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.

On the Web: Six Things I Wish I Knew Before I Went Kosher by Miri

Great new blog post by friend Miri.  Seeking to understand what kashrut means is essential to building a mature Messianic Judaism.

Thanks for your contribution to this discussion, Mirela!

Six Things I Wish I Knew Before I Went Kosher | Biblically Kosher | Biblical Eating.

The Law of the Lord is Good – Understanding Paul

 

Though it may seem to be a huge endeavor to deal with the difficult issue of understanding the words of Paul/Rav Shaul as it deals with issues related to the Torah, but this endeavor is guided by a simple axiom that I was taught by Dr. Mark Nanos, one of the premier scholars of the writings of Paul, including the books The Mystery of Romans and The Irony of Galatians.

First off in understanding Paul you must realize that he was writing primarily to Gentile churches.

With the first understanding clear then when reading Paul’s writings telling believers that they were not bound to Torah commands like circumcision and Jewish rituals then each of these statements per Nanos add “for non-Jews” to each statement.

In so doing it helps to clarify the point that Paul was telling the non-Jews that he was writing to that they were not bound to the Torah.  This is the same opinion that any mainstream Rabbi will give that non-Jews are not required to observe Torah and more to Paul’s stand should not observe Torah.  The special place of Torah as the Jewish people’s rights and privilege can be seen that potential converts to Judaism are to do one act that violates Shabbat so as to keep them from completely observing Shabbat before they were Jewish.

But for Paul himself as a Jew, A life observing Torah was his responsibility and the only way for him to live, even in his final speech Paul declared himself to be “as in relation to the Torah, a Pharisee”. This showing that even at the end of his life he still considered his life of Torah observance to be living to the standards of his Pharisaic training with the sage Gamaliel.

So then if we understand that Paul in addressing his non-Jewish audiences was saying that the non-Jews are not bound to the Torah’s commands (which is the same thing understood in Judaism today) this should help in understanding his philosophy. Paul as a Jew lived a life of Torah faithfulness, even after becoming a follower of Yeshua.  His harsh words in Galatians being pointed at those non-Jews who came to believe in Yeshua and were told that their new faith was inadequate without becoming Jews or becoming “super-believers” by observing Torah.  Both these views are wrong and were rightly condemned by Paul.

Hopefully this will be of help in understanding Paul/Rav Shaul…

One Mitzvah at a time.

 

This simple concept is so important being that doing the mitzvot plays such a vital role in living out Judaism. So often Torah observance is presented as an all or nothing proposition, either you are Torah observant or you’re not. This approach can turn a lot of people off to pursuing a Torah life.

So then wherever you are in your Torah journey you can find a new mitzvah to add to your life and over time add one more and so on and so on (there are 613 mitzvot so there is a lot of on and on and on).

So this is our task find some new way to walk Torah and honor God this week:

 

1. Lighting Shabbat candles

2. Helping those in need

3. Studying Torah

4. Davenning

5. Giving to your synagogue

6. Buying kosher food

7. Putting a mezuzah up

These are simple acts and baby steps in infusing holiness into our lives.

So then let’s get doing our mitzvot, one mitzvah at a time!

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!

http://www.towardblog.com

Doing the Shema – A How to from Jewish Tradition

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יי ְאֱלֹהֵינוּ יי | אֶחָד: וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת יי אֱלֹהֶיךָ בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁךָ וּבְכָל־מְאֹדֶךָ: וְהָיוּ הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם עַל־לְבָבֶךָ: וְשִׁנַּנְתָּם לְבָנֶיךָ וְדִבַּרְתָּ בָּם בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ בְּבֵיתֶךָ וּבְלֶכְתְּךָ בַדֶּרֶךְ וּבְשָׁכְבְּךָ וּבְקוּמֶךָ: וּקְשַׁרְתָּם לְאוֹת עַל־יָדֶךָ וְהָיוּ לְטֹטָפֹת בֵּין עֵינֶיךָ: ט וּכְתַבְתָּם עַל־מְזֻזוֹת בֵּיתֶךָ וּבִשְׁעָרֶיךָ:

Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord; And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words, which I command you this day, shall be in your heart; And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. And you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them upon the posts of your house, and on your gates.

Along with being our statement of belief in the God of Israel and accepting “the yoke of heaven”, as it is commonly referred to in Judaism, we also get commandments to do certain things in response to God.

1. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and might.

2. Keep these words in your heart.

3. Teach them to your children.

4. Speak about them at home and when you travel.

5. Speak them when you go to bed and when you rise in the morning.

These above don’t need a great deal of asking “How do I do these?”

But the next show us the need for our Jewish tradition to help us obey God and honor His commandments.

6. You shall bind them for a sign on your hand.

7. They shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

8. You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates.

The Torah just gives us these commandments with none of the how to do them. From these commandments we get:

 

TEFILLIN
and
MEZUZAH

To fulfill the commandment to bind God’s words on your arm and forehead our tradition developed tefillin. The tefillin consist of two cube-shaped leather boxes, one worn on the head, the other on the arm, with leather straps fixed to them for attaching them to the head and the arm. Into these boxes, known as batim, “houses,” the four passages, written by hand, are inserted.

The hand tefillin (in the Rabbinic tradition the “hand” here means the arm) contains all four sections written on a single strip of parchment. In the head tefillin there are four separate compartments, one for each of the four. The four sections are: (a) Exodus 13:1-10; (b) Exodus 13:11-16; (c) Deuteronomy 6:4-9; (d) Deuteronomy 11:12-21. Although the box (bayit, “house,” singular of batim) of the head tefillin has to be in the form of an exact square (in the part into which the sections are inserted; this part rests on a larger base), it is divided into four compartments for the insertion of the sections, care being taken that these should not be separated from one another in such a way as to interfere with the square shape. The box of the hand tefillin consists of a single compartment into which all four sections, written on a single strip, are inserted. The boxes have to be completely black as well as square-shaped.
(from http://www.myjewishlearning.com/daily_life/Prayer/Ritual_Garb/Tefillin.htm)

They are traditionally worn by men at the Shacharit or morning prayer service on weekdays. In Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism there are also women who will wear tefillin at morning prayers.

The tradition of wearing tefillin can be seen back at least to Second Temple period from Yeshua referring to some of the Pharisees making extra large boxes for their tefillin:

But they do all their deeds to be noticed by men; for they broaden their tefillin and lengthen the tzitzit of their garments.

(Matthew 23:5)

In these words Yeshua is letting us know that it was understood at this time that to fulfill the commandment to bind God’s words to the head and arm, that this was to be done by wearing the tefillin. We also see in this verse that Yeshua was critical of the Pharisees for seeking to fulfill the commandment by making the tefillin larger to be seen or wearing extra long tzitzit. In so doing we see that at least in the time of Yeshua that tefillin were known and used.

Also in the Dead Sea community, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, there were also tefillin found that is on display at the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. So then this is an ancient understanding of the how to do these commandments.

When it comes to writing the words on the doorposts of the house and on the gates, our tradition came to develop the mezuzah. Originally the words of the Shema were actually engraved on the doorposts of homes later the mezuzah a box that contained a scroll with the Shema was attached to the doors of homes and businesses.

So in these brief examples we can see that Jewish tradition developed by the Rabbinic sages helps us to understand and do God’s commandments.

May we seek to walk in God’s ways and live His Torah daily.