1000 Verses – a project of Judaism Resources

To family and friends,
It seems that we are in a kind of “day of reckoning”: right now, with people making firm decisions about their lives and lifestyles, and then pronouncing such changes and affirmations openly. I feel it is time for me to make a proclamation myself and clear the air, lest rumors fly and inaccuracies occur in the speculative reporting of the situation.
Anyone who knows me also knows I am a pretty religious person. Make no mistake, things of a spiritual nature have always been important to me, as well as the idea of “doing the right thing” whenever I could, according to the knowledge I had at the time. This has been a struggle for me, since all people want to be happy, myself being no exception. However, there has always been a tension in my soul between pursuing happiness and pursuing meaning. One does not always lead to, or bring about, the other. Unfortunately, I have also projected such a paradigm onto others, including my children. I cannot really apologize for that, being as how I still believe that meaning in life is should always be pursued even at the cost of happiness, which I believe is fleeting and dependent upon circumstances. Happiness can be stolen from you,but meaning never can be.
However, the pursuit of meaning and truth is a journey that requires taking different paths, viewing things from various perspectives and at times exposing oneself to rejection and pain. I do apologize for putting my family and friends through any pain they may have suffered as a result of my pursuit of meaning and truth. On the other hand, I also hope that my children , family and friends have enjoyed a deeper life experience on some level as a result of the same.
The pursuit of meaning and truth has no end, and is always in motion. It often means “trading-in” one paradigm, or mindset, for another. These trade-offs can sometimes demand not only a change of thought, but a change in lifestyle that accompanies that change of thought, if one is to be consistent. However, I have also learned that compromise is not always bad, and that oftentimes compromise is the wiser path. Obviously there are those who would vehemently disagree.

In 1999, during a time of personal distress over my circumstances. I made a decision to let God take my life and mold it into whatever He thought best. This decision led to convictions about many things. The first of which was to surrender completely to God. I decided to persue my Christian faith in an uncompromising way and to open my heart to anything God wanted to show me. It was at this point that questions came to mind:

1- Why do people pray to Jesus if Jesus said to pray to the Father and not to him?
2- Why don’t Jews, who had the Law,the Prophets and a rich history of deep spiritual persuit of truth accept Jesus?

I had actually made a phone call to a local synagogue in order to ask a rabbi why he did not accept Jesus. At this point I had no information on the matter being as how the “Information Age”, i.e., the Internet, had not yet made it to my household. The rabbi was not available at the time, so I decided to try at a later date.

I was able to find an old friend from my “Christian rock band” days, ________,who was now a pastor, and made an appointment to discuss these things with him. His answer was that Jesus was not what the Jews expected in a Messiah:
1- A warrior to destroy the Romans, so they could dominate the world
3- The egotistical Jewish leadership saw Jesus as a “threat to their power”
These seemed to satisfy my curiosity for a while. I also asked Pastor _____ why people pray to Jesus when Jesus said to pray to God. Of course the answer was that Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit were all the same God, and to pray to any one of them was to pray to them all. It still made no sense, but I pursued my Christianity with great zeal nonetheless. As most of you know, I later became a Seventh-Day Adventist due to my conviction that God’s laws could never be changed, since God himself could never change. But in the spirit of transperancy I must add that SDA was not my first choice.
All of my life I have had a strong and inexplicable pull toward Israel and the Jewish people. Prior to attending the Adventist Church I investigated “Messianic Judaism”, that is, a form of Judiasm that was also Christian. However, the congregations were few and far between, and the ones I found were focused more on political Zionism than God. I had no problem with Zionism ( centering on Israel as a nation), but I was hungry for God and his truth. I has already begun keeping the Shabbat ( Sabbath), adopted a kosher diet and taught my children accordingly.

I joined the Adventist Church, took and Adventist wife and later took a job at a Seventh-day Adventist high school in Oklahoma. During this time, I continued my pursuit of truth regarding my very first question as a “born-again Christian”: Why do people pray to Jesus when Jesus said to pray to the Father? Christianity was very “Christ-centered”, but Jesus seemed more “God-centered”, at least in the Synoptic Gospels. I got many different answers for this, bit none satisfied that nagging curiosity that goaded my conscience and my intellect.

I continued my research for the next couple of years in earnest to uncover this odd mystery . Much to my surprise, I discovered that the SDA Church was nontrinitarian for its first 90 years, and that the trinity was only made an official doctrine in 1980! I then wrote a piece using my over 1000 pages of gleaned study notes, which resulted in the manuscript called “The Trinity Chronicles”. This MS made its way around the globe, was translated into several slavic languages, and eventually found its way to the leadership of the SDA denomination. Calls were made by the General Conference to the school I was on staff at and my contract was not renewed for the following year.

I then began to investigate my original question: why do Jews not accept Jesus as messiah?
This question took me to a few different rabbis, all of whom had a different story than the standard Christian response. The rabbis took me through the Jewish Bible, called Tanakh, which includes what Christians call “the Old Testament”. They showed me that, in fact, there was an entire litany of scriptural requirements spelled out plainly in the Bible which must be met for any messianic claimant; events that would accompany his arrival into the world ( this is only a partial list):

1- The Messiah is not God or a divine being, but a mere mortal, and will not be worshiped in any way
2- He will be of the tribe of Judah and tribal affiliation comes through the father’s bloodlines
3- The Third Temple will be rebuilt and fully functional, including Levitical priests
4- Universal knowledge of God, nobody will have to preach anything to anyone
5- The Jewish Bible says nothing about eternal salvation being dependent on “believing in” the messiah.

I then went back to the Christian side for their response. I was presented with “over 300 prophecies about the Messiah that Jesus fulfilled”. Rather than study all 300, I asked for the “top 40”; those that were considered the plainest and most important. I took these prophecies one by one and studied them in their context and in their original language ( Hebrew) using my concordance and lexicons. Of the 40 I was presented, I concluded that Jesus only fulfilled three:
1- He was human ( the seed of Eve)
2- He was Jewish ( His mom was Jewish so he was too)
3- He rode a donkey into Jerusalem ( although he had his disciples steal the donkey for the sole purpose of fulfiling that prophecy)

Most of the “messianic prophecies” I was presented with were not even prophecies. And those that were prophecies were taken out of context or had a verse attached to the context , such as sins the “messiah” would be repenting of, that would eliminate Jesus as the New Testament presents him. One proof text even tells of a false prophet … and Christians applied this text to Jesus!
I stopped attending the SDA church entirely and there was growing contention with my wife and in my home. Eventually, we divorced in 2010 ( not just over religion, but several reasons).
I attended the Conservative synagogue in Oklahoma City for three years, from 2008 to 2011, while also studying with Orthodox rabbis over the phone and by internet ( the Orthdox rabbis believed I have a “Jewish soul” that is trying to find its way home). I was asked by the rabbi in OKC to convert. But by 2011 my life had become lonely. The synagogue I was attending hired a new rabbi, who became vocal in [liberal] politics from the pulpit which was a turn-off for me ( my friends know I lean conservative, but I also do not enjoy secular political activism from the pulpit) and I found myself in the middle of an emotional “no man’s land”. I missed my “old life”: my wife, my kids, my step-kids and my SDA friends, and tried my best to win back as much as I could. My youngest daughter was still Christian as well.

On the strength of all these difficulties I decided to “hold my nose” and return to the SDA church, burying my antitrinitarian and “non-Jesus” thoughts as best I could. I made no secret of the fact that my Christian faith held by only a weak thread. But in the back of my mind, I knew I was not walking out my convictions, and every Adventist sermon that centered on Jesus grated on my conscience ( I actually appreciated the ones that centered on the law and God’s justice). I found it increasingly difficult to add “in Jesus’ name” to my prayers. You know that feeling when you tell a lie and you know you are lying? Like a “mini headache”, right?

The point of personal crisis came at a communion service when the pastor made it clear that only a human being was sacrificed on Calvary, because God cannot die. A human sacrifice was made by the God who condemned human sacrifices as evil? I got up and walked out, never to return.
I said all of that to announce that I am converting to Judaism once and for all and at any and all cost. In my personal experience I cannot accept anything else in my pursuit of meaning, truth and of who God made me to be. I cannot be atheist or angostic, as it has been to clear me from my life’s experience that there is a God and that this God does in fact intervene in mankind’s affairs, else I would not be here today ( I’ve got stories!). A personal God, in my view, is self-evident.

There is no doubt in my mind or my heart that I was meant to be Jewish, or that I always was before my birth: with all of its trials and difficulties, with all of the hate directed toward us from so many directions, but also with every spiritual form, blessing and tradition given by God to His people. Anything else would be a denial of who I really am. I long to wear a tallit, kiss the Mezuzah on my door post and repeat the Sh’ma in unison with the entire people Israel. The Shabbat has always been in my heart, as has the nation of Israel; the people , the language I seem to somehow recognize on the inside but have to “relearn” on the outside. But mostly, we think differently. It is not a Western linear way of thought, but a cyclical and poetic way of thought. We do not see God’s laws ( mitzvot) as restrictions but as freedom and a way to show God we love all He has supplied, which is everything and everybody. To us, God is not a fictional “Flying Spaghetti Monster” nor a mean-spirited ogre that demands a human sacrifice to assuage His anger. Does God get “angry”? In a way. Is he an “angry God”? Not at all. Judaism goes as deep as anyone could comprehend, but God’s request of His people is still so simple a child can understand it.
Anyway, that is all I have to say at this point. I hope this clears up any speculation of confusion as to my thoughts, my beliefs and my motivations.
Blessings to all in His glorious name!
Fred

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Yisroel C. Blumenthal

Why I Left Jesus – by Concerned Reader

Annelise, as you have noted, (and I tend to agree,) we seem to be tied by strong conviction and knowledge to our own experiences as communities and individuals. We can only see the truth of various religious claims as we perceive them for ourselves. Being told various truths by other groups and people, (be they Jews or Christians, or others) can seldom hold a candle to our personal experiences. I used to believe in Jesus. (I wasn’t raised trinitarian, though I appreciated the doctrine later, after deeper studies in university.)

What led me away from Jesus and Christianity was not disrespect for Jesus, it wasn’t that I couldn’t find various historical or theological reasons to believe in him, it wasn’t for lack of love, nor was in an inability to empathize with Christian experience, it was the realization of the original target audience, content, context, and the expectations of the biblical books of the Torah read by themselves, and as understood as lived by Jews before Jesus who were expected to observe the law.

When Jesus first came, there was not yet a set of books called the “New Testament.” The only sacred text available to Jews to learn from was the Torah of Moses with its laws, and its promises addressed uniquely to Jewish people as a covenant nation, in which they were told to observe perpetually the law in all generations. Even Christians agree that a “second coming” must occur to truly fulfill the big picture of the biblical messianic expectations, namely the age of peace and prosperity.

This hasn’t happened yet, but its the only Crystal clear picture the Tanakh gives us of what it will be like when the messiah comes with the least amount of interpreting of biblical verses needed. Even Jesus’ students asked, “are you going to at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” Messiah is understood by the Torah text, plainly and straightforwardly to be an anointed mortal monarch, just as David, Solomon, and others were. Jesus has not ever literally ruled as an earthly monarch.

In the Jewish people’s historical experience therefore, (given the Torah’s clearest passages about expectations of the coming messianic age,) Jesus has been nothing like a king in the sense the Torah uses most plainly. In that historical plain sense, as far as Jewish experience goes, Jesus simply doesn’t have a role. He has none of the same historical significance for Jews and Jewish culture as he has had for the non Jewish world. He’s not their King. He hasn’t saved them from exile, he hasn’t saved them from enemies, etc. His purported followers in fact have historically harmed Jewish people. Im not blaming all Christians for that, but it shows us something. These promises are things the Torah says the messiah must do. Jesus has not done. This is vitally important information to understand. The Torah describes (most clearly and in its most plain historical sense,) the coming of a ruling mortal king who ushers in an age of peace for humanity, but chiefly, this promise is addressed to the covenant community, the Jews. The Christian experience (coming to monotheism, learning about G-d and bible stories, having many redemptive experiences from lives of depravity,) may have been felt strongly by the Gentiles through this Jesus, but Jews as a nation and people didn’t and haven’t ever experienced these things when Jesus lived, or through him. The Jewish people as a covenant nation therefore have no basis in their lived out historical experience, or clear reason given from a plain reading of the Torah text to accept Jesus as anything more than a 1st century rabbi who made an unverified claim.

Even the gospels tell us that Jesus’ students only knew of Him (at first) as a human rabbi, until he allegedly explained mysterious things to them in a deeper way, or taught them what to see that others couldn’t. The NT says he had to “open their eyes to the scriptures.” This tells us that the everyday people (such as any regular guy who met Jesus with no prior knowledge) had to be told certain things about him.

The New Testament is a document that Chronicles the unique Christian experiences of a Jesus that has been filtered through those Christian experiences. “Joe Anybody” couldn’t just read Hebrew scripture plainly and be assured that Jesus was the messiah. It had to be taught. Messiah as taught by the Torah is supposed to be self evident. Israel knew Moses because he finished his task. Jesus hasn’t completed redemption, so in Jewish experience, he’s not the one.

Give a read to the article entitled Starting Points.

https://yourphariseefriend.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/starting-points-by-concerned-reader/

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Yisroel C. Blumenthal

To those Christians who find it outrageous to consider that the Jewish people have a special understanding of Torah,

One of you, David I believe, misrepresented the Jewish position on this matter. He made the Jewish position out to be one of racial superiority. This misrepresentation is egregious and serves only to malign others, but David feels like this is justified. He believes he is only fighting fire with fire, and that is his business. I am only interested in the facts, here. In a moment, I will show why this mischaracterization, besides being ugly, is false.

But first, let me mention that at least one other of you has protested the idea that the Jewish people are particularly well suited to read Torah. Eric was quite incensed with the idea that he would need to go to the Jewish people to understand Torah. He does not like the idea that he would have to rely upon someone else to understand the Word of God.

I can understand Eric’s feelings, but they must be put aside. We must only consider the facts. Examining them will give us all the reason in the world to look to the Jewish people for our understanding of Torah and the whole of Tanach.

First, let us state the exceedingly obvious. Torah is written in Hebrew. It is in a language with which most of us are not familiar. And for those of us who do know Hebrew, from where did that understanding come? It came from the Jewish people, those who do know Hebrew. One of the Church fathers, his name is escaping me right now, studies with rabbis to make his translation of Torah. He could not read the original text on its own.

Most people recognize that a translation is not the same thing as the original writing. Meaning is lost. Sometimes languages do not even share concepts. Translations are rough approximations. One who reads a translation can get an idea of what Torah teaches but will miss nuances and, sometimes, larger ideas. Sometimes the prophets made puns that are not apparent in translations.

Moreover, as we all know, Torah is not vowelized. The non-Hebrew speaking world relies on the Jews to tell them how the words should be pronounced, which can alter the meaning at times. Without the Jew to guide us, even once we learn Hebrew, Torah will not be clear to us. We rely upon the Jewish people.

It is not only the language, however, that makes us reliant upon the Jewish people, not at all. We rely upon them for context as well. The book is part of their history and culture. They understand its terms and meanings, not just as bits of vocabulary, but contextually. The prophets rely upon this understanding, referencing fasts, for example, that are not mentioned in Torah. Only the Jewish people, whose fasts these were, understand the reference, and those who have learned from the Jewish people.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the understanding of the shema. The Jewish people were given this Torah with the idea that there is none beside God. They were instructed on how to worship Him. It is a part of their heritage. Later, people who were not part of the culture, who were not part of the tradition, reinterpreted the shema. They made God three instead of one, because the concepts of Torah were foreign to them.

But they must acknowledge, that the Jewish people were appointed, according to Torah, to be God’s witnesses. They were to be a kingdom of priests. It is upon the knowledge of the Jewish people, regarding Torah, which we must rely. The Christians who adopted the Hebrew Scriptures recognize that the Jewish people were given the prophets and appointed to keep the knowledge of God alive in the world.

Now, David wants to pretend this is a racial argument for his own reasons. But it is not. Clearly, it is not just any Jew who is qualified to teach Torah. Unfortunately, many Jews did not study Torah, did not practice it, nor cling to it. Some have abandoned it. We cannot turn to these to teach us Torah. It is not their genetic structure that makes them teachers of Torah. Those who separated themselves from it clearly cannot teach it. Those who have gone after other gods have disqualified themselves from being Torah instructors. Those who never learned it, whose parents abandoned it and did not pass its knowledge along, do not have the proper qualifications just because they descend from Abraham. (And in fact, one can attach himself to the Jewish people, though never born to it.)

We must not be afraid to recognize our limitations. God has given the world a great gift in the Jewish people. He gave them Torah and made them our teachers. Let us not be afraid to come to them to learn. Without them, we know that we could not decipher one page of Torah. But with them, we may learn how to serve our God. Blessed is HaShem who gave us the Jewish people, so that we might know His ways.

Jim

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Yisroel C. Blumenthal

4 Reasons Christians come to accept Jesus so emphatically, can’t understand why others don’t, AND WHY ITS A PROBLEM.

1. Christians often have a “conversion experience.” Dr. Michael Brown is a perfect example. He says he was an addict and an agnostic, though he attended synagogue sporadically as a child on high holidays. After an experience of Jesus, he purportedly became devoutly religious. Christians ask themselves, “how can a seemingly godly outcome come from something thats not of G-d?”

2. Christians presently percieve that they live in a “monotheistic” culture that used to be profoundly polytheistic. Nobody worships Zeus, thor, Hercules, etc. anymore. The change from western polytheism to monotheism purportedly came about with Christianity’s ascendance, Christians see “fulfillment” of passages to their mind, like Isaiah 42:4.

3. Before Christian theology becomes a meaningful factor for new converts, Christians (as Neophytes) are exposed first to the ethics of Jesus, ie the golden rule, love, the rules found in Acts 15, and Jesus’ rules for ethical living found throughout the gospels. They appear to most people to be Torah based ethics, based off of the ethics for G-d fearers, even according to scholars.

4. When Christians approach the question of theology, for validation and checking of their ideas and beliefs, they often examine the mytho-poetical aspects of Jewish traditions (midrash and mysticism) of the past to see if they can find some paralells that would possibly account for a Christian-like theology in Judaism of the past. They ask, “can I find Jews in the past who accepted ideas like mine while remaining religious Jews?”
-philo’s Logos
-Rambam’s active intellect, and his descriptions of Moses as having a unique prophetic connection.
-traditions of Ascent of the righteous to heaven (enoch and Elijah) and their angelic transformations.
-Saadiah Gaon’s Kavod Nivra as vehicle and expression of Prophetic inspiration.
– Traditions of a possible dying, (or suffering) messianic figure.
-an examination of the history of messianism

When all these ideas appear to be found in Judaism in some form, Christians feel that their faith and experiences can be reconciled with the Hebrew Bible even if they can’t work out all the details, they feel vindicated. IT IS USUALLY TRUE THAT EVERYONE IS LIKELY TO BELIEVE THEIR OWN EXPERIENCES OVER THE WORDS OF OTHERS.

ANY astute reader of the above information should recognize the problem of method. Take a very careful note of the central factor that is MISSING in the Christian’s methodology for determining the truth of his faith claims, and answering this central question. HE DOES NOT EVER CONSULT HALACHA OR THE TERMS AND STIPULATIONS FOUND IN G-D’s COVENANT WITH ISRAEL! His faith is based on his perceived personal experiences of Jesus, some parallels that he sees in Jewish philosophy, mysticism, and history, and on the message received from his culture. HE LACKS the insider covenant perspective of the Jewish people who are born into an observant culture, with responsibilities to G-d’s Torah. He does not ask, “how does Christianity’s claim fit with the duty of the Jewish people to maintain scrupulous observance of all the commandments in Moses’ Torah forever?” Because the Christian is not asking the questions and seeking answers from the standpoint of Israel’s unique covenant obligations, he cannot really see why his faith doesn’t fit the Torah. In fact, to the Christians, their experience of Jesus seems to retroactively validate things in the Jewish Bible that they find too fantastic to be possible. They were brought in without consulting Torah, so they miss a crucial element in answering the question and getting the right answer.

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Yisroel C. Blumenthal