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Not quite Jewish, not quite Christian … totally commited to Torah and Messiah Yeshua.

Archive for December, 2007

Practical matters of the Exodus

Thursday, December 27th, 2007

The Exodus was miraculous in many ways, but sometimes the practicality of the whole thing is what hits home with me. Everyday concerns and questions arise.

Yes, my rabbi teaches that clothes didn’t wear out during their time in the wilderness and that’s all fine and dandy; I just wonder how they stayed fresh. My undergarments get ripe after a couple days to a week, The Israelites spent 40 years or so in the exact same clothes? What if their body shape changed? It’s a bit mind-boggling. Did they all have just one set of clothes then? Or did the women posses chemises as well as daily wear clothing?

I don’t even want to contemplate the daily latrine issues.

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Happy New Year, time for new calendars?

Thursday, December 27th, 2007

With New Year’s Eve coming up, the subject of calendars has come to mind. I usually wait to buy any generic, secular calendars until very late December, when the prices come down to bargain level.

Maybe I seem a bit cheap, but I refuse to pay full price for a calendar that, sure, may have the cast of Lost on it, but doesn’t include most of the Jewish holidays. Thankfully, my congregation sells messianic calendars at our congregational bookstore, and those I’ll pay full price for, but if we ever move, the only workable solution will probably be custom printed calendars on a color inkjet printer.

They’re not as fun, but at least they’d have everything I want on any calendar I use on them – including the Jewish months, days and year. Happy New Year, everyone! It’s 5768, at least by the Hebrew calendar. And it’s been that for a while now.

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Kosher Air!

Thursday, December 27th, 2007

My wife and I have taken to watching a lot of the Food Network in the wake of the writer’s strike, and while they have a lot of interesting ideas, I generally trust my wife with the cutting boards in our kitchen more than I would any Food Network chef, because virtually none of them seem to know how to cook kosher.

That reminds me of a quick story about kosher diets and food. And air travel.

One aspect of air travel where Jewish and messianic folks seem to get the shaft is in food service. While most passengers are treated to hot meals, the last time I was on an airplane and ordered the kosher meal, all I got was a bagel and some salmon-flavored cream cheese. Granted, it was good, but when you consider other passengers were getting hot, fully-cooked meals, it seemed like the short straw.

One of the challenges for the recently-wrapped reality series, The Next Iron Chef, was for the contestants to cook good airplane food.

I think someone should take up the challenge to offer up not just good airplane food, but good kosher airplane food. Now that would be a challenge!

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Braving the snow and the season

Wednesday, December 26th, 2007

With the considerable snowfall we had last weekend, attendance was down at my congregation last week. I can understand why. Some of our families come quite a distance to attend!

My wife and I braved the snow to attend last Saturday, and something happened on the way in that was sad and disturbing. We stopped before reaching church – despite it being the Sabbath – to pick up a couple items at a Lund’s grocery near our congregation. The ground was thick with snow and the parking lot was full, so we had to park in the nearby Old Country Buffet parking lot.

Walking the distance, we were making our way across a crossing when a Pepsi truck emerged from behind the building. Being partway across, I decided to wave my arms a bit to make sure he saw us; it was intended as a friendly, “hey, we’re here, be careful” sort of gesture.

Instead of slowing, he sped up. I rushed across to one side of the crosswalk, and my wife retreated to the opposite curb. Neither one of us slipped in the snow, or the Pepsi semi would have run us over completely.

Given that the driver, in desperate need of a dose of hydroxycut, was likely a Christian looking forward to his long Christmas weekend, it amazed me how rude, inconsiderate, even potentially life-taking his actions were so close to a holiday that’s supposed to mean something to him. We registered our complaint with the Lund’s manager, who passed it on to Pepsi, but it’s only the most recent example of incredibly rude behavior in the midst of “Christmas” season.

I’ve heard far too many so-called Christians, eager to celebrate Christmas, swear and take than name of the Lord in vain simply because they had to wait a couple seconds longer than they believed they ought to behind someone else. It amazes me how the holiday season Christians claim is their favorite time of year seems only to bring out their worst behavior.

As messianics, my wife and I don’t celebrate Christmas. Given the examples of Christmas season behavior I’ve been exposed to of late, I’m overjoyed not to. The holiday season should remind us to be kinder, gentler, more caring, not ruder, more foul-mouthed and less considerate – to the point of running people over in the streets!

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The play’s the thing…

Wednesday, December 26th, 2007

We may be barely past Hanukkah, but my congregation is already gearing up for Purim.

The tale of Esther, Haman and an early attempt to wipe out the Jewish people has gained favor in post-Holocaust Jewish and Messianic culture. An excellent film, One Night With the King, has even been crafted from the tale within the last couple-three years.

At my congregation, we put on a musical play and nearly everyone gets involved in some way; it serves as a community outreach event and has always gone over well, often being attended by messianic and non-messianic, Jewish and gentile audiences alike, all under one roof. The actual performances are nights of magic and joy and community.

If only the times leading up to them were as serene.

Each year the musical is performed, it gets a bit more extravagant, a bit more of a time commitment, to the point where nerves get frayed and folks – as we’re all so apt to do – are not at their best. The last time our community banded together to put it on, it drained everyone so much, that last year we skipped doing it.

This year, the play’s on again and, earlier than ever, we’re seeing the anticipation and tension rise alongside each other. Whether it’s fretting over the costuming of Vashti, or the number of gold bracelets Esther ought to wear, or even on details of choreography, no production as elaborate as this can be pulled together without some community conflict.

The thing is, we always pray throughout the process. And we always survive. Perhaps our congregation was born, to borrow from Esther’s father, for such times as these?

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Editing the work of others

Wednesday, December 26th, 2007

Sometimes I think a Royal Caribbean cruise would be preferable to some tasks. As a person who holds a master’s in English, with a lot of job experience in both writing and editing, one would think that a bit of cosmetic editing / ghost writing would be a breeze of an assignment, right?

Not always.

I was recently asked to edit a pair of sermons into a single message, eliminating duplicate information and references and making it a bit sharper. I was thrilled to get the assignment. It has, however, become quite intimidating to tackle.

The sermons, written specifically for oral delivery, must now be transformed into something that reads well, and there are more differences to such a transformation than one might expect. I’m wrestling with the text more than I expected and while the test is not unpleasant, it is intimidating, given the spiritual element of the messages.

Of course, I’m closing in on completing the task and it’s been quite instructive; but it has taken quite a bit more time than I first anticipated, and demanded far more of me than just my grammatical skills alone.

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Angels with human faces

Thursday, December 6th, 2007

From a Torah perspective, we believe in the heavenly creatures called angels, even though they are invisible to human perception. Yet once in a while, angels wear human faces.

I’m not talking about manifestations; I’m talking about selfless people working for the benefit of others. Car Angel is one such group. They are a nonprofit company that has given away over 2.4 million helpful videos to needy kids and teens so far, and they want to keep it going.

How do they accomplish this? By accepting car donations, primarily, and using the proceeds from those donations to make the videos and give them away.

It may sound a bit strange, but it’s a unique concept and sometimes that can spur folks on to rise above the self-obsessions of the Christian celebration of Christmas and really think of someone else for a change.

Shalom, Car Angel. Keep up the good work.

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Hanukkah and liberals

Thursday, December 6th, 2007

OK, so Hanukkah is not the biggest or most important of the festivals on the Adonai-ordained Jewish calendar; but is any feast really “minor” when it comes to the L-rd’s commands?

Hanukkah’s symbolism for staying steadfast to the commands of G-d certainly do not make it seem “minor.” Minor would be a holiday in which some local company decides to honor everyone on their workforce who owns an IWC watch; sure, it might be fun for that select few, but it’s nothing that’s going to spread globally.

Yet when Adonai speaks, his people ought to listen, generally speaking. The prayer at the lighting of the Hanukkah candles says it all: we do this because we’re commanded to by Adonai himself. How can such a thing be minor?

I’ll tell you what’s minor. (As well as petty, stupid and offensive.)

Minor is the idiots who are trying to convince Jews and messianics worldwide that somehow, by lighting one less Hanukkah candle this season, we can all “save the planet.” The folks urging this are the same hippie-liberal, good-time, rock-n-roll losers who will expend as much CO2 jetting Algore zittoheads into Bali to talk about how to cure global warming as 20,000 automobiles release in a year’s worth of driving.

Maybe when liberal zittoheads stop acting like complete hypocrites, someone might take the time to at least listen to their Chicen Little rantings. Whether they do or don’t, however, the sky is not falling until Adonai decides to bring the whole she-bang crashing in; and once he does, lighting one Hanukkah candle more or less isn’t going to stop anything from happening exactly the way Adonai ordains it.

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Hanukkah: a season for no compromises

Sunday, December 2nd, 2007

We are now only days away from the beginning of a festival ordained by Adonai, one that Yeshua himself celebrated. No, I’m not talking about Christmas.

Christmas is not remotely located anywhere near the time of Yeshua’s birthday; it is a holiday converted from a celebration of the Roman god, Mithras, and most of the “traditional” holiday celebrations most unsuspecting Christians associate with the messiah are actually symbols that come straight from a celebration of Mithras himself, not Yeshua.

No, I’m talking about Hanukkah. The festival of lights. And one of my favorite of Adonai’s ordained festival periods.

Why?

It’s simple. Most folks think Hanukkah is all about a candle that burned for eight days when there was only oil enough for one day. But that’s just a tiny symbol of what the holiday truly means.

Hanukkah has its origins in the Greek occupation of Jerusalem; the Greeks were trying to force the Jews to compromise their culture, to cast aside their Adonai-ordained traditions, feasts and festivals and celebrate the times the Greeks wanted them to. In fact, the Greeks even offered the Jews a chance to “adapt” the Greek holidays to the Jewish culture a bit to make the transition smoother.

They refused to compromise the truth of Adonai; a war broke out over it, led by the tribe of the Maccabees, and for a time, they were victorious over the Greeks. Even though the Romans soon followed, it is an important holiday that teaches the primacy of not compromising G-d’s truth in order to fit in with the world.

When you consider what Christians have done with Christmas, it’s a bit sad how opposite the path of Christianity has taken in standing for the truth of G-d. Christians believe they have the messiah; but they lack much. They are like the woman who looks in makeup mirrors one moment and forgets what she looks like the next, to paraphrase Yeshua.

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