Rebuilding

Both of one's worlds, inner and outer, were destroyed because of our iniquities. Rachel cries over both. Both will be rebuilt. Rebuilding our inner world depends upon our acquiring a new dimension of understanding of who we are and where we're going. Rebuilding our outer world depends on our joining hands together to re-form society in accordance with the vision of the Torah. -Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh

Bilateral Ecclesiology and the Gentiles Series

Gene Shlomovich just said something interesting on my previous blog post:

This is NOT about any sort of immediate "implementation" - we are all waiting for the Messianic Age for that. The last 2K teach us that whatever man touches eventually turns to dung, but it doesn't mean that we are to fold our hands and stand idly by. We can still do things, one thing at a time, one congregation at a time and go from there. We have to start somewhere. We implement things starting with ourselves and those who G-d brings our way, and pray that G-d blesses it over the coming years.

The first thought that popped into my head was this:

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” Exodus 32:1-4

Yes, human beings have a tendency to mess up a free lunch whenever we can. I like to think that the reason the trials of the Children of Israel are so heavily chronicled in the Tanakh isn't to pick on them but to show how all of humanity continually fails God, yet keeps striving to be close to Him. It's also a continual picture of God's faithfulness, not just to the Jewish people, but to the rest of us (see the book of Jonah for a display of God's love to a non-Jewish people).

My understanding of Judaism is that it pictures man as the junior partner with God in an effort to repair the world, both our inner spiritual world and the world we see around us. In some of my recent blog posts, I've been trying, using marital metaphors, to describe a "partnership" between Jews and Christians joining together under one Messiah and one God, using the Torah as the blueprint for rebuilding our inner and outer worlds.

We aren't doing such a good job, but as Gene pointed out, we don't have the luxury of simply folding our hands and stand idly by, either. We have to do something. In fact, God requires that we do something:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. - James 2:14-18

That's right. Rebuilding the world doesn't necessarily require establishing a megachurch and attracting 10,000 followers or performing some monumental act of righteousness or heroism. Repairing our inner and outer world can be as simple as providing one meal to one hungry person, or visiting a sick friend in the hospital.

But what about rebuilding the relationship between Christians and Jews?

I don't know.

I suppose ongoing conversations like this one are part of that process. Yes, the Messiah will come and he will repair the world, but in the meantime, we still have a responsibility to do all we can to move the process along. Like the Children of Israel and the Golden Calf, we have a tendency to misuse the time we have when we aren't constantly re-enforced by God, but that's the struggle of an imperfect humanity serving a perfect God. The standard quote I use at the end of each of these blogs should be the motto, not just of Jews, but of everyone.

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

Needing Evil in the Perfect World

Hence the paradox of our existence: perfection begets imperfection (as in Rebecca’s pregnancy), for nothing can be said to be truly perfect unless it possesses the potential for struggle, which means that it must be vulnerable to imperfection. And imperfection gives birth to perfection (as in Tamar’s pregnancy), when that vulnerability is exploited to reap the rewards of struggle and to attain the perfect twinship of pristine goodness and vanquished evil.

From Tamar's Twins
by Rabbi Yanki Tauber
Based on the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe

My wife sent me the lesson from which I just quoted above via email and as I was reading it, I recalled something she has told me from time to time. Christianity emphasizes the fall of Adam and Eve from perfection and how the world descended into sin as a result. The fall of man is a central theme in Christian belief. We base a great deal on this understanding, including the need for a Savior to redeem mankind.

Yet, from what my wife tells me, in Judaism, there is no concept of original sin.

The article my wife sent me was based on the Lubavitcher Rebbe's teaching for this week's Torah Portion Vayeshev and the "encounter" between Judah and Tamar. The entire passage is contained in Genesis 38 so I won't recount all of the details here. However, one of the comments made by the Rebbe particularly drew my attention:

But a similar contradiction is also to be found in our sages’ remarks regarding G‑d’s creation of the world. On the one hand, we have the Midrashic statement that “the world was created fulfilled”—i.e., fully matured and lacking nothing. Yet the perfect world which G‑d created contains the potential for imperfection, even evil. Indeed, this potential is an integral part of its perfection. The Midrash, citing the verse, “And G-d looked upon all that He made and, behold, it was very good,” comments: “‘Behold it was very good’—this is the good inclination; ‘and behold it was very good’—this is the inclination for evil . . . ‘behold it was very good’—this is good fortune; ‘and behold it was very good’—this is suffering . . . ‘behold it was very good’—this is paradise; ‘and behold it was very good’—this is hell . . . ‘behold it was very good’—this is the angel of life; ‘and behold it was very good’—this is the angel of death..."

Based on this statement, in order to create a "perfect world", God had to make the world capable of containing anything, including evil. In fact, if the world couldn't allow evil by design, then it couldn't be called "perfect". A perfect world created by God required qualities such as the inclination for evil, suffering, hell, and the angel of death, despite the fact that death was not supposed to exist (at least from a Christian perspective), prior to the "fall".

I'm not saying all this to throw a serious theological monkeywrench into the machine so much as to try and understand how it is possible for Jewish talmudic thought and understanding to merge with Christian canon at this intersection. In Messianic Judaism, even in those organizations which adhere strictly to the Oral Law and that honor the wisdom of the sages, acceptance of some very Christian ideas is required. Messianic Jews, in order to be "Messianic", must believe that Jesus Christ (Yeshua HaMoshiach) is the Messiah, the Son of God, and the Savior of the entire world. They must also believe in some manner and fashion, that the world is in such as state that the Messiah must come to redeem the world and the people in it.

I understand about Tikkun Olam or "repairing the world" but while there is a certain amount of overlap between the Jewish concept of the Messiah's mission to fix our planet and the Christian concept of the Savior returning to redeem the world, they aren't the same thing. Neither is the idea that the world needed to be created with the capacity for evil in order to be perfect, and the free will of man that resulted in the fall.

Perhaps some of the Messianic Jews who roam the blogosphere could stop by sometime and help clear up this seeming contradiction (and even the Lubavitcher Rebbe refers to a contradiction in one of the previous quotes).

I've already posted the link to the original source for this blog post, but I certainly invite you (if you haven't already), to read Tamar's Twins so you can get the benefit of the entire article. I'll leave you with one final quote:

Yet unlike the mixed progeny of Isaac and Rebecca’s marriage, the twin sons born out of this morally dubious union were both righteous men. Indeed, all kings of Israel, from David to Moshiach, are the issue of Tamar’s pregnancy...The whole of history is the noble and painful progress toward the resolution of this paradox, when, in the age of Moshiach, “the saviors (descendants of Tamar) shall ascend the mountain of Zion to judge the mountain of (Rebecca’s) Esau,” uniting the vulnerabilities that are born out of the perfection of G‑d’s creation with the perfection that is born out of the vulnerabilities of the human condition.