How Kosher is Kosher Meat?

All is not well in the Kosher meat industry, especially at Agriprocessors, the largest Kosher meat plant in the world. Agriprocessors is owned by the Rubashkin family, part of the Lubavitch Hasidic sect of ultra-Orthodox Judaism (also called Chabad).

The Bush administration is cracking down on large employers who hire illegal aliens. The meat industry is the main target. These illegal immigrants use fake Social Security cards to forge their federal employment documents. This is a nation-wide problem and it is one of those things that everyone knows is happening and everyone allows to continue.

Agriprocessors has endured several waves of controversy in recent months about alleged abuse of worker’s rights, bully tactics to prevent workers from forming a union, failure to pay worker’s overtime, and controversy about low pay for workers. In one article people were asking, “Why am I paying $7 a pound for Kosher steak if they are paying their workers $5 an hour?” (Note: I have no idea what Agriprocessors pays their workers).

Samuel Freedman, in an article in the Jerusalem Post online edition (jpost.com, May 29, 2008,) said:

Should it not matter to us that the meat we buy and consume, ostensibly for the purpose of fulfilling a religious obligation or at least reifying a sense of Jewish community, is coming from a scandalous source? Just what does the separation between kosher and treif mean or matter if kosher depends on the exploitation and endangerment of the human beings who do the supposedly Godly work of preparing our food?

Freedman also comments on the egregious practices of this supposedly religious family running a business to serve a holy purpose:

Between the PETA criticisms four years ago and the federal sweep on May 12, Agriprocessors has repeatedly abrogated basic standards of health and safety for its workers. It has fought against their right to join a union, and failed to provide them training in Spanish, their native tongue. It has, if recent allegations prove correct, forced them to work overtime shifts without overtime pay. Taken together, these labor practices evoke the Triangle Shirtwaist Company.

The bottom line? All Jews need to hold the established Jewish companies to the fire. If it means boycotting products produced unscrupulously that claim to be Kosher, then so be it. Agripocessor’s meat is marketed under the following labels: Aaron’s Best, Aaron’s Choice, Rubashkin’s, European Glatt, Supreme Kosher, David’s and Shor Habor. God is not mocked. People will reap what they sow and sowing human misery is more unkosher than pork on a challah bun.

Here is more on the story from Forward magazine:

From Forward magazine, May 27, 2008, article by Ben Harris writing for the JTA.

Within the Jewish world, the loudest reactions have come from the Conservative movement and the liberal edge of Orthodoxy. Interviews with some of Postville’s Chabad residents and other observers suggest that the fervently Orthodox, or haredi community, is taking the flood of accusations against Agriprocessors with more than a grain of salt.

“The problem is, there’s a mind-set that you have to give the person the benefit of the doubt,” said Binyomin Jolkovsky, the editor of Jewish World Review and a longtime observer of haredi Jewry. “But when 12 government agencies come in and do a sting operation, and after something that was so detailed, you got to wonder.”

In the haredi community, Jolkovsky said, the sentiment tends to be much more focused on the bottom line for the consumer.

“‛They’re paying people $5 an hour labor, how come I’m paying $7 a pound for steak?’ That’s what they were saying,” he said.

Some Jewish Postville residents refused to even consider some of the government’s allegations, such as that methamphetamine was being produced at the plant or that the company was shorting its workers. In the days after the raid, several told JTA that the affair was the product of an anti-Orthodox, if not anti-Semitic, agenda.

“Many of the allegations are ridiculous, like the meth labs,” said Aaron Goldsmith, a Chabad rabbi and former Postville city councilman with ties to the Rubashkins. “Why would somebody want to pour millions and millions of dollars into infrastructure and let a poor man’s drug business run in a plant? It doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s stupid. It’s not in the interest of the company.”

Goldsmith, who runs a custom hospital-bed business headquartered near Agriprocessors, acknowledged that whatever the truth of the allegations, the company’s reputation is “in trouble.”

Asked what he would say to kosher consumers concerned about the charges flying against the company, Goldsmith paused for nearly a minute before answering.

“Clearly the Rubashkins need to rethink a lot of their management style,” he said, “because whatever good they do and whatever errors they made are completely perceived in a way that’s undermining their own company. To me, they need to bring the reality and the perceptions in line with each other.”

The Benediction of Thanksgiving, Sermon Excerpt

I thought the following sermon would be of interest to Messianic Jewish Musings readers. I derive a lot of the points from an article by Reuven Kimelman called “The Rabbinic Theology of the Physical,” in the Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. IV.

The excerpt below is from the middle of the sermon. If you choose to read the whole sermon, you will read more about Thanksgiving as spirituality and also about the way Jewish blessings orient the one praying in three spheres of existence. If you’d rather, just enjoy the excerpt below. For the whole thing, click HERE.

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The rabbis have a wonderful teaching about thanksgiving. They have a way of explaining thanksgiving that helps me understand why this is no minor commandment.

One of the first steps in understanding thanksgiving is Genesis 1:31:

God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. So there was evening, and there was morning, a sixth day.

Why is this so important? Some people, under the influence of Greek philosophy or similar ideas, think the spiritual is good and the physical is bad. The Bible does not call pleasure bad. The Bible enjoins you to enjoy food and drink and sex.

It is not that there are two realms, the spiritual and the physical, which are separate. They are together.

The next thing to understand is that the whole world is God’s temple, Exodus 40:34:

Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of ADONAI filled the tabernacle.

And yet, Psalm 72:19:

May His glorious name be praised forever;
the whole earth is filled with His glory.

What is the place that is filled with his glory? It is the temple and yet it is the whole earth. Thus, the whole earth is God’s temple.

The final piece of the puzzle is from God’s regulations for the temple, Leviticus 5:15:

If anyone acts improperly and inadvertently sins in regard to the holy things of ADONAI, he is to bring as his guilt offering…

We are forbidden to mistreat the holy things of God. But the whole world is God’s temple. Thus, everything we enjoy is, in a sense, a holy thing of God.

What can we do not to violate them? What can we do to enjoy them appropriately?

The rabbis say that blessings of thanksgiving are our appropriate response. When we thank God, we offer him a sacrifice. We REDEEM God’s holy things so they can be enjoyed without profaning them. We ACKNOWLEDGE God’s ownership. We EXPAND the precincts of God’s temple.

Thanking God often throughout the day for the many blessings we enjoy is temple worship.
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Click HERE for the whole message.

Barry Horner’s Future Israel, Part 5

There is a Barry Horner category on the right if you would like to read this entire series of musings on his useful and timely book, Future Israel (get it here).
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Barry Horner’s excellent work continues in Chapter 4, “Israel and Contemporary Examples of Christian Anti-Judaism in the UK.” While there are a few places in the chapter that I think a good editor could have made into more readable prose, nonetheless the information contained here is invaluable (and at times, infuriating).

Horner focuses on Colin Chapman and Stephen Sizer among other UK Christian writers. Colin Chapman has the distinction of writing the blindly one-sided book Whose Promised Land? I say the book is one-sided because in its pages it seems Israel can do no right and Palestine can do no wrong. Horner notes that in the fourth edition, revised in 2002, there is an appendix on Hamas which states their political platform with no criticism. How can Chapman not criticize Hamas, a group as anti-Christian as it is anti-Jewish? (Note: I am not implying that Chapman endorses Hamas, but that he did not find it important, in a book highly critical of Israel, to bother being critical about this terrorist, genocidal organization).

From Chapman we get such gems as:

Could it be that God is challenging the whole Jewish people to think again about their destiny as a people? What is the whole enterprise of settling Jews in the land and setting up a Jewish state doing to the soul of the Jewish people? Did God really intend that they should be a “peculiar people” forever and ever?

Interestingly, and Horner does not make this point, God does intend for Israel to be a peculiar people forever. How many times does God have to say forever before some Christian theologians will believe him? For example, and this is a common phrase in the Pentateuch, God says, “You shall do no work: it is a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings” (Lev. 23:31). Paul certainly seemed to think that the sacrificial death of Jesus was not the end of the law (Acts 21:24).

Horner catches these UK theologians on their own hypocrisy. In one section, Horner notes that these men believe in grace overruling law in God’s judgment on Christians. Yet when it comes to Israel’s covenant promise with God, they insist that even the promise to Abraham is subject to law before grace. That is, God will completely revoke his covenant with Israel, with Abraham’s descendants, if they do not follow his law (never mind Galatians 3:17, much less Genesis 12, 15, and 17). Horner’s argument is an elegant coup de grace, grace for Christians in God’s judgment, but only strict adherence to the law for Israel.

I will say more about Horner’s chapter 4 in a future post. There is much more to glean from this chapter. But let me finish by doing two things: (1) Summing up the fallacy of UK anti-Judaism thus far and (2) making you aware of a major Christian writer from modern times who spews vile anti-Judaism that makes Chapman and others seem mild by comparison.

Summary: The Fallacy of Legalism in Chapman and other UK Theologians
Irony of ironies. We Messianic Jews, who believe in Jesus and live Jewish lives, are at time accused of legalism (actually its not that often, and its only by a few). Judaism in general is definitely and frequently regarded as a legalistic religion, being a religion of self-effort according to many Christian critics.

And Christianity, especially of the Reformed variety, is allegedly superior because of the perfection of its doctrines of grace, the opposite of self-effort, in which all blessings are the result of divine initiative with no human effort. I might note that only extreme Reformed views so thoroughly eliminate human effort. The Bible uses many expressions about human initiative and effort, but extreme Calvinism prefers to interpret these as having a prior divine cause so that no real human effort is in view.

And the irony is that some of these UK theologians cannot see grace written all through the pages of the Pentateuch. They cannot see the grace in God’s promise to Abraham, “by you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). Instead, they focus on the passages in which God will evict Israel from the land if the nation does not follow God’s law.

Their reading of the Pentateuch is not only infuriating, it is selective. How could they be ignorant of the incredible grace that is in the law? How could they be ignorant of the forgiving way of God, who knows in advance that his people will fail (Deut. 30:1) and yet says to them:

If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there he will fetch you; and the LORD your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, that you may possess it; and he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. –Deuteronomy 30:4-5

Yet Steven Sizer, another UK theologian, says, “The ethical requirements for continued occupancy are clearly outlined in the law.”

Sizer, admittedly, could have a case. He could say, though in fact he does not, that God will give the land back to the Jewish people, but that now is not the time, since Israel has not repented and come back to God.

That could be his case, and it would be a better case, though even that would go against the promise of the Bible. For in Ezekiel 37, God restores Israel first physically and then spiritually. Israel returns to the land in unbelief. How does Chapman maintain that Israel’s current unbelief disqualifies them in spite of the promise of Ezekiel 37? He says that Ezekiel 37 has no application to modern times but was a conditional promise which Israel failed to take hold of.

Horner is absolutely right. For these UK theologians, what is good for the goose is not good for the gander. God is full of grace regarding promises for Christians, but judges Israel according to the law without grace.

I would warn Chapman and Sizer and others in their vein, judge not lest ye be judged, for with the judgment you judge you will be judged and the measure you give will be the measure you get.

Appendix: The Most Enraging Anti-Judaic Rhetoric I Have Seen in Modern Christian Writing
This doesn’t really fit with the theme from above, but I wanted to include it. Horner quotes a Christian theologian from modern times making the kind of statement I would expect to find in the early days of Germany’s rise into Nazism, when Christian theologians supported the anti-Semitism of the Nazis (such as in Kittel’s The Jewish Question).

Imagine a modern Christian, post-Holocaust, making the following statements:

To this day “Jew” is an opprobrious epithet even in our best countries. Read their long history. The sum of that history is not the fact that the Jews innocently suffered these centuries of woe; it is that they ever brought these woes upon themselves anew. Ever they keep acting as an irritant . . . They crucified their own Christ; to this day their hatred of the crucified stamps them more than anything else as “Jews”; their segregation is of their own choosing. The more they retain the character of “Jews,” the more does this appear…

Who would say such a thing? This is in R.C.H. Lenski’s The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, published in 2001 by Hendrickson. I did a little research online and I think this book is a reprint from the 1960’s (correct me someone if I am wrong) and is not as modern as 2001. I am elated to say the book is out of print and none of Lenski’s books, as far as I can tell, are in print anymore. Nonetheless, I found by googling his name that his commentaries are widely used and referenced. And this guy thinks Jewish people brought the Holocaust on ourselves?!

That is over the top. That is beyond a little mild anti-Semitism. That is the kind of deeply unethical pseudo-Christian talk that has discredited the name of Jesus to a world that is cynical and uninterested in the man from Galilee.

Does the opinion of Christian theologians about Israel really matter? I mean isn’t this just an academic issue? No, it is not. Rivers of blood have been shed in the name of such unethical theology. And God is watching and in spite of his love for mercy, he does judge with wrath those who refuse to spurn hatred and come to the light of love.

The World to Come, Excerpt: Amos the Plowman

My newest book, THE WORLD TO COME is due out June 3 by Lederer Messianic Jewish Publishers (www.messianicjewish.net).

Here are the chapter titles for THE WORLD TO COME:

Chapter 1 Magic and Desire
Chapter 2 The Vision of Prophets
Chapter 3 Israel as the Vessel
Chapter 4 The Nations as the Goal
Chapter 5 Yeshua and the Kingdom of God
Chapter 6 The Vision of Yochanan
Chapter 7 Hints of Heaven
Chapter 8 Horrors of Hell
Chapter 9 The Drama of the Coming Ages
Chapter 10 The Days of Messiah
Chapter 11 Love
Chapter 12 The Holy One
Chapter 13 Further Up and Further In

I will post a series of excerpts here and there over the next month or so. I hope you will get a taste for the book from these excerpts. Today’s excerpt is from chapter 2, “The Vision of the Prophets.”
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Israel’s experience mirrors the world’s experience. We live in a world in exile. We are surrounded by the sad and disturbing. We are experiencing the curse. We need the hope of future blessing. The curse is why many do not believe God is real.

Evolution is a view that fits our reality in many ways. Animals mate brutally and without romance. Evolution tells we are merely animals. So we mate brutally. Only we are killing some part of us in so doing.

Animals die largely unmourned. So in our animal reality death reigns. Competition is the game of life. Survival of the fittest is our experience. The stronger rise and the weaker fall. Yet even that principle can be broken, for “under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.”6 No wonder so many of our neighbors cannot see God or grace in Creation.

Looking out from this exile in the land of godlessness, we need a vision of days to come. It might be hard to believe the vision from our place of exile. We see a beautiful wood but we know inside there are briers and poison plants and snakes. We enjoy a clear river, but we know about pollution and we wouldn’t dare drink from it. We admire an animal, but we know it might either kill one of us or one of us might kill it.

We want to believe in life but we see too much death. Can God and cancer be true at the same time? Sometimes we can ignore the hurting around us and we say, “Let’s eat and drink now, because tomorrow we’ll be dead!” Other times, we feel the pain and we can identify with Job who said, “My days pass more swiftly than a weaver’s shuttle and come to their end without hope.” The view from here can be hopeless.

That is because we do not see far. Lost in the woods, we might try climbing a tall tree to look in all directions for some way out. Where is there a tower to climb and survey the past and future? For those willing to believe, the prophets are such a tower, giving us a vantage point high above this world in exile.

Israel needed Moses’ vision of future hope in Deuteronomy 30:1-6. So we need the vision of Moses and the prophets, a vision of a better World to Come.

Amos and the Plowman
Amos was a sheepherder from Tekoa, a town in Judah in the south. God didn’t send Amos to his own people in Judah, but sent him north to the kingdom of Israel. Amos spoke to the northern tribes of Israel about one generation before Assyria came and destroyed them all.

Not only did Amos have a lot to say about justice rolling like an ever-flowing stream, but God also gave him a vision of the future. Amos spoke about “that day,” a favorite expression of the prophets. That day is the coming age when God will act and bring Israel and the world out of exile. Amos saw it because God showed him a little piece of it.

In the little piece that God showed Amos, several things will happen. The sukkah (or booth) of David will be repaired, the nations will be called by God’s name, the plowman will overtake the reaper, the mountains will drip sweet wine, and Israel will be forever restored from captivity.

A sukkah is a booth made of branches, usually used as a shelter in the fields for the workers to get some shade from the sun. It is also used at the Feast of Booths, also called Tabernacles or Sukkot. God will restore the doomed throne of David, the line of Messiah in that day. When that happens, Israel will possess the nations.

Israel possessing the nations might sound like bad news for non-Jews but the news is really good. Amos explains that, in that day, Gentiles will be called by God’s name. That is, God does not plan to limit his restorative joy to Israel, but will call Gentiles into relationship as well.

I can totally get into the paradise Amos painted for us of the World to Come, the picture of mountains dripping wine and plowmen overtaking reapers. I have experienced a foretaste of this world already.

I travel to Israel at least once a year. I have seen the terraced hillsides in Judah, where vineyards and orchards seem unlikely. The terrain is very steep and rocky, with unending hills and small mountains. But grapes grow on them. There are vines scattered here and there on the rocky mountains. Yet in that day, the grapes will be so abundant, the mountains will literally drip with sweet wine. Paradise.

The rabbis take the vision a step further. They paint a fanciful but desirable picture of this grape paradise:

Not like this world will be the World to Come. In this world one has the trouble to harvest grapes and to press them; but in the World to Come a person will bring a single grape in a wagon or a ship, store it in the corner of his house, and draw from it enough wine to fill a large flagon . . . There will not be a grape which will not yield thirty measures of wine.

What about the plowman overtaking the reaper? What does that mean? There will be so much fruit and grain that before it can all be harvested, it will be time to plant a new crop. Again the rabbis fill out this image of plenty: “As in this world grain is produced after six months and trees grow fruit after twelve months, in the hereafter grain will be produced after one month and trees will grow fruit after two months.”

All nations will know God and plowmen will overtake reapers. To modify John Lennon’s famous line, imagine there’s no hunger and no secularism too. That is the vision of Amos. That day will not be a world in the clouds or some existence on another plane. That day will be heaven on earth.

Eight Parallels Between the Soul and God

Readers of Messianic Jewish Musings should be glad I don’t write a post every time I read something that moves and inspires me in the rabbinic texts. While I am taking this class at the Messianic Jewish Theological Institute, I am reading so many things, I could keep you all busy for years. The rabbis read the Bible with such creative minds. I think too few Jews, much less Messianic Jews and Christians, sufficiently appreciate the beauty of rabbinic tradition.

My theme for today is not because this is the most inspiring thing I have read thus far. It’s just something that caught my fancy today. I hope the creativity and truth of it will fill you with pleasantness as it did me . . .
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Judaism emphasizes the unity of the physical and spiritual (and in my opinion, good Christian theology does the same). Reuven Kimelman, writing in The Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. Four, says:

Rabbinic theology differs from contemporaneous Graeco-Roman theologies, Jewish or otherwise, in its emphasis on the physical as complement, not as contrast, to the spirit.

This is why in Judaism it is forbidden to abstain from the good pleasures of the world without reason. God gave wine and food to be enjoyed and it is a sin not to enjoy them (this does not negate abstinence for alcoholics or fasting for religious purposes, etc.). Judaism takes seriously what God said in Genesis, “It is good.”

So I was delighted when I read a traditional, rabbinic description of the relationship between the soul and the body. It can be compared to the relationship between God and the world. There are eight parallels:

1. The soul permeates the body as God is present everywhere in the world.

2. The soul bears up the body, giving it life, just as God upholds the world.

3. The soul survives the body, just as God will be when all things cease to exist.

4. The soul is unique, each one different, just as God is one.

5. The soul is pure, just as God is pure.

6. The soul is seeing yet unseen, as is our heavenly Father.

7. The soul does not eat.

8. The soul does not sleep.

More on the Book Burning in Israel

This op-ed piece was on the jta.org site today. Well said.
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OP-ED
The burning of Christian bibles
in Israel must be condemned
By Rabbi Jerome M. Epstein Published: 05/23/2008

NEW YORK (JTA) — Yom Ha’atzmaut — Israel’s Independence Day — has come and gone. Together, Jews in North America and Israel joyously celebrated Israel’s 60 years of achievement and success. What Israel has accomplished in its short lifetime is a source of pride to all of us.

For six decades, Israel has distinguished itself as a bastion of freedom and democracy in a corner of the world where those values often are desecrated. It has been a haven of religious freedom and tolerance. It is worthy of note that in the Jewish state, Muslims, Catholics, Protestants and Buddhists are guaranteed by law the freedom to practice their religion openly. I am deeply proud of Israel.

But my feelings of pride are dampened by the distasteful behavior of Shas activ ists in Israel who burned copies of the Christian bible, which they allege had been distributed by Christian missionaries. I certainly do not endorse missionizing activities in Israel, but the images of book-burning Jews makes me shudder. It is immoral for any Jew to act this way. For a religious Jew to do so is a Chilul HaShem — a desecration of God’s name. Those Jews who burn books make a sham out of their personal piety.

I shudder at the irony of religious and committed Jews burning any books, whatever their content. Even if they do not remember the Holocaust, I do.

When German Nazi soldiers and civilians burned books in 1933, that action was widely condemned, especially by Jews. That act pained us to the core. For us, the People of the Book, the mere idea of burning a book is destructive and the act itself inflicts an indelible wound.

I shudder at the irony of Jews burning religious books. Whether the text is holy to Jews is irrelevant. The texts that were burned are holy to Christians. Imagine how any Jew would feel if non-Jews burned our sacred texts because they disagreed with them. It does not matter whether they regarded those texts as holy. We Jews, whose ancestors have lived through the inquisitions, whose very essence was desecrated when Christians burned our treasured Talmud in European cities in the Middle Ages, know the tears that are shed when something holy to us is desecrated.

I shudder at the irony of book burning in Israel. Israel is more than a homeland for Jews. It is a light unto the nations. Israel must not permit revered rabbis who condone sin — much less those who encourage it — to go unchallenged. Israel must not permit misguided reactionaries to go unpunished, even if those misguided reactionaries, ironically enough, are the revered rabbis. Book burning in Israel is an attack on all that Israel stands for.

I shudder at the irony of silence. We know what happens when good people remain silent a nd evil edges out good. Israel and Jews throughout the world must condemn this atrocious behavior and take the bold and necessary steps to ensure that this one-time occurrence remain a singular nightmare.

(Rabbi Jerome Epstein is the executive vice president of United Synagogues of Conservative Judaism.)

Ultra-Orthodox Jews Burning New Testaments in Israel

Note: Don’t miss the post below this one, an excerpt from THE WORLD TO COME

I include this story because it interests me to see how hatred is heating up among some Israeli Ultra-Orthodox for all things Yeshua. It would grieve me if anyone thought I published this story as a condemnation of Orthodox Judaism, which I very much respect. What I don’t respect is disrespect. If people were given New Testaments that were not wanted, they could have simply been collected and given back or donated to a church. Burning anyone’s holy book is an act of violence and I would not advocate burning any religious book: Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or whatever.
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Jerusalem Post, online edition (jpost.com, May 22, 2008).

May 20, 2008 18:06 | Updated May 22, 2008 1:57
Or Yehuda deputy mayor: I’m sorry about burning New Testaments
By AMIR MIZROCH

The burning of hundreds of New Testaments by yeshiva students in Or Yehuda last week was regrettable and unplanned, the city’s deputy mayor, the man who spurred the students to act, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon of Shas used the opportunity of speaking to the Post, which publishes a monthly Christian Edition, to apologize to Christians worldwide, saying he hoped the incident would not inflame tensions between Jews and Christians.

Following the publication of the story on Tuesday, however, many messianic Jewish and other Christian groups expressed grave concern over the increasingly violent nature of anti-missionary activity in Israel.

Aharon had a very busy Tuesday. In the morning, Ma’ariv ran a story on how he organized to retrieve and burn hundreds of New Testaments given to Ethiopian Jews in his city by local messianic Jews. By 9 a.m. he was on an Army Radio news-talk show defending his actions, which he called “purging the evil among us.”

At 10:30 he was on Channel 2’s morning news show saying that Ethiopian immigrants in Or Yehuda were being encouraged to go against Judaism by messianic Jews. “We need to stop being ashamed of our Jewishness and to fight those who are breaking the law by missionizing against us,” he said.

But by the early afternoon he had already been interviewed by Russian, Italian and French TV, explaining to their highly offended audiences back home how he had not meant for the Bibles to be burned, and trying to undo the damage caused by the news [and photographs] of Jews burning New Testaments.

But then he also told The Associated Press that he didn’t condemn the Bible burning, calling it a “commandment.”

Aharon then told the Post that he was very sorry for the book burning and that it was not planned, and that he was aware that the incident may have caused damage to relations between Christians and Jews. The deputy mayor said he had organized, together with “three or four” yeshiva students from the city’s Michtav M’Eliahu Yeshiva to go to apartments in the city’s Neveh Rabin neighborhood, which has many Ethiopian immigrants, and round up packages given to them several days earlier by messianic Jews. The packages contained a New Testament and several pamphlets, which Aharon said “encouraged on to go against Judaism.”

“I wasn’t even on the scene when the boys rounded up all the Bibles and brought them all to one place [near the synagogue in Neveh Rabin]. They started burning them before I got there. Once I arrived the most I could do was pull a Bible out of the fire. I put it in nylon and its now in my car. I am really sorry for the book burning, but I did not organize it, it was a spontaneous thing by the yeshiva boys,” Aharon said.

“We respect all religions as we expect others to respect ours. I am very sorry that the New Testament was burned, we mean it no harm and I’m sorry that we hurt the feelings of others,” he said.

However, he added, Israel could not allow messianic Jews to “come into our homes and incite against our religion, and turn our children away from Judaism. That is against the law.”

Aharon said he had received phone calls from Neveh Rabin residents complaining about the packages. “They called me because they know I’ve been fighting missionaries for years,” he said.

Last Thursday, Aharon drove around the neighborhood with a loudspeaker asking residents to gather all the New Testaments that were given to them. The yeshiva boys then went from apartment to apartment and picked up the books.

Hundreds were burned in a scene that reminded some of past atrocities.

The incident in Or Yehuda is the latest sign of rising tension between segments of the modern Orthodox and haredi sectors and the messianic Jewish community. Two months ago, the son of a messianic Jew was seriously wounded by a parcel bomb left outside his home in Ariel. Earlier this year, haredim demonstrated outside messianic Jewish gatherings in Beersheba and Arad, and there were instances of violence.

And just before Independence Day, a group of religious Zionist rabbis called for a boycott of this year’s International Bible Quiz after discovering that one of the four finalists from Israel, Bat-El Levi, an 11th-grader from Jerusalem’s Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood, was a messianic Jew.

The rise in tensions is partly due to an increase in the number of messianic Jews in Israel over the past few years, with some estimates putting the community at 15,000, and partly due to increased fervor within haredi anti-missionary groups.

Sources familiar with the Falash Mura – whose Jewish ancestors converted to Christianity under duress in Ethiopia, and who made aliya under the understanding that they would return to Judaism – say that some continue to be Christians in Israel, and that this makes them amenable to messianic Jews. Several messianic Jews and at least one Christian group in Israel contacted by the Post on Tuesday expressed fear that if they spoke on the record, they would be attacked.

Some of the New Testaments burned in Or Yehuda were published by the Bible Society in Israel, part of a worldwide organization of 140 Bible societies that publishes in some 200 countries.

The society’s director in Israel, Victor Kalisher, the son of Holocaust survivors, spoke to the Post about his shock and dismay at the burnings. “As Jews we were raised and taught that were books are burned, worse things can happen. That’s what I think when I see the pictures of what happened in Or Yehuda. What worries me is that nobody has stood up against this. It seems there is a war against messianic Jews in Israel. Nobody cares about many, what I believe to be cults, in Israel. These cults, which are not based on the Bible, don’t pose a threat to the establishment. But God forbid a Jew learns about the messiah from the [Christian] Bible,” Kalisher said.

He said he did not know who paid for and distributed the New Testaments that were distributed in Or Yehuda, but that there was demand for the books from many quarters. “The Bibles are not forced on anybody and are not forced into any homes. The book has never harmed anyone, you can choose to read it or choose not to read it. If this happened to Jewish books overseas we would be screaming anti-Semitism. This sort of thing happens in some regimes around us that we don’t like,” he said

Kalisher noted a recent increase in tension between the messianic community and their opponents. “Bombs have been sent [in Ariel] and now books have been burned. This cannot be allowed to happen here,” he said.

Michael Zinn, who heads a Christian organization called Beit Far Shalom, which “brings good news to people all over Israel,” said the book burning was “unacceptable behavior which reminds me of the Middle Ages.”

What happened in Or Yehuda, Zinn said, could spread to other parts of the country. What is important to watch now, Zinn said, was the reaction of the general Israeli public. “I expect Israeli society to put a large question mark on this incident,” he said.

According to Calev Myers, a lawyer representing messianic Jews in Israel, the incident in Or Yehuda was an “illegal act” committed by Aharon and his yeshiva charges. Myers added that there was growing institutionalized discrimination against messianic Jews in Israel.

Myers said that according to Criminal Code section 170 and 172 it was illegal to harm in any way a place, symbol or icon of religious importance to a community who imbues that icon with religious significance. Furthermore, it was illegal to speak publicly in a way that is offensive to people of any religion, he said.

Likewise, it was illegal to actively convince a minor to convert to another religion, or to pay someone to convert, he said.

Myers is waiting to see whether Or Yehuda police open an investigation into the incident, and if they don’t, he will petition, through the Jerusalem Institute for Justice that he runs, for Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz to order a probe.

“I expect the police to investigate everyone who was involved in the book burning, including those who incited the youths to the act, even if that includes Mr. Aharon,” Myers said. Myers said the book burning was tantamount to incitement to violence.

“Israelis have to understand something: Messianic Jews here have strong ties to American evangelical Christians, and there are hundreds of millions of people in the world who see the burning of the New Testament as a very serious issue. The New Testament is believed in by hundreds of millions of people. It is not in Israel’s national interest to allow the burning of their holy book,” Myers told the Post.

Myers is not worried about opening up a legal battle over missionary activities in Israel. “Messianic Jews distribute literature here and are very careful about it. Chabad is a much larger group that distributes material and literature,” he said.

[Aharon says it is okay for Jews to give material to Jews, but not for Christians to target Jews.]

“The messianic Jews in Israel are Jews like anyone else. They are registered with the Interior Ministry as Jews. So they are just as entitled to hand out pamphlets as anyone else, as long as it is from adults to adults and does not involve minors. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 there has never been one case of proven missionary work that has led to an indictment,” Myers said.

David Parsons of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem said the burnings “would be offensive to most Christians.”

“We need to understand that in the past some Christians burned many Jewish holy books, and so it seems that this is an outdated mode of dealing with these issues. In today’s world, the public burning of anyone’s books is considered unacceptable,” Parsons said.

By the evening, Or Yehuda’s deputy mayor said he had heard nothing but praise and thanks from residents of his city. Aharon said that he had never met or held a dialogue with any Jewish messianic group or person, but that he would welcome such a meeting.

The World to Come: Excerpt

I am in Little Rock, Arkansas, teaching a four-day series on my about-to-be-released book, The World to Come, by Lederer (www.messianicjewish.net). I’m having so much fun with the people in the church here in Little Rock I’m finding little time for anything else (such as my rabbinics class and blogging).

Anyway, Lederer will be releasing The World to Come on June 3 and I am very excited about this book. FEAST is a very exciting book in its own way, but The World to Come covers entirely different ground. I was excited to see that there is already a review of The World to Come on amazon.com (see it HERE). She says:

In “The World To Come” Derek truly hits on the inner parts of our souls, which responds intuitively to the beauty of creation, and pulls us to the hope of the world to come. My obscure, somewhat distant view of our eternal future has been at once clarified, and made more real.

Anyway, here is an excerpt:
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[From the end of Chapter 2: "The Vision of the Prophets"]

One of my favorite expressions about the World to Come is from Micah, a prophet who was a contemporary to Isaiah. He said:

They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.

God’s idea of the World to Come is every person with their own vine and fig tree. It was a common expression in biblical times for peace and prosperity.

The prophets envisioned an agricultural paradise in the World to Come. Who are we to gainsay the word of God? Maybe the agricultural part is literal. Even if it is not, I am in love with God’s plan that the World to Come has mountains, rivers, and trees.

This is not the view of witless shadows in a murky world or disembodied spirits on the Blessed Isles. This is not the view of white-robed saints playing harps on clouds (who made that up anyway?). In the prophetic vision, the good things of this world are better in the World to Come.

That is a meaningful statement. The good things of this world are better in the World to Come. C.S. Lewis captured the image beautifully in his book The Great Divorce. A busload of residents from hell get a field trip to heaven (just go with the fiction here and don’t worry about whether the story is literal). As the tourists get off the bus, they appear transparent. They cannot move the slenderest blade of grass. In fact, they are like ghosts and the grass appears through their feet as if they were made of mist. Then the protagonist realizes something; the people are not ghosts. They are the same as they have always been. It is heaven that is different:

The men were as they had always been; as all the men I had known had been perhaps. It was the light, the grass, the trees that were different; made of some different substance, so much solider than things in our country that men were ghosts by comparison.

The World to Come is like our world only better. Perhaps, as Lewis imagined, even the light will be better.

We really should not be surprised by this physicality. It is what God expressed in the beginning. In Genesis 1 he said over and over, “It is good.” Before Adam and Eve fell they had “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.” Only afterwards would agriculture be a backbreaking chore and childbirth a pain almost to death.

That means we were not so wrong when a landscape painting awoke in us a desire for heaven. The romantic feelings we felt about some faerie land or about Narnia or Middle Earth or a Disney scene were a longing to be where we are intended to be. We are not wrong when we admire the ocean or a tall hill and dream of adventure. We were made for paradise after all.

Why MJ Needs Talmud Study

The following is a short paper I wrote for a class I am taking on the Talmud from the Messianic Jewish Theological Institute (mjti.org).

We have a long way to go in Messianic Judaism. The program I describe below is something that we can only hope the next generation will be able to take up. Our generation can only go so far. Talmud study really should begin in elementary school.

I will put an asterisk beside terms that some readers may be unfamiliar with and they will be defined at the bottom.

What Place Should Talmud Have in Messianic Judaism?

In his book The Essential Talmud, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz details the world of the Talmud and the areas of Torah living that are covered in its pages. Prior to taking this class and reading such books as that of Steinsaltz, I confess that I had many wrong notions about Talmud. It is without a doubt that Messianic Judaism up until the present time has not been a movement that encourages knowledge of the Talmud. Rather, various segments of Messianic Judaism have emphasized more engagement with Christian sources or a sort of Karaite* approach to Torah.

If we seriously believe that Messianic Judaism is a Judaism, and if Torah living is important to us, then there are a number of reasons why we must take on the difficult task of learning Talmud.

In the first place, Talmud is a historical document without compare. In Talmud we find historical details about the life of Israel, the origins of customs, procedures from the Second Temple*, and so on.

More than that, Talmud is a Jewish way of thought about subjects important from a Jewish frame of reference. It is a guide for Messianic Judaism in forming halakhah*, not as a book of halakhic decisions, but a guide to the kinds of questions that must be asked and the areas of life that require halakhic rulings.

In Christendom the value of tradition is well-known* and opinions throughout the centuries are sought. Many of these are of value to Messianic Judaism as well. But Christendom has placed no value on numerous areas of life that are crucial for Messianic Jews. How can Messianic Judaism develop ethics, halakhah, and a philosophy of cultural engagement without Talmud?

The Torah is obviously a basic rule leaving many areas open to interpretation. Steinsaltz’s summary of the content of the Talmud exposes many areas where halakhah is needed. How are we to keep Shabbat? What shall be our standards for prayer? What about questions of marriage and divorce? How are we as a Messianic Jewish community to live out the Torah in diverse areas of life?

One answer would be to simply copy another Jewish community’s halakhic standards. Yet we have our own communal standards, including the teaching of our Messiah Yeshua*, that differentiate us from other Jewish communities.

Another answer would be to live as the Christian communities do merely adding on various Torah regulations such as Shabbat, dietary law, and circumcision. Yet we find that even in the restricted domain of these few areas of Torah life there are too many issues to naively have each one do what is right in his own eyes. Also, we find that Christian life and ethics often is missing important aspects of Jewish life.

The Messianic Jewish community can neither copy other Jewish communities nor Christian communities. We bring together, uniquely, the concerns and issues of both communities. Talmud is the garden from which all Jewish plants have grown. A uniquely Messianic Jewish way of life must grow from the same garden, even though our flora will be distinct from the others.
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Karaite: The Karaites are a tiny sect of Jews who accept the Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomy), but not the traditions and further teachings of Judaism. It is impossible to keep the commandments of Torah without making decisions about issues not answered in Torah. I am not sure how Karaites handle this problem.

Second Temple: The first temple was destroyed by Babylon in 586 B.C.E. The Second Temple stood from 516 B.C.E. until 70 C.E. The Judaism of the New Testament era, for example, was Second Temple Judaism.

Halakhah: From the Hebrew word for walking. It means something like, “How exactly can we walk out this commandment?” Halakhah and halakhic rulings are the details of how commandments are to be kept. There is no one single halakhic corpus. Different communities will follow different halakhic principles, though there is agreement on a majority of matters.

Tradition in Christendom: Christian thinkers use tradition more for theology than for practice. Thus, most modern theologians would interact with ancient Christian definitions and theology about subjects like the Trinity or salvation. There are also matters of ancient Christian practice, such as reciting creeds and liturgy, that bridge the ancient and the contemporary much as in Judaism.

Yeshua’s teaching: Yeshua made some statements about topics like the Sabbath or what it means to murder your neighbor that must inform our Messianic Jewish halakhah.

Why the New Covenant is So Great

I will post here the beginning of a sermon. For the rest, there will be a link at the end. I don’t usually put my sermons here and I didn’t decide to include this one because I thought it was one of my best. Rather, I thought the subject matter here would be of interest to Messianic Musings readers. So, let me know what you think (derekblogger@gmail.com).
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When you read a lot of blogs and especially if you follow threads of comments on blogs, you have to resist getting caught up in a lot of arguments. And in certain types of blogs you will find a lot of people with an axe to grind against Christianity. Really they have a problem with the particular experiences they have had in churches and Christian groups.

Just this week, I found that a friend had quoted me at length on their blog and opened it up for comments. I don’t take comments on my blog anymore, and for good reason. But I thought it would be interesting to see what comments this quote from my blog would draw.

The first woman who quoted wrote a thoughtful piece. She supported both Christianity and Israel and had some good questions about how the two relate. At the end she asked about certain scriptures which make it seem as though Torah is obsolete.

Then came the really disturbing comment, by a man who wanted to answer her question. He advised her to question everything she had ever been taught and to read the New Testament from scratch with an eye for Jewish issues.

So far so good.

But then he said, that by the time you get to the end of the NT you will realize something.
The only person who doesn’t fit in with the theology of the rest of the NT is . . . Paul.

That is, the NT reads just fine on Jewish issues if you are just willing to take Paul out of it.

I’ve seen before that some people feel the best thing is to get rid of Paul. I see people who feel they owe an allegiance to the Israel/Jewish/Torah side of the Bible and they struggle with how to accurately interpret the grace/universal/in Christ side of the Bible.

Many people fail to see that the two are in perfect harmony. There has been so much bad teaching on all sides and in all denominations over the centuries, it’s no wonder people can get confused.

But I have believed something since the early days when I started following Yeshua and I have found it to be true ever since. When read properly, the Bible will be internally consistent.

It really shouldn’t be hard to believe that. God’s chain of revelation went, essentially, from Abraham to Moses. There should be no disagreement between Abraham and Moses.

Then from Moses God passed the chain of revelation on the Sages and Prophets. They based their work on Moses. So we should be surprised if we were to find contradictions and problems.

Then Yeshua came as a man of the Bible. He quoted it to Satan, to enemies, and to disciples.
He sought the deeper meaning of it. He taught the true message of Moses and the prophets and psalms.

And so the disciples who taught in his name carried on the tradition. They did not intend to overturn Moses, the prophets, and Yeshua. They intended to uphold these and apply them to their readers in their new situation.

So why should we worry at all that the Bible is internally inconsistent? It ought to be a collection that agrees internally, building its ideas in a progression from beginning to end. And it is.

You don’t have to abandon the centrality of Israel to believe in grace or be skeptical about the Paul’s understanding of grace to believe in Israel and Torah.

IF YOU WANT TO READ THE REST, CLICK HERE.

Shavuot is Coming! FEAST Excerpt…

Shavuot is coming on June 9 (starts June 8 at sundown). Some of you say, what is Shavuot? It’s the biblical Feast of Weeks, better known to Christians as Pentecost.

Here is an excerpt from FEAST about Shavuot. I hope we can make the loaves better this year. It makes me wonder how those priests did it with much less technological kitchen gear!
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The oven in our little apartment just wasn’t big enough. Two tenths of an ephah is a lot of flour. That’s how big the loaf was supposed to be that the Israelites offered as a first-fruits offering to God in Leviticus 23:17. We wanted to bake one ourselves to experience as a family a little bit of the biblical past.

We found out there was a debate about whether Leviticus 23:17 means two loaves each being one tenth of an ephah, or if both were to be two tenths. Even one tenth of an ephah is a lot, about four liters or one gallon.

We decided to make a Shavuot loaf of whole wheat from only one tenth of an ephah. If you do the math, you find that this single loaf was supposed to have 16 cups of flour in it; our normal bread recipe called for four cups. It wasn’t pretty and our oven is still recovering, but we pushed forward and fashioned an irregular mass as large as a beach ball. We couldn’t get it to cook through without burning, but even our bread disaster was a blessing to us. We tore off pieces from the bread beach ball and dipped them in honey and imagined living in temple times.
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See more about FEAST here.

See a video of me promoting FEAST here.

Mel Lawrenz, I Want to Believe: Pt. 2

I was attracted to this book because of the premise that faith is what comes naturally, it is what we want to do, and it is disbelief, rather than faith, which is harsh and demanding. Disbelief demands giving up so much beauty. Thus Lawrenz’s title, I WANT TO BELIEVE. (Get the book HERE).

In the second chapter Lawrenz approaches the issue backwards, focusing not on our desire to believe, but God’s desire for us to believe.

Lawrenz doesn’t use this illustration, but it makes the same point and I know it moved me when I encountered it. There is a scene in Hugo’s Les Miserables, I think it is when Jean Valjean has stolen the silver from the priest. (Someone correct me if I am wrong about this). Jean says that he does not believe in God. The priest says, “It’s alright, Jean, he believes in you.”

This is rather the kind of theme that Lawrenz is going for in chapter two, answering the question, “Why does God want us to believe?”

Lawrenz goes on to list five reasons why God wants us to believe in him. They are all personal and relational. They all spell out selfless love.

I won’t spoil all five, but give you a taste for them by sharing two:

God wants us to believe because it is the only way for us to become what we were created to be: the image and likeness of God.

God wants us to believe so that we are moving toward him when we die, not running away from him.

Lawrenz’s second chapter rightly puts the rationale for faith in the realm of the interpersonal. Faith is not an irrational optimism in the face of darkness. Faith is not civil politeness because “good people believe in God.” Faith is fulfilling who we were made to be and communing with the Creator.

The chapter ending is a pleasant thought and a true one:

God wants us to believe, not so that we will be polite and well-mannered, not because he is looking for slaves to perform arbitrary tasks, and not even so the world will be a better place. God wants us to believe because he wants us.

Talmud, Messianic Judaism, and Imperfect Truth

Talmud is not what you think it is.

I say that because Talmud is not what I thought it was. I had done a fair amount of reading in Talmud and about Talmud before taking a class, which I am half-way through, at the Messianic Jewish Theological Institute (mjti.org).

Wow, was I ever wrong. So I will just assume that you are wrong as well about what is in Talmud and what it’s purpose is.

I don’t intend to go in depth here and give you examples. I intend only to open your mind to something and perhaps create a desire for further study (guided study, by a qualified instructor — it is foolish to think you can learn Talmud on your own or by reading a few books).

So, to begin to open your mind to Talmud, why it is important for Messianic Judaism, for example, let me help you think generally about something important: the imperfection of our ability to know the truth.

What does it mean to live for God? Can anyone live, or more specifically know how to live, exactly as God desires in every circumstance?

A simplistic answer: “Yes, God told us in the Bible how to live and all we have to do is read it and do it.”

The wise student replies: “How do you apply the Bible to a complex problem of real life, such as third world debt or capital punishment or even a personal decision about which charity or ministry God would want you to support?”

Simplistically, we can all see that stealing is not God’s will. But life rarely throws such simple dilemmas our way. Would God be more of a pure capitalist, even if it meant millions starving due to mental illness, addictions, and lack of motivation to succeed in a capitalistic society? Or would God be more of a pure socialist even if it meant lack of production due to lack of motivation and rampant corruption as people seek to be more equal than others in spite of socialism’s promise of equality?

Hey, the problems of life don’t even need to be that difficult. In the Talmud, it turns out that the simplest commands of God are not so easy to define precisely. Deuteronomy 6 commands that the words of the Shema be repeated several times a day and taught to children (a command ignored by non-Jews, though Scot McKnight has helpfully brought back the value of the Shema for Christians in his book The Jesus Creed, get it HERE).

God’s command in Deuteronomy 6 seems fairly simple. But there is a place in the Talmud where two sages debate the issue. Must the Shema be recited in Hebrew or can it be recited in any language? The argument goes on and on with both sages using the exact wording of Deuteronomy 6 to make their case.

You see, just because something is written down in the Bible, and even if we all agree that the Bible is inspired and infallible, still it requires interpretation.

And whenever there is interpretation, there will be interpretations (plural). Whose is right?

For a lot of Christians the call to be like Jesus is at the center of spirituality. A simply form of this is the question, “What would Jesus do?” Recently a documentary asked the question, “Would Jesus drive a gas-guzzling SUV?”

Well, if our way of life is so simple and so clearly spelled out in the Bible, you answer that! Would he?

It’s not easy for people to live with uncertainty. I, for one, drive a Chevrolet Suburban. God might not be pleased with that. But then, he gave me eight children in a world where a car is pretty important and we won’t all fit in a Hybrid Compact Japanese car.

So, what does any of this have to do with Talmud and why Talmud is important for Messianic Judaism?

Like I told you, Talmud isn’t what you think it is. Talmud isn’t a book you quote from authoritatively to give weight to some point you wish to make. This is what most Messianic Jews think Talmud is. Thus, when they read an opinion in Talmud that they find unscriptural or offensive, they reject the whole thing.

No, Talmud is not a book of answers. It is a discussion. For the most part, it is a discussion with no answers.

Let’s be honest. Life is like that. Would Jesus watch “Grey’s Anatomy”? Could you write a short paper defending both sides of that question? I know I could.

Here’s the big point, the thing I’ve been building up to all along: Talmud is a discussion about Torah that teaches us to probe the very depths of Torah and it is the discussion that causes growth more than any confident set of answers we supposedly arrive at.

Have you ever tried to read a philosophy book? You thought the meaning of reality was rather simple and then some Greek or European dudes made fine distinctions between things like ideals and forms or phenomena and noumena. And your mind was opened to new levels of thought. And you had less certainty. But you had greater sensitivity.

That’s what Talmud will do for you. That’s why we need Talmudic scholarship in Messianic Judaism. We need people who understand the why’s and why-not’s of keeping the Torah.

Must we say Shema in Hebrew? You tell me.

Barry Horner, Future Israel: Part 4

I have just finished chapter three of Barry Horner’s fine book. I see here a few things about Horner that are short-sighted, and I will mention them in my summary below, but this book is such a refreshing breath of fresh air, I’d rather emphasize the positive. Barry Horner has written a book that deserves wide attention. Besides God, Israel is the most frequent and important topic in the Bible. Remember what Charles Spurgeon said, “If there is anything promised in the Bible, it is this. I imagine you cannot read the Bible without seeing clearly that there is to be an actual restoration of the children of Israel” (see Barry Horner, Future Israel: Part 2 for the Spurgeon quote).
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Horner’s third chapter is called “Israel and Contemporary Examples of Christian Anti-Judaism in the US.” It is not an extensive chapter, though it is long because he quotes at length from and critiques an open letter written on the Knox Theological Seminary’s website.

Horner’s first example is Albertus Pieters (1897-1987), a former professor at Western Theological Seminary, whom Horner says is respected and widely quoted in Reformed circles. Pieters provides a number of alarming statements:

God willed that after the institution of the New Covenant there should no longer be any Jewish people in the world–yet here they are! That is a fact–a very sad fact, brought about by wicked rebellion against God. –The Seed of Abraham, 1950, p. 123.

How is it possible to believe that still prophecies of divine grace to be fulfilled in a group upon which the wrath of God has come “to the uttermost”? –a reference to 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16, ibid. pp. 123-124.

There are at present people in the world who are called, and who call themselves, “The Jews”. — (He goes on to argue that they are not a continuation of God’s people), ibid. p. 132.

Ignorant that their separateness from the rest of the world was in the divine purpose temporary, they strove to render it permanent. Thus, that which had been in itself good and holy became through their error a source of poison in the life of the world; and “The Jew” became the great persistent international problem. –ibid. p.134.

[When the Jews are saved] . . . They will then also lose their distinct existence by absorption into the Christian Church. –The Ten Tribes in History and Prophecy, 1934, p.109.

I doubt that Albertus Pieters is much of an influence on most of you. So my point is not to infuriate us with citations from a man otherwise to be respected. Rather, I think Horner uses him as an example because this type of thinking still exists in Reformed Christian circles.

Consider some of the points Pieters has made and ask yourself how many Christians would agree:

1. Jews are supposed to believe in Jesus and become Christians, shedding their Jewish identity.

2. God has put a curse on the Jews, exposing them to wrath (e.g., Crusades, Inquisitions, ghettos, pogroms, Holocaust), because they rejected Jesus.

3. The people who call themselves Jews now are not really a continuation of God’s people, but are part of a newer, dangerous, false religion called Judaism.

Regarding the first of these points, I would say that to a degree all of Christendom has this tendency, to want to obliterate Jewish identity when a Jew comes to faith in Jesus. I think the Jewish mission organizations do this. I think churches do it. I think even Horner does not go far enough in recognizing the ongoing necessity of Jewish covenantal obedience to the covenant at Sinai (I will say more about this below).

Don’t know what I mean? Let me ask you, if you had a Jewish person who believed in Jesus at your church (I’m speaking here to Christians), would you be a little appalled if they refrained from eating ham at the Wednesday night church supper? If they did not come to a Saturday church workday? Would you or someone else in your church say to them, “But you are a Christian now and this is the New Testament; you are not supposed to keep the law anymore”?

Horner goes on with more quotes from Lorraine Boettner, Gary Burge, O. Palmer Robertson, and a host of theologians who signed “An Open Letter to Evangelicals and Other Interested Parties: The People of God, the Land of Israel, and the Impartiality of the Gospel.” This open letter is not, as far as I can tell, online anymore. But signatories included notables R.C. Sproul, Michael Horton, O. Palmer Robertson, and Bruce Waltke.

Horner’s goal in this chapter is to expose the anti-Judaism prevalent in Reformed theological streams. And he does.

He also reveals in a few places his own short-sightedness. On page 49 he attempts to refute the anti-Judaic notion than the New Covenant makes the old one obsolete. In doing so, however, Horner only goes half-way. He says, “But the new covenant obviously abrogates the old Mosaic covenant, not the Abrahamic covenant.”

Says who? In my reading, the New Covenant of Jeremiah includes the Mosaic covenant, since it says: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts” (Jer. 31:33). What law could it mean? There is no Abrahamic law. But there is a Mosaic one.

And the continuing validity of the Torah of Moses is confirmed in Ezekiel’s vision of Israel new heart and new spirit, in which Israel will “walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances” (Ezek. 36:27). The only statutes are the ones Moses taught.

And Jesus affirmed it as well in Matthew 5:17-19. And Paul affirmed it, as even Horner admits on page 65:

How is it possible for the Council of Jerualem’s decision (Acts 15:1-35) to be construed as teaching the abolition of circumcision for the Jewish Christian? Paul later upheld the participation of Jewish Christians in distinctive Jewish practices (Acts 21:17-26).

But still, far be it from me to complain about Horner’s shortsightedness when the truth is he sees farther than most pastors and theologians into the centrality of Israel in God’s plan. If, looking out from his very biased, anti-Judaism milieu, he is able to see this much, then I am heartened.

God is still working on all of us (yes, I include myself in that). We are all on a continuum from error to truth. We’ll only get to the unvarnished truth in the World to Come.

Until then, I can only hope that the force of Horner’s book and his words will be a source of conversion for many thousands of Christian thinkers.

My recommendation for those of you who love Israel is that you buy several copies of Horner’s book and give them to pastor friends, seminary professors, and so on. Seriously, I mean you really should do that, so go to THIS LINK and get started.

A Reader Writes About the CJB

A few weeks ago I asked people to write in with thoughts about The Complete Jewish Bible (CJB), a translation that is a fine supplement to others on the market, such as my other favorites, the English Standard Version (ESV), the Revised Standard Version (RSV, which I like better than the NRSV), and the New American Standard (NASB).

Sometime soon I will be saying more about the Complete Jewish Bible. I plan to do a series on some important verses and how they should be rendered. Get the CJB HERE.

For now, let me let you read what a reader had to say . . .
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I received my copy of The Complete Jewish Bible at the end of February and I love reading from it! I must disagree with you that this book is uncontroversial. Many of my Christian friends have balked at the idea of the New Testament being a Jewish book. Oh, that I had a copy of just the introduction Mr. Stern wrote! That would explain in detail what I try to tell them.

And speaking of his introduction – what a blessing it is! I have long felt uncomfortable with the idea that I, as a gentile, have “replaced” God’s chosen people, or become a “second” group of chosen. I have been adopted as a joint heir, and therefore must be part of the original family, that being God’s chosen people of Israel. I love the mind picture of the wild olive being grafted into the true olive tree. And I find great comfort in the fact that the branches of the original tree that have fallen shall too be grafted back. Mr. Stern really hit home with what he has to say about Christ completing the Jew and how “conversion” is not what must occur. It is not leaving the Jewish faith, but understanding the fullfilment of God’s promises. I am praying that the mission to reach those who do not see it this way, both Jewish and Gentile, will be quickly fruitful. God’s will be done.

I am currently studying the book of Romans using the CJB. I am really blessed by how clear and descriptive this translation is. When I read it, I truly feel I am “hearing” what is being conveyed. And the Proverbs! How beautiful the word pictures are.

I ordered my copy through Amazon.com and was blessed to receive not only the hardcover edition of The Complete Jewish Bible, but the softcover of the Complete New Testament Commentary for the Jewish Bible. All for a very reasonable price!
–Robin