3.2.1 History as Transitional Rite

Turner considers liminality in transitional rites that „indicate and constitute transitions between states” (Turner 1967: 93). In such rites he distinguishes three phases, departure, liminality and return. During departure a social entity leaves a society, disregarding status, roles and positions it held there. During liminality it wavers in a transitional phase where neither past nor future structures are valid. While physically still existent, the departed social entity seized to exist symbolically and structurally. In this phase it examines the past and aspires for future values. During return into society the social entity receives a new identity, new functions, recognition and acceptance.

Turner distinguishes for the liminal period various characteristics (Turner 1967: 93-110). Sacra are material and symbolic elements that communicate basic values and norms. I suggest that they can also be acts. For the movement they can be, the role of Israel or the church, the meaning of Torah or the New Testament, the Trinity or Unity of God, a cross or a torah shrine in a congregation, an ecclesiastical or synagogal service. Detachment refers to the absence of social and symbolic order. Instead, monstrous combinations force abstraction and re-evaluation of common patterns. Messianic Jews can appear monstrous to Christians and Jews, as they comprise cultural elements of both, which are traditionally regarded as incompatible. The true mystery may be considered, but not touched, not changed or challenged. The ascribed or denied role of Israel versus the church may be that mystery. Pollution places the neophyte literally outside the community, renders him non-existent, dangerous. Living on the verge between two seemingly irreconcilable systems of beliefs, Christians and Jews are inclined to regard all or parts of the movement as intolerably polluted by the other system, as heretic, unclean, that should be avoided. Liminality grants freedom for new interpretations and changes. Christian and rabbinical tradition and theology can so become challenged and redefined (Stern 1991a).

States of transitions are states of progressive movement that accompany changes of place, state, social position and age (Turner 1967: 94). As the ritual subject can be either individual or corporate, applying the theory of liminality on the movement appears possible. Such application requires considering its possibilities and limitations. If Rites de passages „are not restricted ... to movements between ascribed statuses”, but also „concern entry into a new achieved status, whether a political office or membership of an exclusive club or secret society” (Turner 1967: 95), the movement can be regarded liminal. I can regard the programmatic change, from Hebrew Christian to Messianic Jewish, as departure, as a symbolic separation, as detachment from an „earlier” state, from gentile, that is non-Jewish Christianity. As „symbolic behaviour signifying the detachment” I may regard the decisive adoption of secular Jewish, rabbinical and synagogal expressions. I can understand the movement as currently in a liminal period. Its state appears as ritual subject, itself as ambiguous „passenger”, (Kjær-Hansen 1996, Benhayim 1992, Sobel 1974, Weiner 1961). The movement appears as „Neither Fish nor Fowl” (Kjær-Hansen 1996), as neither Christian nor Jewish, yet still as both at once (Stern 1991a: 24). It has attributes of the „past”, Christian, and of the aspired „future”, Jewish, state. That combination renders it „unusual”, even „monstrous”, „frightening”, and even dangerous to the Christian domain where it came from and to the Jewish where it aspires to arrive. The final consumption of the passage presently appears predominantly hindered by ultra-orthodoxy.

If „ritual is transformative, ceremony confirmatory” (Turner 1967: 95), one can view the spontaneous historical process that the movement undergoes as ritual. The aspired consumption of passage, the acknowledgement and legitimation by the Jewry, would be its confirmatory completion of passage that is still outstanding. Whether this will ever occur is another question. While a societal transitional rite may be prescribed into detail, no man can prescribe a spontaneous historical process for any involved party. Yet every party may try to influence the outcome in its own interest, as no tradition has ever ordered and preset its outcome. Thus history can appear as a „ritual”, forth-growing from unique spontaneous situations. This process is subject to individual and collective human actors who pursue their interests and maybe cause by that an outcome they never intended.

While the movement aspires consumption of transition, for example through acknowledging legislation, ultra-orthodoxy aspires laws that annihilate it. The movement works hard to achieve a new status in the still young state of Israel, yet is at best tolerated, not recognized, appears symbolically and social-structurally still non-existent, invisible. As „the liminal persona” is defined by a name and by a „set of symbols” (Turner 1967: 95), the movement has different contexts who name and symbolise it differently and ambiguously. During centuries, Christians and Jews viewed each other's relationship as governed by exclusive antithesis. Jewry and Christianity partially still treat the Israeli Messianic Jewish movement accordingly.

The secular Israel public, represented by journalism and electronic media, calls its adherents „Yehudim Meshihim”, Jewish Messianists (Benhayim 1996: 53, Weiner 1961: 79), accepting thus their Jewishness. Secular Jews, liberal and reform synagogal Jews may identify themselves partially with the movement, whereas the orthodoxy despises them (Weiner 1961: 143, 170). Weiner might still quote Mendel of Vitebsk, to whom it was „obvious and crystal clear”,

That the essential reason for our people's lowered condition is the disrespect shown by those who uphold the Torah toward those who abandon it. It is the person who mocks the one who leaves the Torah, and not the latter, who withdraws himself from the community of Israel and Divine Grace (Weiner 1961: 157).

As a young Israeli farmer put it, „As for religion, ... we have the problem of the religious, not religious problems” (Weiner 1961: 202). The „religious” fiercely doubt and fight the Jewish status of the movement and its adherents, as all who do not stick to their Halakah. To them, the adherents are „pathologic”, „auto-destructive”, „Jewish” Notzrim, gentile Christians, that means pagans, unbelievers. To conservative political agents in the media, they can be „a piece of dirt.” Turner would ascribe this to the realm of the non-existent, pre-born, death, earthen, undefined, liminal.

Also evangelical, or Protestant, reactions appear to reflect the liminal state of the movement. Where denominational interests seem threatened and disrespected by individuals or groups of the movement, evangelicals can outright reject explicit religious Jewish expressions in the movement. From a traditional, denominational point of view the praxises of some entities in the movement appear even as „sin”. Again others embrace almost everything that emanates from the movement. It seems as if some believe that being a Messianic Jew makes one competent for everything. Fortunately for the movement, most groups and leaders would not yield to such exaggerated accusations and stretched expectations. Still, I found indications that depict a one way flow of teaching from the Messianic to the Christians (Fruchtenbaum 1966: 132). Where such a one-way approach comes from, e.g. from a mystification of Jewishness, further research could reveal.

Despite the above explications, adherents of the movement can still object to the idea that their movement would be in transition from Christianity to Judaism. They can insist either to remain Christian and not at all to depart from it, or to be already Jewish anyway. However, even if most Messianic Jews do not want to be gentile-Christian at all, the movement departed from there (Sobel 1974). If they want to be 100% Christian, they do not want to be so in traditional gentile ways, but in a genuine 100% Jewish way (Stern 1991a), however interpreted. While most of the movement's members are born Jews many other Jews would not consider them anymore such, because they believe in Jesus. This is where the movement still did not yet arrive. Culturally and social-structurally, I can understand the movement as in transition from Christianity to Judaism, revealing the characteristics of liminality. It appears increasingly to withdraw itself from gentile-Christian symbolic and social structures, from gentile-Christian values, norms, sentiments, and associated techniques, traditionally regarded as alien and even hostile to Judaism. Such detachments can at times appear even aggressive, which can be an indication for how difficult detaching is experienced and achieved. The movement legitimates this process of transition by the argument of aspiring biblicality for Jewish believers. Consequentially, the movement as a whole appears as diverting from previous, traditional, formal Christian habits of thought, feeling and action. Yet they do not experience this departure everywhere in the movement with the same intensity and speed. Some even deny that such Judaisation takes place at all and would like to reverse even the achieved departure. Not all Messianic Jews embrace gladly everything that various would regard as Jewish. Israeli Messianic Jews, on the verge between Christianity and Judaism, are continually forced to cerebrate, to rethink their own and their surrounding society.

The dialogue between the world wide Messianic Jewish movement and evangelical Christianity got institutionalised by conferences, committees (Lausanne Committee for Jewish Evangelism), periodicals (e.g. Mishkan since 1984) and books. Even contradicting and controversial issues seem treatable in decent ways on such platforms. I found no indications that a similar broad beginning of exchange occurred yet towards Judaism, or the Jewish orthodoxy. The debate with the orthodoxy of which I know, appeared to me to be only spontaneous. I could not scan what might be available in Ivrit, and because any debate with the Israeli orthodoxy likely would have to be in Ivrit, I may be mistaken. If not, the absence of an institutionalised exchange could suggest that as for transition the movement still be closer to its point of departure than to its point of arrival. Yet I heard of attempts of dialogue, at least from the side of the synagogal Messianic, and there seem good relationships between some synagogal Messianic and a few Orthodox leaders. Also, Nerel successfully defended a dissertation at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (LCJE Bulletin 49 1997: 8-9). An academic commentary on the New Testament in the light of Jewish tradition is in the making. The first volume, on Romans, got published. Dictionaries for the ancient languages, facing an almost incommensurable (Van Brakel 1998: 11) gap between specific Christian and Jewish terminology, may also appear soon. A synagogal representative of the movement met an extreme exponent of the Jewish orthodoxy. How virtually dangerous they regard such meetings can be seen by that one Messianic remained concealed during the meeting, with a camera ready to record any irregularity, while the other conversed. The relation between Israeli Messianic and Orthodox Jews could be a rewarding field of study for and application of conflict management (Glasl 1994).