Sarx

Glad you asked!

You’ll notice above each post and, in the comments section, at the bottom of each comment, both the Gregorian and the Hebrew date. Today (until sunset) is the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Heshvan or Cheshvan (depending on how you transliterate the word). Apart from totally appealing to my inner Calendar Geek (the Hebrew one being one of the few calendars I follow that that is A. Useful; and B. available as a plugin for Wordpress), there’s another reason I’m using the Hebrew Calendar. It’s kind of hard to express though.

I’ve been asked twice this week if I was interested in converting to Judaism. My worst answer is that Sunday was the Asheville Jewish Food Festival. And I missed it. My best reply is “Somewhere on the edges of thinking about the beginning.”

I’m wrestling with what it means to be a Christian and the best answer I can come up with is “following God in the way of Jesus” and, repeatedly, the way of Jesus comes to me as “Judaism for Gentiles”. The worst (and I have those moments a lot) I can come up with is “Hellenic philosophy running amuck in ethical monotheism using Jesus as an excuse.”

In those latter moments, to save what’s left, I have to position myself into the Way in which Jesus would have been most comfortable: Rabbinic Judaism, for we kid ourselves if we think Jesus would recognise the Church at all. Jesus - if you will, the red letter edition, devoid of the later anti-semitism of the gentile church - is profoundly Jewish. Most of Jesus’ teaching, as recorded in the NT, is siding with either Hillel or Shammai - as Rabbis did in the day.

My love affair with Judaism began in 1975, riding to Middle School. Living in Sullivan County, NY, in the Catskill Mountains, I’d known many Jews growing up. But in Fifth grade it was all kind of abstract. In ‘75 I started going to Middle School in Monticello. Most every day I rode to school sitting next to Michael Weinstein. Michael took great pains to explain to me how Jews were not just “people who rejected this Jesus guy”. Even today I’m used to explaining religions in Christian terms (like this, not like that). Michael tried to explain Judaism on its own. I don’t think it sunk in, but I learned some Yiddish Drek (ie not really the kind of Yiddish you’d use with your Bubbe). Later, when I was learning Hebrew in High School, Laurie B. taught me some finer points. I also learned some things from the Greenwald Family - who graciously had me over for Sabbath and Pesach several times. From them I learned enough to be dangerous and, when I started studying Hebrew at NYU, I would come home to my Episcopal Congregation and, during the very long Maundy Thursday liturgy downstairs, I would lead the Youth Group upstairs in a Passover Seder (for which I usually cooked as well). 30 kids, sitting at two long tables, with four adults telling the Exodus, and all praying from from the Art Scroll Haggadah.

Even in College I had it in my head that I needed to learn Hebrew to understand Jesus better. Yiddish, of course, was anachronistic for Christian purposes, but the Lushen Kodesh was important. Still, I learned more Yiddish at NYU and not so much drek this time (thanks, Esther!). During my time at NYU I could be found, of a Sabbath, davening with the folks at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the Gay synagogue in Greenwich Village. I kept up the Hebrew and Jewish learning, even when on a break from NYU. I remember sitting in one of the first Sabbath Meetings at Bet Haverim (c. 1985) in Atlanta. There was no minyan as we were only four that Sabbath Eve - two men and two women. We met at the Quaker Meeting House in Decatur. As we started the service that evening, I contributed about the only thing I knew: how to sing “Mah Tovuh” the way they sang it in Greenwich Village. I can still do that…

When in SF, I admit I was a little lax but I think that’s because St Gregory Nyssa Church was so like a Synagogue: the worship, the attitudes, the approach to scripture, the approach to Jesus. Once, when I was preaching, my friend Esther came to SGN to hear and she walked in just as I was singing the “Sh’ma” from the Bima. I wondered that day what it must be like for a Jew to walk into a Church and hear “Sh’ma Israel” sung to a traditional melody. For me that melody - and the Hebrew Haiku - came off with such force as to be more powerful than the “Credo” (which we didn’t use at SGN anyway).

I did visit Sha’ar Zahav once with a friend from Israel. And it was also while I was in SF that I began experimenting with Jewish prayer - using the Art Scroll Siddur, buying a prayer shawl and keeping my head covered. For a while I tried to keep kosher as well. And Esther and I went to Beth Shalom where I learned that one didn’t have to be Reform or Reconstructionist to be a gay-friendly shul. And I also visited B’nai Jeshurun, the most amazing congregation ever. If I still lived in NYC, I would be spending much, much more time there - not only because of the quality of the Liturgy, but also because of the community. Forgive me, but to put B’nai Jeshurun in terms that some of my readers will totally understand: in terms of liturgy and people, it’s a Jewish St Gregory’s.

Part of my problem in SF (and in Asheville) was, in fact, community. It’s fun to explore and experiment with all this - but one needs a community in which to pray and grow. My (increasingly Jewish) understanding of Paul and Jesus was interesting to my Christian friends and made for good conversation with Esther. It worked well in sermons, Bible class and my Bible study mailing list. But no one was in my life to help me pray in the morning or to answer my questions about what the Amidah means. I remember going up to the roof of the building at 995 Market Street to say the Amidah facing east in the time before sunset. Since I couldn’t quite rattle off all the Hebrew words, for the sake of time (on my break at work) I’d say most of the prayers in English and cap each graph off with the blessing in Hebrew. But I was doing it alone - apart from the occasional cellphone call to Esther as I was standing in Safeway, asking advice about Kosher foods.

Looking for community where religion was all-embracing, as I struggled with various discernment issues at St Gregory’s, I became an Orthodox Christian. The thing that attracted me most about Judaism was the idea of a life lived religiously: you had to think about Kashrut standing in Safeway. You get up before sunrise and stop each day in the afternoon/evening. You had to think about the blessings when you were first waking up and when you were getting dressed; then throughout the day and again when you went to bed. I found that in Eastern Orthodoxy, too, albeit in different ways and in different areas. But I also found other things: if Christianity can be “Hellenic philosophy running amuck…” then Hellenism in Orthodoxy runs, to borrow the words of Sarah in Hocus Pocus, “Amuck, amuck, amuck, amuck, amuck!” At times even claiming Jewish Roots for something that was, clearly, only baptised Greco-Roman paganism or, more often, simply a reaction to Judaism. Nothing wrong with that - I want to be clear: it’s a cultural thing. But it makes me wonder why I, a 21th century American, need to worry about such 2nd century cultural issues. And in those times when I do want to think about other cultures, I’d rather think about Judaism, the religion of Jesus, rather than the religion of the Gentile converts.

Because while I did feel comfort in Orthodoxy, I feel comfortable in Judaism.

And is theology about God or is it simply our cultural ideas and thus more about us? Can we worship God without knowing what to think about God beyond knowing that I am not God? Yes, we can. For, as a Christian, all the theological ideas are based on later, mostly-Gentile readings of the Hebrew Scriptures. (Some modern Rabbis have debated with Pauline concepts as well.) What happens when you read Hebrew ideas into the Hebrew scriptures? You get a very different picture. If you stop with the Greek text of the LXX and the non-Jewish understanding of the Byzantine Church, how much do you miss? Eventually, you have to wonder what would have been changed in the Church if she hadn’t lost touch with her Mother Faith, that of the Jews. You have to wonder, along with those other so-called “heretical” groups, what might have happened if Jesus had stayed in his role as Messiah and Rabbi instead of morphing into what the E.O. calls “Christ God”.

To be certain I’m probably too close to this “other religion” for some folks’ comfort. But I’m trying to figure out where I am. How does one pray Jewish? What’s different? What do I do with Jesus? Concerns about family, etc don’t yet bother me: I’ve lived for five years unable to share communion, etc, with them. This lack of communion has been so disturbing to Mom that, save is crisis situations (like the St Raphael’s incident) the folks stay out of my religious life any more. But today, at Mass, we were celebrating the anniversary of the laying of the corner stone for our Church (93 years ago). We sang Christ is Made the Sure Foundation and The Church’s One Foundation and Ye Who Own the Faith of Jesus. I got verklempt several times through the service; although I snarkily concluded that “faith of Jesus” was a double entendre and one could own the faith that claims him or the faith he was part of - but not really both. Getting Verklempt is not the same as having religious conviction though and as I’ve documented over at +Z’ev, I’ve been trying to figure out what having an adult faith is.

So I put the Hebrew date at the top of the page. Not because I am (yet) considering conversion beyond the abstract. I’m reading. I’m holding. I’m looking to be held. And I’m praying. Tomorrow I think I shall use the Amidah. I think I will get something that says the Shema for my prayer corner (and maybe for my neck, as well). And I’m wrestling with a calligraphy design in my head. It’s almost there… may end up on a t-shirt. On the other hand, I had some amazing spare ribs for supper.

But that is where I am now.