Tikkun Olam in the New Year

Here's hoping everyone has a great new year, filled not only with happiness but with the necessary steps towards being better people--more generous, compassionate, and sweet-spirited.

As we celebrate the new year and prepare for Yom Kippur, our thoughts are on atonement. But atonement is empty without a renewed effort to do better. One of the ways we can do better is to focus on reparing this damaged world. There are many ways to perform tikkun olam, but I know I am going to spend the upcoming year being more proactive in helping my friends and family members.

The worst thing about American culture is the blind pursuit of individual wealth and material goods, especially when we are equally blind to the struggles of the friends we spend time with. We ALL are just a few set-backs from being in some sort of trouble--whether it be financial or health-related or spiritual. Capitalism forces people to focus on the self and pass judgement on others.

Living a Jewish life should help us overcome that tendancy.

Rabbi Milton Steinberg writes, "Are men brothers, owing one another fraternal solicitude? Then let a tithe be taken up for the indigent; the needy may lawfully claim for their own the corners of fields, the gleanings, and anything overlooked in the harvesting. Therefore, too, anyone who requires it may enter a field and eat, save that he may carry nothing away. Hence also the accepting of interest is prohibited, nor may a millstone or cloak be taken as security for a loan.

Are the world's goods a trust imparted by God to mankind? Then, loans shall be cancelled every seventh year so that no one may forever be sunk in debt; and bondsman may not, except at his explicit request, be indentured for more than six years; nor may the land be sold in perpetuity but shall be returned every fifty years to the descendants of its original owners so that the impoverished may have fresh access to the soil from which they have been dispossessed."

Rabbi Steinberg continues, "On the evidence of the past and of the modern rabbinate, Judaism stands these days:

• For the fullest freedom, political, economic, and social, for every individual and group, which includes among other things, maximal civil liberties, trade unionism, the equality of all.
• For the social use of wealth, though whether this involves social ownership and if so to what extent is disputed among contemporary interpreters of Judaism.
• For a society based on cooperation as its root rule rather than competition.
• For international peace guaranteed by a world government, the notion of the absolute sovereignty of the national state having always been an obscenity in they eyes of the [Jewish] Tradition."

Rabbi Steinberg was one of Judaism's greatest rabbis. Like I said, there are many ways to perform tikkun olam in the coming new year; let's allow the good rabbi's interpretation of the Jewish way of life to seep into our consciousness and help repair the world.

Shana Tova!!

(Basic Judaism, Rabbi Milton Steinberg. Harvest; San Diego, New York, London 1947.)

Gentiles For Yarmulkes

(Some Jews belong to different, non-Jewish religions, including Christianity. Just as Irish people do not necessarily have to be Catholic and Arabs do not have to be Muslim, ethnic Jews are still Jews even if they're Christians. This essay has NOTHING to do with these people.)

Gentiles For Yarmulkes

I live in the midwest, so I'm accustomed to seeing Nordic or Anglo-Saxon looking people inexplicably wearing a kippah and filing into Whole Foods' deli to pick up some Middle Eastern dish they cannot pronounce. They cover their heads. They keep kosher. They pray the shema. And they're not Jewish.

Sometimes if I'm unsure whether I'm looking at a fake Jew or the real thing, there are a few questions that usually seperate the Chosen from the wannabe's. "I like your kippah" is a much better statement than "I like your yarmulke," since "yarmulke" is the word usually used in movies and TV shows and is thus more familiar to non-Jews. Next month, I will tell them to have a happy new year, and in January I'll say "happy secular New Year!" If they looked confused, they're probably Messianic "Jews."

I'm sure some of them are good people, and tolerance of their antics is a testament to religious pluaralism and freedom of religion, but--holy Moses--what a silly cult. In a weird affront to both Judaism and mainstream Christianity, Messianic "Judaism" is the most infamous and ambitious evangelical effort to convert Jews to Christianity. It blends traditional Jewish rituals with the Christian belief in Jesus' divinity and messiahship--completely missing the point of both religions: namely, those Jewish rituals are empty without real Jewish meaning. And Christian grace is supposed to have made those rituals null and void.

Judaism says people can only atone for their own sins. Evangelical Christianity claims vicarious atonement through Christ. Jews believe people are born morally neutral and can choose to do good or evil or somewhere in between. Evangelicals believe people are born with orininal sin--an evil inclination--and that they can only be saved through Christ. Jews who believe in a forthcoming messiah think he will be a political leader. Evangelicals say the messiah is divine, he is God in the flesh, and that he has already come.

That last part is the most important difference: Jesus. The idea that any person who ever walked the earth is God or part of a God-head or a holy trinity is as alien to Judaism as a belief in Xenu--and just as incompatible.

While most conservative Christians believe in converting non-believers, most of them focus on the whole "unsaved" world. Messianic "Jews", on the other hand, believe in taking the Gospel "to the Jew first" as their ads put it. They are obsessed with us. They travel to big cities or wealthy neighborhoods where they know there will be a lot of Jews and proselytize in the most deceitful way. The biggest lie is calling themselves Jews in the first place, when most of them are gentiles, something they only admit when pressed on the subject. They must think this will confuse young Jewish people. The deceit is really mind-boggling. They call their churches "synagogues". They call their pastors "rabbis". They call their cult a branch of Judaism.

Real Jews have won many legal battles, including the famous Google case, as well as getting the Yellow Pages to list Messianic "synagogues" under the 'Church' category instead of the 'Synagogue' category. And a few years ago, Jewish leaders stepped up their efforts to combat this deceitful missionizing.

But I have a sad prediction. Since most Messianic "Jews" support Israel, I fear the same Jewish leaders who were so bold not long ago will become more relaxed on this issue. We cannot allow that to happen. Support for Israel cannot outweigh serious theological differences. The problem is, not only are most Messianics Zionists, but somewhere between 6 to 15 thousand Messianics live in Israel, and the Supreme Court of Israel made the historic decision that Messianics who really are ethnically Jewish share the same right of return granted to Jews who belong to mainstream Christianity, something I happen to agree with. But acknowledging the obvious fact that ethnic Jews are Jewish, despite their religion--which I don't think is even controversial--does not change the fact that we should be educating our kids in their religion and to beware of cults and missionaries.

I realize it's possible these people pose no real threat to Judaism. Proportionately, more Christians convert to Judaism every year than the other way around, despite the facts that Jews do not proselytize and that converting to Judaism is difficult and time-consuming. That's actually amazing and empowering. But it's sad to see more and more leaders grow tolerant of this destructive cult simply because this cult is supportive of Israel.

Jesus is an important issue that should divide Christians and Jews along theological lines--not in a nasty, violent way, but in a firm, peaceful way. And I feel we're losing that passion, both out of some wrong-headed, lazy, pussy idea of "tolerance" and out of nationalistic zeal.

One year a group of Messianics stood outside our JCC holding signs saying "Behold Your God" above a picture of Jesus dying on a cross. As I made my way inside, a woman yelled at me, asking me if I am "a complete Jew." I told her I am a complete Jew because I love the REAL God; I don't give a fuck about Jesus. She looked shocked, and I said it's cool if he's your thing, but don't expect me to not defend my beliefs when you push yours' on me.

Imagine if Jews created a Jewish group called Christians For the Real God and traveled to churches, telling their underage children that they can reject Jesus, convert to Judaism, and still be called Christians. That's exactly what's going on here. And our leaders are ill equipped to deal with the onslaught because Judaism is slowly being replaced by both Judaica. I will have nothing to do with that. They can decorate their church with as many menorahs as they want; it's still a church. And while I support Israel, I would rather give Jerusalem to Scientologists so they can turn the Western Wall into a giant spaceship landing pad than ever, ever, ever call a lying, Evangelical cult Judaism.