Judaism for Gentiles: Lecture 1

This post is part of the Judaism for Gentiles series.

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The transcript was generated by a tool, so it may not be 100% accurate.

Okay, so, Gary asked the first question, what is a Gentile? A Gentile is just a non-Jew. So this is Judaism for not Jews.

This is class number one. Was it Gary who asked me this morning about, I’m not trying to convert you?

Right. It’s just part of your religion to come out in the public and try to educate people.

We don’t convert people. We do not do proselytization. The only reason I’m doing this is because around Easter time, we did that Passover potluck, and people seemed to have some interest in the concept of a Seder and, like, what do Jews do around this time? And then people brought bread and macaroni and pizza to the Passover potluck, and Passover is the festival of unleavened bread, and Jews are not allowed to eat bread or pasta or pizza. So I thought that was a little bit, um, almost like a faux pas, kind of, you know? But, of course, y’all didn’t know what Passover was or anything, so that’s why I’m doing this class.

If anyone has questions about anything at any point, stop me and ask them.

These are some of the questions that I’m hoping to answer today. So isn’t Judaism just Christianity without Jesus? What’s the difference? Like, isn’t the only real difference that Jews reject Christ? Isn’t it just Christianity with more rules? Like, what you can and can’t do? Like, eat bread during Passover. And what’s the deal with the Jews crucifying our Lord and Savior?

Right, so to answer the Jesus questions, we should probably start with addressing whether or not Jesus was a real history guy, or just made up, I guess. Um, so this is a quote from the book, New Testament History and Literature. The New Testament contains contradictory historical accounts of various parts of early Christianity. The account of the birth of Jesus and the origins of his family provided by Matthew is totally different from that in Luke, and any harmonization cannot stand up to the standards of modern historiography. The different narratives of his resurrection appearances, who of his disciples claimed they had seen him, when and where, and Mark, Matthew, Luke, and Paul all contradict one another. The New Testament is simply not a reliable source for the history of Jesus or early Christianity when taken at face value.

This is a pretty common thing for ancient historical sources. They weren’t interested in hard facts the same way that we are. They were more interested in presenting an interpretation of history in order to convey the right message. So if a kid asks you, what’s electricity? How does electricity work? You might answer them, um, well, you know, there’s, there’s power in the walls, and the power goes through wires, and it makes machines work, because kids aren’t going to understand electricity is the flow of electrons, and, uh, electrons flow from a higher to a lower voltage in order to reach equilibrium, and all that nonsense, and probably most of us don’t really understand how electricity works either. So we present an interpretation of the facts in order to get a message across, and that is probably what the gospel authors were doing. And that’s why there are some contradictions between accounts.

Well, isn’t it also because it was probably oral history and so forth? I mean, my brother and sister and I can get together and talk about something that happened 40 years ago. It doesn’t mean a different memory. So it could be partly part of it.

Yeah, the Bible is, it’s not univocal. It’s told by many voices. And so there’s always going to be some differences in how people remember things, how people choose to tell a story. But yeah, that does make it a little bit more difficult to nail down the historicity of the gospel accounts.

Okay, so what archaeological evidence do we have for the existence of Jesus as a historical figure? This is the first pretty much not-gospel evidence that we have for Jesus. It’s called the Alexamenos graffiti, and scholars date it to around 200 CE. I am sure that you cannot make out any of this. So, here’s a sketch instead. We have a horse-headed man hanging on the cross with the inscription, Alexamenos worships his God. This is a sort of derogatory graffiti making fun of this Christian for worshiping a God who was executed in a brutal and humiliating way.

So, where was it found?

Somewhere in the Roman Empire, but I believe the city of Rome itself.

It’s interesting that that’s a Roman cross. It’s not the cross that we have. It’s a T-shaped cross.

Yep. Yep. So, we know for sure that by 200 CE, there were some people going around worshiping a God who had been executed on a cross. They didn’t give us a name or anything for this God, unfortunately, but we can be pretty sure that it’s Jesus. We also have some non-Christian literary sources from the Jews in the Talmud. What is the Talmud? Who knows? What’s the Talmud?

You don’t know. We’re all in trouble. Is it an idol? Right?

Not really.

Is it a group of people? Are there the writings? Is the Talmud the writings? You have the prophets.

Okay, so you’re getting at something sort of different. So, the Hebrew scriptures or the Old Testament is divided into three sections. The law, the prophets, and the writings. The law or the Torah is the first five books. The five books of Moses or the Pentateuch. Then you have the prophets, the Nevi’im, we call them in Hebrew. And that’s Isaiah and all those guys. And we have the writings, the Ketuvim. That’s everything else. So, the Psalms, Song of Songs, Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, all that stuff. But that’s all in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. Which we call the Tanakh, which is an acronym. Torah, Nevi’im, Ketuvim.

After the Tanakh was sort of formalized, Jews kept on saying things and writing things. And we collected that into a volume called the Mishnah. And then they kept on saying things and commenting on the Mishnah. So, we compiled that into the Gemara, which is the commentary on the Mishnah. And the Mishnah and the Gemara together are called the Talmud. So, this was probably written down sometime after the Jews were kicked out of Israel the last time.

So, before Moses separated the Red Sea?

Long, long after. Okay. Moses was, if he existed, probably a couple thousand years BCE. And this probably would have been around, I don’t know, 200 or so CE. Around the same time that the New Testament Gospels were being written down, we were writing down the Talmud.

And so, that’s just everybody’s conversations and commentary on everybody else’s conversations.

It’s commentaries on commentaries on commentaries.

So, that’s why the saying, like, you know, nine Jewish rabbis in a room, ten opinions.

Yeah, two Jews, three opinions. There’s actually a funny story. The Old Testament translation that Jesus had was called the Septuagint. It was a translation of the Hebrew into Aramaic, which was kind of the lingua franca of the time. All the Greeks, the Greek Jews spoke Aramaic. And it was considered at the time to be a miracle. Because the Greek authorities got, like, 70 rabbis in a room together. No, they got, they put 70 rabbis in 70 different rooms. And they weren’t allowed to communicate. And they all came up with the same Aramaic translation. But the Jews said, if you want a real miracle, put them all in the same room.

So, this is a story from the Talmud that might be talking about Jesus of Nazareth. And it goes like, so. So, on Passover Eve, they hung the corpse of Jesus the Nazarene after they killed him by way of stoning. And a crier went out before him for 40 days, publicly proclaiming, Jesus the Nazarene is going to be stoned because he practiced sorcery, incited people to idol worship, and led the Jewish people astray. Anyone who knows of a reason to acquit him should come forward and teach it on his behalf. And the court did not find a reason to acquit him. And so they stoned him and hung his corpse on Passover Eve. Ulla said, how can you understand this proof? Was Jesus the Nazarene worthy of conducting a search for a reason to acquit him? He was an insider to idol worship. And the merciful one states with regard to an insider to idol worship, neither shall you spare, neither shall you conceal him. Rather, Jesus was different as he had close ties with the government and the Gentile authorities were interested in his acquittal. So, consequently, the court gave him every opportunity to clear himself so that it could not be claimed that he was falsely convicted.

What the heck is going on here? So this story is really about due process in Jewish law. There is this guy called Jesus the Nazarene, and the Jews are going to execute him for practicing sorcery and inciting the Jews to idol worship. And it describes a sort of due process that the Jews give to Jesus the Nazarene where they have a guy go out and say, hey, this guy is on trial. He’s about to be executed. Anyone who has evidence to help him should definitely come forward before he dies. And this rabbi, Ulla, is saying, why did we do this? Inciters to idol worship are not supposed to get any sort of due process. We’re supposed to just kill them according to our law. So what’s the deal?

And the answer is, Jesus was very close to the Gentile authorities, the Roman government. So if we just killed him, that would look bad for us, and we might get in trouble with the Romans. So that’s why we had a crier go out ahead of time. This does not sound like the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion. I mean, the Jews hang him on Passover Eve. That doesn’t make any sense because Jesus was crucified after Passover. Jesus was not that close to the Gentile authorities, considering…

They didn’t like him.

They nailed him to a cross, etc., etc.

So, what do we do with this? Is this evidence of Jesus or not? We don’t know.

Here’s another Talmudic story about someone named Jesus.

What is the word on top?

This is the book of the Talmud that it comes from, and this is the page that it’s on. So, it’s kind of like Matthew 7:9, something like that.

Was Sanhedrin a person?

The Sanhedrin is the Jewish court, so this is the volume of the Talmud that deals with the discussions upon discussions about the Jewish court, and most of it has nothing to do with the Sanhedrin, actually. But that’s a story for another time.

Yehoshua ben Prechaia said, How beautiful is this inn? Jesus, his students, said to him, But my teacher, the eyes of the innkeeper’s wife are narrow. Yehoshua said to him, Look in one! Do not involve yourself with regard to that manner, the appearance of a married woman. So he produced 400 shoferot and ostracized him.

So these guys, Yehoshua and his student Jesus, go to an inn. Yehoshua says, This inn is awesome. And Jesus says, Yeah, and the innkeeper’s wife is kind of a looker, right?

That’s what eyes are narrow means?

Yeah, she looks like a bit of a loose woman.

I’m like, my eyes are narrow.

So Yehoshua says, What are you doing commenting on the appearance of a married woman? Get out of here, you’re ostracized. We shun you.

What’s 400 shofar?

A shofar is the horn that we blow at certain ritual occasions. So he gets 400 people who blow shofar to officially ostracize him from the Jewish community. And everybody knows it because we had 400 shofar announce it.

So he’s kicked out.

He’s pretty much kicked out for this. Excluded from the community.

So maybe we should just say that Jesus is a very common name.

That is true.

This could be anybody’s guess who this person is.

Jesus came before Yehoshua several times and said to him, Accept my repentance. Yehoshua took no notice of him. One day Yehoshua was reciting the Shema, the central prayer in Judaism, one of them. And Jesus came before him with the same request. Yehoshua intended to accept his request and signaled him with his hand to wait until he completed his prayer. It’s against Jewish law to interrupt the Shema. Because it’s very important. So Jesus approaches him while he’s reciting and he says, Hold on a second. But Jesus didn’t understand the signal and thought, He’s driving me away. So he went and stood a brick upright to serve as an idol and bowed down to it. Yehoshua then said to Jesus, Repent! And Jesus said to him, This is the tradition that I received from you. Whoever sins and causes the masses to sin is not given the opportunity to repent. And the master says, Jesus performed sorcery inside of the Jews to engage in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Jews today use this story as an example of how not to treat people. Often we will say that this was Jesus Jesus. Even if the facts don’t quite line up. And we’ll say that Jesus went off and started his own religion because one of our rabbis was a jerk and wouldn’t take his repentance. And that’s what Jesus says here when he says, Yehoshua says repent, and Jesus says, Look, I learned from you that even if I try to repent, you’re not going to accept it. So why should I even bother with you anymore? You’re a jerk. But is this the Jesus of the New Testament? I don’t know.

So, Evelyn, in this prayer that you just said, they say, Lord. Who is the Lord that they’re talking about?

The word there in the Hebrew is the Tetragrammaton, Yad-Heh-Vav-Heh. This is the name that God gave to Moses at the burning bush to identify himself. But we don’t say that name, so we use a substitution, Adonai, and that’s generally translated as Lord.

So, in the Jewish religion, we believe in God, but not Jesus, as our Savior.

That’s pretty much what we’re trying to answer. We don’t accept him as the Messiah, but we’re also not really sure if he was even a real historical guy or if the Gospel accounts happened as they’re written or, you know. And why do we not accept Jesus? What do we really think about him? Well, to answer that, I will pose to you a question. Who do you prefer, Rabbi Hillel or Rabbi Shammai?

Don’t know the dude.

Yeah, you don’t know the dude. We don’t really think about Jesus that much, honestly. I think there’s a sort of misconception that Jews just really are against Jesus, but kind of just don’t care. I personally think that Jesus, as he’s presented in the Gospels, was a brilliant, radical reformer, and that the Jews could probably listen to him here and there. But the whole, like, Messiah, Son of God thing, it’s a little bit odd.

So Jews don’t believe in the Holy Trinity. Where does the Holy Spirit come in here?

What Holy Spirit? I mean, everybody has the breath of God within them.

Are you going to, at some point, because I don’t want to get in the way of your narrative, but are you going to talk about some of the differences, like the differences in terms of belief in an eternal life, or that sort of thing?

Was I going to? Maybe, maybe not.

Write it down, add it to your list.

So it’s Hillel and Shammai. You don’t know who they are? Why do you care? Yeah.

Hillel founded a society. The Hillel Society.

I don’t think he founded that. He did invent the sandwich, allegedly.

I do want to address this question, though. Differences in belief like the afterlife and such. Afterlife is a tricky question, because it’s not directly addressed in the Tanakh, the Hebrew scriptures. So in the Tanakh, the closest that we get to is a place called Sheol. Translates to grave, described as a dark, watery place underground. So according to the Tanakh, when you die, you get buried. And that’s about as far as we get. After the Tanakh, we have come up with various different theories. One of them is the idea of the world to come. This is pretty analogous to what Jesus would have called the kingdom of God. Some sort of utopian future in which things will not suck. And maybe some of us will come back to life. Maybe some of us won’t. Some people believed in the resurrection. Some didn’t. The Apostle Paul actually manages to escape from persecution once by bringing up bodily resurrection. And then all the Jews start arguing with each other and he kind of just slips away. Some Jews today believe in reincarnation. There’s no real agreement.

Who were these people?

Hillel and Shammai were two very popular rabbis back in the day.

What day?

I don’t know. Nobody knows, the mythical time of when we tell stories about the sages. No one knows. But they, yes?

The question is, the Gospels were written like, say, a hundred years or so after the death of Jesus.

Yes.

Now, when was this written and stuff? I mean, is everything just open to interpretations from who’s ever writing whatever, you know?

The Talmud was probably written about the same time as the Gospels.

So everything takes place hundreds of years after the fact. So it’s just whatever the people, you know, oh, well, so-and-so said this or that. And they don’t actually know. I mean.

Whatever message that they’re trying to get across is what they write down.

They didn’t have cell phones to them. And the internet.

And most people were not very literate, so they couldn’t have written things down. Right. We think that Paul was illiterate and dictated all his letters. Actually, I think we know that for sure because he says in the preamble to the letters, I’m Paul, and this was written down by so-and-so. But yeah, Hillel and Shammai had two competing schools of thought, and Hillel won pretty much every single argument. And we only remember Shammai as a loser.

We’ve accepted that we can’t know for sure if Jesus was real or not. Plenty of people are willing to just say, yeah, he probably did. What was Jesus’s relationship with Jews? So to understand that, we’re going to go through what did Judaism look like in Jesus’s day? So Jesus was around during the tecond temple. The first temple was destroyed many long time ago. And then the Jews came back to Israel after some time away, built a second temple. And that’s where Jesus is going all the time whenever he goes to Jerusalem.

We have three main factions, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Zealots. You might recognize some of these guys from many of the Jesus stories. So the Sadducees are the priestly class. They run the temple. They’re in charge of the temple sacrifices. They got into power because of a revolt earlier when they kicked the Greeks out of the temple. So they kind of have some political status. And they work together with the Romans because they have political status. They want the Romans to not take that away from them. They’re very interested in maintaining the status quo.

The Pharisees are a faction that came out of the exile in between the first and second temple. So Judaism was pretty centered around the temple until the exile when the temple was destroyed. And they couldn’t really do temple stuff anymore. So they had to figure out, how do we stay Jews in exile? So they invented this form of portable Judaism that was less focused on the temple rituals and more focused on the Torah, obeying the commands, personal piety. This resulted in a decentralization of practice. We didn’t have to necessarily rely on the temple. And they are a separatist faction because they’re so focused on the law, they sort of isolate themselves. They don’t hang out with non-Pharisees very much. They definitely will not eat at the same table as a Gentile because who knows what Gentiles are eating. It might not be kosher. They might be praying to idols at that table, et cetera.

And then the Zealots are the anti-Roman guerrilla fighters. They lived up in the Judean hill country and would just get together and go attack some Romans every now and then.

When would this have been?

This would have been around the time of Jesus, probably around, I think we’re talking 20 CE. The second temple was destroyed in the year 70. So around 0 to 70-ish CE.

Was there a connection between the Zealots and Masada?

Who?

Masada, the fortification that the Romans took.

I haven’t read my Josephus enough, so I’m not…

When you talk about the second temple, were those described as big temples in Jerusalem? Is this one like the…

Yes.

Like the golden one?

So the first temple that I refer to is the Temple of Solomon. It’s the central location of Jewish worship from the time of Solomon throughout the whole Old Testament, basically. Solomon is described to have built an enormous temple with a lot of gold and a lot of stuff. And then the Babylonians come in and knock that down. And a while later, the Persians say, you’re allowed to go back and build a new one. It’s not quite as impressive as the first one. And the people who remember the first one start crying because it’s so lame compared to what they remember. And then the Romans knocked that one down, and now there’s no temple.

Okay. So it’s the one temple.

Yes. One temple.

Okay.

Unless you’re a Samaritan because they had a different temple, but that’s a whole other conversation. Any other questions?

So this is way before they did the Golden Dome? Temple?

Yeah, that’s a Muslim temple. The Al-Aqsa Mosque. Yeah.

My bad.

What was Jesus’ relationship to all these guys? We can probably guess that the Pharisees and Sadducees weren’t too fond of him if you’ve read your Gospels because they’re always trying to trick him into saying silly things. So let’s start with some stories.

Then they came to Jerusalem, and he, Jesus, entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves, and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a den of robbers. And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him, for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching.

It makes sense.

It does make sense. We’re probably talking about the Sadducees here because it’s the temple, and the Sadducees control the temple cult. And they are being, Judy mentioned them earlier today, saying that they’re charging for money conversion. They’re charging for the sacrifices that you have to make. They’re not optional. They are mandatory. Everyone’s skimming off the top. And Jesus is not okay with the Sadducees profiting off of mandatory religious ritual. So he thinks that everyone should be able to participate in temple sacrifice, whether they can afford to or not. So he comes in and says, You guys are a bunch of jerks. I’m flipping your tables. So there’s clearly bad blood between Jesus and the Sadducees.

Next we have Jesus and the Pharisees. And as Jesus sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, he said to his disciples, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? But when he heard this, he said, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners. So we talked earlier about how Pharisees won’t eat with non-Pharisees because they’re worried about becoming ritually impure or accidentally eating non-kosher food, food that might have been sacrificed to idols. So they see Jesus eating with these people, tax collectors and sinners. I always think it’s funny that tax collectors are lumped in. The historical reason for that is that tax collectors worked with and for the Romans, and they usually would not take Jewish law very seriously. They were pretty assimilated to Roman culture. They were considered, like, traitors. Okay, so the Pharisees are very focused on the law, the book of the law. But Jesus here is quoting from the prophets, like Isaiah, in which God says, Your sacrifices are meaningless to me. Your festivals are repugnant. The sacrifice that I want is for you to take care of the poor, the widow, and the orphan. Jesus took this message to heart and preached it quite regularly. And so he’s kind of calling the Pharisees out for being very hoity-toity, but not actually doing anything useful that is actually helping anybody.

We’ve got quite a few of them people in our society now, and Jesus needs to come and talk to them again. That’s an understatement.

Yeah.

And we have a story that deals a little bit with his relationship with the zealots. Then they, meaning the authorities, the Jewish authorities, sent to him some Pharisees and some Herodians to trap him in what he said. And they came and said to him, Teacher, we know that you are sincere and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay them or should we not? But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me see it. And they brought one. And he said to them, Whose head is this and whose title? They answered, Caesar’s. Jesus said to them, Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s. They were utterly amazed at him. So they’re trying to catch him in a trap where if he says, Yes, we should pay our taxes, then he’s a Roman shill. And if he says, No, we should not pay our taxes, then they can get him in trouble with the Roman government. So either way, he’s between a rock and a hard place. But he pulls this maneuver where he says, Look, it’s George Washington’s face on the quarter. God doesn’t care about this. The money is already his. Just give it back to him. So he’s clearly rejecting the sort of militaristic, anti-Roman position of the Zealots.

What are the Herodians?

Herodians, they’re the faction of King Herod, who was put into power after the Maccabean Revolt, which was the same revolt that put the Sadducees in power. So he’s pretty much referring to the Sadducees in a roundabout way.

So people higher up.

Yes. So Jesus had strong words for everybody. He was very radical, very interested in reforming the Jewish community into something better.

Are the Jews responsible for killing Jesus? This has been a thing that Jews have had to deal with for the last 2,000 years, being called the Christ killers. According to this book, Jesus was executed by a crucifixion, which was a common method of torture and execution used by the Romans. So the execution of Jesus was a Roman affair, possibly with the cooperation of Jewish leadership in Jerusalem. The Romans did not need to try a troublesome Jewish peasant in order to kill him. They tortured and crucified nameless lower class people all the time in order to get rid of Jesus, who had caused a disturbance in the temple, had made radical sounding pronouncements and prophecies, and was rumored to have aspirations to kingship. The Romans would have simply taken him by force and crucified him the next day, along with a few others they were getting rid of. There was no need for any trial, much less two or more before different courts would have been more trouble than a Roman government needed for the desired result.

So the gospel narratives are a little bit confusing in the context of the actual political reality of the time. It seems like all the rigmarole was completely unnecessary. But I like to take literature seriously anyways. So if we read the gospel accounts and what they say, we can just say that they happen pretty much the way that they’re written down and still get some information out of them.

There’s a few threads common to all of the gospel accounts. Some differences, but there are some commonalities. First one is that in all of the accounts, Jesus is captured by the Romans in collaboration with the Sadducees because he is a threat to their power and the institutions, political institutions that they’re a part of. He is directly flipping over their tables and such and calling for reform, trying to take away their sources of revenue.

Does anyone know who Barabbas is?

It was the alternative.

Yes. Yes. Yes. In the Gospel accounts, when Jesus is brought before Pilate, the governor of Judea, apparently there is a tradition around Passover when the governor would pardon one criminal, whoever the Jews chose. This is an outrageous tradition. There’s no way this happened. It’s kind of like Prima Nocta and Braveheart, if you’ve seen that. It’s very good storytelling, but it probably didn’t happen.

So there’s Jesus and there’s Barabbas, who is the other criminal. He’s described as a murderer and a seditionist. And the Jews say, we want Barabbas. Free that guy.

Barabbas is not a real name. It’s Aramaic. Bar-Abbas, son of the father, which is completely meaningless. It basically just means a person. We can contrast that with the name that Jesus used for himself, son of man, which is completely meaningless and basically just means a person. So the gospel narratives are creating this dichotomy between Jesus and Barabbas, who are, their names are meant to be similar, to call our attention to them. Jesus is this peace-loving pacifist. He is submitting himself to execution. The Gospel of John says, I could free myself if I wanted. I could have my followers storm this place and free me, but I’m not going to do that because my kingdom is a kingdom of peace. It’s a kingdom of the last coming first, the mighty being brought low.

Meanwhile, Barabbas is an insurrectionist and a murderer. He’s one of the zealots probably going around trying to gain Jewish independence from Rome by violent means. So the story is saying the Jews chose violence rather than the way of peace that Jesus was teaching. And I think that’s probably the message that the Jews of the first century would have heard.

So, yeah. We also know that Jesus was a victim of sort of a mob mentality in all of the Gospel accounts. It’s the Sadducees who start up the crucified Jesus chants and everybody kind of just goes along. I don’t know if anyone here has seen the movie Borat. But if you have, you’ve seen Sacha Baron Cohen pretending to be a foreigner going up and saying things like, we support your war of terror. We support killing every single man, woman, and child in Iraq. And all the people start cheering and going along with it. So it’s pretty easy to get a mob to agree with almost anything.

And again, Roman execution, the historicity of whether or not the Jews were allowed to administer capital punishment is in question. But according to the gospel narratives, they couldn’t, and that’s why they had to bring him to the Romans. But pretty clearly…

Okay, so how is Judaism different from Christianity? Jews are more focused on action than belief. Nobody cares really if a Jew believes in God or not. There are a ton of atheist Jews who are still Jewish and still very accepted as Jews. What we care about is being a good person, obeying the laws maybe. Depending on what that means to you, there are a lot of different positions. I think for Christians, mostly there is a lot more emphasis on belief. You are expected to believe in Jesus, believe in the resurrection. There’s a bunch of creeds like the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed. You might know of those. Many, many Christians were burned at the stake by Christian authorities for having some heretical beliefs. Judy would have been burned at the stake if she was a believer.

I wouldn’t have lasted long. That’s great.

Christianity is generally considered to be a pretty individual affair. It’s between you and Jesus. Judaism is a group activity. You cannot be Jewish by yourself.

Say what?

You cannot be Jewish by yourself.

It’s cultural.

Jews cannot pray alone, most of the prayers. You’re required to pray in a minyan, which is often translated as a quorum, which is traditionally a group of ten adult Jewish men. Today, we will usually let women be part of the dominion.

Thanks.

You’re not allowed to do mourning practices by yourself. If your mom or dad dies, you have to pray the mourning prayers in a minyan. You’re not allowed to practice that in isolation.

So, you have to go to the temple?

Yes. Yeah.

Currently?

Currently. We don’t have a temple temple anymore. So, you’d have to find like your local synagogue, which sometimes we will call a temple. A better translation would be a house of prayer. So, yeah.

You can pray at homes or does it have to be at the synagogue?

It can be anywhere as long as you have a minyan.

Of mostly men.

Depends on how orthodox you are.

Well, that’s my question. So, when you say more focused on action than belief, what would an Orthodox rabbi say? Think of that bullet point. Would they agree with you? An Orthodox is stricter? Just so I know what you’re… I just want to clarify. Versus Reform.

Right. There’s three major branches of Judaism today in America. We have the Modern Orthodox, the Conservative, and the Reform. I won’t get too much into the history, but they all have different positions about the Jewish law, and that’s the key differentiation. So, is Jewish law binding? Are we required to follow Jewish law? And, can Jewish law change over time? Are we allowed to reinterpret the law in response to our changing times?

So, the Modern Orthodox basically say, yes, Jewish law is binding, and no, it does not change. So, they are very conservative, very much sticks in the mud. The Conservative movement is kind of a middle ground. Yes, the law is binding. You have to follow the law, but we can change it in response to our evolving understanding of humanity and society. Reform are very loosey-goosey. The law is not binding. It’s more of a suggestion, and it’s subject to change. We can adapt it.

So, the Modern Orthodox would still agree that action is much more important than belief. But they might think that a lot of the, for example, atheist Jews are crazy.

So, that would be under the last cow. The crazies? The crazy people. You’re just saying Reform.

Yeah. They’d probably be considered more Reform, but I, yeah. Yes?

Well, I’m focusing on the word action. So, when you say an Orthodox would still believe that action is more important than belief, what’s, is that action like, like following the rituals?

Yeah. For the Orthodox, it would primarily be doing the three daily prayers, keeping kosher, making sure that you don’t touch dead bodies or lizards or whatever.

But not on good works.

Not so much for the Orthodox, but the further you get to the right of this chart, the less that they’re worried about the sort of traditional laws and the more that they’re worried about the more social justice part of it, the prophetic, I don’t care about your fasts, help the poor.

Clothing, clothing and hair.

Yeah, that’s more on this side, the clothing requirements.

This just is reminding me of Christianity today with the extreme conservative fundamentalists who would have stormed out of here when you said anything at all about whether Jesus existed or not because the Bible is inerrant, infallible and has no contradictions in it. I mean, that’s their position and so the law is everything and your belief is everything. But on the other side, it would be like the UCC for sure and the Presbyterians to a degree that we’re going to put social justice and human needs first. So would you say we’re more Reform? Sure. As Christians, oh yeah, because the folks on the left, on this chart that is, don’t even think that progressive Christians are Christians at all. They think we’re going to hell because we don’t believe the way they believe. They’re very rigid and that’s who’s in power right now. That mindset is the powerful mindset in our country.

In fact, the Modern Orthodox wouldn’t even consider me Jewish because I had Conservative conversion and that is not strict enough for them.

Bless you. So are there different synagogues with these different, you can be a Conservative synagogue or you can be a Reform.

For the most part, a Jew is a Jew and you can go to wherever you want. This is more at like an institutional level of, you know, there’s like a bunch of rabbis in a building somewhere making rules and publishing books and stuff but most everyday Jews just don’t really care that much and will go to whatever synagogue is closest.

So if you walk to synagogue, does that mean you’re at least a Conservative? Would the Reformed Jews consider that this idea of not doing work, not starting your car, would they go for that or is that a Conservative Jew?

The car issue is not really a work issue. It’s about kindling fire on the Sabbath or carrying on the Sabbath which are two other prohibitions that you’re not allowed to do those things on the Sabbath. Modern Orthodox, you definitely are not allowed to drive a car. The leaders of the Conservative movement made a ruling some years ago that it’s better for you to go to synagogue than not. So if you must drive to get to synagogue then you can but you probably shouldn’t be driving anywhere else.

That kind of sounds like an Amish people. So with not using the power, the energy that is only on Sabbath.

Electric cars are fine.

Really?

Because it’s kindling fire that is prohibited.

So the spark flag or the…

Yeah, internal combustion engines are all…

But without using lights in the house, isn’t that considered by the Orthodox…

Modern Orthodox, for some reason, have decided that electricity is fire. Yes. Nobody else agrees.

Okay. Weird.

Yeah. Yeah.

So you can go back to what you were saying.

I don’t know what I was saying. What was I saying?

Alright, so traditionally Judaism is transmitted by the mother. So if your mom is Jewish then you’re automatically Jewish. Different positions on this now. Most people will say that if either of your parents was Jewish and you were exposed to Judaism growing up then you count. Converting to… Yes.

Can I ask a question?

Yes.

Okay, so my grandfather was Jewish and my grandmother wasn’t.

Mm-hmm.

Does that affect my grandfather’s Judaism or…

Is the question does marrying a non-Jew make him less Jewish? '

Does he… He stays Jewish, right?

Yes.

Okay. You know…

You can’t stop being Jewish.

Okay. You couldn’t convert to another religion?

I could, but I wouldn’t stop being a Jew. I would just be an apostate.

A non-Jew not a person or an apostate? Is that a Christian or Christian Jews or some Christian Jews?

Yeah, there are. Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of Buddhist Jews. A whole lot of Buddhist Jews. We call them Jubus. But don’t repeat that. That’s our word.

So, converting to Judaism is quite different than Christianity. Especially, for some reason, like, the more conservative Christian, the easier it is to become Christian. like, you just pray the prayer, like, I accept Jesus into my heart and boom, you’re Christian. For Judaism, if anybody remembers the, what is it called, confirmation classes, that kind of stuff, it’s sort of like that. We generally have to spend at least a year studying Judaism, learning all the laws and the traditions and the practices and the customs and the history. So it’s more like trying to get citizenship in a new country where you have to live in the country for a while and then you have to take an exam. When I converted, I had to sit in front of a Jewish court of three rabbis and they asked me questions and I had to prove that I knew what I was talking about and I’m sincere, before I was allowed.

No pressure.

Oh, there was a lot of pressure. I babbled like an idiot.

Without being a smart aleck, right?

I was still a smart aleck.

Do you read Hebrew? Is that a requirement?

Reading Hebrew is a requirement for the Modern Orthodox. I cannot read Hebrew. I can sort of sound things out a little bit but a lot of the letters look the same and the vowels are really hard to figure out. But that’s the end of my slides.

Okay, there. That was perfect. That’s very nice. Very good. Thank you. Yeah. That was interesting. I missed a lot of it. Thank you.

Yay.

Thank you. Thank you.

Next time, I think I will focus more on some of the common Jewish practices like what is Jewish prayer like? What’s the deal with the funny hats and the clothes and stuff?

Oh, yeah. That kind of thing.

Mm-hmm. That kind of thing. So… Thank you.