Who is My God?

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.

What is the Halachah for Gentile Disciples?

Most of the other stuff you listed is not forbidden halachically as far as I know – reading from siddur is certainly not forbidden neither is praying together (you do this when visiting a synagogue anyway), observing Shabbat in the manner that you do (since it’s safe to assume that you are not observing it in a strict manner, therefor you would not be considered (by traditional authorities at least) as observing it JEWISHLY (which technically means – again, from traditional point of view – that you are NOT observing it at all!), lighting candles, etc. Speaking about lighting candles – a Jew must light Shabbat candles for him/herself – that is if circumstances allow to light them in the first place. If he/she can’t or missed the time to light them, there’s always next Shabbat. So, technically speaking you lighting them is for your personal benefit – it doesn’t fulfil the commandment (from a halachic point of view).

So, aside from tefillin, I don’t remember reading about any of this as being forbidden to non-Jews.

Gene Shlomovich from his comments on
Book Review: Tefillin, A Study of the Commandment of Tefillin

The link I just posted above leads not only to Gene's comments, but to a book review I just wrote about a new First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) booklet about the history and commandments involving the use of Tefillin in Jewish (and possibly Gentile) prayer (and please feel free to read the review and comment about it on my other blog).

Gene's comments started me wondering about a subject that sometimes occurs to me when we have these conversations. Messianic Judaism, and particularly that expression that takes to heart the concept of Bilateral Ecclesiology (BE), tends to believe that the specific roles and responses of Jewish and Gentile disciples of the Messiah are different based on having a different status before God. From that perspective, authoritative rulings are not only rendered in the written Torah, but also in the Oral tradition and judgments of the learned Jewish sages. Halachah, as Gene mentions, is considered applicable to define both Jewish and Gentile responsibilities (or lack thereof) relative to what we think of as traditional Jewish religious practice.

One of the criticisms that Messianic Judaism has of the One Law and Two-House movements, is that these groups only consider the written Bible (Torah, Prophets, Writings, and Apostolic Scriptures) as authoritative and relegate the Oral law and rulings of the sages to the status of "opinions", which are then easily dismissed. This is why, for example, that a One Law practitioner can say they are keeping a type of kosher by only eating beef, chicken, and vegetables purchased at their local supermarket, while a Messianic Jew whose practice is more "rabbinically" centered, would require that their kosher meat be certified as such under rabbinic supervision, prepare their food in a kosher kitchen, not mix meat and dairy products, and so forth. Hamburger from Safeway or Albertsons just wouldn't do and a cheeseburger is out of the question.

As Gene formerly pointed out in the book review and as other comments there illustrate, the majority Jewish opinion would forbid a non-Jew from observing the Sabbath "Jewishly" and would forbid men from, among other things, praying while wearing a tallit and tefillin. While the rabbinic rulings are not unanimous, if a non-Jew were to walk into their local (non-Messianic) synagogue and ask the Rabbi what he or she thought of Christians wearing tzitzit and laying tefillin, it is very likely the Rabbi wouldn't support such activities.

But they don't believe that Yeshua is the Messiah either, and thus don't consider any of his teachings authoritative. Neither did any of the Jewish sages including Rambam, whose statements quoted in my book review could be interpreted as supporting Gentiles obeying more than the Seven Noahide Laws.

Halachah, in part, must make the assumption that all non-Jews are obligated only to the Noahide Laws, and a Gentile's responsibilities to God are contained within those limitations (and keep in mind that the seven laws can be further subdivided into multiple, specific behaviors).

Are non-Jewish people who have come to faith in the Jewish Messiah and who have become the Messiah's disciples (you can't get around Matthew 28:19-20) considered absolutely equivalent to Noahides? Is the Jerusalem letter (Acts 15) considered to be a specific and limiting container for Gentile Messianic disciples in precisely the same way as the Noahide Laws recorded in Genesis 9?

I've previously blogged that I don't believe the Acts 15 letter describes an absolute limit for Gentile Messianics, since Yeshua's teachings that we Gentiles are required to obey extend beyond the borders of the letter and into many principles directly drawn from the Torah mitzvot (visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, remaining faithful to one's spouse, not murdering, and so forth).

Everything hinges on the difference (assuming there is one) between the status of a Gentile Noahide and a Gentile Messianic disciple before God. The "requirements" are different for both groups and at least from what I can see. Gentile Messianic disciples are allowed, and perhaps required, based on the two greatest commandments  from Matthew 22:37-40 (which are derived from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18) to have a love for God not suggested by the Noahide commandments. I've never gotten the impression that Noahides would ever have the ability to "approach the Throne of God", at least in the same manner as those of us who are supposed to be fellow heirs (Ephesians 3:6).

I don't have an answer to this next question, but can we totally accept all of the halachah regarding Gentile religious practice, when every single ruling was written specifically for Gentiles who were either Noahides or pagans?

Wait! What did I say?

Gentiles have two classes...or three?

Consider this. We non-Jews in the movement are disciples of the Jewish Messiah, AKA "Christians". A concept and status not taken into account (for the most part) in halachah (and when it is taken into account, the "account" is usually not favorable, given the historic relationship between Christians and Jews). However, does any of the rabbinic judgments consider the difference between a "righteous Gentile" and a pagan (a Gentile who does not comply with the Noahide requirements)? They would have to if the status of "Noahide" were to have any meaning. But if Christianity and Messianic Judaism (in all its forms and variations) must accept the fact, based on the Matthew 28, that Gentiles are also able to assume the status as "disciples of the Jewish Messiah" and heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:29), then there must be a difference between Gentile Messianics and Gentile Noahides. Otherwise, why not just have all Gentiles either convert to Judaism or become Noahides and leave it at that? Heck, Yeshua could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he didn't have to die for the sins of the world (John 3:16).

Like I said before, I don't have the answer to these questions, but these are questions we don't ask very often, if at all. I believe that, in some manner or fashion, we have to consider the possibility that halachah for Gentile Messianic believers may need to be "adjusted" to accommodate a status for us that the sages, by definition, would never have considered.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark, ignoring the light of the world. Look for the lamp who lights your path or you may become lost in the dark forever.

"A Jew never gives up. We're here to bring Mashiach, we will settle for nothing less." -Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh