Status Report

I met with a Rabbi on Thursday who made it quite clear that conversion, per se, isn’t necessary for a Gentile. Unlike the Christians and the Muslims, the Jews don’t have sense of “evangelism”. We had a nice conversation and he suggested I read a book - now out of print - which I found on eBay that night for only $6, including postage! I promptly ordered it.

I was to go to services on Friday night but the entire week of resumes and interviews and general stress had left me in a place of not wanting to meet any strangers. So I stayed at the house until leaving to spend the weekend w/ Brodie.

After I passed the customs station on the Canadian side of the border, I turned on my iPod, plugged into the car stereo, and began listening to a podcast. On the way I listened to a Rabbi discuss last Saturday’s (2/16) Torah portion: Tetzaveh. Then I listened to a discussion of this week’s (2/23) portion, Ke Tisa. I listened to two more podcasts on the way home today, on the same two portions of the Torah.

I arrived home, in Buffalo, at a very different place from when I left.

To explain this, here are some sentences, ripped from their context, that all struck me at the same time during this weekend’s journey.

1) In studying Judaism I meet the warm, Semitic deity I expect (but do not find) in traditional Christianity as I have experienced it.
2) The commentaries (as explored by some Rabbis) theorise that God gave the Tabernacle to the Jews to help them with the problem expressed in the worship of the Golden Bull.
3) Without the Rabbinic Commentary you can read the (Hebrew) scriptures to point directly to Jesus on the Cross or to my Bar Mitzvah.
4) Before I read Why the Jews Rejected Jesus I thought the issue was that there was a common text between Jews and Christians about which they simply disagreed. - Nothing could be further from the Truth.
5) The past has a vote but not a veto.
6) Christianity is a religion of Creed. Judaism is a religion of Deed.

Sentences 1 and 4 are mine, in dialogue with others. I’m talking there. 2 and 3 are recaptured from my audio memory - #2 from the podcasts this weekend and #3 from Michael Wex’s Born to Kvetch. Sentence 6 is a quote from Mordecai Kaplan and, amongh Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic sorts, I often here the reverse sentiment expressed. 6 came from an online course for which I registered. It ties back to a discussion a year ago this week about the difference between Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy. Most of these came up - in one form or another - in the conversation with the Rabbi as well as in other conversations I’ve had around the net with all sorts of people.

What came to me in the zen of driving was that, really, I am still deeply committed to following God in the way of Jesus. What I blogged back in December is still true:

Yeshua: Rabbi? Yes, who fully participated in the Rabbinic debates of his time. Messiah? I’m confused as I look more into what Jews thought of the text they had. God-in-the-the-flesh? Well now…

So much of the theology I understand, so much of the theology by which I see God, experience the word, deal with my neighbour, understand forgiveness, healing/salvation/wholeness (tikkun olam) is exactly incarnational. I can’t make the leap. If Jesus isn’t God in the Flesh, not only does Christianity not make sense, but so also does nothing else.

Judaism, Islam and Christianity all three have their true believers: people who somehow imagine the Sacred Text or Form of thier religion to have existed somehow, unchanged from all eternity. I’m told that Allah had a Koran in mind at the creation of the world. I’m told that the scrolls of the Torah sat in HaSham’s throne for eternity before they were given to Moses. I’m told that Jesus was alive on the Throne of Glory even as he died on the Cross and that the Gospel was planned from all eternity. But what comes to me, over and over, having looked at the claims and the reality, is that There is no way to get to a “pure” religion - if that means a religion some how crafted by God and handed whole cloth to man.

There may *be* such a path, but unless it shines with gold light for everyone to see, we’re not going to know what it is. Each of us is called to the Holy One in the voice designed to speak to us, in the voice we are designed to hear.

The next thing that came to me in the zen of driving, is the realisation that if what I believe to be true really is true… then I am a Christian - whatever that may mean - and that I must do that in a Christian community - whatever that may mean - rather than a Jewish one. I say that no matter how I might feel about the various points in the Nicene Creed. (There are times when I can’t get past the first paragraph without hedging my bets or crossing my fingers.) But what I *do* believe is in the deeds that Yeshua taught, some of which are Jewish, through and through, and some of which are elaborations on Judaism and some of which, finally, are Jesus (or his followers’ communities’) Jazz riffs on elemental truths.

From the Sh’ma we get to the Trinity - in round about ways.
From the Torah we get to the Sermon on the Mount.
From the Shabbat and Pessach Seders we get to the Communion Supper.
From the Hillel we get to the Greatest Commandment.
From Shammai we get to the teaching on Divorce.

Judaism has Rabbis - so does Christianity: for everyMaimonides there is a Gregory of Nazianzus; for every Shimon bar Yochai there was a Gregory of Nyssa; for every Rashi an Origen. For every one of Maimonides 13 Principles of Faith there is a point in the 12 sections of the Nicene Creed. It is, however, only at that point that Judaism and Christianity part company for even with these two “creeds” the two communities differ. The Jews debate the meaning of the 13 points and even deny their creedal necessity. Many Christians (even those who might debate the finer meanings of various points), however, insist that the Nicene Creed is sort of a checklist that defines one’s status as a Christian.

What Judaism does not have is the ability to make a final statement. What Christianity did not have until Constantine, was a desire to make such a statement: she has largely made a fetish of it. What Judaism does have is a conscious, overt debate and stylistic give-and-take between opposing schools of thought. What Christianity fails to name is her own give-and-take, being hung up on the claim that someone must be right and someone must be wrong.

Christianity - in her institutional forms (which Jesus would never recognise) attempts to close all discussion down.

Judaism - in her institutional forms (especially in the ones Jesus would recognise in our day as being descended from those of his day) attempts to keep discussion open.

To use to game theory as expressed in Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games, Christianity, as projected by her institutions (liberal and conservative) is best understood as a finite game. Judaism - at least as far as Rabbinic Debate is concerned, is an infinite game.

The rules of the finite game may not change; the rules of an infinite game must change.
Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.
Finite players are serious; infinite games are playful.
A finite player plays to be powerful; an infinite player plays with strength.
A finite player consumes time; an infinite player generates time.
The finite player aims for eternal life; the infinite player aims for eternal birth.
The choice is yours.

The issue is, at heart, to find a way to follow God in the way of Jesus that is aware (and honest) about growth, evolution and change and that seeks to further all three. In short, one seeks to find a way to Do Church as an Infinite Game.

Is it possible to read the scriptures - and all of our history - and to live, honestly, in relationship with those sources: and yet be in a different place?

I’m going to stop there, because, at the age of 43, I feel I’m on the verge of a Manifesto which is to be avoided, I think, at all costs.

Tzvee

The writer makes it clear that Vatican Blind to the Dangers of Its Liturgies or else dishonest.

For a German churchman to say, “I must say that I don’t understand why Jews cannot accept that we can make use of our freedom to formulate our prayers” — that is a load of crap.

I note that no other people is mentioned by name in any liturgy.

Update: Some are not happy with the change itself, it is “insufficient”.

Rosh Hodesh Adar I

This is a “leap year” in Judaism: there are two months of Adar. Normally one would say, “Be Happy, it’s Adar.” But my understanding is that, this year, that would be next month, in Adar II. (I may be wrong.) But Purim is next month - in Adar II. I note that this moves the Passover a month later - likewise Orthodox Easter is quite late this year.

Anyway, the first of the month is greeted with a festive meal, usually. I’m having Lemon Chicken and a salad.

In the mail today we find a link to The Lunar Files - Heaven Exposed:

Arguing with G-d is an old Jewish tradition. Abraham did it, Moses did it, most Jewish grandmothers do it frequently. But, according to our sages, the first to argue with G-d was the moon.

Before we get to that story, it’s important to point out just how ludicrous arguing with G-d really is. Here you have the first belief system that ascribes absolute omnipotence to a single deity. Power over everything, both in heaven and in earth. He knows all, directs all, and everything that occurs comes from Him. Everything — including Abraham, Moses and your grandmother. And they argued with him.

It doesn’t stop there: They usually win.

The rest of the page tells an interesting story about the moon’s increasing and decreasing. It packs a zing of liberation…

Enjoy.

And have an argument with G-d.

Live or Memorex?

Here’s the rest of the earlier post “Is it really the Torah… I was on my way out the door when I got the email that led me to that post over on the Chabad website. It’s been a long day of car-related errands (Mom and Dad coming this weekend).

Here’s why that Chabad post is so important:

When I read the question - which was posted as “The Question of the Week”, I was 100% sure I new the answer. The standard Orthodox (and ultra-Orthodox) response to questions about the Oral Torah is “God Gave the Oral Torah to Moses at the same time as the written one.” Most flavours of Orthodox Judaism takes the same tack as Eastern and Roman (etc) Christianities: the Oral Tradition is an inspired part of the religion handed down to us by the Founder (Jesus or Moses, as the case may be). Yes, there are exceptions and not all parties accept these claims.

But it was a great (as in enjoyable, wonderful, awesome) surprise to see such a conservative group as Chabad say what most religion geeks imagine to be true: that “We the people” came up with the these things. It was also rather wonderful to read that, in fact, this was what God had intended.

The Maharal of Prague provided another parable.20 He likens our situation to a man who moves into a home built by a master architect. The man finds all in place, in exquisite design and order. Yet, in one place, it seems a door is missing. There is a lintel, there are doorposts, even hinges in place. Within is a room that needs to be shut off from the rest of the house. So the man fashions a door, in accordance with every other door in the house, to match the fittings of the open doorway.

So, too, says the Maharal, when the story of Esther occurred and the rabbis established the festival of Purim; when merchants began to trade on the Shabbat and the rabbis established the laws of muktzah; when Jewish society became primarily mercantile and the rabbis established the pruzbul. And in our day, as we deal in medical halachah and supervision of the food industry—at each step along the way, we find the lintel, the doorposts and the hinges awaiting our finishing touches.

And whose door are we placing? Not our own, says the Maharal, but that of the Master Architect. For all is His design, only that He has provided us the privilege of being His partner in completing His world.

This was precisely Moses’ intent: That Torah should come from within, not from without, from below, not from above. He recognized that, even though he had not been Divinely instructed so, this was the true intent. It’s just that you can’t direct a populist revolution from above, so it had to come from Moses himself.

This is, I think, what many mean when they say “living tradition”. A living tradition grows and changes as needed by the culture and times. And it happens at the hands of the *people* in the tradition. The “keep four sets of dishes” and no cheeseburgers rules weren’t handed down from Mt Sinai. The “no meat dairy, fish, eggs, wine or olive oil” fast wasn’t whispered by Jesus to St Andrew for future reference and God didn’t reveal Sunday as the new Sabbath. We made it up: it’s the action of our lives in response to God. Of course it lives and grows.

But should one turn around and say that exact thing, many pious Orthodox take exception.

The next step after that is to realise that very very little isn’t Oral Tradition and subject to interpretation.

Is It Really the Torah, Or Is It Just the Rabbis?

I believe in my heart that the Five Books of Moses and the Prophets are from G‑d. When it comes to the Talmud, however, I am beginning to believe it was made up over the centuries to control the Jewish believer with all its added laws. The rabbis add scores of laws to each of the 613 commandment and you end up having to obey all kinds of things that were never part of Judasim when it all started.

The Chabbadniks provide and amazing answer, one that clarifies my fascination with the Jewish approach to religion - even when I look at following God in the way of Jesus.

That is why what we do is called Judaism–and not “Scripturalism” or “Torahism” (there was such a movement, called Karaism). Judaism believes in the Jews, meaning, in the Torah that is revealed through the Jewish People.

True and Faithful

Thanks to Avi, I’ve been reading Emet Ve-Emunah: Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism. Conservative Judaism is not a Creedal or Confessional Religion (none of Judaism is, I think). Judaism - as I’ve been reading of it - is, like Anglicanism, a propositional religion. There are certain “out of bounds”, but mostly it’s not defined (unlike Catholicism or Mormonism).

The final portion of this document - to start at the end - offers a brief synopsis of Jewish history in the last centuries which explains the position of Conservative Judaism as one between extremes.

Throughout most of its history, Jewish life was an organic unity of home and community, synagogue and law. Since the Emancipation, however, Judaism has been marked by increasing fragmentation. Not only do we find Jewish groups pitted against one another, but the ways in which we apprehend Judaism itself have become separate and distinct. That unified platform upon which a holistic Jewish life was lived has been shattered. Participating in a majority culture whose patterns and rhythms often undermine our own, we are forced to live in two worlds, replacing whole and organic Judaism with fragments: ritual observance or Zionism, philanthropy or group defense; each necessary, none sufficient in itself.

Facing this reality, Conservative Judaism came into being to create a new synthesis in Jewish life. Rather than advocate assimilation, or yearn for the isolation of a new ghetto, Conservative Judaism is a creative force through which modernity and tradition inform and reshape each other.

More

Desert Call

The Lyrics for Eden Mi Qedem’s Desert Call
By Sh’muel

We’re born into the sand,
Palms stretched out, infinite hands
For generations generations the same call,
Constantly reminding us what here for.

We’re walking on the edge,
Of holding on and letting go,
From with out from within ourselves
   beyond our minds,
Subtly answering us all the time.

But the truth beyond words is always clear,
Hints of it in this and that
   and everything even in our thoughts.
If there was a song which makes it clear
   what you want from me, I’d sing it.
If there is a way to make known to me
   where I should be, I’d be there.
If there was such a thing as revelation,
   I’d do and I’d hear.
The time is gonna’ come when you
   and the creation will be as one,
Please, look into our eyes.

Please look into our eyes,
Tell us, were our fathers right or wrong?
In the way they heard your light
   the way they saw your voice?
In the language that the chose
   to call your sacred name?

There’s not a single place,
The beginning endless light don’t shine,
A thousand ways to turn away from you.
A thousand ways you give us to come back again.

But the truth beyond words is always clear,
Breathing life into this world
   drawing us closer to it.

But the truth beyond words is always clear,
Hints of it in this and that
   and everything even in our thoughts.
If there was a song which makes it clear
   what you want from me, I’d sing it.
If there is a way to make known to me
   where I should be, I’d be there.
If there was such a thing as revelation,
   I’d do and I’d hear.
The time is gonna’ come when you
   and the creation will be as one,
Please, look into our eyes.

Click on over to their city and buy the disk or some MP3s:

Yeshua?

Peter asked me a question on an earlier post.

A question I’ve been harbouring for some time now is, what do you think of Y’shua? Did he exist? What role does he play in your mind, heart, understanding now?

It was the perfect question for me to get this morning with my coffee. It prompted a heartfelt reply from me, then a further conversation with Peter, via iChat.

I’ve edited all that together into the following:

More

Where Am I?

I received a very wonderful phone call asking about my conversion to Judaism. Specifically wondering, “Where are you?” It was a wonderful phone call because it resulted in 2 hours of chat and a new friendship. But if a stranger can ask that question - open invite to ID yourself, btw - what must my friends be wondering? Todd probably knows best, so, open comment invite.

Most days, I’m on my 3rd Shift Schedule. At home, I’ve been praying out of a Siddur in the morning and struggling to learn the Hebrew for the heart of the service - the Blessings before the Sh’ma, the Sh’ma itself, the Blessings after the Sh’ma and the the Amidah. As the Hebrew gets easier/comes back to me, this gets a little faster.

This praying in Hebrew means nothing, though: the very heart of the Synagogue Liturgy is exactly where Christian and Jewish Prayer overlap. I can think of nothing in the service itself that an Orthodox or Roman Christian - and most Protestants - could not say.

At night, I sit in silence before my prayer corner, the Ner Tamid burning silently and me simply waiting to feel the touch of the Holy One reaching in. Then I go to work.

I work two shifts on Friday. I’m not going to get to a Friday Evening Service or go Shomer Shabbat right here and now. Just ain’t gonna happen even if I wanted to. Given the lack of a Jewish community, I keep going to Church on Sunday.

On Sunday I’m sitting in a pew debating with Fr Brent during the sermon. Father preaches a decently orthodox sermon for an Episcopalian, and he preaches a rather meaty sermon as well, so there’s a lot to argue with. It’s all in my head, of course, silently. It’s not like St Gregory of Nyssa Parish, where you can offer your feedback from the floor in the context of liturgy. But then I stand up and say the Creed with everyone else (minus the filioque - which a few Episcopalians skip). Then, when the time to lift up our hearts comes, I generally stick in “God” where the text says “him” - and “Blessed be ‘God’s’ Kingdom” etc.

This has been wonderful in other ways: for a few months ago I thought I wanted to pop right off the Christian spectrum. Sitting on Sundays an listening to Fr Brent has shown me was I still like about the Christian system, and what I would miss if I went beyond the pale. Mind you, I still like the idea of Praxis Buffalo. Just now, I may explore it differently - think Minyan.

And that’s where I am. I’m still involved in the idea of an incarnational God. I wonder how a totally transcendent deity can be involved at all. This I do not understand. By the same token I wonder how we move from a totally transcendent deity to an incarnational one. How is it possible for one even to evolve into the other? But that’s on a personal level - assuming God-as-Person. Once we step away from that, I’m far more in tune with Reconstructionist ideas. And if we broach God as “the sum of natural powers or processes that allows mankind to gain self-fulfillment and moral improvement” suddenly we’re in a place where I spent most my life. I don’t know how I feel about it. The primary claim of Christianity: That God is a Person who Loves us - is one that it is hard to define in any other way. Yet, I lived outside of that claim for much of my adult life.

Currently my plan is to keep exploring. As I said to my caller, if the claim of Judaism is that one needn’t convert at all, then why bother? Or, more to the point, why rush? I wrote to another comment poster yesterday that I’ve noticed a pattern whereby I rush in and get burned. I need to move slower. Right now I can see myself exploring Praxis Buffalo, as well as going to either the Conservative or Reconstructionist synagogues in town - and/or maybe both for a time and just sit in silence, simply waiting to feel the touch of the Holy One reaching in. Then I go to work.

Rosaries, Icons and Teffilin

Interesting link made over at Trial & Error, answering a question I’ve had for quite sometime.

One sort of standard Jewish Blessing begins:

Blessed are you, O L-rd our G-d, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us by your commandments (B’mitzvatav) and has commanded us (V’etzivanu) to… (something).

Those commandments - Mitzvot - are things like Sabbath and Hanukkah candles, the morning use of phylacteries and the prayer shawl, washing of hands, Sabbath Challah, Passover seders, study of the Torah, etc.

When I was first exploring Jewish Piety, 5 years or so ago, I couldn’t quite wrap my brains around this one. I’m so very used to Paul’s arguments about the “works of the flesh” so why would “commandments” make us “Sanctified”? To my Christian brain, it read like making points. If I get enough points, I’m saved. It’s just “works-based righteousness” which any Protestant will tell you isn’t real at all.

Some “Messianic Gentiles” say the blessings rather differently: Blessed are you, O L-rd our G-d, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us by your Messiah and taught us to…”

That’s a rather different sort of blessing, no? And while it may sound more “Christian”, in fact, it sounds rather more like that common branch of soteriology where the Father has to sacrifice his son to himself for the rest of us. In this view - monergism - an Omnipotent and Scary Deity acts alone and we do nothing. While supportable from a twisting of certain texts, it’s not what the Early Church taught. That was “Synergism”the idea that we are saved in our co-operation with our Loving Creator.

While I have a whole HOST of problems with many of the doctrines of Palamism, the one that gets me is that Grace is the active presence of the HOly One himself in our lives. We co-operate with Grace - with the Holy One moving through us - to draw ourselves closer to wholeness. Icons, rosaries, holy communion all become vehicles of Grace, of divinity reaching out to us to draw us back. And when we reach out to take hold of those vehicles that Grace flows into our lives making it easier to do more.

Daniel today made a connexion that ties that Synergism back to our Jewish sources.

One of the chief creative leaders of an educational organization we fund and work with has written a lot of material on the notion that the word “mitzvah” can also mean “connection” as well as command.

It turns out that she’s right. According to Jastrow’s lexicon, the Qal form of the root צןה does in fact have as as base meaning “to join” or “connect.”

“AH!” I gasp, finally getting a handle on something I’d missed all those times.

The Mitzvah is not a “thing you do to score points”. A Mitzvah is a connexion, a link forged in a chain between us and the Holy One. As Daniel put it,

…the commandments are not the laws that a commanding God issues to a chosen people but the actions that the people that chooses God feels commanded to take in order to create in the world of human thought and society a vision of the unity that underlies all things. The mitzvot are paths toward holiness, not laws to be obeyed under fear of punishment. Where the body goes, the mind and spirit will follow so by mandating ritual action, the mitzvot should in theory lead the mind to conscious appreciation of the unity and sacredness of life.

A connexion, a joining. A linking. A synergy. We do some blessed thing not to make points, but because in so doing we co-operate, connect, make contact with the thing we want to become.

Maybe the proper understanding is not “By your commandments” but, taking the suffix, “b’” literally as “in” what we mean is “made us holy in your mitzvahs“. Maybe the proper understanding of icons and rosaries isn’t “sacramentals” but “mitzvahs” - connexions. (We’ll leave to the ultra-Protestant their mistake of “Works-based righteousness” - which they will see in both Icons and Teffilin.)

My point here is not to Christianise Judaism or to “return to the Jewish Roots” of Christianity but rather to show the parallel: how, at least here, the common divisions are based on misunderstanding rather than actually difference.