I can't simply do nothing, continue on with the status quo, and hope for the best. I've been praying and waiting for an answer to this puzzle for almost two years and I'm still waiting. While God can provide miracles completely outside of human actions, I know we aren't supposed to depend on God doing so. With all this going on, what does God want and what will He do?

Today, my email quote from Rabbi Freeman contained the following:

Every moment,
every human activity
is an opportunity to connect with the Infinite.

Every act can be an uplifting of the soul.

It is only your will that may stand in the way.

But as soon as you wish,
you are connected.

In seeking God and His will, I'm like a blind man trying to find a sunny patch of ground on which to stand. The weather is partly cloudy, and I only have a feeble sense of warm or cold to tell me if I've reached my goal. Rabbi Freeman says that any time I truly wish to be connected to God, I am, but like that blind man, I can't always tell if I'm already standing in the light of day. Like a man driving his car on a lonely stretch of freeway in the middle of the desert at night, I can only see as far as my headlights can pierce the darkness. In order to reach my destination, I must continue driving through the vast obsidian wastes and hope for the dawn.

A rebuke impresses a discerning person more than a hundred lashes a fool. -Proverbs 17:10

Yom Hashoah: Remembrance

2011-05-01T08:56:00.000-06:00

Before the Shabbat began last week, I wrote about how it was a miracle of God that the Jewish people continue to exist. Today is Yom Hashoah or Holocaust Memorial Day and we remember the six million who lost their lives to the world's attempt to eradicate the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I don't write this blog post to say anything profound. This has been said by writers and commentators much wiser and more eloquent than I. I only add my voice to theirs in the spirit of remembrance.

Don't forget. Don't let your children forget. The world is not so civilized and the Mashiach isn't here yet. They can come for you. They can come for the Jews again and when they do, they come for all people of conscience. If we forget, then we become one of them; one of the oppressors.

Do not just remember in your hearts. Make a loud noise. Shout out to the world. Don't let the world forget, or it will surely try again to destroy what God has created by His Hand and by His Mercy.

The Miracle at the Shabbos Table

2011-04-29T09:52:00.001-06:00

Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. -John 14:11-14

There will come a time, very soon, when we will be shown miracles so great, they will make the ten plagues and the splitting of the Red Sea appear as ordinary as nature itself.

So great, no mind can begin to fathom them; so powerful, they will transform the very fabric of our world, elevating it in a way that the wonders of the exodus never did.

For then, our eyes will be opened and granted the power to see the greatest of miracles: Those miracles that occur to us now, beneath our very noses, every day.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
Greater Miracles
Chabad.org

I don't know why, but I continue to be amazed at how the teachings of Jesus (Yeshua) parallel the Talmudic masters and even the modern Jewish sages. They are all painting the same picture and revealing the same vision. We are all looking for miracles and we are all looking to God to provide those miracles. Even with evidence of the hand of God all around us, we can still fail to see what He is doing in the world and in our lives.

I suppose this shouldn't surprise us. Face it. The world is a mess. You have problems. I have problems. The world has problems. Where is God? Just look at His holy nation; the one He established Himself. We have members of the Fogel family murdered in their sleep in their Itamar home by Palestinian terrorists. Hamas fired a rocket from Gaza at a school bus critically injuring a teenage boy who later died. Several young Jewish men were murdered by Palestinian police while worshiping at Joseph's tomb in Nablus. Where does it all end? Where are the miracles of God? Why isn't He saving His people?

Any Jew alive on the face of this planet today is a walking miracle. Our mere existence today is wondrous, plucked from the fire at the last moment again and again, with no natural explanation that will suffice. Each of us alive today is a child of martyrs and miracles.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
Walking Miracle
Chabad.org

The fact that there are Jews on earth today at all is a miracle. For thousands of years, the world has been trying to exterminate the Children of Israel, and it always seems like the Jewish people are on the verge of extinction. Yet we still have Jews among us. As much as the world hates Jews and hates Israel, the world needs the presence of the light of the world.

“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” -Isaiah 49:6

This is what the LORD Almighty says: “In those days ten people from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the tzitzit of his robe and say, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you.’” -Zechariah 8:23

In the last days the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established
as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
and peoples will stream to it.

Many nations will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”
The Torah will go out from Zion,
the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. -Micah 4:1-2

And lest you think that Israel has irredeemably failed God and that the Christians have taken over, here is Paul's commentary on the matter:

I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written:
“The deliverer will come from Zion;
he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.
And this is my covenant with them
when I take away their sins.” -Romans 11:25-27

It's not just that Israel is part of God's plan. In many ways, Israel is the plan. The salvation of the rest of the world depends on the Jewish people. We Gentiles will turn to them in the last days and through the Jewish Messiah, we are all redeemed.

However, even the most far reaching cosmic plan can have very humble elements. God created the miracle of the nation of Israel and through his mercy, sustains each and every Jew. Yet we see that every individual has a part in that mission, even down to a single parent and how he or she raises their children.

Rav Shmuel Aharon Lider, shlit”a, learns a beautiful lesson from this. “We see from this that Shabbos is the time for us to sanctify and educate our children at the table. The best way to be mechanech and sanctify our children is through the zemiros that we sing and the divrei Torah that we say at the Shabbos table.”

Rav Shach, zt”l, had a neighbor - a simple baal habayis who was not too learned - whose sons grew to all be exceptional masmidim and great talmidei chachamim. Rav Shach himself lived and breathed Torah all the time, yet his neighbor’s children appeared to surpass his own in certain ways as far as Torah study was concerned.

Rav Shach himself commented on what seemed to him at the root of the distinction. “My neighbor spent a long time at the Shabbos table interacting with his children and singing zemiros. I, on the other hand, was always very engrossed in working through a difficult Rambam or some other intricate Torah argument. One should never underestimate the power of filling the children with a spirit of holiness through the simple singing of zemiros and speaking divrei Torah at their own level at the Shabbos table!"

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories off the Daf
The Power of the Shabbos Table
Menachos 50

Here we see a miracle. One does not have to be an exceptional Jewish Torah scholar or exalted sage or saint in order to raise children who are close to God. We can also extend the metaphor, so to speak, beyond Israel. We can apply what else we've learned in this short lesson and say that by the Gentiles attaching themselves (ourselves) to Israel through the Jewish Messiah, we can also share in the miracle of not only continuing in the world, but of being able to belong to God.

The Torah has gone forth from Zion and, as the Master sometimes said, "to those who have ears, let them hear".

Shabbat Shalom.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Review: Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism

2011-04-28T09:24:00.001-06:00

Reading Scholem again from our precarious vantage point in the age of the information revolution, at the moment of the much-trumpeted breaking of a canon, we may detect in his grand evocation of this strange and in many ways quite alien mystical corpus an exemplary pattern of how viable historical change takes place, how the antithetic tensions of life in culture lay against each other without destroying the continuity of the cultural system.

In this regard, Scholem's searching investigation of the twisting paths of Jewish mysticism makes profoundly instructive reading as we approach the millennium. But he also sees sharply that the mystics, impelled by discernible historical circumstances, very often sought to escape the ordeal of history by withdrawing into a realm of ecstasy and, at worst, delusion.

Scholem's magisterial study is hardly intended to promote a nostalgia for mysticism or any illusion that we can embrace it as it was, but he makes us see the essential role it has played in the Jewish story, and indeed in the human story, and he leads us to ponder what other symbolic languages there might be to express our stubborn sense of connection with eternal things.

From the Foreward to Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
written by Robert Alter
Berkeley, 1995

Gershom Scholem was not a mystic. He was a thorough and compelled educator and researcher who threw himself into an investigation of Jewish mysticism which resulted in Major Trends, a book that is considered to be a major contribution and central tome on the history and nature of the Jewish mystical movements.

Scholem's book is based on the nine Stroock Lectures he presented at the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 1938 (Major Trends was published just a few years later) and each chapter stands, more or less, on its own, with just a few strings weaving forward and backward to the other material. The book functions as a whirlwind tour of the history of the various flavors of Jewish mysticism and how they developed, from first century Roman Judea and Merkabah mysticism, through 18th and 19th century and Polish/Ukrainian Chasidism. Suffice it to say, the book covers a vast territory. Unless you are already well versed in the different expressions of Jewish mysticism, don't hope to come away with an easily digested summary of what makes up the different mystic traditions. You can read the book cover to cover, but once you've done so, you'll need to do so again, and then you'll use this book as a reference when exploring one or more of the mystic movements in detail.

My own modest introduction to the Jewish mystic tradition was in reading and reviewing Paul Philip Levertoff's Love and the Messianic Age. Levertoff was a Chasidic Jew who lived in the late 19th and into the mid-20th century and who saw the Gospels, particularly the Gospel of John, as a reflection of his own mystic background as a Chasidim. When I read Levertoff and the FFOZ/Vine of David commentary on his work, I began to see frail glimpses of who the Jewish Messiah is through that unusual and elusive lens and I wanted to see and understand more.

Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism is more; a lot more.

As a non-Jewish Christian and disciple of the Jewish Messiah, I started reading Scholem with an eye on discovering more hidden truths about the Jesus (Yeshua) within his pages and I must say I found those truths...and I didn't.

I have to be careful here. It is easy to find what you're looking for, much like a person panning for gold nuggets, eager to "strike it rich". But does a person searching the river with an eye filled with preconceptions find true gold, or only what looks like gold? That's the dilemma I faced reading Scholem.

I found many dualisms and parallels that seemed to point to Jesus, especially in the earlier mystic traditions, but is he really there? I don't know that I can say "yes" or "no" based on Scholem's rapid and intense coverage of such a broad spectrum of Jewish mysticisms. Right now, I prefer to withhold judgment and to be content learning what there is to learn on Scholem's terms rather than my own. The rest will come, God be willing.

The details of the book are too numerous to document here. I wrote copious notes as I turned each page, but to replicate those notes here would create a novel, not a blog post. The chief benefit of reading Major Trends at this stage of my education is to lay a wide foundation for what comes afterward. I've already started reading my next book, The Way of Kabbalah by Ben Shimon Halevi, and from the very first page, what I had learned from Scholem enabled me to grasp Halevi's description of Kabbalah in a way I couldn't have achieved otherwise (Scholem dedicated two full lectures just to the Zohar).

Scholem seems to leave out no detail or observation as he takes us through history, examining each mystic movement in Judaism. He relates not only the prize, but the peril of pursuing the mystic, and not only the virtues, but the flaws and fallacies of each mystic writer and explorer. As Alter stated in the Foreward, Major Trends is both a Jewish story and a story of human beings striving, sometimes vainly, to pursue God in His "native realm" which lies beyond the boundaries of human perception and existence. Scholem's final lecture ends this way:

The story is not ended, it has not yet become history, and the secret life it holds can break out tomorrow in you or in me. Under what aspects this invisible stream of Jewish mysticism will again come to the surface we cannot tell. But I have come here to speak to you of the main tendencies of Jewish mysticism as we know them. To speak of the mystical course which, in the great cataclysm now stirring the Jewish people more deeply than in the entire history of Exile, destiny may still have in store for us - and I for one believe that there is such a course - is the task of prophets, not of professors.

There's another way to view the course Scholem describes:

If we were Jews because our minds and hearts told us so, then our Judaism would take us only as far as our minds and hearts can know. But we are not. And so, our journey is on eagle’s wings and our destiny beyond the stars.
Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
from his short article, "Not by choice"
Chabad.org

Jewish mysticism is not just a Jewish story but a human story. It's a journey to find God using means that go beyond prayer and study. It's a path that leads us outside of our perceptions and even outside our imaginations, and into a set of worlds fantastic and dangerous. Ezekiel saw such worlds. So did John as he describes in the Book of Revelations. Scholem doesn't tell us how to find the road that takes us to these worlds, but he tells us many stories about the men who did. If you want to learn about the mystics who discovered the trail head into the unknown, reading Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism is a good place to start.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

The King's Scroll

2011-04-27T14:29:00.001-06:00

The 17th mitzvah is that we are commanded that every king who sits in rulership over the Jewish people shall write a Sefer Torah for himself; and that it shall never be separate from him.
Translated by Rabbi Berel Bell
Sefer Hamitzvot in English
The King's Torah Scroll
Chabad.org

"It shall not move from his presence except when he enters the bathroom, the bathhouse, or a place where one is forbidden to study. When he goes out to war, it must be with him; when he returns, it must be with him; when he sits in judgment, it must be with him; when he eats, it must be in front of him."
Rambam, Hilchos Melachim, Chapter 3, Halacha

"I will rise up at midnight to give thanks to You for Your righteous judgments." -Psalms 119:62

According to Deuteronomy 17:18, each King of Israel is to write for himself a copy of the Torah scroll. The Talmud interprets this as meaning the King will write two scrolls, one to be kept in the Treasury, and one to be kept, as we see in Rambam's commentary above, with the King at all times. If God's justice and mercy is before the King every waking moment, when he's eating breakfast, when he goes to war, when he sits in his home, when he goes along the way, then God's judgments will not be far from the King when the King issues his judgments over the people of Israel.

We who are disciples of the Jewish Messiah Jesus (Yeshua) have one King. If we are true to our faith, then he and his righteous judgments are always before us. He is our living Torah. But is he his own living Torah?

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. -John 1:14

It's common in Messianic circles to consider Jesus as the living embodiment of the commandments of God, the flesh and blood container for all of God's mercy, compassion, judgments, and ordinances, the Torah incarnate who dwelt among us. As the suffering servant, he set aside his Kingship and his majesty and he died, although he died with the titulus ironically declaring his Kingship nailed above his head. When he returns, he will come as avenging King. When he walked among men as a man, he obeyed all of the mitzvot without error or flaw. As King, he can do no less. But how will the King keep the Torah before him at all times?

I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.” He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: King of Kings and Lord of Lords. -Revelation 19:11-16

I'm stretching the metaphor, probably beyond reasonable limits, I admit it. I can't say with any certainty that the commandment for a King of Israel to always have the Torah before him is fulfilled by his name written on his robe and his thigh. Yet it is a fascinating thought and a compelling image, that Yeshua is the Torah and that he wears the Torah, so to speak, upon him. He is the King of Israel; the final King. He is the Torah and the Torah is with him.

But what about us? Deuteronomy 31:19 is understood by the sages as a commandment for every Jew to write for himself a scroll of the Torah, even if he has inherited a scroll from his father. In modern times, the commandment is fulfilled by most Jews, in purchasing a book of Torah rather than writing it out by hand.

It is said that many of the commandments do not apply to Gentile disciples of the Jewish Messiah. I certainly don't think the Talmudic masters intended for non-Jews to be obligated to the commandment of writing a copy of the Torah. It's not a common concern among Christians certainly. Nevertheless, we have this:

They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. -Deuteronomy 22:4-5

As the King wears his name, so will we wear his name and we will belong to him. You may believe you belong to him now, and I certainly cannot refute this. However, the "throne of God and of the Lamb" is not yet with us (Revelation 22:3) and we do not yet serve only him with wholehearted devotion as we will in Messianic days. Today, we can keep his name and his word before us by studying the Bible, by associating with other believers, by performing acts of kindness and compassion, by attempting to embrace a mystic understanding of the Messiah beyond the literal word, and by praying that his "will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:8).

Pray that the King comes soon and in our days.

To the Hasidic mind Devekuth and Kawwanah were the primary emotional values, a significance which they had by no means always had before. "That is the meaning of Devekuth that when he fulfills the commandments or studies the Torah, the body becomes a throne for the soul...and the soul a throne for the light of the Shekhinah which is above his head, and the light as it were flows all round him, and he sits in the midst of the light and rejoices in trembling."
from Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
by Gershom Scholem

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Why Don’t Christians Count the Omer?

2011-04-26T08:47:00.000-06:00

You shall count for yourselves -- from the day after the Shabbat, from the day when you bring the Omer of the waving -- seven Shabbats, they shall be complete. Until the day after the seventh sabbath you shall count, fifty days. -Leviticus 23:15-16

You shall count for yourselves seven weeks, from when the sickle is first put to the standing crop shall you begin counting seven weeks. Then you will observe the Festival of Shavu'ot for the LORD, your God. -Deuteronomy 16:9-10

Last week, our congregation had our annual community Passover Seder. As always, it was a wonderful time and is still in my heart on this last day of the week of Unleavened Bread. Of course, Passover, among other things, starts the beginning of the 50 days of Counting the Omer. Originally, this was the period of time between the Children of Israel leaving slavery in Egypt and the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai 49 days later, by the Almighty Himself. The counting period is considered to have been a time of spiritual cleansing for the Children of Israel in preparation for receiving the Torah of God.

Since that time, the period of Counting the Omer between Passover and Shavuot has a similar function in Judaism. Actually, the preparation for Passover itself is a time to clean out the "hametz"; leaven or sin in our lives, so Jews prepare their souls to break with the sins of the past and dedicate the coming year to drawing closer to God. Passover also "starts the clock" of the seven weeks (also why Shavuot is called "The Festival of Weeks") of Omer counting and the anticipation of Shavuot, which is the anniversary of the giving of the Torah at Sinai.

The meaning of the Torah for observant Jewish people goes well beyond what the Bible typically means to the Evangelical Church (which is not to say that the church doesn't highly regard the Bible). It's not "just" considered the Word of God. Jews consider the Torah as having a spiritual and mystical "life" beyond the printed word. In a sense, they believe that the world was created for the sake of Torah and that if the Jews had rejected Torah at Sinai, all of Creation would have been undone. Torah is also considered the means by which God created the Universe and everything in it. Torah is the guide to Holy living, the path to wisdom, and the means to draw nearer to God. Torah scholars are considered on a higher spiritual level and closer to the Creator because of their study, and Torah study and worship of God are considered the same thing.

I'm providing this context to communicate the incredible importance that the giving of the Torah has to the Jewish people. That means the Counting of Omer is a time of tremendous anticipation. It's like knowing the most important event in your life will happen 50 days from now. It's a once-in-a-lifetime event that will change you forever. Naturally, during that 50 days, it will be all you can think and talk about, and it stands to reason you'd want to spend those 50 days getting as ready as possible for this exceptionally important moment.

That's what the Counting of the Omer is. A period of intense preparation for an encounter with God. It's a countdown to the day when you will receive the most important gift in the world from the Creator of the world. But what does this have to do with Christianity?

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues (languages) as the Spirit enabled them. -Acts 2:1-4 (NIV)

The festival of Shavu'ot arrived, and the believers all gathered together in one place. Suddenly there came a sound from the sky like the roar of a violent wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then they saw what looked like tongues of fire, which separated and came to rest on each one of them. They were all filled with the Ruach HaKodesh and began to talk in different languages, as the Spirit enabled them to speak. -Acts 2:1-4 (CJB)

What the Church calls Pentecost and considers the anniversary of the giving to the Holy Spirit to the disciples in Jerusalem, Judaism calls Shavuot and considers the anniversary of the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai; but they're the same day. A too casual reading of Acts 2 might cause us to forget a few things. First of all, the Disciples were all Jewish, so it makes a huge amount of sense that they'd be celebrating the Biblical festivals, including Shavuot. They'd be gathered together in fact because of Shavuot, in remembrance of that day and in obedience to the commandments.

Also in obedience of the commandments, the Disciples would have been counting the Omer, just as their forefathers had done for thousands of years. The crucifixion of Yeshua (Jesus) on the threshold of Passover and his subsequent resurrection and ascension wouldn't have done anything to change that. Certainly, there's nothing in the Bible that records Yeshua saying to not count the Omer that year and that "all bets were off", so to speak.

So here you have a group of Jews, who have come to faith in Yeshua as the risen Messiah. They have gone through 49 days of counting, and are now gathered together for the festival of Shavuot, commemorating the giving of the Torah. The giving of Torah is the most important and binding event in the lives of every Jew in existence, past, present, and future (it was the reason why Acts 2 records that there were Jews in Jerusalem from all over the diaspora, and why they understood the disciples when they were speaking in different languages; the languages of the nations they lived in). With the stage set, God does something incredible; He gives another gift, this time, the Holy Spirit to dwell within the disciples and to specifically empower them to begin the mission assigned to them by their Master and Messiah, Yeshua at the end of the book of Matthew.

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." -Matthew 28:16-20 (NIV)

The events in Matthew 28 and Acts 2 go hand in hand. Matthew 28 defines the assignment and Acts 2 provides the tools to accomplish the assignment. It wasn't that the Holy Spirit didn't connect to faithful and righteous people before that time. After all, consider the Prophets and, at the end of Exodus when the Shekinah; the Glory of God, descends onto and into the Tabernacle in the desert, the Talmud states that at that moment, each Jew was to consider that a small piece of the Shekinah was dwelling in their individual hearts. I know that Christianity makes a distinction between the Spirit dwelling "on" vs. "in", but why would God do that? The Spirit is the Spirit. Why would all righteous people be considered "second hand (spiritual) citizens" prior to the coming of the Messiah?

The other and primary connection that needs to be understood is the link between Exodus 20 and Acts 2; the giving of Torah and the giving of the Spirit. I don't believe that, in a created universe, there is such a thing as coincidence; certainly not on the level of Shavuot and Pentecost "just happening" to be on the same day. Therefore, it fulfills the plan of God that these two events be connected. On a larger stage, perhaps the giving of the Spirit enables us to fully implement, not only the Matthew 28 directive, but the Torah as well.

Does that mean, in essence, these two events are the same event? If so, or at least if they are intimately connected, it has incredible implications in the life of every believer in Yeshua (that is, the life of every Christian). What would have been assumed by the Jewish Disciples is considered revolutionary to we 21st Century Gentile believers. 1st Century Jews wouldn't have batted an eye at the thought of obeying the Torah commands. They were taught this from childhood. If the Spirit enabled them to more completely obey the commands of God and "The Great Commission" as it is called by the Church, then so much the better. But what about us?

If the Spirit enables the modern Church to continue the commandment of Jesus to "go and make disciples of all nations", that's completely acceptable and understood (as long as you understand that the terms "convert" and disciple" aren't synonyms). However, understanding that these two events and concepts are also fused with the giving of Torah at Sinai and the enabling to "keep Torah", is likely a stunning revelation to a non-Jewish believing audience. There is much debate over how a Gentile disciple of the Master is to "keep the Torah" vs. the obligation of the Jewish people to the commandments, but given the undeniable link between Shavuot and Pentecost, I can't see any reason why a Christian shouldn't count the Omer.

In other words, given all of my prior statements about why it is so important for observant Jews, to this day, to count the Omer, and prepare themselves for a "close encounter" with God, if Christians believe that the giving of the Spirit is also a "close encounter", then why not count the Omer, too?

It seems like Evangelical Christians are really missing out on something special. I think it's part of why we Gentiles who are attached to the "Messianic movement" do what we do. The living out of the Biblical festivals has not just ancient, but modern applications as well. Hopefully this modest article has brought a few of those applications out into the open. Pentecost didn't "replace" Shavuot, nor did the Spirit replace the Torah. The Spirit is God dwelling within us and the Torah is God's practical and mystical guide to Biblical wisdom and righteous living. We are told that the Word (or Torah) is written on our hearts, which makes the Spirit and Torah more closely linked than we may imagine. If the Children of Israel in Exodus already understood that connection, no wonder Jews, even today, are so in awe of the Torah and of God. They count the Omer with a sense of anticipation and wonder at the immense graciousness and kindness of God. Gentile believers need to recapture that sense of awe of God and what He has given us. One way to do that, is to count the Omer and to eagerly look forward to that encounter. Remember, there's a final anticipated meeting that is yet to arrive. He's coming.

He one who is testifying to these things says, "Yes, I am coming soon! Amen! Come, Lord Yeshua! May the grace of the Lord Yeshua be with all! -Revelation 22:20-21 (CJB)

A slightly different version of this article was originally published at the Congregation Shema Yisrael blog. You can find a related article on the same blog called Of Matzah, Bagels, and Omer.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Choices

2011-04-25T09:16:00.007-06:00

We are not Jews by choice. We are not circumcised by choice—they do it to us before we can be asked. Neither did anyone ask us if we would like to be obligated in all these mitzvahs—not since Mount Sinai. Even the one who joins us does so because something propels him from inside.

If we were Jews because our minds and hearts told us so, then our Judaism would take us only as far as our minds and hearts can know. But we are not. And so, our journey is on eagle’s wings and our destiny beyond the stars.
Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
Not by choice
Chabad.org

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will - to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. -Ephesians 1:3-6

Do we have a choice? I mean, about who we are...do we have a choice?

Logic would say "yes", at least up to a point. We don't have a choice about who our parents are, our hair or eye color, how tall we'll be, and a lot of other things. But we were given free will and the power of decision. We can choose where to live, what kind of work to do, who to marry, what to read, how to spend our free time. We can choose.

But if you're a Jew, you don't get to choose. As Rabbi Freeman states, except for those people who choose to convert to Judaism, you do not choose to be a Jew (more on this later). You are "born that way", to quote a popular song by Lady Gaga. Of course, a Jew can choose to comply to his or her obligations to the commandments and what sort of lifestyle to live. There are Jews who experience being Jews by virtue of their genetics, but who otherwise live a completely "goy" lifestyle. There are Jews who relate to being Jews in terms of a social identity, but who do not acknowledge the religious and spiritual reality of being a Jew. There are Jews who embrace all there is about being Jewish including the Torah and the Talmud, and who embrace God.

Even if you're a Jew who chooses to reject your Judaism, just like in Nazi Germany on Kristallnacht in 1938, when they come for you, it won't matter if you say you're a Jew or not. You are a Jew and they will take you away.

But what about Christians? No one is born a Christian. Even if you are born into a Christian family, it's not a foregone conclusion that you will become a Christian or, if as a child you accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, there's no guarantee your faith will endure into adulthood. Many kids raised in Christian homes lose their faith upon entering college and never regain it. You can choose to be a Christian and later you can quit. When they come for the Christians, you can deny your faith convincingly and with credibility, unlike the Jew.

There's a story about a teenage girl named Cassie Bernall who was murdered during the Columbine High School massacre on April 21, 1999. According to popular media reports, including news sources in Evangelical Christianity, Bernall was asked at gunpoint by one of the assailants if she was a Christian. She said "yes" and was immediately shot as a result. The church considers her a "martyr" for her faith and she has been much touted (or perhaps exploited) by organized Christianity as an example of a young person of faith who would even die for Jesus.

The facts of this event are somewhat in dispute and there are those who say the martyrdom of Cassie Bernall never happened, at least not in the way we've heard it reported. But fact or myth, the story of Cassie Bernall does highlight that Christians have a choice about acknowledging or denying Christ.

Don't we?

But if that's true that we have a choice, what did Paul mean when he said that "he (God) chose us in him before the creation of the world" and "he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ"? Paul is clearly addressing non-Jews who came to faith in the Jewish Messiah and who were adopted "to sonship" through the Messiah. Did we have a choice?

Free will says "yes", but Paul throws that choice into doubt.

Converting to Judaism for a non-Jew is a choice, isn't it? That choice is one of the reasons Judaism is hesitant to offer conversion as an option since converted Jews can more easily deny their "Judaism" when the going gets tough, just like Christians. Rabbi Freeman says, "Even the one who joins us does so because something propels him from inside...And so, our journey is on eagle’s wings and our destiny beyond the stars." This is applied even to Jewish converts...people who have been destined by God to be Jewish before the creation of the world, even though they weren't born that way.

I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. -Leviticus 26:42

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. -Acts 12:13

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. -2 Peter 3:9

In Judaism, the merit of the Patriarchs is applied to every Jew and it is in that merit that Jews are considered by God. Of course John the Baptizer did say that God could raise up sons of Abraham from stones (Matthew 3:9), indicating that the merit of the Fathers has limits. But God has remembered and God will continue to remember His covenant with the Jewish people and, as Paul states (in Romans 11:25-32), all of Israel will be saved.

But Peter says that God does not want anyone to perish. If Jews, not by their own choice, are members of the covenant, and Christians were chosen by God from before the creation of the world, where does choice figure in? I don't really know the answer, but there is this:

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. -Genesis 1:27

Choice or not, all human beings everywhere are special just because we were created in God's image. That doesn't mean arms and legs and such, but the part of us that, through no will of our own, seeks out something greater than ourselves. For some that means seeking science, for others some form of spirituality, and for those who try to block out that "image", it means immersing themselves in the things of the world including sex, drugs, alcohol, and whatever other pleasures they can find.

For those of us who try to answer "the call" and seek out that thing within us that wants to reconnect to its origin, we are taken places we don't want to go, we ask questions we don't want to ask, and we hear answers we don't want to hear. Yet we cannot stop seeking that missing part of ourselves, we cannot stop asking troublesome questions, and we cannot stop listening for disturbing answers.

The deepest longing, therefore, of the genuine Chasid is to become a "living Torah." The keeping of the Law is to him only a means to an end: union with God. For this reason he tries to keep the Law scrupulously, for "God's thoughts are embodied in it."
Paul Phillip Levertoff
Love and the Messianic Age

I suppose I'm cheating when I say that we do and don't have a choice. We don't have a choice about being created by God and we don't have a choice about who God created us to be, Jew or Gentile. We don't have a choice in that God seems to have created us with a built-in "homing signal" and, at some point our lives, He activates it and compels us to seek out that which we don't understand.

We do have a choice how we respond to that signal. Jews, though they can never stop being Jews, have a choice about how to respond to God. The rest of humanity, regardless of their religion including claiming no religion, have a choice about how to respond to God. Responding to God is challenging, even frightening. God calls us into worlds we don't always understand and probably wouldn't choose to enter, even if we did understand. We just know that, having answered God, we have only our faith to help us do what God has called us to do:

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” "Hineni" (Here I am), he replied. -Genesis 22:1

Dory: Come on, trust me on this one.
Marlin: Trust you?
Dory: Yes, trust. It's what friends do.
-from Finding Nemo (2003)

Trust. It's what Abraham did when God asked him to sacrifice his son, his only son, the son he loved, Isaac. Trust. It's what we have when God asks us to respond to Him. We don't have a choice in being the person God created us to be. We do have a choice in what we do with that person.

To quote a favorite expression of the Zohar: "The impulse from below (itharuta dil-tata) calls forth that from above." The earthly reality mysteriously reacts upon the heavenly, for everything, including human activity, has its "upper roots" in the realm of the Sefiroth.
Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
by Gershom Scholem
quoting Zohar I, 164a and Zohar II, 34a

And so, our journey is on eagle’s wings and our destiny beyond the stars.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Searching for Easter Morning

2011-04-24T07:49:00.007-06:00

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. -John 3:16-18

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father - Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. -1 John 2:1-2

By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures... -1 Corinthians 15:2-4

Sounds like pretty good news, doesn't it? Christ died for our sins. He paid the price for our faults and failures before God so we wouldn't have to. All we have to do is accept the free gift of Jesus Christ, believe, and we will be saved. We are forgiven.

Aren't we?

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. -Romans 8:1-2

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. -1 John 1:9

So we do that. God forgives our sins. Right? Good news.

What about people? Do they forgive us? Not always.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. -Romans 12:17-18

To me, this implies, if not outright states, that I can try to live at peace with others but that doesn't mean others will want to live at peace with me.

Sometimes, I don't blame them.

I'm not a perfect person, far from it, actually. I guess I'm safe in saying that no one is perfect and that we all make mistakes, but it doesn't make my mistakes any easier to live with. I've hurt people. I've let people down. I've tried to make those things right again, as best I can, anyway.

That isn't always enough.

What happens when you've wronged a friend, tried to make it right and they don't forgive you? What happens if you've wronged your child or your spouse, tried to make it right, and they don't forgive you? Sometimes, you can only do so much to try and fix the past. Some people say to let the past be past, let it go, and move on, trying to be a better person today than you were yesterday.

Not everyone "forgives and forgets".

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. -Matthew 6:12

This is part of what we call "the Lord's Prayer" and the Master was instructing his disciples how to pray to God. He was also illustrating here that there is a relationship between our forgiving others and how (or if) we receive God's forgiveness.

Maybe that's the key. Why should we expect God to forgive us of our sins if we don't forgive others when they wrong us? But does that mean God doesn't forgive us if human beings don't forgive us? If even one, single person won't forgive us for how we've wronged them, even when we've tried to make it right, to turn from our sins, and make amends, does that mean God will refuse to forgive us too?

I doubt it. Otherwise, the forgiveness of our sins in front of the Eternal God would be dependent on the emotions and even the whims of a human beings and some of them (us) aren't very forgiving.

But there is something else to consider.

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD. -Leviticus 19:18

The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these. -Mark 12:31

We should love our neighbor as we love ourselves? Love ourselves? That's quite an assumption. Here's another one:

In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church... -Ephesians 5:28-29

Loving yourself. Loving your own body. I guess Jesus and Paul never heard of low self-esteem and depression. There is a considerable amount of information in the Bible about forgiving others and asking for forgiveness when we've done wrong, but as far as I can tell, there isn't an instruction regarding forgiving yourself. That brings up an interesting question.

Based on the Lord's Prayer and God's forgiveness being contingent upon our forgiving others, if we don't forgive ourselves, does God forgive us? If I don't or can't forgive myself, will God refuse to forgive me?

It would be rather ironic, especially in light of the hope engendered by the week of Unleavened bread as celebrated by Jews, and the joy generated by this Easter Sunday as commemorated by Christians, to realize that the plan of God to provide for the forgiveness of the world could be stymied by a person's inability to forgive himself. But even if by some miracle God forgives you anyway, does it matter if the people you love can't or won't do the same? Does it matter if you can't forgive yourself?

I respond to Easter pretty much the way I respond to Christmas. Both are Christian holidays where the assumption is you are supposed to feel happy and joyous, no matter what. In fact, if you don't feel happy and joyous on Christmas and Easter for any reason, there's something wrong with you. I really don't like it when holidays and human expectations impose their required emotional or affective states on me.

By the way, in looking up the various scriptures I wanted to reference for this blog post, I came across a discussion board thread at All About GOD called How do i know if i am really forgiven when i ask for it. The original poster never came back after making his initial query, but there were numerous answers provided. Many of the responses he got I'd consider somewhat empty platitudes and a few were just plain guilt trips, but one poster named Shari Burgess gave what I thought was a very honest answer:

I am sorry I don't have that answer for you but I will tell you that a lot of the forgiveness you seek starts within you. I don't know it seems that sometimes we are just programmed to continue with self hate self doubt not realizing that this is the trick of the "enemy" he wants you to be confused and not feel that you have been forgiven. Anything or anyone that makes you feel guilty or sad or hurt is not of God. Yes God does allow us to have guilt when we have done wrong but his word says that he forgives you and what ever you have done in the past is not a part of his memory. We are our own worst critics I know I suffer with the same problem I cling to all the hurt and the wrong I've done but we got to dig deeper into ourselves and understand if we were that bad we would not have the unique blessing to rise each and every day honor God in our actions and live to see another day.

Telling a depressed or upset person that Jesus makes life all sunshine and lollipops isn't helpful and usually communicates to the person who is struggling that you haven't the faintest idea what it's like to wrestle with real-life problems, let alone with faith. I don't know the answer to the conundrum but I suspect Shari is on the right track. However, I do know that it hurts when you think a wound is healing and it gets ripped open again.

This is Easter morning and the Christian and Messianic blogosphere abounds with joyous messages of resurrection, salvation, and hope. Never being one to fit in with the crowd, this is what I bring to the table for Sunday breakfast. The sun has risen and with it, the Son of God. Yet the road before me is still shrouded in darkness. I continue on my journey and await the dawn.

The road is long and I continue to travel in the dark.

Friday's Child in the Family of God

2011-04-22T09:13:00.003-06:00

Friday's child is loving and giving...

-from an old nursery rhyme

I keep forgetting it's Good Friday, the day the Christian church commemorates as the day Jesus died. For the past several days, I've been trying to work up some sort of feeling for this coming Easter Sunday. I've been reading a few Christian and Messianic blogs and it seems as if folks are just "on fire" for the coming of Easter and the celebration of the resurrection.

I'm not "feeling" it.

Actually, I've never had a strong emotional response to Easter. My parents took me to church when I was a young teen, but no one ever got around to asking me if I believed in Jesus or what it all meant to me. Being a "good kid", I did what my parents told me to do (for the most part) which included going to church. But I didn't believe. Christmas was a time when there was loot under a tree. I don't like hard boiled eggs or milk chocolate, so Easter didn't even have that much appeal.

When I was old enough, I told my parents I wasn't going to church anymore. My father wasn't a believer at the time (he has since found faith) so he didn't say much. I could tell my mother was hurt, but she accepted my decision.

I didn't come to faith in Jesus (Yeshua) until my early 40s. That was about 15 years ago or so. Even with that, I only worshiped in a traditional church setting for a few years before shifting into a "Messianic" context. I never developed an emotional attachment to the Christian holidays as Christian holidays. I never learned to love Christmas because of the birth of Jesus and I never acquired an adoration of Easter because of the resurrection.

Apparently, my perspective is something of an oddity in Messianic circles (it's a foregone conclusion that it's outright strange from a Christian point of view) if the Messiah Connection blog is any indication. If you've been reading my blog this week, you'll know that of late, I've also been questioning a Gentile Christian's (me) role in participating in the Passover, at least as a Christian rite, as opposed to the traditional Jewish festival.

But if I don't feel connected to Easter and Passover is becoming a question mark, where does that leave me?

I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I take pride in my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them...If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.” Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. -Romans 11:13-14,17-21

We Gentiles are "grafted in" to the natural root. Jesus said that he was the vine (natural root) and we (Gentiles, in my case) are the (grafted in) branches (John 15:5), co-existing, so to speak, on the same vine as the natural branches. But we're not the same...I'm not the same.

Many years ago, I worked in social services and part of my job was "special needs adoptions". Among other things, that means, finding adoptive homes for older children who have been removed from their birth families by the court (usually due to some unrepairable parental problem that resulted in child abuse). One of the things that child psychologists and other, similar professionals know about kids, is that they bond with their parents really, really early in life and once that do, that's it. No matter who those parents are or what they've done, those kids are bonded. If kids miss that special window for bonding because no "parental object" is available, they're "unbonded" forever, which usually results in all sorts of psychological and behavioral problems. Finding them a "good home" after the bonding window is closed doesn't open it again...ever.

Kids who are adopted into families at an older age almost always struggle with issues of identity and belonging. Even well into adulthood, when these "adoptees" have married and are raising their own families, many of them still question if they really have a family, if they really belong, and if they were ever really loved by anyone.

I was "adopted" into the "family of God" at an older age. I wonder if I failed to bond? Could that be the reason that, as Easter approaches and even the old city of Jerusalem is alive with Good Friday observances, I feel as emotionally flat as a piece of matzah?

My friend Gene Shlomovich wrote a blog today that said something very telling about this point, quoting his Muslim friend "Ahmed":

I was thinking Israel is really taking our lands, killing Palestinians, [they are] war criminals, etc… When I grew up I wanted to see what is the “Jew”, what kind of religion. They (Arab propaganda) make it like hell. Oh no, I want see. I read some books. I found out it is so close to our way of worshiping, it is so close, very very very close, and too far away from Christians! And then I wanted to know about land issues. I say now: oh yeah, we got 50 Arab countries, they (Jews) got none, just that one. So let them live in peace and give them more!

I’m telling you - a Jew is way too far from Christianity! And makes me feel sad of how much Jews and Muslims are far from each other nowadays and how close Christians are to Jews. Makes me enjoy this relationship.

In his missive, Gene referred to Ahmed and himself as cousins because of their common ancestor Abraham and the large number of similarities between Muslim and Jewish religious practice and perception...much closer than the resemblance between Judaism and Christianity. Jewish Israeli author Yossi Halevi made the exact observation in his book At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden when he undertook a spiritual journey to find "connectedness" with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land.

This probably wasn't Gene's intent, but the wonderful story he told about his conversation with Ahmed continued to cement my impression that the gulf between God's natural root and those of us who have been grafted in is much wider than we'd like to admit. During the week of Unleavened Bread, during Holy Week, on Good Friday, with both Erev Shabbat and Easter Sunday waiting in the wings, while the world of Christians and Jews celebrate an unquestioned sense of belonging, I'm still not sure where in all this I fit in. Is it possible to be a square peg in a universe where God created only round holes?

A few days ago, my 2 year old grandson Landon had a fever that spiked at 104 degrees F. He's still sick and has both an upper respiratory infection and a virus. He's doing better, but his Mom's come down with it now. My wife and I took Landon in last night to give his parents a break. He's still himself, but the poor little guy isn't feeling well.

As I was getting ready for work this morning, my wife asked me to hold him for a bit. He reached out to me and as I took him in my arms, he folded quite comfortably onto my shoulder and started to doze. In that moment, I knew I belonged to someone, at least for that tiny march of minutes. A two-year old little boy is wonderfully accepting and once he loves you, he loves you unconditionally.

While driving to work this morning, I wondered if perhaps those few, sweet minutes of holding my grandson would be the only worthwhile thing I'd end up doing today?

Today is Good Friday and I don't feel anything about it. What bothers me is that I think I should feel something. But I don't.

The poem I quoted from above was first published in 1838 and is meant to be a "fortune-telling" song which predicts a child's character based on the day of the week he or she was born. I used "Friday's child" because it's Good Friday. Also, I was born on a Friday. But if Friday's child is "loving and giving", Wednesday's child is "full of woe" and Thursday's child "has far to go".

The road is long and seen from the "rest stop" of Good Friday, I have far to go.

A Shroud for the Dead

2011-04-21T08:59:00.001-06:00

The Gemara concludes that even though shrouds for the dead are exempt from the mitzvah of tzitzis, when a body is prepared for burial we do wrap a garment with tzitzis around the body. The idea is based upon the verse in Mishlei (17:5) which states “One who mocks a pauper insults his Maker.” The term “pauper” refers to a person who has died and is therefore no longer obligated in mitzvos. We are not allowed to mock his inability to perform mitzvos, so we dress him with tzitzis.
"Tzitzis on the garments of the dead"
Menachos 41
Daf Yomi Digest

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures...
-1 Corinthians 15:3-4

Jesus is dead. At least he's dead if this is just after the Passover. Since the timing of when he was executed varies from one Gospel version to the next, we aren't absolutely sure what "three days" means in terms of hours and minutes, or just how long the Master spent entombed as a corpse. But we know he died.

We also know that, as an observant Jew, he would have obeyed the commandment to wear tzitzit or "fringes" on the four corners of his garments (Deuteronomy 22:12). We see an example in the Gospels (Matthew 9:20-22; Mark 5:25-34; Luke 8:43-47) that he wore fringes or tzitzit. It would have been unusual and even a little bizarre for a Jewish Rabbi and Prophet not to have obeyed the commandment of tzitzit as a representation of his obligation to the Torah.

And then he died. Another quote from the Daf:

Nevertheless, Shmuel agrees that if someone made burial shrouds for himself there is no obligation to place tzitzis on it.

While there's no obligation for the dead to be dressed in garments with tzitzit attached because a dead person cannot obey the commandments, as the earlier quote citing the Gemara states, we do not mock the dead. When Jesus was prepared for burial, his disciples, perhaps the women or even Joseph and Nicodemus, would have taken care of this important detail to honor and respect the Master. They loved him. They would not neglect him in this.

Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. -John 19:38-40

Yet the dead cannot praise God and they cannot obey Him.

Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave? -Psalm 6:5

It is not the dead who praise the LORD, those who go down to the place of silence... -115:17

Who provided the garments for burial? Who offered the tzitzit to the Master's body? He was stripped when beaten, though his clothing was returned (Matthew 27:27-31), but the Roman soldiers removed his clothes when he was placed on the cross and cast lots for his garments (Matthew 27:35). When he died, he died almost naked.

But while the Romans and the faithless mocked the dying Jesus, those who loved him suffered in tears and when he died, they did not mock him by refusing to attach tzitzit to his garments as they prepared a shroud for the dead.

I know I'm extrapolating from later Rabbinic rulings to earlier practices, but in my imagination and in my heart, I do not mock the dead. As the Children of Israel died in the desert wearing tzitzit, and as Jews are commanded to wear tzitzit on their four-cornered garments, I can see the Master dressed for burial this way.

Shulchan Aruch (Y.D. 351:2) rules that we bury the dead with tzitzis, but Rema adds that the tzitzis should be invalid. Our custom is to wrap the dead in a tallis, but to cut the tzitzis from one of the corners.

In reading the Gospels, we jump almost immediately from the burial to the resurrection but I'm asking you to pause. Don't go on the the next paragraph or the next page yet. Stop and consider. In Christianity, we jump to Easter in a mad rush, eager to celebrate the risen Lord, running immediately from the ugly, bloody death to the party commemorating his life, but stop. Think about it. Consider the day after he died. Break a piece of dry matzah and put it in your mouth. It's almost tasteless. It's like death. It's like his body. Think about what the Passover and unleavened bread is trying to tell you. Ponder what the Master was saying when he compared his body to the bread and asked you to think of him when you eat it. Taste the dry, brittle bitterness of grief; let the salt water in which we dip our karpas during the Seder be tears.

He died. He was buried. Right now, immediately after the Passover feast, he is buried. We honor him and prepare his body, though our hearts are shattered within us. We apply myrrh and aloes to his broken and torn body and wrap him in fresh, clean linens, struggling between slowly and reverently attending the Master and the urgency to finish before the Sabbath. On his robes we make sure that the tzitzit are attached. Little do we know that they should not be "invalid" as Rema will later rule. In three days time, the Master will live again.

The dead do not honor and praise God. A corpse does not obey the commandments and perform the mitzvot. That is for the living. Today, Jesus is dead. Tomorrow, after the Sabbath, he lives again.

Praise God.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

The Christian Passover

2011-04-20T10:27:00.000-06:00

Some Christians eager to connect with their religion's roots in the Hebrew Bible also fashion a Christianized seder to reflect the common assumption that the Last Supper was a Passover seder. But scholars point out that the Gospels disagree among themselves over whether the Last Supper took place on Passover or on the day before. And in Jesus' time the seder service was not set in the way we know it today.

These Christianized seders show the Passover story as merely the prelude to the advent of Jesus. This distresses some Jews and Christians. "It's deceptive to introduce Christian themes into the Jewish seder. When you start talking about Jesus, that is no longer a seder. That is a different creation altogether," a vehicle for preaching or proselytizing, says Rabbi Neil Gillman, professor emeritus of Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

from the story "Is Passover the New Christmas?
by Diane Cole
The Wall Street Journal

Just when you thought it was safe for Christians and Messianics to celebrate the Passover, another monkey wrench comes flying into the machine.

It's been awhile since I've seen a good knock-down-drag-out, Messianic Judaism, One Law, Bilateral Ecclesiology free-for-all in the Messianic blogosphere. We've all been (amazingly) well behaved, blogging about actual theological and faith issues, and pretty much not stepping on each others toes. I was almost convinced that these issues were settled between Christians and Jews, at least as far as Passover was concerned. Then I read Cole's story.

The interesting part is that my wife was the person who emailed this story to me, right before Passover started (about an hour before candle lighting). Reading the article, I couldn't help but consider that my congregation, a group of Christians from my wife's point of view, were going to be having one of those "Christianized seders" about 24 hours hence (last Tuesday night, actually). My wife denied having any ulterior motives for sending me the email. She told me she just thought I'd find the article interesting, but if she wasn't trying to send me a "message" consciously, I still wonder about what was lurking somewhere in the inner reaches of her brain pan. Maybe I'm being overly concerned.

I'm also really, really surprised this issue didn't come up in our little corner of cyberspace. It seems like all of the "angst" of what I call "strict Messianic Judaism" as driven by the concept of Bilateral Ecclesiology (coined in Mark Kinzer's book, Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism and blogged about by Derek Leman and Gene Shlomovich, among others) has evaporated into a soft, gentile mist.

There was a time when, if any non-Jew did anything Jewish, the opposing comments from Jews in "the movement" would have been swift and decisive. Has everyone just gotten tired of arguing? Why no cries of outrage at Baptists and Methodists conducting their own Seders? Why no vocal protests against Gentile "Messianics" leading their own Seders and declaring themselves free from slavery in Egypt?

I'll make the situation even worse. I'll mention Jewish/Gentile intermarried couples as quoted from Cole's article:

The changing demographics of American Jewry have played a role, too. Before 1970, only 13% of married American Jews were married to non-Jews. By the turn of the 21st century, that figure was 47%, according to the National Jewish Population Survey. As a result, interfaith couples and families have had a growing presence at Passover seder tables, both as guests and as hosts.

For some of these families, the seder—which has a recognizable theme and generally takes place at someone's home, rather than at a synagogue—provides a comfortable introduction to Jewish ritual. That's one message of the recently published book by journalists Cokie and Steve Roberts, Our Haggadah: Uniting Traditions for Interfaith Families. Themselves an intermarried couple (he's Jewish, she's Catholic), the Robertses have for decades hosted a Passover seder, mostly for other interfaith families.

Gentile/Jewish intermarrieds are another "hot button" issue that tends to touch a nerve in both Messianic and non-Messianic Jewish circles although, according to the statistic presented in the above-quoted statement, almost half of all U.S. Jews are married to non-Jews, so it must be the other half that's upset about it (or non-intermarried Jews in other nations, especially Israel). Additionally, the vast majority of Jews in the Messianic movement as a whole are themselves intermarried. It seems interfaith couples are not only bringing non-Jews to the Seder table, but into the worship of the Jewish Messiah as well.

In addition to Rabbi Gillman's objections to "Christianized seders", some Christian authorities are also concerned about Christians entering into the Passover arena:

Hal Taussig, pastor of Chestnut Hill United Methodist Church in Philadelphia and a visiting professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary, says that after presiding over Christianized seders from the mid-1970s to mid-'80s, he had second thoughts. He chose to stop the practice, he says, because he recognized "the ways in which such a service replaces the Jewish celebration with a Christian one." And that, concludes Rev. Serene Jones, the president of Union Theological Seminary, "makes Jews invisible."

While the portion of the Messianic world of which I am aware has chosen to remain silent regarding Gentiles and the Passover, both traditional Judaism and Christianity have taken up the banner and gone on record in asking us, "just what the heck do you think you're doing?"

What are we doing? Are we making Jews "invisible"?

My family and I have had Seders in our home before. I didn't really think it was inappropriate for me to lead the Seder as a Christian husband to a Jewish wife, but a few days ago, I had the distinct feeling of being uncomfortable. This is the first Seder we've had in our home since my wife has become so closely associated with our local Chabad community. In some ways, she's becoming increasingly Jewish right before my eyes. I don't object to this in the slightest, but I am mindful that it creates something of a gulf between us along the axis of our separate (and increasingly separating) faiths. I'm not sure anymore how much of Judaism I should try to connect to and still not seem like a caricature in my wife's eyes.

Like my marriage, Christians and Jews operate on the same planet (and in the case of my wife and me, in the same home) but not always in the same worlds. More accurately put, we operate in overlapping worlds, but just how far can we go before my Christian presence in her Jewish world becomes uncomfortable to her? We've seen this question played out in the Messianic movement time and again, and the current Christian fascination with "seeing Christ in the Passover" only heightens the "experience". If the "last supper" of Jesus (Yeshua) wasn't a Passover Seder, the imagery and symbolism of the Passover is still undeniably imposed on his last meal, and on his death. It may be uncomfortable for Judaism to accept this, but Christianity has a tangible link to the Passover, thanks to the Jewish Messiah (though he's not currently recognized as such by Judaism as a whole), and now we have to decide how to respond to it.

The "sacrament" of Holy Communion is the way the church has traditionally adapted the "bread/body" and "wine/blood" aspects introduced by Jesus, but that, and Easter, may be redundant and even misguided. While they make Judaism feel more secure because Communion and Easter separate Christian observances of "last supper" events from Passover, they also (in my opinion) don't honor the original intent and context of that last "Meal of the Messiah". That said, should Christians stick to Communion and Easter and leave Passover to the Jews? Did the Jewish Messiah open the door to a Christian application for the Passover, making Easter unnecessary? Is there a mandate for Christians to celebrate both Passover and Easter, or is that making a much larger mess out of an already confused situation?

Jesus said that, "many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 8:11). If we're good enough to sit down at a meal with the Patriarchs, why can't we sit down at a Seder with them as well?

Addendum: A scientist claims to have definitively dated the last supper and resolved the conflict between the different Gospel versions of this event. I'm dubious, but have a look for yourself.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

The Desert

2011-04-18T09:00:00.001-06:00

In each one of us there is an Egypt and a Pharaoh and a Moses and Freedom in a Promised Land. And every point in time is an opportunity for another Exodus.

Egypt is a place that chains you to who you are, constraining you from growth and change. And Pharaoh is that voice inside that mocks your gambit to escape, saying, "How could you attempt being today something you were not yesterday? Aren't you good enough just as you are? Don't you know who you are?"

Moses is the liberator, the infinite force deep within, an impetuous and all-powerful drive to break out from any bondage, to always transcend, to connect with that which has no bounds.

But Freedom and the Promised Land are not static elements that lie in wait. They are your own achievements which you may create at any moment, in any thing that you do, simply by breaking free from whoever you were the day before.

Last Passover you may not have yet begun to light a candle. Or some other mitzvah still waits for you to fulfill its full potential. This year, defy Pharaoh and light up your world. With unbounded light.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
The Inside Story on Passover
Chabad.org

Sounds easy, doesn't it? Simply objectify your achievements and shortcomings. Make the things that keep you in chains "Egypt" and the voice that says you're no good "Pharaoh". It sounds like the John who wrote Revelation was using the same basic material when he wrote the following:

The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. -Revelation 12:9

The phrase, "who leads the whole world astray" is sometimes translated as "the accuser of the brethren". The idea is that your doubts, insecurities, and feelings of inadequacy don't actually come from you, but from an external, supernatural force or entity we refer to as Satan (Hebrew: HaSatan = "the Adversary" in English). And yet, that voice often comes from those who are closest to you, including your family and friends...and especially from yourself.

Rabbi Freeman links slavery in Egypt and the "accusing" voice of Pharaoh to the liberator Moses and freedom in the Promised Land. What his metaphor lacks is this:

The LORD replied, "I have forgiven them, as you asked. Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the LORD fills the whole earth, not one of those who saw my glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times— not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their ancestors. No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it. But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it. Since the Amalekites and the Canaanites are living in the valleys, turn back tomorrow and set out toward the desert along the route to the Red Sea." -Numbers 14:20-25

Between freedom from slavery in Egypt and entry into the rest of the Promised Land is the desert. The desert is the result of fear, insecurity, lack of confidence, and lack of faith. God can and has sent a deliverer to all mankind, but although we are taught that salvation is a free gift, that doesn't mean it's effortless for us to accept that gift, open it, and then live out the contents. Accepting God and becoming a disciple of the Master isn't "as easy as rolling off the log". There can be many barriers and setbacks on the trail between "Egypt" and "Israel".

Yesterday, I wrote a blog about how we can be sitting on the keys to our own chains, and it sounds fairly easy to just get up, pick up the keys, and unlock the door to our prison. As Rabbi Freeman points out in today's Daily Dose of Torah, there is a metaphorical and spiritual connection between the Passover story and how we conduct our lives at any given point in time. Passover is a reminder of how much we have to gain and how much we have to lose, depending on which decisions we make each day. Freeman likens our achievements to mitzvot (commandments or deeds of kindness) but also to "lighting up our world" with "unbounded light".

Somewhere between the infinite darkness of a slave's life in "Egypt" and the "unbounded light" in the Land of "Israel" lies the shadowlands of the desert. We can be neither here nor there, neither a slave nor truly free. We can be in a state where we have escaped the darkness but still cannot walk into the light. Either something inside of us or something about our circumstances keeps us on the edge, as if staring into the abyss or waiting at the threshold of some gate into the unknown realms.

An entire generation was forgiven of their sins, yet died in the desert, one by one, dropping in their tracks, collapsing in the sand, because of their failure. Our existence, between birth and death, contains decisions, victories, achievements, and defeats. We succeed or we fail. We light the candle, or watch it burn out. Even on the eve of Passover, a time when there should be hope in our hearts, something can come along to smother that hope like suffocating a child in a crib. Sometimes, we stand at the edge of hope, with an infinite sky before us, and still we cannot breathe.

What do you do when you are at a wedding reception where you expect to find God and instead, the bride and groom have vanished, the room is dark, and the hall is empty?

Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.

“Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’

“But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

“Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.

“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.

“Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

“For many are invited, but few are chosen.” -Matthew 22:1-14

Passover is not only a time when we discover how far we've come, but how woefully far we have yet to go.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Sitting on the Keys

2011-04-17T08:29:00.000-06:00

In truth, the world, standing on its own, is a place of exile and captivity.

Even when a man stands upright on the tallest mountain and perceives all there is to perceive, comprehends all that can be comprehended, achieves a realization of the Ultimate Oneness and Void that is behind all this --

But in the end, he is still stuck on the ground where his feet have brought him, his eyes have not seen beyond his own eyeballs, his mind has only comprehended that which he can know and reached that which is reachable --he has remained within his own self.

And the proof:
he has remained with a G-d Who is above
and an earth which is below, and the two cannot meet.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
Bringing Heaven Down to Earth series
Liberated by Betrothal

Man is separated from God. I know that's not what you wanted to hear, but for a thousand reasons, some of which you may know, we cannot ascend to God and God does not descend to us, at least in any way we can comprehend. Oh we try to reach God. We try to summon Him. We pray. We plead in our anguish. We cry out in our loneliness. But sometimes the only answer is silence.

Or so it seems.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. -James 4:1-3

The brother of the Master tells us that our selfishness and humanity get in the way of our prayers to God. In many ways, we are like the prostitute/wife of the Prophet Hosea, faithless and wandering after other lovers. Yet, we see a picture of God toward a faithless Israel in Hosea 3 that reminds us of ourselves:

The LORD said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”

So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you.”

For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or household gods. Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the LORD and to his blessings in the last days. -Hosea 3:1-5

Though we are faithless to God, He is faithful to us. Though we are unworthy, we will be redeemed.

This message should be very clear to us as we approach the time of Passover. The Children of Jacob were enslaved and through no power of their own, God sent a Savior and a Prophet to free and redeem them. The end of Rabbi Freeman's message which I quoted, but not in it's entirety, tells the message:

His only liberation, and the only liberation of the entire world, is when the One Above reaches down and tells us, "Do this. With this deed you are betrothed to Me."

And then there is no above and below. Then there is only One.

We cannot reach God on our own strength, but He does reach down to us. We, the entire world, are "betrothed" to Him and through that betrothal, there is only One. It sounds very much like this:

I will betroth you to me forever;
I will betroth you in righteousness and justice,
in love and compassion.
I will betroth you in faithfulness,
and you will know the LORD. -Hosea 2:19-20

This set of verses from the writings of the Prophet Hosea are also part of the blessings a Jew says when donning hand tefillin before prayer. You might say that the messages here of the Prophet and certainly of Rabbi Freeman, are intended only for the Jewish people, but the coming of the Messiah opens the door for the rest of humanity.

Let us rejoice and be glad
and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready.
Fine linen, bright and clean,
was given her to wear.” -Revelation 19:7-8

There are numerous "marital metaphors" in the Bible referring to Israel as the bride of God and the disciples of the Messiah (Jews and Gentiles) as the bride of Christ. All who join ourselves to the Messiah, both Israel and the nations, have a part in the life of the world to come. However, although this is abundantly available to us, escaping our slavery requires our willingness. Rabbi Freeman has a commentary about this, too:

Man, on his own, cannot reach higher than his own fingertips. He cannot break out of his own skin, he cannot lift himself up by pulling at his own hair. All of his achievements are tied to his ego. All that he may comprehend is defined by his own subjective perception. He is a prisoner by virtue of existence.

So G-d threw Man a rope. He gave him tasks to fulfill that are beyond his grasp, thoughts to fathom that take him outside the hollow of his subjective universe. All that is needed is his willingness to leave himself.

We are all prisoners. But we sit on the keys.

He is the vine and we are the branches (John 15:5) and we can do anything if we are united with him, which includes escaping our chains. Sometimes however, we slump down in our jail cell, dejected and discouraged; lamenting our imprisonment and fearing we will never be free. Ironically, that freedom is always available to us. We just need to get up and see that, as Rabbi Freeman points out, we are sitting on the keys.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

The Oddly Scheduled Passover

2011-04-14T09:21:00.003-06:00

“This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD—a lasting ordinance. For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. On the first day hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat; that is all you may do. -Exodus 12:14-16

On the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus’ disciples asked him, “Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover?”

So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. Say to the owner of the house he enters, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.”

The disciples left, went into the city and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover. -Mark 14:12-16

I hadn't planned to blog about Passover. This time of year in the Jewish and Messianic blogospheres, you'll find an abundant amount of material on the subject, so I thought whatever I chose to contribute would be redundant. Then a couple of things happened.

Last Sunday, my son David asked if we (as a family) were going to have a Seder. Sadly, we don't always have one. I attend the community Seder at my congregation and my wife usually attends the Chabad Seder. Schedules being what they are, we don't always have the "bandwidth" to organize and conduct a private home Seder as well. David hasn't been to a Seder in a number of years and particularly since he joined the Marines and then got married (he was honorably discharged about eight months ago), and his wife and son have never experienced a Seder. Seizing the opportunity, I asked my wife if we could have a family Seder this year and yesterday evening, I got my answer.

As I was getting ready to leave home to teach my class, my wife and daughter pulled into the garage and unloaded supplies of wine and matzah (kosher for Passover, of course). As a husband and father, I'm often "out of the loop" as to what the family is planning so I asked when we would be having our Seder.

Sunday.

What?

As most of you reading this know, this year, Passover officially begins at sundown on Monday, April 18th. My wife just told me we'd be having our Seder exactly 24 hours early.

There's a practical reason for this. We usually have the kids (and my grandson) over for a family dinner every Sunday evening. It's something we all look forward to, and we get to enjoy some good food and good company, and it's a fine way to end the weekend. Sunday evening fits into everyone's schedule. So my wife's logic told her that it would be a good time to have our family Seder.

It bothers me.

OK, despite the fact that some people might think I have a few goofy theological ideas, I'm something of a traditionalist. I like attending Seders during the week of Unleavened Bread. I believe it is what God intended.

At this juncture, you may well ask yourself what I'm worked up about since, not being Jewish, the various commandments regarding Passover observance don't specifically apply to me. To answer, I've been attending Passover Seders for decades, long before I became religious. I've had Jewish friends all of my adult life and have always appreciated and enjoyed being invited to their Seders. There's something about the Haggadah and the essence of the Seder that weaves its way into the fabric of my being. Also, while I may not be commanded to observe the Passover, I'm married to a Jewish woman who is, I have Jewish children who are, and although a Goy, I'm head of a family where all of the "nuclear" members are Jewish. We should celebrate the Passover "on time". Beyond all of that, I'm a Gentile disciple of the Jewish Messiah. The Jewish Messiah observed the Passover each year. Some say his last meal was a Passover Seder.

But my family will be observing the Passover a day early. Has this ever happened before?

Maybe.

Depending on which Gospel you read, Jesus (Yeshua) and his inner circle had their Passover Seder either on the first day of Passover after sundown or the day before. It's impossible to resolve the differences between the different Gospel versions (to see what I mean, read Derek Leman's blog posts: Passover, Last Supper, Crucifixion: 2011 Notes, Part 1 and Part 2).

If you read Mark's version (Mark 14:12-26), then Jesus and his disciples conducted their Seder on the 14th day of the month of Nissan (which began at Sundown in the traditional and religious way of counting days in Judaism). In this version, the sacrifices of the Passover lambs at the Holy Temple in Jerusalem wouldn't occur until after the following sunrise and would be happening at the same time that Jesus was slowly and painfully dying on the cross. That's Mark's version, at least as rendered by D. Thomas Lancaster at First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ). You'll understand what I mean by that last comment in a moment.

Every Passover, at my congregation's community Passover Seder, I read part of the chapter "One Long Day" from Lancaster's book King of the Jews. It recounts in exquisite detail, the day Jesus died, based on Mark's Gospel. It is a heartrending rendition, juxtaposing the trial, torture, crucifixion, and death of the Jewish Messiah against the virtually endless stream of Jews offering a vast sea of Lambs as sacrifices at the Temple, in accordance with the commandments. As thousands upon thousands of Passover lambs were bleeding and dying at the hands of the Temple Priests, the Lamb of God was bleeding and breathing his last at the hands of a faithless humanity.

There isn't a dry eye in the house by the time I'm finished reciting the chapter.

There are many scholarly opinions about why the timing of the "Last Supper" and the crucifixion don't line up in the Gospels, but I'm not here to address, let alone "solve" this mystery. However, to resolve my own "timing" conflict, I'm choosing to consider my family's early Passover Seder as a connection to Mark's telling of the Messiah's "Haggadah"; the speaking and relating of the Messiah's journey and the Passover, if you will, that results from his suffering, death, and resurrection; the Passover that can be accessed by all human beings if we believe and declare God's Lamb as Lord.

When I lead my family's Passover Seder at the start of the 14th of Nissan, I will have Jesus on my mind. One justification for Jesus and his disciples having their Seder a day early was that he desired anxiously to celebrate the Passover with them and knew that, the next day, he wouldn't be consuming the Lamb, he would be "consumed" as the Lamb. Next Sunday evening, during our telling of the Passover, I will choose to accept for that day, how Mark told of the Messiah's last Seder. I will envision breaking the matzah with him, drinking wine with him, and when I eat the maror and charoset, I will experience the bitterness of his suffering and death, and the sweetness of his resurrection,and the life we all have in him.

Chag Pesach Sameach. Happy Passover.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Writing a Reality Check in Mystic Realms

2011-04-13T09:26:00.003-06:00

'Major Trends...' is broken down into nine lectures. He covers everything from the beginings of Jewish mysticism up to modern times. He traces its origen from the Second Temple era, through the apocalyptic/pseudepigrapha period, and right into Jewish gnosticism with the Thrown (merkabah) mysticism. The 'Hekhaloth Books' (hekhaloth: the heavenly halls or palaces the visionary passes through on his way to the seventh heaven where there rises the thrown of divine glory) are well known for the their similarity to standard gnostic works. The caves around Khirbet Qumran are another (Dead Sea Scrolls). He covers all aspects of this; the 'Song of Songs' and its mystical meaning (it was banned until a man reached 40 years old), the Shi'ur Komah (Measure of the Body of God), and all the magical elements that encompassed this, also theurgy, and so on.
Amazon.com review (all spelling errors belong to the reviewer)
of Gershom Scholem's book
Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism

As I mentioned before, I'm a skeptic at heart. A book like this one wouldn't likely catch my attention and certainly wouldn't win any praise from me. So many books like these are fanciful, unbiblical, and simply outright inconsistent with what I know to be true from the Bible. Colton Burpo's story was a refreshing and surprisingly accurate portrait of what awaits each of us whose destiny is Heaven. I read the book with a critical eye, looking for those little details that would prove this story to be at best inaccurate or at worst a fraud. I couldn't find them. His tale seemed honest. His descriptions fit the way a child would describe things, not one whose words had been fed him by an adult. Some of his revelations were simply amazing!
Amazon.com review of Todd and Sonja Burpo's (with Lynn Vincent) book
Heaven is for Real

I know these are two books you wouldn't expect to be quoted side-by-side, but hear me out. There's a reason I'm tossing both of them into the same conceptual bucket.

I was on a Christian blog this morning where the blog writer was touting the virtues of the Burpo's book. For those of you who haven't heard of it (and it's been all over the news), at age four, Colton Burpo suffered a life-threatening incident whereby, according to the book, he "slips from consciousness and enters heaven" (from the Product Description of the book on Amazon). To continue with the description, "He survives and begins talking about being able to look down and see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room. The family didn't know what to believe but soon the evidence was clear."

After reading the book, one Amazon reviewer, Pastor Micah Mauldin AKA "The Heavy Revy", wrote a response, part of which I quoted above.

Apparently, I'm more skeptical than Pastor Mauldin, because I think it's pretty strange that this child is relating a vision of Heaven that matches so precisely the expectations of modern, western Christianity. If little Colton's experiences were "real", then wouldn't we expect to hear revelations that are unexpected or different interpretations of Heaven than what we have in current Christian doctrine? We know that Colton is being raised in a Christian family and in fact, his father, Todd Burpo, is a Pastor in Nebraska. Frankly, I'd be a lot more convinced of Colton's reports if his parents were atheists or belonged to another faith and he still related a story that matched what we understand of Heaven from the Bible. It's fairly likely that, whatever Colton experienced at age four, as he became older and more verbal, he "filtered" his experiences through the lens of his Christian upbringing as taught by his church and his Pastor father.

Now that I've probably won the "Ebenezer Scrooge" and "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" awards for most mean-spirited reviewer (and it should be noted that I haven't read the Burpo book), you may be wondering why I bring all this up.

I'm writing a "reality check". In a few of my past blog posts, including A Brief Meeting with the Mystic and Search for the Messiah in Pools of Unknowing, I've presented something of my introductory understanding to serious Jewish Mysticism as I attempt to relate some of the concepts it contains to my understanding of and faith in the Jewish Messiah. I am also very conscious of the human capacity (including my human capacity) for self-delusion and wish-fulfillment. I could hardly suggest that the Burpo family, and the many Christians who find their expectations of Heaven realized in young Colton Burpo, are guilty of "reading between the lines", and still enthusiastically proclaim that mysticism is the method by which we can and must understand Jesus (Yeshua) with complete confidence.

In other words, let's slow down a minute and catch our breath (and maybe I'm the only one who is acknowledging the need to take a breather). At this point in my journey, I'm an investigator or explorer looking at possibilities, not an inventor who's already made a great discovery and is seeking support. Maybe I'm onto something and maybe I'm not. I think I'm on the right track, but it's important to pause and to question the assumptions I'm forming, without getting caught up in the potential of the mystic writings and perceptions to interpret Jesus in a fresh and exciting way.

It occurred to me yesterday that, back in January, I said I was going to strip my faith, or at least my dogma and doctrine, down to its gears, wires, and batteries, but it seems as if faith can't exist in its most raw and basic condition for very long. Already, I'm building a system back up and forgetting my original intention. The whole reason I created this blog (and I've said this more than once) was to question my assumptions and to honestly examine my beliefs. I have to do this with what I'm currently constructing as well as with what I've been deconstructing.

On Derek Leman's blog post Biblical Glimpses into Mystical Horizons, Carl Kinbar made this comment:

For (Max) Kadushin, devekut is should be part and parcel of the holy life. This approach is based on the realization that God is near in everything and does not require that we put aside our lives in order to commune with Him. Thus, we encounter the Word as we are immersed in the written word. We connect with God’s presence in the blessings. Etc. But none of this happens apart from a deep thirst for God that prepares the way for him to show himself to us in new ways even in the midst of the ordinary.

In other words, experiencing God in a "mystic" way doesn't always entail entering into meditative states, taking extreme measures, or experiencing highly "unusual" visions. We can "experience God" in many ways, sometimes just in the ordinary events of our lives, or in prayer, or in acts of charity, or in reading the Bible.

No, I'm not giving up my exploration of Jewish Mysticism as a method of approaching the Messiah, and I'm not surrendering in the midst of my journey into the mystic. But I do want to assure you that I do take a few breaks to stop, look at my surroundings, and make a candid assessment of where I'm coming from, where I'm going, and how I arrived at my current location.

The next time you find yourself in an "Oh Wow! Gee Whiz! That's incredible!" situation, take a moment and make sure that it really is outside the normal realm of existence and that it's coming from God...rather than your expectations, desires, imagination, or your need to have all the pieces of the puzzle fit "just so".

I know that's a strange thing for a person of faith to say (since having faith in God means that, by definition, I believe in the supernatural), especially one who is looking into a mystic tradition, but in exploring the dangerous and potentially hostile unknown outlands, we must keep an anchor in the safe and the known, lest we be swept away into imagination and unreality. The veil between the mystical and fantasy is very much thinner than we'd like to believe.

God is real, but not everything we experience is from God. Sometimes, we are very good authors of our own play. We just fool ourselves about the identity of the playwright.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Search for the Messiah in Pools of Unknowing

2011-04-12T04:16:00.005-06:00

The first phase in the development of Jewish mysticism before its crystallization in the mediaeval Kabbalah is also the longest. It's literary remains are traceable over a period of almost a thousand years, from the first century B.C. to the tenth A.D., and some of its important records have survived...Between the physiognomy of early Jewish mysticism and that of mediaeval Kabbalism there is a difference which time has not effaced.

Gershom Scholem
Chapter 2: Merkabah Mysticism and Jewish Gnosticism
Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism

The first thought I had when I read this passage from Scholem's classic is that this early mystic Jewish tradition occurred within the lifetime of Jesus, the apostle Paul, and later "church fathers", and some the writers during the era of the Gospels and Epistles could possibly have been influenced by such a tradition.

OK, I know you may think that's rather far fetched, but considering the "mystic" nature of John's Gospel as well as the imagery in Revelation, I don't think I'm reaching too far out of the bounds of credibility, particularly considering all (or most) of the early "documenters" of the teachings of the Jewish Messiah were Jewish themselves. Perhaps Yochanan ben Zakkai, who Scholem cites as one of "the most important representatives of mystical and theosophical thought" during the mid-first century era influenced some of the writings about Yeshua (Jesus) and his followers.

All of this, at least in terms of my very limited knowledge, is very thinly connected and anyone even marginally more familiar with the topic (which includes just about anyone familiar with Jewish mysticism) could blow away my arguments and suggestions with a mild sneeze. Still, it's rather compelling to take a look at these tentative connections and consider the possibilities.

Derek Leman, in his recent blog post Biblical Glimpses Into Mystical Horizons makes a few comparisons of his own:

EPISTLES: The one who ascended into the third heaven in 2 Corinthians 12. The uniting of all things in Messiah in Ephesians 1. The one who descended into human form in Philippians 2. The God and Lord of 1 Corinthians 8. The Radiance of His Glory in Hebrews 1. The One in Whom All Things Adhere in Colossians 1 (and the Image of the Invisible God).

Scholem writes:

Thus for example in the "Visions of Ezekiel", which have recently become known, Ezekiel sees the seven heavens with their seven Merkabahs (driven by four chayot or "living creatures"; Isaiah 6:2, Revelation 4:8) corresponding to the seven heavens is still innocent of any mention of Hekhaloth, or chambers, of the Merkabah.

This references Ezekiel's vision (Ezekiel 1:4-26) and definitely recalls the scriptures Leman cites including:

I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell. I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. -2 Corinthians 12:1-7

Again, I can't say for certain nor to I assert as absolute, the connections I'm proposing here, but novice in mysticism that I am, it certainly sparks some interest. Still, Paul seems to be saying that he has accomplished what many mystics throughout the ages have attempted: a transition (in one form or another) into the realms outside of our own into those that approach the Throne of God...and he returned sane and whole.

I've said numerous times before in other blog posts, that I'm becoming convinced that we cannot understand the teachings of the Jewish Messiah and his early disciples without some ability to look at those teachings through a Jewish mystical lens. This goes beyond an understanding of Torah and Talmud (and possibly flies in the face of Judaism's more "rational" understanding of God), but there are "mysteries" exposed in the Apostolic scriptures that suddenly become more comprehensible if we don't examine them only with a literal and practical microscope. Seeing that Jewish mysticism can trace its origins to the first century B.C.E. (and perhaps before even that), makes it all the more likely that such a tradition found its way into the early Jewish writings describing the person and mission of the Jewish Messiah. How the divine could become a man and dwell among human beings requires belief beyond the physical realm and mysticism is the door that leads to the world where the mysterious can, in some fashion, become known.

I suppose you could just consider me a person who has gone off the deep end and that mysticism is a fool's errand. You wouldn't be alone. From Scholen's book:

If, finally, you were to ask me what kind of value I attach to Jewish mysticism, I would say this: Authoritative Jewish theology, both mediaeval and modern, in representatives like Saadia, Maimonides, and Hermann Cohen, has taken upon itself to task the formulating an antithesis to pantheism and mythical theology, i.e.: to prove them wrong.

Here, we see some of the greatest luminaries among Jewish wisdom and intellectualism standing opposed against the Jewish mystic tradition. Nevertheless, Jewish mysticism has survived such attempts to be extinguished and endures into modern times in Kabbalah and Chasidic Judaism. It occurs to me that the philosophical vs. the mystical approach to God doesn't have to be either/or. They can both co-exist as different perspectives; perceiving God from radically different angles of observation (and participation). And then, there's this:

Levertoff believed that the Gospels and Chasidic Judaism merged seamlessly, and he dedicated his scholarship to demonstrating that conviction. He is said to have best developed his ideas in his major life work, a manuscript on the subject of Christ and the Shechinah. Unfortunately, the book was never published and the manuscript has been lost; however, he presented a lecture titled "The Shekinah Motif in the New Testament Literature" to the Society of the Study of Religions that we may assume represented something of an abstract of the larger work. This short paper provides a glimpse into a compelling and radical attempt to reconcile Jewish mysticism and faith in an exalted, divine Messiah.

Commentary on Paul Philip Levertoff and
Love and the Messianic Age

A rare but direct and living connection between the Chasidim, their mystic understanding of things, and the Gospel of John brought young Feivel Levertoff into discipleship under the great Rebbe Yeshua of Nazareth. He recognized the mystic in the Gospels and in the teachings of the Messiah. In fact, Levertoff thought it was impossible to understand the Jewish Messiah without a mystic understanding.

Where does that leave those of us without that understanding? It leaves us at the doors to the libraries and maybe even the synagogues, daring to enter and striving to learn more.

Knowledge is beyond me; exalted, I am incapable of it. Where can I go from Your Spirit? And where can I flee from Your Presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; were I to take up wings of dawn, were I to dwell in the distant west, there, too Your hand would guide me, and Your right hand would grasp me. -Psalm 139:6-10

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Sages , Students, and Rebels: How to Tell the Difference

2011-04-11T08:58:00.001-06:00

Our Sages said explicitly, "Between [honoring] his father and his teacher, his teacher comes first. "The Sages have already explained that it is forbidden for a student to dispute his teacher, i.e. to reject his authority, to give separate interpretations, and to teach or issue rulings without his permission. It is forbidden for him to argue with him, or speak angrily to him, or to judge him harshly, i.e. to give any kind of [non-literal] explanation to his action or speech, since it is possible that this was not his intention.

Sefer Hamitzvot in English
Respecting the Sages
Positive Commandment 209
Chabad.org

I can agree with that as far as it goes. When you agree to come under the authority of a Rebbe or a Sage, you agree to "the rules of conduct", so to speak, including the Sage's right to issue rulings, and your responsibility to treat him with the respect and honor that is his due. It would be foolish of a student or disciple to make such an agreement and then dispute and argue against the Rebbe at every turn. It would be (to use an extreme example) as if Peter, John, and other members of Yeshua's (Jesus's) inner circle were to get in his face and disagree with his directives and his commandments. Why bother becoming a Rebbe's disciple if you aren't there to learn from him?

However, this also means you should do your homework on the Sage and his teachings before hand. I can't speak to the nature and character of the teachers operating in 1st century "Roman Judea", but I know for certain that today in both the "Messianic" and "Christian" movements (and in the places where they overlap), there are many so-called "teachers", Pastors, leaders, and self-styled "Rabbis" who are not reliable or honest scholars, and who have assumed positions of authority over groups, not to sanctify the Name of God and to teach others of His ways, but to glorify themselves, create a personal power base and, in some situations, to make money off the deal.

Sadly, many of these "teachers" will misuse the commandments to try and make themselves "criticism-proof". I've seen it happen more than once:

Our Sages said in the Talmudic chapter "HaChelek", "Anyone who goes against his teacher is as if he went against the Divine Presence., as it is written [regarding Korach], 'when they rebelled against G-d,'"; "Anyone who makes a dispute against his teacher is as if he made a dispute against the Divine Presence, as it is written, 'These are the Waters of Dispute where the Israelites disputed with G-d'"...

We have sections of the Torah (Deuteronomy 13:1-5, Deuteronomy 18:20-22) that teach about a false prophet, but what do you do about a false teacher? We see in both the Torah and the Apostolic Scriptures that we are to revere a Sage and to treat a leader with respect:

Do not blaspheme God or curse the ruler of your people. -Exodus 22:28

Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity. -1 Timothy 5:1-2

The commentary of Paul in 1 Timothy 5 can be applied to Sages and teachers since the Talmud interprets respecting the aged person (Leviticus 19:32) in the same manner. But while I cannot find (at least in this limited study) a Torah or Talmudic provision for dealing with a less-than-sincere leader or teacher, Paul offers one to the Messianic community:

The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. For Scripture says, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,” (Deuteronomy 25:4) and “The worker deserves his wages.” (Luke 10:7) Do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses. But those elders who are sinning you are to reprove before everyone, so that the others may take warning. I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, to keep these instructions without partiality, and to do nothing out of favoritism. -1 Timothy 5:17-21

Here, Paul continues the general theme of honoring a teacher and a leader, but he also acknowledges that a leader can sin, and offers the congregation the ability to respond when a leader strays outside of behaving in accordance to the position of authority they have been granted by God.

In our modern, western culture, we have a strong history of defending the rights of the individual and questioning authority figures, sometimes to an extreme. Human beings tend towards abusing power when they acquire it (just look at the arena of politics) and even entering leadership with the best possible motives, an honest person can be seduced by the allure of self-gratification and thus abuse their authority and the people they are to be serving.

Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” -Mark 9:35

When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. -John 13:12-17

More so than any other teacher who has ever walked, the great Rebbe Yeshua of Nazareth deserves high honors and authority and his teaching is not to be questioned. Yet he humbled himself to wash the feet of his own disciples (and humbled himself even to death for the sake of many) to illustrate to them, and to us, the proper role of the teacher.

As a mentioned before, we are used to, as a culture, questioning and disobeying rightful authority and to "having our say" and "standing our ground". While this is sometimes necessary, our "rights" can easily become a barrier to obeying the example of the Jewish Messiah in humbling ourselves before God and before His Sages (and remember what Paul said about not showing favoritism to one person as leader over another), so that we might learn his good and upright ways. Be a responsible student. Choose a teacher wisely. If you discover you've come under the authority of one not fit to teach or lead, Paul has provided a method of addressing such a person. Beyond that, if you've selected your teacher carefully, then obey the commandment and do not rebel. Most of all, do not rebel against the Rebbe to whom we are all disciples.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

A Brief Meeting with the Mystic

2011-04-08T04:33:00.008-06:00

We have seen that mystical religion seeks to transform the God whom it encounters in the peculiar religious consciousness of its own social environment from an object of dogmatic knowledge into a novel and living experience and intuition. In addition, it also seeks to interpret this experience in a new way. Its practical side, the realization of God and the doctrine of the Quest for God, are therefore frequently, particularly in the more developed forms of the mystical consciousness, connected with a certain ideology. This ideology, this theory of mysticism, is a theory both of the mystical cognition of God and His revelation, and of the path which leads to Him.

Gershom Scholem
Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism

This is part of Scholem's struggle or "quest" to attempt to define mysticism in general and Jewish Mysticism in specific. It's also just a few pages into the first chapter of his classic tome on the latter and my first serious introduction to this topic.

Just about the only time I find free time to read most days is during my lunch hour from work. I walk ten minutes to my local public library, try to find a quiet corner where I'll be undisturbed, and begin to turn the pages and perform an elementary exploration into what most would consider "alien" worlds.

It's slow going.

The concept of mysticism is difficult to define, not because Scholem lacks the skills or understanding, but because the mystic is a difficult vision to relate, particularly as words on a page. It's like trying to describe a world to others that only you can see. It's as if you can peer into a fifth and sixth dimension and then labor to find a vocabulary to relate your perceptions to those of us who can only see in the mundane three-dimensions.

Perhaps it's not that bad, but it's not that easy either. Yet the need to describe the journey is as powerful as the drive to walk the mystic's path. And that drive comes from the need to walk beyond the four walls of ordinary existence and to somehow become involved in a realm where you can touch the hem of God's garment. It's the need to cross a fundamental gap that was built into the universe:

Man becomes aware of a fundamental duality, of a vast gulf which can be crossed by nothing but the voice; the voice of God, directing and law-giving in His revelation, and the voice of man in prayer. The great monotheistic religions live and unfold in the ever-present consciousness of this bipolarity, of the existence of an abyss which can never be bridged.

When I read Scholem's words and tried to envision the abyss, another voice spoke up from a different direction:

“If you stare into the Abyss long enough the Abyss stares back at you.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

While I doubt that Nietzsche intended this expression to be used in the way I'm interpreting it, I sometimes wonder if the abyss he describes is the same one Scholem offers; staring into the abyss between man and God...and having the abyss finally stare back into you?

Is that the mystic's final goal, to be able to have an exchange with the abyss, or is it just the first step on a journey into a larger experience?

This leads us to a further consideration: it would be a mistake to assume that the whole of what we call mysticism is identical with that of personal experience which is realized in the state of ecstasy of ecstatic meditation. Mysticism, as an historical phenomonon, comprises much more than this experience, which lies at its root. There is a danger in relying too much on purely speculative definitions of the term...

Herein lies an introduction to the danger of exploring the mystic; the assumption that whatever you experience personally and subjectively, must be a mystical encounter with God or His Spirit. I add that last part because I have heard so many times in traditional Christian circles of believers relating their encounters with "the Holy Spirit" and that, their internal, subjective, emotive states were interpreted as signs of what the Spirit wanted them to do.

As far as I could tell, the "signs" were telling many of these people to do what they wanted to do anyway, more's the pity.

Of course, I can't completely discount that "the Spirit" communicates while, at the same time, conducting an inquiry into a metaphysical encounter with God; staring at the abyss and summoning a method of crossing. But how do you tell who is truly the recipient of a supernatural encounter and who is simply engaging in wish-fulfillment? Scholem himself proposes that internal, subjective experiences are not enough evidence:

There is no mysticism as such, there is only the mysticism of a particular religious system, Christian, Islamic, Jewish mysticism, and so on.

Moreover, as Evelyn Underhill has rightly pointed out, the prevailing conception of the mystic as a religious anarchist who owes no allegiance to his religion finds little support in fact.

Above all, what encourages the emergence of mysticism in a situation in which these new impulses do not break through the shell of the old religious system and create a new one, but then to remain confined within its borders.

So much for studying Kabbalah without the context of the Jewish faith.

Apparently, there is no such thing as mysticism isolated and apart from an existing and recognized religious system, hence a study of "Jewish Mysticism" as opposed to "Christian Mysticism", "Islamic Mysticism", Greek Mysticism", and so forth. So Scholem, at least in this preliminary forage into locating a definition for his book's topic, presents a context for the mystic, in that he or she must remain within the boundaries of the larger religious organism, which for our purposes, is Judaism. But does the mystic always allow himself to be so contained?

It is hardly surprising that, hard as the mystic may try to remain within the confines of his religion, he often consciously or unconsciously approaches, or even transgresses, its limits.

With the context defined, we see that the main danger to the person desiring to explore mysticism is the risk of crossing the borderland from the mystic to the heretic...and as you might imagine, that dividing line is quite thin and not very apparent at times.

The subject of Jewish Mysticism came up at a class I taught (about the Shabbat) last Wednesday evening and, as an amateur explorer and novice tourist amid the dark alleys and shadowy passageways of the mystic tradition, I couldn't do justice to the questions of some of my students. After all, I'm a mere student myself.

I recently had the advantage of reading and reviewing Paul Philip Levertoff's Chasidic/Messianic text Love and the Messianic Age and the accompanying commentary produced by First Fruits of Zion/Vine of David, so I was able to point the interested parties in that direction.

Beyond that, I'm starting to read Scholem's classic. I suspect it will take awhile, but on the other hand, I must take Scholem's advice to go slow, allow myself to remain grounded by my religious anchors, and cautiously enter into the outer limits of the abyss between man and God, seeking to dispel darkness with an unfamiliar illumination.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Heeding Jesus the Righteous Prophet

2011-04-07T09:10:00.008-06:00

The 172nd mitzvah is that we are commanded to obey each of the Prophets, may they rest in peace, and to fulfill all their instructions. Even if his instructions contradict one or many of these commandments, [we are commanded to obey him] as long as his instructions are temporary. This does not apply, however, if he permanently adds or subtracts [from the commandments], as we explained in the Introduction to our Commentary on the Mishneh.

The source of this commandment is G-d's statement (exalted be He), "To him you must listen." In the words of the Sifri: "The verse, 'To him you must listen,' means that even if he tells you to temporarily transgress one of the commandments of the Torah, you must listen to him."

Sefer Hamitzvot in English
Heeding a Prophet
Positive Commandment 172
Chabad.org

What?

This is very confusing. Why, if the Torah of God is perfect, would a Prophet be commanded (Prophets don't speak on their own authority; they speak the words of God, otherwise, they're false Prophets) to temporarily contradict or override one or more of the commandments?

The commentary I quoted from above contains a footnote with the answer:

See Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah 9:3, where the example is brought of the prophet Elijah, who brought an offering on Mount Carmel, in spite of the prohibition to bring offerings outside the Temple in Jerusalem. Since it was a temporary measure — only to disprove the idolatry of Baal — it was permitted.

What this says to me is that, under certain circumstances, a Prophet may, as directed by God, temporarily override or disobey a commandment to uphold a higher commandment or to "make a point", so to speak.

That brings me to the class I taught last night.

Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus. -Matthew 12:9-14

Jesus (Yeshua) could have waited until the next day to heal the man's shriveled hand. The fellow had probably lived with it for years and waiting one more day wouldn't have made much of a difference. Even in Israel today, on Shabbat, such a disability probably wouldn't be treated by observant Jewish doctors, and only injuries and illness where the person was suffering would be attended to. Christ's example, ("if any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath") doesn't seem to be a good comparison, because a sheep falling into a pit could be injured and might die (or at least suffer terribly) if not rescued from the pit immediately. Not so with this man's shriveled hand.

So why did Jesus heal the man's hand on the Shabbat, especially when he knew the group of Pharisees present were just looking for an excuse to bring charges against him? Why did Jesus (apparently) violate the Shabbat?

While it's passages such as this one that traditional Christianity use as a "proof text" to illustrate that the Shabbat, along with the rest of "the Law", was done away with by Jesus, it's more likely (this presupposes the authority of the ancient Jewish sages to render opinions based on Torah and Oral Law) that the Jewish Messiah was acting in the role of a Prophet. Certainly as the Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8), he would know precisely what is and isn't permitted Shabbat behavior, but using the example of the 172nd mitzvah, we see that he could also temporarily suspend or weaken a portion of his Shabbat observance to obey a higher commandment or to "make a point". In this case, (my opinion), I think Jesus is saying that doing good is upholding the spirit and intention of the Shabbat, as opposed to manipulating the commandments in order to snare someone (which seems to be what the Pharisees were up to).

The Shabbat isn't a straight jacket that God uses to restrict us and to frustrate us. It's a protection from the troubles and problems we must endure the rest of the week. It's a "protected zone" where we are more free to pursue our experiencing God and to behave more completely out of His desires, including "loving our neighbor" (Mark 12:31), which is an extension of the commandment to love God (see Mark 12:28-34 for the complete context). The behavioral restrictions associated with the Shabbat are there to guide us and to help us structure how to observe the Shabbat, not to provide a list of "thou shalt nots".

Keep in mind that Jesus, as a true and righteous Prophet, as well as the Messiah, could not permanently override any of God's Torah because to do so, would have made him a false Prophet...and we know there is nothing false about the Jewish Messiah.

We are told to heed the Prophet because he speaks in the Name of God and not on his own authority (Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does." -John 5:19). We are also told in the 6th mitzvah to "cling to the Sages" (based on Deuteronomy 10:20), imitating them in their "good and upright ways" because heeding and imitating a tzadik (righteous person) brings us closer to clinging to God.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Book Review: How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?

2011-04-06T09:38:00.001-06:00

I hope that the preceding studies will have communicated to readers something of the intriguing questions and hotly contested issues that justify and comprise the historical investigation of early devotion to Jesus. It may be somewhat unsettling for some Christians, at least initially, to explore the origins of Christian faith as a subject of historical inquiry. I trust, however, that Christians will see that a historical appreciation of the emergence of devotion to Jesus need not pose a challenge to continuing to revere Jesus as rightful recipient of devotion with God. Indeed, I hope that Christians will welcome any light that can be cast on the faith of their religious forebears from the earliest period of the Christian movement.

Larry W. Hurtado
How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?

The thing that struck me the most as I finished Hurtado's book, was that he never once said point blank, "Jesus is God". In fact, he didn't come to a definite conclusion one way or the other on the matter (barring the above-quoted statement). He simply presented his evidence, discussed why he disagreed with opposing views, and let the reader come to his or her own conclusions. I rather like that.

Hurtado is a scholarly writer but he did "tone down" the chapters of this book, allowing them to be a bit more accessible to the "average reader". The first four chapters were originally presentations he gave as part of the inaugural lectures in the Deichmann Annual Lecture Series at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel (2004). The last four chapters were taken from some of Hurtado's earlier published works. I wouldn't recommend this book for a little light reading before bedtime, but I do recommend it for someone who wants to investigate the history of early devotion to Jesus by his Jewish and Gentile disciples, particularly within the context of 1st century Jewish monotheism.

I very much appreciated Hurtado's attention to the environment, sociology, history, and theology of the Jewish people of 1st century "Roman Judea" and how it became possible for Jews to revere Jesus while not (apparently) violating the Shema (God is One). I also never concluded that Hurtado's evidence resulted in Jesus being co-equal to God in deity...exactly.

The book repeatedly makes use of the term "dinitarianism" (as opposed to "binitarianism", which would be two Gods; God the Father and God the Son) which generally means that God shared or more accurately, that God "delegated" some of His authority and divine nature to the Jewish Messiah, allowing high honors to be afforded Jesus, but only for the glory of God. Hurtado paints a picture of Jesus as a unique being with a position in the spiritual hierarchy unlike any other being. He is worthy of honor and glory, but only as it glorifies the Father. In other words, Jesus doesn't stand alone as an object of devotion and is only acknowledged in reverence as it relates to worshiping the One God.

The biggest problem for this book to solve was not how Gentile converts to the Messianic (early Christian) faith could worship Jesus as God and God (the Father) as God, but how Jews could bend, twist, or mutate ethical monotheism to allow Jesus to be granted "divine honors". The answer is that Jesus was seen as divine, but not actually "God" by the Jewish disciples. He was (and is) a unique entity who was granted a special status by God as Messiah. However, even Hurtado's mountain of evidence in an early occurrence (within the first 30 years of the ascension) of reverent honors being given to Jesus, does not result in the more modern understanding in God is God and Jesus is God too. Although Hurtado didn't say it outright, how we understand the divine nature of Jesus has indeed "mutated" from the original Jewish perspective that existed within Paul's lifetime. The viewpoint of the status of Jesus has changed from what the Jewish apostles saw and taught, to how subsequent generations of Gentile Christians chose to believe in and respond to Jesus. It is more than likely that the Greek pagan "understanding" that a man could be honored as a "god" became a large part of the development of what we now see as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. It didn't originate, as such, from the first Jewish disciples.

Hurtado spent a great deal of time and effort factoring in Jewish perspectives of Jesus including a point Levertoff and the FFOZ/Vine of David commentary made about how the death of a great tzadik (righteous sage) could atone for the sins of many, including the nation of Israel (Hurtado, pg 21). However, Hurtado (pg 28) did miss that Jews can and do pray in the merit of (in the name of) a great Rebbe all the time, so that isn't an an iron-clad indication of "godhood" as such.

Hurtado did repeat, on a number of occasions (starting on pg 30), that although Jesus was the first sage or Prophet to be afforded a sort of devotion usually associated with God alone, he was not treated as co-equal to God or as another "person" of God or the "Godhead". In fact, the book states (pg 53) that Jesus continually subordinated himself to God the Father (which I consider that aspect of God referred to as Ayn Sof in Kabbalistic thought) and the words of the Master reflect this most clearly:

Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does." -John 5:19

"By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me." -John 5:30

If Jesus made a point to subordinate himself to God and if that's how his early Jewish disciples came to understand him, then it would not violate Jewish monotheism to give honors to Jesus, just as God delegated honors to the Son, and not have it be the worship that is given to God alone. Humanity must exalt God and God only. God exalts the Messiah and gives him a special and unique divine status among all beings in existence. That seems to be the general message I get from reading Hurtado. It isn't the same message I get from Evangelical Christianity that God is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God (and as in other books I've reviewed that have addressed the Christ as deity issue, Hurtado barely mentions God's Spirit and never suggests that it is also God).

It's as if God "shared" something with Jesus that no other being possessed (pg 95). The closest analog we have is Moses, and when we understand that God elevated the name of the Messiah above every name, we see that the merit of Yeshua (Jesus) is the highest form of merit, not unlike (but superior to) praying to and approaching God in the merit of Moses or Abraham, or the patriarchs or the prophets.

Hurtado spends an entire chapter analyzing Philippians 2:6-11 as an ancient, honorific hymn acknowledging Jesus, which I wrote about last week. At that time, I drew a comparison between the Kabbalistic concept of Ayn Sof as "the Father" and the Shechinah (Divine Presence) as somehow being manifest as "the Son". If Judaism can see the Ayn Sof, the unobservable, unknowable, ultimate creative force that is God and the Shechinah as the physical, visible, touchable, "experience-able" manifestation of God in our world and not see those two concepts as "two God", then it may be possible to apply the same illustration to God and the Messiah and still have One God.

I'm not saying that Hurtado went this far in his presentation of early Jewish and Gentile devotion to Jesus, but for me, it's the logical extension of what Hurtado has written. Glory and honor is given only to God through the Messiah (pg 137), not for the sake of Jesus alone. That may well satisfy the Jewish requirement of monotheism and still give the ancient (and modern) Jewish disciples the ability to give honor to the Messiah's divine and unique status. The subsequent Gentile believers, not having a Jewish educational and experiential background, very likely "took it too far" (I'm extrapolating from Hurtado's writing now) as evidenced (one example) by the Johannine community being evicted from the synagogue for "blending" God the Father and God the Son (the Jewish Messiah). This probably (my opinion) is because the newly-minted Gentile Christians couldn't "get" how Jews saw God and the Messiah as closely related, but still different and separate. When a Jew says "God is One", then He's One". Subsequent Gentile Christian doctrine made it possible for the One to be two in the eyes of the Jewish Messianics, crossing the line, so to speak, between worshiping God and honoring the Messiah, and worshiping God and Jesus as "co-Gods".

Hurtado goes so far as to refer to Jesus as plenipotentiary, which paints a picture of Jesus as a "person" who has been delegated full authority and power by the source, as God's representative and "ambassador" but not creating Jesus literally as a God. It's like the President granting our nation's ambassador to a foreign country full powers and rights to negotiate a treaty. It doesn't make the ambassador the President, but it does give him/her complete authority to make a treaty as if the ambassador were the President. They are two separate people, each with their own status and position, but certain powers and rights are granted from one to the other.

This probably isn't what some of you wanted to hear, but it's what I get out of Hurtado's book as filtered through my beliefs and my personality. That's what a book review is.

Whatever you may think of my conclusions, I highly recommend Larry Hurtado's How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? if you want an honest, well considered (especially in his treatment of 1st century Judaism), and thoughtful perspective on how Jesus came to be granted divine honors and worship by his Jewish and Gentile disciples...and how that carries forward to those of us today who call ourselves disciples of the Master.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Depths

2011-04-05T12:13:00.000-06:00

Hundreds of linguistic and ideological differences between the commonly accepted Masoretic version of the Pentateuch and the Samaritan text indicate that editing may be one of the world's oldest professions.
Professor Yair Hoffman
Bible Studies / The things that you're liable to read in the Bible
Written for HAARETZ.com

In Israel, a new archaeological “discovery” of sorts is buzzing and making bold claims that they may be the next “Dead Sea Scrolls.” They include a collection of scrolls as well as 70 lead codices (ancient scripts bound in book form, rather than as scrolls). However, we have conflicting reports on the nature of these “newly found” artifacts. They are owned by “Hassan Saeda, a Bedouin farmer in Galilee who says they have been in his family’s possession since his great-grandfather found them in a cave in Jordan, a century ago.” Although there is still a lot of skepticism surrounding these artifacts, there are some strong voices that are willing to attest to their authenticity, wanting to avoid another possible Shapiro Affair.
from the Digging with Darren blog

How did the things we read now in the books of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John get written down in the form we now have them? There are many decisions to make if we try to reconstruct a possible or probably story of gospel transmission. I’ll try to make the story interested, not too bogged down with long lists of sources and proofs. I’ll keep that kind of writing short and refer the reader to various scholars such as Mark Goodacre, Richard Bauckham, Paul Anderson, and others that I know I will find along the way have added something significant to an understanding of gospel transmission.
Derek Leman
Chronicling the Formation of the Gospels #1
from the Yeshua in Context blog

All of the quotes you've just read have something in common. They are all the opening paragraphs of articles addressing the struggle we have in understanding, and in some cases locating, the Word of God. While many Christians in the world believe that the Bible, as it is translated into English (or as it is rendered in people's favorite English translation) is totally sufficient as the original, inerrant, Word of God; the source of truth and facts about God, Jesus, and everything, is this really so?

The quotes I posted and the articles they come from seem to indicate that the Bible, all by itself, as we have it today, isn't the end all and be all of the word of God.

I don't say this by way of complaint. I'm beginning to come to terms with the uncertainty that the Bible introduces as a "stand-alone" document and the requirement of interpretation and examination in "studying the Word". Yet, while we rely on the Bible for so many things, we can also be ignorant of what the Bible can't do for us.

He was born in Israel and lives in the north. He trains rabbinical court judges and writes essays on the weekly Torah portion, which he says are well-respected. Clearly possessed of a sharp, inquisitive mind, he could be described as a religious sage. During the flight, he was preparing a commentary on the Torah portion of Miketz, in Genesis, and he shared various questions and insights with me. I referred to variations of certain words in Genesis as they appear in the Samaritan Pentateuch, and to how the Greek Septuagint translation of the Bible contains sentences that do not appear in the Masoretic version.

My fellow passenger did not know what I was talking about. Not only was he unaware of the existence of ancient versions of the Bible, but he also lacked knowledge of the essence of the Masoretic text - the canonical Hebrew text redacted by scholars in Palestine and Babylon toward the end of the first millennium. He did not know, for instance, that the diacritical marks date only from the 10th century, or that manuscripts and later printed versions of the Masoretic text are not identical.

Yair Hoffman, professor emeritus of Bible Studies at Tel Aviv University, was describing a man he met on a recent flight from New York, a man who was an ultra-Orthodox Jew and who "trains rabbinical court judges and writes essays on the weekly Torah portion, which he says are well-respected." Yet, as Hoffman relates, this intelligent "religious sage" did not grasp some of the most basic facts about the Bible, what it is, and where it comes from. How can this be?

How can this be for any of us?

In my own case, I just didn't know any better. Fortunately I found out (the hard way) and once I got over my shock, I started consuming every text I could lay my hands on, specifically on the New Testament, and with a focus on Jesus and the "deity issue".

Our own Messianic Bible scholar, Derek Leman, addresses similar matters regarding the Gospels in a recent blog post and I certainly hope he continues to write articles for his series "Chronicling the Formation of the Gospels". It's not enough to "have" the Bible as it exists today. "Having" isn't understanding. Like a pool of unknown depths, we must go beyond the surface, brave the shadowy waters, and search for what awaits us as we dive into a sea of many hidden truths.

I had rather high hopes for the recently discovered lead codices before I found out that they were fakes. I did entertain the interesting question "are they Christian or Kabbalistic" with the hopeful thought that they could, in their own way, be both. That may sound strange to some of you, but I've found that looking at the mystery of the Jewish Messiah through a mystic and Chasidic lens has revealed more to me than most traditional Christian commentaries and dogmatic interpretations.

Saying "the Bible isn't enough" probably sounds horrible and maybe even a bit heretical, but if a surface reading of the Bible were enough, we wouldn't have commentaries, interpretations, and scholarly theological theses. Certainly observant Jews don't think the Bible is enough. Otherwise, we (they) wouldn't have Talmud, Mishna, and Gemara. When I introduce this topic among some folks associated with my congregation, I get the argument that we must rely on the Word of God, not the word of man. Yet the Bible we have today is as much (if not more) the word of the human writers, interpreters, and translators as it is the Word of the One, True God of the Universe.

While the "facts" of the Bible may be contradictory, and the truth of the Bible remains elusive, somewhere in the middle of man, God, and the words on the page, I see an inviting but mysterious portal. Paul said that in the present age, we see the things of God as "through a dark glass" (1 Corinthians 13:12). I believe we're looking at the surface of a body of water. We can't tell what's under that surface, how deep the water goes, how hot or cold it is, and what sub-sea enigmas it contains. If we want to know what God has to tell us, we have to dive in, sometimes half-blind, and pray that once we've made our "leap of faith", we will find the illumination under the blue waves that we can't find in the light of day.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Treating God as Holy

2011-04-04T09:39:00.003-06:00

In the end of tractate Sanhedrin, they ask, "Is a non-Jew commanded to sanctify G-d's Name or not? Here is a statement which proves it: 'The seven commandments of the non-Jews.' If you include this one [i.e. to sanctify G-d's Name], there would be eight!" From this we see that, for Jews, [sanctification of G-d's Name] counts as a mitzvah.

Sefer Hamitzvot
Sanctifying G-d's Name
Positive Commandment 9
Chabad.org

As I mentioned in yesterday's blog post and on numerous other occasions, there are many things that non-Jews can learn from Jewish tradition to help us understand the nature of God and our place as disciples of the Jewish Messiah. While there are a number of commonly applied concepts we can find and study, there are also many demarcation points as well.

The quote I posted above from today's small study of the daily digest of the teachings of Maimonides, seems to tell us that non-Jews do not have a duty to sanctify (make holy) the Name of God, or at least, for we non-Jewish disciples of the Jewish Messiah, it's not considered a mitzvah (a religious duty, an obligation to God, or an act of lovingkindness).

The lesson I read includes the responsibility of a Jew to love, fear, and sanctify the Name of God. Do none of these apply to non-Jews?

The 3rd mitzva is that we are commanded to love G-d (exalted be He), i.e. to meditate upon and closely examine His mitzvos, His commandments, and His works, in order to understand Him; and through this understanding to achieve a feeling of ecstasy. This is the goal of the commandment to love G-d.

Sefer Hamitzvot
Loving G-d
Positive Commandment 3
Chabad.org

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” -Mark 12:29-31

While Jesus (Yeshua) is quoting from the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) and addressing a Jewish audience, the fact that he commanded his Jewish disciples to "go and make disciples of all nations...teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you (from Matthew 28:19-20), indicates that the command to love God applies to the rest of us as well. Also, Noahide.org states the second commandment that must be obeyed by the non-Jewish peoples of the world is to "Respect G-d and Praise Him". This doesn't seem to necessitate "love", but it does define an attitude toward God beyond simple belief.

What about fearing God?

The 4th mitzvah is that we are commanded to establish in our minds fear and dread of G‑d (exalted be He); that we not be calm and nonchalant, but be constantly concerned of imminent punishment [for misdeeds.]

The biblical source of this commandment is G‑d's statement (exalted be He), "You shall fear G‑d your Lord."

Sefer Hamitzvot
Fearing G-d
Positive Commandment 4
Chabad.org

"I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him." -Luke 12:4-5

That seems to take care of fear. But is there anything Jesus said or a teaching in the Apostolic scriptures that commands non-Jewish disciples to sanctify the Name of God? Before proceeding, let's take a quick look at the definition of "sanctify".

To make holy; to consecrate. Set aside for sacred or ceremonial use; To free from sin; to purify; To make acceptable or useful under religious law or practice; To endorse with religious sanction.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sanctify

Make holy, to reverence as holy, or to give authority to.
www.godonthe.net/dictionary/s.html

I'd probably expand that a bit to include "to honor", "to elevate", "to treat as holy and separate". When we sanctify the Name of God, we perform acts (prayer, charity, righteous deeds) that lift up the reputation of God in our eyes and in the eyes the world. Based on what we find in the Torah and Talmud, no one would question a Jew's duty to sanctify the Name of God. But does a non-Jew, and particularly a non-Jew who has become a disciple of the Jewish Messiah, have the same duty?

Maybe...maybe not. It depends on what translation of the Bible you're using.

The King James Bible translates 1 Peter 3:15 as:

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and [be] ready always to [give] an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear

This seems to give us an answer that we Gentile disciples have the same, or similar duty to God as do the Jews, to sanctify or to make holy His Name. However, virtually every other Bible translation, at least in English, says something like "But in your hearts set apart (sanctify) Christ as Lord" (New International Version), specifying our duty to sanctify Christ or the Messiah, not God the Father. You can see the list of translations for the verse I'm referring to at bible.cc.

There are a number of verses in the Apostolic scriptures that talk about people being sanctified by God or His Spirit (Romans 15:16, 1 Thessalonians 5:23, Jude 1:1) and that we are sanctified in Christ (1 Corinthians 1:2, 1 Corinthians 6:11), but we don't see a lot said about us specifically sanctifying or making holy the Name of God in our lives or in the lives of others as non-Jewish disciples of the Jewish Messiah.

I can't believe we aren't supposed to, or that we are somehow forbidden to, treat the Name of God as Holy. Yet it is apparent that, from a Jewish point of view, this duty rests solely in the hands of those who received the Torah from the Prophet Moses at Sinai. This may well be true if you believe that only the 7 Noahide Laws apply to all Gentiles everywhere, but did not the coming of the Messiah and the opportunity Matthew 28:19-20 affords us to become his disciples not change anything for us?

It's probably my poor scholarship that is creating the problem here from a Christian perspective, but where can we see that, as Christians or disciples of the Messiah, we have a responsibility to treat as holy and honorable, the Name of God? I hate to say it this way, but it makes "common sense" that we are supposed to revere the Name of God. After all, we know we are to love Him and to reverently fear Him. But where is the Holiness by which we are to treat Him? Didn't Jesus teach us anything about that?

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

The Diseased Messiah

2011-04-03T08:41:00.003-06:00

Our Sages ask: “What is Mashiach’s name?” and reply “The leper of the House of Rebbi.” This is very difficult to understand. Mashiach will initiate the Redemption, and is associated with the pinnacle of life and vitality. How can his name be linked with leprosy (tzaraas), which is identified with death and exile?

-from Mashiach's Name
Commentary on Torah Portion Metzora; Leviticus 14:1-15:33
Chabad.org

He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
-Isaiah 53:3-4

Both Christianity and Judaism understand the above-quoted passage from the Prophet Isaiah to refer to the Messiah. The "suffering servant" aspect of Jesus is well integrated into Christian belief, but it presents something of a problem in Judaism, where the Messiah is seen as a conquering King and a "political" figure who will return self-rule of the totality of the Land of Israel to the Jewish people, and establish an era of peace for the entire world.

The Chabad commentary continues:

There is still a difficulty. Although the above passage explains why Mashiach must endure suffering, it does not show why that suffering is identified with Mashiach. Mashiach’s name who he is should be positive.

The First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) commentary presents a very similar take on how this coming Shabbat's Torah portion applies to the Messiah. As you can see, they mirror the Chabad's understanding and cite the same sources:

And the rabbis say: "[The name of Messiah] is The Leper of the House of Study, as it is said, 'Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted.'" -Sanhedrin 98b

If you've been reading my blog posts lately, you'll know I believe that we (non-Jewish disciples of the Jewish Messiah) can achieve a better understanding of the Master we serve, by trying to see him through the eyes of his original disciples and their descendants; the Jewish people. I am beginning to gather some significant insights into the Messiah by reading and probing Talmudic and Chasidic thoughts on the matter. I am even occasionally amazed on how well some of these teachings illustrate the life and teachings of Yeshua (Jesus).

But while Judaism, at least in some perspectives, expects two Messiahs and not one (one a suffering servant and the other a conquering King), Christians and Messianics can see the one person being both the "diseased" Messiah and the ruling Messiah.

He has already removed the barrier that separates man from the divine by bearing our sufferings, our diseases, and our wounds (which he did not deserve but he took upon himself because we did...and do). May he come soon and in our day to repair our broken world and to reign over us all in justice and mercy.

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. -Philippians 2:9-11

Amen.

Update: Friday, April 8: For more, read The Leper Scholar by Joshua Brumbach.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Seeing Like a Ben Aliyah

2011-04-01T11:04:00.002-06:00

We can explain in light of this statement that the bloods do not cancel each other out. A Jew who ascends in the ways of Hashem—a ben aliyah symbolized by the olah—does not nullify his friend. Instead he sees only the good in others and often praises them.

Stories off the Daf
You Are Called Adam
Menachos 22
Daf Yomi Digest

I read these "Stories off the Daf" every day (or almost every day) and sometimes they really get my attention. From yesterday's Daf, Rav Yehudah Freund, zt"l teaches us that we can learn something from the Olah offering in the combining of the blood of the bull and the goat on Yom Kippur (I know this may seem obscure, strange, or even bizarre to some of you, but the great Rebbes were able to see many moral lessons illustrated by God in the study of the Oral Law). In this case we learn that, even though more of the blood of the bull is used than the blood of the goat in the two separate Olah offerings, they do not nullify each other and particularly, the majority (bull) blood does not nullify the minority (goat) blood being offered.

The Rav continues:

My brother Yaakov taught a profound lesson from this halahcah, based on the famous words of the prayer of Rav Elimelech of Lizhensk, which many recite before the morning prayers: "May we only look upon the good qualities of our friends and not upon their weaknesses."

In the reality of our lives, even in the lives of disciples of the Jewish Messiah and worshipers of the one, true God of Israel, we find this practice, though ideal, somewhat elusive. A few days ago, Judah Himango posted a blog about the difficulties in forgiving others, and some of the comments made on one of the recent blogs I wrote for my congregation, show a less than gracious reply to some challenging remarks.

As human beings, our first response is to build ourselves up by tearing the other guy down. While the anonymous sage relates, "blowing out someone else's candle doesn't make yours burn any brighter", we nevertheless expend a great deal of our breath extinguishing the flames of those around us in the (vain) hope that our light will provide greater "illumination" (though often, we find ourselves sitting in the dark, instead).

The Rav concludes his lesson this way:

When a person acts as he should, he takes the blood of his body and binds it to Hashem, the "Aluf or Master of the world," But when one is on a low level he is merely dam, blood that is not connected to Hashem. People who are on this level of blood nullify each other. They tend to focus on the weaknesses of others, not on their good points.

We can almost imagine that Paul was making a commentary on Rav Yehudah's teaching with these words:

We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.” For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope. -Romans 15:1-4 (quoting Psalm 69:9)

We bear the weaknesses of others, overlooking them and only seeing their strengths, because this has also been done by the Jewish Messiah for us:

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. -2 Corinthians 12:9-10

Good Shabbos.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Chasing Cars

2011-03-29T19:50:00.005-06:00

Who, being in the form of God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the form of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

-Philippians 2:6-7 (NIV)

Moreover, it appears that the meaning of "being in the form of God" may have been presumed as apparent and known to the intended readers, for the text does virtually nothing to explain this interesting phrase.

Larry W. Hurtado
Chapter 3: A "Case Study" in Early Christian Devotion to Jesus
How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?

This is probably premature and I'm sure I have no business posting this opinion on the web without a lot more study to back it up, but it's what's on my mind just now, so here it is. As many of you who read this blog regularly know, I'm pursuing, among other things, some sort of understanding of the deity of Jesus. Just how is Jesus God the Son and how is God the Father also God? Is there a way to understand the "mechanism" of this process and particularly, how early in "the church" it became apparent that Jesus was (and is) divine?

I'm not going to render a detailed analysis of these questions but I've been wrestling with a few thoughts lately.

Ever since reading "The Word became a human being and lived with us, and we saw his Sh'khinah, the Sh'khinah of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14 from the Complete Jewish Bible translated by David H. Stern) some years ago, I've tried to imagine the connection between the Shechinah (Divine Presence) as it descended upon the Mishkan (Tabernacle) in the desert and the living, breathing, human Messiah:

And he set up the enclosure around the Tabernacle and the altar, and put up the screen for the gate of the enclosure. When Moses had finished the work, the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the Presence of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting, because the cloud had settled upon it and the Presence of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. When the cloud lifted from the Tabernacle, the Israelites would set out, on their various journeys; but if the cloud did not lift, they would not set out until such time as it did lift. For over the Tabernacle a cloud of the Lord rested by day, and fire would appear in it by night, in the view of all the house of Israel throughout their journeys. -Exodus 40:33-38 (JPS Tanakh)

This passage, and the analogous event in Solomon's Temple (1 Kings 8:10-11), indicates that the Shechinah is not just a cloud of fog and a fancy lights show, but that it is the physical manifestation of God in our world. It isn't the totality of God, however:

Thus says the LORD: "Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool;
what is the house that you would build for me,
and what is the place of my rest? -Isaiah 66:1

If God can't (or won't) squeeze His total "self" into the Mishkan or Temple, what was in Solomon's Temple and where was the totality of the God of the Universe? Are we talking about two Gods here or different manifestations of God's nature?

Ever since I read Levertoff and the FFOZ/Vine of David commentary on his work, I have been approaching a closer understanding of the Jewish Messiah as, somehow, mystically, metaphysically, a "container" or "expression-in-flesh" of God's Shechinah (which is considered a feminine aspect of the Divine, making things all the more interesting). Looking at the JewishEncyclopedia.com definition under "In the Targumim":

The majestic presence or manifestation of God which has descended to "dwell" among men. Like Memra (= "word"; "logos") and "Yeḳara" (i.e., "Kabod" = "glory"), the term was used by the Rabbis in place of "God" where the anthropomorphic expressions of the Bible were no longer regarded as proper. The word itself is taken from such passages as speak of God dwelling either in the Tabernacle or among the people of Israel...

No, this doesn't get any easier and in fact, it gets even more off the beaten path (at least my beaten path). I think the reason the whole "deity" issue is so hard to grasp is that, in Christian circles, we tend to try and understand it all through completely rational, intellectual means, or just abandon all hope of coming to any understanding at all. Engaging in a mystic understanding is pretty tough for most believers to accept.

Now let's compare the Shechinah to another concept, this time from Kabbalah as described at AynSof.com:

Ayn Sof (sometimes transliterated as Ein Sof) refers to the infinite Divine (or G_d). In Hebrew Ayn Sof means "Boundlessness", but is usually translated as "Without End." Often it is referred to as the "Infinite No-Thingness." It should be understood that this does NOT mean that Ayn Sof is "nothing" for It is NOT a THING, but is a "somethingness" that we cannot define in human terms. Ayn Sof, in the Kabbalistic tradition, is the ultimate source of all creation or existence!

Ayn Sof, at least as far as my limited understanding can describe it, is the infinite, invisible, unknowable, non-object object, non-entity entity, ultimate creative force, God (God the Father?).

I hate to reduce these concepts down and make them too simple, but would I be so far out of the ballpark to suggest that there is an infinite, invisible, non-corporeal, God, and then suggest there is some part of Him that He can shrink, humble, extend, and intersect with the created Universe; a part of Him that He can allow us to see, touch and some part of Him with which we can interact? Can I then apply that part of Him with which we can interact, that part we saw in the Tabernacle and in Solomon's Temple to the existence and being of the Messiah?

I don't propose this as an answer but suggest it as a possibility. I'll probably be pursuing this for years. I'm sure I'll write more about this. Yes, I'm an unqualified amateur. I'm like this guy:

You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it.
The Joker (played by Heath Ledger)
The Dark Knight (2008)

I'm a dog chasing cars. I'm not sure I'd know what to do with one if I ever caught it, but I just can't help chasing cars.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.