Rabbi Dr. Mark Kinzer in First Things

Just a note, since my local theological library is closed for the holidays and I do not have a subscription to First Things, but one of my mentors, Rabbi Dr. Mark Kinzer, is featured in a dialogue in this month’s issue.

If you are unfamiliar with Dr. Kinzer and if you like to read academic theology, you owe it to yourself to read Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism. He is defining, along with a group of other Messianic Jewish scholars, a mature path for the future of Messianic Judaism.

To see the Table of Contents for the current issue of First Things, featuring Dr. Kinzer:

http://www.firstthings.com/current.php?index=current

The Gaza War and American Media

A reader asked me to comment on the current Gaza military campaign Israel is undertaking. They specifically said they’d like to know what the American media is not saying.

So, not being any kind of expert on “the American media” I simply went to CNN.com where I found this article (beware, it is one-sided):

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/12/30/gaza.israel.airstrikes/index.html

The CNN article shows a photo of three dead Palestinians and a mourner. 95% of the article is about damage to Gaza and Palestinians. The 5% or less that mentions why Israel has a reason to attack Gaza is quite limpid:

Monday, Israel’s defense minister said the nation was in an “all-out war” with Hamas, which rules Gaza.

“We have stretched our hand in peace many times to the Palestinian people. We have nothing against the people of Gaza,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel’s parliament. “But this is an all-out war against Hamas and its branches.”

Mortar fire along the Gaza border late Monday killed one Israeli soldier and wounded four others, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman told CNN.

So, my conclusion is that this one article, which may be representative of American media, makes no attempt to show Israel’s side. This despite the fact, IMO, that Gaza has no justification whatsoever for what they have done by sending missiles against Israeli civilians. Gaza started this war and asked for this attack.

So, let me share with you three things: an analogy, a statement by Peres, and a way for you to get better media coverage.

First, an analogy. Imagine that Nicaragua (I picked them at random from Central America) decides that America has caused it financial ruin. Terrorists in Nicaragua take up on apartment buildings and civilian neighborhoods with missile launching platforms. They start sending missiles for months into Texas. A few of them hit schools while American children are learning and a few of them get lucky and hit homes, occasionally killing Americans who are watching TV in their homes.

The liberal politicians in the U.S. keep saying, “Let’s not do anything. Let’s just condemn the attacks.”

After a while, the situation becomes intolerable and the U.S. decides to attack. We send notices to apartment owners, “You have missiles in your building. Evacuate all residents because we are going to bomb you.”

Then the U.S. takes out several buildings and a neighborhood from which many missiles are coming. 350 Nicaraguans die. How many are terrorists and how many are civilians? Who knows? The Nicaraguans claim they are all civilians. The terrorists know they are their wives and children whom they refused to allow to leave and other families who decided or were not allowed to leave.

How does this analogy strike you? If you saw footage of American children in a burning school from a Nicaraguan missile, would you be in favor of letting it continue?

Now, listen to a statement by Shimon Peres, a man about as liberal as any Israeli politician can get, and yet a man fed up with the senseless attacks from Hamas:

PRESIDENT OF ISRAEL SPOKESPERSON’S OFFICE

Sunday, December 28, 2008

President Shimon Peres Has Made A Special Statement on “Operation Cast Lead” and the Ongoing Palestinian Rocket Attacks

This morning, President Shimon Peres made a special statement to the media regarding Operation Cast Lead (Israel’s attack on the Hamas terror infrastructure in Gaza) and the ongoing Palestinian rocket fire on civilian areas in southern Israel. A transcript of the statement, which is also available on video from the Associated Press and Reuters, is below.

It is the first time in the history of Israel that we, the Israelis, cannot understand the motives or the purposes of the ones who are shooting at us. It is the most unreasonable war, done by the most unreasonable warriors.

The story is simple. Israel has left Gaza completely, out of our own free will, at a high cost. In Gaza there is no single Israeli civilian or soldier. They were evacuated from Gaza, our settlements, which called for a very expensive cost. We had to mobilize 45,000 policemen to take out our settlers from there. We spent $2.5 billion. The passages were open. Money was sent to Gaza. We suggested aid in many ways – economically, medically, and otherwise. We were very careful not to make the lives of the civilian people in Gaza difficult. Still I have not heard until now a single person who could explain to us reasonably: why are they firing rockets against Israel? What are the reasons? What is the purpose?

And I must say also that the phenomenon about Israel is the restraint of the army and the unity of the people. The army waited and waited; the Palestinians asked for a ceasefire, and we agreed. They themselves have violated the ceasefire. Again, we didn’t know why, until it came to a point where we were left without a choice but to bring an end to it. The operation was planned carefully and the army was true to its principles: namely, to be precise in its targets and careful not to hit civilian life. There is a problem because many of the bombs were stored in private houses. We have contacted the owners of the houses, the people that dwell there, and told them leave it. You can’t live with bombs. We have to bring an end to the source of the bombs.

Israel doesn’t have any ambition in Gaza. We left out of our free choice. We have never gone back to the idea of returning to Gaza. It’s over. But we cannot permit that Gaza will become a permanent base of threatening and even killing children and innocent people in Israel for God knows why. I feel that in our hearts, we don’t have any hatred for the Gazan people. Their suffering doesn’t carry any joy in our hearts. On the contrary, we feel that the better they will have it, better neighbors we shall have. Now that Hamas is turning to the Arab world for help, the truth is that the Arab world has to turn to Hamas for the help of Hamas. If Hamas will stop it, there is no need for any help. Everything can come again to normalcy. Passages: open; economic life: free; no Israeli intervention; no Israeli participation in any of the turnarounds in Gaza.

As a nation, we feel united. As a nation, there is wholehearted support for the army, the way they handled it, their restraint, their discrimination, and their responsibility. The great winner can be reason, and reason will lead to peace. We are very serious, in a serious mood. Many of our children are still in the shelters, and we would like them, like the children of Gaza, to breathe fresh air again. This is the story, and whoever asks us to stop shooting – they have to change the address. Let them turn to Hamas and ask them to stop shooting, and there won’t be shooting.

Finally, where can you get accurate reporting? Why not try Israeli news websites? You might say they will be biased toward Israel, but the Israeli press, unlike the press in Muslim countries, is a free press and is often critical of its government and armed forces. I get my news from:

http://www.haaretz.com/

Meeting a Half-Jew in Douglasville, Georgia

I had already paid my check at the restaurant in Douglasville, Goergia, about half an hour west of Atlanta. I had time on my hands and I was spending it learning the ta’amei hamikra, the “Signs of Reading” or accent marks and musical notes of the Torah. It is one of the last requirements for rabbinic ordination that I must complete. I have foolishly put it off until the last six months before I am due to be ordained.

I had been at my table for a good hour or more with Marshall Portnoy and Josee Wolff’s book The Art of Torah Cantillation when the waitress walked over my way. Since I had already paid my check and finished my meal, I was pretty sure this would be a question. In Douglasville what sort of question might I expect? I was prepared for something like, “What language is that?”

Instead, she said, “Curiosity overwhelms me. I see you have a Hebrew book there.”

She knew it was Hebrew. I was now anticipating an interesting conversation. I explained that I am learning how to sing the Torah.

She said, “My father was Jewish and my mother is . . . I know this will sound crazy . . . Southern Baptist.” I didn’t think it sounded crazy. I speak in 40 to 50 Baptist churches a year and I meet scores of people with Jewish relatives. Down here in the Bible belt, Jews and Baptists get married with some regularity.

She went on to say that her father’s parents were Orthodox, that he joined the church to marry her mother, but when he died, he had an Orthodox funeral. There are interesting things about Jewish-Christian intermarriage. The idea of someone “converting” for marriage and reverting to their former identity when facing death is intriguing.

She told me about her children and said that one of her sons is changing his last name to that of her father. There was no one else to carry on the family name, so they are working on the name change to keep her father’s name alive.

“How about you?” I asked. “Do you practice either side of your identity? Do you keep Christian or Jewish traditions?”

“No, I don’t do either, but my kids go to church.”

“You ought to get in touch with who you are, with both sides,” I explained. And I told her what Messianic Judaism is all about. She was soaking it all up. No one had ever told her the two halves of her identity could be joined.

I told her she was a half-Jew and that there are many like her.

Interestingly, there are those who would say she is not Jewish because it was her father and not her mother who is Jewish. But I saw how her father’s Jewishness impacted her. She was deeply moved at the Jewish funeral. She spoke about it with a sort of awe. She told me he took her to an Orthodox service once, where was was separated to the women’s side and left alone in an environment she knew little about. She was terrified and never tried it again.

Also of note, there are those who would say her Jewishness does not matter. She should simply become a Christian. In Christ, some say, Jewish identity has no meaning.

It is interesting to meet a half-Jew and to think on how the religious worlds of Judaism and Christianity can have no room for such a person.

I gave her all of my information and I hope we stay in touch. I hope she can see how the faith of her mother and the practice of her father come together in Messianic Judaism.

Rabbi Besser and the Maccabees

This was my Hanukkah sermon for today (but don’t let that keep you from reading it :-) ). The book I refer to is The Rabbi of 84th Street by Warren Kozak. I’ll be reviewing the book soon.
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Rabbi Besser is an octogenarian rabbi in Manhattan. The Maccabees are a family from almost 22 centuries ago. It might seem their stories are separate, unrelated. Yet in the hands of God stories run together and have meaning not only individually but as part of the Great Whole.

Rabbi Besser’s story, in short, is of a young man from a religious family who escaped Poland in WWII. 3 million of Poland’s 3.3 million Jews died in that war. So Rabbi Besser was one of the mere 9% who escaped. Yet still his is a story of loss. Because from his beach home in Tel Aviv during the last years of the war, when he was 17 and engaged to be married, there was little rejoicing over being a survivor. Families on his right and left got news that their children, their wives, their mothers and fathers were gone.

The story of the Maccabees, in short, is of a family who became militant in a time that called for militancy. Families to the right and left of them were willing to allow betrayal of God rather than face the prospect of war and killing. Fear was more powerful than faith. Then the Maccabees stood up and said, “Whoever is for God come and join us.” There would be little rejoicing in that war as well. But moments of victory came, such as the liberation of Jerusalem and the rededication of the Temple, which we celebrate today.

What do their stories have in common, this aged rabbi in Manhattan and the family that led a rebellion against betrayal? The story of the Maccabees begins with the Syrian Greeks. They were ruled by a megalomaniac named Antiochus who called himself Epiphanes, the manifestation of God. Antiochus wanted to be another Alexander the great. Though he lived 160 years after Alexander, around the year 165 B.C.E., Antiochus was expanding his empire. And he wanted to make the peoples he conquered uniformly Greek in culture. He wanted to be their hero, one who brought the light of Greek civilization to the world much as Alexander had done. And one stubborn group stood in his way.

These were an ancient people too. But Antiochus cared nothing for their history. These people were pledged to their God to strange customs, such as circumcising the foreskins of their sons. They read their holy books in Hebrew and not in Greek. They turned their noses at the nudity which was so artistically pleasing to the Greek mind.

But not all of them were so difficult. In fact, Antiochus wooed the very leaders of this people to his cause. Jason the high priest became an advocate of Greek change. Antiochus wanted Zeus and not the God of Abraham on that Temple mount. Jason said Zeus could be another name for the God of Abraham. Antiochus wanted circumcision to stop. Jason said it was an outdated custom anyway. Antiochus wanted pigs slaughtered on the Temple altar. Jason said pigs were made by God as well and why not.

For the common man this was all a very dangerous time. Some wanted to be caught up in this new movement. Some young men had surgeries to reverse their circumcision. Some young men participated in the nude Greek games that are the forerunner of our modern Olympics.

Others wanted to be faithful to the 2,000 year old covenant with God through Abraham. But there was fear everywhere. Antiochus had mighty armies of mercenaries.The rich and powerful were on the side of change. What could the common man do?

But one family in Modi’in in particular started a revolution. They were not the only Hasidim, not the only Pious Ones. But they were a family who especially could not stand by and let Israel be wiped out by assimilation. They could not allow Greek life to erase Jewish life. They could not sit by and let parents bring their children up in a non-Jewish way.

They remembered God’s covenant with Abraham and with Moses. These were not things to throw away.
God’s covenants are not simply the fashion of the time. God’s covenants are eternal.

God said:

He that is eight days old among you shall be circumcised; every male throughout your generations (Gen 17:12).
This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall observe it as an ordinance for ever (Exod 12:14).
You shall keep my sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations (Exod 31:13).

……………………..

Well, that is one story. And we will come back to it before the end.

But shift forward 2,000 years to the time of WWII. Shift forward to the story of young Heskel Besser, son of a Hasidic family in Poland. His family was Hasidic but was also open to education, modern things, and art. They were not a family closed off from the world like some ultra-Orthodox can be.

And this family got out before the killing of Jews began. They saw the signs. In stages they got visas to go to Tel Aviv, Israel, which was then called Palestine and was ruled by the British.

The British let very few Jews in. It was Haskel’s father’s wealth and influence that made it possible for them to escape.

But that does not mean Haskel did not face danger. It does not mean the Holocaust left him unscarred.

Haskel was 17 and he was the last one to get out. He stayed to take care of some family business. When Haskel did leave, it was an emergency and he had to get out right away. Relatives met him with money.
They bought him two things since he did not have them with him: a raincoat . . . a set of tefillin, so he could pray.

Haskel’s family had money, so he traveled in a second-class train car. The only other second-class passenger was a Catholic priest.

The priest could see that 17 year old Haskel was headed all the way to the border of Austria. He could see Haskel was leaving before the Germans arrived in Poland. He asked if Haskel was going to Palestine. When Haskel said yes, the priest said, There has been tragedy in Palestine. Jewish bombs have been killing Arabs. It’s terrible when Jewish bombs kill innocent Arabs.

Young Haskel replied to the priest, It is always a tragedy when innocent civilians who are not involved are killed.

At the next station a group of Polish soldiers got on the train. They saw Haskel and one of them said, Hey, there’s a Jew-boy sitting here. They harrassed young Haskel and the priest looked on. Finally, one of the soldiers opened a train window and said, Let’s throw the Jew-boy out the window. The train was moving 60 miles per hour.

Then the priest stood up and started yelling for the conductor. One of the soldiers, respecting a priest in this Catholic country, got the conductor for him. When the conductor came, the priest said, Are these men second-class passengers?

The conductor said, No, Father, but they are soldiers and we always let them travel second-class.

The priest said, I object. I want only second-class passengers in my car. That is why I paid for the ticket.

And with that, Haskel’s life was saved. The priest said to him, Someone who is against the shedding of innocent blood, I will not let his blood be shed.

And even once he got to Palestine, Haskel saw the tragedies of the war every day. He said, We were free but our hearts were bleeding because of everything that was going on in Poland. In Poland 3 million out of 3.3 million Jews were exterminated.

The tragedy of the war for Haskel focused on one cousin and childhood friend, Israel Chaim. Israel was an intelligent and pleasant boy. When Haskel was 13 and Israel 10, the boy came to visit and announced very excitedly, I have met Haskel’s future CHOLLEH (bride). Haskel was surprised.

He said, Oh, and who is she?

Israel smiled and said, Every girl I have seen would like to be your CHOLLEH.

A year after his Bar Mitzvah, Israel was dead at the hands of the Nazis. The now aged Rabbi Haskel Besser says he still misses him.

When you listen to Rabbi Besser tell stories of the Holocaust, as the author of his biography did, you will be surprised by something. He mostly tells stories of the little good deeds people did. Some were great and very risky. Others were small things, but they were small things that helped save lives.

A Gestapo officer tipped them off they should leave Germany.

A priest spoke up and saved Haskel’s life.

A German officer looked the other way so a woman in Haskel’s family could escape.

A father, being sent to the gas chambers, reminded his son as he was being led away what page they were studying in a Torah commentary.

If you are familiar with Post-Holocaust Theology, then you know that Christian and Jewish writers have said the Holocaust may have killed 6 million Jews along with others such as Gypsies, the mentally handicapped, Poles, and homosexuals, but there was one other important death. These theologians say the Holocaust killed God.

People have said to Rabbi Besser, Surely if the Holocaust teaches us anything it is that there is no God, and there is no God watching over the Jews.

Rabbi Besser says just the opposite, What happened to the Jews is more proof that there is a God and we are his people.

For Rabbi Besser it is stories like the father who reminded his son to continue reading in the Torah commentary while the father was being led off to die that prove God. There are stories like a group of men who smuggled in a set of tefillin and took turns praying in secret with them.

Rabbi Besser sees a religious reason behind the Holocaust. Hitler wanted to believe that there was a higher power, he didn’t say God, who favored the Aryan race. What really infuriated Hitler was not Jewish wealth. In Germany, industry was not controlled at all by Jews. Only 1% of the German population was Jewish. It was for a religious reason that Hitler killed Jews.

It was because Aryans could not be the Chosen Race if the Jews were God’s Chosen People.

The Holocaust was the Jews being slaughtered because they were the Chosen. Rabbi Besser says, I would never condemn anyone who suffered and lost faith. I feel sorry for them because religion can make life much more comfortable. Not being religious offers a life that can be filled with doubts, worry, and pessimism about the future. I never doubted God’s devotion to the Jewish people, but that doesn’t mean I understand everything.

……………………

So here we have two stories. Both involve the possibility of the end of Israel. Both involve the possibility of faith disappearing from the earth. Both involve the struggle to remain faithful to God in the face of overwhelming odds.

When Syrian Greek soldiers order you to sacrifice a pig to Zeus, what will you do?

When German Nazis exterminate your family and friends despite Torah’s insistence that God loves Israel, what will you do?

The greatest lesson of Hanukkah, I think, is faithfulness.

The Syrian Greeks could not erase God. They could not erase God even though God did not unleash a Biblical style miracle and vanquish them. In the Hanukkah story, we do not see a miracle like the days of the Kings of Israel. The Syrian soldiers did not die of a plague overnight.

God has his reasons and his ways. I could give you reasonable theories about why God did not simply destroy the Syrian Greeks. But theories matter less than God.

God uses people to do his will, almost all of the time. Angelic destructions and plagues have their place. But mostly God demands faith in a world of faithlessness.

And then God shows his faithfulness in more quiet ways. 165 years after the Maccabees stopped the Syrian Greeks, God did something rather unspectacular and yet overwhelmingly beautiful. To a nation with many sins, and yet to a nation that remained faithful to God’s covenant, God did something that the faithful can see and rejoice in.

165 years after the Syrian Greeks were first defeated, God brought Messiah to Israel.

And without the Maccabees and without Jews who stood up and remained faithful, who knows? Would there have been a people for Messiah to be born to? If all the Jewish boys were left uncircumcised and became Greeks, if all the Torahs were destroyed, if Zeus was worshipped and not the God of Israel, would Messiah have come?

God’s faithfulness is in the historical record. It is there for us to see, but it will never be enough to prove anything to the faithless.

And God showed his faithfulness after the Holocaust as well. The ashes and bones of Auschwitz live just as Ezekiel foretold. These bones will live, God told Ezekiel.

And so they have. If you visit the Yad VaShem today you will see it. After walking for hours through the displays of death you come out on a balcony overlooking a great valley. And you see the new neighborhoods of Jerusalem where children play in the streets again.

And while I did not find Rabbi Besser saying it, there is another way the Holocaust shows us God is real. How does such a tragedy show us God, you ask?

It is because we all care so much. The death and destruction of a people feels so wrong. And it is not just wrong to Jews. The world says it is wrong.

Hindus say it is wrong.
Buddhists say it is wrong.
Christians say it is wrong.
Atheists say it is wrong.

But why? Why is it wrong? It is because we know God made us. It is because we know life is sacred.
And life is not sacred if God is not there. And human suffering does not matter if God is not there. But we all know it does matter. Thus, admit it or not, we all know we are special, made by God, loved by God, and our lives matter.

The Hanukkah story is about being faithful in spite of danger. The Rabbi Besser story is about being faithful in spite of loss.

There are covenants from thousands of years ago. Do they matter anymore? Who cares if Jews remain Jews? Who cares if Christians follow a Jewish Messiah?

What matters, some say, is the way I feel right now. I don’t feel like God is real. He isn’t helping me with my very real problems at the moment. Who needs him? If God doesn’t make me feel good, why believe in him at all?

And the lesson of Hanukkah and the lesson of the Holocaust is just the opposite. God is real when we do not feel him. God is real when Temples are defiled. God is real when a people is nearly exterminated.

And a Jewish prophet said it best. It was Habakkuk, who foresaw a tragedy much like the Holocaust. He foresaw the Babylonians killing Jewish children and starving the elderly and wiping out the city of Jerusalem. And he struggled with faith. And he said,

Though the fig tree does not blossom and no fruit is on the vines,
though the produce of the olive fails and the fields are barren,
though the flock is cut off from the pasture and there are no herds in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in Adonai and I will joy in the God of my salvation.
Adonai, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the deer,
he makes me tread on high places.
(Habakkuk 3:17-19)

You Review It: Me on Matthew 5:17

I am working on some text for a possible publishing project coming up soon. I’d like to benefit from some reader response.

This piece is a short explanation of Matthew 5:17. It cannot really be longer or at least not much longer.

I’d be interested in your comments:
1. Does it read well?
2. Could something be said better?
3. Did I miss explaining something you think quite helpful?
4. Do you disagree with something? If so, please give a short rebuttal (100-200 words is plenty). It’s okay if you are coming from a different way of thinking (yes, that includes you, Adam).
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Matthew 5:17 has been an easy passage for people to misunderstand. What the passage seems to say is often dismissed because other places in the New Testament seem to disagree. Paul says, “ye are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14, KJV). The issue of the relationship of the believer to the Law of Moses is a complex one. Many people are content to dismiss the positive statements about the Torah in favor of those which seem to say it no longer matters.

Thus, in order the deal with Matthew 5:17-19, which seem to say the opposite of Paul’s teaching, there is a common understanding that goes as follows. Yeshua said he did not come to abolish the Torah but he came to “fulfill” it (most English translations say “fulfill”). One way of thinking is to assume that fulfill means something very much like abolish. Thus, Yeshua would be saying, I am not contradicting the Torah but bringing it to an end in a way my Father intended.

There are four immediate problems with this sort of interpretation:

1. The word translated fulfill is actually a simple word meaning to fill up. In fact, it may be helpful to remember Yeshua as saying, “Do not think I have come to abolish Torah and the prophets but to fill them full.”

2. The idea that fulfilling the Torah is similar to abolishing it does not fit with 5:18-19. There Yeshua says that not even a stroke will pass from the Torah as long as heaven and earth are here.

3. Nowhere in the Bible does Yeshua’s Father say anything about a time when the Torah will come to an end. Thus, if Yeshua meant to say that he was doing God’s will by bringing Torah to its rightful end, Yeshua would be contradicting the numerous passages of Torah which say it is forever (e.g., Exodus 31:13).

4. The idea that fulfilling Torah means bringing it to an end does not fit what Yeshua goes on to say in the Sermon on the Mount. Rather than bringing the Torah to an end, Yeshua fills it up. For example, in 5:22, Yeshua says the commandment not to murder even means not to hate or nurse anger against someone. In 5:28 he says that looking lustfully violates the commandment against adultery. Yeshua is truly filling up the Torah, not by bringing it to an end, but by giving it the fullest interpretation which judges motives and the heart.

To understand Yeshua’s teaching and Paul’s at the same time is not impossible at all. Paul was a missionary to the Gentiles. Yeshua was teaching Jews. The long-time view of Judaism is that certain Torah commands such as the Sabbath, the dietary laws, circumcision, and several others were not commands to the whole world, but just to Israel. These commands are part of Israel being a people set apart. Thus, in Acts 15, James, Peter, and Paul agreed that non-Jews need not live like Jews to live by faith in Yeshua. Thus, Paul could praise the Torah (Rom. 7:14), keep it himself (Acts 21:20-24), and yet say to his Gentile readers that they should not let anyone compel them to live as Jews (Gal. 5:1).

Properly understood, the Torah is about loving God and not about earning God’s love. Yeshua taught his Jewish disciples in Matthew 5:17-20 that their practice of the Torah should be deeper than even the Pharisees. Yeshua was a Torah-teacher (rabbi) as well as Messiah. And numerous Jewish traditions from the time and in the later rabbis speak of Messiah as one who would show Israel the proper way to keep Torah. (For more, see They Loved the Torah by David Friedman and The Distortion by John and Patrice Fischer).

An Upcoming and Very Needed Book

Tefillin, or phylacteries as they are known to many Christian readers, are a vital part of Jewish devotion. The practice of tefillin comes from four scriptures in the Torah, which speak of “a sign for you on your hand and a memorial on your forehead”:

Exodus 13:9
Exodus 13:16
Deuteronomy 6:8
Deuteronomy 11:18

There are at least three ways of looking at these passages:

1. Perhaps they are figurative, rather than literal. They mean the Torah should be close to the heart (mind/soul) and hand (vehicle of our actions).

2. Perhaps they refer to an ancient custom of amulets or jewelry worn with sayings relating to the gods, but which the Torah takes over with a requirement to wear Torah words on amulets and jewelry.

3. Or perhaps the custom of placing God’s words on scrolls in a leather box is as close to literally fulfilling these commands as we can get. And since this is the accepted tradition, we in Messianic Judaism should pay attention and comply. I should point out that tefillin are considered to be a mitzvah not only in Orthodox and Conservative Judaism, but also in Reform (and I would imagine Reconstructionist).

The great news is that a new and very needed book is coming out on this topic for Messianic Jewish readers. The producers and publishers are none other than First Fruits of Zion (ffoz.org), a Torah-teaching organization that is in the midst of producing a small library of much-needed volumes for our movement.

FFOZ is going about this project in a commendable manner. They are obtaining feedback during the development of these resources from a broad spectrum of people involved in Messianic Judaism and philo-Semitic Christianity. I am a volunteer reviewer myself, trying to bring the perspective of my circles of Messianic Judaism to bear on my reviews and critiques.

I am in the circle of the UMJC (umjc.net) / Hashivenu (hashivenu.org) / MJRC (ourrabbis.org) / MJTI (mjti.com) branch of Messianic Judaism. And we do not agree completely with FFOZ about certain definitions and boundaries. Yet I, speaking only for myself, am greatly encouraged by the rapid maturing and excellent scholarship at FFOZ. Besides that, I have come to count FFOZ’s director, Boaz Michael, as a good friend.

I have a review copy and the final version, due out in a few months, will have many improvements, but here are some features that should interest you in this new work. I think these features may persuade you it is a worthy tool for personal and congregational development of the mitzvah of laying tefillin:

– There is a section on the devotional significance of laying tefillin and I found it very moving as it draws from many streams of rabbinic and even Hasidic tradition.

– There is a concise, clear, thoroughly documented section on the halakhah of laying tefillin.

– The final book will have diagrams and how-to’s to make it easy to understand and practice.

– There is a fascinating discussion of the history of tefillin, including an appendix on the tefillin found at Qumran from 2,000 years ago.

– The book is very short, but has a ton of footnotes. The review copy is only 40 pages and I’d imagine the final book will be similarly short. So this is not something people will find a chore to read.

– The book deals with what must be the two most important questions for our movement:
1. Did Yeshua lay tefillin?
2. Is it acceptable for non-Jews to lay tefillin?

The FFOZ staff, primarily author Toby Janicki have done an amazing job. It is my prayer that many Jews, returning to their Jewish identity after the confusion of Christian influences and so on, will return to the mitzvah of laying tefillin. It is my prayer that Messianic Jewish leaders will use this resource or some resource to restore to our synagogue members the tradition of Israel about how to have a sign and a memorial on the head and hand. I know many leaders who lay tefillin, but I wonder if we are teaching our people to do so.

MJ’s and Aliyah: An Issue to Get Involved In

Israel isn’t letting all of her Jewish people in. It’s that simple. And Israel is losing the battle against Muslim extremism. It’s also that simple.

And who is to blame? Two groups: liberal-minded leaders who hope that appeasement will eventually produce peace and ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionists who run the ministry of Interior. They are a cliche that we like to call strange bedfellows.

On December 14, Jamie Cowen, the former president of our denomination, the UMJC (umjc.net), was detained and held in a cell along with his wife in Tel Aviv. I am pasting the story from the Jerusalem Post below.

The ultra-Orthodox leaders who control immigration and several other facets of Israeli life are a thorn in Israel’s side. By analogy, imagine if Louis Farrakhan or some other rabid extremist group controlled immigration, weddings, and other aspects of America’s social policy.

We can get involved. Through the UMJC and attorney Calev Myers in Israel, work is being done to stop discrimination against Messianic Jews. Also, through The Alliance for the Future of Israel, all discrimination against all Jews who deserve a right to return is being fought against.

The Alliance for the Future of Israel is open to coming to Atlanta (where I am) in February and hosting a Bless Israel event. I am going to be working to put it together. I know many pastors and Christians in Atlanta who would love to see oppression cease in the name of Messiah, which is to say that oppression against Jews who believe in Messiah should cease.

By the way, Jamie Cowen was released and was not deported as the bad guys in the ministry of Interior wanted. They lost this round, thanks to the quick work of attorney Calev Myers and some Israeli leaders who cared enough to stop this discrimination. These people, several not sharing our faith in Messiah, but definitely sharing our disdain for injustice, cared enough to act. Inaction will never get Messianic Jews the right of return. Our involvement is needed. You can contact me or the UMJC if you would like to help.

Here is the story from the Jerusalem Post, December 14:

A director of the US Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations and his wife were detained Sunday at Ben-Gurion Airport by Interior Ministry officials amid allegations he is involved in illegal Christian missionary activity.
It is illegal in Israel to proselytize among minors. It is also prohibited to engage in missionary activities among adults when economic incentives are offered.
After over eight hours of detention, Jamie Cowen, a former president of the union, and his wife, Stacy, were permitted to enter Israel only after they agreed to sign a document that they would not engage in missionary activities during their stay.
The Cowens are in Israel to visit their two daughters, one of whom is an Israeli citizen. The other is in the process of obtaining citizenship after she and a group of other Messianic Jews won a Supreme Court case against the state.
The Cowens and their daughters all identify as Jews but believe that Jesus is the messiah.
“This type of religious discrimination would be expected of Iran, not Israel,” said Jamie Cowen, a US immigration lawyer, a few hours after he was released by immigration police.

“In the US we imprison individuals suspected of terrorism. Here apparently one can be jailed for his religious convictions. This is a case of blatant discrimination against basic rights. It is a story of a bureaucracy run amok. Someone has to crack down and bring in people of integrity.”
Cowen said he had visited Israel about 10 times, and had been active in social causes via the Knesset Social Lobby.
“I’ve brought $100,000 in humanitarian aid to Israel. We’ve provided lone IDF soldiers with about $50,000 in aid. This is unbelievable,” he said.
The Interior Ministry, which directed the police to arrest the Cowens, said they had classified information regarding missionary activity.
“The Immigration and Population Authority has reliable information that the Cowens were involved in missionary activity prohibited by Israeli criminal law during their last visit to Israel,” a ministry spokesman said.
“This is the reason they were detained. As soon as they agreed to refrain from any missionary activity they were allowed in.”
The Cowens arrived in Israel on a flight from Frankfurt at 3 a.m. They were arrested at passport inspection and placed in detention at the airport.
“As an immigration lawyer I have visited many detention facilities for illegal immigrants. This one was particularly dirty, smelly and overcrowded,” Cowen said.
According to Cowen, the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations has 90 member congregations with membership ranging between 50 and 400 per congregation.
Calev Myers, founder and chief counsel of The Jerusalem Institute, which provides legal advice and representation to messianic Jews, said the Interior Ministry was filled will clerks who identified with a strictly Orthodox definition of who is a Jew.
“During the years that Shas controlled the ministry they made sure to appoint clerks who were willing to carry out their policies,” Myers said.
“As a result, Israel is the only Western country where basic freedom of religion is denied. Today those who being discriminated against are messianic Jews. Tomorrow it will be Conservative and Reform Jews.”
Myers said anti-missionary organizations such as Yad Le’achim often tipped off Interior Ministry officials regarding messianic Jews attempting to enter the country.
However, Meir Cohen, a Yad Le’Achim activist, said that while it was true that his organization did provide the ministry with information, they were not involved in the Cowens’ case.
Cohen said the ministry had its own intelligence unit that gathered information on missionaries and on messianic Jews who were ineligible for Israeli citizenship due to their religious convictions.
The Supreme Court has ruled that Jews who embraced Christianity are not eligible for Israeli citizenship. However, the court has also ruled that people who are not Jews according to Orthodox standards, but who are eligible for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return do not forfeit this right if they adopt Christian beliefs.

Books I’m Reading

We have a Messianic Jewish Musings book review program. The idea is simple: kind, wonderful people buy me books which I will review on the blog. I know, sounds ridiculous, but who knows? Before long, I might talk you into buying me a book :-)

One reader bought me The Rabbi of 84th Street by Warren Kozak. It is a story about a rabbi who survived the Holocaust and who is much beloved in New York. When I review the book, I think you will see its value immediately. It is profound, the dictionary definition of which is “having or showing great knowledge or insight.” I think the dictionary should have added something to that definition, “that which is simple yet has or shows great knowledge or insight.” I will be reviewing it this week and I am halfway one.

Another kind reader bought be The Lost History of Christianity by Philip Jenkins, a book about the once mighty Christendom of the Middle East virtually wiped out by Islam. I wanted this book to help tell the story of Islam’s devastating track record of cultural destruction. If you are a nice Muslim reading this blog, great. God loves you. But the people you associate with are destroying the world.

A few other books likely to be on my review list soon include:

My Jesus Year by Benyamin Cohen, a different Jewish spin of A.J. Jacob’s The Year of Living Biblically.

Jewish Living: A Guide to Contemporary Reform Practice by Mark Washofsky. I think some readers, prone to count only Orthodox Judaism as legitimate, will be surprised by what I have to say about this book. Reform makes more sense than a lot of people think. I about 1/4 of the way through it.

The Blue Parakeet by Scott McKnight, a conservative and yet progressive book about how to read the Bible. So far I am loving it. If the last half does not disappoint I may even use it in training people who want to become better Bible readers.

Want to buy me a book? How about:

The Bible, Rocks and Time: Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth, by Davis Young
The Commentator’s Bible: The Jps Miqra’ot Gedolot: Exodus, by Michael Carasik
Abraham’s Promise: Judaism and Jewish-Christian Relations (Radical Traditions), by Michael Wyschogrod and R. Kendall Soulen
Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion), by Daniel Boyarin

Email me at derekblogger@gmail.com

Jerusalem, Hidden and Enduring

Some people think it is easy for us who are believers. That is, we who believe in the Divine, it might appear to outsiders that our belief comes effortlessly and automatically. Maybe we’re just naive.

But the silence of God can be deafening.

I don’t blame those like Christopher Hitchens, apostle for atheism, who ridicule us. I see where he is coming from. God is silent for him, because he is looking in the wrong inner places and the wrong outer places for the wrong signs.

A few days ago, I walked the streets of Jerusalem. It is a city hidden most of the time, or at least hidden from me in my place seven thousand miles away from its stone walls and narrow streets.

Jerusalem is just there.

Sometimes I find it hard to believe in Jerusalem. I am looking in the wrong places, within and without. I expect something that disappoints by not arriving.

Some people cover the silence of God by manufacturing counterfeit evidence and imitation miracles. Some people hope in hope more so than in God. Still others create their own images of the hidden Omnipresent.

We saw that in Jerusalem. We saw those who make icons and decorations and who paint the historical characters like superheroes whose feet never quite touched the ground. Frescoes and brass incense vessels and wood and glass create an atmosphere that smothers me, but for some it seems to be a sort of surrogate for the invisible Eternal. Visiting their churches, I find myself believing in God in spite of the garish decorations of the centuries.

God is like Jerusalem to me. He is real when I do not see him, when I do not hear the clamor of his streets.

I do not hope in hope. I hope in a Shepherd who watches and sees all, though he usually remains hidden.

To not believe in him would be harder, because I actually find the Christopher Hitchens style of empiricism naive. I believe in God because he made me like he is. I find my own nature and that of the billions who share this life with me too much like the Compassionate One to doubt him.

I know him and he knows me.

Someone from a World War II death camp scratched on a wall, “I believe in the sun when it is not shining.”

Now is not the time when the Omnipresent completes the healing of this world. But Jerusalem stands. It is one more sign among many. If you look in the right places, within and without, it is unbelief that is naive. God cannot be denied, only doubted.

We Missed Archaeological Find by One Day!

I just arrived home this morning at 6 a.m. from Israel. I was glad but sad to read the news that we missed by one day being the group to make a remarkable find at the Temple Dirt operation in East Jerusalem.

For those unfamiliar, this is a place where tourists and students and various volunteers sort through dirt and rubble from illegal Muslim construction on the Temple Mount. We were just there as a group of 20 sorting and looking for treasures on December 18.

A headline today at haaretz.com says someone on December 19 found a rare 1st century coin. And we were there December 18! It could have been us. If we had been lucky and picked the right bucket . . . it was probably a bucket we saw ready to sort on the 18th. I am almost in physical pain :-)

Here is the article from http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1048260.html

Rare first century half shekel coin found in Temple Mount dirt

By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent

A rare half shekel coin, first minted in 66 or 67 C.E., was discovered by 14 year-old Omri Ya’ari as volunteers sifted through mounds of dirt from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The coin is the first one found to originate from the Temple Mount.

For the fourth year, archaeologists and volunteers have been sifting through dirt dug by the Waqf, the Muslim authority in charge of the Temple Mount compound, in an unauthorized project in 1999. The dig caused extensive and irreversible archaeological damage to the ancient layers of the mountain. The Waqf transported the dug up dirt in trucks to another location, where it was taken to Emek Tzurim. 40,000 volunteers have so far participated in the sifting project, in search of archaeological artifacts, under the guidance of Dr. Gabriel Barkay and Yitzhak Zweig.

The project is sponsored by Bar Ilan University and funded by the Ir David Foundation with the assistance of the National Parks Authority.

The half shekel coin was first minted during the Great Revolt against the Romans. The face of the coin is decorated with a branch of three pomegranates and ancient Hebrew letters reading “holy Jerusalem.” On the flip side, the letters say “half shekel”.

The coin that was found in the sifting project, though it was well preserved, showed some damage from a fire. Experts believe it was the same fire that destroyed the Second Temple in 70 C.E.

Dr. Gabriel Barkay explained that “the half shekel coin was used to pay the temple taxes… The coins were apparently minted at Temple Mount itself by the Temple authorities.”

The half shekel tax is mentioned in the book of Exodus (Portion Ki Tisa), commanding every Jew to contribute half a shekel to the Temple every year for the purpose of purchasing public sacrifices.

Dr. Barkay added that “this is the first time a coin minted at the Temple Mount itself has been found, and therein lies its immense importance, because similar coins have been found in the past in the Jerusalem area and in the Old City’s Jewish quarter, as well as Masada, but they are extremely rare in Jerusalem.”

So far, some 3,500 ancient coins have been discovered in the Temple Mount dirt sifting, ranging from earliest minting of coins during the Persian era all the way up to the Ottoman era.

An additional important archaeological discovery in the sifting project was another well preserved coin, minted between 175 and 163 B.C.E. by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, against whom the Hasmoneans revolted. This revolt brought about the re-dedication of the Temple after Antiochus seized the Temple’s treasures and conducted idol worship in it. The coin depicts a portrait of Antiochus the Seleucid King.

Last Day in Israel

We’re coming home today. I am ready. I love Israel, but being here with only one of my eight children and missing my wife, home cannot arrive soon enough. To see my family, go to derekleman.com

Yesterday we went to the Yad VaShem (Holocaust museum), to the fruit and vegetable market, and to help out with the Temple Dirt Dig.

Yad VaShem helped me kick a feeling of uselessness I haqve been feeling, as if the things I do for God do not matter. I see the importance of life and death and I realize that representing God in this world is a blessing and something very needed, even if people do not realize it. Sometimes, I let little discouragements make me think it is not so important encouraging people to read Torah and know God. Facing the reality of evil and death renews my sense of calling.

Helping at the Temple Dirt Dig is our little contribution to discovering Israel’s past. The dirt came from illegal Muslim construction on the Temple mount that removed 400 truckloads of archaeologically rich dirt and stone. People have found amazing things helping in this project, usually students and tourists volunteering. Every year we find at least one coin and a few other interesting items. The best thing this year was a complete, unbroken Roman nail.

Well, Linda and kids, I will see you soon, but not soon enough.

The Israel Journey and Thoughts on MJ

We are alive. I say this because some people may have heard about a tourist bus that crashed yesterday near Eilat and 24 tourists were killed. The driver was trying to race another bus to get through a checkpoint and the bus went over a cliff. The driver was a Russian Jewish Christian and the passengers were Russians. Many more are badly wounded.

Our trip has been beautiful and quite safe. We laugh about people who think it is dangerous to come to Israel. We have yet to see a rocket pass over our heads.

Let me summarize briefly our packed itinerary for the past two days, for those who are following the journey, and then I will share some thoughts about a conversation with an Orthodox shop owner.

Monday we began on the Mount of Olives, where Yeshua will return (Zech 14 and Acts 1). We walked down to Gethsemane and prayed (I wore my yarmulke). We toured the City of David, Hezekiah’s Tunnel, and the Pool of Siloam. We spent a delightful hour in a shop near the Cardo speaking with the owner and I will share some of the conversation below. We shopped on the Cardo (Roman name for “Main Street” and now this is the upscale Jewish section of shops). We ended the day at the South Wall Excavations (Davidson Center) where you can see the stones thrown down by Roman soldiers in 70 C.E. and also the stone about the place of trumpeting and many other things.

Tuesday we went on the Temple mount. We saw up there several groups of Orthodox Jews exercising their right to be on the Mount. One group was being lectured to by an eminanent Jerusalem archaeologist and another was accompanied by an extreme right-wing Knesset member.

We then went to the Bethesda Pools by the church of St. Anne and the remains of the Praetorium where the soldiers played games with Yeshua before killing him. We prayed at the Wall, always my favorite time, and attended a lecture at the Temple Institute (the group that is making the articles for the Third Temple).

We shopped on the Cardo again and then walked through the Western Wall tunnel where you can see one stone that is 600 tons, the largest Herodian stone we are aware of. The engineering is amazing. We also pass here the closest point to the Holy of Holies. We then finished the day with two sites focused on the death and resurrection of Messiah: the basement of Caiphas’ house where Yeshua was likely held prisoner overnight and the Garden Tomb, which still has the look of the real tomb, whether it is or not.

Now, about my conversation with the Orthodox shop owner. This is a guy who is friendly to Christians and Messianic Jews. He always gives our group a nice speech about Israel as a fulfillment of prophecy, about the commonalities between Jews and Christians, and about the divine appointment God has for us all in Jerusalem.

He wants people to ask him questions, so I came to him with a simple one: “If somehow you could know that Yeshua is the Messiah, would you consider Messianic Judaism a valid Judaism?”

His first response was to say that Messianic Jews, in his opinion, remain Jews. Just as atheist and Buddhist Jews remain Jews, he said, so do those who accept Jesus as Messiah and even as God.

The issue for him, he said, is not the Messiah-ship of Yeshua, but the idea of his divinity and that his death was a needed atonement for sin. These things, he said, are anti-thetical to Judaism. God cannot become a man, he said, and all Jews agree on this. Therefore, Messianic Judiasm is Christianity, in his opinion, and not Judaism.

To further clarify, I asked him if he sees it as a good thing that Messianic Jews keep Torah and pray as Jews instead of assimilating. He said yes, it is a good thing, provided Messianic Jews are doing it out of love for God and not with a motive to entice Jews away from Judaism.

Knowing, as I do, how diverse Judaism is on questions of the nature of God, I am disappointed that so many are ready to claim that the divinity of Yeshua is anti-thetical to Judaism. It would be a worthy subject of research to show the complete lack of unity in Jewish sources about the nature of God. The idea that God cannot become a man lacks proof and sounds to me like a reaction rather than a well-thought out doctrine.

Do I Wear a Yarmulke in Gethsemane?

Yesterday was Ein Gedi, Masada, Jericho, and the Dead Sea. But today we start touring Jerusalem. I want to consider an issue of identity, Yeshua, the Jewish Community, and so on.

Do I wear a yarmulke in Gethsemane?

I mean, obviously I will wear one when I pray at the Wall. I will have to leave it off when I go on the Temple Mount or the Muslim authorities will descend on me quickly.

But what about Gethsemane?

Is there a sort of separation between Jewish prayer and Messianic prayer? When I am in a “Christian”place do I try to look Christian and in a Jewish place try to look Jewish?

Would some Messianics avoid Gethsemane?

These are questions of identity. I spoke the other night to someone who, from a Christian point of view, said that we are really Christians and not Jews. To him, our belief in the divinity of Jesus means we have crossed the line out of Judaism.

But my response to him was: Peter was a Jew.

Would Peter have gone back to Gethsemane to pray? Would he have left his Jewish identity aside and assumed a “Christian”identity?

I don’t think so. Gethsemane is a Jewish place. It is on the Mount of Olives. It is where the Messiah prayed the night before he filled up the prophecies of Isaiah and Zechariah. It is every bit as Jewish as the Wall.

So, I will put on my yarmulke as I pray in Gethsemane. My identity is not divided. I am with Israel and I am praying with Israel in Gethsemane and praying in the name of the one who was and is Israel’s truest and greatest son.

Israel Days 4 and 5

Friday morning we began the day by leaving our hotel in Tiberias by the Sea of Galilee and driving south. We made a lot of stops on our way to Jerusalem, where I hoped we would arrive at our hotel before the onset of Shabbat, but we were prevented by something I will explain later.

First stop was Ein Harod, a spring near the hill of Moreh. It is known as Gideon’s spring because of the well-known story of how God reduced Gideon’s army from 10,000 to 300 based on how they drank water. A few of us knelt at the spring for photo opps. There are different interpretations about what the 300 did that made them fit to be in the elite army. I think they used one hand to bring the water to their mouths and kept their other on their sword while remaining vigilant.

Next we toured some of the best preserved Roman ruins in the world at the town of Beth Shean. In the days of the judges of Israel, Beth Shean was an Egyptian stronghold in the land of Canaan, so there is also an Egyptian site to explore as well as some old Canaanite ruins.

From there we went to Qumran, not only to learn about the Dead Sea Scrolls, but also to shop for Ahava skin care products made from Dead Sea minerals.

Finally, we went into Bethlehem. It is a Palestinian Authority area, so we had to pass through a checkpoint and our Israeli guide could not come in. We hired a guide in Bethlehem to give us a quick tour of the Church of the Nativity. I find nothing authentic about the church and nothing makes me think of the humble birth of our Messiah at this site. But it was meaningful for some in our group.

It was the checkpoint on the way out that made us late for Shabbat in Jerusalem. So, while I wanted our tour to be kosher, we broke Shabbat by arriving about 1/2 too late! The line to get out of Bethlehem took an hour. It has never been that long before.

On Shabbat we had a late morning and then a social time at our guide’s beautiful home on the slopes of Ein Kerem, the traditional place of the family of John the Baptizer.

Then, after sundown, we went to a Jerusalem shop to have Havdallah (the ceremony to end the Sabbath) and then we shopped. And boy did we shop. I bought my daughter an expensive ring, as I do for all my daughters at Bat Mitzvah age. I got her emeralds forming a Star of David with a diamond in the center. It is an elegantly made ring and I am glad my little Hannah will be wearing it the rest of her life.

I was going to leave the Jerusalem shop without making any more purchases, but I am an antiquities collector. I have a nice collection of artifacts from Israel. And I had my eye on some daggers from the Middle Bronze period. I could associate such a dagger with the story of Abraham offering Isaac on Mt. Moriah (the Akeidah, as it is known in Judaism).

The price was way out of my range. But the owner wanted to thank me for bringing him such good business, so he made me an offer I could not refuse. This will be the most valuable piece in my little museum collection. I am kvelling (google it for a definition). I love knives anyway, and now I have one from about 1800 B.C.E.

Finally, at night I met a friend from Holland who has a blog and with whom I have had online conversation. He was in Jerusalem at the same time and the chance to meet was too good to pass up.

I must say he is a remarkable young man. At 22 he has read so much and can so intelligently discuss theology, I am jealous. When he is 41 like me, I will be in his shadow. I sensed in him also a beautiful spirit, a person who is full of ahavat HaShem (the love of the Lord). Our conversation centered around the problems of confusion in people’s lifestyle and beliefs and the way our beliefs can separate us from other people and make us isolated.

It is a conversation I will never forget.

O Jerusalem, city of our God, you bring us blessings in ways we do not even expect.

Israel Day 3

It wouldn’t do to have two emotional, super-charged days in a row, so today’s touring went at a slower pace and with a bit more of an educational purpose.

The weather in Israel was amazing again today: cool, sunny, and clear. And we went to some of the most naturally beautiful places in Israel. Where Jerusalem is radiant due to the buildings and the Jerusalem stone, the upper Galilee and the Golan are splendid because of the green hills, abundant stones, and steep grades. This is an open, rolling paradise.

Tel Dan, the ancient city of Laish which became known later as the city of Dan, is a national park known for its crystal rapids and lush forestation. These waters, the Dan river which feeds the Jordan, come from the melted snow off of Mt. Hermon, rising some 9,000 feet near to the north. The park borders Lebanon and you can stand on the ancient Tel and look into Lebanon. Eucalyptus trees and a few ancient oaks adorn the cultic area.

More interesting to me than the lush wetland forest, which in one section is popularly known as the Garden of Eden, is the history of this place. A gate from the time of Abraham is here. In another part of the Tel there is a complete city gate, rising some 12 feet high, with strong and ancient stone. The gate is so well preserved, the dais outside the city gate is still there upon which a throne could be set for a king or other figure of power. Even the standing stones, a sort of primitive pagan worship area, remain undisturbed having been uncovered in recent decades.

This is the site where an inscription was found, the famous Tel Dan inscription, in which an Aramean king brags about conquering the “house of David,” a king believed in by masses of Jews and Christians but too often doubted by scholars.

And an altar is here, used as late as the Hellenistic period, perhaps up to the first century B.C.E. But the history of this altar goes back further into the past. Remains from the Iron Age have been found here. How did this altar and platform come to be here in the days of Israel’s kings?

The Bible says that Jeroboam, the king who split the twelve tribes into a northern kingdom of ten and left a southern kingdom of two tribes, built two altars: one at Bethel and the other at Dan.

It is no leap of faith to say this is Jeroboam’s altar, a visual confirmation of a Biblical story.

And we sit under the ancient oak, not ancient enough to be the one from Jeroboam’s time almost 3,000 years ago, but perhaps a grandchild of that tree. For ancient cultic sites were often chosen for a location on a hill and near a large oak tree. The majestic oak that sits there now gives off acorns the size of golf balls.

And we sit on this high place, under this tree viewed as cultically relevant, and before an altar built in violation of God’s holy Torah. But we are not here to worship the Golden Calf, but to remember the story. It is a story close to home, for we too make pragmatic decisions to compromise the oneness of God at times.