For the past six years I have been working on a book, to be published shortly, on a new understanding of Jesus as prophet rather than deity, based exclusively on the New Testament. The real story of Jesus as teacher of traditional Jewish spirituality to his disciples lies explicitly in the text. I have lectured Christian audiences about rediscovering the uniquely Jewish Jesus as a way of deepening their spiritual understanding of Christianity and stripping it of any acquired pagan coating. The response has been overwhelming.Wow! I bet it has. The interesting thing, and I wonder how the church will truly accept this, is that Rabbi Boteach speaks of "Judaizers" as the answer to saving Judaism. Normally, churches speak of "Judaizers" in very negative terms as if they're "trying to bring us under the Law" (egad). I also wonder what combined Judaism thinks of this?
Two thousand years ago a still mysterious man named Saul of Tarsus saw that the ideas and values behind Judaism were so breathtaking that they could change the world, if only they could be stripped of their ritual demands and be mixed with a human deity who was more accessible than Judaism’s invisible God. Thus, from the foundations of Jewish spirituality Christianity, and later Islam, was born. The time has come for the original progenitors of the ideas to offer the world the original source, not by converting non-Jews to Judaism but by reviving an ancient “associate” status that allows them to live lives deeply influenced by Jewish spiritually and values while retaining their own identity.Many years ago, I heard a Jewish (non-Messianic) woman refer to Jesus as "a nice Jewish boy", but she had nothing good to say about that "traitor" Paul, who twisted the teachings of Jesus into another religion (i.e. Christianity). In both Christianity and Judaism, it's generally agreed that Paul threw away his Jewishness and converted to the Christian religion, which he more or less invented (the latter is more of a Jewish viewpoint from what I understand). Rabbi Boteach starts from a similar foundation, but reframes Paul's actions in a much more positive light.
Rabbi Boteach outlines seven steps Gentiles would go through to incorporate Judaism in their lives and you can find these in the source news article (hence the title of this blog post). Is this so different from what Messianic Judaism proposes relative to the Gentiles in their midst? It's not about converting Gentiles to Judaism, it's about integrating the rest of the world into the values given to the Jews by God.
Since Yahnatan brought this up on twitter but hasn't yet blogged about it, I thought I'd take it upon myself to start the conversation in the Messianic blogosphere. I think it's a subject worth tossing about. First read the Jerusalem Post article and then come back here and comment.
Let the games begin.
