3.2.2 Purity and Social Conflict

If there is no sense of separation, there can be no sense of holiness (Donin 1980: 140).

Messianic and Orthodox Jews would both approve of Donin's statement, yet draw the line of separation differently, probably without explicating to one another their implicit assumptions, and therefore experience another as „irrational” and „wrong” (Van Brakel 1998: 54-56). Mary Douglas' considerations about „the Abominations of Leviticus” (M. Douglas 1976: 59-78) shed light on the particular difficulty of the relationship between Messianic and Orthodox Jews.

For M. Douglas, the prescriptions in Leviticus start „with the task to be holy”. Holiness and abomination she regards as forming a cosmic dichotomy linked to power and danger. She considers the translation of the Hebrew word „tebbel” (תבל, root בלל) with „perversion” wrong. The correct word would be „abominable mixture or confusion” (Leviticus 18:23, 19:19, 20:12 NIV, Gesenius 1962: 101, Lisowsky 1993: 232). Leviticus forbids the mating of two different sorts, the sowing of two different seeds into one field, or to wear a dress made of two different fabrics. Such commandments are preceded by the command to „be holy, for I am holy”. She concludes that undividedness, wholeness, is an example of holiness. Holiness requires from individuals that they act according to the kind to which they belong. Holiness demands not to mix or confuse different classes of things (M. Douglas 1976: 73). For her, holiness infers more a specific circumscription and a distinguishing order, separating what should be separated, and less a protection of rights of husbands and kin. To be holy is to be whole, one, like God; holiness is unity, like God's, integrity, completeness of individual and kind. Kashrut becomes so an elaboration of holiness.

M. Douglas explicates holiness by the distinction between clean and unclean animals. Usually, the definitions of what are unclean animals are perceived as illogical, irregular, arbitrary. Yet to her, in the light of Genesis, the distinction becomes logical in view of the threefold classification inherent in the story of creation, of land, water and sky. In the sky fly birds with two legs, in the water swim fish with scales and fins, on the land jump, hop and run four-footed animals. Any kind unable to move appropriately in its habitat contradicts the premises of holiness. Whether an animal is a predator or a scavenger, is irrelevant. Contact with the unclear, the ambiguous, disqualifies for participation in the temple cult. Rules of avoidance express the holy in matter. To comply with kashrut becomes active participation in a wide liturgical deed of recognition and worship, culminating in the temple service (M. Douglas 1976: 76).

What is unclear and socially contradictory defined, can be regarded as ritually unclean. A politician characterised a Messianic leader publicly as „a piece of dirt”. This can refer to his liminal state between Christianity and Judaism. It can also refer to his questionable state towards ritual holiness, as circumscribed by M. Douglas. The unclear are the unclean, who cannot be unambiguously defined with traditional criteria. What is betwixt and between any recognized cultural and social-structural classification appears by definition dangerous to holiness. Thus it is also dangerous to those who regard themselves for being commended by the highest cosmic authority to be holy. Messianic Jews, claiming to be Christians and Jews, become a threat of contamination to the individual, the collective, the land. At least, they have to be consequently avoided. Against this background, loathing, symbolic and physical marginalisation and exclusion, even violence of ultra-Orthodox against Messianic Jews, and other „unorthodox” Jews (Tabory 1991), become plausible. Thus the challenge of the orthodoxy for the Messianic is to be holy, unmingled and wholly Jewish (Donin 1972: xvi). On a social-structural level, probably nothing less can reconcile orthodoxy with the Messianic.