What of Sizer?

Serious questions regarding this Anglican Vicar with a penchant for decrying supposed (yes, sometimes real) Israeli foibles and now infamous for linking his Facebook page to a horrific website  (http://www.uglytruth.wordpress.com).

Fortunately, there are those such as Rev Nick Howard, who have made it their business to speak plainly and clearly to these questions. I believe he has done a tremendous service by doing so. Howard’s latest article concerning Sizer’s apparent duplicity is posted at Harry’s Place, a blog site with the tag line: ‘Liberty, if it means anything, is the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear.’

Read Nick Howard’s telling piece here: http://hurryupharry.org/2012/05/02/stephen-sizer-the-unanswered-questions/.

Messianic Judaism’s Bar Mitzvah

Messianic Jews, while not properly acknowledged as such, are Ba’alei Tshuvah, ‘sons of repentance’. Upon accepting Messiah Yeshua as King, even Go’el (Redeemer), we often find ourselves on a path to greater appreciation of our Jewishness, our membership in Israel, and towards greater observance of the Mitzvot (commandments). This is both an individual and a communal path that the Messianic Jew and his congregation are on.

I wonder if my own story might be illustrative.

A Sephardic Bar Mitzvah in Cairo

I begin with my father Elie’s bar-mitzvah, in Egypt, before he was even 13 due to the exigencies of the war. A number of years ago my father related to me that he was Bar-Mitzvahed in Cairo at 12 with his older brother Albert (13) in Sha’ar Hashamayim Synagogue (I found it on the web, here), in the morning weekday service (this would have been a Monday or Thursday), taking the opportunity the family had before all the uncles (his mother Victoria Forte’s brothers) went to work. In Bombay where they sat out the war, my father had already been taught to read the Torah, no doubt laining in the Iraqi style.

They were in Cairo before Israel’s independence (the UN vote would occur just before my father’s 13th birthday)and already the Arabs were getting riled up against them and cursed them as they made their way back from the synagogue. Aunty Etty yelled back at them, which caused her husband no end of consternation. When they got home, Uncle Marco prayed a Psalm (you can guess which one!) and had my father say אמן at the end.

In the afternoon when the uncles came back from work there was a small celebration and to their surprise, Albert and Elie were given gifts. My father, the more ‘scholarly’ one, had prepared a special speech, at his Uncle Marco’s insistence, just before the event. He had to put pen to paper and after a short while was surprised as the thoughts began to flow and he was able to put together a tolerable speech that gained him some applause at the party. Sadly, we don’t have a copy. After he was done he thought ‘enough of that’ and tore it up and threw it away!

A Hebrew Christian Bar Mitzvah in Vancouver

A few years later, Elie came to see that Yeshua is Israel’s Messiah. In accordance with expectations of the day he stopped laying tefillin and became involved in the Church. Later, he married a Jewish woman from Berlin who had survived the war (hidden) and had become a believer in Yeshua after moving to London. I was born and thirteen years later, 1974, in Vancouver, took part in a very humble Bar Mitzvah celebration in our Vancouver living room. In that day there were no Messianic congregations in Vancouver, no Torah scrolls to be had or borrowed, and no other Messianic Jews to celebrate the occasion with, although some of our Jewish friends did thankfully take part. I remember being a little dismayed by it all. How did this fit with my ‘Christianity’? It was all a little too quiet, as if Christians in general might not sympathise with a Jewish family’s attempt to keep at least some of their people’s customs.

A Messianic Bar Mitzvah in Seattle

Fast forward two decades, and my wife (a Jewish girl from the ‘valley’ in LA who, like me, believes in Yeshua) and I had the privilege of celebrating our son’s Bar Mitzvah. Jeff was a bit of a terror, but we were so proud of him as we held a traditional torah service at which he read from the Hebrew (thank you, Mr Bean, for that instruction!). My parents came, his mother’s mother came along with lots of other good friends and relatives. But something was odd. We held the service ourselves at an ‘off’ time and managed the invitation list carefully. Sadly (maybe a commentary on us, sadly), we felt that the regular Messianic Synagogue service at Emmaus was just too Gentile. Very few members were Jewish, and the whole atmosphere of the services was like a circus. I wish now that we had just recognised all the good that was there at the time.

A Messianic Bar Mitzvah in London

Another two decades and it is 2010 in London. My son Samuel is called up to the torah. A packed Messianic Synagogue, with over 60 members and guests over-spilling into the garden behind, on a warm, sunny Shabbat. My Son can’t lain properly, but he has memorised (imperfectly, but still very well!) the Sephardic cantillation for his portion, within the auspicious Nitzavim-Vayelech at the end of the torah. The full roster of olim are called up to the torah, and the service goes off splendidly. Much to his delight, presents are still flowing in months later.

What has happened? Step by step we have wound our way back towards the faith of our fathers and our own people. My experience and that of my family, is of course anecdotal. Nevertheless, it also reflects broader trends in society. 1946 Cairo was chaotic, but it presaged the establishment of the Jewish State – which laid the groundwork for the resurgence of Messianic Judaism following the Six Day War of 1967. My Vancouver Bar Mitzvah of 1974 was in a city with 12,000 Jews but no more than a dozen Jewish followers of Messiah. Today there may be 30,000 Jews in Vancouver, but also a thriving Messianic Jewish community, part of the hundreds who see Yeshua as Messiah. Still, there is no torah scroll in Vancouver, but some day there will be. The Seattle experience reflects the Messianic community that rapidly grew up in the intervening years. Rapid growth = immaturity. We wanted maturity, so we tried to create our own closeted ad-hoc community for Jeff’s Bar Mitzvah. London, however, is where we are today. Today, a Messianic Jew can hold a traditional Bar Mitzvah in a Messianic Synagogue, just as any other Jew can do within their own tradition.

Messianic Jews – we have made teshuvah and turned to Yeshua. Now it is for us to continue making teshuvah as we return to our people. It is only as part of our people that we can be part of the Jewish people, the part that knows and worships the risen Messiah. Maybe, just maybe, Messianic Judaism has reached its Bar Mitzvah?

The Hermeneutics of Christian Palestinianism

Calvin Smith recently wrote a great blog on Christian Palestinianism and ‘Jewish Roots’ at http://tinyurl.com/852gjk6. There’s good food for thought there.

In general the CZ (Christian Zionist) and CP (Christian Palestinian) ‘camps’ approach the Hebrew Bible on radically different terms. This was partly addressed in a chapter by Prasch in the book Calvin Smith edited, called The Jews, Modern Israel and the New Supercessionism. If Sizer is anyone to go by, CP’s would caricaturise CZ’s as wooden literalists, whereas I have no doubt that most CZ’s would characterise the CP position as ‘spiritualising’ the OT. In addition, CP’s tend towards ‘covenant’ theology and Reformed doctrinal positions. CP’s seek to (mis-)portray covenant theology and Reformed doctrine as the dominant, correct, and accepted views, and as naturally leading to Supercessionism. Thus non-Supersessionists are pictured as holding to aberrant theologies, quite often as quirky dispensationalists.

Dispensationalists are to be commended for at least one thing – an insistence upon interpreting Scripture literally unless there is reason not to. If one leaves the moorings of literality, then Scripture can be interpreted willy-nilly according to the inclinations of the reader. This, it seems to me, is quite convenient for the CP, who would like to minimise the importance of Israel and God’s covenants with him in the OT. These, the ‘Jewish Roots’ of Christianity become a very inconvenient truth. Thus the CP chooses to read their particular interpretation of the NT back into the OT, reinterpreting its original meaning and sense regardless of the text’s initial sitz-im-leben. The OT is relegated to a subservient status to the NT. Thus it is inevitable that a modern form of Marcionism should become a threat.

CP’s are seeking to convince CZ’s and Christians in general of their warped hermeneutical approach. This is necessary for them as they contend that modern Israel is irrelevant to God and therefore to Christians today. I fear that their political positions are driving their hermeneutics and ultimately their theology, forcing them into yet more radical political postures in a vicious circle that they would like to turn into a vortex, dragging the whole church down with them.

One in Messiah? What Paul REALLY Said

Rav Shaul

By 1937 Hitler was well entrenched in power. Anti-Semitism was sickening Europe. The ”Jewish problem” was a frequent topic of discussion. In his book Le Mystère d’Israël. French philosopher Jacques Maritain proposed a ”decisive solution” to the ”Jewish problem”. This was “the emancipation of Jewry and the increasing recognition of their rights [as] a means toward their complete assimilation and silent disappearance as a distinct people.“[1]  Hebrew Christianity and often Messianic Judaism[2] have inevitably contributed to the assimilation[3] and silent disappearance of its adherents from the Jewish community into the greater church. What does Scripture have to say of this?

Hebrew-Catholic Schoeman asks: “Do the Jews continue to have a role to play in salvation history following Christ, that is, between the first and the Second Coming?”[4] He then evaluates several alternative rationales for Jewish identity in the Church, finally suggesting that Jews may be “yeast” for the Church, perpetually providing leavening, whereas unbelieving Jews may be the stock of “yeast” from which the leavening yeast is continually drawn until Messiah comes again. Thus the yeast being put into the Church is continually assimilated, as it should be.[5]

On the other hand, at the end of the 19^th century, Rabbi Isaac Lichtenstein appealed:

And will Israel cease to be a nation when at last he recognises in Christ his Redeemer and Messiah-King? Shall we then be absorbed in Christendom, and will there be an end to our God-consecrated people? By no means; Israel will then, at last, attain the position to which he is called of God.[6]

In America (and in many travels to England), Mark Levy tirelessly campaigned for the right of Jewish believers to maintain their Jewish customs in the Christian world. Writing for the Hebrew Christian Alliance, he railed against the prevailing tide:

When he wrote “In Messiah Yeshua there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond or free, male or female,” he was referring to the spiritual tie and no more intended to unjew the Jew than he did to unsex the Gentile. He mentions “All the Churches of the Gentiles” (Rom. 16.4) and proclaims himself a “Hebrew of the Hebrews.”….[7]

According to Levy, Paul was did not intend to erase Jewish identity, but to affirm that all believers in Messiah Yeshua are alike in their relationship to God. Levy both raises and interprets an apparent contradiction in Paul’s thinking, interpreting Galatians 3:28 in light of other Pauline epistles.

In Kishinev, Rabbi Rabinowitz affirmed in his statement of faith (article 4):

There is but one God, who shall justify the circumcised Jews by faith and the uncircumcised Gentiles through faith; and there is no difference between Jew and Greek, between bond and free, between male and female; for they are all one in Messiah Yeshua.[8]

But he wrote more (article 6) “And as we are the descendants of those whom the Lord brought out of the land of Egypt… we are bound to keep the Sabbath, the feast of unleavened bread, and the feast of weeks.”[9] Just as Levy did, Rabinowitz has quoted Galatians 3:28 and interpreted it in the light of other Scripture – this time not Paul’s, but the Torah.

Interestingly, both of these proponents of a distinguishable Jewish identity for Messianic Jews appeal to the same text – Galatians 3:28a, where Paul says:[10]

“there is neither Jew nor Greek, (οὐκ ἔνι Ἰουδαῖος οὐδὲ Ἕλλην)
“there is neither slave nor free, (οὐκ ἔνι δοῦλος οὐδὲ ἐλεύθερος)
“there is neither male nor female”; (οὐκ ἔνι ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ)

In our morning prayers we (men) bless God:

“who has not made me a Gentile, (בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, שֶׁלֹא עָשַֽׂנִי גּוֹי)
“who has not made me a slave, (בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, שֶׁלֹא עָשַֽׂנִי עָֽבֶד)
“who has not made me a woman”. (בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֶלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, שֶׁלֹא עָשַֽׂנִי אִשָּׁה)

You will be encouraged to know that following the Conservative tradition the Siddur used by Beit Sar Shalom in London uses more inclusive language. However, this was the language of Paul’s day. Philo wrote “and if you give thanks for man, do not do so only for the whole genus but for its species and most essential parts, for men and women, for Greeks and barbarians”.[11] What did Paul mean by using such language, and does it provide Messianic Jews a Biblical basis for Jewish identity?

In answer, we will first examine Galatians 3:28 in the context of the epistle’s purpose. We will then examine the text itself more carefully.

Paul’s Premise

Paul opens his letter to the Galatians with both a forceful assertion of his apostleship and a forthright defense of the Gospel “preached by me” (1:11), which he received “through the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1:12). His very first lines contain two balanced clauses that highlight the basis of his appeal to the troubled congregation:

1:1          Yeshua Messiah and God the Father who raised him from the dead (Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ θεοῦ πατρὸς τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν)

1:3-4      God our Father and the Lord Yeshua Messiah who gave himself on account of our sins (θεοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ δόντος ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν)

The two phrases make two points. In the first phrase, God the Father is referred to as the Agent of the resurrection. In the second, the Lord Yeshua Messiah is referred to as the One who has given himself “ὑπὲρ” (on account of) our sins.

Paul’s Primary Concern

Paul’s primary concern in writing was the perversion of the Gospel by those who taught that Gentiles ought to live as Jews (2:14).  Paul was vitally concerned to protect his mission to the Gentiles from this, “threat of marginalization and subjugation of his Gentile mission and the community members.”[12] The question was whether Gentiles should be permitted to keep their Gentile identity.

Galatians 3:26-29 brings the argument that Paul makes throughout the letter concerning the Gospel’s implications for Messianic community life, to a head. Paul’s conclusion is bracketed by two related phrases.

3:26        Πάντες γὰρ    υἱοὶ θεοῦ        ἐστε (For you are all sons of God)

3:28b      πάντες γὰρ    ὑμεῖς εἷς         ἐστε (For you are all one)

Diversity and Unity

Galatians 3:28a is therefore in a wider structure (all sons of God – all one) which is itself nested in the sequence of Paul’s argument for the Gospel. This gives a framework for the three assertions he now makes.

The first is that for those who have been immersed into Messiah and have therefore “put on” Messiah, “there is neither Jew nor Greek” (οὐκ ἔνι Ἰουδαῖος οὐδὲ Ἕλλην).[13]

Years later (1 Cor 7:17-18) Paul wrote “And so I ordain in all the churches… Was anyone called while uncircumcised? Let him not be circumcised.”[14] This is notable because it was possible to surgically reverse circumcision in order to facilitate assimilation with the Greeks.[15] Paul is opposing not only reverse circumcision, but kol vachomer assimilation in general. Likewise, Paul did not expect Gentiles to jump through hoops in order to become acceptable company for Jews.

Paul’s second assertion goes further. In Messiah “there is neither slave nor free” (οὐκ ἔνι δοῦλος οὐδὲ ἐλεύθερος). Slavery was not merely a matter of status. Aristotle famously viewed slaves to be “by nature”[16] inferior of soul. Both Jews and Gentiles tended to this prejudice. Paul did not deny that these differences exist. On the contrary, he advised δοῦλοι (slaves) to obey their masters (Eph 6:5; Col 3:22).

Paul’s third assertion, “there is neither male nor female” (οὐκ ἔνι ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ) is the most impassable of the three mutually exclusive categories he invokes. Nevertheless, Paul (controversially) holds to distinctions between men and women, even within the Messianic community. For Paul there is a distinction in gender, domestic order and community functions between men and women. “The head of a woman is her husband” he writes in 1 Cor 11:3. “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men” he tells Timothy in 1 Tim 2:12. He was not alone in this. It may be an unfair comparison, but according to Josephus “The woman, says the Law, is in all things inferior to the man. Let her accordingly be submissive, not for her humiliation, but that she may be directed; for the authority has been given by God to the man.”[17]

Thus Paul’s “neither male nor female” is in some ways the most instructive dyad of the three.

Paul concludes the pericope with one final thought. “And if you are Messiah’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (3:29). As Burton notes, the “δέ” that begins this final sentence “is continuative… adding fresh inferences from what has already been said.”[18] The fresh inference is that those who are in Messiah are indeed Abraham’s seed as Paul has argued earlier (3:7). As a dialectician, Hietanen considers this an issue. “The argument is problematic: what is the relationship between belonging to Christ and being one of Abraham’s offspring? The connection is assumed without further arguments.”[19] Abraham’s ‘offspring’ are thus Jews, Gentiles, slaves, free, male and female. “What is new is the new corporate person, as the final clause of the formula shows (v 28b). It is Christ and the community of those incorporated into him who lie beyond religious distinctions.”[20]

Differences do, indeed must exist. All however are one “in Messiah” and children of God, and this unity must be displayed in the Messianic community. The “law” must give way to this higher principle.[21] “We answer to a higher authority”.

Paul has radically reshaped the Messianic community’s social world. He has affirmed the validity of Gentile identity in Messiah. He is making an “effort to construct community-identity”,[22] but that community is not intended to be monolithic or homogeneous. Rather, the different members of that community are to be treated as equals.

Conclusion

We now turn Paul on his head to answer the question of Jewish identity. For two millennia, assimilation and loss of Jewish identity has been the experience of Messianic Jews, yet Galatians 3:26-28 asserts that Paul intended Gentile believers to maintain their Gentile identity. It therefore follows that the Jewish believer must as well. Schoeman’s “yeast” hypothesis does not hold true.

If called upon to defend Jewish identity, Paul may well have applied the words of British Rabbi Louis Jacobs zt”l, to that of the communities he taught:

‘The Jew who prefers the Jewish way of life above all others can as little be accused of fostering an egocentric form of particularism as those who, with good cause, wax eloquent over the British of the American way of life.’[23]

---

[1] W. D. Davies, Christian Engagements with Judaism (Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press, 1999), 157.

[2] For the purposes of this discussion, “Hebrew Christian” is used of Jewish believers in Yeshua who primarily identify socially with the Christian community. “Messianic Jew” is used of the Jewish believer in Yeshua who primarily identify socially with the Jewish community.

[3] Encyclopedia Judaica, “Assimilation.” Arthur Hertzberg here defines assimilation: “In general the sociocultural process in which the sense and consciousness of association with one national and cultural group changes to identification with another such group, so that the merged individual or group may partially or totally lose its original national identity.”

[4] Roy H. Schoeman, Salvation if from the Jews: The role of Judaism in Salvation History from Abraham to the Second Coming (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003), 67.

[5] Ibid, 70-71.

[6] Isaac Lichtenstein, An Appeal to the Jewish People (London: Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel, c. 1895), 21.

[7] Mark Levy, “Jewish Ordinances in the Light of Hebrew Christianity,” The Hebrew Christian Alliance Quarterly, Vol. 1:3&4 (1917), 138-143.

[8] Ibid, 103. Kjær-Hansen quotes the translation of J. Adler, The First-ripe Fig (London: 1885).

[9] Ibid, 104.

[10] Given the striking similarity, it is also unlikely that there is a direct relationship between the two lists. It is most likely that Paul wrote in reaction to sentiments that were current in his day, also the basis of the Jewish man’s daily prayers that are not attested to until much later.

[11] F. H. Colson, trans. Philo (London: Heinemann, 1937), vol. 7 of 10, 221.

[12] Atsuhiro Asan, Community-Identity Construction in Galatians: Exegetical, Social-Anthropological and Socio-Historical Studies, (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 200. Rhetorical analysis such as this are useful for answering the question as to Paul’s primary concern. Was it the Gospel or the subjugation of his mission?

[13] Cp. Col 3.10-11 “the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.”

[14] Rudolph rightly asks “Should a teaching that Paul considered important enough to be a universal rule be almost universally neglected by contemporary Christians?” David Rudolph, “Paul’s ’Rule in All the Churches’” (1 Cor 7.17-24) and Torah-Defined Ecclesiological Variegation”, American Academy of Religion Conference, November 3, 2008, (Boston: Boston College University, 2008), 1.

[15] 1 Maccabees 1.13-15, NRSV: “and some of the people eagerly went to the king, who authorized them to observe the ordinances of the Gentiles. So they built a gymnasium in Jerusalem, according to Gentile custom, and removed the marks of circumcision, and abandoned the holy covenant. They joined with the Gentiles and sold themselves to do evil.” This interpretation is followed by Margaret Thrall, The Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge, 1965), 55; Charles Hodge, I & II Corinthians (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1974), 122,

[16] Aristotle, Politics, V.

[17] Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, trans. H. Thackeray (London: Heinemann, 1926), 2:24.

[18] Ernest De Witt Burton, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1920), 208.

[19] Mika Hietanen, Paul’s Argument in Galatians: A Pragma-Dialectical Analysis (London: T&T Clarke, 2007), 135.

[20] J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 382.

[21] Another application of this might be to take Paul’s command to “great one another with a holy kiss” as even permitting Jews to kiss Gentiles, men to kiss possibly impure women, all in contravention of Jewish purity laws.

[22] Atsuhiro Asan, Community-Identity Construction in Galatians: Exegetical, Social-Anthropological and Socio-Historical Studies, (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 205.

[23] Louis Jacobs, We have Reason to Believe (London: Valentine, Mitchell, 1957), p. 132.

Roland Allen a century on…

In my youth (a long time ago!), my father recommended an already old work to me: Missionary Methods: St Paul’s or Ours by Roland Allen (London, 1912).

As an employee of, and in some capacities a leader within, Chosen People Ministries it would be duplicitous of me to claim that I am not a missionary. Nevertheless, I do not use the term as I do not believe it is appropriate without severe qualification. Fortunately, I have the example of my father who worked with Christian Witness to Israel from the mid-sixties to 1986. He too dislikes and has persistently eschewed the term missionary. The term I prefer and would use is that used by the orthodox community – Shliach (emissary). This is an acceptable translation of apostolos and links us to Rav Shaul and the twelve.

Shaul the Shliach believed that Messiah was able and willing to keep that which he had committed to Him. Is the present day missions movement willing to do that with the Messianic community? Are we ready to let the Spirit guide and lead the Messianic community? As with Shaul, this does not mean to plant communities and just walk away. Shaul planted communities which rapidly became self supporting and self-governing… ah, there’s the ‘rub’ in my opinion. Shaul’s methods do mean to plant, water and nurture Messianic communities that because of their place within the world and church are under pressure at a hundred different levels (no, you don’t want me to enumerate them!).

It is my passion that the missions community should stop making the Jewish Messianic movement towards Messiah Yeshua less than an addendum to its strategy. Rather than an embarrassment to the ‘Jewish Mission’ the Messianic community should be its crown jewel, encouraged and helped but in no way controlled or kept in financial servitude (Messianic Jews are in danger of becoming the ‘rice Christians’ of the Western world). This even involves quietly letting us ‘get on with it’ and not overwhelming our congregations with a preponderance of non-Jewish attendees.

On our part as Messianic Jews, we need to come up with a ‘business model’ that will allow us to employ and send our own shlichim around the Jewish world, men and woment beholden not to church purse strings but to the Spirit of the Almighty.

As a ‘reluctant missionary’ I am extremely grateful for those Christians who support me in reaching my own Jewish people. I thank the Lord for those who, with great vision, commit their Canadian dollars, US dollars and Pounds Sterling to the cause of helping Jews come face to face with the Jew from Nazareth.

Your thoughts and feedback are valuable to me. Please feel free to comment.

Siddur Sar Shalom – סדור שר שלום

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Siddur Sar Shalom – the Prince of Peace Prayer Book – a Siddur for Messianic Jews who want traditional prayers set in a way that elevates Messiah Yeshua – has just been sent to the printers. Baruch Hashem!

Siddur Sar Shalom has been in process for over two years. Its genesis came upon viewing a Siddur that David Taylor (thank you, David!) wrote for Chosen People Ministries back in 2001. Then came Davka Writer Platinum, and the whole thing became feasible.

One Messianic publisher friend had severe reservations. ‘Do we REALLY need another Messianic Siddur?’ was the jist of his query. Well, he may have a point, and as a publisher he must think that way. On the other hand, I believe that we REALLY do! Much gratitude goes to this siddur’s fore-runners, by John Fischer, David Bronstein and Jeremiah Greenberg. However, there was nothing that really met the need that exists in my congregation. My congregation needs something that is complete and all-inclusive, with transliteration for those who are new to Judaism and the Jewish prayer book. Other people have siddurim in the works, but it might be years before they come to print, and we need our siddur NOW. That’s why our siddur is available NOW. (£20 GBP or $32 USD). At 320 pages the siddur includes prayers for Erev Shabbat, the welcoming of Shabbat, the Shabbat evening service, and the Shabbat morning service, as well as a Torah service and additional ‘mussaf’ service that can follow that, and much more. Commentary, especially where prayers have an overt Messianic significance, is include at the bottom of the page.

Now my son is grabbing my ear to tell me about The Green Lantern, Batman and the Joker, so I have to go….

Publications Available for Download

Shalom,

It’s a terrible shame to go to all the trouble of writing something, have it published, and thereafter relegated to the dustheap of history. In an effort to counter this inexorable sequence, at least for a time, I am putting everything I can think of up on my website, available for download should anyone find it useful. Of course, please remember that everything is copyright, but feel free to quote with appropriate attribution, and to print out for academic purposes.

http://daniel.nessim.org/publications.html

The History of Jewish Believers in the Canadian Protestant Church, 1759-1995 (Master’s Thesis), Regent College, Vancouver, 1996.

The History of Jewish Missions in Canada, Paper presented to the LCJE North American Consultation, Toronto, 27 April, 2004.

Jewish Missions in Canada – A History, LCJE Bulletin issue 76, May 2004.

Reflections on LCJE Lake Balaton 2007, LCJE Bulletin issue 89 (Sept. 2007).

The Messianic Congregational Movement and its Fruit, LCJE CEO conference (Lumières, 2009).

Communicating the Deity of Yeshua to Jewish People. Borough Park Symposium, 2010.

Reflections on LCWE 2010 in Cape Town. LCJE Bulletin issue 102 (November 2010).

The European Re-birth of Anti-Semitism and its Effect on Jewish Evangelism. Mishkan, Issue 62 (2010)

Introducing Your Jewish Friend to Yeshua. By Daniel Nessim and Mark Surey (London: 2011).

The Hebrew Christian Shoah and its Soteriological Legacy. European Messianic (Jewish) Theological Symposium (February, 2011)

Want to Be Jewish?

A few weeks ago a gentleman turned up at the door for our Erev Shabbat service. The first words out of his mouth were ‘I want to be a Jew.’
I wonder if I would be married to Deborah today if the first time I ran into her (25 March 1989) I had started with ‘I want to be your husband’. Yikes! Talk about getting off on the wrong foot!
Why do so many Gentiles want to be Jewish? Israel is meant to be a Light to the Nations, not to relegate the Nations to obliteration by making the Nations all Jewish, or all Israel. Israel’s very raison d’etre is linked to the fact that Hashem ‘so loved the world’ that He blessed Abraham that in him all the nations of the world should be blessed. Israel is a peculiar treasure of the L-rd but certainly not His only treasure. Egypt will one day be called ‘My people’ He says. His praise shall be declared in the Islands, Isaiah says. I would like to suggest to you that there is as much to rejoice in being a Gentile as there is in being a Jew.
The Shliach Shaul (Apostle Paul) reminds us that there is no distinction between male and female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile in our Messiah. Awesome! Along with our Conservative (Masorti) friends we can now amend the prayers that say ‘thank you that you have not made me a woman/slave/heathen’ to a more egalitarian form. While we all have clearly different roles in the world He has created, we also have a wonderful unity.
All the more not to insult G-d by saying ‘I want to be a Jew (or woman or man) when He has divinely ordained that we should be other than in His infinite Wisdom He has created us.
So please, please, do not come to my door and say ‘I wanna be a Jew’

Back to the Future (via The Rosh Pina Project)

I really appreciate Gev’s post, so would like you to have the chance to read it too.

Jewish disciples of Yeshua have been a massive blessing as Jews in British churches since before the start of the British Messianic Jewish Alliance (as it is known today) in 1866. They made their positive impact as Jews in a predominantly Gentile church. Some of the names of those Hebrew-Christian heroes of faith are well-known, others are not. Just … Read More

via The Rosh Pina Project

Israel and the Church

Increasingly, British Christians are becoming perplexed about the relationship between Israel and the Church. Political and Theological positions are becoming melded and divorced in surprising ways. Sometimes this is due perceptions regarding the state of affairs between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Sometimes this is due to other factors, such as the perception that the Jewish people no longer have a key role (or any role) in the Plan of salvation for the world.

Into this quandary have stepped various authors and pundits, as well as Chosen People Ministries and Kings Evangelical Divinity School, with a conference entitled Israel and the Church: A Common Heritage and an Uncommon Future. This is a unique conference to be held on the campus of the London School of Theology on 8-9 October, 2010 .

Israel and the Church will explore the often tense relationship between the Church and Israel and provide insights into the Middle East Crisis, encouraging Christians to pray and evangelise among Jews and Muslims – in Britain and abroad.

Registration is only £30. To hear such speakers such as Darrell Bock, Barry Horner, Calvin Smith and more – it is a bargain. Not to mention the free concert in Hammersmith that will follow, by well known Messianic artist Marty Goetz.

To register, just go to  Israel and the Church: A Common Heritage and an Uncommon Future and follow the link.