Posted on 03/21/2005 1:36:27 PM PST by 1 spark
ABOUT a month before Easter this year, I received a poignant letter from a prominent Seattle-area evangelical Christian businessman, a passionate activist for Israel. He wrote to invite me for a kosher meal at his home — and to discuss Jesus.
He did not, he promised, intend to evangelize me, a believing Jew. Rather, as a leader in the growing movement of Christians and Jews allying on behalf of the Jewish state, he was puzzled about what we Jews believe about the Christian savior. He was, he said, "ashamed that I never engaged my friends in what is the most important aspect of their lives, their faith, simply because some Christians — not Jews — told me to never ask these questions of my Jewish friends, or risk deeply offending them."
With the approach of the most holy day on the Christian liturgical calendar, his questions deserve answers. As citizens of a largely Christian society, most Americans see Easter through Christian eyes: as a commemoration of Christ's death and resurrection, which won salvation for all mankind. My Christian friend was asking why Jews don't see Easter as he does.
In wondering, he is far from alone. The new political alliance of conservative Jews and Christians has aroused curiosities. Jews like me who work with evangelicals and other Christian conservatives are often asked, by friends and colleagues mustering their courage, how nice people like us could possibly reject the risen Christ.
How, indeed. The best answer may be that what distinguishes the two religions above all is that Jews never saw a need for the sacrifice recalled at Easter.
The apostle Paul, who originated the most distinctive ideas in Christianity, taught that salvation is not something you buy with deeds — in particular, not with the Torah's system of 613 commandments, whose practice he explained could now be discarded. Rather, salvation is God's gift. God gave the ultimate gift in the form of Jesus' saving death.
Later Christian theologians boasted of God's unmerited "grace" as if it were a unique feature of their religion, while Jews were stuck with a discouraging faith where you try to earn your way to heaven by performing commandments. This represents a misunderstanding of Judaism.
As the Bible's book of Ecclesiastes, attributed to King Solomon, advises, "Go, eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a glad heart, for God has already approved your deeds." At the same time, Solomon crystallized the heart of biblical religion: "Be in awe of God and keep his commandments, for that is man's whole duty." How were the two ideas reconcilable?
In the Jewish understanding, salvation came in the form of the covenant given to Moses on Mount Sinai — God's gift. The commandments a Jew performs do not "earn" salvation. They are merely the response that God asks to the fact that the Jew is already saved — "God has already approved your deeds." As a fundamental Jewish text, the Mishnah, puts it, "All of Israel has a share in the world to come." Non-Jewish peoples had their own covenant with God, received by Noah after the flood. It worked the same way.
What about the great Jerusalem temple, often depicted as a mechanism for "purchasing" forgiveness with sacrificed animals — before the building was destroyed 40 years after Jesus died? Surely, this made the need for Christ's sacrifice clear.
But Solomon also said that when the Jews were in exile, without a temple, they "should repent saying, 'We have sinned; we have been iniquitous; we have been wicked,' and they [will] return to you with all their heart and with all their soul — may you hear their prayer and their supplication from heaven and forgive your people who sinned against you."
In Judaism, repentance is always available to people, Jews and non-Jews, who wish to "get right" with God. The temple sacrifices were an aid to this, not a precondition. That was proved by the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. The first temple lay in ruins for 70 years (before a new one was built). If God saw no need then for a sacrificial Christ, why would there ever be a need?
The offer of Christianity, for Jews, amounts to giving up the unique grammar of our relationship with God, the commandments, in return for a gift that we already had. This is why Easter is a day on which we should wish Christians all the blessings of their faith — a faith, however, that if we understand our own, we can never share.
LOL!
I'm not even sure they're food...
Moshiach, Moshiach, Moshiach...
Malachi lays stress upon the inevitableness of the Day of Judgment, the coming of which would prove to the skeptical that devotion and fear of God are not in vain, but will be rewarded. The messenger of Yhwh and the Last Judgment form the closing theme of Malachi's prophecy.
"Remember the law of my servant Moses, ... {Mal 4:4a RSV}
"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse." {Mal 4:5-6 RSV}
But they would remain ethnically Jewish whether they followed the Torah or not. The State of Israel recognises Jews for their ethnicity as well as their religious activities. Just because someone is not an orthodox religous Jew does not make less entitled to refer to themselves as "Jewish" or get automatic citizenship of the Israeli state as a Jewish person.
ping
Are you suggesting that it might have been better had he not been crucified?
Are you suggesting that it might have been better had he not been crucified?
Hmmm... you brought another point to mind. nmh, were the apostles Christian?
Invincibly Ignorant; malakhi; ET(end tyranny); nmh
The real question is why do so-called Christians fail to celebrate Passover
And instead celebrate the Pagan holiday created by the first Leader of the Roman church,
The Pagan Emperor Constantine.
Constantine as the world leader convened the Council at Nice, which made it anathema
to celebrate Passover and instead created the Pagan feast of Easter.
HaSatan must be pleased.
B’shem Y’shua
chuck
Excellent point, and an appropriate way to view the subject of the article.
Simchat Purim... I'm on my way to the wine shop...
I did not say that. Here it is in context:
"To attempt to do so would be to try to please God with a lesser sacrifice and would be a return to the law, as a dog to its vomit and would make the Crucifixion of no effect for you."
The reference was addressed to those who were once under the law of sacrifice, having understood that part of the law was fulfilled with the crucifixion, after which they entered into a new covenant which did not require blood sacrifice. But to return to the blood sacrifice after being freed from it would be a rejection of the perfect sacrifice and denial of the blood of the Savior.
Hope the context is clear, for I was not disparaging the law that Jesus fulfilled. Not one letter shall pass from that law until all be fulfilled. Those who have not seen the fulfillment of it are still required to follow it.
The state of Israel does not follow Jewish law on this. The will accept a crypto-Muslim whose grandfather was a Jew.
If such things as religious belief, such as Jesus is the Messiah, are provable, then what is the role of Faith in Christianity?
If such things as religious belief, such as Jesus is the Messiah, are provable, then what is the role of Faith in Christianity?
The name "Pesach" (PAY-sahch, with a "ch" as in the Scottich "loch") comes from the Hebrew root Peh-Samech-Chet , meaning to pass through, to pass over, to exempt or to spare. It refers to the fact that G-d "passed over" the houses of the Jews when he was slaying the firstborn of Egypt. In English, the holiday is known as Passover. "Pesach" is also the name of the sacrificial offering (a lamb) that was made in the Temple on this holiday. The holiday is also referred to as Chag he-Aviv , (the Spring Festival), Chag ha-Matzoth , (the Festival of Matzahs), and Z'man Cherutenu , (the Time of Our Freedom) (again, all with those Scottish "ch"s).
See post 135.
Yes.....
Thanks. This is a very enlightening article. I'll still evangalize, but it shows how close the Jews and Christians are in belief.
Show me where in the Hebrew scriptures that a second coming of the messiah is prophecied.
Again, the passage you cite has nothing to say about the messiah coming twice.
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