The Miracle at the Shabbos Table

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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.