Happy Rosh HaShanah!

This is the beginning of the days of awe in the Jewish calendar ending with one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur. These are days of introspection, repentance and reconciliation with God and man. Check out this link for more information!

Have to get this off my chest:

Since I was a Jewish Studies major and am now getting my masters in Hebrew, the first question out of every Christian (a gross generalization, sorry) I meet is, "What do you think about what's going on in Israel?" The frequency of this question has obviously increased over the past month, and there is a direct correlation to my frustration and the frequency of these questions.

Why you ask? Because I think Israel really screwed up on this one. Are the hundreds of civilians that have been killed in the bombings on both sides really worth the lives of the two soldiers taken by Hezbolah? I don't think so. It also doesn't help that I'm a pacifist and find any form of violence appalling. So then I inevitably get into a debate about violence and pacifism and the teachings of Jesus, defending so called "just wars," which I don't think exist.

Then the conversation invariably (unless of course I manage to duck out before it gets that far) goes to an end times/rapture/dispensation argument. I have to point out that prophecy doesn't really foretell the future, as much as warn about likely scenarios. That apocalyptic literature really has nothing to do with our times as much as it has to do with the political maneuvering of the time of the writer. It usually comes out that I don't believe in the rapture, that humanity is supposed to build the kingdom of God and we've done a piss poor job of it because we keep responding to violence with violence. If people would just understand that violence does nothing other than beget more violence, and that turning the other cheek and loving our enemies could have amazing political implications the world would be amazing.

Really, that teaching is one of the main reasons I'm a Christian. Out of all of the monotheistic religions, Christianity is the only one that (at least originally) teaches non-violence at all costs. It doesn't teach retaliation, it doesn't teach justification of war via spiritual means. Instead, Jesus teaches to love your enemies, to bless those who curse you and not drop bombs on them.

A Jewish Reading of Scripture

I'm reading the book Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition by Rabbi Steven Greenberg. Rabbi Greenberg is an Orthodox Rabbi and he's also openly gay (he came out many years after his ordination and the first chapter is his story of dealing with the fact that he's gay). Because he's Orthodox he feels compelled to read the Torah as the word of God; because he's gay he has a problem dealing with those verses that condemn male homosexuality. If you're interested in a way of reading the text that both honors it and moves it beyond it's probable original intent this is a great book. But that's not what I'm writing about.

He describes the Rabbinic view of scripture very succinctly, and the way they handle the Torah has always been something that I have greatly admired. So here is his description of Torah from a Jewish point of view:

"While [Judaism] refused to relegate scriptural passages into a distant and irrelevant past, it also refused to read the Torah as if it meant and has always meant only one thing. The Torah is black fire upon white fire, which bears specific and different meanings depending on the living-reading-observing community. In the first century the schools of Hillel and Shammai differed greatly on many issues and often had competely opposing interpretations. The rabbis claimed that 'both these and those are the words of the living God' (Babylonian Talmud Eruvin 13b). If two opposing understandings of Scripture can both be the word of God, there must be no final reading of any verse. All verses in the Torah are pregnant with multiple meanings, some on the surface, others more deeply hidden, and some yet unborn.

"Traditional reading demands that one approach the verses in Leviticaus as covenantal duty. That we ought to be committed in advance of our reading to uphold the verses in question is not to say that we know in advance what they actually forbid or require us to do. Even though they may have meant something particular in the past, they also speak today. As the psalmist teaches, the Torah is given 'today--if you will hearken to his voice' (Ps 95.7).

"Those unfamiliar with Jewish reading of Scripture may find the barage of questions...unusual. Questions are a hallmark of Jewish spirituality. They are a great cultural paradox in that they both destabilize and secure social norms. Questions tend to spread power around; they are a democratizing force. Comfort with questions conveys a fundamental trust in the good sense of people...

"It is for this reason that God loves it when we ask why. We celebrate challenging the Torah to make sense and above all to be a defensible expression of divine goodness. When we ask good questions, the Torah is given anew on Sinai at that very moment."

I Love Liturgy!

I feel like I should kinda' balance out the previous post on modern worship with how I feel about liturgy. Somehow in my mind liturgy is a seperate entity from hymns and what not, and I love liturgy, especially Jewish liturgy. There's just something about praying these thousand year old prayers, rich in theology and sincerity with only the hundred or so voices, no instruments. Everytime that I have gone to a synagogue, it has been hard to not get emotional at the ancient melodies, prayers and motions.

I can't really explain it concretely. I've tried several times, but there's something that feels.....right? assuring? comforting? ( None of those are quite it, but will have to do) about seeing and being apart of a room full of people, praising God in one of the oldest living languages that is spiritually overwhelming for me.

There's a time in these liturgies for everything: praising God, remembering commandments, challenging God on the state of affairs here on earth, asking for forgiveness, good health and peace. One of the experiences that most impacted me was hearing mourners say the Kadish (a special prayer for those in mourning). The synagogue silent but for a few voices praying. Not asking for anything but peace and still praising God. You can hear the pain in their voices, the melody the raw openness of it all still gets to me now thinking about it.

As much as I love modern worship music, there is something about liturgy. Honestly, I don't think I'll ever really come back to liking the hymns I grew up with. They bring back too many horrid memories...but liturgy (which I never experienced until I was an adult) I love. I pray different liturgical prayers throughout the day. I love the prayers in the Orthodox Jewish Siddur. I even steal some of the words for my own music.

So I guess maybe the best of both worlds for me would be a liturgical prayer set to rock music. Or maybe a cantor that raps . . . naaah, that's going too far.

Book Recomendations I

*ahem* A confession here....I....uh....I don't have a TV. Really. The only way I watch anything is when it becomes available on DVD at the library, and then I can watch it on my computer. Needless to say this allows me some mad amount of reading time, and since other people do movie/tv reviews and I can't necessarily do that, I thought I would give some recomendations and reviews on books that I have been reading lately. Today's topic Jewish understanding of the Hebrew Bible. So viola:

Understanding Genesis & Exploring Exodus
by Nahum M. Sarna

I loved both of these books and his other popular book On the Book of Psalms. These two however explain in detail the cosmology of the ancient world, ancient texts of the Middle East that influenced many of the stories in these books and examines them in light of what we have received in the Bible. The most enlightening part is the differences between the Biblical stories and the other various texts and Sarna is quick to point them out, and expound on them. One warning, he was an ordained Rabbi but he was also a keen academic, teaching at the Jewish Theological Seminary and eventually retiring from Brandies University where his son now teaches. All that means is that sometimes, this book gets real heavy, and you have to read and re-read sections just to understand what he's saying. But they are definately worth the effort.

The Prophets
by Abraham Joshua Heschel

If you can slog your way through the first portion, go for it. Heschel goes through each of the literary prophets and gives a sort of commentary on what makes them and the prophets in general tick. Very interesting, but the best section is the second half. And you don't need to read the first part to understand it, so skip it if you want! In the second half Heschel deals with the idea of an emotional god. That is one who creates, cares for His creation and is concerned with what goes on. He calls this characteristic Pathos (ala Greek) and shows how God can only be truly perfect with this trait and the more popular "Stoic" God (unchanging, unconcerned, kinda like a bully at best) is certainly less. It will seriously challenge your perception of God in the prophetic writings. He also is an academic and Rabbi, but easier to read than Sarna. Anything by Heschel is usually worth the effort, I also highly recomend The Sabbath, Man's Quest for God and God in Search of Man.

Coming Out

For some reason, after being an incognito goy (non-Jew) in the Jewish Studies department at OSU it has come out: I’M NOT JEWISH!! I'm out of my own special closet of one, and the questions are flying. Why is a goy majoring in Jewish Studies? It wasn't that I was trying to hide being goy, but it just never came up. I've been operating a "don't ask don't tell policy."

The most recent exposure of being a goy came in my Hebrew class today. People were talking about going to synagogue and other fun stuff, and I admitted that I hadn't been to a synagogue in a while. (Which is true, because I have been to a couple of synagogues, just not in a while.) So one of the older students in the class asks me,

"What's a good little Jewish boy like you not going to Temple for?"

"I'm not a good little Jewish boy, I'm a good goy boy."

"You're a goy boy!?! I thought you were Jewish! Then what's a good goy boy like you studying Judaism so much?"

In all honesty it's a bit of a long story, and maybe later on I'll talk about it some more. But let me give the quickie sound bite answer.

In a previous post I listed some assumptions that I make in my religious writings. Number 4 (Judaism is at the heart of the New Testament) is probably the most important. The easiest way to describe it is a matter of perspective. It seems to me that the right perspective is firmly planted in the Hebrew Bible (and therefore the mindset of those who wrote it and were interpreting those scriptures in the first century AD) looking into the writings of the New Testament and the newly forming Jewish sect called the Nazarenes (soon to be known as Christianity). In order to get that perspective I have to be so deeply steeped in that community and mindset that it’s second nature.

Today, it seems that Christianity is starting to move in that direction, but everything I’ve seen has been “Judaism-lite:”

“Isn’t this cool? Jesus was, like, a Jew!”

“Ohmygod! Let’s all go get yarmulkes and prayer shawls with the Prayer of Jabez embroidered it!”

“That is totally cool!”

(The Prayer of Jabez on a prayer shawl is uber tacky and in my oppinion bordering on the profane. By the way, I did see said prayer shawl on sale in a Christian book catalog sent to me recently.) Anyway, some of the implications of a Jewish perspective on the New Testament take you in quite a different turn than much of what Christianity has presently traveled because much of Christian theology has been based on Greek thought and philosophy. For those of you on the edge of your seat, I’ll talk about some of those at a different time.

So that’s it, I’m out! I’ve been exposed to all my Jewish friends! Ahhhh, you know I feel better now. Do you think they have goy bars somewhere? Do you think they serve lox and bagels?