JANE

I love to read.  I don’t get to read as much as I’d like, because I am a mom.  Laugh all you will, but I miss my hour long commute into The City by train.  It was two hours a day, five days a week, of reading and napping Nirvana.  

Several weeks ago, I found an unlikely book in my mother-in-law’s back seat (of all places!! Seriously, what was this book doing in her back seat?!?),  The Shack, by William P. Young.  Clearly, I am not the intended audience for this book, religiously speaking.  Having said that, if you are the intended audience, I suppose it has a spiritual message, a fresh way to look at God.  Myself, I couldn’t get past the heavy handed,  knock you over the head metaphorical representations of God as a Big Black Woman; the Holy Spirit as a diaphanous, slightly sheer fairy/sprite; and Jesus as a Middle Eastern carpenter (duh) with a big nose.  Seriously.  And Jesus actually explains this by saying, "Well, I am Jewish…"  OY!  Was that really necessary?  Anyway, the Three (One?) of them heal the soul of a man whose daughter has been brutally murdered by a serial killer.  The man is healed and of course forgives the killer.  Interesting, if not so well written.  

LIZZIE

Jane, while you may not be the intended audience for this book, it seems to me that you are the best possible audience for it.  It is readers like you (that is, spiritually sensitive, highly literate readers not steeped in the jargon and assumptions of American-style Christianity) who can get outside the Oh, what a marvelous allegory! We simply must have it for the church library. mindset.  (Believe me–I know whereof I speak.  I was the church librarian for a year and had these conversations on a weekly basis.  And, from what I gather, The Shack is the latest must-have church library title.) You, as a Jew and as a serious, intelligent question-asker, are the perfect person to respond to this spiritual allegory that is selling lots and lots of copies.

And the first thing I must say after talking with you about the book and reading your comments is that I, as a professing Christian, am blushing and burning with embarrassment about the big-nosed Jewish Jesus quip.  Oy is right.  It may seem like a small thing–a little throwaway line–to the average inhabitant of 21st-century American Christendom.  But the last thing the book’s churchgoing audience needs is a light-hearted dash of anti-Semitism cloaked in spiritual development.  

"Well, of course!  My savior was a Jewish carpenter, and isn’t it just precious to think that he had a big Jewish nose?  How very open-minded I am to embrace the Jewishness of my Jesus."  

I know I may be overreacting here, but your mentioning the author’s facile stereotype triggered a flashback or two.  Maybe I should write a separate post about the fifth-grade Sunday school class I co-taught where the male lead teacher offered a prayer in which he asked God to open the eyes of "our Jewish neighbors who can sometimes be bossy and rude."  Blood pressure rising–still mad at myself for my weak little mitigating comment after that bit of sanctimonious, bloviating bigotry.  Okay, I’ll shut up for a moment, take a deep breath, and let you get on with your story.

 

JANE

Why am I writing about a book I was not so crazy about?  Because the book got me to thinking about the differences between the relationship Christians have with Jesus, and the one Jews have with God.  If Christians have a close, walking next to me (two sets of footprints in the sand, if you must, but do you really have to?) relationship with a kind, forgiving Jesus… do Jews, can Jews have that sort of relationship with the God of the Torah?  This is a God who in one moment is Creating the world, telling Abraham his people will be as many as the stars in the sky, all sorts of wonderful things.  But the next minute, God is burning down cities and smiting folks left and right.  An all-powerful, but capricious God, if you will.  How is one supposed to embark upon a personal relationship with such a God?  (Please understand that while my intentions are serious, my tone is often, and intentionally, snarky and sarcastic.  You have been warned.  I don’t intend to offend, but I am That what I am.   ha ha)

LIZZIE

Oh Jane.  (Biting lip, watching sky for lightning to the north, and feeling relieved that the tetragrammaton was not used.)

JANE

Of course I called Lizzie, who thought it was a wonderful question.  And of course she added to my muddled state of mind, because our conversation segued into the differing Jesuses of the New Testament (I know, I’m not supposed to use that term, it implies the Five Books of Moses are not the complete Bible.  Since I am Jewish, that is what I think/believe). Which led to discussing the different authors of various parts of the Bible, original Torah and the… let’s call it the Newer Stuff…   Of course, Lizzie knows so much more about the Bible than I do.  So these conversations are always lessons in Torah (sort of?) and biblical history.  We moved onto the various ways Jews were treated in the different parts of the Newer Stuff (oh that just does not sound right… For the sake of intellectual argument  - heh – we’ll just have to call it the New Testament).  It went on and on, and of course veered off to the week’s political topics, including Rush Limbaugh as the new GOP leader.  Ack.  

LIZZIE

Yes our conversation really did wander into all of those different areas.  All while my daughter worked on her science fair project and I gathered glue sticks and washed beakers.  (Well, not beakers really–but the Tupperware did look scientific with the labels on them and all.)  

Jane and I are both struggling with the same questions–just from different perspectives.  I always took it for granted that Jesus should be a close companion.  He didn’t feel very close when I was growing up in the Catholic Church–but I did have some CCD teachers along the way who pleaded with us to see Him in that way.  My seventh-grade CCD class even had the Footprints poster up on the wall.  It was the first time I’d ever read that little piece, and I remember getting a little choked up.

I remember one other thing from my Catholic upbringing that made me feel Jesus and I ought to be chummy.  It was this enormous felt Jesus banner hanging up behind the altar (made, I suspect, by the group of little old ladies that formed the altar guild). What a contrast it was to the crucifix hanging over the altar.   The traditional crucifix–sculpted into the wood is that moment when the scourged, nailed, thorn-crowned Jesus utters "It is finished" and his lifeless head drops over one shoulder.  Cheekbones high, body sinewy, posture submitted, and all of it somehow graceful and still even in the horror that it depicts.

But that banner was a different story entirely.  My sister Lina named it "The Shuffle-off-to-Buffalo" Jesus.  Jesus was ever-so-slightly disproportional, his head a mite too big and his posture hunched due to the lack of a proper neck.  His hands and one of his feet were extended as if inviting all of us to join him.  (Or, in Lina’s eyes, to shuffle on off to Buffalo with him.)  It was a nice, friendly, beseeching Jesus–the kind of Jesus who you’d say no to if he asked you to the Homecoming Dance, but who would grow up to be the sort of super-nice neighbor who’d loan you all of his yard tools. The problem was, I wasn’t sure I wanted Jesus to be quite such a buddy.  (Truthfully, I’m a little creeped out by the neighbor who’s eager to loan me all his yard tools.)  

So, I’ve spent my Christian journey caught in a great ambivalence. Jesus as the great I AM vs. "What a friend U have in Jesus."  One is a little frightening and is wont to show up with a sword protruding from his mouth like a giant stogie of destruction.  (At least, that’s how he rides back onto the world stage in Revelation.) The other is, honestly, a little insipid and irrelevant.  Like that bland, lilting hymn that goes, "A-a-a-and he….WALKS with me and he TALKS with me and he TELLS me I am his ooooooown…"  It’s actually kind of a comforting hymn to hear when I am in a funk and feeling completely alone and misunderstood.  However, chanting that little ditty cannot compare belting out with the rest of the congregation "A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing…."   

So, yes, Jane’s and my conversation probed into all of this.  Who is Jesus, really?  Who is Yahweh?  Is he nurturing and intimate?  Or is he wrathful and capricious?  Why all the smiting if He has numbered every hair on the heads of the smited and each smited one is worth more to him than many sparrows?  

It’s all there–even in the New Testament, Jesus can be fairly wrathful and inscrutable at times.  I don’t really understand.  I used to think I did, but I just don’t.  The contradictions nag at me and cause me to doubt.  Will the real Jesus please stand up?

JANE

If you’ve read the earlier discussions Lizzie and I had, you know I am a maybe-believing, non-Observant, culturally and socially, dedicated and committed Jew.  I needed some more answers.  So I went to talk to my synagogue’s Rabbi.  Who is a very cool guy.  Seriously.  

We chatted about the difference between Christians and their close, personal relationship with Jesus, and how that was different then the typical Jew’s relationship with God.  I asked him why Jesus is always there for Christians, but Jews haven’t "talked" with God since… Moses?  Maybe a few prophets after that?  Certainly not since biblical times.  He laughed, and showed me a book written by a couple of guys in Israel about people who talk to God on a regular basis.  "what do we call people who talk to God in this day and age, Janie?" he asked (he doesn’t realize no one has called me Janie since college, and I am hesitant to correct him.  Which is silly.  I know… But he’s The Rabbi! )  and I answered, "Crazy?"   Laughter all around, because it’s true.  Talk to God today and you are a whacko.  Meshugenah with a capital M.   

LIZZIE

The day Jane told me about her conversation, I had just run into an old church acquaintance in the supermarket.  I knew her from our time in the charismatic Calvary Chapel congregation, and I hadn’t seen her in six or seven years.  So I’d sort of forgotten her penchant for being ultra-mystical about the most ordinary things– and having ongoing dialogues with God in which he tells her how her day is going to shape up.  As we both examine the fat-free Campbells soups, she recognized me and exclaims, "Well, Lizzie!  It’s been so long.  Father told me just this morning I’d be bumping into someone I hadn’t seen in awhile.  And I told Father I couldn’t wait to see who it would be!"  For a moment I thought, "Does her dad have ESP?"  And then I remembered that that’s how Jeannie always talks.  I guess the Rabbi would just shrug his shoulders and say, "Meshugenah."

JANE

I asked him if it’s possible to have a relationship with Judaism in a closer, personal way,  … if maybe you are not so sure you believe,  … if you really don’t want to be so Observant.  But still, to have a personalized commitment to Judaism, to being Jewish.  To my surprise, he said "Yes".  He then added that he believes it is possible, but that it is made all that much richer, deeper and more personal with observance.  Okay, well it was a start.  (and might I add,  I think he was very pleased that one of his congregants was coming to him with this sort of curiosity, even if it was of a  more intellectual bent than spiritual).   Here’s a book for you to read, Janie: God – A Biography by Jack Miles.   I told him about The Shack, which had spurred my relationship with God question.  He hadn’t read it, no big surprise.  Hadn’t heard of it.  I learned that the Rabbi at my synagogue leans toward the literary.  We discussed the part of the book where the main character forgives the killer of his young daughter.  No matter how hard I try, I can’t wrap my head around that one.  And Rabbi E agreed, that one is more of a Christian thing, that sort of forgiveness.  It is a little squirmy.  Forgiveness, heaven, hell…  

LIZZIE

Jane, your rabbi’s comments about closeness to God through observance are not so far away from the Christian notion of "spiritual disciplines."  We draw near to God not so much from thinking of God as friendly–but by weaving habits of prayer, meditation, fasting, and service to others into our day-to-day lives.  Right now, for example, we are in the midst of the Christian season of Lent–when spiritual disciplines are supposed to be a greater priority than at any other time.  At least, in the more liturgical churches.  I have had varying degrees of success with the formal practice of spiritual disciplines.  At times–especially with the fasting experiments–I have felt what I can only describe as an unusual spiritual freedom and boldness.  Not so much that my idea of God changed during those times–but that I felt less cluttered and muddled by other stuff.  There have been moments when I felt God’s presence as almost a palpable thing.  Mysterious and not promising anything.  Not speaking words into my head, but still unmistakably personal.  Just surrounding me and leaving me feeling both thrilled and calmed.  It’s hard to explain, but I believe in what your rabbi said about observance and closeness.  Even though the Jewish style of observance is, I admit, foreign to me…. 

JANE

Hey, while I’ve got you here, Rabbi… what about Jewish belief in resurrection?  I always thought (and wrote about here) that resurrection is a very very Christian belief.  More rabbinic laughter.  That’s what everyone says.  Apparently he talks about this very idea, once every couple of years at services, and each time people come up to him,  newly surprised to hear that resurrection is a very Jewish idea.  Yup, they got it from us!  (Lizzie laughed at this, of course she already knew that… )  We spoke about resurrection, Olam Haba (the world to come); the Messianic Age, Gan Eden, and Genhinom/Gehenna.  I’d always thought Jews spend more time on this life, doing Tikkun Olam (good acts that will repair the world, make it whole) to hasten the Messianic Age when things will be made whole and the righteous shall rise.  Well… yes but there is much more about Olam Haba than I’d realized.  And apparently I am not alone among my fellow Jews.  We do emphasize Tikkun Olam, and that’s good.  Then, he whipped out a volume of the Talmud (a really really cool thing to look at, whether you read Hebrew or not – the way the commentary/arguments are framed around the previous law… physically on the page, and philosophically) and showed me the part about this.   That the Messianic Age is only an interim time when the world will politically, harmoniously come together and after that will come the time when all will be whole.  (I think? Am I still getting this wrong?)  So it’s there, prominently, in the Talmud.  We just don’t dwell on it, like at funerals, for example.  There is not so much talking about sin and all that,  once we are eulogizing a person.  So if I have this right, Jews don’t get the reward in this life.  Nope, we have to wait for Olam Haba.  We don’t do the whole knowing we are saved thing.  But then, do you need to be Saved when you know you are Chosen?  (she asked, tongue in cheek.  Sort of…)

LIZZIE

I’m so glad you had this conversation with Rabbi E. and got to dig into the whole matter of Resurrection.  What a discovery.  Most of what I’ve learned about the concept of Resurrection in the Scriptures comes from the amazing N.T. Wright, an Anglican archbishop and brilliant theologian.  I read his book Surprised by Hope last year during the Lenten season.  The whole book was an examination of the Bible’s teaching on Resurrection–and it drew from both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.  (There, Jane!  Does that work better for you than "Old" and "New" Testaments.)  We as Christians think too narrowly of Resurrection.  It is certainly not an idea that came along with the advent of Jesus.  And, as your rabbi pointed out, it has everything to do with redemption and restoration of wholeness.  Most of which is yet to come.  But, as Wright pointed out, is for Christians part of the call in the here and now.  A sadly ignored call, I think.  The Messianic Age was, for Christians, ushered in (gee whiz, I almost wrote "shuffled in") with Christ.  And the Body of Christ (e.g., the Church) is supposed to be very busy with demonstrating the reality of Resurrection (a.k.a. Redemption or Making Whole or Restoring Hope) in the world.

JANE

Now I was on a roll.  So what about Jesus in Judaism, Rabbi?  Someone I consider to be quite knowledgeable about this sort of thing, told me Jesus is not mentioned at all in the Talmud.  We just don’t mention Him, historically or religiously.  A huge smile busted out on Rabbi E’s face.  And he again pulled out a volume of the Talmud, this one with the part about Jesus. (is it me, or does this sound like an episode of Friends?  The One When Joey Looks for  References to Jesus in Judaism)  It was about what the Rabbis of that time thought of Jesus.  Now, that was very interesting.  We don’t talk so much about that, do we?  Okay then.  Explains my confusion between what I call "historical Jesus" and "Biblical Jesus".  Which goes back to my conversation with Lizzie: historical Jesus seems to be the peace, love and tie-dye, countercultural Jesus, while "Biblical Jesus" and His story (in my under-educated head) is more about making rules, sins, and then goes on to cause centuries of Jewish persecution.  And of course Rabbi E then showed me a book called, Jesus in the Talmud by Peter Schafer.   (as an aside, Lizzie had mentioned that of course Jews mention Jesus, at least historically – and cited Josephus.  After a quickie Wiki search, my answer to her, later verified by Rabbi E, was that looking to Josephus for historical accuracy about Jesus, or the Fall of the Temple, was sort of like asking a Big Pharma rep for the truth about a particular pill… Full disclosure is required when the source is working for the Romans).

LIZZIE

I never knew that about Josephus–I’ve been so used to hearing his name in questions about historical support for the existence of Jesus.  Tell your rabbi thanks for the clarification–and I will be careful not to rely on that Roman-sycophant bad boy.

By the way, I really like Rabbi E!  With all his books, his literary bent, and the smile busting out on his face in fielding questions about Jesus.  A man after my own heart.

I think that part of the confusion about historical vs. biblical Jesus comes from the marked differences between Paul’s letters (some of the more dogmatic of which were probably not even authored by Paul) and the Gospels.  I’m certainly not going to try to get into a theological analysis of those differences here, but I have been doing a lot of reading myself lately about this historical Jesus and about Paul’s message (books by Marcus Borg and Garry Wills).  I think the bottom line is that, as little as we do know about the life of Jesus, it is clear that that particular first-century itinerant rabbi considered himself fully a Jew.  And that he was at the same time 100% countercultural.  

As a radical, Jesus challenged hypocrisy, bigotry, religious arrogance, and power-grabbing.  And, as a  Jew, he loved and identified with his fellow Jews, agonized over spiritual abuses by their religious leaders, laced his teachings with references to the Law and the Prophets, observed the Sabbath and the Feast Days, and prayed to Yahweh.  Jesus himself never "authorized" a deal in which the Jewish people would become targets of persecution by some new religion using his name.  That had more to do with the mysterious John–a Jew who nonetheless had some pretty harsh things to say about the Jews.  And who also wrote his gospel generations after the events of Jesus’s life and ministry had taken place. 

JANE

By now Rabbi E and I were having a great discussion.  So why not throw another huge topic out there?  Because why not cover several topics people spend a lifetime studying each,  in one short meeting?  Anything else you want to talk about, Janie?  Well since you asked Rabbi, of course there is.  Let’s discuss the different authors of the Torah.  (I figured I’d leave the various authors of the New Stuff to Lizzie…)  We talked about Harold Bloom’s Book of J, and the J author in general.  We talked about how to put such different parts of the whole back together.  Here’s another book for you, Janie!  The Art of Biblical Narrative by Robert Alter.  Which in a literary criticism sort of way discusses the various books of the Torah, written at different times, by different authors,  then pulls them back together into a whole, cohesive narrative with a purposeful story arc.  So he lent me a copy of this one.  I’m going to read it and make another appointment.  At least in a few weeks?  Months, with little kids, he allowed.  Sigh of relief.  Spiritual versus intellectual curiosity about Judaism.  He wasn’t bothered by it at all…  I think I surprised him a little, and I know he surprised me.  But I’m digging the "to be continued" part of the conversation. 

LIZZIE

I can’t wait for the followup talk on the J Writer and the Torah.  That’ll be a good one.  If I drive up to Jersey, do you think the delightful Rabbi E. would let me sit in?  (Wishful thinking, of course.  But wouldn’t THAT be a fun time?  We’d walk in on the Rabbi with freshly pedicured, blue-enameled toes and armloads of books.)  Well, in the meantime, I’ll take his reading suggestions to heart and make an effort to read at least one of those books.  And we’ll just see where this conversation goes….   

JANE

So what have I read since our meeting last week?  Academy X, by Andrew Trees – a sort of Nanny Diaries-esque faux memoir about an upper crust private school in Manhattan.  Not exactly tearing into the narrative arc of the Torah, now are we?  I’ll be back, Rabbi E…  I promise.