Working from several of my previous essays, I want to try to encourage Judaism’s practitioners to move beyond the static nature of their religion to embrace our rather obvious shared Messiah or Mashiach, Jesus Christ. From its beginnings, Christians have remained puzzled, resentful and, unfortunately, sometimes assaultive toward Jews for not “making the connection,” but it was and is not so simple for them, who have been indoctrinated from the origins of Judaism to reject anyone who does not meet the requirements as outlined in their faith for such a divine presence. Thus, Judaism has stagnated over nearly 2,000 years, despite the Mishnah and Talmud, which barely consider Jesus (Yeshua) at all, combined with the nay-saying about Him by Maimonides, their well-respected 12th Century rabbi. As I have mentioned before, too-few Jews have even read the New Testament, despite its being available (Jerome’s Vulgate Bible, in Latin) since the 4th Century. Aside from my earlier brief review of the history of Judaism, I want to examine both its social psychology as well as what has to occur within this realm for the acceptance of Jesus to be better received, since it is not mere religion that holds them back. Having looked at Messianic Judaism as a recent development in this vein, I am concerned that this “sect” will not grow fast enough over time to persuade a sufficient number of Jews to accept Jesus, so that they will remain a spiritually languishing people perpetually searching for the true purpose of their particular faith. In other words, I almost feel sorry for them for whom they are missing. While Jeremiah called his brethren “stupid children” (4:22) for their tendency to engage in idol worship, this “stupidity” runs deeper than mere name-calling will fix. As Freud often said, we must deal with Jews’ resistance to even look beyond what they know, which has become mere religion for its own sake. There was and is too strong a pagan tendency in Judaism, which gets in the way of seeking a Messiah more seriously. If Christians are grafted to the Jews’ olive tree, can Jews eventually become grafted onto our Mashiach, seemingly before the end of time? It is true that many Christians simply do not know what to do with Jews, despite God’s intent for us all to “swim in His river.” Christian pilgrims visit Israel every year, to the extent that Jerusalem depends on tourist revenue, though such money “has not talked enough.” American evangelicals might mutter “Can’t they be saved,” to which I answer, still not yet. Underneath Christian indifference to Jews can easily found the question: “What will it take?”
Every religion tries to deal with this same overarching central “problem”: what to do about God’s increate invisibility, as we all know that we will likely never see Him, even in Heaven. His famous white light, which ushers us toward His divine majesty in a realm beyond the simpler ease of our many speculative theologies and comparatively comical creeds and rituals, may be as close as we ever get from this side of the too-rarely bridgeable chasm between the human and the divine. Judaism, like any other religion, was developed by human beings, with our unmatched potential to guess at least half-wrongly about what God is like and how He might deal with us. Jews do know they were singularly chosen by God because He saw in them a surprising capacity to become monotheistically devoted to Him out of a cultural panoply of polytheistic gods, most of whom were notoriously fickle and hard to please for the simplest of things. God’s covenant with Abraham and Moses, as described in the Tanakh, is a sometimes heroic story suggesting that they indeed were capable of remaining faithful to an unseen and untouchable being, despite their waywardness and corruption. For me, that is the greatest enduring strength of Judaism: that God did and does brand them as His chosen people for the purpose of that certain day granting them the brash favor of a humanly-lived Mashiach as His representative among us, and that He will not abandon them despite their many centuries of “stiff-necked” rebellion, idol worship and nearly incorrigible ability to misunderstand Him, having been gifted the only man-god ever born: Jesus Christ.
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First, a bit different version of the history of Judaism than I described in a previous essay. The Jewish customs and rituals which I will examine shortly were developed over a long span of time to coax forth their single-minded spiritual posture of devotion unto God with the intent of trying to pull Him inside them to improve their moral lives, which Freud called introjection. This occurs when a person(s) or idea(s) are internalized to such a refined degree that our behavior readily reflects such influence(s). Culture itself is readily introjected to form social psychology, which, in Judaism, has generally taken the form of us verses them. Jews believe that God belongs to them, and the rest of us “borrow” Him for our own paler usage, because they are His chosen people. Most of us are rudimentarily familiar with basic Jewish rituals and practices: the Tabernacle in the desert and the later two Temples, animal sacrifices, dietary laws restricting what can be eaten, encouragement to almost obsessively (re-)read the Tanakh, and their three major annual festivals: Passover (Pesach), Pentecost (Shavuot) and the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot). All of this forms a “spiritual bubble” in which Jews live to devote themselves to God through practicing their faith in this manner, and such, for too many Jews, this is enough. If they were asked about something like “the white light of Heaven,” they would perhaps know of it, but it does not figure into their way-of-being. Judaism is a self-referential, even solipsistic system of beliefs and practices which remains stubbornly insular and so nearly indestructible. It preserves itself through a time-honored tradition, which only rarely gets challenged or disturbed, as when Jesus bristled at its limitations and was later harshly disparaged for doing so. The Temple served as a sort of religious clearing-house for all things Jewish, with its pilgrimages, baths for ritual purity and gold-plated milieu. The first Temple was built by Solomon in the 10th Century BCE, the second after the end of the Babylonian Exile in the 6th Century BCE. No attempt has been made to reconstruct a third Temple since it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, and later I will answer why. Note that the Mishnah and Talmud, as detailed descriptions of the Jewish way of life, can not be taken from them. Judaism, after the Temples were destroyed, became a “book religion,” with all the rigidities and disdain this implies.
Second, what these rituals and practices in Judaism mean from an outsider’s perspective, and how they continue to hold the Jews back from God. Jeremiah and other Old Testament prophets lamented and shamed their brethren over indulging in idol worship, even while Moses spent forty days on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments from God. In fairness, they had been wandering in the desert for a long time, and could not have known what he was bringing them from the mountaintop. As I have discussed Jewish idol worship before, I will only say here that this was a necessary stepping-stone on their journey toward a working monotheism, which took centuries to be released into practice, since no one sees God. It is hard to maintain religious devotion on a daily or yearly basis without some tangible reward, so I do not fault them so much for their entrenched idol worship. The cute little statues, such as for Baal, do look a bit silly, though. The Temple itself became a sort of stone-and-gold idol where certain things predictably happened which illustrated what Judaism thought God was doing in their favor. In the Temple’s Holy of Holies, its innermost sanctuary, was the Ark of the Covenant, made from acacia wood and plated in gold. Only the high priest saw the Ark once a year, hence, when it was lost or destroyed after the second Temple was ruined in 586 BCE, the Jewish populace had never seen it, yet God “lived there.” The Ark was a beautifully-crafted idol which had previously been carried into battle and was deemed to have special powers, and yet, when it was gone, God had not abandoned the Jewish people. Their dietary laws serve the function of pantheistic infusion of at least religion into inanimate foods to suggest that what we do or don’t eat positively or adversely affects our spirituality, rather than merely sustains us biologically. When I eat pork or lobster, then not only have I sinned, but I also risk being cursed by God for blatantly disobeying Jewish Law for my own pleasure. This reminds us of Catholic transubstantiation during the Eucharist in Mass, when bread and wine supposedly become the literal body and blood of Jesus, although He never intended such a concretized interpretation to His disciples before being crucified. Circumcision, a covenant practice in Judaism, provides no real spiritual blessings for millions of male Christians. When I said earlier that Judaism can be overly pagan, this is what I mean. God is neither food or idols, He is not creeds or the Law, as He is the Creator of the universe. Let us always know the difference.
Third, there is psychological identity: one of the most important, steadfast qualities of our human functioning. Identity is both personal and familial as well as social and national. It cohesively binds us to our loved ones, our neighbors and countrymen, our sports teams, our politics and our religion (especially atheism, the most parasitic religion). Whether religious or not, Jews are an ethnic group with a shared cultural history dating back at least 3,500 years, along with familial, social and religious customs within a smaller geographical region. There are some 16-18 million Jews in our world of over eight billion people, and most of them live either in Israel or the United States. The history of their being persecuted by various groups is well-known, most egregiously by Christians, in terms of the sheer number of Jewish lives lost. Their hyper-sensitivity to insult and potential threats is also well-known, and, while understandable, cuts both ways. It is both protective of Jewish history and culture, but tends too often to be intolerant of new ideas out of their fear of again being subjugated by “foreigners,” especially Gentiles. Traditional Jews attack their Messianic brethren in Israel for the nauseating proposition that Jesus is indeed their shared Mashiach, and have taken legal action to try to prevent the Messianic message from being heard there. How do we know that the Pharisees wanted to kill Jesus as described in the Gospels? Because traditional Jews today coerce their own ethnic brethren not to break ranks with them, as families in Israel disown their grown children for becoming believers in Jesus Christ. It is again the anguished cry of “Blasphemy!” My problem as a Gentile outsider with all of this is that it has little to do with God, as He cares about our religious preferences only so much—mostly that we believe in Him, and do His work in this world. The thorny history of Jewish persecution can not be used as a perpetual excuse to avoid considering the obvious: that Jesus is the son of God. Judaism has, for 2,000 years, really travelled nowhere in any significant direction. It has wandered in circles for well longer than for forty years in the desert, and so strangely, Jesus has watched His fellow Jews do this wandering while He stands just out of sight, vexing and sighing, every day. Any Second Coming awaits their devoted participation with Him—-not just studying the Tanakh, engaging in religious practices or assuring continued orthodoxy. Jews have always belonged to Him since the days of miracles in Galilee and Jerusalem, and when Mary Magdalene found Him alive outside the tomb. It is God whom they must seek, and not merely themselves.
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If not the ancient Temples or the Ark of the Covenant, if not the dietary laws or animal sacrifices, the annual festivals or other rituals of Jewish life, then what of Judaism is left that maintains a real covenant with God? The answer lies in the difference between what and whom, between what can be eaten or read against who could be witnessed as surely more divine than any of the rest of us. It is the difference between a baby’s pacifier and their mother, between an object and a person: that is the answer to this languishing Jewish dilemma as to the real purpose of their religion. Jews are very proficient at maintaining a religion, but any sense of the divine realm was and is only rarely considered, which is true of most religions. Christianity itself has also struggled with this, but at least we have a diviner figure upon whom to spiritually gaze. Catholicism borrowed Judaism’s love of endless arguing about dogmas and heresies, which to a great degree, tainted its usefulness after the Council of Nicaea in the early 4th Century. Constantine thought God and Jesus could be decided upon by a group of several hundred clergymen, and so the matter would finally be settled after two hundred years of bickering amongst theologians. He was wrong, since it was and is never settled well enough for our collective liking. Messianic Judaism is now a heresy in Israel, though it probably will not be banished like so many dismissed Christian sects. So what would it take for more if not most Jews in Israel and America to accept Jesus as their Mashiach?
What verses whom. Religion verses spirituality, which sounds a bit strange, since doesn’t religion lead to spirituality? Not necessarily. In American polling on religion, the current slogan tends to be “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” I take this to mean such people have given up on church, but still believe in God, which, if true, would include me. Remember I mentioned the Freudian concept of therapeutic resistance, which is what it sounds like: an entrenched defensiveness about the patient’s personal situation and why they might fear changing. We are all resistant about things in one way or another. I am not especially keen to learn how to use a smart phone, for example. I don’t think we start with lending Scripture to people who are hesitant or resistant to hearing about Jesus. I myself don’t like evangelicals spouting “Bible stuff” to me when I pass by them in public, as it is annoyingly presumptuous. We start with the resistible question: “What do you know about Jesus?” and then listen for how negative their reaction(s) are. The initial goal would be for traditional Jews to eventually say “I don’t know much about Him,” which, curiously, would be the best answer, because “I don’t know” can become “I am surprised that He is not only whom I had heard about,” implying animosity. The issue of what verses whom is broached as can traditional Jews not exactly set aside their bias against Jesus (no, certainly not initially), but can they even entertain any discussion at all that is not dismissively punitive? The social psychology of Judaism tends to be to dismiss what falls outside common knowledge and practice, and some aspects of cult psychology are present. Telling such Jews to go home and read the Gospels would likely be asking too much, too soon. They will say He does not matter—so what would matter to them?
We could ask them “What is the purpose of Judaism for God?” They would recite the Shema, reflecting the historic Jewish covenant with God from Mount Sinai, into which we slip a slight complication: “Jesus is God’s human reflection of the Shema’s covenant, He is part of the oneness of God for the Jews.” They would vigorously shake their heads, to which we answer “Did not Jesus perform miracles, and how would He do so without authority from God.” The wonderful line from John 9:32, out of the mouths of the Pharisees, then gets quoted: “If this man were not from God, He could not do anything.” We have to nudge them toward the outskirts of Judaism to say “What you have is not enough, it is not spiritual enough, and knows too little about the divine realm.” We ask them about who God is, saying “Try to answer the question without merely referring to the tenets of Judaism.” Jesus constantly nudges His disciples and fellow Jews to the edges of what they know, and then says, in effect, “Keep going.” Most Jews will have little tolerance for all of this, and it is best not to waste time with unreceptive people. I frankly don’t know that such “conversion” unto Jesus is even possible in Israel on a large scale within, say, twenty years, since their social psychology is so ingrained. Making the Gospels out to be a palatable source of spiritual curiosity could help, such as through YouTube videos. The least familiar option would be to expose traditional Jews to the Shroud of Turin (about which they generally know little), but this requires specialized knowledge, and may not be easily understood.
In regard to what scholars have called replacement theology or supersessionism, Jesus offers no real theology to replace the rituals and practices of Judaism, but by “fulfilling the Law,” He transcends its rigid limitations through providing Himself as a direct linkage to God to straddle the chasm between the human and the divine. He is the who eclipsing the what to gift us Himself as the One who gets baptized in the Jordan River to gain divine status for our benefit. We can tell recalcitrant Jews that He is the path their religion takes to be offered any real sense of what God is all about, that any religion must be subservient to the divine realm, since we did not create ourselves. To use the familiar analogy, Christianity is the snake shedding the skin of limitations Judaism has shackled itself with to be any less dogmatically burdened with the what over the whom, though it is far from perfect. As I write this, the Methodist church is likely going to splinter over the issue of homosexuality and same-sex marriage, as though any church can actually affect anyone’s sexual orientation. Protestants gave up five of the seven Catholic sacraments, but how much better are we for doing so? No religion, by itself, is ever enough, since, in our case, we can “see” the elephant we are all talking about amongst ourselves, yet it remains invisible.
John’s Gospel (which, for me, is the greatest of all Scripture) was written late in the 1st Century CE against the backdrop of the first Jewish Christians being banished from synagogues for accepting Jesus Christ as their Mashiach. John was the only disciple still alive, but once he was gone, the theological arguments would ensue because there were no more witnesses to Jesus’ ministry, and so it has been since then. It was really theology that nearly “replaced” Jesus, not Christianity replacing Judaism. His new covenant melded into the old one as a continuous movement toward God in predicting the loss of the second Temple, and with it the animal sacrifices that would never return. The whom had finally replaced the what—-hence, no third Temple. The schism between Judaism and early Christianity was inevitable for this same reason: there was no Jesus in traditional Judaism, so, for the Christians, it was not enough. The Bible was never enough, and no religion is ever enough. Only Jesus was humanly enough, and only our ever-invisible God is enough. All the books and all the dogmas are left behind should we reach Heaven, and there we shall be blessed with our Lord, who bathes everyone in radiant love—Jews and Gentiles—at last.
May 2022
Every Day Easter 