Shavuot and Pilgrimage to the Temple

The following is an excerpt from my 2008 book, Feast, available at lifeway.com:
…………………….

A Pilgrim Feast

In the really old days, before there was a temple, there was only a tent called the tabernacle. It moved from place to place, eventually resting for a long time in central Israel in a settlement called Shiloh. Later, David brought it to Jerusalem, and then Solomon replaced the tent with a magnificent building of Jerusalem stone, cedars of Lebanon, gold, bronze, and colorful cloth.

The temple is significant to Shavuot because it was one of the three pilgrim feasts, along with Passover and Sukkot. In other words, people made a pilgrimage to the temple for this feast. It didn’t matter if you were nearby in Jerusalem or if you were far away, in Samaria or Dan. You made a journey.

Sidebar: The distance from Dan in the far north to Jerusalem is about 100 miles (the furthest city from Jerusalem in ancient Israel). Traveling with animals, this might be a journey of ten days, each way.

Every home for miles around Jerusalem was full. People even slept in the animal stables, if they were lucky enough to have relatives in the city. The rest brought tents. Rain wasn’t a worry since it wasn’t rainy season.

But the experience began long before the actual feast. The journey itself was a worship experience. The roads were packed around the time of the feast as families, clans, and entire towns traveled together to the temple. Or more appropriately, they went up to the temple, since Jerusalem rests on a small mountain. That’s why certain Psalms are called Psalms of Ascent. Psalm 121, for example, incorporates the journey into its worship: “I raise my eyes toward the mountains. Where will my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

So while walking up to Jerusalem, people would sing these psalms. Fellow Israelites were camped and congregating all around. It was a huge crowd. The atmosphere was charged with worship and awe.

Describe what you think it would be like to worship in a setting like Shavuot around the temple. How would it be like and unlike worship services you’ve been part of?

After all the build-up and anticipation, they finally arrived at the temple. But when they got there, they didn’t go inside to worship. The temple was not a building people went inside to worship. It was where sacrifices were offered and the place from which the priests and Levites led psalms, prayers, and musical worship; the people stood in open air all around the front of the temple. In fact, due to the crowds some people might not have been able to get closer than half a mile. But if you were close enough to see the smoke rising from the altar, you were fine.

And the service for the feast wasn’t an hour. There was music, chanting, and worship going on all day.

How does this picture of temple worship at a Biblical feast differ from your preconceptions?

People didn’t have worship like this every week. There were no synagogues—the local centers of worship—until much later in Jewish history when the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. During the temple days, this all-out worship with crowds in the hundreds of thousands and even millions, only happened three times a year.

Does this sound more like worship or a party? What’s the difference? What’s the similarity?

If it sounds like a huge party in Jerusalem, that’s not far from the truth.

Shavuot: A Reading from 1954

Philip Goodman’s Shavuot Anthology, like all of his holiday anthologies, is worth its weight in twenty dollar bills. It is, unfortunately, out of print and available only used online.

The reading I selected today is from a more modern writer, Ludwig Lewisohn (1882-1955), professor of comparative literature at Brandeis.

What I like about this short essay is the clear way it presents the value of revealed Torah commandments for the progress of human history. It is not uncommon at our synagogue for us to reflect on the question, “Where would we be without Torah and the rest of the Bible?” What if God had left us orphans in this strange universe with no hope of ever seeing a better world?

Well, Lewisohn develops it in his own way. It is a fitting reading for this second day of Israel’s consecration before the revelation at Sinai. Tomorrow is the anniversary of that great speaking which changed Israel and the world forever:

The Jewish people made its historic appearance in quite a normal fashion. Yet the pattern of history is violently abnormal. It never flourished greatly in terms of power. It knew defeat and desperate catastrophe over and over again. Yet from each historic grave it re-arose; it survived; it lived to reaffirm its changeless character and historic function.

What was the source within history of that power of survival and renewal which has taken place from age to age down to that birth of the state of Israel from the ashes of the six million martyrs, an event which from the memory of the youngest Jew now living and seeking to interpret his destiny and its meaning? So far as human insight extends, the source of that perpetual life and perpetual power of rebirth must be, cannot but be, in that transcendent experience at the foot of Sinai which welded a group of rude clans and fugitives from oppression into a people whose fundamental character was stamped and molded then.

Petulant men with minds frozen thirty years ago will call this explanation “mystical” in the illiterate usage of that word as anything beyond the grasp of the most mechanical and empty understanding. Mature and unbiased reflection will show that this explanation and this alone, precisely this, like any respectable hypothesis in the sciences, serves to account for the historic phenomena which no one denies. This hypothesis alone works. It alone explains the character, the history, the ever-recurrent fate of the Jewish people.

-From Philip Goodman, Shavuot Anthology, p.113. Originally from What Is This Jewish Heritage?, B’nai B’rith, 1954.

Ezekiel: Anti-Deuteronomy?

I am reading God’s Words in Human Words by Kenton Sparks, a self-professing evangelical Christian who is a professor at Eastern University. I am glad for the arguments Sparks makes in his books in favor of a critical (cynical?) view of the Hebrew Bible. This is an important part of my preparation as I make decisions about my stances on various critical issues in preparation for doctoral studies.

And Sparks has a lot of compelling arguments.

One in particular has gotten under my skin. It is about Ezekiel 20:23-26, a passage which threatens to undermine much that I hold dear:

Moreover I swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the nations and disperse them through the countries, because they had not executed my ordinances, but had rejected my statutes and profaned my sabbaths, and their eyes were set on their fathers’ idols. Moreover I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not have life; and I defiled them through their very gifts in making them offer by fire all their first-born, that I might horrify them; I did it that they might know that I am the Lord.

I am writing this blog post as a sort of cathartic exercise in working out some thoughts on the matter. I am not ready to propose any final interpretations. Also, I am going to write in a sort of shorthand which may raise questions for those who are not already familiar with critical scholarship. I do hope that by being concise I get more people to read this post start to finish than if I went on with clear but lengthy prose.

One Critical Take on Ezekiel 20:25-26 (Sparks, pp.91-93)

(1) Start with the theory that the Torah comes from four camps, perhaps none of which originate with Moses: the Book of the Covenant (Ex. 20:22 – 23:33), the Deuteronomic Code (Deut. 12-26), the Holiness Code (Lev. 17-26), and the Priestly Code (Exod 25-40; Lev. 1-16; Numb.).

(2) Ezekiel is said to represent a later form of Torah, the Holiness Code, and to oppose the earlier ideas of the Deuteronomist.

(3) Ezekiel was reflecting on the exile and promoting the new Holiness Code (the Priestly Code did not yet exist).

(4) Ezekiel opposed such lax procedures as allowing firstborn animals to be offered outside the Temple area (Deut. 12:15-25).

(5) Ezekiel proposed, right or wrong, that God gave some bad laws in Deuteronomy on purpose to make Israel sin.

(6) How then does Judaism consider the Torah to be of Moses? In the same way that Mishnah and Talmud and the whole tradition is considered to be of Moses.

Rabbinic Commentators on Ezekiel 20:25-26

(1) Rashi: I gave them decrees which are not good, I gave them into the hands of their evil inclination that they might stumble through their sins. (Note: Very similar idea to Paul in Romans 1:24).

(2) Maimonides in Hilchot Teshuvah (The Laws of Repentance): says that sometimes justice demands that God prevent someone from repenting of their sins so that their guilt would increase (as Rabbi Moshe Eisemann reasons in the Artscroll Tanakh Series: Yechezkel).

(3) David Kimhi (Radak, French commentator, early 13th century): because of their rebellion, Israel was scattered to nations where they were forced to live under decrees which violated Torah.

A good reading might be to assume a variation of Kimhi’s idea: God gave Israel over to Canaanite/Egyptian/Mesopotamian customs when they rebelled, exemplified by the sacrifice of children to Molech, which God could have prevented, but did not.

A Lexical Consideration

The NET Bible (free online at net.bible.org) clued me in to two things:

(1) The word used in vs.25 for statutes/decrees/laws uses the masculine plural ending (chukkim) instead of the far more common feminine plural ending (chukkot).

(2) They are not called “my statutes” (chukkotai) as in vs. 24 and many other places in the near context.

(3) These may be considered clues that the statutes in vs. 25 are not Torah statutes (the word is used in a number of contexts in the Bible for customs, as in the customs of the surrounding nations which lead Israel astray).

Considering the Internal Logic of Ezekiel Chapter 20

(1) The entire chapter is about Israel’s guilt for not following God’s statutes.

(2) In order for Israel to violate God’s statutes, they had to know them.

(3) It strains credibility to think Ezekiel could imagine God holding Israel accountable for two sets of contradictory statutes (e.g., “You should have rejected my false statutes in Deuteronomy and accepted the true ones in my Holiness Code.”).

(4) It fits better with the internal logic of the chapter to assume that the statutes and ordinances of vs. 25 are not from God directly, but indirectly.

Proposing a Different Reading
Moreover I swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the nations and disperse them through the countries, because they had not executed my ordinances, but had rejected my statutes and profaned my sabbaths, and their eyes were set on their fathers’ idols. Moreover I gave them [over to] statutes [of the surrounding peoples] that were not good and ordinances [such as the Moabite custom of passing children through the fire] by which they could not have life; and I defiled them through their very gifts in making them offer [since I did not stop them] by fire all their first-born, that I might horrify them; I did it that they might know that I am the Lord [since now in the exile they see the falsehood of the foreign customs].

New Modern Orthodox Prayerbook

I have recently bought a Koren Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and it is beautiful. Imagine my interest when I heard from MJTI’s Carl Kinbar that Koren has just released (as of May 15) a Modern Orthodox Siddur (Prayerbook) translated and commented upon by Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks. This is a way of bringing the prayerbook into our time without diluting it in any way. It is fresh translation and commentary for a newer generation. And, oh, the typography . . . mine is on order.

Watch a wonderful video by Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks here:
http://korensiddur.com/

Suddenly Sabra and Jews for Jesus

I just read an article in the Jerusalem Post and it brought up for me my former life and a whole host of issues about Jewish-Christian relations.

“Suddenly Sabra” is a recent American immigrant to Israel. She comes from the deep south (who knows, maybe Atlanta). She is liberal and in favor of a two-state solution in Israel and even says she does not believe Israel needs a Jewish majority to thrive and survive. (Note: Sabra is a nickname for native Israelis and is being used tongue-in-cheek as this young lady is an immigrant and not a Sabra).

She is someone who has a bad taste in her mouth from Christian Missions to the Jews and particularly Jews for Jesus.

Recently on a Friday afternoon, Suddenly Sabra, went out for humus with her boyfriend (husband?). This is a common ritual in Tel Aviv for the many ready to slow down for a Shabbat experience and enjoy their weekend. The humus restaurants are usually quite crowded. This week, they were crowded with a band of Jews for Jesus in their blue shirts.

Suddenly Sabra was mortified and then furious at the intrusion of these Jew-converting missionaries in “her” humus hangout. The intensity of her emotion came from a lifetime experience in the U.S. of dealing with such missionaries. Her grandfather had taught her to deal with them on the street with a simple comeback line: “Jesus was a good Jewish boy.”

What is the source of such hard feelings a liberal, young Jew feels for these Jews for Jesus missionaries? Is her animus justified or ridiculous?

While I never worked for Jews for Jesus, I did work for a Christian mission in Atlanta called Light of Messiah. I used to stand on street corners, such as International and Peachtree in downtown Atlanta, handing out pamphlets for God. I saw myself as a modern disciple of Paul the Apostle, preaching in the synagogues and market-places. I distributed hundreds of thousands of pamphlets and occasionally encountered angry Jews on the street. Angry Jews were a sign of blessed success.

My own feeling now is that Christian missions to the Jews are woefully misguided and much more effective at fundraising amongst naïve Christians than at introducing Messiah to his own Jewish people.

If that verdict sounds harsh, believe me, I feel it too. I know these people and they were part of my world for a decade. I know them as good parents and dedicated followers of Jesus who practice love and good deeds. I know them as salt of the earth, caring people. But there is something rotten at the core which spoils the whole, something which explains the ire of little Suddenly Sabra at her humus café in Tel Aviv.

Christian missions to the Jews fail on three accounts, in my opinion. First, their view of Jewish people is a very low one in spite of their professed love. Second, they offer a shallow half-gospel to their own Jewish people. Third, they play to the donors at the expense of their alleged people.

As I am writing this, I think of friends in these Christian missions for whom I have an abiding affection. There is much we agree about. I do think Messiah is so needed by our people, religious and non-religious, old and young. I think I am no less passionate about my desire to see Messiah known amongst his own people. But I do not believe the end justifies the means. Messiah must be made known as Messiah would have it and not through deliberate conflict which undermines the very message.

To my old friends in these Christian missions, I urge the consideration of these three critiques and a willingness to change. It could happen just as surely as our Jewish people could start calling on Yeshua as Messiah. It must happen or the Christian missions will go out of existence because their era in evangelical Christianity is closing as evangelical Christianity itself is changing and adapting.

First, I urge my friends in Christian missions to repent of their low view of Jewish people, history, culture, and religion. That low view is epitomized by a recent commenter here, himself a volunteer with a Christian mission, who criticized me for associating with “unregenerate rabbis.” This is a world view in which the majority of humanity walks around with a mark on their forehead: “unregenerate, worthless and dead until such time as they are turned on by God.” It is interesting that the key verse for this view, from Ephesians 2, was used not to demean humanity, but to praise the new life God gives. I do not believe, nor does Biblical theology support, the idea that apart from Messiah, humanity is worthless. Analogies like being dead and coming to life should not be pressed so far. When they begin to contradict the numerous Biblical examples of God working in humanity apart from Messiah, then such analogies are being abused.

This is not the place to demonstrate my point, I am going on too long already, but the “unregenerate” rabbis have the hand of God all over their work. Have many of the rabbis of tradition made sinful and erroneous statements? Of course and so do we “regenerate” people. But those who castigate the damnable “rabbis” generally know so little about them they couldn’t even write a couple of fortune cookies worth of profound rabbinical sayings.

Second, I urge my old friends in Christian missions to offer a whole gospel. The gospel is surely not, “God has a wonderful plan for your life, to take you to heaven when you die.” Evangelical Christian thinkers and movers (I might name Scot McKnight as a very promising example) are moving away from this shallow, revivalistic gospel in droves. The gospel is about the coming reign of God, the kingdom, and being part of God’s work now as we wait for its full arrival then. God does not call us out of the world into the smug fellowship of the “regenerate,” but into our own people to be Messiah’s representative among them. For Jews, this means being better Jews, Jews whose passion and meaning is heightened by association with the only Messiah and Lord, Yeshua.

Instead, Christian missions are calling on Jews everywhere to become dropouts, walking Gentiles with Jewish ancestry. There is no synthesis of Judaism and Christianity possible in the minds of these missionaries. It must be Christianity with Jewish identity reduced to a mere label. This is not New Testament ecclesiology. It not how James and the Jerusalem congregation would view things at all, nor Peter nor Paul. It is purely an invention of supersessionist Christian theology which the missions have not yet repented of. But, oh the joy of the day, when we perhaps will see these missions and their leaders repent and embrace a full gospel. May it be in our days, quickly and soon.

Finally, I urge my friends in Christian missions to make Jews and not Christian donors the center of their work. This charge is, I know, heinous and cruel of me to make. It was indeed my experience directly in Jewish missions life. I am ashamed of the things we did to look good for donors. I considered naming some of them, but as I participated in them for a time, I am too ashamed to be so bold.

Who cares if the money will dry up if missions start proclaiming a full gospel to a people viewed as God’s beloved instead of unregenerate nothings? Who cares if actual engagement with Jewish life is not good for fundraising? Is shameless huckstering of harmful methodologies to pander to Christian donors worth it?

The wonderful thing is that the Christian donors are wising up. The days when news of many pamphlets being handed out to New Yorkers who could care less about receiving them will thrill Christian donors are drawing to an end. The changing face of American churches has its ups and downs. One of the ups is that the parts that will survive involve a wiser anthropology and a fuller view of the gospel. It is past time for my missions friends to change.

And it is too late for the generation of Suddenly Sabra. Her trust has been so violated, it will not likely be restored. But perhaps Messiah himself is waiting for that next generation, the one to whom we can represent Messiah accurately, as a Jew within Judaism calling for regeneration within and not from without.

Here is the Jerusalem Post article that started this whole blog post:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1242212436150

Five Days Preceding Shavuot, 1st of Sivan Today

On the third new moon after the people of Israel had gone forth out of the land of Egypt, on that day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. And when they set out from Rephidim and came into the wilderness of Sinai, they encamped in the wilderness; and there Israel encamped before the mountain. –Exodus 19:1-2

Today is the first day of the third month, Sivan 1, 5769.

It is the anniversary of Israel arriving at the base of Mt. Sinai and the first of five days preceding Shavuot (Pentecost, arrives Thursday, May 28, at sunset).

These are five days of preparation for the festival and each has its own spiritual significance. You can prepare yourself and enjoy a little study to elevate your thought-life. In the free download I am offering below, just look for a section called “The Five Days Preceding Shavuot” which will engage your heart and mind for each of these five special days.

You can view online or print out the Shavuot Haggadah here:
http://mountolivepress.com/Mount_Olive_Press/Downloads.html

Free Shavuot Resource

I just posted a free download on mountolivepress.com, my effort at serving Messianic Judaism with much-needed literature at low-cost (and some for free).

What I have prepared is a Shavuot Haggadah. It is incomplete, but there is more than enough in here to add to your Shavuot celebration. This is a project that will become a booklet (God-willing) in time for Shavuot 2010. (Incidentally, if anyone has suggestions of pieces to submit that could belong in the Shavuot Haggadah, I will consider them).

The Haggadah is planned to have the following contents, more than half of which are completed:

Contents

Laws and Traditions.

On the Obligation to Rejoice at Festivals.

The Five Days Preceding Shavuot.

Readings for Shavuot from Jewish literature.

On the Obligation to Remember Sinai, Visually and Audibly.

A Shavuot Seder.

Akdamut (A Shavuot Prayer).

Musings on the Megillah: Ruth.

Spiritual Insights for Messianic Judaism.

Here is the link to get if (free) and print it for your own use or synagogue/havurah use:

http://mountolivepress.com/Mount_Olive_Press/Downloads.html

And here is a reading for Shavuot that impacted me deeply. I found this in Philip Goodman’s Shavuot Anthology:

S.B. Unsdorfer, The Yellow Star (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1961).

Strangely enough it was on the pyre of the camp, in that hellhole of Buchenwald, that I received my first injection of vitamin R—Religious Revival.

A few days before our scheduled departure for Czechoslovakia, the camp loudspeakers blared out an announcement that the Jewish chaplain to the U.S. forces would be conducting religious services in the evening to mark the festival of Shavuot—the anniversary of the receiving of the Law by the Jewish people on Mt. Sinai.

Having lost my handwritten diary, as well as my Haggadah, during the march from Nieder-Orschel to Buchenwald, this announcement came as a pleasant yet disturbing surprise.

Since my childhood I had always looked forward eagerly to the arrival of our wonderful and inspiring festivals, and particularly so in the tragic war years. But I wondered whether we weren’t being put to test too soon. Who among those thousands of physical and mental cripples would want to attend services and prayers so soon after their tragic experiences? The Festival of Receiving the Torah! Within a few weeks after liberation, religion, which had seemed to do so little for us, was now challenging us and our loyalties.

But as you cannot measure the physical strength of an oppressed people, so you cannot gauge its spiritual wealth and power.

On that evening, Buchenwald staged a fantastic demonstration of faith and loyalty to God. Thousands upon thousands of liberated Jews crowded into the specially vacated block for the first postwar religious service to be held on the soil of defeated Germany. The Mussulmanner, the cripples, the injured, and the weak came to demonstrate to the world that the last ounce of their strength, the last drop of their blood, and the last breath of their lives belonged to God, to Torah, and to the Jewish religion.

As Chaplain Herschel Schacter intoned the evening prayers, all the inmates in and outside the block stood in silence, reaccepting the Torah whose people, message, and purpose Hitler’s Germany had attempted to destroy. Jewish history repeated itself. Just as our forefathers who were liberated from Egypt accepted the Law in the desert, so did we, the liberated Jews of Buchenwald, reaccept the same Law in the concentration camps of Germany.

Who Let the Jews Out (of Messianic Judaism)?

I just read a thought-provoking essay on the history of Messianic Judaism and the current crisis of identity that has stalled so great a movement in God’s redemptive plan. In case anyone is wondering, Messianic Judaism has been in the doldrums for a decade and the passionately committed among us are praying for a breakout.

If reading that essay were not enough, the discussion that ensued from my poll on terminology yesterday also makes apparent the seriousness of the crisis. Who let the Jews out?

Maybe I should start by explaining, for those who don’t know what I am talking about and for those who do but want to know where I am coming from, what I mean about Messianic Judaism’s crisis. I will say something briefly about the history that has led us here (without stealing the thunder of the wonderful article that will soon be coming out in a publication I can’t name because I am a confidential adviser).

Messianic Judaism follows on a history of emergence of Jewish believers in Jesus seeking to reclaim their identity as Jews and as followers of Jesus at the same time. A simple summary of that history should note that in the 18th and 19th centuries, Christians of Jewish descent increased in numbers due to social issues in Europe and America. By the time of the Holocaust, the number of Jewish Christians was quite large, and I have heard estimates of 100,000 or more Jewish Christians killed among the 6,000,000 Jews.

In Europe and America the growing number of Jewish Christians were represented by missionary organizations to the Jews with quaint names. It is a fascinating history.

And out of that movement came some geniuses ahead of their time, none of them perfect and all short of what we would consider a Messianic Jewish agenda today. Men like Joseph Rabinowitz, Alfred Edersheim, Yechiel Lichtenstein, Yitzhak Lichtenstein, Paul Phillip Levertoff, and more come to mind.

The Christian missions to the Jews movement made an advance, in my opinion, when Hebrew Christians, as they were known, began to associate and come together for conferences. The idea of maintaining Jewish identity as followers of Jesus began to grow. At first this had little to do with Judaism. But it was a tremendous step forward.

In the 1970’s, some of these Hebrew Christians, especially under the influence of Martin Chernoff and Manny Brotman, developed Messianic Judaism in its incipient form. The advancement here was the idea of Jews actually practicing faith in Jesus in a Jewish way.

All of this historical summary is to make one big point: God, as I see it, was moving the hearts of Jews not only to follow Jesus as the long-promised Messiah, but also to identify as Jews and eventually to return to Judaism.

Increasingly, however, in the 1980’s and 1990’s, Messianic Judaism became a haven for non-Jews looking to find a restoration of a perceived early church or some alternative to a church that had grown soft on Biblical practice and strong on revivalist tradition.

In other words, something God had been doing amongst Jewish people became a predominantly Gentile movement.

We could stop here and ask a lot of questions:
–What are some good reasons for Gentiles to be involved in Messianic Judaism?
–What are some less than helpful reasons for Gentiles to be involved?
–How can Messianic Jewish synagogues encourage the right Gentiles to stay and the wrong ones to move on and form their own movements?

I certainly have opinions on those questions and have been asked by several to address them. I plan to, after a little more thought.

But the question driving this musing is in another direction: why aren’t Jews who follow Jesus turning up in Messianic synagogues in increasing numbers? As Monique commented in yesterday’s poll:

But what tends to be missing in those same congregations is a degree of authentic Jewish culture and loads of Jewish families.

I have opinions about this matter as well. Perhaps we can discuss this in the comments and I will throw in my thoughts as we discuss:
–Where have the Jews in Messianic Judaism gone?
–Where are Jews who have a commitment to Yeshua going?
–Why aren’t intermarried Jews and their children coming more?
–Does any of this relate to the general decline in religious practice in America?
–Does any of this reflect trends in the synagogue world?
–Does any of this reflect trends in the church world?
–Are there hopeful signs of a promising future for a Jewish Messianic Judaism?

Poll: Terminology and MJ

In distinguishing a Messianic Judaism which has a lot to do with Jewish people and Judaism from the wide variety of groups who also use the label “Messianic” and “Messianic Jewish” and “Messianic Congregation” and so on, it is always a struggle to find better terminology.

So here is a question and I hope many will weigh in: how about the term Jewish Messianic Judaism? I don’t mean this should replace the term Messianic Judaism, but how is Jewish Messianic Judaism as an occasional qualifier?

Shavuot and Mt. Sinai, Part 1

The Torah commands a positive mitzvah that we make known to our offspring from generation to generation all that transpired there [Mt. Sinai], both visually and audibly. There is a very great purpose to this mitzvah. –Maimonides

You will not exactly find a verse in the Bible which says, “On Shavuot (Pentecost), God appeared to Israel at Mt. Sinai and spoke the Ten Words.” The belief that God gave the Torah to Israel on Shavuot is partly based on the account in Exodus and partly based on tradition.

We read in Exodus that Israel arrived at the foot of Sinai “on the third new moon [rosh chodesh]” (Exod. 19:1).

This does not mean, though I used to read it this way myself, that the Israelites were approaching three months of journeying since they left Egypt when they came to Sinai. Rather, it means on the first day of the third month of the year (Sivan), Israel arrived at Sinai. The first month is called Aviv (now called Nisan) and is the month of Passover. You may recall Israel left Egypt on the 15th, or midway through Nisan. The second month, Iyyar, had passed, and now Israel arrived on the first day of Sivan. They had been journeying approximately 45 days.

Shavuot occurs on the 6th of Sivan, five days after Israel arrived at Sinai. On Sivan 1, the people set up camp. On Sivan 2, Moses went up to talk to God. On Sivan 3, 4, and 5, the people sanctified themselves in preparation. And on Sivan 6, Moses went up again and God spoke to all Israel from the mountain.

This timeline is speculative and far from exact. It makes a number of assumptions that cannot be proven. It is, nonetheless, a reasonable guess.

More importantly, it follows a principle, that the great divine acts of redemption occur on the appointed times which God said the sun, moon, and stars point to in Genesis 1:14. The revelation of redemption through sacrificial blood came on Passover and the revelation of God’s will in the Torah came on Shavuot. There is a rightness to the notion that God follows such a pattern.

The sages, in fact, debated the issue of the timing the Sinai revelation in the Talmud (Shabbat 86 a-b). The majority of the sages argued that Israel arrived on Monday at Sinai, which was Rosh Chodesh, and Torah was given on Saturday which was both Shabbat and Shavuot. R. Yosei argued against the majority, however, and said Israel arrived on Sunday, and that Torah was not given until Saturday, which was in this case the day after Shavuot. The issue is not resolved and Yosei’s minority opinion remains as an alternative.

With all of this speculation and uncertainty about the timing of Torah at Sinai in relation to Shavuot, one thing is certain: God commands us to remember and pass on the story of Mt. Sinai in detail and with devotion. In the Maimonides (Rambam) citation at the top, we read a worthy description of this mitzvah. Where did Judaism come up with the idea that telling and passing on the story of Mt. Sinai is a commandment? It comes from Deuteronomy 4:9-10 (among other places):

Only take heed, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children — how on the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb [Sinai], the Lord said to me, ‘Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children so.’

Let’s pass on the story, visually and audibly, as Israel received it at Sinai on a Shavuot long ago.

A New Blog: Yinon

Psalm 72:13 says, “May his name endure for ever, his fame continue as long as the sun!”

The word for “continue” is interesting. It is written in the Masoretic text as yinnin, but is read aloud as yinnon. This is an example of the the Qere/Kethib phenomenon in which scribes passed on what they considered mistakes in the written text (out of respect for their predecessors) but suggested an oral correction in the margin for those reading the text out loud.

Yinnon is a Niphal, which can be read as a passive or reflexive (grammar lesson is almost over, don’t worry). In this case, it might be read as a reflexive, “[may his] fame continue itself/increase itself for as long as the sun!”

Yinon is also the new blog of Rabbi Joshua and Monique, a young couple with a lot of great things to say. They are on the blogroll to the right and you can start following them at:

http://yinonblog.blogspot.com/

Scot McKnight on “Trickle-Down Scholarship”

A Christian theologian I follow closely (I read his blog 5 days a week and I’ve read a good number of his books) is Scot McKnight.

Professor McKnight (North Park University, Chicago) is well-known on the internet with one of the top blogs on theology and the Bible. He is well-known precisely for the reason I am writing this post: Scot McKnight believes that scholars should serve the community and not just write to one another.

The idea that scholars should write academic treatises o each other and that this high-level research will eventually trickle down into communities of faith is something McKnight calls “trickle-down scholarship.”

On a speaking tour in South Africa, McKnight’s presentations are being followed and reported on by Thomas Smith, a South African pastor and student of theology, of the blog soulgardeners.com. Here is a piece by Smith explaining McKnight’s talk about trickle-down scholarship:

What I do want to highlight is a soapbox Scot went unto. He blasted the trickle down theory of education. According to Scot discoveries made in academia are not getting to people in churches because academics are not writing for the church. They only publish journal articles suited for their own guild.

This in my opinion is what makes Scot’s ministry so accessible and useful – he takes complex ideas and explains it to normal people.

Scot challenged the group to engage in scholarship to the church.

You can read the whole blog post here.

So, here is my point. Christian, Jewish, and Messianic Jewish communities need accessible scholarship. We need scholars who write not only for the academy, but for people who cannot take 4 to 8 years off from their income-producing work to learn the lingo, history, and themes of Biblical, historical, and theological scholarship.

There are a precious few who do this. And it is something I very much believe in. I plan to practice it myself as I develop myself in the field of Hebrew Bible studies. I plan to point to and draw attention to other scholars who make themselves accessible.

There is a gap in the Christian and Jewish communities between high-level scholarship and popular worship and congregation. Here’s to Professor McKnight for raising the bar and calling for some relief from trickle-down scholarship.

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Want to check out Scot McKnight for yourself? Here are a few recommendations:

(1) Check out his blog on beliefnet: http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/

(2) If you buy just one McKnight book, get the Blue Parakeet, which is about how to interpret the Bible and offers some of the most sane advice I have ever heard.

(3) If you buy a second, get The Jesus Creed in which McKnight teaches Christians to adopt the Jewish custom of reciting the Shema as the tradition is expanded and modified by Jesus himself.

(4) Other great ones include A Community Called Atonement and Embracing Grace.

Israel’s Story in Revelation 11

You sometimes find stories in unexpected places. I have to say Revelation is apparently an unexpected place to find Israel for the majority of Christian scholars who study Revelation. They find the church in everything-Revelation in ways that should be a little embarrassing to them. The word bias is supposed to be something scholars seek to minimize. Yet as I read otherwise excellent works on Revelation by Christian evangelical and critical scholars, I find few, other than dispensationalists, who consider that the author may have been a Jew recasting the vision of Israel’s prophets to include the story of the nations. Instead, I find that nearly all see Revelation as the story of the nations replacing the story of Israel.

Revelation 11 is one of those places where you see Israel’s story turn up in an unexpected place.

The author, writing to his audience in Asia minor, definitely locates them in the center of the action. They are the ones who must persevere as events in history always follow the pattern of the end of the age. They did not know that 2,000 years later we would still be waiting for the eschaton. But no matter, since every age has its beast empires and persecutions and signs of hope as well. Revelation is, in my view, about the end of the age, but the patterns in it occur continuously throughout history as well.

So, in this very contemporary book aimed at giving its readers center stage in the redemption drama, enter again the story of Israel (in many places throughout the book). Revelation 11 is the turning point, the removal of the last barrier to the coming of the King. This is why we read in vs. 15:

The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ [Messiah].

“Has become” is the language of arrival, it has just become the kingdom. It has just arrived. And what immediately preceded the turning of this age to the age of the kingdom?

The answer is so simple and so related to other texts in the canon of scripture and yet so understated in the interpretations of the scholars.

What has just happened before the kingdom’s arrival is the repentance of Jerusalem:

a tenth of the city fell; seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.

What did Yeshua say? “You [Jerusalem] will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes’” (Matt. 23:39). What did Zechariah say?

I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of compassion and supplication, so that, when they look on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a first-born. . . . On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness. -Zechariah 12:10; 13:1

So, I say we see Israel’s story in Revelation 11. The central narrative thread of the Bible is the promise to Abraham’s descendants to be a blessing to the whole world. The renewal of Israel is the turning point. And we should be more surprised if the Jewish author or Revelation denied this than if he affirmed it.

Nonetheless, I must contrast two ways of seeing the story of Revelation 11. There is the way of most Christian scholarship and there is the way of Israel’s story.

The Story of Revelation 11 in Much Contemporary Scholarship
John is told to measure the temple, a figure for the church [people of God].
The inner courts [the faithful in the church] will be protected while the outer courts [the compromisers] will be trampled on by Gentiles.
Two witnesses [figures for the witnessing church] will call for repentance, but the world will mock them.
God will resurrect the witnesses [revive his church] and the world will see.
The wicked city [every city] will mock, and yet a change will happen when many see the church revived.
Some [in every city] will give glory to God after judgments and the revival of the church.
The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our God and Messiah.

The Story of Revelation 11 as Israel’s Familiar Story
The temple [literal, in Jerusalem] is measured as in Ezekiel and Zechariah.
Two witnesses [Elijah] come before Messiah [just as tradition and Malachi say it will happen].
Elijah [two witnesses] is despised at first, just as is the pattern in Israel’s history.
Jerusalem [the city] is denounced as being like Sodom and Egypt [just as many times before in the prophets].
After many signs, the one that finally begins to persuade is bodily resurrection [the traditional Jewish hope for the Age to Come].
An earthquake [a standard prophetic judgment on Jerusalem] is the final persuader for Jerusalem to give God glory at last.
With Jerusalem chastened and renewed, the last barrier to Messiah’s kingdom is removed.
The heavens prepare for the descent of the King.

Shavuot and a Famous Prayer

If you have ever read bad religious poetry, it makes you appreciate all the more the relative handful of exquisite verses that can draw us in and transport us to paradise. At Shavuot we find one of those rare hymns which causes us to delight in God.

The Akdamut (Ashkenazi Jews say Akdamus) is an Aramaic poem written in the eleventh century by Meir ben Isaac Nehorai, a German cantor.

As is typical in some Biblical poetry, the Akdamut makes use of literary features involving letter sequences. In the first half, the lines begin with letters in order of the Hebrew (Aramaic) alphabet. In the second half, lines begin with the letters spelling the name of the author. Even more interesting, each line ends with a suffix of two Hebrew letters: tav and aleph, the last and the first letters of the alphabet. The suffix symbolizes the end and the beginning, a recurring cycle, which is about the endless cycle of Torah study which is the delight of Jews everywhere.

The original intention of the prayer was for it to be read just before the scripture portion about Mt. Sinai and the giving of the commandments during the Shavuot morning service. Some congregations have moved the prayer until after the Torah service, though others continue the older tradition.

The prayer moves from creation’s beauty reflecting God’s glory to a description of the wonders of the World to Come and to the angelic beings praising God and his chosen nation studying the perfect words of Torah.

The most famous stanza of the Akdamut is worthy by itself as a great poem and great prayer:

Were the sky a parchment made
A quill each reed, twig and blade
Could we with ink the oceans fill,
Were every man a scribe of skill,
The marvelous story
Of God’s great glory
Would still remain untold;
For he, Most High,
The earth and sky
Created alone of old.
–Translated by Joseph Marcus, from the 1946 Rabbinical Assembly Sabbath and Holiday Prayerbook

You can read the entire Akdamut online here.

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