Jesus Christ
You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
– Matthew 7:5
So recently I was reading a post by American Conservative Rabbi David Wolpe. It’s from a few months back on Facebook. It gives an opinion held by over 99% of rabbis that I’ve ever heard speak on the subject. Basically, he says that Jews for Jesus and other “Messianic Jewish” groups are spiritual frauds. They’re correct, these groups are fraudulent. Anyone who calls themselves a Christian has no business wearing a kippah, calling a pastor a rabbi, a church a synagogue or anything like that. The rabbi is right on this.
In the Facebook post from November 19, 2018 the rabbi(speaking about “Messianic Jews”) says:
But they are part of a fraudulent faith, a marketing scheme dressed up as theology, a faith-based oxymoron that no one should believe.
Now, Rabbi Wolpe has a few deficiencies. He endorses homosexuality, performs homosexual “marriage” ceremonies in his synagogue, doesn’t believe in the exodus story clearly recorded in the Bible, and holds several other problematic beliefs. One might ask if Rabbi Wolpe is a spiritual fraud like he accuses the Messianic folk.
Now, I’ll be fair, most traditional Jews don’t collapse on these issues like Wolpe does. They also share his opinion about the messianic movement. I have a challenge to these Jews.
A double standard exists. I agree with the Jews that these Messianic folk are part of a fraudulent faith, but many rabbis promote a fraudulent faith as well. They promote the Noahide religion. Many rabbis don’t want gentiles to convert so they tell them that God gave an alternative covenant to Noah by giving him seven laws. Of course this is absurd. A plain reading of the Biblical text doesn’t give any hint that these seven laws were given to Noah. It’s simply incorrect. The ultimate proof is that there were no Noahides 100 years ago or the 3,000 years before that.
Rabbi Tovia Singer once said:
It may be said that the Noachide movement is the oldest religion in the world.
This is a lie. The truth is that the Noahide movement is younger than Scientology. Islam claims to be the oldest religion in the world and Jews know that this statement is absurd. I agree with them, however at least a Muslim can claim that this is what their Scripture says. The Quran says that the prophets were Muslims. Nowhere in the Torah does it talk about these 7 laws or a Noahide religion.
Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but he was a Monotheist, a Muslim. And he was not of the Polytheists.
– Surah 3:67
This statement is false. Islam isn’t the oldest religion in the world and neither is the Noahide religion. I would like to use Rabbi Wolpe’s description of the Messianic movement to describe the Noahide religion.
..a fraudulent faith, a marketing scheme dressed up as theology, a faith-based oxymoron that no one should believe.
So Jews, I agree with you that the Messianic movement is fraudulent. However, if you promote this fraudulent Noahide religion, it doesn’t make your condemnation of the Messianic movement look that impressive. A hundred years ago, neither of these movements existed. Let’s hope it becomes like that again.
You’re using ad hominem to bash Rabbi Wolpe. Unfair! His character has nothing to do with his Messianic views, and guess what? Most Jews DO think the Torah isn’t all literal. You think the fairy-tale for children really happened 6,000 years ago? You really believe the whole world was flooded like that? No, let’s stick to the facts, modern science.
As far as the Bnei Noach movement, false. It is the oldest because it was the oldest brit from HaShem to the peoples of the world. It’s as simple as that. How else can I explain it? But the real reason we’re not out knocking on doors for converts is because that’s not the Jewish way (the Rebbe disagreed though!). We, unlike you and our Muslim friends, don’t believe G-d’s damning everyone to hell simply because they’re not Jewish! In fact, hell might not even exist! We look at it like this: you guys have an advantage – you only need to keep seven connections – that is the accurate translation of mitzvot – we, 613. No one’s calling it a “yoke,” but hey, why not keep things simple? However, a Gentile may just have a Jewish soul, and if that’s the case, we’re the ones pushing for the conversion! He or she may also be Zera Yisrael. You see, this is more complicated than you think!
Is it a double standard? Not so. We’re not the ones using deception here. We’re not the one’s having our guys dress up like Catholic priests or carrying around Martian Luther’s 95 theses around (he was a vicious anti-Semite by the way). But is the Noahide movement biblical? Read Sanhedrin 56a for yourself and you tell me. We’ve already established beyond a doubt here that the Oral Law is indeed authentic (see my post here concerning Josephus and the Mesorah: http://allanruhl.com/the-end-of-rabbi-tovia-singer/). Therefore, we know its biblical (see also Genesis 9 for reference).
But I am open to your counter-arguments, if any. You haven’t seem to produce anything yet.
–Most Jews DO think the Torah isn’t all literal. You think the fairy-tale for children really happened 6,000 years ago? You really believe the whole world was flooded like that? No, let’s stick to the facts, modern science. —
I’m curious, do you think the Exodus was literal? Or that it is merely a fable with a moral message, like Barry Silver opined in his debate with Michael Brown?
How about the fiery destruction of Sodom, the sojourn and slavery in Egypt, the fall of Jericho, the conquest of Canaan, the Saul-David-Solomon monarchies?
Scott, I get we’re you’re coming from. I’m not a Reform Jew, but very, VERY Orthodox. Rambam taught us that anything that sounds too miraclous, or too fairy-tale-like, is likely just teaching a moral lesson. Therefore, the flood was actually local (there’s biblical evidence for this), and the universe wasn’t likely created in 6 days, 6,000 years ago. HOWEVER, the Exodus happened as described, as well as the destruction of Sodom, Jericho, and all the rest.
The ONLY exception is the giving of the Torah. No one ever said that didn’t happen. And there’s no need to.
I hope this helps clears things up. Thanks for asking!
Scott, neither I nor Justin speak for Judaism. Essentially, we speak for ourselves, just as you don’t represent Christianity.
While Justin and I agree on much, we disagree about whether most Jews believe the Torah is literal. The Rambam of blessed memory, I believe, took the minority view on this issue. This isn’t surprising, as this isn’t the only minority view position he held.
The six days of creation pattern what we know from both cosmology and evolutionary biology. I think there are other biblical evidences that the flood covered Pangaea, and that the mountains as we now know them did not exist. Rabbi David Fohrman with Alephbeta has a great teaching on Genesis where he explains that it was primarily a re-creation of the earth that needed to take place in order to save humanity because they had destroyed the earth.
Glad to hear you accept most of the less-fantastic sounding events as historical – the reason I brought them up is because archaeological evidence has been found corresponding (if not outright proving) each of those events.
Once upon a time – in fact, not too many decades ago – it was ‘proven fact’ that there were no such people as the Hittites, that the Exodus and Conquest never happened (especially the fall of Jericho), that the destruction of Sodom was myth, that no Davidic kingdom existed, that the various citations in Luke-Acts were mistaken, that John was a very late composition since its language didn’t match 1st-century Jewish concepts, even that Pontius Pilate has no mention outside Christian writings.
So with a track record like this, I don’t bet against the Bible being literal when it seems it is trying to be literal.
Which leads back to the Creation and Flood accounts – perhaps someday, the evidence and science will line up with a literal interpretation of the Biblical accounts. (The Big Bang Theory already displaced the Steady State Theory – the former gels better with Biblical Creation than the latter.)
PS. I’ve read some interesting physics theories that purport to show BOTH the literal 6 days and the observed billions of years age of the universe are simultaneously true.
No, I can’t fully grasp it – advanced physics is above my brain’s pay grade. But then, I find it hard to conceptualize gravity as the effect of mass bending spacetime (Einstein’s theory, proven) instead of gravity as a force (Newton’s theory, disproven).
The Zohar once said we’d be fools for taking the Torah at face value.
However, אֵין מִקְרָא יוֹצֵא מִידֵי פְּשׁוּטוֹ, which guided the Gedolei HaRishonim, because Rav Saadia Gaon concured in Emunos v’Deos 7:2, “It is a well known fact that every statement found in the Bible is to be understood in its literal sense.” But this isn’t the full quote, because he goes onto say that our sensory perception of the world, intellect, and even some saying of the Chazal, sometimes refutes the peshat. Therefore, now you know why Rav Yehudah says one is foolish otherwise.
Rambam, in Moreh Nevukhim, II:25, said, “A mere argument in favor of a certain theory is not sufficient reason for rejecting the literal meaning of a Biblical text.” But then we get his opinion in Moreh, 2:24-28, which seems to contradict this. Remember now that Rambam wrote many things in this way as a means to an end: so no one could misquote him. So take interpretive liberties.
P.S., I’ve heard of Gerald Schroeder’s book, but there’s a better argument than that. As you know, there are 26 generations from Adam to Moshe Rebbaineu. It doesn’t jive with modern science. But Rashi says a lot of Bereshis was done in maaseh, and, that the world was only created then with Midot HaDin, so HaShem needed to add Midot HaRachamim. That’s why no one celebrates the world’s birthday on Rosh Hashanah. All this was done in the last shemitah. Yitzchak deMin Acco took it a step further: he calculated Psalm 90:4 with Sefer HaTemunah. What did he find? Here’s the breakdown: 42,000 x 365,250 = 15.3 billion years.
Keep in mind that 42,000 years were “divine,” each lasting 1,000 years (that jumps to 49,000 with Olam HaBa). Now, also recall that each of the 7 cosmic cycles equate to a thousand years also. So this too was added to the calculation.
And for those that say he didn’t believe in Zohar, I recommend they see Otzar HaChaim, written 20 years later, which concludes Sefer HaYuchasin
Now, NASA and others sometimes think the universe is more like ~13 billion, but some stars look far older than that, exactly 15 billion!
Now you know what Yeshayahu meant (Isaiah 45:18-19) when he said, “I did not say to the seed of Yaakov, Seek Me, in vain….”
What about the “firmament”? This is also wrong. The real word is רָקִיעַ, and it means “expanse,” not “dome.”
And though Chagigah 13b-14a refutes the notion of people living before Adam and Chava, I point you to R. Yehudah Chayit, in Maareches Elokus.
“Most Jews DO think the Torah isn’t all literal. You think the fairy-tale for children really happened 6,000 years ago? You really believe the whole world was flooded like that? No, let’s stick to the facts, modern science.”
I think after a statement like this, we’re done.
Ok, I hope you see my follow-post post though. Regardless, we might be done, but me and Scott are just getting started with a fruitful discussion. So please leave us be, and I’m sure all parties will appreciate it. Toda raba.
Absolutely, I’ll only delete posts if you use foul language and you clearly don’t.
Thank you for not deleting anything. I appreciate it.
David, not sure if you got my last response involving an in-depth approach to halacha vs hashkafa. Yes, I take Rambam’s daas yachid (but it is also Ralbag’s and a few others). Yes, none of us can say we represent Judaism. Reform and Orthodoxy have tried to work together, but it’s a “as long as we follow me, now there’s union!” approach. Its gone nowhere, to say the least.
I once read somewhere about the Vilna Gaon saying that the 6 days are allegorical, insomuch that they actually reflect Jewish history, but I’ll have to look back at some sources for that. Also, did you know that the Zohar mentions Pangaea, and that there is a talmudic – as well as biblical – case for a local Mabul (flood)? In R. Fohrman’s opinion, was the “re-creation” of earth metaphorical, meaning, mankind had to do something, or is it more along the lines of what the Midrash says, that G-d built and destroyed worlds? And that’s up for debate, being that it’s a Midrash, of course. OR… are you speaking of Rashi on Midot HaDin and Midot HaRachamim??? Just curious on his research, and I’ll definitely look into it. Toda raba.
P.S., Allan Ruhl, I guess my other post was wayyyyy too long to be posted here? Maybe I can send a link and it’ll show up? Or maybe cut it down some? Please let me know what’s best. Thanks.