[+/-] Scrolls and Scribes

The first time I saw a Torah scroll was in the special collections library at the University of Alberta. The scroll was beautiful. It was about three feet wide, made of parchment, and hand-written in ancient Hebrew, in strictly measured rows and columns. Like all Torah scrolls, it contained the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, and was written laboriously by a professional scribe over about a year. Like all scrolls, every line is the same length and contains the same words, and in every scroll there are precisely the same 304,805 Hebrew letters.

A new scroll will cost a synagogue something in the neighborhood of eighty thousand dollars. A synagogue's scroll is stored in an ark at the front, and every Sabbath it is taken out and carried up and down the aisles, and the congregants touch it with their prayer books, and then touch the books to their lips. The synagogues keep their scrolls in a beautiful fabric case, and decorate them with ornamental breastplates and crowns. I later learned that the University's scroll originated in what is now the Czech Republic, and is centuries old.

I felt a kind of awe when I saw this scroll for the first time. To be within a couple feet of something so old, so beloved and sacred, is quite an experience. Traditional Jews believe that the Torah was verbally inspired, word for word, to Moses on Mt. Sinai. They believe it was written at that time in the same form and the exact Hebrew letters and words in which it is now preserved, that the scroll I saw was a perfect preservation of the very words of Almighty G-d.

I've thought since then about the 17th century Czech scribe who wrote that scroll, and many others identical to it, one each year throughout his adult life. It's a very prestigious job, a high calling, but it must also be extraordinarily boring - a monotonous and meticulous process of copying 300,000 letters one by one, with exactly the right calligraphic flourishes.

I mentioned the scrolls and the scribes to a friend recently, and she decided she wants to write out the whole Old Testament by hand. I thought it was a great idea, but I doubt I have the patience to get through even the first five books. A good chunk of the Old Testament is unspeakably boring. But the New Testament might be manageable.

So on Thursday I bought a book with a black cover and thick, blank pages, and on Friday I bought two good pens. I won't follow the any of the strict rules of the Jewish scribes and I won't try to wrest my scrawl into an elegant script, but I will attempt to copy neatly and accurately the whole text of the NIV New Testament by hand.

I decided to do this for a number of reasons. For one thing, I hope it will help me develop patience and perseverance. I also hope that it will force me to read carefully through the text and not rush past the parts that don't interest me, or that I just don't like. I imagine it will be difficult for me to copy passages such as Romans 9, but maybe doing so will foster a sense of humility and reverence for the book. Maybe putting so much effort into the Bible will make it feel more meaningful or valuable or something. Or maybe I'll just get sick of it. I'll keep you posted.

[+/-] The Jews and Their Book

I took a Judaism class this semester. I hoped that a Jewish perspective would shed some light on some of my many confusions and frustrations with the Bible, and especially the Old Testament. I've felt for some time that Christians (of course I don't mean all Christians) have a tendency to ignore or distort the more troublesome aspects of the Old Testament by emphasizing the supremacy of the New. How do we deal with a God who punishes whole nations, and even their slaves, for the sins of their kings? For many of us, it is enough that he doesn't seem to do these things anymore, and that Jesus was a really nice, gentle guy. Surely the God who demonstrated such love and grace in the New Testament would not do anything cruel or unjust, so however cruel and unjust his old-covenant actions seem to be, they must really be motivated by compassion or righteousness or some other good, Jesus-y quality.

This doesn't do much for me.

I hoped that Judaism could offer me some insight into what the troubling parts of the Old Testament are really saying. As direct heirs of the patriarchs, the judges and the prophets, without the benefit of our "New and Improved" Testament, they must have some insight into the more vexing aspects of the Torah. That was my reasoning.

It turns out that modern Judaism has very little in common with its Biblical roots. The destruction of the Temple in the first century brought an abrupt end to the religion of Moses, in which animal sacrifice was central. Modern Jews of all persuasions have immense reverence for the Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomy) but in practice, it is not their most authoritative text. Judaism today is largely the product of the centuries of Rabbinical debates and commentaries that form the Talmud. It is understood that the various, often contradictory positions of the Rabbis are inspired by God, and that it is the Rabbis' responsibility to continuously reinterpret and adapt Judaism to meet the needs of their time, culture, and individual congregations. (The relative value of adaptation and tradition is the primary difference between Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Judaism.)

I was disappointed to hear that even the strictest Orthodox Jews no longer hold to many of the things that bother me most about the Bible. It's not that I think they should, really. I like the idea of continuous revelation. I think you could make a strong Biblical case for it, and I think it's more honest to say that we no longer believe certain things God has said because he reveals new things to new generations than to claim that we still believe everything God has said, and then twist or ignore the parts that don't fit with our modern intuitions. (I don't mean to suggest a dichotomy. I think there are other possibilities, but the latter approach seems to be quite popular among Christians.)

I was disappointed because I want to find someone who really believes in the God who sent the plagues on egypt, or who orders rape victims to marry their attackers, or who punishes children for their father's sins, to the four generations and beyond. I want find a champion for this God - someone who can explain why he should be worshiped or loved or believed in, or else who can explain to my satisfaction how these passages don't say what they seem to say. I don't know if I could be convinced that passages such as these are God-breathed, infallible truth, but I want to give them a fair shot.

My Judaism Professor said that much of the Torah is embarrassing to modern Jews. They certainly don't believe, for example, that God still commands genocidal war against immoral nations, but it is still problematic that, according to their scriptures, he used to. Jews, like Christians, seem to have found no good solution to this problem.

[+/-] A Hole of a Different Shape

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."

...So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman,'
for she was taken out of man."

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

-Gen 2:18-24

Something struck me today. The first couple chapters of the Bible describe God's "very good" creation, which included a man living in a very intimate relationship with God. God apparently had verbal conversations with Adam, gave him instructions, attended to his needs, and even walked in Adam's garden. This, according to the Bible, is paradise - the way God meant the world to be before the corruption of sin and death. But immediately (likely within minutes of Adam's creation, if you're a literalist) God senses that there's something missing.

"It is not good for the man to be alone."

In fact, Adam is not alone. God himself is near at hand - physically present. Few Biblical figures, and likely few people in history, have experienced anything like the kind of intimacy with God that Adam had. But it wasn't enough. Adam needed "a helper suitable for him."

I'm amazed by what this suggests about human fellowship. (It may also say something about gender roles, but I'll look past that for now.) I value my relationships, but I tend to think of them as a dim reflection of the relationship I hope to have with God. There may be some truth to this (particularly when human relationships are unhealthy) and I don't think friends or lovers were ever meant to fill my "God-shaped hole". But I think this passage suggests that there we also have "human companion-shaped holes" which even God Himself cannot adequately fill. That's pretty powerful statement about the importance of community.

[+/-] Fruit in Keeping With Repentance

I've never been a huge fan of John the Baptist. I guess I've always envisioned him as a sort of first-century hellfire preacher - the sort of pulpit-pounding moralist who rails against miniskirts and alcohol and loud music. The kind who glares down at sinners and riffraff from beneath a furrowed brow, and yearns for the good old days when people wandered in the desert and wore camel-skins and were serious about God. You know the kind I mean.

John certainly sounds like a hard-ass. His slogan is "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near", which has a kind of a doomsday-prophet ring to it, and he greets the crowds who come to hear him preach as "You brood of vipers". He also warns that the Messiah will come and "burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire". Hard-ass.

Normally when I think of John I don't get much past the call for repentance and the "brood of vipers" line. But we get a glimpse into the content of his preaching (i.e. what he calls for repentance from and to) in Luke 3. John tears into the crowd for not "producing fruit in keeping with repentance", and the people ask him what exactly he wants them to do.

John answered, "The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same."

That's interesting. The crowds may have expected John to mention clothes and food, but he doesn't seize the opportunity to tell the them what kind of tunics they ought to wear (ankle-length, I would imagine, and preferably a coarse, itchy fabric) or which foods they shouldn't eat (the Jewish law is big on dietary restrictions, and John himself ate only locusts and honey). Instead he calls for compassion and charity. From this one comment, you'd almost get the idea that the coming kingdom is less about laws and purity and more about social justice. And it goes on.

Tax collectors also came to be baptized. "Teacher," they asked, "what should we do?"

"Don't collect any more than you are required to," he told them.

Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?"

He replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely — be content with your pay."

I'm struck by the practicality of John's teaching. Ethical business practices. Justice. Honesty. Compassion. These are the fruits of repentance. John seems to have no interest in long lists of religious laws. (He seemed to get along with those who kept them no better than did Jesus, and for the same reasons.) He also doesn't seem to care about respectability or avoiding the appearance of evil - after all, he never tells the tax collectors and soldiers to quit their disreputable jobs, only to do them with integrity. And he certainly didn't focus on matters of doctrine.

John's a real turn-or-burner, but at the same time he's radically compassionate. His style isn't quite to my liking, but his message, I think, is bang-on.

On a related note, I couldn't go through all of Lent without linking to Isaiah 58.

[+/-] Forgive Us Our Debts

"This, then, is how you should pray:
...Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.

For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."

Matthew 6:9-15

Someone read this is church last week and I was struck by how strongly Jesus commands us to forgive. He goes so far as to say that God will forgive us if and only if we forgive others. Of course, other passages suggest that the requirements for God's forgiveness are far more complex, but this is not the only place where Jesus indicates that there is a relationship between forgiving and being forgiven.

"Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

"This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."

Matthew 18:32-35

"And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins."

Mark 11:25

"Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. ...For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."

Luke 6:37-38

I'm not suggesting that we take these statements at face value (as I said, other passages suggest a more complex view) but I think we can say with certainty that Jesus viewed forgiveness as a discipline of the highest importance. I'm surprised that I haven't heard more about this. I can't remember ever hearing an alter call that included an admonition to forgive others. I don't recall ever hearing a sermon on Matthew 6:15, or reading "forgive and you will be forgiven" in a statement of faith. I'm sure no one would argue that forgiving others is unimportant, but I didn't realize that Jesus considered it so important. Food for thought.

[+/-] Trembling Before G-d

We watched this movie in my Judaism class yesterday.
It's about homosexual Orthodox and Hasidic (i.e. super-conservative) Jews struggling to reconcile their sexuality with their religious beliefs. It follows several people, including a man dying of AIDS and rediscovering his Orthodox roots, a lesbian couple who've been together for twelve years, the world's first openly gay Orthodox rabbi, and an ultra-orthodox, married Israeli woman who dares not tell her husband she's a lesbian. It also includes the perspectives of several Orthodox rabbis who struggle to find a balance between upholding their religious laws and showing compassion and acceptance to people in pain.

I found the movie moving and very thought provoking. It's not pro-gay propaganda, it offers no pat answers, and it's definitely worth watching even if you're not gay or Jewish. I borrowed the movie from my professor until Tuesday, so if you're in town and want to see it, give me a shout. I may purchase my own copy.