Jewish and Catholic "Coffee Shop"

[RebAvomai]

BS’D

Turkish Coffe gives me something in the stomache. I could never get use to the stuff.

 

[Coder]

Hi SSV,

stillsmallvoice:

…the angels that Jacob wrassled with, that appeared to Samson’s parents, to Balaam, etc. were Jesus. (Naturally, I disagreed.) What does Roman Catholicism hold on this?

First, I would say that, in a way, when an angel of the Lord acts, it is as if the Lord Himself is acting because the angel is doing as God wishes. I.e. God works through the angel.

Perhaps it is we humans with our limited perspective that don’t understand the spiritual world.

I don’t know if I would categorize all those instances that you mentioned in the same way.

I think, in some cases, it is the Lord acting indirectly through an angel and in other cases maybe the Lord Himself as Irenaeus says:

XXIII.
newadvent.org/fathers/0134.htm

The disctinction between an angel (in union with God’s Holy Spirit) acting and the Lord Himself may be little more than a matter of the presence of other beings (angels) whom the Lord is acting through. Does the presence of angel(s) mean that the Lord Himself is any less present? Perhaps the search for the answer to this will lead us all deeper into the knowledge of God.

Since Catholics believe that Jesus is one in being with God the Father as His eternal Son, then we also believe that the presence of God is the presence of Jesus.

For the case of the angel who appeared to Balaam, it would seem that it is acceptable for a Catholic to believe that it was Jesus Himself. For other cases, it is possible that the God (Jesus) was acting indirectly through an angel.

Judges 13:18 The angel of the LORD answered him, “Why do you ask my name, which is*** mysterious***?”

Mysterious.

I am not learned in many areas of the Hebrew Scriptures and I would be happy to hear yours or others’ additional thoughts about angels of the Lord.

 

[RebAvomai]

BS’D

With in Jewish thought, Angles represent HaShem’s will, so when they speak, they speak with the authority of G-d.

However, Angles don’t contain free will, they are merely done what they are told. In that respect tho, it is proper to call an Angle “Adonai” ( or L-rd) to show them proper respect.

 

[stillsmallvoice]

Hi all!

I noticed that there was a thread on a certain Hilaire Belloc (whom I’ve never heard of) and allegations that he may or may not have been anti-Semitic. Not beinhg familiar with the man or his writings, I’ll respectfully stay out of that one.

But the thread & this coming Saturday’s weekly Sabbath Torah reading (jewfaq.org/readings.htm) of Genesis 37:1-40:23 got me thinking. Anti-Semitism is indeed (as somebody once said) the oldest hatred. Indeed, hatred of us goes all the way back to our very dawn as a people, to the books of Genesis & Numbers.

Genesis 26:12-16 says:

And Isaac sowed in that land, and found in the same year a hundred-fold; and the Lord blessed him. And the man waxed great, and grew more and more until he became very great. And he had possessions of flocks, and possessions of herds, and a great household; and the Philistines envied him. Now all the wells which his father’s servants had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them, and filled them with earth. And Abimelech said unto Isaac: 'Go from us; for you are much mightier than we.

Through a combination of his own industry and Divine blessing, Isaac becomes very wealthy. We can assume that his Philistine neighbors also benefited from Isaac’s success (from trading with him, etc.). Yet the text tells us that, “and the Philistines envied him.” There was no rational basis for their envy which eventually prompted their king, Abimelech, to tell Isaac:

'Go from us; for you are much mightier than we.

The Hebrew for the above phrase is lech meh-imanu ki atzamta mimennu maod. The last three Hebrew words are ambiguous and the phrase could be read as:

'Go from us; for you have grown strong from us

It is a principle of Judaism and of Jewish Biblical exegesis that (to quote our Sages): “The actions of the fathers are a sign to the children,” i.e. that the actions of our Patriarchs and ancestors in the scriptures are a paradigm and a model for subsequent Jewish history. Here, in these verses from Genesis, we see one of the models of anti-Semitism throughout Jewish history: The Jew as leech, as an economic bloodsucker. The Philistines envied Isaac’s material success and, if we accept the variant reading, accused him, leech-like, of taking from them and getting wealthy from them, even though the text testifies that Isaac did no such thing & that Isaac owed his wealth to God and to his own industry. Their irrational hatred of him (see Genesis 26:27) was such that even though Isaac’s presence in their midst was to their material benefit (via the wells of his father & through trading with him), they still expelled him, the first of many such expulsions that would follow in later eras. (When the expelees from Spain began to make their way to Ottoman Turkey en masse, in response to the official Ottoman policy which welcomed them, one of the courtiers of Sultan Bayezid remarked that Ferdinand of Spain was called “Ferdinand the Wise”. The Sultan turned on him and said, “What? Call you such a one wise, who impoverishes his kingdom and enriches mine?”)

In Genesis 26, we see the first appearance of economically-based/justified anti-Semitism. This Saturday’s Torah reading (specifically Genesis 39) marks the first the first appearance of racial anti-Semitism.

(cont.)

 

[stillsmallvoice]

(cont.)

After Joseph has resisted the seductive wiles of Potiphar’s wife and runs out of Potiphar’s house, Mrs. Potiphar summons the household slaves and relates to them her version of events, which she repeats to her husband, furthering altering the account of what actually happened. It is a principle of Jewish Biblical exegesis that there is no wasted or redundant ink in the scriptures & that we can learn much from seemingly trivial turns of phrase, subtle differences in the text and from the seeming repetitions of accounts. Genesis 39:12-13 tells us:

“…that she caught him by his garment, saying: ‘Lie with me.’ And he left his garment in her hand, and fled, and got him out. And it came to pass, when she saw that he had left his garment in her hand, and was fled forth…”

In Genesis 39:14-15, Mrs. Potiphar tells the other slaves:

“…that she called unto the men of her house, and spoke unto them, saying: ‘See, he [her husband]has brought in a Hebrew unto us to mock us; he came in unto me to lie with me, and I cried with a loud voice. And it came to pass, when he heard that I lifted up my voice and cried, that he left his garment by me, and fled, and got him out.’”

In Genesis 39:17-18, Mrs. Potiphar tells her husband:

‘The Hebrew servant, whom you have brought unto us, came in unto me to mock me. And it came to pass, as I lifted up my voice and cried, that he left his garment by me, and fled out.’"

.

Note the subtle differences in the three accounts. I quote from Studies in Bereshit/Genesis by the late Prof. Nehama Leibovitz:

We noted…how the slightest variation in phraseology, and addition or omission, may contain a world of significance. We may note how she reported that Joseph left his garment “by me” instead of “in her hand” as had actually happened. Otherwise the real truth would have become immediately self-evident to her hearers. She did not vary her account regarding Joseph’s terrified flight in freeing himself from her whilst in her room and his resumption of his normal pace as he left it, for fear that her slaves had, perhaps, seen Joseph leave. But when she reported her story to her husband she stressed simply that “he fled out” in order to strengthen the impression of his guilt. She emphasizes both in the account to her slaves, who heard nothing, and to her husband that she cried out, in order to absolve herself of any suspicion of being an accessory to the deed.

Further light is thrown on Potiphar’s wife’s unscrupulous defaming of Joseph in another subtle differentiation between her phrasing of the account to her slaves and subsequently to her husband. She does not employ the term “slaves” when addressing the slaves themselves. Joseph is called simply a Hebrew (literally: “a Hebrew man”). To her husband however, she says “the Hebrew slave.” In order to win over her slaves and gain their sympathies she is at pains not to create any feeling of solidarity among the slaves for Joseph, as one of them. After all, it was a common thing for masters to denounce their slaves. They would naturally side with their fellowsufferer. So she subtly changed her tone and stated that it was not one of them but a stranger, a Hebrew, the common enemy of all of them. To strengthen the impression and arouse their hostility for Joseph she does not say that the Hebrew slave came unto me but rather, “See, he brought in a Hebrew unto us to mock us.” In short, the Hebrew has not only wronged me but all of us; he has dishonoured the whole Egyptian nation! How far, however, was that from the truth! In Egypt there were rather two nations, the free men, the Egyptian nobles, and the serfs, the slaves who had no rights at all. In spite of this, Potiphar’s wife in her effort to gain sympathy lumps her slaves together with herself part of one family. The common enemy is the Jew.

(cont.)

 

[stillsmallvoice]

(cont.)

We Jews are the original, quintessential, dissenters. Balaam prophesied (Numbers 23:9):

Lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations.

This, I think, is the root of it. This is what has caused individual pagans (Roman & Greek), Christians (Catholic, Orthodox & Protestant) & Muslims to hate us - our insistence on being different, on maintaining our own customs, our own beliefs, our own language, etc., our refusal to go with the flow and accept what others “know to be the truth.” The late scholar Michael Grant noted in his From Alexander to Cleopatra: The Hellinistic World (see tinyurl.com/3wx8b) that, “The Jews proved to be unassimilated and unassimilable.” Did you ever watch that old TV series Northern Exposure? In one episode, the town sponsored a grueling marathon for wheelchair-bound athletes. One of the competitors was plagued by her personal demon, External Validation (personified as a smartly dressed handsome young man named Oscar Pulitzer). One of the show’s regulars, Ed (whose personal demon was Low Self-Esteem, personified as an ugly little green man) tried to help her overcome her personal demon. I (the amateur psychologist) think that most people crave external validation. How do you know that you’re OK, right, etc.? What makes you feel secure in your beliefs? When everyone around you does as you do, believes as you do, acts as you do, and is as you are. But along comes someone who not only refuses to act, think or believe as you do, but refuses both bribes and threats to do so and is willing to endure degradation, humiliation or even death as the price of maintaining his own beliefs, customs, ways of thinking & acting, etc. This is the Jew!

I purposely wrote, “… individual pagans (Roman & Greek), Christians (Catholic, Orthodox & Protestant) & Muslims to hate us…” in the preceeding paragraph. Roman Catholicism (ferinstance) is no more inherently anti-Semitic than orthodox Judaism (ferinstance) is inherently anti-Roman Catholic. There is all too often a gulf between what our respective faiths teach regarding the other (tinyurl.com/6uwyh, tinyurl.com/5u67z & tinyurl.com/4fbwo), on the one hand, and what individual Catholics & Jews may believe regarding the other, on the other hand. All too often we may harbor prejudices and bigotries that contravene the “official” doctrines/beliefs of our faiths. While individual Christian and Islamic anti-Semites may twist certain elements of their respective faiths in order to give peculiarly Christian or Islamic spins on Jew-hatred, anti-Semitism is, as we’ve seen, far older than either Christianity or Islam.

Personally, I’m an optimist; see my first post on this thread (#3), above.

Be well!

ssv

 

[Coder]

Thank you SSV for your good cheer and kindness.

 

[stillsmallvoice]

Hi all!

Hanukkah starts tonight!

The festival commemorates both the 164 BCE (“Before Common Era”) rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem after its desecration by the ruling Seleucid (Syrian Greek) Kingdom, under Antiochus IV – and the re-establishment of religious freedom for the Jewish people after a period of harsh repression. The success of the popular revolt led by Judah Maccabee and his brothers has, ever since, symbolized the Jewish people’s fight for, and achievement of, its liberty and freedom as a nation against overwhelming odds. This jewfaq.org/holiday7.htm is a very good introduction to the holyday (it has audiolinks & a recipe for latkes, the traditional potato pancakes).

I would like to quote 4 excerpts from I Maccabees. They sum up what Hanukkah is for me and what it means to me.

I Maccabees 2:19-22 -

Then Matityahu [Matathias] answered and spoke with a loud voice, “Though all the nations that are under the king’s dominion obey him, and fall away every one from the religion of their fathers, and give consent to his commandments, yet will I and my sons and my brethren walk in the covenant of our fathers. God forbid that we should forsake the Torah and the ordinances. We will not hearken to the king’s words, to go from our religion, either on the right hand, or the left.”

1 Maccabees 2:51-64 -

“Remember what acts our fathers did in their time; so shall you receive great honour and an everlasting name. Was not Abraham found faithful in temptation, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness? Joseph in the time of his distress kept the commandment and was made lord of Egypt. Pinchas [Phineas] our father in being zealous and fervent obtained the covenant of an everlasting priesthood. Joshua for fulfilling the word was made a judge in Israel. Caleb for bearing witness before the congregation received the heritage of the land. David for being merciful possessed the throne of an everlasting kingdom. Elijah for being zealous and fervent for the Torah was taken up into heaven. Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael, by believing were saved out of the flame. Daniel for his innocency was delivered from the mouth of lions. And thus consider you throughout all ages, that none that put their trust in Him shall be overcome. Fear not then the words of a sinful man: for his glory shall be dung and worms. Today he shall be lifted up and tomorrow he shall not be found, because he is returned into his dust, and his thought is come to nothing. Wherefore, you my sons, be valiant and show yourselves men on behalf of the Torah; for by it shall you obtain glory.”

I Maccabees 3:18-22 -

Unto whom Judah answered, It is no hard matter for many to be shut up in the hands of a few; and with the God of Heaven it is all one, to deliver with a great multitude, or a small company. For the victory of battle stands not in the multitude of an host; but strength comes from Heaven. They come against us in much pride and iniquity to destroy us, and our wives and children, and to spoil us, but we fight for our lives and our Torah. The Lord Himself will overthrow them before our face, and as for you, do not be afraid of them.

I Maccabees 15:33-34 -

We have neither taken other men’s land, nor do we hold that which pertains to others, but the inheritance of our fathers, which was in the possession of our enemies, wrongfully, for a certain time. But we, having opportunity, hold the inheritance of our fathers.

But Chanukah is a far more complex holyday than meets the eye. On the one hand, it was a kulturkampf between Judaism & Hellenism. As Rabbi Shlomo Riskin wrote last year in his Jerusalem Post column on the weekly Torah reading (see tinyurl.com/62jro):

(cont.)

 

[stillsmallvoice]

(cont.)

Whereas Hebraism claims that God formed the human being in His image, and that we “must walk in God’s ways” of compassion, loving-kindness, and truth, Hellenism, with its pantheon on Mount Olympus, pictured the gods in the image of human beings and declared that “man is the measure of all things” (Heraclitus).

The sculptor Praxitatles saw the human image as ultimate perfection, and the chorus of Sophocles’s play Antigone sings that “although many are the wonders of the universe, nothing is as wondrous as the human being!”

God is at the center of the Hebraic universe, while man is at the center of the Greek cosmos.

I’ll quote the late Michael Grant (from his book From Alexander to Cleopatra: A History of the Hellenistic World):

“Judea went further in violently rejecting all that Hellenism had to offer. The Jews proved to be unassimilated and unassimilable.”

Why did we react so violently? After all, Antiochus IV’s egoistic insanity aside, the Hellenistic world was offering us an open hand. As Hamlet says, “Ay, there’s the rub.” Our Sages contrast Chanukah with Purim. In the Book of Esther (the events of which Purim celebrates), the enemy Haman approaches with a closed fist and seeks to destroy us by using that closed fist to slaughter us. But Haman was stupid for seeking to destroy us with a closed fist (because, as Esther shows, we responded with a closed fist of our own). The Hellenists were far cleverer, they sought to destroy us not by smashing us with a closed fist, but by extending to us an open hand and saying Come, join us. Accept our culture, merge with us, accept syncretism, intermarry, assimilate with us. This is far more clever & insidious. And as I Maccabees 1:11-15 tells us

In those days certain renegades came out from Israel and misled many, saying, “Let us go and make a covenant with the Gentiles around us, for since we separated from them many disasters have come upon us.” This proposal pleased them, 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.

many Jews were so seduced. (A very similar thing is happening today, before our very eyes in the US. The American cultural ideal of the melting pot [it was the author & Zionist leader Israel Zangwill who coined that phrase] is collective, slow suicide-by-assimilation-and-intermarriage for Jews.) Thus, on the other hand (see above), Chanukah was a civil struggle between Jews who wanted to be Jews and Jews who wanted to be Greeks.

Our next holyday after Hanukkah is the (first light-to-nightfall) Fast of the 10th of the Hebrew month of Tevet (aish.com/literacy/mitzvahs/The_Tenth_of_Tevet.asp & ou.org/chagim/roshchodesh/tevet/fast.htm), which falls on Wednesday, Dec. 22 this year.

(cont.)

 

[stillsmallvoice]

(cont.)

One of the things that the Fast of the 10th of Tevet commemorates is the deaths of Ezra & Nehemiah, who were our spiritual leaders during the critical period following our return from the Babylonian Exile, in which we struggled to rebuild both the Temple & ourselves as a nation/people. If you look at the books of Ezra & Nehemiah, you’ll see that intermarriage/assimilation was a big, big problem, just like it was a few centuries later during the Chanukah period (and like it is today; see? what goes around comes around!). But Ezra & Nehemiah managed to stop this and bring about a great change & return to God, in us by words, by their oratory alone. But, several centuries later, as I Maccabees 2:44-48

They organized an army, and struck down sinners in their anger and lawless men in their wrath; the survivors fled to the Gentiles for safety. And Mattathias and his friends went about and tore down the altars; they forcibly circumcised all the uncircumcised boys that they found within the borders of Israel. They hunted down the arrogant men, and the work prospered in their hands. They rescued the Torah out of the hands of the Gentiles and kings, and they never let the sinner gain the upper hand.

tells us, the Hasmoneans resorted/had to resort/ to force. Something not good had happened to us in the intervening centuries. Whereas oratory alone had once sufficed, now force had to be used. Either the Hasmoneans didn’t try to use words or we were so far enamored of Hellenism and so hell-bent on jettisoning our Jewish heritage (see my citation of I Maccabees 1:11-15 in my previous post) that their words would have had no effect, or some combination of both, but something had happened. Instead of Jew speaking to Jew, Jew fought Jew, and even if that is sometimes necessary, it is never good or desirable. It’s certainly nothing to trumpet. (The “little-discussed, rather unsavory aspect of Hanukkah” is, as I mentioned in my previous post, that, “Chanukah was a struggle between Jews who wanted to be Jews and Jews who wanted to be Greeks.”) This is one reason why Chanukah (apart from a rather dry & technical discussion of when to light the candles, with what, by whom, etc.) gets very little press in the Mishnah & Talmud and this is also one reason why our expressions of joy on Hanukkah are rather muted (we light the candles & say festive prayers, but there is no precept to feast & drink like there is on Purim); our Sages did not want to overly dwell on this shameful chapter in our history when Jews’ shed each other’s blood (it’s certainly nothing to feast about).

Without violating my self-imposed cyber-rule of never discussing the Israeli-Arab conflict online, I’ll simply say that as Hanukkah approaches, I find myself thinking about this alot especially seeing that things here in Israel are so polarized and public debate is so charged about so many things. Civility & courtesy seem to be doing not so good right now and the still, small voices are getting shouted down.

We will do this Festival of Lights a disservice if we don’t learn from both its positive & negative aspects. Just as a candle banishes the physical darkness, so too must we use the 8 (count 'em!) candles of Hanukkah to banish the spiritual darkness, because where the light shines, the darkness cannot come.

Happy Hanukkah!

Be well!

ssv

 

[Coder]

Thank you for the interesting insight into Hannukah SSV.

Happy Hannukah to you!

 

[asquared]

thank you for your extraordinary kindness in providing us with this information, and know that we are in your debt, and as children of the One True Lord of all, honor our parents who gave us that faith.

 

[RBushlow]

stillsmallvoice:

Hi all!

Hanukkah starts tonight!

Thank you. I found the quotes from Maccabees particularly interesting.

Happy Hannukah also to you!

 

[Bat-Ami]

Nice to be a part of this coffee shop! Former Catholic who is now a Jew via the Conservative Movement of Judaism. Synagouge is sponsoring a trip to Israel next year. My best friend and I are thinking about making aliyah so we’ll be paying very close attention on the visit.

Many in my synagouge already have homes in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Looking forward to it.

Bat-Ami