I have been collecting some great quotes over the last few months with the intent of sharing them when I had some time. As you can probably tell, I have found some time hidden in my amazingly full schedule. This current post relates directly to yesterday's post about the "Golden Age" ideal and Messianic Judaism's approach to rabbinic authority.

There are many people within Messianic Judaism who take issue with the concept of rabbinic authority. I would venture to guess that 99%+ of these people have never cracked the Shulchan Arukh, nor have they ever studied other elements of the Torah shebal peh for themselves. I have yet to meet a Messianic Jew who has done so and still thinks badly of the concept of rabbinic authority.

Those in the 99%+ adhere to the goal of "getting back to the way things were in the 1st century". However, as lamedzayin said, "attempts to recreate the past must do so at the expense of dealing with the present." We cannot afford to ignore the present, and there is no validity in trying to become Saducees. Instead, many people are being influenced by Karaites like Nehemia Gordon, who has taken it upon himself to teach Messianics what to believe (based on bad scholarship, in my mind). While Karaism may look Biblical on the outside it is not true Judaism and needs to be handled with extreme caution.

What it comes down to is something that one of the writers on Maven Yavin stated a few weeks ago:

But ultimately TSHBP is faith based... The proselyte [from a midrash quoted earlier] could have gone to a Sadduccee and been converted and also taught the Aleph-Bet correctly.... However, the point is that he went to Hillel. This is what he wanted in on. If you go to Hillel, if you want to join our club then you must ultimately trust our interpretations and traditions.

That, my friends, is the gist of the matter. This has become one of my biggest soapboxes in recent months. We need to remember that G-d gave His religion to the Jews. He gave them the ordinances and then told them to observe them and to interpret them—to adapt them as necessary for the benefit of the world. He has revealed himself as the G-d of Israel, so we must learn to approach him in that capacity. That means that we must engage the halachah, not attack it. How can we ever hope to be seen as a valid form of Judaism if we are not doing what Judaism, event its liberal anti-Torah elements, does?

Labels: Messianic Judaism