Thanksgivukkah

Thanksgivukkah!

Understanding Christianity as Jewish

Once in a Lifetime

On November 28th, A.D. 2013—or 5774 by the Jewish calendar—the first day of Hanukkah will fall on Thanksgiving Day, a convergence not scheduled to occur again for more than 70,000 years. In popular parlance, this unique event has been dubbed “Thanksgivukkah,” and in Jewish communities throughout America it has become an opportunity to celebrate Jewish American heritage (or Judaica Americana, as I like to think of it). Recipes combining the classic Thanksgiving feast with traditional Hanukkah foods have flooded the Internet. Songs, t-shirts, and even a turkey-shaped menorah, “The Menurkey,” have been selling like latkes. As one rabbi recently put it, America and Israel are the yin and yang of modern Jewish experience. Thanksgivukkah gives us the chance to celebrate what America means to Judaism, and what Judaism means to America.

The Broader Story

For the Church, Thanksgivukkah also provides the opportunity to talk about Judaism’s relationship with Christianity. Though it may seem strange to Jews and Christians alike, Christianity is properly understood as Jewish. Any competent historian will tell you that the Church began as a movement within Judaism. Jesus, the Virgin Mary, all 12 Apostles, every author of the Bible (with perhaps one exception) and the vast majority of Christianity’s first generation were all undeniably and unapologetically Jewish. Obviously a split did occur. From the Jewish perspective, Christianity spun off from Judaism, creating a new religion. From a Christian perspective, Christianity fulfilled Judaism and opened up the family of Abraham to all the nations of the earth. Over time, the relationship between Judaism and Christianity has vacillated from brotherhood to division, from persecution to respect. It is, to say the least, a relationship fraught with shared history—all the more now, in light of the Holocaust and the birth of the modern state of Israel. But even broken families cannot deny their kinship.

Ad Fontes

To understand modern Christianity’s relationship to modern Judaism, we must go back to the shared root of our faith: the Hebrew Scriptures. Christians refer to these as the Old Testament, and Jews as the Tanakh, which is an acronym for the three parts of the Hebrew Scriptures: the Law (Torah), the Prophets (Nevi’im) and the Writings (Ketuvim). Together, these three parts of Scripture tell the story of God’s people Israel. It goes something like this.

Genesis lays out the Creation of all things in a manner that refutes the pagan myths of the ancient world. All the pagan stories claim three things: (1) Nature birthed the gods; (2) the universe is at best indifferent and more often cruel; and (3) mankind is insignificant. The Hebrew Creation account asserts just the opposite: (1) One True God created Nature; (2) the universe was made good; and (3) human beings are the stewards and crowns of Creation, made in God’s own image. The Hebrew God is perfectly moral, just, and loving, omnipresent and imageless, and concerned with those whom we generally dismiss as valueless—namely, the poor, the young, the elderly, the vulnerable, the widowed, and the foreigner. As we know, however, the original “goodness” and harmony of Creation was broken when sin and rebellion entered the world. This we call the Fall of Man, or Fall from Grace.

A Few Good Men

God hatches a plan to redeem His fallen Creation and to save mankind from ourselves. Sometime around 2000 B.C. (with a large fudge factor) God calls an elderly, childless man named Abram to leave his home in Ur of the Chaldeans and travel to a Promised Land. Here God promises that Abram, renamed Abraham, shall become the Father of Many Nations, and that his family will become a great people through whom all the world will be blessed. Abraham believes God, and despite a series of missteps the promise is fulfilled in Abraham’s only son with his wife Sarah, Isaac. Isaac inherits the promise of God in lieu of his elder half-brother Ishmael, who goes on to be the father of all Arabs (and eventually the spiritual father of all Muslims). Isaac goes on to have twin sons: the firstborn, Esau, founds the Edomite nation, while the younger, cleverer son, Jacob, inherits the promise of God and, after wrestling with an angel, is renamed Israel.

The Exodus

These three generations—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—are known as the Patriarchs. Jacob’s 12 sons each found great families of their own, and become the 12 Tribes of Israel. During a great famine, Jacob and his sons take refuge in Egypt, where the Israelites flourish. Alas, they are later enslaved by a new dynasty of Pharaohs, and God sends Moses to liberate them from Egypt. Here we have the famous story of the Exodus, with the 10 Plagues of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, the apostasy of the Golden Calf, and the reception of the 10 Commandments atop Mt. Sinai. All this occurs sometime between the 16th (Early Date) and 13th (Late Date) Centuries. After 40 years as wanderers in the wilderness, the Israelites return to the Promised Land of Abraham, which they divvy up into 12 parcels. The tribesmen of Levi become the caretakers of all things religious, and so lose their tribal status; the tribe of Joseph is thus split between Joseph’s sons Ephraim and Manasseh so as to maintain the existence of 12 Tribes.

Lest Ye Be Judged

For a time the 12 Tribes of Israel exist in a loose confederacy bound together by blood, history, and worship of the One God at His Tabernacle in Shiloh. This Tabernacle houses the Ark of the Covenant, with the 10 Commandments and relics of the Exodus within it. When foreign powers threaten the 12 Tribes, God selects individual champions, or “Judges,” to defend His people. This works rather well, but the Israelites look with covetous eye upon the centralized authority wielded by their neighbors. They want a king.

The House of David

Samuel, last of the Judges, anoints first King Saul (a Benjaminite) and then King David (a Judean from the little town of Bethlehem) to rule and safeguard Israel. Within the territory of Judah lies Jerusalem, a Canaanite city that worships the same God of Abraham. In fact, Jerusalem is built on a the Ophel Hill right next to Mt. Moriah, upon which Abraham famously “unsacrificed” his son Isaac. David conquers Jerusalem and makes it his capital city, with a population loyal to the king rather than to any one given tribe. The Ophel Hill becomes “The City of David,” and on Mt. Moriah David’s son Solomon builds the great Temple of Jerusalem to house the Ark of the Covenant. Jerusalem is now the center of government and religion for the 12 Tribes of Israel. David’s rule occurs around 1000 B.C.

North Against South

After seeing great prosperity under Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, the Kingdom of Israel chafed under the harsh rule of Solomon’s son Rehoboam, who favored the southern tribes over the northern. The northern tribes broke away and selected a king of their own, setting up rival worship centers upon mountaintops. The southern kingdom became known as Judah, since Judah was the largest and strongest of the tribes. The northern kingdom called itself Israel, or Ephraim, after the strongest northern tribe. During the 8th Century B.C., the northern tribes were conquered by the Assyrian Empire and scattered to the wind, never to reform as coherent entities. They are the Lost Tribes of Israel. Later, in the 6th Century B.C., the Babylonian Empire conquered the southern kingdom of Judah.

Exile

The Babylonians destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and sent the people of Judah (Jews) into exile. God, however, sent a series of prophets who revealed to the Exiles God’s plans for the future; the Exiles would return to the promised land; a Messiah, an Anointed One and heir of King David, would reclaim His ancestor’s throne and inaugurate the Kingdom of God on earth; and the Resurrection of the dead promised a just and loving future for Israel and all humankind. The prophet Daniel in particular spoke of four great pagan empires, of which Babylon would be only the first, and of the coming of the Messiah at the end of “70 weeks”—that is, 490 years after Daniel. As prophesied, the Persian Empire arose to conquer Babylon. Persia allowed the Jews to return to the Promised Land and rebuild the Temple. But as a Persian province they had no Davidic king, and the age of prophecy here came to a close.

Filling in the Gaps

This is where the Hebrew Scriptures as we have them end. The last book, that of the prophet Micah, closes out at around 400 B.C. When Christians jump to the New Testament we may be shocked to see how much has changed. Why is everything suddenly written in Greek? Whence did all these Romans come? What happened between the Old and New Testaments? Here we must turn to the Deuterocanonicals.

All Greek to Me

The 4th Century B.C. is all about Alexander the Great. He conquered the known world and spread Greek language and culture wherever he went. After Alexander, we refer to the “Hellenistic World,” which basically means the “Greek-ish World.” His was the third great pagan empire prophesied by Daniel (after the Babylonian and Persian) and when Alexander died young he named his successor “kratistos”—to the strongest! Thus did his empire break up amongst his generals. For our purposes, the most important were the Ptolemies, who claimed Egypt, and the Seleucids, who took Syria and lands to the east. The land of Israel falls smack in between these two powers, and at first flourished under Ptolemaic rule.

Alexandria, in Egypt, became a center for Jewish learning, and here 70 learned Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. This translation became known as the Septuagint (LXX) for “the seventy.” The Septuagint became the standard Scriptures for Jews in the Hellenistic world, and so for early Christians. The Septuagint also contains several biblical books, either written in Greek or translated from now-lost Hebrew originals, which we cannot find in Hebrew. Judaism rejected these Greek books in the early centuries A.D., and Martin Luther much later did the same for Protestants during the Reformation. These Jewish Greek books, preserved in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, are known as the Apocrypha (“hidden”) or Deuterocanonical books. They bridge the gap between the Old and New Testaments

Mighty, Mighty Maccabees

The Seleucids took Israel from the Ptolemies and many Jews in Israel began to adopt Greek culture and religion. Jews loyal to God and to the ways of their ancestors resisted such changes, and the Hellenizers called upon the Seleucid emperor for aid. The emperor, Antiochus Epiphanes IV, used this conflict as an excuse to eliminate the Jews as a people. He forbade circumcision, observing kosher, and worshipping at the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem. In what Daniel and Christ alike call “the desolating sacrilege” or “abomination of desolation,” Antiochus erected an idol to Zeus (with himself as the model for its face) in the Temple and sacrificed unclean pigs upon the holy altar. This was too much for the Jews to take. Up north, however, lived the Samaritans, half-pagan descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, and they happily assimilated their mountaintop temples to Yahweh-Zeus. This would not be forgotten by the Jews.

Mattathias, a rural Jewish priest, led a guerrilla revolt with his sons, the most famous of whom became Judah Maccabee, “the Hammer.” Through battlefield victories, religious piety, and pitting various claimants to the Seleucid throne off against one another, Maccabee and his brothers managed to gain first religious liberty, then political independence, and finally a small but vigorous empire for Judea. The Maccabees were given the High Priesthood and “overlordship” of the newly independent Hasmonean dynasty, and cemented their power by forming alliances with Sparta and the rising power of Rome. This history is recorded in the books of 1 & 2 Maccabees, which were later rejected by the Rabbis because of their favorable portrayal of the Romans as patrons of the Jewish state.

Hanukkah, O Hanukkah!

When the Maccabees retook Jerusalem, they made sure to cleanse and rededicate the Temple to God on the anniversary of the desolating sacrilege. This took place around the winter solstice, on the 25th of Chislev—the equivalent of December 25th on the Roman calendar. The rededication of the Temple gave birth to the annual eight-day Festival of Lights or Hanukkah (“rededication”) in 165 B.C. The Talmud records a legend that at the time of the rededication there was a shortage of proper kosher oil to burn in the Temple menorah. Yet the single day’s supply miraculously burned for a full eight days, giving the priests time to prepare more oil. This story is recounted with the lighting of the Hanukiah. Another Hanukkah tradition involves spinning tops, or dreidels: legend says that when Greeks would come across Jews illegally studying Torah in caves, the children would bring out their dreidels and pretend simply to be gambling. The story grew that the Messiah would be born during Hanukkah—around December 25th.

A Tangled Web

The Maccabees (Hasmoneans) conquered Galilee to the north, repopulating it with Jewish mercenaries from Persia—including the Natzoreans of King David’s clan. They also conquered Idumea to the south, the kingdom descended from Esau’s Edomites, old relatives and foes of the Jews. Alas, the Hasmoneans fell to dynastic infighting and called on their Roman allies for aid. Just as the Seleucids had used such squabbling as an excuse for conquest a century earlier, so now the Romans quelled Jewish unrest simply by conquering Judea in 63 B.C. An unscrupulous Idumean, Herod by name, ingratiated himself first to Marc Anthony and then to Octavian during the Roman civil wars, and managed to get himself appointed as King of the Jews. To cement his claim to the throne, Herod married the last Hasmonean princess and inaugurated a great expansion of the Temple in Jerusalem. Under Herod the Great, the Temple Mount would become the largest manmade structure on the planet. But Herod was no Jew and bilked no rivals.

A New Testament

And now we know why the Gospels are written in Greek and set in Roman-occupied Judea with Herod on the throne and bad blood towards the neighboring Samaritans. Jesus of Nazareth, born on December 25th in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth of Galilee, descended from the Natzorean clan of David, began His public ministry in A.D. 30, right when the prophecy of Daniel proclaimed that the Messiah would arise. The Jews were in a messianic furor over this prophecy, as were the Romans who had a similar prophecy of their own—that a ruler of the world would arise from Judea. Would-be messiahs arose before and after Jesus; Rome put down them all.

Judaism in Jesus’ day was a many splintered thing. Herodians assimilated to Hellenistic and Roman ways. Sadducees controlled the Temple and rejected any Scriptures outside the Torah. Pharisees, pious laymen, proclaimed an Oral Law that expanded upon and protected the written Law (Torah) of Moses. Essenes abandoned what they saw as a corrupted Temple and began a monastic movement in the desert. Zealots waged a guerrilla war of terrorism against Rome, and Sicarii assassinated collaborating Jews in the night. Meanwhile, John the Baptist prepared the way for the Messiah in the wilderness.

The Jewish Messiah

Jews were divided over the coming of the Messiah as well. Sadducees did not look for a Messiah, since the Prophets were not part of the Torah. Pharisees and Zealots hoped for a warlord who would reestablish the throne of David and destroy the pagan power of Rome, Daniel’s fourth empire. The Essenes, however, looked for the Messiah to be God in the flesh, and Isaiah prophesied not a conquering Christ but a Suffering Servant Who would die and rise again. In other words, Jesus met many people’s expectations of the Messiah but did not meet the expectations of others. Some Jews recognized Him as the Christ for Whom they had waited; others did not. It is untrue to say that the Jews “rejected” Jesus. Many Jews did. Many did not.

After the Crucifixion and Resurrection, Jesus’ Apostles spread the Gospel throughout Judea, Samaria, and the entire Hellenistic world. Paul went to Greece. Peter went to Rome. Thomas went to India! And everywhere they went they first preached in synagogues, the meeting houses of Jewish communities. The great question of the early Church was whether or not Gentiles—that is, non-Jews—could become Christians without first becoming Jewish. As much as 10% of the entire Roman Empire consisted of Jews, proselytes (converts to Judaism), and God-fearers (non-Jews worshipping the Jewish God). The Apostles, led by Peter, Paul, and James, allowed Gentiles (non-Jews) to become Christian without adhering to Jewish Law. Jewish Christians, however, seem to have maintained Hebrew traditions as good Jews.

All Fall Down

Meanwhile, 40 years after Jesus’ Crucifixion, the Zealots of Judea finally managed to provoke their sought-after war with Rome. They seem to have believed (as perhaps Judas Iscariot did) that their violence would force God’s hand, as it were, so that He would send a warlord messiah. This obviously did not happen. The Christians of Jerusalem, having been warned by Jesus what was to come, fled to the city of Pella. Many Judean cities refused to associate themselves with the rebellion and greeted Rome as a friend. The Zealots made their stand in Jerusalem, refusing to negotiate a peace, and the entire city—including the Temple, at which, according to the Talmud and Zohar, God had not accepted sacrifice for 40 years—was utterly destroyed. The remaining Zealots fled to Herod’s fortress of Masada, where they perished after a long siege. The Sadducees, linked inextricably to the Temple, fell when it did. The Essenes in the wilderness were put to the sword by Rome. Of the various branches of Judaism, only the Christians and the Pharisees survived.

The First Jewish War was put down by the father-son team of the Roman generals Vespasian and Titus. When chaos broke out in Rome, Vespasian left Titus to mop up resistance in Jerusalem whilst he himself returned to conquer Rome. Titus accidentally set fire to the Jerusalem Temple, having hoped to rededicate it to Jupiter. Meanwhile, Vespasian burned down the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in Rome. Thus did the greatest temple of the pagan world perish by the same hand that destroyed the greatest and only Temple of the Jewish world. Vespasian claimed the messianic prophecy of a world-ruler arising from Judea as his own, and proclaimed himself Emperor. Titus would later succeed him.

Rabbinical Judaism

With the fall of the Temple, great changes came to the Jewish world. The synagogue immediately became the center of Jewish worship for Pharisees and Christians like. Unfortunately, around A.D. 100, the Pharisees declared Christianity heretical and cast all Jewish Christians out of the synagogues, resulting in the First Great Persecution against the Church. Judaism, as an ancient religion, had special protections under Roman law and exemptions from sacrificing to the imperial cult. Since Christian Jews were no longer treated as Jews by non-Christian Jews, Christianity became a capital offense. Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity now went their separate ways.

By A.D. 200, Christians had written the New Testament, or Christian Scriptures, and Rabbinic Judaism has codified the Oral Law of the Pharisees into a document known as the Mishnah. Another corpus, the Midrash, consisted of rabbinical commentary on the Tanakh. Rabbi Akiva, renowned “Head of the Sages” during the First and Second Centuries A.D., rejected the Deuterocanonical books and expunged them from the Hebrew Scriptures. Meanwhile, the Church Father Irenaeus called upon Jewish Christians to stop practicing Jewish custom for fear of “Judaizing,” which is the sin of trusting in observation of the Mosaic Law for salvation rather than the grace given in Christ. Moreover, the Church did not wish to have a “caste system” of Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians. The Rabbis had forced Jewish Christians to choose between Jewish and Christian identity; now the Church Fathers did the same.

Further disaster fell upon the Jewish people in A.D. 135, when Simon Bar Kokhba, claiming to be the messiah, led the Third (or Second, depending on how we number them) Jewish War against Rome. For three years the Bar Kokhba revolt had great military success, but eventually it was crushed. The Jews were now expelled from Judea and scattered throughout the Roman Empire—an event known as the Diaspora—and the Emperor Hadrian leveled a severe persecution against Judaism. Rabbi Akiva was flayed alive with iron combs. Judaism was now divorced from both the Temple and Promised Land. By A.D. 500, a commentary on the Mishnah (Oral Law), known as the Gemara, was completed, and together the Gemara and Mishnah made up the Talmud, the defining work of rabbinic Judaism. Many debates found in the Talmud involve the rival interpretive schools of Hillel and Shammai, Jewish legal scholars who were rough contemporaries of Jesus. In the Fourth Century, the Emperor Constantine had a vision of Christ which led to the A.D. 313 Edict of Milan legalizing all religion in the Roman Empire. Europe was on its way to becoming Christendom.

The Middle Ages

As Christianity expanded the Church focused her energies on dialogue with and conversion of pagan peoples. In the Seventh Century the warlord prophet Muhammad arose amongst the children of Ishmael and brought first conflict, then contact with ideas both new and old, to the Christian world. During the Middle Ages Judaism suffered periodic persecutions in both Christian and Muslim lands. Those Jews who lived in predominantly Christian lands during the medieval period came be known as Ashkenazi, whilst those who lived in predominantly Muslim lands were called Sephardim. A failed messianic movement in the Ninth Century A.D. led to a mass conversion of Ashkenazi in Europe. Many Jewish converts to Catholicism participated in the Inquisition, since they had intimate knowledge of Hebrew and Judaism.

Colliding with Modernity

During the modern era, Reformed Judaism sought to distance itself from traditional, Orthodox Judaism in order better to assimilate in Western societies. Some thought that the Reformed had gone too far, and established a middle position in Conservative Judaism. Long-standing anti-Jewish prejudice combined with social-Darwinist pseudoscience to produce racial anti-Semitism, which reached its horrific climax in the Holocaust, or Shoah, of World War II. This caused understandable consternation and anguish amongst Jewish thinkers. How could God let this happen? What did such suffering mean? Beginning in the 19th Century the Zionist movement had sought to give Jewish peoples an escape from persecution by returning to the Jewish homeland of Palestine. Many settlers found great success making the desert bloom, and in the wake of the Holocaust the modern state of Israel was born. Many Jews and Christians alike saw this as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

Jewish and Christian

The 20th and 21st Centuries have seen the return of Jewish Christian believers. Many great saints of the Church were raised Jewish, but in these new communities Jewish Christians maintain both their faith in Jesus and the traditions of their ancestors. Evangelical Jewish Christians practice Messianic Judaism, whereas Catholic Jewish Christians prefer the term Hebrew Catholic. While small, these growing communities throughout America and Israel may represent the largest number of Jewish Christians in existence since the First and Second Centuries A.D. God willing, they may help to facilitate understanding between non-Christian Jews and non-Jewish Christians.

Christians often fall into one of two heresies with regards to the relationship between the Church and the Synagogue. One is “supercessionism,” which is the idea that when the Jews “rejected” Jesus (which, as we’ve seen, they didn’t) God thus rejected the Jews and replaced them with Gentile Christians. Such a notion is flatly denied in the Christian Scriptures. St. Paul makes it clear that the gifts of God are irrevocable, and so the promise given unto Abraham and his children forever still remains intact; the Israelites, the Jewish people, are a special chosen possession of God, a priestly nation fashioned for the blessing of the entire world. As Christians we understand that the Jews were prepared not just to be the people of God but the people of whom God Himself would become a part when He became Incarnate in Jesus Christ. Jesus was, is, and ever shall remain a Jew! Quite literally, then, God is Jewish.

The other heresy, perhaps more well-meaning but nonetheless misguided, is a “dual covenant” theology which states that Jews are saved by the Old Covenant while everyone else is to be saved through the New. This, again, is clearly false. Christ is “the Way, the Truth, and the Light.” We are saved by grace through faith, not by works of the Law. Christ is the Jewish Messiah, sent first to the “lost sheep of Israel,” Who yearns to gather the children of Jerusalem together as a mother hen gathers her chicks. There are not two roads to salvation, not two separate conflicting Truths parceled out by God, one to a single nation and one to all the rest.

The New Israel

In the words of one Hebrew Catholic, Judaism is the promise and Christianity is the fulfillment. To become Christian is not to abandon Judaism, but is “the most Jewish thing one can do.” Not sharing the Gospel with Jewish neighbors, meanwhile, is “the most anti-Semitic act you could take,” as a prominent Messianic Jew recently wrote. St. Paul, himself both Jewish and Roman, must be our guide in this. He speaks of the Gentiles as wild olive shoots grafted onto God’s cultivated olive tree. Non-Jewish Christians cannot “boast against the root,” that is, against non-Christian Jews, because if wild shoots flourish on the cultivated tree, how much more will the natural branches when they are reattached. Indeed, Scripture states that “a hardness” has come upon Israel so that the “fullness of the Gentiles” may be saved. The Church has long taught that the Jewish people as a whole—those who have not yet recognized Jesus as the Christ—will be welcomed home en masse at the end of time. This current delay, this “hardening,” is somehow, in the divine workings of Providence, a mercy upon Gentiles rather than rejection of the Jews.

The New Israel—like the New Covenant, the New Heaven, and the New Earth—does not replace the old but fulfills it, resurrects it, makes it manifest to all peoples! In Christianity, God’s people Israel is opened not only to those who share Abraham’s blood but also to all those who share faith in Abraham’s God. We are all spiritual Semites. Those of us without Jewish blood are adopted into the family of Abraham, and so have much to learn from those born naturally into the promise. None of us would be here were it not for that ever-present “faithful remnant” who trusted in God’s promise after each calamity that befell the Jewish people. Salvation still comes from the Jews.

In the words of Pope Francis, we cannot be good Christians if we do not understand Judaism. While the Church has warned about the sin of “Judaizing,” that is, trusting in the Law for our salvation over the Gospel, she also warns us not to “boast against the root.” The Jews were God’s people long before the rest of us. Now that all are one in Christ, let us be grateful to our forebears in the faith, from Abraham and Moses to David and the Maccabees. And let us be sent, as the Body of our Lord, first to the lost sheep of Israel.

Clearly we have much for which to be thankful. Happy Thanksgivukkah!