There’s no question the worldview of most younger Christians already differs from previous generations regarding social justice, cultural engagement and politics. The next issue of probable divergence? The conflict in Israel and Palestine. The American church has largely purported just one theology about the modern state of Israel, but now questions are being asked – especially by younger Christians learning of persecution and human rights issues happening in the region – if the church should have a more active role in peacemaking. Is there a way for the Church to be pro-Israel, pro-Palestine and pro-peace? (religion.blogs.cnn.com)

I think Strang is saying that younger Christians aren’t buying the Christian Zionist line, and tend to view the conflict in Israel strictly in social justice terms (generally with the Palestinians on the victim side of the equation). I see that trend among younger Christians myself, especially as evangelicals become more concerned with social justice, which is in general a good thing. Therefore, it’s urgent that advocates for Israel argue on the basis of justice and not solely on biblical prophecy. There are two claimants to justice here–Jews and Arabs–and we can defend Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East on that basis.

On the other hand, if we rely on biblical prophecy alone, we limit ourselves to a smaller audience, and it’ll be one primarily of those who are already convinced. We’ll lose lots of younger people, who have seen many interpretations of biblical prophecy fall apart. In arguing for Israel from a justice standpoint, we can acknowledge Israel’s shortcomings, but insist these don’t invalidate it as a state. If we talk as if Israel is always right, we weaken our case. But Israel, as Alan Dershowitz points out, has a better human rights record than any nation ever facing the kinds of threats that it faces (http://youtu.be/OiTh730rk-Y). And Israel has demonstrated its ability to correct and reform itself in ways that no other Middle Eastern nation can claim at all.

Needless to say, I’m thoroughly enjoying this book, including the silent arguments I’m having with different contributors over their interpretation of various texts. For example, when Yeshua explains that he can’t get rescued from those who arrest him, because the Scriptures “say it must happen in this way” (Matt. 27:54), the note points out that Matthew doesn’t cite any specific Scriptures here, and claims, “no pre-Christian sources predict the arrest, suffering, and crucifixion of the messiah.” Perhaps you can argue that about the arrest and crucifixion per se, but surely the theme of a suffering Messiah is well established in the Tanakh, as rabbinic literature amply recognizes in the following centuries. And sometimes the notes don’t go far enough. Since I got The Jewish Annotated NT for Hanukkah, I read John 10:22ff early on. It mentions, of course, that “the festival of the Dedication” here is Hanukkah, but it doesn’t say that this is the earliest reference anywhere to Hanukkah as a holiday, or explain the connection between the festival and this pericope in John.

But what’s most striking about The Jewish Annotated NT is its deep engagement and respect toward Yeshua and the writers of the New Testament. In the Introduction, the editors cite Lutheran scholar Krister Stendahl’s phrase “‘holy envy’ to express the idea that a religious tradition different from the one we practice may express beautiful and meaningful notions.” Of course, we Messianic Jews would like our fellow Jews to get more out of the New Testament than “beautiful and meaningful notions,” but we also need to be confident that Scripture itself can get through to people, if they’ll only read it, and this publication can help many Jewish people to do just that with the New Testament.

Another benefit of the book from a Messianic Jewish perspective is that the authors read the texts without the layers of Christian preconceptions and dogmas that color the reading of Yeshua-believers, Messianic Jews as well as Christians. Here’s one example:

A couple of weeks ago (before I got the book), I spoke at a Navajo One New Man conference here in New Mexico (see http://umjc.org/home-mainmenu-1/news-mainmenu-40/1-latest/729-navajo-nation-supports-israel). I opened with Revelation 7, where John hears the number of those sealed from the twelve tribes of Israel—144,000—and then sees “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands” (Rev 7.9 NRSV). I said that this was a picture of the One New Man that this conference was speaking about—not a homogenized humanity, but still Jews and Gentiles. John hears the perfect number of redeemed Israel, with the twelve tribes represented, and then sees a remnant from all the nations, representing humankind in all its diversity, ultimately Jews and Gentiles worshiping God and the Lamb.

Now, traditionally Christian scholars have read Revelation through the lens of replacement theology and seen a “new Israel,” with 144,000 as a symbolic number for the redeemed, who appear in the next scene as the multi-national multitude that no one can count. Or, more recently, other Christians see the 144,000 as the literal number of Jews who will be saved during the great tribulation, even if the rest of Israel doesn’t make it. The multi-national multitude of those raptured before the tribulation worship before the throne while the drama plays out on earth. The Jewish Annotated NT, free of centuries of interpretive dispute, offers a simpler and more compelling reading of this passage: “John’s eschatology revolves around the restoration of the tribes of Israel, as in Ezek 37.15-22 . . . affirming the fundamentally ethnic ideology of this book.” The great multitude of 7:9 comprises “Gentiles who have devoted themselves to purity (white robes) and to the God and messiah of Judaism.” I might prefer to see Messiah capitalized, but I love the interpretation. It’s pretty much how I preached it to my Navajo brothers and sisters, but I was a little nervous about my interpretation until a Jewish scholar backed me up here.

I’m just starting to work with The Jewish Annotated New Testament, but I sense that it will provide lots of insights like this one as I incorporate it in my studies.

The Jewish Annotated New Testament, New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, editors.New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 637 pages, hardback.

Then came Hanukkah in Yerushalayim. It was winter, and Yeshua was walking around inside the temple area, in Shlomo’s colonnade. So the Judeans surrounded him and said to him, “how much longer are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us publicly!”

Yeshua answered them, “I have already told you, and you don’t trust me. The works I do in my Father’s name testify on my behalf, but the reason you don’t trust is that you are not included among my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice, I recognize them, they follow me, and I give them eternal life. (John 10:22–28a CJB)

People are often surprised to hear that Hanukkah is mentioned in the New Testament, and even more surprised that this is the earliest mention of the holiday in any literature. The books of the Maccabees are earlier than John’s Gospel, but they don’t mention Hanukkah itself, only the events surrounding it. Now, that’s a nice bit of biblical trivia—not that anything biblical is trivial, of course—but it doesn’t explain the connection between Hanukkah and the story that follows in John 10. Was there a Hanukkah-related reason for the Judeans to challenge Yeshua, “If you are the Messiah, tell us publicly,” or for Yeshua’s response about the sheep?

One of the more plausible Hanukkah connections is Yeshua’s repeated reference to his “works” (10:25, 32, 37, 38), the miracles of healing and deliverance that he had performed among them. Miraculous works are a theme of Hanukkah, cited in the blessing, “… for the miracles, the redemption, the mighty deeds, and the victories in battle which You performed for our ancestors in those days, at this time” (Koren Siddur). Yeshua is telling his critics, “We’re celebrating past miracles right now; how about recognizing the present-day miracles happening right around you?”

There’s another Hanukkah connection, though, that I haven’t heard so much.

The blessing continues, “You delivered the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few.” The Maccabees led a minority movement within Israel. The Jewish majority was ready to go along with the oppressive decrees of the emperor Antiochus, and some even embraced them. Why would they do that? Because Antiochus’s goal wasn’t just wiping out Jewish practice, but assimilation; he was promoting solidarity with the dominant Hellenistic culture that had already won over many Jews. Of course, when Antiochus over-reached and desecrated the temple it strengthened the resolve of the anti-assimilationists and war broke out. Many more Jews were won to the Maccabean cause. Even then, however, they waged guerrilla warfare and eventually won by forming small, nimble bands that could harass the imperial forces and flee to safety, not by numerical superiority.

So Hanukkah celebrates a minority victory, and Yeshua points out that he’s leading a minority movement too—the sheep who listen to his voice and follow him, not such a big crowd at that point in the story.

A few years back, when I was part of a big UMJC tour in Israel, a European journalist interviewed me for a Christian magazine. He asked about the size of our movement and I said, “We’re small, but pivotal.” His face lit up at that and I thought he liked my use of “pivotal” to describe the movement. But, no, he wasn’t impressed with my cool word choice. Instead, he said, “ I’ve never heard an American describe something they’re involved in as ‘small.’” But, of course, Hanukkah reminds us that God doesn’t shy away from smallness, even if the typical American might.

I don’t remember if I said this to the journalist, but I’ve had other occasions to describe the community of Yeshua-believing Jews as a minority within a minority, something like one-quarter of one percent in Israel and probably not much higher in the USA, if you count Jewish Yeshua-believers who are actively maintaining a Jewish identity. This brings me to a second Hanukkah-related point. As a celebration of minority, Hanukkah is also a statement against assimilation. In fact, David Stern points out that the holiday “has become a Jewish refuge and defense against absorption into and assimilation by the Gentile majority: ‘We don’t celebrate Christmas; we celebrate Hanukkah because we’re Jewish’” (Jewish New Testament Commentary on John 10:22; also the reference for this verse as the earliest mention of Hanukkah).

This is a recent development, as Stern points out, but it’s totally consistent with the original meaning of the holiday. Back in the second century BCE, many Jews went along with Antiochus, at least at first, because of the allure of assimilation. In the 21^st century, Jewish continuity is more threatened by assimilation than any other force. The mission of Messianic Judaism as we envision it within the UMJC —to promote Jewish loyalty as well as Yeshua loyalty—is often frustrating, but well worth the struggle. We’re not looking to vanquish our foes, but we are looking for a victory that only God can bring.

Happy Hanukkah in Yeshua!

The idea that the Christians worship three gods—which the Trinity definitely does not teach—does seem to be a big impediment for Jewish people who might otherwise be interested in Yeshua, especially when they realize they can believe in him and still be Jewish. But does believing him mean believing that he’s God? That’s a big problem.

Before we go any further, I should note that the New Testament doesn’t actually say in so many words “Jesus is God.” There are a couple of passages that almost say that, depending on the translation, but much more often what happens is that attributes that belong only to God are ascribed to Yeshua the Messiah. Indeed, in Revelation, the final book of the New Testament, the multitude of the redeemed “from all tribes and peoples and languages” worship God and the Lamb, or Messiah, “who is at the center of the throne” (Rev. 7:9–17). I could give lots more examples, but the point is not that a man became God, but that God become a man in order to be the Lamb of redemption, whose sacrifice redeems human beings for God and cleanses them from sin.

I won’t try to explain how this can be; the doctrine of the Trinity seeks to do that (and the interpretation of the Shema in Maimonides’ second affirmation of Jewish faith seeks to prove that it’s impossible). But Revelation is still talking about the one and only God of Israel, and we see something similar in the Torah itself.

God becomes a man at least temporarily to reveal himself more fully to his followers. In Genesis 18, for example, Abraham is sitting at the door of his tent when he lifts up his eyes to see “three men standing near him.” After Abraham entertains his visitors, he escorts them out to continue on their journey, and one of them turns out to be As they are walking together, one of them turns out to be the Lord, Hashem, who is debating with himself whether to let Abraham in on his plans to destroy Sodom. Hashem decides to let Abraham know what’s up and Abraham begins to argue with God, who is standing next to him in human form, addressing him as “the judge of all the earth” (Gen. 18:25), and going on to say, “Indeed now, I who am but dust and ashes have taken it upon myself to speak to Adonai—my Lord” (Gen. 18:27). Abraham doesn’t use the divine name YHVH, but it’s clear that he knows he’s speaking to the one true God, who a few minutes earlier had sat down with him to eat some roasted meat and pita bread.

In the recently published Koren Siddur, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks reminds us,

The God of the philosophers is a dimension of reality but not a personal presence, a shaper of history. One may meditate on such a being, but we cannot speak to Him, lay our innermost thoughts before Him, and place our fate in His hands. The God of the prophets—the God of redemption—is encountered in events, in history, in life (citing Kuzari by Judah HaLevi).

Amen. The God of Torah is not remote, abstract and existing in some absolute and indefinable oneness. Rather, he takes great measures to reveal himself to humankind, even if it means coming among us as a human being.

Let’s stay in the neighborhood of the Shema itself, namely the Torah, while we consider this question.

The Torah doesn’t describe God as absolutely One, but as a complex One. Or I should say that the Torah records God describing himself that way, since God is the ultimate author of the Torah. There, when God names himself, he uses multiple terms to bring out complexity within his oneness.

In Exodus, after Moses suffers a setback in his effort to lead the Israelites out of bondage, “God spoke to Moses and said to him, ‘I am YHVH. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make myself known to them by my name YHVH’” (Ex. 6:2–3). Notice that Deity in these two verses has three different names—“God,” “YHVH” or Lord, and “El Shaddai.”

Now you might say that these are just three different names for one and the same God, which doesn’t suggest any division within his oneness, but just helps us understand different aspects of it. That’s true, and that’s the point. Only God can name himself. Back in Exodus 3, Moses asks God what his name is, and God doesn’t say, “You can describe me by whatever name works for you—since I’m ultimately beyond naming anyway.” Rather, he answers, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh—I am who I am” or “I will be what I will be.” And then he continues,

“Thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘Ehyeh sent me to you.’” And God said further to Moses, “Thus shall you speak to the Israelites: YHVH, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you: This is my name forever, and this is my memorial to all generations.”

God has a name for himself, but to describe himself more fully he doesn’t limit himself to that one name, but uses several.

The first name that appears in the Torah is “Elohim” or “God,” not the personal name YHVH. Commentator Nahum Sarna explains,

The preference for the use of ’elohim in [Genesis 1], rather than the sacred divine name YHVH, may well be conditioned by theological considerations; the term ’elohim, connoting universalism and abstraction, is most appropriate for the transcendent God of Creation. (JPS Torah commentary on Genesis 1)

Only at the conclusion of the creation account does the name YHVH appear, and then it is used repeatedly in Genesis 2–3 in combination with the more generic name Elohim. Sarna continues,

The repeated use here may be to establish that the absolutely transcendent God of Creation (’elohim) is the same immanent, personal God (YHVH) who shows concern for the needs of human beings.

The ancient rabbis noticed this same usage, “the Lord God” and explained it in terms similar to those of the 20^th century commentator, as joining two very diverse aspects of the one God. But they explained this with a story:

This may be a compared to a king who had some empty glasses. Said the king: “If I pour hot water into them, they will burst; if cold, they will contract and snap.” What then did the king do? He mixed hot and cold water and poured it into them, and they remained unbroken.  Even so, said the Holy One, blessed be He: “If I create the world on the basis of judgment alone, the world cannot exist. Hence I will create it on the basis of judgment and of mercy, and may it then stand!” Hence the expression, The Lord God.

This is from the Soncino edition of Midrash Rabbah Genesis 12:15 (on Gen. 2:4), which comments, “The rabbis hold that Adonai (YHVH) refers to God under His Attribute of Mercy, while Elohim describes Him as a God of judgment.” So, are there two Gods? Of course not! But God in his fullness provides two different names, emphasizing two different aspects of his being, so that we can understand him a bit better. Perhaps that’s a step toward God revealing himself in “three persons” to use terms similar to trinitarian thinking. But there’s still more to consider—in another blog—closer to home within the Torah itself.

Honor looks beyond the outward circumstances and behavior of our fellow human beings to see the divine image in each one: “Every one a holy being.”  This understanding of human nature doesn’t seem to come to us easily. We’re ready to ignore, discredit, mock, and malign people around us, according to our own needs and prejudices.

Rachel, an elderly friend of ours, recently went into a serious decline, one that looked like it might be her last. She said she wasn’t afraid of dying, but made it very clear that she didn’t want to be left alone during the process. Since Rachel doesn’t have any family in town, my wife, Jane, spent the night and several hours the next day with her, until her niece arrived. After Rachel’s niece had been there for the afternoon, she needed a break for a couple of hours, so I covered for her. When she came back to the hospital, she thanked me for taking the time to be with Rachel. I said, “It’s a mitzvah; it’s a privilege to sit with your aunt during this time.”

It really is a privilege to be with someone as they approach death or to attend or conduct a funeral afterwards. In the presence of death, as all the outward trappings fall away—the small talk, the preoccupation with this or that problem, and even good things like energy and exuberance—we can often sense more clearly the holiness of the soul that had been obscured by all these things.

In a setting like this, we’d never think of dishonoring the other person. The point, however, is to recognize the holiness of the other person, regardless of appearances or circumstances to the contrary, before he or she reaches the final stages of life.

A Hasidic story tells of a prominent rabbi who was once riding into a shtetl when a notably ugly and misshapen Jewish man greeted him along the roadside. The rabbi, who must have been in an unusually bad mood, greeted the poor Jew with the words, “And are all the men of this village as ugly as you?” “I don’t know,” said the man. “You’ll have to take that up with the One who made me in his image.” The rabbi was immediately shamed and asked the man’s forgiveness.  (Paraphrased from Tales of the Hasidim, by Martin Buber.)

Honor—deference, respect, simple kindness—toward all whom we meet goes a long way toward fulfilling “love your neighbor as yourself,” which is an essential part of “love Hashem your God with all your heart.” Honor recognizes what we are often quick to ignore, the holiness of all who are created in God’s image.

* For a definition of middah, visit www.rivertonmussar.org, where this article first appeared. 

I’ve been dwelling on the second line of the Shema these days—“Love Hashem your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind”—and also studying Matthew with a few friends, in the new Delitzsch Hebrew-English translation (see  http://vineofdavid.org/resources/dhe/). This week we arrived at this:

A man is not able to serve two masters. For he will hate the one and love the other, or he will cling to one and despise the other. You are not able to serve both God and mamon. (Matt. 6:24)

Rabbi Yeshua is giving us an application of what he calls “the great commandment” to love God wholeheartedly. If we’re serious about fulfilling this commandment, we can’t also serve material comfort and increase, personified as the false god mamon. A divided loyalty just doesn’t work with Hashem our God.

If divided loyalty was a temptation in Yeshua’s day, it’s become a global pandemic in ours. I’m no economist, but it seems apparent that the global economy depends on continual growth and expansion, which gives birth to the endless stream of new technologies, new products … and new debt to finance them. Mamon drives the whole system, and if we turned from him en masse the whole system would be shaken to its roots.

So perhaps the failure of the super-committee reveals how far our country has fallen for the mamonic myth of ever-expanding prosperity. It’s easy to criticize the committee for kicking the can down the road, as they say, until after the next election. But we need to remember that we’re the ones electing them. We don’t want real spending cuts that might hinder our own comfort and possibilities of expansion, but we also don’t want to pay anything extra in the form of taxes to sustain the current the level of spending.

Oops, I’m getting political, but I want to end on a more helpful note. Perhaps it’s simplistic, but we can celebrate Thanksgiving by renewing our wholeheartedness for Hashem. And we can work on systematically translating that devotion to him alone into reduced consumerism. So, as we gather around for Thanksgiving, let’s actually give thanks . . . and then keep it up through the whole long weekend. Instead of rising up at 4:00 on Friday morning to line up for the latest sale item, we can pursue a better plan:

Seek first the kingdom of God and his tzedakah, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry for itself. (Matt. 6:33–34a)

I have a question that relates to one of my children’s friends at school, who has a Jewish mother and a Christian father…  She is interested in Yeshua as Messiah but has questions about the Trinity and the Shema balancing out. I am trying to help my 14-year-old son to have these conversations with her.

Now I know how our sages Shammai and Hillel must have felt when a Gentile came to each one of them and said, “Teach me the whole Torah while standing on one foot.” Except it would have been a 14-year-old asking the question—and I’m not quite as smart as Hillel and Shammai.

But, let’s give it a shot.

For starters, I’d say that balancing the Trinity and the Shema is one of those apples and oranges deals. The Trinity is a highly refined theological statement about the nature of God. The Shema is a much simpler statement (although no less profound) and wasn’t originally about the nature of God at all. The Shema, unlike the Trinity, isn’t trying to define the Oneness of God, but is telling us to be loyal to the One God.

It’s true, however, that people, especially Jewish people, often see the Shema as completely at odds with the idea of the Trinity, or of Immanuel, God with us, as Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be. Why is this? As I say in my last blog, “Doing the Shema,” the translation of the Shema as, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one” does sound like a statement of absolute monotheism, a description of God as unified and indivisible. Perhaps the best-known version of this view comes in Maimonides’ 13 principles of faith from the twelfth century, which is part of the Jewish prayer book to this day:

I believe with perfect faith

that the Creator, blessed be His name, is One;

that there is no oneness like His in any way;

and that He alone is our God who was, is, and ever will be. (Koren Siddur, p. 202)

Maimonides is using the Hebrew word yachid for One here, instead of echad, which is used for One in the Shema itself. In the Torah, neither yachid nor its root yachad is ever used to describe God. By Maimonides’ time, however, it came to define Jewish monotheism. Why the change? One reason was the rise of Christianity and its doctrine of the Trinity, which came to be seen as totally un-Jewish. The behavior of official Christianity, with its expanding oppression of the Jewish people, didn’t help either. Maimonides helped build a protective wall against Christian thinking that still stands today.

But, as I pointed out in my last blog, there’s another way to translate the Shema, which also has roots in the Medieval period, and appears in the most recent Jewish Publication Society version: “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” This reading fits a lot better in the original context of Deuteronomy, where the Shema was first given to Israel. It wasn’t a theological definition of God, but a command to worship God only, and have no other gods. The Jewish Study Bible comments: “Modern readers regard the Shema as an assertion of monotheism, a view that is anachronistic. In the context of ancient Israelite religion, it served as a public proclamation of exclusive loyalty to Hashem as the sole Lord of Israel.”

The Shema isn’t really dealing with the nature of God’s Oneness, as Maimonides and Judaism after his time reads it. Instead, it is saying that for us, Israel, the Lord is “the One and Only,” as the Artscroll Siddur puts it. In its original context, Moses gives the Shema after reminding Israel that God has graciously chosen us and delivered us out of bondage into his service. Therefore we are to choose Hashem alone as our God.

So, I didn’t quite get all this out while standing on one foot, and it doesn’t yet balance the Trinity and the Shema, as my friend’s father is requesting. But it’s a start—the Shema is a command, a statement of relationship more than a statement of theology, and that gives us some room to explore its relationship with belief in Yeshua as Immanuel, God with us. Since Yeshua himself says that this is the greatest of the commandments, there must be a way to believe in him and be loyal to the Shema at the same time, but that will take another blog.

Join me on December 4 for an interactive seminar on Mussar along with Rabbi Jason and Malkah Forbes,  live in Seattle or online. It’s entitled Ma Nishma? Doing the Shema according to Mussar. Read more at http://umjc.org/home-mainmenu-1/news-mainmenu-40/1-latest/724-seattle-congregation-pioneers-messianic-mussar-.

On the other hand, some people think of the Shema as a sort of Jewish statement of faith: Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. But is it really a statement of faith? Or is it just as much about behavior as about belief?

I’m quoting the translation of the Shema that I remember from my childhood days at Temple Beth Israel in Southern California, but even back then it didn’t quite make sense. Why did it say “Lord” twice? And what did it mean to say “the Lord is one” exactly? I didn’t know it back then, but there was another way of interpreting the six Hebrew words of Deuteronomy 6:4—something like, Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. Or as the Artscroll Siddur winsomely states it: Hear O Israel: Hashem is our God, Hashem the One and Only.

This sort of translation goes back to the Medieval sages Ibn Ezra and Rashbam, who definitely knew their stuff. And it makes the Shema more of a commandment than a creedal statement. It’s not about the nature of God as One, but about something we are to “Hear,” heed, pay attention to, and obey: The Lord and only the Lord is our God. That’s how Yeshua saw it, because when someone asked what was the greatest commandment in the Torah, he quoted the Shema (Mark 12:28ff.): Hear O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. If we heed the fact that Hashem alone is our God, then Hashem alone has to be the object of our affections as they used to say.

So as I’m focusing on learning the Shema these days, I realize that I’ve been reciting it for a long time, but haven’t always been intent on practicing the whole-hearted love of God it commands. I’m getting some help from a book I mention in another blog, The Year of Living like Jesus by Ed Dobson (see WWDD, 13-10-11).

As I said, it’s a good read, and surprisingly inspiring, especially as Dobson touches on his battle with ALS (Lou Gehring disease), a grim, degenerative, and incurable affliction. Toward the end of the book, Dobson evaluates his experiment:

One of the many good things about this year has been that when I get up every morning, I focus on reading the Gospels and trying to live like Jesus instead of focusing on my latest muscle that doesn’t work. Focusing on Jesus and his teachings keeps me from unduly focusing on my own disease and deterioration.

Now, when I get up every morning, I don’t worry about my health, which is excellent, thank God. But my mind does tend to rev up with all kinds of worries and kvetches . . . until I remember the commandment: “V’ahavata, you shall love Hashem your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” When I’m wholehearted in my love for God, it doesn’t leave much room for worrying and kvetching. I realize that these are really just different forms of ingratitude—lamenting what I’ve lost, or never had, or might not have much longer, instead of being thankful for what I do have.

The Torah’s demand for exclusive loyalty to Hashem doesn’t seem oppressive or confining. I’m not so great at it, but I do find its call to listen up and love God to be invigorating indeed.

Join me on December 4 for an interactive seminar on Mussar along with Rabbi Jason and Malkah Forbes,  live in Seattle or online. It’s entitled Ma Nishma? Doing the Shema according to Mussar. Read more at http://umjc.org/home-mainmenu-1/news-mainmenu-40/1-latest/724-seattle-congregation-pioneers-messianic-mussar-.

In The Year of Living Biblically, AJ Jacobs describes his experience with wrapping tefillin (both binding and wrapping are used to describe the ritual). It’s part of what the book’s subtitle calls his “humble quest to follow the Bible as literally as possible”:

The tefillin is tight, creating six little lumps of forearm. The experience isn’t frightening or odd, as I’d imagined. It is more . . . comforting. The wrapped arm reminds me of getting my blood pressure taken. . . . Or maybe it’s that it reminds me of getting swaddled. I used to envy Jasper [his son] whenever I rolled him into a human burrito in his swaddling blanket. Perhaps this was God swaddling me.

Jacobs goes on to note that his grandfather wrapped tefillin and so, most likely, did his grandfather’s father and all the rest of the generations before him. Jacobs finds the experience positive because it reconnects him with his ancient patrimony, and that works for me too. But the swaddling metaphor doesn’t. First, as a borderline claustrophobe, I’m not too eager to be made into a human burrito. But more to the point, the straps of tefillin aren’t soft and comforting, but tight and challenging. I’m bound up, not swaddled.

Why is that a good thing? The final step of binding tefillin makes it all work for me. After you wrap the strap around your forearm seven times, you put on the head tefillin with its blessings. Then you take the end of the arm strap and wrap it around your middle finger three times, reciting Hashem’s three-fold betrothal of Israel (which is anticipated in this tradition and fulfilled through union with Messiah Yeshua):

And I will betroth you to me forever [wrap];

I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy [wrap].

I will betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know the LORD [wrap]. (Hosea 2:19-20)

In a day that worships unbridled freedom, it’s a privilege, and a relief as well, to enter the bond of matrimony with the Lord. Now I’m ready for the prayers and a day of serving Hashem. Binding tefillin is a custom for Jewish males, but it has a message for everyone who is seeking the God of Israel, male and female, Jew and Gentile.