Congregation Shema Yisrael

This is not our first foray into the battle for faith. In 2007, First Fruits of Zion offered a conference dedicated to answering anti-missionary arguments. The conference was a response to an alarming trend we observed among many Messianic Gentile believers who were falling in love with Judaism and abandoning faith in Messiah. Without exception, such apostates warmly (and gullibly) accepted the arguments of anti-missionaries without question, while at the same time they treated the New Testament and anything they perceived as Christian with cold suspicion and cynical criticism.
From vineofdavid.org
Answering Anti-Missionaries

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” -John 6:66-69

Vine of David is the publishing subsidiary of First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ). I read their article about Anti-Missionaries and it reminded me of a couple of things. One has to do with the Jewish people and the other has to do with Gentiles in the Messianic movement…at least some Gentiles.

I don’t want to belabor the point regarding anti-missionaries in Judaism, but to understand this article, you have to understand something about anti-missionaries:

The Mission of Jews for Judaism is to strengthen and preserve Jewish identity through education and counseling that counteracts deceptive proselytizing targeting Jews for conversion.
From the Jews for Judaism website

The man the Christians worship may have been a good person, and he may have taught many good things. (Although I hasten to point out that there are many teachings in the Christian Bible that are completely unacceptable to Orthodox Jews, and incompatible to the teachings of the Torah.) But he was not the Messiah for whom we await and have long awaited. He may have been crucified, and that’s a horrible thing. But that merely proves to us that he was not the Messiah.
From BeingJewish.com

In addition to the two sources just cited, there are a wide number of anti-missionary resources on the web. Many of them can be found at the Being Jewish Anti-Missionary Gateway. I’m not including this to express dismay or insult to the Jewish people or to cause emotional upset to those who feel dedicated to preaching the Good News to the Jewish people, but to illustrate the reality of the current perspective Judaism has regarding Christian missionary efforts. Certainly anyone who has read books such as Michael L. Brown’s Our Hands are Stained with Blood understands that Jews have good reason to experience “concerns” regarding missionary efforts, at least historically. I recently reviewed a book written by Rabbi Hershel Brand called On Eagles Wings: Moshiach, Redemption, and the World to Come that not only gives a good presentation of the Jewish vision of the Messiah, but provides something of a primer of anti-missionary literature.

The interesting thing about anti-missionary work in Judaism, is that it is impacting an unanticipated target audience: Gentiles in the Messianic movement.

I consider it a “developmental phase” in the life of many Gentiles who have entered the Messianic movement, to temporarily become more focused on the practices and material objects (kippah, tallit, and so on) of Judaism, than reintegrating their faith into a Hebraic and Torah perspective. Most people, if they enter this phase (not everyone does), eventually exit it as they develop a greater maturity of understanding and passion for God and His Messiah, but some people never do. They study more of the Judaism of our movement than the underlying faith and devotion to God, and end up shooting out the other side and converting to traditional Judaism. Part of the material that leads some of these Gentile Messianics to such a decision is the anti-missionary works I’ve previously described.

My last statement might seem unfair, and I don’t mean to say that anyone who converts to Judaism from being Gentile is insincere in their efforts and their intent. I do say that at least some Gentiles can be misguided and misdirected in their studies. We examine the Torah from a Hebraic viewpoint to recapture the original intent of the authors and how they point to a Jewish Messiah, not to become devoted to Judaism as such. Nevertheless, the tradition and depth of history of the Jewish people in their connection to God is extremely powerful and some Gentiles feel that Messianics just aren’t “Jewish enough”.

Anti-missionaries, at the core, are there not to act on or against Christians, but to preserve Jews to Judaism. I can understand their perspective, but one interesting “side effect”, is that sometimes they end up convincing Gentile believers that Judaism is the way to go. This isn’t deliberate of course, and Judaism tends to discourage conversion, but if a Gentile is persistent, the process can be undertaken.

I’ve seen friends who once thought our congregation was “too Jewish” eventually leave and pursue more “authentic” Jewish studies, believing that Yeshua could not have been the actual Messiah, who is yet to come, as the anti-missionary literature attests.

I’m writing all this, not to bash missionaries, anti-missionaries, Jewish people in general, Christian people in general, or Messianics who transition into Judaism. I’m writing all this as a reminder of our focus.

We are supposed to be focused on God, not necessarily the Jewish God or the Christian God, but God; the objective God, the God of the Universe. How do we know God? Our material source of information is the Bible. It could be Stern’s The Complete Jewish Bible, the NIV Bible or any other authorized translation of the Holy Scriptures, but the focus is the Bible, not any other documentation source. It’s the Spirit of God who guides our studies and we know we are hearing the Spirit clearly when His leading is completely consistent with the written Word.

Yes, commentaries are valuable and important and I study the Jewish sages myself, but the minute the sages become more important than the Word of God, there’s a problem. As Messianics, our “interpretation” of scripture is through the Hebraic lens in an attempt to connect more closely with the men (and women?) who contributed to the Bible, but it’s still the Bible that’s our focus, not the lens of the perspective. When you start confusing the two, you start losing the focus and in the blur, you miss the target.

The word “Torah” comes from a root word yod resh hey, which in Hebrew can mean teach or instruction but can also mean to hit the target, as an archer hitting the target with an arrow:

Torah is from a Hebrew root word, an archery term meaning “to take aim, to shoot” –as in shooting an arrow to hit a target. In his book, Our Father Abraham, Dr. Marvin Wilson explains, “The word torah, commonly translated ‘law’ derives from the verb yarah, ‘to cast, throw, shoot.’” The essence of the word Torah is to “hit the mark.”
-From Torah Does Not Mean Law!
by Boaz Michael
HaYesod.org

The more abstract meanings of this verb, “guiding” and “teaching,” seem to me to derive from this concrete, physical root word. And it seems plausible to me that the noun “Torah” stems from this root. Torah, with all its abstract meanings — Law, teaching, a body of knowledge — thus derives from something like aiming accurately to hit the target, and thus means the opposite of sin.
From Tsav: The Torah is designed for those missing the mark
by Rabbi Eliezer Finkelman
JWeekly.com

In our zeal to attach ourselves to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we want to score a “bulls eye”. Sometimes, if we confuse the focus with the lens, and we select the wrong target; Judaism itself, as our object of interest and even worship. God is the real target in the absolute sense and our instructions for understanding how to “hit the target” are contained in the Bible.

First Fruits of Zion has gone so far as to produce an Audio training on CD called To Whom Shall We Go? It’s their answer to the anti-missionaries and I suppose it targets both Messianic Jew and Gentile, but I suspect more the Gentile. I haven’t heard any of the materials so I can’t say anything about them one way or another. This isn’t an advertisement or a promotion in any sense, but a mention of what brought this topic to mind and that there are others besides me who are concerned.

As Messianics who have adopted a modern Jewish worship practice (most of us, anyway), we need to understand the difference between our practice and our faith. We also need to understand why we express our faith using a traditional modern Synagogue and Siddur model. We need to understand the difference between a worship model and faith as a way of life. If men and women feel lead to wear tzitzit in response to the commandments, it needs to be in response to God, and not human emotions or desires. At that point, it becomes less a “Jewish thing” and more a “God thing”. If you’re Jewish, then such a practice is connecting not only with God, but with your fathers, linking to a Jewish worship life that goes back over 3500 years. If you’re Gentile, it’s connecting with God and with a rich tradition that bridges to our Messiah and Savior across a span of almost 20 centuries.

Did the 1st Century Gentile believers, worshiping along side their Jewish brothers and sisters, wear tzitzit? I don’t know. Maybe not. We however, in the 21st century, should we choose to wear tzitzit, learn Hebrew, study Talmud, and pray facing Jerusalem, need to keep our eyes and our hearts focused on the correct reasons for doing so. The “Jewish stuff” doesn’t make Gentiles closer to God. Our hearts turned to Him in faith brings us closer to God. We all need to keep that clearly in mind and always choose substance over form. Form is the particular method we employ to express our faith, but the substance of faith, love, and obedience must always come first. Anything else is futility.

The next time you’re on the archery range and you’re aiming at something Hebraic by way of connecting with God, don’t miss the mark.

The Hebrew word “hatat,” however, has a clear concrete meaning to go with its abstract one. In the Book of Judges we read about a band of sharpshooters, so trained and talented that every one of them can sling a stone at a hair and not miss (Judges 20:16). The word in this verse that means “miss,” yehetu in Hebrew, clearly has the same root as “hatat.” “Sin,” in Hebrew, means something like “missing the target.”
From Tsav: The Torah is designed for those missing the mark
by Rabbi Eliezer Finkelman
JWeekly.com