- What did Jesus change? Sons of Abraham – James has a multi-part discussion on what Messiah changed: gentiles are now sons of Abraham.
- Bible Of Unknowing – Derek Leman starts a new blog on mysticism in the Bible and related ancient texts. Interesting read! And completely devoid of ugly theological battles…for now...muahahah
- Is meaningful dialog possible? You bet! – The notorious Dan Benzvi finds common ground with…Mormons? Yes. And then ends with an unthinkable statement:
Yes, I can have a civil, meaningful dialogue with Kinzer, Rudolph, Derek, and Yahnatan. Gene Shlomovitch? Ehh...Just kidding, you too Gene. All we need is to find the things that unite us and discuss them first.
- Smashed Tablets – Dr. Schiffman on Moses smashing the stone Torah tablets, and lets his thoughts meander onto Yeshua, a parallel between the redemption after the golden calf and Yeshua’s return, and our own living of the Torah:
God gave us his Torah to live by. To what extent do we order our lives by God’s commands? We may kiss it as it goes by, and read it every week, but when we go home, do we live according to the Torah, or are we worshiping at a golden calf of our own making? The majority of the commandments teach us how to live with those around us.
I knew a man who liked to rant and rave about people not following the rituals and Holy Days of the Torah in a proper manner, and one could say he was zealous for the Law. Yet he treated people like garbage. A person can not treat someone like crap and claim to love God. The way we treat one another is an indication of how we really feel about God.
- Simply Lewis – New Testament scholar N.T. Wright has a frank and from-the-heart post on C.S. Lewis and the great debt the Christian world owes him.
- UMJC Conference Report – Rabbi Brumbach reports first-hand info on the recent UMJC conference.
- Rabbi overturns
moneychangersgo-karts – Amusing post on the story of a rabbi who overturned the go-karts, due to tzniyus (modesty) issues with Jewish girls driving them. The author jokingly refers to the rabbi as a “modern-day Pinchas”:He stormed the course, forced the girls to get out, lifted the go-karts, and simply broke them,’ one eyewitness said. ‘He turned the cars over and slammed them on the floor while uttering quite a few curses.’
J-BOM (Jewish Book of the Month Club)
- Smooth Cookies – Chaim Potok’s The Promise Part 1 and Part 2
Podcasts
- Dr. Michael Brown debates Conservative Rabbi Silver – Some clips from the debate.
Silver’s opening question: If a righteous person who loves God with all his heart and does good deeds his whole life, and doesn’t believe in Jesus, isn’t that person going to burn in hell according to your theology?
Brown’s opening question: Since Messiah’s identity is, from your perspective, unknown, are you opened to the possibility that the Messiah will be Jesus?
So far, the "Sons of Abraham" blog post discussion is just a back and forth exchange between me and Gene. Anyone else, feel free to jump in. We could probably both use some perspective.
ReplyDelete"Anyone else, feel free to jump in. We could probably both use some perspective."
ReplyDeletePersonally, I am quite disappointed how uninvolved Messianic Jews are - there's rarely an MJ contributing to the various discussions (and those who do, I can count them on half a hand). Either that or there are hardly any Jews left in MJ at this point or most of believing Jews are in churches or just MIA all together at this time (hey, we are still supposedly in the "The Times of The Gentiles", right?).
I'm pretty happy with the discussions lately. A good mix of Jews and gentiles in the last post here on Kineti in what was a fairly good discussion, ~100 comments, with some common ground reached.
ReplyDeleteIf find that a weird metric, though. I never think to myself, "Oh man, there's not enough Jews commenting here."
Besides, Benzvi counts as 10 Jews. He's the Bear Jew. :-)
It might be interesting if you could compile the consensus arrived at in the comments you reference Judah, and present the statements at points in a future blog. It's tough for every interested party to search through blog comments and be able to distill the meaning, plus the comments eventually fade into the background noise of the Internet and are essentially lost forever.
ReplyDeleteHaving those consensus points brought to the fore, including indicating who said what, preserves this "history" of the event, and might help the lot of us realize that perhaps we're not as far apart in our thinking or our faith as it seems on the surface.
"If find that a weird metric, though. I never think to myself, "Oh man, there's not enough Jews commenting here."
ReplyDeleteJudah, that's perfectly understandable, from your point of view! Not faulting you in any of this.
Gene,
ReplyDeleteSo who's fault is it? God's, by not bringing enough Jews to MJ?
Let's all take out our violins and serenade to poor sad Jewish Gene.....LOL!
Gene,
ReplyDeleteSo who's fault is it? God's, by not bringing enough Jews to MJ?
Let's all take out our violins and serenade to poor sad Jewish Gene.....LOL!
"So who's fault is it? God's, by not bringing enough Jews to MJ?"
ReplyDeleteDan, if you chose to worship with Jews rather then with Mormons, we'd have one more Jew in MJ:)
James, you're right. I was actually thinking about that earlier -- a kind of "here's what we found common ground on, and here's where we part ways" kind of post.
ReplyDeleteTerrific, Judah. We can have conversations and make comments until the bovine come home, but trying to arrive at some common ground and a few conclusions will help us all (and whoever is reading these blogs without commenting) in making progress in our relationships with each other and perhaps with God.
ReplyDeleteJames,
ReplyDeleteWhat's bovine? Don't forget I am an Israeli refugee...LOL!
Sorry Dan. I was trying to be clever (didn't work, as usual). Cow or Ox as in the old saying "Such and thus won't happen until the cows come home." http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bovine
ReplyDeleteGene said: "Personally, I am quite disappointed how uninvolved Messianic Jews are - there's rarely an MJ contributing to the various discussions (and those who do, I can count them on half a hand)."
ReplyDeleteI was wondering where they are also. Without more input, you are the most outspoken voice of Messianic Judaism, Gene....and maybe other Jewish believers have a somewhat different point of view. What could be done to encourage others to post? I would really like to know how widespread your particular point of view is, or if there are varying views within UMJC on these issues.
Not trying to be mean or anything, but maybe most Messianic Jews consider One Law-Two House-Hebraic Gentile believers beneath them, because we lack a certain amount of "enlightenment". Just a guess of course, but maybe BE extends to online conversation for them (maybe we really are a fractured fellowship after all). That makes Gene the lone pioneer willing to brave our waters.
ReplyDelete"Without more input, you are the most outspoken voice of Messianic Judaism, Gene..."
ReplyDeleteMaureen, I know... but this precisely WHY I have been so outspoken. To begin with, Jewish believers are a very small minority in Messianic movement today - their voice is easily overwhelmed by other voices. We have very few young zealous Jews in the movement (the old generation of Jewish Jesus Movement hippies are mostly out of the loop on the recent developments). Many Jewish believers I speak to have simply become disinterested in the messiness of Messianic movement, tired of the identity crisis in it, and lack of respect of Judaism and Jewish distinctives in general. In fact I know quite a few who LEFT the movement altogether and now attend mainstream synagogues exclusively or almost exclusively.
It's also true that many Jewish believers do not really care about Torah observance and Yiddishkeit (they grew up secular and want to stay that way) or became so "Christian" over the years, anything "rabbinic" is a scare word for them. Since they do not care, they don't care to speak up.
"and maybe other Jewish believers have a somewhat different point of view."
May be there are, but all that I've spoken to at the recent UMJC conference seem to share my point of view by a large margin (or may be I share THEIR point of you?).
Not trying to be mean or anything, but maybe most Messianic Jews consider One Law-Two House-Hebraic Gentile believers beneath them, because we lack a certain amount of "enlightenment". Just a guess of course, but maybe BE extends to online conversation for them (maybe we really are a fractured fellowship after all). That makes Gene the lone pioneer willing to brave our waters.
ReplyDeleteThat is because they have a healthy fear of not wanting to be called Least in the Kingdom of God, others don't mind, such as Gene. :P :P
"That makes Gene the lone pioneer willing to brave our waters."
ReplyDeleteThanks, James. You and I generally have a pleasant dialog. No reason this can't extend to others on your side of the world.
"That is because they have a healthy fear of not wanting to be called Least in the Kingdom of God, others don't mind, such as Gene."
ReplyDeleteZion/Jeruz, as long as I can count on you to spare a guest room (one of of many hundreds) in your heavenly mansion for me once in a while, I think I'll be OK living in the Kingdom as a pauper:)
Besides, I'll be in a good company - John the Baptist was called by Yeshua as the lesser than even the least in the Kingdom.
@Gene: If John is considered even lower than the least, then me and you are probably going to have to build our own cardboard box, plus clean the steps leading to the Temple with tooth brushes.
ReplyDeleteGenius:
We could put our boxes together and make a fort! :)
Our conversations have been rather pleasant of late, Gene. Is it time to sing "Kumbaya"? :P
ReplyDelete