Overlap, Part 3: Speed Bumps

Stop separating us already! We are family and should treat each other with love . I believe it says to love your neighbor as yourself a couple of times in scripture . We have all been called to obey Torah. No tap dancing around it.

A comment from the Congregation Shema Yisrael blog

Bilateral Ecclesiology and the Gentiles Series

Last Friday, I copied the content of one of my articles on this blog called Orthodox Rabbi’s View of Torah and the Gentiles and posted it on my congregation's blog. I've received two responses there so far, and both have been like the quote you read at the top if the page.

Today, I even went so far as to use this content as the basis for my teaching at Shabbat services. It turned out to be a very lively discussion and inspired a great deal of debate.

These are the sort of teachings that, at least in my little corner of the world, I consider "pushing the envelope". I make it a big deal on this blog to question assumptions and I'm extending that to my more "public" and "in person" world. The results are predictable and not entirely comfortable.

While you can expect questioning assumptions of the "One Law status quo" (or any status quo) to yield some push back, can you (or I) expect it to do any actual good? I hope so. But on the other hand, I'm only one guy. I'm not trying to lead a revolution, I'm just trying to get people to see alternatives. I guess this is what happens when you start threatening the sacred cows (and I've done that before).

As I've probably mentioned previously, I'm extending this type of class and presenting these questions in a 16 week course I'm teaching at my congregation starting the last Wednesday of January. While, from my point of view, it's an expansion of what I've been writing about on this blog all along and contains much of what I've learned from the experience, it's also either going to open some eyes or end up shutting some ears.

I hope it's the former, but no one likes to have their assumptions questioned. I know that in traditional Talmudic study, debates, questions, and struggling with the status quo is allowed and even encouraged, but with many non-Jews or Jews who didn't have the benefit of a classic Jewish education, they respond a lot like Christians in a Bible study. If you step outside the established canon, you won't be received well.

The struggle between unity and division isn't just on one side of the equation. Everybody owns a sacred cow. When you go out "cow tipping", the cows push back.

I'm going to stop blogging now and go to sleep. Honest.

Addendum, the next afternoon:

I've never encountered problems building relationships with Christians who have repudiated supersessionism or, at least, acknowledge there is something deficient in the way that Christianity traditionally approaches the Jews, their Scriptures, and their Torah.

I have had a problem building relationships with Christians (One Law Messianics included) who are committed to the proposition that they are Israel.

I think what you identify as the "BE" corrective has nothing to do with BE at all, it has do with good sense. You shouldn't just go messing around and playing fantasy dress-up with someone else's religion.
A comment by Ovadia in

Overlap, Part 2: The Therapeutic Horse

Is it time to play Stuck in the Middle by Steelers Wheel? If I try to educate people to be sensitive to the needs of Messianic Judaism as Ovadia suggests, I get accused of not treating people with love and rebuilding the wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles in the "Messianic movement". If I devise a plan that I think will gain the best results in achieving what Ovadia suggests but moves slowly, it's not good enough and all I'm doing is playing "dress up" with someone else's religion.

If I were the character Q (played by John deLancie) from Star Trek: The Next Generation, I suppose I could just snap my fingers and give everyone what they want, but I'm not...and I can't.