Judaism: A Branch's Attempt At Understanding the Root

Introduction
If you have had a theological conversation with me of depth, and especially if you have listened to my preaching, you might have picked up that Judaism is a fascination of mine. There are two main reasons for this. One, Judaism feels no obligation to rationalism. In other words, for Judaism to exist, Jews have to accept that the most important things are things that cannot be comprehended by the faculty of the mind, such as God’s pure essence, or Torah’s essence, or God’s election of the Jewish people. I have at times been accused of being an absurdist. I’d rather be called “Kierkegaardian” I think, but I wouldn’t say that my beef with rationalism constitutes me as an “irrationalist” or an absurdist. Neither should Judaism have to endure this criticism; for to say that there are things that one can know and that one cannot know is a perfectly rational philosophical presupposition. But to claim that the most important things are things we cannot know with the faculty of our mind, is not a rational claim, it is a religious claim, but is not automatically absurd. It is from what I can tell a definition of faith. Nothing I have read from any orthodox Rabbis, despite major theological differences between them, hints any other view of faith; faith as the beginning of the Jews’ religious epistemological presuppositions. And if you know me, you know why that appeals to me.
It is not at all inconvenient that the faith which I profess is historically and theologically attached to Judaism. Therefore the second reason for my fascination with Judaism has to do with Christianity’s dependency on it. They (Jewish folk) may view us (Christians) as the annoying toddler who they just cannot shake off their leg. But we’re there, and we both know it. Regardless of Christianity’s deviation from Judaism, which is frankly more significant than many postmodern theologians might lead you to believe it is, we do share the Old Testament, and we both see it as Scripture. The Christian Messiah is a Jew who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah, and the greatest apostle of Christianity (Paul) is also a Jew who claimed that Jesus’ Messiahship extended to Gentiles as well and that that was part of the plan all along. As divergent as Christianity may be from Judaism (ironically Christianity’s whole claim is that “Judaism” is divergent from true Judaism/Christianity), it still owes its worldview and way of approaching life to the Jewish worldview and Jewish history.
Believing in and holding to everything I have said thus far absolutely compelled me to study Judaism for myself; not Judeo-Christianity which can only mean one of two things: either it’s a synonym for “monotheism”, and in that case you might as well include Islam, or it’s the brand of Christianity which is somewhat educated in the Old Testament. Still, the latter is so blatantly biased in its research of Judaism. Therefore, I have endeavored to study Judaism itself without Christian presuppositions about the identity of the Messiah with a hope to gain from this a template which I can compare and contrast to the teachings and worldview of Jesus and the Apostles. The posts which follow highlight those comparisons and contrasts.
There are other things I’m reading right now, such as “The Early Church” and comparing to my appreciated but theologically limited Bible (Baptist) education. These things will also be a part of upcoming blog posts, and I may intentionally or unintentionally mix them with the other stuff I’ve been reading about Judaism or philosophy or the Bible itself. I think that this can be profitable for both you the reader and I the blogger; if I am able to untangle the mixed up pieces by the time that my fingers hit the keyboard. So as to avoid confusion, I will be sure to be very clear and possibly clever with the title of my posts, as well as with the purpose of them; making distinctions between ones that follow particular lines such as “Early Church” or “Judaism” and posts that are hodge-podgy or ruff attempts at synthesis.
As it pertains to Judaism, what I have done in the past regarding Hebraic studies has been either tainted with overblown New Testament ideas, or too heavily guided by subjective Rabbinical commentary of which I am usually ignorant of to what particular school the Rabbi I am reading belongs. Because of the disadvantages of this sort of approach, particularly the latter, I decided to start with the basics and I bought this book written by an Hasidic Orthodox Rabbi named Naftali Brawer. It is called “A Brief Guide To Judaism: Theology, History, and Practice.” It is from this book that I will be making the particular observations in the following post. Although his Hasidic biases come to surface sometimes, he’s up front about them, and reiterates compellingly that the purpose of the book is to inform non-Jews about Judaism. Plain and simple. One of the things I’ve learned in reading is that although I have a hodge-podge of ideas from randomly selected Rabbinical readings from various schools of thought and mixed in with my Christian background, there is a lot I don’t know about Judaism. Also, I would’ve thought going in that I would find more convergence with Christianity and Judaism, and have my faith strengthened thusly. Actually, I have been surprised to discover that Judaism and Christianity have major differences. So much so that I’m embarrassed at having told my friend Dan on a few occasions that one has to be a Jew before they are a Christian. I still believe in some senses that this is true, qualifications necessary, but I think if I can trust Rabbi Brawer’s “guide”, a Christian is someone very different than a Jew, even if Yahweh is who we both claim as God! However, comparisons are as helpful as contrasts in this study, because it helps us see that what the New Testament presents in Christianity is not a new religion, but to a Jew, an overblown Messiah cult, and to a Christian, a true, but totally different Judaism.
So welcome to my brain.

God is Odd

Reformed theologian Walter Brueggemann has a great quote. In reference to God's displeasure and active punishing of the socially unjust Israelites as portrayed in the prophet Isaiah he says,

"It's easy in our secularized time to find such a Yahweh reference more than a little naive, and surely life can be well imagined and well understood without reference to Yahweh. But it must have been equally easy to do so in that ancient context. It is easier to perceive reality in terms of practical politics than it is to situate a decisive Yahweh at its center. According to the prophetic tradition, however, such a construal of reality is deeply misguided and will never bring security, well-being, or joy. Yahweh is the inescapable character at the center of things. Yahweh is, insists the poet, (Isaiah), deeply offended and mobilized to wound. All this from Yahweh can be avoided, but the requirement for such avoidance is taken by Judah to be too heavy. For that reason the hand of Yahweh remains vigorously and hostilely stretched out. Such poetry is an odd rendering of reality. But Bible believers do indeed operate with such an odd sense of reality as the only version of reality that makes sense of the whole world."

One might question exactly how "odd" this view of reality is. But it doesn't need to be too "odd" for Brueggemann's point to be grasped. For the prophetic perspective is in any age, as Brueggemann points out, conter-cultural. It certainly is odd in a secular age. And in mentioning secularism at all Brueggemann may have dug himself into a hole, but despite his vagueness, one like myself who shares many of his presuppositions can appreciate what's being said here, which is very relevant. We rarely put ourselves in the situations of the subjects who are receiving these prophecies. We get to see it all from God's objective point of view, and we sometimes in the prophets get a glimpse of God's personal feelings. But suppose that we were receiving the prophecies, let alone as secular people, but as ancients, it's relationship to our experience, our reality would certainly be difficult to detect, unless we have already decided to look at things from God's point of view. If there is indeed a difference between God's perspective of our experience and ours, and God is of the opinion that our refusal to hear his perspective is the cause of our rebellion, then we are doomed unless we choose to hear it from God's perspective, because there are two realities, and ours is not really reality. An Israelite might say for example that the reason Assyria is an Empire is that they have the biggest and best army in the whole world, the prophets would say that God has granted Assyria the biggest and best army in the world so that He can bring punishment upon disobedient Israel. So for an Israelite the correct perspective is one which is focused on their relationship to God. And perhaps the most stunning and I would say beautiful aspect of this line of thinking is that God is so much less world-event oriented than he is covenant relationship with Israel oriented. If history was a newspaper, (bear with the analogy)God's favorite page might be the Israel section which to the editors of this particular paper is worthy of (if its worthy of the paper at all) section E.

"His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts"

In a nutshell God is counter-cultural.

Marveling at Speech

The exchanging of thoughts through the medium of words is marvelous. By marvelous, I do not mean "awesome" or "great" or "good" or "friggin great" or any other vernacular-ed synonym. (Has anyone noticed how many ways that are to exclaim high approval in our culture?) By marvelous I mean marvelous, that is, worthy of marveling. In short, I think communication is marvelous. When we communicate we take great risks. Mostly, we risk being misunderstood, and thus we also risk being opposed for an untruth, or a misunderstood truth. That we can use words that can be misunderstood is marvelous enough. You would think that the entire point of having words is to avoid miscommunication. The whole point is to communicate! Yet we would probably be a victim of misunderstanding less if we didn't talk at all. But then, we might be taken as anti-social and thus a hater of people. In our refusal to communicate we still communicate.
And one considers this, one must wonder what it even means to be understood, and how one knows that one is understood. Indeed, being understood is something that many of us regard as a rare jewel, and pine for under the assumption that our anxiety and loneliness point to the difficulty of being understood. But if it is possible to be misunderstood, isn't it possible to miss being understood? And instead of our own words being misunderstood, it is us who misunderstand the ability of our own words to communicate truth, making our loneliness a reality worth doubting, since it may be totally based on a misunderstanding of our own ability to communicate.
Silliness?
I don't know. I think it's worth writing.

From Tuesday into Thursday

So if you're reading this post and you haven't read the last post; read the last post.
It seems providential that I stumbled across this silly article about Alfred Pennyworth (Batman/Bruce Wayne's butler); how he's Kierkegaard's "Knight of Faith" from the book "Fear and Trembling". Or in Kierkegaard's (the book to which this post and the last refers)"Concluding Unscientific Postscript", he may be closely linked to the individual who does not mediate his ethics/ relationship to the absolute telos, nor does he externalize them as the monastics. But he rather keeps them to himself as he relates to them absolutely, yet, the outside world wouldn't be able to tell that he is relating himself to an absolute telos. They would see him merely as Bruce Wayne's butler, doing the job of a butler. Basically Alfred lives in the faith that one day Bruce wayne will see the impossible and destructive nature of his idealism expressed in his duel identity, Batman, and repair his damaged psyche. Alfred's ethos, his absolute relationship to an absolute telos, i.e. his faith in Bruce is based on no higher ideal, or necessary reason. His faith is a pure presupposition against which he must constantly face the temptation to abandon. It is a passionate decision that keeps him from giving up on Bruce. But all of this is inward. None of it is external, or spoken, directly. So all the while Alfred expresses himself as relating relatively to a "relative telos" (like the majority of folks) he is actually relating himself to an absolute telos. In other words, a knight of faith can never be identified.
My questions are. Is the church (universal or local) required to relate itself, as if it is an individual, to the absolute telos? i.e. is the church supposed to be a corporate "knight of faith"? And if Kierkegaard is right, how shall the church be able to be a sign of the Kingdom of God, if the nature of being a knight of faith is being unidentifiable?
For me this is difficult because I think Kierkegaard's understanding of faith as presuppositional is correct, and I follow the logic of that all the way to his understanding of a "knight of faith." But I cannot reconcile that understanding and logic, with the nature and call of the church.
To be continued...

Relevant Kierkegaard

I hear you sighing.
"Matt says that his blog is about everything, but I think it's really about Kierkegaard, and sports."
Maybe.
But this post is not about Kierkegaard or his philosophy per se. It's about a Kierkegaard quote that is particularly relevant to a discussion which I've forced upon the parishioners of Steamtown Church via the teaching blog at steamtownchurch.com. So I'm linking them.
The quote:
"What has particularly helped mediation to grow and prosper in the ethical sphere is the deterring way in which the monastic movement of the Middle Ages has been used. People were made to believe that the existing person's absolute respect for the absolute "telos" (purpose, goal, end) would lead to entering the monastery. The movement itself was an enormous abstraction, monastic life a continued abstraction, so that life would be spent in praying and singing hymns--instead of playing cards at the club. If it is permissible as a matter of course to caricature the one, then it surely must also be permissible to depict the other as it has caricatured itself. In order, then, to stop the monastic movement, from which worldly wisdom has known how to derive great advantage, which even now it sometimes uses to preach indulgence from all engagement with the religious, (indeed in a Protestant country where Protestantism has prevailed for three hundred years, where anyone who wanted to enter a monastery would get into even greater difficulties than was the worried father who wrote: Where shall I send my son to school; in the nineteenth century, in which secularism is triumphant, we now and the stillhear a pasot who, in a discourse urging his listeners to participate in life 's innocent joys, warns against entering the monastery; one hears this and sees, behold the pastor is so gripped by his subject that he perspires and wipes away the perspiration)--consequently in order to stop the monastic movement people hit upon this foolish talk about mediation. Just as it is foolish talk to bring up God's name in ordinary chatter, so also is it foolish talk to place the absolute "telos" on the same level as the rank of captain of the popinjay shooting club and the like. But even if the Middle Ages erred in eccentricity, it by no means follows that mediation is commendable...the monastic movement is a passionate movement (related to what the Greeks also had, passion), as is appropriate with respect to the absolute "telos" and to that extent is far preferable in its nobility to the wretched brokerage wisdom of mediation."

It's important to note that although Kierkegaard prefers monasticism to mediation, (modern day Protestantism/the evangelical of my other blog)he does criticize the monastic movement for wanting to make the absolute telos external as opposed to internal. The whole of that particular argument is the assertion that one compromises the absoluteness of the absolute telos my making it external. That's not the goal of this particular blog post, although it's related and interesting. But now suffice it to point out the reason that Kierkegaard prefers monasticism to mediation. However, I might come back to discuss what exactly we should prefer as existing individuals if not mediation, or monasticism. In short, Kierkegaard would argue for a private yet passionate filled ethos or spirituality that could not be detected by anyone accept the one possessing it. I'm not very comfortable with that idea. But I do like the point he's made in the quote about the preferable nature of monasticism over mediation, i.e. the victory of passion over the tyranny and paganism of balance.

Baseball is for People Who Are Not Bored Easily

Baseball is a sport that doesn't need its romantic fans to defend it. And it is a sport for the romantic. It was America's pastime when America was romantic instead of cynical. I wonder if football is the cynics sport. I believe I could make a case for that, but that's neither here nor there.
Baseball is not in need of defense because the reason for which it's critics balk is totally subjective. How many romantic ways can one write that Baseball is boring? At least the romance employed by Baseball enthusiasts, is multifaceted, if not nuanced, and even at points objective. All the talk, the humor and hyperbole, by baseball's critics puts one thing on display. They think Baseball is boring. How can I persuade them that it is not boring? The fans of baseball can wax eloquent, and speak poetically about the ins and outs of baseball's intricacies, but if it's boring it's boring. Besides rhetoric is a lost art. An attempt to transfer enthusiasm may be the best method of persuasion.
The difficulty with Baseball in particular, when trying to persuade through enthusiasm, is that the enthusiasm which exists for baseball is an enthusiasm of knowledge. In other words, you have to know it to appreciate it, and you must know it on a deeper level in order to really know it. Furthermore, to appreciate it truly, to make the leap from hater, to tolerater, to spectator, to appreciater, and finally to enthusiast, you have to experience it existentially. And in all of these moves/leaps, essentially qualitative leaps, words can only build to a level of persuasiveness allowed by the subject. The critic must want to be baseball enthusiast.
So I'm not going to go the route of poetic persuasion away from the opinion that Baseball is boring. Even if it can be shown that a majority of Americans are under this opinion, I am of the opinion that a majority is not a synonym for a truth. In short, what you mean to say is not that it is boring, but that is bores you. Despite everything I said. I will still make an attempt to defend baseball against the accusation that it is boring. This is why it doesn't bore me.
When you see a pitch, I see the result of a thought out decision. A decision based on data, the empirically recorded data of the strengths and weaknesses of both the pitcher and the batter. When you see a pitch, I see a pitch count which plays into the pitcher's decision about what to pitch. When you see a pitch, I see a no one on base, or 1 man on, 2 men on or the bases loaded. When you see a pitch, I'm not only checking the pitch count, or the guys on base, but how many outs there are, and how the defense is defending the particular hitter, and what the manager for the hitting team is telling the hitter to do based on the situation, and the statistical data. And that's just one pitch. Nevermind a discussion of the home run, the squeeze play, the bunt, the steal. Or watching every pitch on its ways to a potential perfect game. Or a brewing confrontation at the mound.
Of course there is the esthetics of baseball culture. That's the area most defenders of baseball swim to. I like that too. But I've nearly exhausted the reasons for not going that way. And you may never understand the culture, the appeal of a ballpark frank, and the smell of a freshly cut ball field, the smell of summer, and a manager getting thrown out by an umpire, the sound of a ball smacking a glove. These are just little things that make us enthusiasts giddy about the whole thing. That's just us. We're quirky that way. But with so much packed into every pitch. With the fate of the entire game hanging on every single pitch, and the time to contemplate that fate, you cannot say that baseball is boring. Maybe you can say that contemplation is boring. But contemplate that for a second and realize that you cannot be bored and contemplating at the same time. If you realize that your bored, then you've acted, and for a second have by focusing on your boredom occupied your own mind, and are therefore, not bored. Baseball, for those willing to go beyond the surface is not any more boring than life itself. Perhaps many think life is boring. Perhaps that's why many prefer football...
Man, I am a snob.

Final Thoughts on Lebron James

If there is one thing I've never about that Lebron, its that he's bad in the clutch. In 2006 (I think) I watched him score 25 points in a fourth quarter comeback against the defending NBA champion Pistons. In 2009 I saw him nail a three-pointer at the buzzer in game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Magic. I've seen him takeover games and single-handedly win them for the Cavs. (With the Cavaliers posting less than 20 wins this year, one wonders how many games Lebron himself won? Is that not clutch? I can't remember one game I watched in which I thought... "man Lebron really blew that one." I do remember two games last spring though, when Lebron gave up. It wasn't an outright, intentional, lay down and die affair, but it was obvious that Lebron had somehow lost his motivation to play. After the Heat ousted the Celtics last night James himself even said that a lot of his emotion came from the fact that he had finally gotten over the hump of the Celtics, the team that beat his Cavaliers in the second round last season. He admitted that he saw no way for the Cleveland roster to match up with the Celtics roster. He saw no foreseeable championship in Cleveland. He had waited seven years, and signed two contracts and had not gotten the pieces to beat the Lakers or the Celtics, hell, even the Orlando Magic. The point is to win the NBA championship. He had lost trust that his organization would ever be able to complete the puzzle to win him a championship, and you have to give it to Lebron, what he wanted was a championship. He took less money to get it. Put in this light, his departure from Cleveland is justified, and done with no less motivation than the best of us would have if we departed one job for another. Talk Show host Colin Cowherd illustrated this point well when he compared Lebron leaving Cleveland to a lawyer leaving a bad firm. He also pointed out that lawyers get to pick their first job, and that Lebron had to go to Cleveland. He had to go to the "bad firm.", and was for all intents and purposes loyal to it. I feel for Lebron. I really do. I feel he should have the right to play for who he wants to as a free agent. That's what a free agent is. And we've all heard the argument that it wasn't THAT he left, but HOW he left. There's some merit to that argument, but having psychoanalyzed myself as a Cleveland fan for the past year I've determined that while the way Lebron made "the decision" had an effect on the level of my animosity, I would've have been greatly disappointed either way. For while I believe that Colin Cowherd's analogy has merit as a defense for the decision, and I never want to be part of the fanbase that makes Lebron feel shackled to a municipality called Cleveland, which I think he sincerely loves, and respects, and sincerely regrets the way everything went down, and while I didn't take his decision personally, I will say that as a Cavalier fan that I wished that Lebron James was not only about winning a championship for himself, but wanted to win one for Cleveland, the city of the Superbowless Browns, and the Indians, who despite their magical run in the 90's lost two world series, and are without one since 1948. If anyone could have sympathy for a sports city such as Cleveland. It was Lebron James. Now it may be a lame argument to say that he should've stayed for the sake of local sympathy. I understand that in the bigger context of his personal legacy that to ask Lebron to stay for Cleveland sounds absurd, but what doesn't sound absurd, assuming that this kind of egotism is tolerable, (it apparently is not only tolerated, but sympathized with, and encouraged), is to make a case that Lebron's legacy would be significantly more legendary if he did stick it out like Jordan and bring championships to the Cleveland Cavaliers, rather than join a superstar in Miami, and manufacturing championships through personal agreements made during the Olympics rather than through blood, sweat, and tears. Again, I understand why he did what he did. And maybe we should applaud the postmodern/generation x athlete. This vision of Lebron James being Cleveland's Michael Jordan was actually in my heart and mind since the minute he was drafted. He just never got his Scottie Pippen. Here was hoping that my favorite player felt the same. Here's the disappointment in discovering that the feelings were not mutual. There are weaker individuals in character than Lebron James, to be sure, but they are not Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, or Kobe Bryant. Maybe Lebron's way of thinking is a better way of thinking than those guys in the long run. Maybe we'll just have to get used to the utilitarian oppurtunist athlete? But why? Why? Why did the city of Cleveland have to be the ones that paid for the revolution?