The Right Question

Greater is the promise made by the Holy One, Blessed be He, to the women than to the men, for it says, "Rise up, you women that are at ease; you confident daughters, give ear unto my speech" (Isaiah 32:9). Rav said to R. Hiyya, "Whereby do women earn merit? By taking their children to synagogue [to learn Scripture] and sending their husbands to the Beit HaMidrash [to learn Midrash], and waiting until they return from the Beit HaMidrash. -Gemara (17a)

I've been reading The Talmud for Beginners: Volume I Prayer by Rabbi Judith Z Abrams. One of the reviews for this book calls it a "good intro to the spiritual side of the talmud" and I can see a number of compelling themes, even for the Gentile believer, as I read through this text. One of the topics that attracted my attention is how the Gemara considers that Jewish men have a different and larger set of obligations to the Torah than Jewish women. Here's part of Rabbi Abrams' commentary:

This sugya deals with a different kind of interference that prevents one from reciting the Shema with the required intention. In the rabbis' view, being a woman interfered with one's ability to relate to God. They assumed that a woman was responsible for the demanding, and time-consuming, tasks of raising children and managing a household and therefore could not be held responsible for performing positive, time-bound commandments...

The purpose of this blog post is not to draw attention to the Talmudic differences between how Jewish men and women are bound to Torah obligations, but to illustrate how the sages considered that different roles and duties in Judaism affected the how different groups of Jews were obligated or not obligated to observe various commandments or mitzvot. Since I consider myself a voice in defense of Gentiles within the Messianic movement, I want to try and extend the allusion to Gentile Torah participation, including if or how Gentiles are obligated to the mitzvot. Here's more of what Rabbi Abrams has to say about a Jewish woman's obligations to the mitzvot and the exceptions to those obligations:

There are many exceptions to the rule of this system. Women are, in fact, obligated to perform some positive commandments, such as lighting the candles on Hannukah. Women are not forbidden to perform positive time-bound commandments; they are simply not obligated to do most of them...They may perform these mitzvot voluntarily if they wish to do so.

Because women are not obligated to do these mitzvot, the rabbis ruled that women cannot have the same intention and sense of responsibility regarding the mitzvot as men do...

I know that both Rabbi Abrams and the Talmudic sages were not considering Gentiles and particularly Gentile Messianics (Christians) in their writings. However, there is a natural extention to their opinions when you consider the debate within the Messianic movement regarding Gentile obligation or lack of obligation to the entire body of mitzvot. Traditional or non-Messianic Judaism believes that Gentiles (whether Christian or otherwise) are obligated by God to obey only the Seven Noahide Laws. While these seven laws may expand into numerous (perhaps hundreds of) subsets of laws, it is a much smaller list of the mitzvot than what Jews (Messianic or not) believe they are obligated to by the God who gave the Torah at Sinai.

What adds a wrinkle to the traditional Jewish viewpoint of Gentiles and the Noahide Laws is the fact that Messianic Jews, because they acknowledge Yeshua (Jesus) as the Jewish Messiah, must recognize that in some manner or fashion, Gentiles are allowed a greater access to God when they (we...I) accept the sovereignty of Yeshua over our lives. When we Gentiles become disciples of the Master (Matthew 28:18-20) and receive the Spirit of God in the same way as the Messianic Jews (Acts 10:44-48) our status, identity, and obligations relative to God, the Messiah, and the Bible are changed. The question is, what has changed and now much has it changed?

Many One Law groups bristle at the thought that Gentiles in the Messianic movement have a different (that is, lesser) set of obligations to the Torah than Jews, but at least as we see from the Talmudic viewpoint of Jewish men vs. Jewish women, there is sufficient precedence to believe (extending Talmudic opinion into the Messianic world) that Messianic Jews and Gentiles could operate under different Torah obligations. Of course, that brings up the issue of whether we can consider the rulings of the sages binding on Gentiles and Gentile Messianics typically don't acknowledge Talmudic authority. The Talmud as applied to Messianic Jews has been the topic of a recent Messiah Journal article I reviewed called Talmud on Trial (which amazingly enough, elicited absolutely no comments from the various interested parties...or "usual suspects") and I highly recommend that Gentile Messianics read the article to gain some illumination in this area.

Of course, even within Judaism, the idea of "allowed but not obligated", at least as it's applied to Jewish women, is not without its critics as Rabbi Abrams points out:

Some critics of this system contend that it is sexist and designed to exclude women from public religious life. Some traditional thinkers answer that this system was devised to help women by lessening the claims made on their already overcommitted time; the "mommy track" for mitzvot, as it were. They also contend that raising children is so spiritually elevating that women have less need of prayer.

Both groups of thinkers make valid points. There is no denying that the rabbis simply did not consider women full participants in Jewish religious life. In part, this is because they made assumptions about women's roles that no longer hold true...On the other hand, raising children is spiritually elevating...

Do Messianic Jews make assumptions about Gentile roles that are no longer true due to the fact that we've been grafted into the community by the blood of Yeshua and are now co-heirs? But I digress.

The focus on this blog does not allow me to completely outline Rabbi Abrams' observations on the differences in roles of Jewish men and women relative to the mitzvot, but you can see that agreement, even within Judaism, isn't universal on this point. Perhaps we can reasonably extend this to say that universal agreement within Messianic Judaism regarding the roles Jews and Gentiles have in terms of the mitzvot doesn't have to exist, either.

A recent comment on one of my other blog posts, The Unequal Yoke figures into the matter as well:

Instead, MJ's refocusing on serving the needs of the Jewish people will naturally do the work of sifting those who do not belong and are best served and can serve elsewhere, and those non-Jews who are truly and selflessly committed to Jewish people [specifically]...

Here Gene seems to be suggesting that the only valid reason for a Gentile to have a presence in a Messianic Jewish congregation is to service the needs of the Jewish people, rather than having any individual role in terms of worshiping and serving God. I'm not opposed to supporting Israel and in fact, I'm very much in favor of doing so, but do we not also have a role in directly having a relationship with the Jewish Messiah? Is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob not our God, too?

Rabbi Abrams has a similar comment to make in terms of how women are viewed in Judaism:

In our foregoing text, women are clearly seen as enablers, not as persons who perform mitzvot in their own right. Women are rewarded for enabling their children and husbands to study Torah, not for studying Torah themselves. However, the more women study Torah, the more genuinely committed they will be to sharing it with those they love. Helping someone else to study Torah without studying it oneself is like trying to enthusiastically urge them to eat something you've never tasted. Your exhortations may be effective, but they will be even more effective, and more sincere expressions of your love, if you know the sweetness your loved ones are about to enjoy.

I'm not automatically advocating that all Gentiles in the Messianic movement try their hardest to imitate a Jewish lifestyle at every single level, but one of the things that attracts Gentile believers to Hebraic worship and study is the beauty of that lifestyle. If we Gentiles are charged with supporting Jewish involvement in being Messianic and in allying ourselves with Israel as God's special chosen nation, can we not also have an individual and unique connection and worship of God in our own Gentile lives?

All that said, we Gentile Messianics must also give serious consideration to the intention of God and the teachings of the Messiah that were placed specifically upon the Gentile disciple, starting at Matthew 28. I've blogged extensively on the Matthew 28 mandate and how it is applied to Gentiles and have come up with a body of conclusions regarding Gentiles and the Torah. I'm finally getting the opportunity to turn those blog posts into a 15-part class that's available both to people in my local community and to anyone with Internet access who expresses an interest. I'm hoping this class with get both Jews and Gentiles in the Messianic movement to start questioning their assumptions (as I've been questioning mine) and to perhaps realize that none of us really "know it all".

Worship is pursuing the right questions, not in always pumping out "the right answers" like a scriptural slot machine.

That, Detective, is the right question. Program terminated.
Dr Alfred Lanning
I, Robot (2004)