avakesh

Chips to the Nations.

Kosher Jesus

The World of Lubavitch is astir. You hear it in shul; it is the staff of mikva conversation and of heated discussion between friends. Vos is di neias? It is Rabbi Boteach's new book, "Kosher Jesus", which is slated for publication on February 18. The book itself is not yet available, but as I understand from Rabbi Boteach's articles and from those who have read the book, it is based on the scholarship of Hayam Maccoby and his belief that Jesus was a kosher Jew who was misunderstood and whose teachings were distorted by his followers.

Many Lubavitchers are concerned about "Chilul Shem Lubavitch". G-d knows, Chabad does not need bad publicity. However, it goes beyond that. I think that the opposition within Lubavitch is not only due to what R. Boteach says but it is because Rabbi Boteach has a long history of blurring the boundary between the Jewish and the Gentile world.

In itself, this theology of Kosher Jesus does not bother me. The scholarship of Hayam Maccoby is dated and most scholars see Jesus as a complex figure who may not have enunciated all of the teachings attributed to him, but certainly taught doctrine that contained seeds that later blossomed into Christianity. Rabbi Boteach favors Matthew over John but it is John who shaped Christian theology more than Matthew. Yes, one can read the synoptic Gospels as teaching low Christology; that is, that Jesus was fully human and spoke of himself us the "Son of God" only in the figurative sense, much like Ezekiel Is called the son of man. The Gospel of John is another matter. The Gentile author of John promoted a clearly non-Jewish theology.

Seeing Jesus as a Jewish teacher is a well written about approach. Rabbi Boteach joins a long list of thinkers and scholars who are tempted to reclaim Jesus for the Jewish people. Luminaries such as Rav Yaakov Emden and many others, and in our own time, activists like Irving Greenberg, Shlomo Riskin and Yechiel Eckstein have enunciated this view on many occasions. There are several scholarly Jewish commentaries by significant scholars on the New Testament, including one by Rav Yaakov Emden, and recently Amy Levine published another one with multiple contributors.

However, "times, they are a-changing". Now is a different time. What I fault R. Boteach for is for blurring boundaries. Judaism and and Christianity are two different religions with very different theologies, two distinct spiritual lives, vocabularies, and, let's be honest, a history of conflict. Christianity is, in Pope John Paul's words "the younger sister of Judaism". Whereas one can hardly think of an amalgam of Christianity and Islam, the same is not true of Christianity and Judaism. These two can be forced together because there are many shared points between them, which is not true of Judaism and Islam. Because Christianity sprang out of the Jewish milieu, it is possible to extend its limits and to create the murky, poorly defined, but nevertheless workable Twilight Zone in which a mongrel Christaism religion can exist.

Therein is the problem. We, in this period in time are faced with this extension of boundaries. On one side we have Hebrew Christians, according to their types. Groups such as Jews for Jesus create a mixed Jewish – Gentile movement in which trappings of Judaism are combined with Orthodox Christian dogma. On the other end of the spectrum, Jewish observances are being adopted by the increasing number of fundamentalist and Pentecostallist congregations, that are looking to Judaism as the means to better relate to Jesus. To Protestants, religion is all about their personal relationship to the Nazarene and how best they can invite him to come into their hearts. This is sometimes hard for Jews and Muslims to understand. To people who are brought up viewing religion as a way of life, this incessant focus on the Man – God is foreign and hard to grasp. To Christians, and other hand, even theology is only important in as much as it tells them what to teach about Jesus. Many of them are seeking Jewish symbols and taking on Jewish observances and holidays in order to better relate to the Jew Jesus.

So what is taking shape all across the religious landscape of America, is the twilight zone of rapprochement between Christianity and Judaism. Rabbis in small out of town communities are already routinely faced with new congregants who observe like Jews but believe like Christians. Sometimes they are intermarried couples, sometimes Christians who have drawn close to Judaism, and sometimes Jews who are in the process of reassessing their Christianity and looking back at their community. This state of affairs has created a space for mixing, intermarriage and mongrelization of ancient teachings. This is not good.

Rabbi Boteach has a long history of facilitating such phenomena. As the founder of the Lechaim society in Oxford University, he was immensely successful, to the extent, that Lechaim became the second-largest student group in the University. As I understand, its membership was about 60% Gentile and only about 40% Jewish. As a result, it became a setting for Jewish young men and women to mix with fine, spiritually minded, and clean-cut Gentile students who respected and liked Jews a certain recipe for intermarriage. The world Lubavitcher movement was very concerned and when Cory Booker, currently the mayor of Newark, became the head of the society, they acted. There is the root of the rift between organized Lubavitch and Rabbi Boteach. The same can be said of R. Boteach's subsequent career, much of which has taken place in the world of entertainment, celebrities, and the society of non-Jews.

Therein is the rub! The book Kosher Jesus facilitaes and promotes this blurrring of boundaries. As Jews, and as Americans, we celebrate the values of religious tolerance and rejoice when religious values are adopted and respected by the American public. On the other hand, let Jews be Jews and let Gentiles the Gentiles. Judaism and Christianity have long and sophisticated religious and spiritual traditions. With the advent of the Internet, and the diffusion of knowledge, perhaps it was inevitable that Christians become familiar and take note of the religious riches of Judaism. However, we are a small faith community that still has much of importance due to share with the world and the encounter weakens us and threatens Jewish continuity. This is why Kosher Jesus is bad for the Jews.

"Is Birth Control Kosher For Orthodox Jews?"

The emergence of Chareidi-lite

The recent events in Beit Shemesh are noteworthy for several reasons. First of all, they showed emergent faultiness between the religious and nonreligious and the movement of the national religious public into the chiloni community. Secondly, they demonstrate that despite its great power, this Chareidi community in Israel remains vulnerable and besieged. Third, it brings to for the the inevitable coming separation within that Chareidi community itself, between the chareidim "as we used to know them" and  what I call Chareidi-lite.

In America, we know Chareidi-light very well. These are people who dress in black but maintain an ongoing engagement with modernity. They work in secular occupations, their children read English books and they are familiar with and take pride in knowing and being within the mainstream of American society. This is a group that has been growing within the Israeli Chareidi community as well in the recent years. Due to the changing socieconomics, more and more former Kollel men have transitioned into various occupations, have gone through various Chareidi training programs, or simply has wives or children who obtained secular degrees. The not insubstantial Anglo community is also a part of this group as are many chareidi immigrants from other countries. In their own countries, they were Chareidim but here, in Israel, they are Chareidi-lite. They are absorbed and indistinct within the Chareidi communities. Their voices are stifled and their are abilities are not yet known.

What is interesting about the current imbroglio is that for the first time we are hearing the voices of this large and growing contingent. Whereas in the past the community monolithically closed around its members under attack, in the past two weeks we heard many voices that explicitly draw a line of separation between themselves and the so-called extremists. What this heralds is the emergence of a new community, whose name is not yet known. I call it Chareidi-light.

It was as inevitable as it was to be expected. Historical precedent teaches us that all movements divide into four groups:those on the far right, those on the far left and the two near the center, one on the right and one on the left, and they struggle over the center.

So it was from the beginning. When Aguda started, it contained two wings: the wing that shared some of their assumptions and the worldview of MIzrachi and the wing that was more isolationinst, headed by Issac Breuer and Nathan Birnbaum respectively. To its left was the world Mizrachi movement and on its right, were the rejectionists, who rejected any cooperation on engagement with the Zionists or the nonreligious. To its credit, Aguda managed to contain both wings within iself for many decades, although it did lose the Poalei Agudas Yisroel on its left wing. As Aguda had become irrelevant as a political or an ideological movement, the two wings began again to be identified under one banner of Chareidism. This situation could not last and what we are witnessing now is the separation of the two.

This Chareidi world will fracture. One group will be people who reject engagement with modernity, have long beards and long black coats, payos, Yiddish, be poor and who assume geographic and cultural isolation. The other one will consist of people with small beards, fashionable black garments, good Hebrew and English, who value professions and the positive features of the contemporary society and are affluent, and who are much less committed to the authority of Gedolei Torah.

What will this two groups be called? I don't know. Perhaps one will remain known as Chareidim and the other one will adopt a name the denotes both seriousness and flexibility. I do know one thing. It is a wonderful opportunity for the right kind of a Talmid Chacham to emerge as a leader of a popular movement.

 

Tachrut Kelavim by Evyatar Banai

An interesting Israeli Baal Teshuvah singer, Evyatar Banai.

Warning: One less than fully tsniusdig moment at 1:04. More on Evyatar Banai, here

Judaism is a "science fiction" religion.

An interesting observation on why there are so few Jewish fantasy writers and how Judaism is a "science fiction" religion, here 

They can't get away from it.

This is a heavy metal band from Israel. This is no question an offensive image... but he is still connected!

Shofar the Massai way

Prayer to prevent

 

Angry young men of Borough Park.

In the aftermath of Leiby Kletzky's tragedy our attention should be directed to the hundreds, if not thousands, of single yong men from all over the world who live in the basement apartments and studio flats of Borough Park and Flatbush. Every once in a while, when something happens, their existence bursts onto our consciousness, and then they fade away. The great majority of these yong single men moved to Broklyn to pursue shidduchim, to complete their education and at the same time, grow as Jews. Some, however, have a variety of issues...and no one to whom and nowhere to take them. Their families are far away, they do not always have friends or mentors, and they daven in shtiblach where no one pays them heed and they have no community or a Rav. A few, have difficulty in creating and maintaining a relationship. Some grow increasingly strange and isolated, as their psychological issues come to fore, and no one knows, no one notices.

Remember Gideon Bush? He was one of such men. Alone, slowly descending into depths of emotional illness, with no one to take an interest or to get him help, he acted more and more bizarrely, until he attacked a group of policemen with a hammer on which he engraved the Name, YKVK, and was shot to death. 

Levi Aron was another such man.

About 15 years ago, I attended a shiur in Faltbush. I desperately wanted to master and understand dikduk but was finding it very difficult to break through. Existing seform were hard to understand and I knew that I needed a teacher. I heard of a half-hour shiur by R. Eluzer Bruger, the author of Sefer Hadukduk L'Ramachal that was being given in a shul in Flatbush between mincha and maariv. I adjusted my commute to use the Belt and every night for several months I would eat supper at Chap-a-Nosh, then learn in a nearby Beis Medrash and then walked over a few blocks to the shiur.

I met single angry young men at Chap-a Nosh. They s me there every night and thought that I was also a single angry young man, like they. They came over to chat, while we consumed our evening meal. There was Shmuel, who every few months left observance and then, for a few months, returned to it. There was Moshe, who did not communicate, though he craved company and gave me the creeps.There was Duvi, a bright and sociable young man, cynical and battered beyond his years, the full extent of his bitterness and anger I could then not even begin to fathom.

Had I been at a different point in my life, had I understood more, had I not already been burdened with a myriad responsiblities, perhaps I whould have made this my shlichus. I did not. No one did.

No one did.

And we had Gideon Bush. And we had Levi Aron.