Messianic Judaism Quest

What Distinguishes Judaism?

According to Rabbi Hartman, the Torah provides the Jewish community with a historical memory of a living G-d who selected the Jewish people from among the nations through whom which He would be sanctified in history.

Furthermore according to Rabbi Hartman, the essential question in Judaism is not the nature of what is “good.” This is already established as it states in the Tanakh “It has been told you, O man, what is good and what the L-rd does require of you.” (Micah 6:8). Rather the principal concern is the ability to embody the will of G-d in action. G-d therefore is revealed in the life history of the community “ I am the L-rd your G-d who brought (or because I brought) you out of the land of Egypt.”

The individual member within the Jewish community understands the primary role of the community in shaping his or her spiritual identity. To separate oneself from the community is to cut oneself off from the G-d of Israel and hence the G-d of history. The divine will, history, community, and action are dominant and interconnected in organizing the principles of daily Jewish life.

Judaism and the Challenge of the Non-Jewish World

All this Hartman states in order to try to establish a framework for understanding Maimonides (the greatest Jewish philosopher of the Medieval period) in his book Torah and Philosophical Quest and the complicated struggle or tension Maimonides may have encountered in living a devout Jewish life while simultaneously remaining true to his philosophical quest for universal truth and reason.

While the importance of such an issue may not seem to be so clear cut at first glance, the relevance for Messianic Jewish communities is all too real.

In the normative Jewish community, the question has always been, “How does one live a Jewish life and engage or respond to the challenges and confrontation of the truth claims, philosophy, lifestyle, etc. presented by the outside world?”

The Relevancy for Messianic Jewish Communities

With regards to Messianic Jewish communities, we may phrase the problem as follows: “Can individuals embrace a historical and spiritual understanding of Jewish tradition, a devotion to the Torah, and combine this with an intellectual and spiritual commitment to the Mashiach despite the fact that this places them at odds with the rest of the historic Jewish community? Is it possible? How can it be done?

There have been four responses to the general question of Jewish interaction with the non-Jewish world which reflects the manner in which Jews have sought to react to the challenges presented by dominant societies throughout the centuries.

The responses are as follows: the way of insulation, the way of dualism, the way of rejection, and the way of integration. Aspects of some of these overlap with others in certain areas. These four approaches I believe also apply to Messianic Jewish communities.

To establish a frame of reference for our question, I will briefly review historical Jewish perspectives on the issue and then review various scenarios which might reflect Messianic Jewish responses.

The Challenge to Judaism

For normative Judaism, the challenge of embracing Jerusalem or Athens (in a metaphorical sense) was a real issue of tremendous significance. While Hellenism is a historical phenomenon, it serves to represent the everpresent struggle toward assimilation and potential abandonment of Judaism by Jews caught between two competing worlds.

This is perhaps most strikingly and violently seen in the Maccabean struggle, but was also experienced intellectually and theologically in subsequent generations. This was true for individuals like Philo of Alexandria and especially, in the philosophical arena, was confronted by or embraced by various medieval Jewish philosophers (i.e. Saadiah Gaon, Yehudah haLevi, Moses ben Maimon, Levi ben Gershon, etc.) as a threat by some and a strength to Judaism by 0thers.

For Maimonides, the issue of engaging Judaism and extra-Jewish knowledge or revelation (outside of Judaism) was seemingly resolved (see Moreh Nevuchim – the Guide to the Perplexed), but was less so by many of his rabbinic contemporaries and successors. That his Aristotelian views were coupled with an embrace of classical Judaism was highly problematic for many. His opponents adopted a number of interesting responses to the faith and philosophical challenges presented by the dominant non-Jewish society of the day.

The Way of Insulation

One approach in dealing with the outside world is the “particularistic” position which embraces the view that Jewish thinking has its own native categories; other modes of non-Jewish thinking are superfluous or even inimical to Jewish thinking and authenticity. It has also been referred to as the “way of insulation” by David Hartman.

At its extreme, the “way of insulation” , as Hartman describes, simply rejects and dismisses “foreign modes of thought” by refusing to accept them as serious. Attempting to explain or substantiate Jewish values within the category of another philosophical or religious framework requires the affirmation of the competing system as rational and legitimate to some extent. If one denies outside views as inherently lacking any legitimate claim, then one need only to ignore the claim. The act of dedicating oneself to a manner of life decreed by G-d automatically delegitimizes any claim made by human reason independently made without divine revelation.

The strength and advantage of this position is its very insulation and hence protection of an entire body of knowledge from all serious challenges. Problematic questions are simply denied legitimacy. According to this view, the ultimate guarantor of true knowledge is found in G-d, as the ultimate source of revelation. With G-d as the guarantor of true knowledge, any competing claim is easily dismissed; moreover, considering alternative foreign claims or philosophies hints of irrationality and arrogance.

From a historical perspective, the opposition to the type of encounter between Judaism and the outside world embraced by Maimonides took some seemingly contradictory forms. For example, the Maharal (Judah Loew of Prague) while opposing philosophical inquiry, nevertheless, embraced Kabalistic thought which itself was strongly influenced by Platonic ideas. Judah Loew of Prague argued that Kabbalah was an authentic way of Jewish thinking and classical philosophy was not. To justify his acceptance of Kabbalah, Judah Loew of Prague pointed to the fact that even the word Kabbalah comes from the root kibel meaning tradition. That is, Kabbalah is the mesorah (i.e. authentic Jewish tradition). In contrast, “Jewish philosophy” is never referred to the tradition or as kibel. For the Maharal, classical philosophy is instead the individual contemplation of the philosopher.

For the Maharal, philosophy is based on Greek thinking which has several fundamental claims that are inherently inimical to Jewish life. The Maharal also pointed to the pseudo work entitled Tefilato sh’Aristo - The Prayer of Aristotle in which Aristotle repents and asks G-d for forgiveness for introducing ideas that were inimical to Judaism to buttress his attack on philosophical inquiry. For Judah Lowe, authentic Jewish philosophy is Jewish thinking.

Rabbi Moses Isserles however argued against the Maharal’s vehement opposition to all philosophical inquiry and can be viewed as a reconciler between philosophical inquiry and mysticism. For Rabbi Isserles, there was no true clash between philosophy and mysticism. They are both a part of the tradition, because they really are the same thing but they speak about things in a different ways and hence both are legitimate ways of Jewish thinking.

The complexity of the way of insulation becomes clear in applying this to Messianic communities because two aspects of this may be adopted. In cases where they are challenged on these issues, some Messianic Jews may argue that theological Christian fundamentals (i.e. classical Trinitarian thought, Sola Scriptura, original sin, etc.) are in fact truly part of the classical Biblical tradition and therefore part of true Biblical faith. The validity of this statement is not our concern but rather a recognition that these are major points of differentiation between classical Judaism and classical Christianity. A defense against the seeming incongruity of certain theological ideas with classical Judaism and the Messianic perspectives of most Messianic congregations are often argued to simply be due to misinterpretation or a corruption of originally “Biblically Jewish ideas”, much like Isserles’ claim about Greek philosophy and Judaism.

For Rabbis Isserles, Plato and the other Greek philosophers derived their knowledge from Jewish sources. He argued that the Jews invented philosophy and went as far as to assert that Plato was a disciple of King David and Solomon. His assertion led to the question of how is it that the Greeks espoused views that were inimical to Jewish thought and why philosophy had fallen out of favor in Jewish circles brought about because of the tribulations of Jewish life. This fits in well with Messianic communities that essentially defend the theological perspectives of the Church fathers (be they anti-semitic or not).

According to Isserles, the Greeks learned philosophy but corrupted it by introducing various ideas which deviated from its Jewish foundations. As far as Isserles was concerned, the task of Jews was to reconstruct philosophy as it was originally.

This task of “reconstruction” is one that many Messianic Jews seem to embrace. Their contention is that Messianic Jews are restoring Biblical faith to its true origins eliminating those Christian and Jewish practices that obscure the true nature of biblical faith. Any challenge presented by the Mesorah (i.e. the classical Jewish tradition) or Christianity are simply rejected as baseless since either lack inherent legitimacy or authority.

The act of dedicating oneself to a manner of life decreed by G-d automatically delegitimizes any claim made by human reason independently made without divine revelation. This view is found in the 12^th and 13^th centuries in response to the rise of Jewish philosophy but was also espoused by rabbis of the Renaissance period. For Judah Loew, Maimonides was poisoned through his exposure to foreign influences since the study of philosophy lent legitimacy to outside knowledge. For the Maharal, truth does not exist outside of Judaism.

While there are certainly various ways this manifests itself in the Messianic Jewish community, one common occurrence is to deny the existence of anything that does not correlate with the overwhelming evangelical tendency to describe things as Biblical. That is many, Messianic Jews see themselves as the true and sole inheritors of ancient Israelite faith and see the Bible as the only authoritative source, not simply the definitive one. All other sources including halakhic, Talmudic, historical, scientific, etc. are rejected as baseless or meaningless in authority.

The development of those theological perspectives they hold critical to their faith are divorced from the intellectual and spiritual tradition of Christianity from which many grew. Nothing that stands against their view of what is Biblical is to be accepted.

It also however exists in an surprisingly opposite form. Anything which is not Orthodox (and often Hasidic in nature or substance) is foreign to historic Judaism. The Mesorah becomes increasingly rigid and in an extreme form can be used to exclude any continued relevancy of the Maschiah.

This is also manifests in another convoluted form especially in circles of non-Jewish adherents to Messianic Judaism. One can find “Orthodox” non-Jews whose adherence to Halachah begins to restrict their ability to fellowship with Messianic Jews and non-Jews who they deem to be less observant than them, despite the inherently problematic perspectives on non-Jews and Torah present in traditional Jewish thought.

The basic element here is a sincere desire to adhere to a “Torah” or Biblical lifestyle, though the nature of what Torah means is often divorced from its historical and theological context. Furthermore, while it adherents often embrace many Jewish practices and often adopt certain modes of behavior, the underlying theological framework remains one that is fundamentally Christian in nature and which retains many of the same fundamentalist tendencies and attitudes towards a variety of theological issues. This typically manifests itself in the Biblical versus rabbinic motif.

The Dualistic Approach

Another approach to confronting the challenges presented to Jewish life by the outside world is the dualistic approach which reflects a loyalty to ones tradition, while accepting the truth-claims of a competing system.

The approach essentially bifurcates or compartmentalizes aspects of a person’s life. A person may view the scientific or philosophical claims of non-Jewish systems as valid or even possibly incompatible with Jewish thought, but separates this mental understanding from his or her practical life. This individual sees merit in maintaining Jewish tradition regardless of whether the may intellectually question the “consistency” of this with outside views. They may do so for a variety of reasons including because they believe that this contributes to a well-ordered society, preserves the Jewish people, etc.

At its extreme, the dualistic approach separates an individual’s knowledge from his practices. In this mode, the individual can disregard the outer forms of observances as simply contributing to the well being of a well ordered community. Rituals and traditions can be viewed as meaningless but the moral actions justify the spurious claims upon which the former are based.

The idea of dualism is of course a common accusation against Messianic Jews – which they claim adherence to Judaism while simultaneously claiming adherence to a faith perspective that is fundamentally separate from Judaism and in the case of Christianity fundamentally undermines the legitimacy of Judaism.

In the Messianic community, this perspective has been adopted by many a congregation which view Jewish rituals and traditions as inherently meaningless other than as to further a collective cultural identity of the community or to further their apostolic calling. The preservation of Jewish identity however is sub-ordinate to a spiritual identity that is grounded in the notion of a universal body of “believers” that takes precedence over Jewish identity and hence over Israel.

Hence the theology and in fact lifestyle of most Messianic Jewish congregations are largely evangelical in nature even as they maintain some aspects of Jewish praxis. These Messianic Jews are dualistic in their ability to preserve Jewish tradition (in some form) despite the underlying fundamentals behind them that may challenge their Christian perspectives, or vice versa. Arguing against a legitimate Oral Tradition on the basis of the theological view of the sole authority of Scripture, does not keep many communities from arguing against “the Rabbis” while continuing to practice Jewish customs otherwise unknown or incomprehensible outside an Oral Tradition.

For those who adopt this perspective, this dualistic approach protects the tradition and beliefs (as understood by the individual) from counter claims. In the case of Messianic Jewish expressions that follow this approach, the accusations of hypocrisy towards Jewish concerns are dismissed since their “Messianic Jewish community” is the only entity truly capable of using Jewish methods to justify its end goals of universal redemption. Here we do find similarity in the “way of insulation” in the sense that counter truth claims are largely ignored.

This approach whether in normative Jewish circles or in the Messianic community bifurcates the realms of thought and action. As Hartman notes, “the G-d of metaphysics and the G-d of history are never confused.” A person’s acquiescence to this kind of thinking and its theological claims are justified by the inherent functionality it affords rather than by the truth it claims.For Messianic Jews, the realities of historical Jewish life and the inherent problems of incompatibility with Christianity in its post apostolic era are simply dismissed as ancillary to the principal questions of redemption.

The Way of Rejection

This approach is relatively straightforward as it is in the normative Jewish community. In the case of the normative Jewish community, the individual is incapable of reconciling Judaism and Jewish obligations with the outside world (whether in terms of the truth claims about the superiority of Jewish truth claims, or simply the desire to abandon Jewish distinctions for acceptance in greater society).

In the case of the Messianic belief, the individual that chooses this path is incapable of accepting the Christian claims and views regarding the nature of the Mashiach and coupling this with Judaism.

This individual is incapable of reconciling the disconnect between the Jewish theological perspectives that the very concept of the idea of a Messiah is rooted in for the views of the Messiah presented by Christianity.

Judaism and Christianity are two distinct religious traditions and any attempt to reconcile them, as far as this individual is concerned, are pointless and meaningless. Christianity is triumphant; Judaism is irrelevant in the cause of the Messiah. Jewish identity and Judaism are a dangerous lure to forsaking what is most important. The justification for this lies in the view that Judaism is simply incompatible with true Biblical faith.

Not surprisingly, this is the view that the normative Jewish community would prefer that messianic Jews take- one which they feel is much more honest.

At the other side of the spectrum, a Messianic Jew can reach the opposite decision. The challenges presented in accepting a long rejected Messiah as the legitimate Jewish Messiah is all too complex. The challenge of forging a path that takes seriously the continued relevance of Judaism and the rejected Messiah is simply too much to ask. This individual abandons, suppresses, or subordinates his faith for acceptance in the Jewish community and an identity which lends itself to a “single” identity.

The Way of Integration

The way of integration recognizes that inherent challenges presented in embracing the messianic claims of Yeshua of Nazareth while also embracing, promoting and upholding Judaism and Jewish tradition .

The way of integration recognizes the distinction and validity of the classical Jewish tradition, the distinction of Jewish thinking, the inherent differences found in the fundamental perspectives of Christian thought as influenced by the Western Hellenistic tradition and is capable of struggling with the hard questions no matter where they might lead.

The way of integration is descriptional in nature – not doctrinal or definitional. The individual that accepts this view is capable of operating independently of the Christian tradition and dogma while intellectually grappling with the simple fact that Christianity has preserved the only texts that provide the revelation of the Maschiah.

The critical issue is to be free of the contraints and non-Jewish approaches which cause much of the incompability to arise. One need only to look at the premium placed on creedal formulations of faith in Christianity to understand the fundamental differences between Jewish and Christian approaches to knowing G-d, though the differences go far beyond this. The proper articulation of Christian faith is understood by the affirmation of a series of propositional statements, deviation from which can render an individual heterodox. At the extreme, the advent of the Protestant reformation and its offspring in subsequent centuries reveals that even seemingly minor doctrinal deviations can spark the rise of a new denomination or create chasms in existings ones. The argument to borrow from Maimonides, is the true knowledge of G-d as reflected in a philosophical understanding. The simple fact that the contemporary Jewish experience manifests itself in 3 or 4 or 5 movements at most reveals the reality that Judaism understands its approach to “knowing G-d’ through a very different basis than does its Christian counterpart. The way of integration calls for the individual to wrestle with these issues.

The individual in the way of integration understands that history, textual criticism, science, and philosophical inquiry are all part of the nature of G-d’s revelation and interaction with the world. It recognizes the validity of Jewish practice and Jewish texts and indispensable aspects of Jewish identity. It understands halakhah as a binding and authoritative element yet allows for the consideration and flexibility of it given the complicated nature of Messianic Jewish communities. Most importantly, it understands that there is Jewish thinking and non-Jewish thinking – a fact largely misunderstood by even the various Torah oriented movements in Messianic circles.

The basis of the accommodationist or the way of integration position also lies in the confrontation, exposure, and finally engagement with non-Jewish forms of thinking and life. An individual does not have to approach faith and reason as an either/ or approach. The individual takes the knowledge claims of outside sources seriously but allows for the validity of human thought to engage him. For the integrationist, Divine revelation need not be in conflict with human understanding, history, the challenges presented by either the classical Jewish tradition, or Christian theology.

But when human understanding appears to conflict with a traditional understanding of religious tradition, the integrationist allows for rational truth to alter the meaning of religious challenges as informed by Jewish texts and a knowledge of the Maschiach. The integrationist allows for the supremacy of the knowledge of G-d, but recognizes the endowment of creation by G-d with reason.

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