Messianic Jewish Conversion: Avoiding “The Bandwagon Effect”

There is a concern about a possible “bandwagon effect” if Messianic Judaism established a conversion process.

This fear is unfounded if the Rabbis and leaders follow strict guidelines. Of the Non-Jews that I know in my synagogue only 1 or 2 would seek this conversion process and all have been involved in Messianic synagogues for many years. These are people who have a calling to sojourn with Israel and who as Non-Jews seek to make Torah their life.

So then, how can we hold back the “bandwagon effect or “mass conversion” of Non-Jews to Messianic Judaism?

First off, like in other forms of Judaism, the Rabbis must rebuff those seeking conversion, so as to test their commitment to the process. This rebuffing is also a test of the calling and commitment to the whole of Jewish life.

Also important is education in that the prospective convert must be committed to a Jewish life and to their connection to all of Israel not just “saved Jews”.

The prospective convert must be actively a part of the life of a Messianic synagogue, the life of the local Jewish community and have training and knowledge of Torah and Jewish practice.

They should also stand before and be examined by a Beit Din made up of recognized Messianic Jewish leaders in which their commitment to Jewish life will be examined.

Of great importance is that for prospective male converts brit milah or dam brit must be done. Circumcision is the sign of the Covenant in the flesh and this must be a part of the conversion process. At least for men this will be a real sign of commitment to Judaism and a Jewish life.

The prospective convert should also go through immersion as the final act of commitment to Messianic Judaism.

Also important in the process is the taking of a Hebrew name, as they become son or daughter of Abraham and Sarah.

This calls for leadership and guidance by recognized leaders. We can take this important step in our maturation and I believe that there are respected leaders willing to take the responsibility for this important work of allowing those like Ruth, to tangibly cast their lot with the Jewish people.

Building A Jewish religious movement for Yeshua

 

In seeking to be a Judaism, a Jewish religious movement for Yeshua within the Jewish people and for the Jewish people we will ask Jewish questions, seek to give Jewish answers and credibly live out our lives as Messianic Jews as a part of the Jewish community, rather than the missionary model as one who goes into the Jewish community as an outsider to target the “unsaved Jews” for conversion to Christianity. We see the Jewish people as “us” and not “them” and therefore our desire is to live credible Jewish lives that we can make the Messiah seen within Israel as the Messiah followed by Torah honoring, Jewishly connected, Messianic Jews. Our hope is to be a light for Messiah within the Jewish world.

In this identity we embrace our oneness with all of the Jewish people as an act of faithfulness to God and to His Torah and not some act of “seeking man’s approval”. We seek God’s approval by living as he intended as a Torah community that follows the Jewish Messiah.

Yeshua is central to the building of a mature Messianic Judaism, because he is the Messiah that we honor. Our desire is to make him known within the People of Israel and this can only be done by seeing the Jewish community as our community of reference and living within Jewish life embodied in our respect for Jewish tradition and Torah living as we seek to be organically connected within the Jewish community as the Jews who follow Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah.

Yeshua can only be properly seen by the Jewish people as he really is as the Jewish Messiah, by being made known by a credible Messianic Judaism that reflects a love for all Jewish people and with a vital connection to the People of Israel.

May we live lives that make Yeshua known within a Judaism, Messianic Judaism.

Intentional Messianic Jewish Community – More than Saturday morning.

To obey is better than sacrifice

I want more than 

Sunday and Wednesday nights

‘Cause if you can’t come to me every day

Then don’t bother coming at all

(To Obey is Better Than Sacrifice by Keith Green)

 

As we continue to explore the building of a Messianic Judaism for the future we need to realize that intrinsic to living a true Messianic Judaism is that it is more than just something we do on Saturday mornings but a lifestyle done seven days a week guided by our Torah.

The above words written by Keith Green, of most blessed memory, who was a Jewish follower of Yeshua who left this world before the Messianic Judaism movement began, and therefore framed his Yeshua faith within the Christianity of his day, lays out that a life of following God is not just attending services but living everyday for God. I imagine that if Keith would be living today as a Messianic Jew that I imagine the lyric would be “I want more than saturday mornings…”.  One of my cherished memories was meeting Melody Green, Keith’s widow at a High Holyday service about 10 years ago and she shared that Keith would have loved to participate in Messianic Jewish life if he would have had the opportunity in this world.  He is now living each moment in the radiance of King Messiah.

Though we don’t have Sunday and Wednesday as our days of religious services (common in evangelical Christianity), the lesson we can learn is that there is more to a Messianic Judaism life, more to walking in the way of Torah, than just attending Shabbat services and doing Messianic Judaism for 2-3 hours on Saturday mornings. Messianic Judaism is a life of walking Torah everyday and is more than just being a Sabbatarian, but a Jewish life of walking a Torah life each day.

So how can we consciously build up a daily walking in Torah ways?

The key is community, being that Judaism is to be lived communally. We need to seek to build up chavurot, Erev Shabbat gatherings, home study groups and even seek to build intentional communities of Messianic Jews living together, either in shared housing, in the same apartment building or in houses in the same neighborhood. We need to be in community to fully live out our lives walking Torah in “the other 6 days”.

We have to move beyond the “commuter synagogue” model wherein are “community” is grounded in whatever people are willing to travel 20-50 miles to Saturday services and at 2pm, head back to their separate lives.  If we want Messianic Judaism continuity, we have to have Messianic Judaism community.

May we seek to walk in God’s Torah each day and seek to build living breathing 24/7 Messianic Judaism communities!

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Beyond the Imot – Women Rabbis and the Future of Messianic Judaism

…God of Sarah, God of Rebecca, God of Rachel and Leah…

(Avot v’Imot, Amidah (Blessing 1))

The above words are added into the 1st blessing of the Amidah in the most recent versions of the prayerbooks of the Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements and also used in “egalitarian” liturgies of the Messianic Judaism movement.  In this one line there is a powerful acknowledgment of these women who were the co-laborers of the Patriarchs.  These women are so significant in the thought of those who added these words to the liturgy that the very name of the God of Israel is attached to them, they like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are known as the ones who were connected to and followers of the Holy One of Israel.  But unfortunately, unlike Abraham, Isaac and Jacob they could not serve as a rabbi in any of the mainstream Messianic Jewish congregations.

Egalitarianism is a buzz word in the Messianic Judaism circles that I am involved.  This in practicality means that the daily prayer times will be men and women praying together and we will use a prayerbook that includes prayers with the line about the Imot.  Sadly this is where we are with egalitarianism, we can bless God for being the God of these extraordinary women of faith, but a practical place for the extraordinary women of faith today is all but absent.   There are women as shammashim, oneg committee leaders, Shabbat school teachers and singers in worship teams, but the real key to full involvement in the life of the Messianic Jewish world is via rabbinic ordination, a step that women cannot take within the mainstream Messianic Jewish organizations, the MJAA and UMJC, where it is officially prohibited by a decades old position paper of the Union.

Rabbinic ordination beyond the practical outworking, allowing gifted women leaders the opportunity to use their God given gifts to serve God, their community and the large Messianic Jewish world, it is also the gateway to other important places of leadership and influence including leadership roles in committees of the Union, prominent speaking and teaching roles within the Messianic Jewish world and even full membership in groups like the Messianic Jewish Rabbinic Council.

The lack of female voices in these important roles is a great loss for us all and especially to deal with important issues of Jewish life, like that being done by the MJRC, without women being full participants and voices in the debate is reminiscent of Constantine’s exclusion of Messianic Jewish input at the Council of Nicea that gave the world a creed of faith that made no practical mention of Israel, do we want a Messianic Judaism that establishes halakha that will be walked by men and women, yet be fashioned only by men, mostly 50+ year old men, which also leads to concerns over the missing input of 20/30somethings in the future of our movement, to be covered later.

The issue of full involvement of women gifted by God to serve as rabbis, cantors, elders, synagogue presidents, seminary professors and umbrella organization executives is something that has to move forward and move forward now.  We have already lost some gifted younger women in our movement and will continue to in the future to our great loss because the “glass” ceiling for women in the Messianic Jewish world is reinforced by 18 inches of battleship quality steel, not only does it diminish the flames of service and use of gifting of individual women, it diminishes all women in our movement and the movement as a whole.

We have to take our “egalitarianism”  beyond just words in our prayerbooks and truly honor the blessed memory of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah and let their daughters step into the roles for which they are called and gifted.

And practically we need men of courage and character who are in leadership roles to finally take the steps to remove the barrier of ordination for women in the UMJC.  The time has come to revisit the issue of women in leadership and take that all important for women rabbis, a vote for a bright future where all members of the Messianic Jewish community can fully serve and be who God made them to be.

One of my great hopes is to see the day, may it be soon, that this barrier to our bright future is finally removed.

Let’s all do our part to make it so!

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It is incumbent to await the coming of Moshiach every single day…

It is incumbent to await the coming of Moshiach every single day, and all day long.. It is not enough to believe in the coming of Moshiach, but each day one must await his coming..

Furthermore, it is not enough to await his coming every day, but it is to be in the manner of our prayer ‘we await Your salvation all the day,’ that is, to await and expect it every day, and all day long, literally every moment!

- Chafetz Chaim, Chizuk Emunah

These words lays out another important principle for the building of a mature Messianic Judaism and that being the primacy of our righteous Messiah and the hope of His return to bring the Messianic age.

This is important in dealing with two potential problems:

1. That Yeshua gets lost in our practicing Judaism.

2. That we get so focused on the Messiah’s return that we don’t build a mature Messianic Judaism for the future.

The first point is seen by many critics of our movement to be our critical error, in that Yeshua is secondary to our Jewish practice. We need to realize that Yeshua is the one that is so ever present in the prayers of the siddur and embodies the hopes of Judaism, including the Judaism of today. As Judaism has developed since the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the messianic hopes of the Jewish people have sought for the coming redeemer. We who are followers of Yeshua know that this one that is alluded to each day in the prayers of the Jewish people is our righteous Messiah, Yeshua.

Whenever I consider the connection of Yeshua to my daily practice of Judaism the verse:

“If you love me you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15)

plays a significant role and was a part of a homily that I gave one Shabbat during Passover, relating the eating of matzo per the Torah’s command to an act of love for Yeshua. In living a life within Judaism, seeking to follow Torah we are also performing an act of honoring our Messiah. So then this is also another response to those who hold to a Yeshua-Judaism dichotomy.

The second point and actually more direct to the words of Chafetz Chaim, is the prime duty to await the coming of Messiah. Yeshua is the long awaited Jewish Messiah that will come and establish Yom Shekulo Shabbat (A time of unending Shabbat). Though much of those in the Jewish world are expecting this to be the first appearing of Messiah, we know that this will be His glorious return. The coming of Messiah will be the full flowering of God’s consumation of history and the hope of the ages, yet this Messianic hope must not keep us from seeking to continue to build a mature Messianic Judaism for the future (for a more extensive posting on this see “Messianic Jewish Education and the End of the Age” on this blog).

We must as the words say “await the coming of Moshiach, every day, even every moment”, but while waiting we must be doing those things necessary to building our future, including establishing new Messianic syangogues, establishing educational programs, writing books, mentoring future leaders, writing children’s curriculum, dealing with formation of Messianic halakha and other vital tasks.

We need to see that our Messianic hope be tied to the work that will bring about this consumation of all things and to do our part to fulfill the words of Rav Shaul in Romans 11:26,

“On that day all Israel shall be saved”.

The salvation of the Jewish people is intrinsically tied to the work of our righteous Messiah and we as His followers must do our part to establish a place wherein the over 1800 year old breach of Yeshua from Jewish space will again be bridged and we can be the place where Jewish people can follow Torah, live in Jewish space and honor the Messiah of Israel and this can be done if we build a mature Messianic Judaism.

May we be worthy to see the coming of Yeshua, our righeous Messiah and if he tarries may we earnestly await His appearing and do our part in His service to establish Messianic Judaism for the future.

Defining Messianic Judaism – What about Hebrew Roots?

As we sadly saw in the Ralph Messer/Eddie Long Torah desecration debacle, the names “Messianic Jewish”, “Messianic Rabbi” and “Messianic Judaism” have been used throughout the press to define the actors in this tragic drama.  As stated by Mr. Messer in his own words, he and his group are NOT Messianic and never will be.  And much of the Messianic Judaism world agree with him on this.

In the world of  Messianic Judaism there are organizations and groups like Messer’s that espouse “Jewish roots”, “Hebrew roots” or the archaic sounding “Hebraic roots”.

These groups seek to teach what they call the “Jewish roots” or “Hebraic roots” of Christianity. This is a common message topic for speakers from various missionary groups like Jews for Jesus and Chosen People Ministries to present in local churches. In doing so they seek to teach that at the earliest followers of Yeshua were Jews who lived within Jewish life, which is true.

The problem with the “Jewish roots” model is that it ignores the fact that what we know as Christianity today was developed after the Jewish believers and their influence was stripped from the Church. Christianity as we know it today as a unique world religion owes it’s roots to Constantine and specifically to the Nicene Council, the formers of the “Nicene Creed”, one of the earliest statements of Christian belief. By the time of Constantine (and especially since him) the Church  no longer  is attached to it’s Jewish roots. The Nicene Council excluded Jewish believers from being involved in the Council and it’s formation of the future of what we now know as Christianity. So then based on Christianity as we know it today as a world religion there are no “Jewish roots” that were allowed in a Post-Constantine world.

People like Messer and others are doing “Hebrew roots” separate from Jewish people, the Jewish world and Judaism and they show in their lack of connection to Jewish norms where it could go as was seen in their disrespect of the Torah scroll both at New Hope Church and other times.  Rather than being horrified like Jews of all stripes at this display, Messer and his flock applauded and were honored to have their “rabbi”, perform this bizarre and blasphemous show.  The disconnection of “Hebrew roots” from the Jewish people and norms of Jewish life does a discredit to them and to the Messianic Jewish wing of the Body of Messiah.  It is these kind of people who are at best ignorant and at worst evil that brings harm to the name of Yeshua, to Messianic Judaism  and those that have devoted their lives to building Messianic Judaism for the future.

So then to Messianic Judaism, we are not a “Jewish roots” of Christianity movement, because we are not within Christianity, we are a Judaism, a 21st century expression of Jewish life and faith. We are not just studying or exploring the experience of the early Messianic Jews, we are daily living within Judaism and Jewish life in the 21st century, with the knowledge that we are following the Jewish Messiah.

Our orientation is toward Judaism, our world is the Jewish world, our faith is within Judaism and our daily practice and way of living is guided by Torah, the way of life for the Jewish people.

We can appreciate the desire for Christians to explore the early Messianic Jews and their life, which would go a great deal toward changing incorrect teachings within the Church like anti-Judaism, anti-Torah and anti-Semitic views, but a true Messianic Judaism is far more than a historical study, it is a living breathing peoplehood, that is lived in 21st century Judaism with a faith trust in Yeshua, our righteous Messiah.

Living Torah – Experiencing the Messianic Age Now

 

In John 8:12-20, Yeshua gives us a picture of his identity as the light of the world. Yeshua is speaking with the religious leaders; he leads with his identity as the “light of the world.” Yeshua makes the point clear that by following him that he offers “light” which brings life, unending life. The religious leaders question Yeshua’s authority to make this statement because he was speaking on his own. In response Yeshua makes it clear that his words are not his alone but the words of his Father also. We then read these words in verse 19:

They said to him, “Where is this “father” of yours?” Yeshua answered, “You know neither me nor my Father; if you knew me, you would know my Father too.”

In Yeshua’s response we see an interesting teaching, that to recognize Yeshua, the Son, involves acknowledging God, his Father. In acknowledging Yeshua we are drawn deeper into connection with the Father. What then can we learn from this?

In Isaiah, we read of Israel’s growing weary of God and not honoring him by offering the Torah’s required sacrifices and observances. This neglect of covenant faithfulness leads to estrangement from God and even words of condemnation and curse. In this we see that relation to and more importantly intimacy with God is derived through obedience. The lack of covenant faithfulness demonstrated in this passage led to estrangement between Israel and her God, the flipside is that faithfulness to the covenant draws us closer to God.

In a picture of the Messianic Age given by Ezekiel in chapter 37, we read: “My servant David will be king over them, and all of them will have one shepherd; they will live by my rulings and keep and observe my regulations.” As Ezekiel sees the future reign of Messiah, the Davidic king, ruling over Israel as her rightful monarch, inextricably tied to the Messianic Age is that part and parcel of the Messianic Age is a Jewish people committed to the rulings and regulations laid out in the Torah. The eternal, ever presence of Yeshua is also a time of ever present Jewish covenant faithfulness.

If the Messianic Age, our daily hope and longing is characterized by a renewed Jewish people surrounding a returned Messiah and walking in Torah ways, if we live for this glorious day, why don’t we now begin living in the reality of the Messianic Age by drawing near to the LORD’s Torah and being drawn deeper into connection to God the Father and to Yeshua, his Son and our righteous Messiah?

As we draw near to the LORD by walking lives of Torah faithfulness, we go beyond just acts of obedience to acts of deep connection to the God who gave us this Torah. As we draw nearer to the LORD, we are given a new experience of God and Messiah and begin living now in the reality of the Messianic Age today.

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