It doesn’t require any Delta machinery, but it does take a lot of courage to step out in faith and admit the goals you have in pursuing deeper study of the Torah and ministry. Recently, I had to ask my rabbi if the advanced study classes I was taking would continue, since attendance seemed to have fallen very low.

When I confessed to him that I hoped there’d be a way for me to continue, he got straight to the point: “To what end?” It’s a relevant question, because he is not one who believes in study for study’s sake.

Going under the concept that to those whom little is known, little is required, and to whom much is known, much is required, he does not give out ordinations lightly or as bookshelf trophies. He wants to know what a person’s going to do with it.

For me, that’s simple; well, actually, simple on the surface and highly complex in the details.

The simple truth is, he’s inspired me and I now know why G-d prompted me to be part of the advanced study in the first place; I believe I’m called to become a congregational leader.

That’s the simple part.

The complex part is figuring out how to live up to that calling; it’s no easy job, being a messianic rabbi, and certainly not for the faint of heart.

When I admitted I wanted to be a congregational leader, his next question was equally pointed and insightful.

“Do you think you can weather the storm that’ll come your way?”

That one requires more thought; while I beleive with training I can become the kind of person who can, I think it would be the height of ego to say I’m already there. I need time, training and the blessings of the G-d of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, Yeshua, and the gifts of the Spirit if I’m ever going to reach that stage.

But I’m willing to being the journey; hopefully that counts for something.

One of the great mysteries to me is how evil men end up with wives and children.

I’m not talking, of course, about a random rival here or there tha someone doesn’t care for, or even the average mean fellow. That can happen. No, I mean that it’s a mystery to me how a person can be a really, really evil guy, and still find some woman who sees enough good in him to marry him and bear his children.

Haman, for example, had 10 sons and who knows how many daughters. Pontius Pilate had a wife and children. So, apparently, did Attila the Hun. Even Adolph Hitler could have been married if he’d wanted to be; Eva Braun waited until nearly the end of their lives before getting her wish and becoming Mrs. Hitler.

What is up with that? Was it too much alcohol in their daily routine? The lack of comfortable adjustable beds? Or maybe just a screw loose? And where were they when their husbands started doing all this evil crap? Clearly, being nagged back from the edge might have saved some lives.

It’s hard to say. But it’s clear that in matters of the heart, not only is love sometimes blind, it’s deaf, mute and outright stupid, to boot.

There was never, in Biblical times, a need for anything as specialized as a truck accident lawyer, but there were a few “train wrecks” in the annuls of Bible history. One such example is the rise of Haman; if King Saul of Israel had listened to Adonai and obeyed with without question, Haman never would have been born.

You see, G-d ordered King Saul to wipe out the Amalakites completely, leaving no one alive. Shocked at the thought of such genocide, King Saul substituted G-d’s command for his own sense of mercy, sparing many lives that G-d told him to end.

One such spared like was that of King Agag, who went on to have his wife conceive and bear children; several generations from that family tree, Haman arose, carrying a generational hatred of the Jewish people with him, and rose with the threat of wiping out the Jewish people in their entirity, in the closing days of the Babylonian captivity.

Haman was Hitler long before Hitler was Hitler; both desired greatly to wipe out the chosen people of the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and both had shocking success before they were stopped at last. While King Saul believed he was showing greater mercy than Adonai, the merciful G-d, himself, Saul’s mercy was grossly misplaced; in the wisdom of Adonai, He was trying to prevent a great enemy of Israel from arising.

If only Saul had obeyed, there might never have been an occasion for the story of Esther, or the feast of Purim.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Purim lately. My synagogue is holding a Purim play and celebration this week and it’s been a huge production. It’s turned out to be a huge success, with the first two shows becoming sellouts. Thursday’s looks promising to do the same.

The woman who was cast as Queen Vashti was joking around recently, pretending to be self-absorbed, and said, “Ha! This play should be all about Vashti. The tragedy of Queen Vashti!”

Even thought she probably thought her comment had as much relevancy to the story of Purim as online auto insurance, when I was researching the festival while preparing a bar/bat mitzvah lesson, I found out she was closer to the truth, perhaps, than she realized.

You see, Queen Vashti is often portrayed as self-centered and heedless of her husband, the king, because she’d rather hang with the gals than be shown off to the men for her beauty. But the truth, suggested by the Jewish sages, may go deeper.

Vashti was not only the wife of a king, she was also the daughter of one, and therefore quite versed in the art of statecraft. Her husband’s position on the throne of Shushan was not stable, and many of the men who might potentially try to topple him were at the king’s feast.

Many of the women Vashti was hosting – at a separate location – were the wives of the men the King Achashverosh was hosting. The line of thought goes that Vashti and Achashverosh had planned this event just so; by her having control of the wives of the guests in a separate locations, any attempt to overthrow Achashverosh would result in Vashti holding those wives as hostages against the usurpers.

Remember, the king was drunk when he ordered his wife to appear before him. Perhaps he’d forgotten their strategy; but not Vashti. It is entirely possible she chose to stay with the women to protect her husband’s throne from his guests, as well as from his own foolishness.

Of course, her wisdom was not well-rewarded; she was demoted as queen and eventually the Jewish girl, Ester, takes her place. Vashti had to be made an example of because of appearances; she had openly defied her husband’s wishes, even if by doing so she’d saved both his life and his throne. By then, the only alternative would have been for the King to admit to his guests the hostage plan he’d hatched with Vashti. And that simply would not happen.

Vashti may have been a minor hero in the story of Esther after all!

There are a lot of things I don’t understand.

The one that has me thinking a lot lately is why some people attend one house of worship, when all they do is spend time talking about the teachings of everyone but the place where they are a member. Now, I’m not suggesting one should never question the teaching of their pastor or rabbi. Quite the contrary; that’s fine.

What I’m talknig about is being part of a community of faith that holds a certain set of values, but then spending time at that church or temple talking about a teacher or set of teachings that simply does not line up with anything that community stands for. I’ve seen it in nearly every church or temple I’ve attended.

I’ve run into people who do nothing but talk about miraculous healing in conservative churches that don’t believe G-d heals peopel today, as well as seeing the reverse of that dynamic. I’ve run into people who enter churches that are open to many types of Bible translations, trying to convince people there that the King James Version is the only “reliable” word of G-d, as well as the opposite of that dynamic also.

I can understand having disagreements; what I can’t understand is swimming completely against the tide like that. Wouldn’t it be a better experience to seek out a congregation of the like-minded? Seems like that would be as simple as installing tail light guards, rather than having your first mechanical challenge be to rebuild an entire engine.

While I have deep respect for the writings of the Sages, some of their ideas are more than a little “out there.” Take for example this teaching on the parentage of Kayin, (better known in English Bibles as Cain).

At least some of the Sages teach that Kayin was born by a post-fall of man encounter between Ishah (Eve) and the serpent. After being driven from the Garden, the serpent allegedly bedded Eve, with Kayin the result of their coupling, while Adam’s first child with Eve was Hevel (Abel). While that makes a fine alibi for the first murder (I can’t help it, the devil was my father!), my real problem with the tale is that nowhere in the B’reshit text is there any room or hint for such a thing to be even suggested.

Quite to the contrary, the text of B’reshit says that Adam and his wife had sexual relations and Kayin was their firstborn. Doesn’t get much more straight-forward than that. The rabbinic traditions surrounding the Torah is a rich tapestry of traditions, but not all traditions are created equal. Some are very nice insights into possibilities, while others – like this one – are flights of fancy that flat-out ignore the Torah text itself. Perhaps these ancient sages would have been helped by nice, modern dash kits to improve the lighting by which they read the Torah?

Recently, I was given the honor and opportunity to update the Web site of my messianic kehilat, RabbiYeshua.com. It was a considerable task. I had helped my rabbi, Stan Farr, build the first version of the site back in 2001, and although the code had been tweaked by some folks since then to keep it up to date, the design had gone unchanged since then.

A lot has changed in the past seven years. When I built the site, we were not yet delivering audio sermons over the site, nor were we delivering some lessons via PDF. All those functions had been added on in the intervening period. A Web store had also been added, allowing folks a way to order Rabbi Farr’s sermons online. Also, back, then, the height of Web browsing technology was MSIE 3.0 and Netscape 3.0. These days, it’s MSIE 7.0 and Foxfire 2.0. Back then, 640×480 was standard resolution and 1024×768 was considered cutting-edge high resolution; these days, 1024×768 is considered the lowest most would want to go, while the majority of monitors are operating at either 1280×1024, 1600×1200, or 1400×900, depending on whether one is using XP or Vista, and whether one has an HD or non-HD monitor. Heck, some monitors these days are so big, they require TV wall mounts.

In other words, building a Web site these days is a lot more complex than it used to be, so when invited to take on the redesign task, I honestly wasn’t sure I was up to it. But after the first week of coding customization and design specs, it all started flowing naturally again and within about three weeks, we had the new site up and running; it took about an extra week to debug, and now we’re moving forward with adding more photos and content.

I’m pleased with the outcome and glad that we managed to avoid breaking links in all but one case in which we consciously decided to do so. The feedback so far has been positive, and I’m happy to have played a role into bringing my church’s Web presence up-to-date. Mazel tov!

One of the biggest dangers a ministry can face is to start treating a church or temple too much like a business. Sure, there are bills to be paid, and yes, one has to maintain the support of a congregation in order to remain pastor, rabbi or whatever title the leader of such a congregation holds.

But there is peril in treating a church body like an exercise in investor relations. Developing that kinds of attitude can lead to the kind of hypocrisy that Yeshua condemned during his time on earth, approaches that curry favor with the wealthy at the expense of less affluent congregants.

As my rabbi has been pointing out in recent sermons, it can also lead to false teaching. The most common example of this in modern congregations is the health and prosperity Gospel, the concept that one’s bank account balance is directly related to the extent of favor one finds in Adonai. Put more simply, this heresy is summed up like so: “The richer you are, the more G-d loves you.”

As my rabbi would say, that’s ba-lone-y! Yeshua’s teachings are exactly the opposite; that in the world to come, it is the rich who shall be cast down and the meek who shall “inherit the earth.” One would think a simple reading of the beattitudes would quench this false teaching, and yet it is rampant in the world today, especially in America. The health gospel is often linked to it, which mis-teaches that sickness only comes when one is out of favor with Adonai, and health indicates God’s favor, yet I know of cancer patients, heart patients and many others who are closer to the heartbeat of haShem than most four-star athletes who’ve never caught so much as a cold.

Yet Rabbi Yeshua warned of this, as did Rabbi Shaul. Too many in ministry have given up following the leading of the spirit and have become more interested in teaching only that which lets them keep their position in ministry. There are too many ears that want only to be tickled, not challenged; and too many pastors and rabbis who are only too willing to accommodate.

In the end, these preachers may be pleasing their congregants for a time; but they are not pleasing their Employer.

There’s a lot of business behind running a church; that’s one of the things I’m learning since I began working at mine. There are bills to be paid, and most of them are pretty standard, but one thing I discovered is one that makes sense but never occured to me.

Amid the heat and electric bills, phone bills and all the typical stuff you’d expect with any building, including mortgage life insurance and other stuff, I found out churches also carry ministry insurance.

I guess it makes sense; ministries are as likely as any to get sued, I suppose, and since one of the services a ministry performs is a form of counseling, it makes sense to cover that kind of risk. I suppose it’s something I should have figured out long ago; but it was still an eye-opener. Learned something new.