2.3.2 Interaction with the Supernatural

From the age of two I grew up in Jerusalem. I had no interest in religion, or anything related to it. My mother was a communist and my father an atheist. He hated religious people, Jews as well as Christians. The terms he used for them were primitive, superstitious, underdeveloped people. Belief in God and in the Bible wasn't modern. But he was a nice man and everybody loved him. If there was a feast in the synagogue, ... then they always invited my father. My father didn't care and would cheerfully enter the synagogue with a lighted cigarette on the Sabbath. (Hoekendijk 1992: 73).

Kindling any kind of fire on Sabbaths, even only a match for the delight of a cigarette, orthodoxy regards a desecration of the Sabbath (Donin 1972: 65-66). How can a Jewish child, being brought up in such context, become religious, and then even a believer in Jesus? In secondary school, the boy read the Bible for the first time. Also, he had to write an essay on the origins of Christianity. For this he had to read the Sermon on the Mount and the first chapters in the Book of Acts.

I got my hands on a New Testament and what I read appealed very much to me, as a secular Israeli. It dealt with problems such as hypocrisy, violence, misunderstanding between people, religious disputes, problems that crop up again and again in Jerusalem. The New Testament surprised me because it was so Jewish. I looked up Christianity in the Hebrew encyclopaedia and was again surprised as it seemed to talk about something totally differently. As I read the New Testament, I couldn't find anything Christian in it, at least not according to the norms that the teachers had given us. I didn't find priests, nuns, convents, Rome, Protestants, archbishops or Christmas in the New Testament. I didn't find any of the Christian holidays; on the contrary, everything was very Jewish. That surprised me greatly, and aroused my interest. I wanted to discover exactly what had happened in history to have caused the division between Judaism and Christianity. I read every book about Jesus that I could get my hands on. I asked my teachers what literature was available and read many Hebrew books. I spent a year reading and studying. (Hoekendijk 1992: 75.)

Then he made friends with Christian children and criticised them for not living according to their own Bible. Their father agreed to his accusations and he spent ever more time with them. Before long he felt torn between two camps. When his contradictory thoughts became too strong, he cried and decided to turn his back on his „obsession”. Yet three hours later he swung around totally and decided better to look into the matter seriously. Soon he got baptised in the Mediterranean Sea.

It was an intellectual decision, not an emotional one. Every emotion was against it: my upbringing in the city of Jerusalem, the atmosphere at home, my friends and the roots of my culture. ... I gave up everything that I had learned as a Jewish Zionist child. ... It was a difficult decision, but it was a logical conclusion after reading God's word ... When my parents heard what had happened, that I'd become a believer and had been baptised, they threw me out of the house. ... I was sixteen and had a lot of friends. We were at a rebellious age so I didn't care too much about being thrown out of my home. (Hoekendijk 1992: 76).

When his parents informed the semi-Orthodox school, his education there was over. An American tourist took him to the United States where he finished high school and carried on to college. There he learned that his mother was seriously burned and still in a hospital. His parents never answered his letters, but now they received him warmly when he came to Jerusalem. He continued his studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and earned a living during evenings. He found an American missionary who „discipled” him in spiritual matters, without robbing him of his Jewish identity and love for the Jewish nation. Soon his one-room-flat became a meeting-place for Messianic Jewish believers. They grew out into a congregation while he studied at a Yeshiva, a rabbinical seminary, and completed the course.

When students of another Yeshiva caught him lecturing from the New Testament in the Yeshiva where he studied, they denounced him. As he insisted to believe in Jesus, he got denied official certificates. Otherwise, he would be an officially ordained Israeli Orthodox rabbi now. Today he is a popular Messianic leader, recognised even by opponents for his profound and specialised rabbinical insights. He has founded two Messianic Jewish and one Arab Christian congregation, and a Messianic Midrasha, which is a research and study centre. International contacts and relations got established. His congregation wants to be a model Messianic Jewish congregation, similar to those that existed in the first century in Jerusalem (Hoekendijk 1992: 80).

Here, the dilemma felt between the own Jewish identity and „obsession” with Christian matters, caused sadness. An intellectual decision against emotion solved the tension, out of fear to possibly to miss the true Messiah. Evangelicals often perceive conversion as a sequence, starting with the conviction of personal sin, followed by repentance and a prayer of dedication to Christ (Riecker 1953, Graham 1986). Here, however, emotional regret and repentance of sins came later and gradually. The described conversion appears to follow more the pattern found in the Prophets and Gospels, and less an evangelical scheme, less introverted and more practically, socially oriented (Neill et al: 58-60).

A considerably different life story is the following. ²⁷The man was member of a ℷ (gimel) congregation. I never interviewed him with a recorder. ) An American was searching in the seventies for the meaning of life. Disappointed with Christianity, he went to Israel and decided to convert to Judaism. He accepted „the yoke of the Kingdom of God” (Donin 1972: 283) and „the yoke of the commandments” (idem). He found a rabbi to teach him and to guide him through the corresponding „rite of conversion” (idem) to make him an Orthodox Jew. Only after his conversion to Judaism he met Messianic Jews and Jesus regained a central place in his religious life. He appeared to me more consequent in observance than many a born and raised Jew, Messianic or not. When time and Halakah allowed, he still loved wearing tefillin and praying from the Siddur. The „yokes” were to him an obvious source of joy. Jews, Messianic and others, several times remarked, that proselytes to Judaism had a greater need to express their Jewishness ritually because they were not born Jews. Especially Americans were reported to appear fanatically. ²⁸I could not verify this observation and critique. Even the so obviously American Lubavitcher at Lod airport, who friendly explained to me the complex production of tefillin, made no fanatic impression on me. He exposed a joyful, patient and warm personality. I can report only one encounter with a religious fanatic. When I once on my own visited the Western Wall, a man yelled at me from behind, „are you Jewish?” First I felt not addressed at all as the tone was so unfriendly. Yet there were so little people that at the second shout I could no doubt any longer that I was meant. So I went to the young man who sorted prayer books and tefillin on a table. He threw me a glance, „make sure your head remains covered.” Of course had I a skullcap with a clasp. I asked him to show me how to use it properly. He refused and instead threw a little paper at me. It listed Noachite rules for gentiles, similar to those in Acts 15:29 (Stern 1991a: 99-100). The encounter vividly reminded me of Christian sectarians in Europe. Disrespectful fanaticism or fundamentalism is no priviledge of any particular religion. )

Adherents of type ℷ (gimel) congregations will more likely than others reveal the following attitudes to the supernatural. They emphasised God as one. The notion of Trinity, the deity of Christ and the Holy Spirit will be submitted to the dominance of God's oneness. They doubt Christian creeds and, partially, also rabbinical Halakah, as both are post-biblical. Nevertheless, in congregational worship not only sifrei Torah, the Torah scroll, but also the Siddur, the Jewish prayer book, plays a central role. It orders the services and prayers, in synagogue, home and personal piety.

The Shemoneh Esrei is the heart of every service. It contains the basic components of prayer: praising God, petitioning Him, and thanking Him. (Donin 1980: 69).

The Shemoneh Esrei is the prayer in the Talmud. That I could not observe that members of type ℷ (gimel) congregations fulfilled the obligation of praying it three times a day, does not mean that none ever does. Shemoneh Esrei means eighteen, because this prayer originally consisted of eighteen blessings. When a nineteenth was added, the prayer kept its name. The added blessing, Birkat Haminim, petitions for the „Destruction of Israel's Enemies” (Donin 1980: 69, 91-93). It is now the twelfth in sequence and forms a particular difficulty to some Messianic Jews, even to those who deliberately embrace Jewish tradition. Some scholars date it to the second century, but others even to Ezra the Scribe (idem [±485 BC]). It fell in and out of use, and was addressed against Samaritans, Sadducees and „new heretic sects (among them Jews who adopted Christian beliefs) who informed on fellow Jews to Roman authorities” (Donin 1980: 93). Messianic Jews attending non-Messianic synagogues give it a new meaning or remain silent while others pray it. Some will not pray it, as they perceive it especially directed against those who belief in Jesus. Donin explicates that such must not necessarily be the case.

Jewish law ... requires ... to sanctify the Sabbath - at its beginning and at its closing - with an oral declaration” (Donin 1980: 319).

The opening prayer is called Kiddush, Sanctification, the closing Havdalah. The sages ruled that these prayers are said over a cup of wine, as a symbol of joy and celebration that added significance. Pouring out wine on the altar was once part of the sacrificial system in the Temple. At the end of the service (Exodus 29:40),

the Sabbath morning Kiddush serves as the entree to the partaking of other food as well, be it a light repast or a full meal (Donin 1972: 84).

Adding bread and blessing it refers to Jesus' last supper with his disciples, which compares with the „breaking of bread” of Jesus' disciples (Acts 2:42 and 46) and Christian communion.

Leaders of type ℷ (gimel) groups do not appreciate Christian missionaries and gentile dominated groups that claim to be also Jewish. They regard the Jewish people as the only people God has ever called as a whole people, to reveal his purposes in a covenant. To them, this supernatural relation with Israel has never „ceased”, was never „replaced”, Israel has still a supernatural meaning and destiny. This is less a privilege, but more an obligation, as Tevye complained in the musical „Fiddler on The Roof” (Stern 1991a: 91).

Also the land has supernatural connotations as the geographic place where God revealed himself before, still does and will continue doing so (Weiner 1961). Only in Torah the genuine meaning God gave the people and the land of Israel is to be found. The shema calligraphy on the front wall affirms loyalty to this ancient tradition of confessing the one and only God as a whole people (5/96).

The mode of religious construction of the relationship with the supernatural is predominantly explorative, after a revelatory beginning. The subject of exploration above all is the Bible as authority for teaching. Believers derive the course for action intellectually from it. The commandment to love is given in Torah (Leviticus 18:18).

Besides, also other literature deserves thorough exploration, yet not to reveal something new about God, but to bring forth again the Jewishness of Jesus and the New Testament. A Messianic Jewish Commentary on The New Testament, in the making, must show Jesus and the New Testament text in their Jewish context, which they regard the churches to have abandoned already in the first centuries.

If at all, I could see exploitation of the supernatural in hastening the coming of Messiah by evangelization. When the Good News will be preached to all nations, and when Israel has „returned” and is „restored”, then also the Messiahs would return from heaven, they believe. Yet this belief is no issue of daily conversation, if it is conscious it is an underlying value that perhaps often only resides in the unconscious. Anyway, the official view is that God can never be forced to do anything, only asked to grant something.