A Stiff Necked People

Okay, so I went to a Judaism forum and said I was a convert to Judaism. Which, as someone who believes in the Torah and Tanakh and tries his best to put that into practice, I think I should be entitled to call myself.

Whereupon they accused me of being a Messianic Jew or some variant thereof (a believer in Jesus) who was trying to snatch their congregation away from them!

They said I was in no respect a convert and that if I ever wanted to be one, I would have to uproot my life and move to New York or somewhere that a Jewish community exists and get properly processed by a rabbi. Meaning in their mind, not a Karaite rabbi which would be the kind of Judaism I would belong to, but Orthodox or Conservative or something. Karaite Jews aren't Jews, to them. The fact that they are every bit as much children of Abraham and Jacob as they are I guess means nothing, since the Karaites don't conform to their belief that the word of rabbis is equivalent to the word of G-d.

Now, you get all sorts of people on the Internet, and the immediately hostile reaction to me on this Judaism forum might not have been something I would get on every Judaism forum, but it is instructive.

We all like our little boxes in religious matters, and don't like people bending the boundaries of our boxes. Or at least traditionalists are that way. To those Jews, I was not a practitioner of Judaism however much I obeyed the Tanakh. Christians have their little boxes too, I went to Christian Forums which I used to frequent as a Christian and they have all sorts of position statements that you have to sign off on now to post in any of the Christian areas. So I won't be posting anything there.

Christianity the proselytizing faith is now the faith that walls itself off. And who could blame them? There's a lot to wall yourself off from. At least their New Testament tells them to proselytize. The Orthodox Jews are like, "G-d is ours, f0ck off."

I have a little box too, it's just that nobody is really in it but me. It is not so much that I initially wanted to define Orthodox and Conservative Jews out of my box, but they want to. And I will take them at their word and be liberated by it: I have no part with them. I am not their co-religionist. No rabbi's word, however wise that rabbi is, is of the same weight as the Tanakh. The Talmud and the "oral law" is a book of opinions and should be taken as such.

I have ideological differences with Muslims, but how different are they in terms of what they do? They don't observe the Sabbath, true, but in almost every other way we are far more alike than not. Their dietary rules are essentially the same as in the Torah, they believe in more or less the same moral rules. In terms of life practices and moral beliefs I have more in common with them than I would with a lot of Christians. Given the abundance of Orthodox Jewish practices and beliefs that are nowhere in the Tanakh, I might have more in common with Muslims than I do with Orthodox Jews. Aside from, you know, Muhammad and the Quran. I am not with them on that. So whatever the similarities, they are in their box and I am in mine.

So as of right now, nobody is in my box but me. Nobody I know of, anyway.

"No one I think is in my tree,

I mean it must be high or low."
~Strawberry Fields

So, earlier today I put on my tallit (prayer shawl) and asked G-d, "what am I?" If observing the Tanakh does not make me a Jew, what then am I? And I was led to the passage where King David had to reluctantly make war on his son Absalom, who was trying to usurp him as king. Now killing Absalom was the last thing David wanted to do, and in fact he ordered his men to "be gentle with Absalom." But he also ordered his men to fight them and put down the rebellion. And, well, David's men won and Absalom was killed despite the order. And David was beside himself with grief. To the point where his commander had to come and tell him essentially, "hey you are being a huge downer, here the men won this great battle and you act like you would trade all of these loyal men to get your son back. You value the traitor more than these good men who would die for you."

And at the time I had no idea what this meant as an answer to my question, but I think now I know.

G-d's true children are those who heed what G-d says. To be called Jewish doesn't matter, to belong to G-d matters. The one who does what G-d says, is a true son of Abraham and no others are. Absalom was a false son however much a biological son of David he was, he was a rebellious and treasonous son who violated the command to honor his father. 

A true child of G-d, a true son of Abraham, would not place the opinions of men on the same plane as the commandments of G-d. So call me whatever you'd like, as long as you call me "belonging to G-d."

And do not think you can say to yourselves,

'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you

that out of these stones God can raise up

children for Abraham.

~Matthew 3:9