In a recent column in the Jerusalem Post, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach wrote the following:
The news, therefore, that a leading rabbinical court in Israel refused to allow into Judaism a Chabad-educated conversion candidate because he believed the Rebbe is the Messiah is deeply troubling and constitutes an act of serious contempt for a non-Jew who has made sacrifices to ally himself with the Jewish people. Comparing this with a Jew-for-Jesus wishing to convert is preposterous, given that Jews-for-Jesus believe in the divinity of Christ (which no one in Chabad would ever assert about the Rebbe) as well as the irrelevance of the Torah to modern times.
As a member of the Yeshua messianic movement, I would respectfully submit that Rabbi Boteach is not completely correct in his assessment that those who look to Yeshua as the promised messiah subscribe to the idea that the Torah is irrelevant to modern times. In fact, among the Yeshua messianic movement, it is our insistence in the very relevance of Torah, even today, that sets us apart from mainstream Christianity.
Prior to becoming messianic, the last two Christian churches I attended were almost exclusively “grace-based,” which in practice means that, when push came to shove, attendees of those churches tended to believe that as long as they were “covered by the blood of Jesus,” anything goes because it’s all forgiven anyway. “Grace covers all” was the watchword, and I increasingly found myself ill at ease with such a viewpoint.
Why would Adonai offer up the Ten Commandments, and indeed the whole of the Torah, if it were only “culturally relevant to the time and culture of Moshe, but ready to be cast aside upon the appearance of Yeshua in human history.” Even the teachings of Rabbi Shaul (Paul) indicated a deeper struggle against violating the standards of Torah than is found in modern, grace-based churches. Faith in Yeshua as messiah without a conviction in the relevance of Torah to modern times is like a faith on diet pills; it will always be found wanting.
The revelation I found in the Yeshua messianic movement is not relabeled, warmed-over Christianity with a dash of Judaism for flavor. On the contrary, it is an equal balance. Yes, we have a messiah whose grace covers our human failings and inability to live up to Adonai’s perfect standard for human behavior and, far too often, our failure to even live up to His minimum standard, set forth in Torah.
While such forgiveness is precious, it did not come cheaply and it must be remembered above all that Yeshua was not a revolutionary starting a new religion. Yeshua the messiah was a faithful Jew who lived blamelessly the standards set by Torah; if anyone wishes to emulate Yeshua, the Torah is the only place to go to discover how he lived righteously before Adonai, and therefore the Torah – the written Torah, at least – is more relevant in the life of a Yeshua messianic than any other document they could possibly read.
While rabbinic Jews and Yeshua messianic believers do part ways on some areas of interpretation and conviction, the relevance of Torah to modern times is not one of them. That said, I certainly look forward to a new season of Shalom In the Home and Rabbi Boteach’s new book, The Broken American Male and How to Fix Him.