Beth Immanuel, 828 3rd Street, Hudson, WI (2026)

09/07/2026

I have spent my life believing that Mashiach will come, that the Jewish people will be gathered to Eretz Yisrael, and that the Beit HaMikdash will stand again in Jerusalem.

Yet even to me, some of these things seemed very far away at times.

But perhaps we should occasionally reconsider what we believe to be “far-fetched.” In 2020, NASA announced something more unbelievable. The Moon is rusting.

Hematite—iron oxide, essentially rust—has been detected on the Moon. This presented an obvious problem. Rust requires oxidation, while the Moon has virtually no atmosphere and is constantly exposed to hydrogen from the solar wind, conditions that should work against the formation of hematite.

The proposed explanation sounds considerably more fantastic than the Beit HaMikdash being rebuilt in our own generation:

Oxygen is supposedly escaping from the Earth, traveling hundreds of thousands of miles through space, reaching the Moon, and contributing to the rusting of its surface. And in 2025, researchers published experimental evidence showing that energetic oxygen ions carried from Earth toward the Moon are doing just that.

There is a rabbinic way of reasoning called a kal va-chomer—an inference from the lesser case to the greater.

If I am prepared to believe that oxygen can escape the Earth, cross the emptiness between the Earth and Moon, and turn iron on the lunar surface into rust because scientists have discovered evidence that this occurs, perhaps those inclined to accept their findings should exercise a little humility before declaring the promises of the prophets too fantastic to happen.

The prophets repeatedly describe extraordinary things accompanying the redemption.

“The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and awesome day of Hashem.” (Joel 2:31)

The same language appears again in Acts 2:20, while Revelation 6:12 describes the moon becoming “like blood.”

For years people have talked about eclipses, harvest moons and “blood moons.” Meanwhile, scientists discovered something considerably stranger: the Moon itself is rusting.

The Jewish people have returned to Eretz Yisrael after an exile measured in millennia. Hebrew is again spoken in the streets of Jerusalem. Regardless of your politics, Israel has become a military power among the nations.

Organizations are preparing vessels, garments and training connected with the service of the Beit HaMikdash. Red heifers have been raised and brought to Israel. Archaeologists are uncovering what might be the Jerusalem of Solomon.
And Jerusalem increasingly finds itself at the center of the attention and controversy of the nations.

“Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of staggering to all the surrounding peoples.” (Zechariah 12:2)

People whose parents or grandparents had little connection to traditional Jewish life are putting on tefillin, keeping Shabbat, learning Torah, keeping kosher and raising Jewish families. This includes the descendants of hundreds of thousands of conversos and other Jews who have entered the church in more recent times.

As we approach Rosh Hashanah, this deserves some reflection.

Rosh Hashanah is Yom HaDin, the Day of Judgment. We proclaim HaShem as King and speak of the day when His kingship will ultimately be recognized throughout creation.

I don't know where we stand on the prophetic calendar. I don't know whether the things occurring around us are the events envisioned by the prophets. Judaism has good reason to be suspicious of people who calculate the end and announce that they have deciphered the timetable of redemption.

But skepticism can become its own kind of dogmatism. We sometimes imagine that believing in Mashiach requires us to believe that the impossible will suddenly become possible.

The world itself is continually showing us that things we would once have dismissed as fantastic can become matters of observable reality.

The appropriate response is neither panic nor prediction, but teshuvah.

Because whether Mashiach comes tomorrow or generations from now, the reality Rosh Hashanah places before each of us remains exactly the same:

The King is coming, are we ready to stand before Him?

09/06/2026

IN THE BEGINNING CREATED G-D

Rosh Hashanah is a day for all of humanity, not only the Jewish people, to crown G-d King. Why is Rosh Hashanah called the coronation of the King?

The answer is hidden in the first three words of the Torah:
בראשית ברא אלקים
Beresh*t bara Elokim.

The Talmud, in Megillah 9a, we learn that Ptolemy gathered seventy-two Jewish elders, placed each in a separate room, and commanded them to translate the Torah into Greek.

Independently, each made the same intentional alteration to its opening words. The Greek Septuagint that has come down to us likewise begins:

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ Θεὸς
En archē epoiēsen ho Theos

“In the beginning G-d created.”

Why such concern over the first three words?
Because בראשית ברא אלקים — Beresh*t bara Elokim could be read as though Beresh*t were the subject:

“Beresh*t created G-d.”

The sages feared that the nations might imagine a primordial power called Beresh*t that had created G-d. But there is a beautiful derash hidden inside the very reading they feared:

The Creator is eternal. Before heaven and earth, before time and space, the Creator is. Kingship, however, is a relationship. There is no king without a kingdom.

The heavens obey their Creator because they can do nothing else. The sun rises, the sea keeps its boundary, the trees produce their fruit, and the animals follow the nature given to them.

Then the Creator formed Adam and for the first time, creation contained a creature with free will—a creature capable of choosing to place itself beneath the sovereignty of its Creator.

Only such a creature can crown a king. This is why Rosh Hashanah, the anniversary of the creation of Adam, is the coronation of the King.

That is the mystery contained in the Torah’s opening words:
בראשית ברא אלקים
“In the beginning created G-d"

The Creator created humanity with free will.
And with that freedom came the possibility of the greatest human act, to bow before the One who made us and crown Him King. On the one hand: Who are we that we should crown Him King? On the other hand: Only we possess the Divine free-will to do it.

That is Rosh Hashanah. The Creator gives us freedom.

Use that freedom to crown Him King again this Rosh Hashanah.

09/04/2026

“Shalom is the binding and joining together of two opposites.” — Likkutei Torah, Naso 27a

09/03/2026

GARMENTS OF THE KING

There is a remarkable idea running through Jewish mystical tradition. The 613 mitzvot correspond to the complete human form.

The 248 positive mitzvot correspond to the body's 248 organs and limbs, while the 365 prohibitions correspond to its 365 sinews and vessels.
Together they form a complete body.

The Alter Rebbe develops this correspondence throughout the Tanya. The soul itself possesses a corresponding spiritual anatomy, so that through Torah and mitzvot:

“The totality of the 613 organs of his soul are clothed in the 613 commandments of the Torah.”

Within this correspondence, the Alter Rebbe calls the 248 positive mitzvot the “248 organs of the King”—eivarim d’Malka. An organ is the immediate instrument of a person's will. When I raise my hand, my will finds expression through my hand. So too with the mitzvot. They give concrete form to the Divine will within this world.

The positive mitzvot direct our organs toward the Divine will. The prohibitions govern and sanctify the corresponding gidim. Together, Torah and mitzvot encompass the entire person.

The purpose of Jewish life is therefore to bring the human person into correspondence with the organs of the King.

The hand gives tzedakah. The feet carry us toward a mitzvah. The mouth gives physical voice to words of Torah. The mind contemplates Divine wisdom. And here we encounter one of the great ideas of the Tanya: hitlabshut—enclothement.
Divine wisdom descends. It clothes itself within things the human mind can grasp and even the human form.

The lower becomes a garment for the Higher.
The physical brain contemplating Torah becomes the place in which transcendent Divine wisdom can be encountered within a finite human mind.

G-d's wisdom and will descend into garments so that embodied human beings can take hold of them.

Christians reading the Tanya should recognize the significance of this language.

Christianity developed its own technical vocabulary for speaking about Divine embodiment, most famously in the language of incarnation. Human language necessarily draws upon human categories when speaking about Divine realities.
Judaism knows this principle well.

Our Sages teach:

“The Torah speaks in the language of a man.”

Scripture speaks of G-d's hand, His eyes, His arm, His sitting and His descending. Divine realities are communicated to embodied creatures through the language of embodiment.

Judaism affirms that G-d is incorporeal. And yet Jewish mystical tradition speaks with extraordinary boldness about the Body of the King.

The Alter Rebbe takes us still further. In chapter 4 of Tanya, he asks us to imagine embracing a king.
The king is clothed in robes.

Perhaps one robe.

Perhaps many.

The number of garments makes no difference to the embrace, because “The person of the King is within them.”

This is the Alter Rebbe's picture of Torah. Divine wisdom has descended through garments until it can be grasped by the human mind. We take hold of the garment— and thereby take hold of the King. One is told to become the garment.

Immediately before giving this analogy, the Alter Rebbe makes an astonishing statement. Although the Divine is beyond created comprehension, when a person comprehends Torah, he apprehends and embraces HaKadosh Baruch Hu mamash—the Holy One Himself—because:

“The Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are entirely one.”

This is extraordinarily radical language.
Questions concerning Divine manifestation within the physical world—and particularly Chabad language concerning the tzaddik—have therefore become the subject of intense controversy within modern Orthodox Judaism.

David Berger's famous polemic, The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference, expresses his fear that certain developments within Chabad messianism move Judaism toward Christian ideas concerning Divine manifestation in a human person.

But here there is a remarkable irony.
For many Jewish followers of Yeshua, the Tanya has functioned almost as a tikkun.
Berger looks at Chabad and fears a Judaism moving toward Christianity. Many Jewish followers of Yeshua have traveled across this bridge in precisely the opposite direction.

They came from Christianity, and the Tanya helped bring them home to Torah and mitzvot.

For Jews who inherited Christian theological language while becoming separated from the categories of Jewish thought and practice, the Alter Rebbe provided a Jewish vocabulary for thinking about Divine unity, Divine wisdom, embodiment, indwelling, the tzaddik, the soul, devekut, Torah and mitzvot.

Ideas previously encountered through Christian categories could now be reconsidered through the language of Torah and Chassidus.

And the result, for many, has been deeply practical.
The Tanya teaches that the purpose of creation is realized here, within the physical world, through physical bodies performing physical mitzvot.
For many Hebrew Christians and Messianic Jews, therefore, Tanya has represented something very nearly opposite to the Christianization of Judaism:
the Judaization of their Christianity.

It has provided a pathway back into Jewish observance.

And perhaps the key to understanding why lies in the Alter Rebbe's image of the King.The garment is how the King becomes accessible to the embrace.
The physical becomes a garment for the spiritual.
The finite becomes a garment for the Infinite.
Divine wisdom clothes itself in Torah. Divine will clothes itself in mitzvot.

And human beings clothe their minds, speech and bodies in those same Torah and mitzvot and become a garment and a vessel of the King themselves.

The result is complete embrace.

The purpose of Jewish life is therefore greater than obedience from a distance.

It is to take the whole human person—248 organs and 365 gidim, thought, speech and action—and bring it into correspondence with Torah and mitzvot.

The human body becomes an instrument of the Divine will.

The finite becomes a garment for the Infinite.
The Jew embraces the King through His garments.
And, in the astonishing conclusion of the Alter Rebbe, the King embraces him.

— Tanya, Likkutei Amarim, chs. 4, 23, 37

09/03/2026

“G-d Has No Body”: Rambam’s Principle of Faith and the Reformation

One of the most basic Jewish affirmations is also written into some of the foundational confessions of Protestant Christianity:

G-d has no body and no parts.

This was certainly not something Christians first discovered during the Reformation. Christian theologians had affirmed the incorporeality of G-d since they received the doctrine from the Apostles of Israel.

Thomas Aquinas, had already discussed this point extensively, but also happens to have studied Rambam's writings, so did his teacher Peter of Ireland. Something especially interesting happens at the Reformation.

The Reformers were returning to original languages and ancient sources. And among the sources Christian scholars were increasingly studying were Hebrew commentaries, Jewish texts—and Kabbalah.

One of the towering figures in this movement was Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522).

Reuchlin should properly be remembered as one of the great Christian Kabbalists of the Renaissance. His work On the Art of the Kabbalah attempted to understand Christianity through the mysteries of Jewish tradition.

His encounter with Judaism went far beyond occasionally consulting a Hebrew dictionary. He immersed himself in Jewish texts, defended Jewish books from destruction, learned under Jewish rabbis, and became increasingly convinced that Christians had something to recover from the inherited wisdom of Israel.

Among the Jewish teachers whom Reuchlin read with particular respect was Rambam. Not merely in Latin. Reuchlin seems to have been the first Christian scholar known to have read Rambam's Moreh Nevukhim in Hebrew.

There is even intriguing evidence that when Reuchlin studied Hebrew in Rome in 1498 with HaRav Ovadiah Sforno, one of the texts he seems to have learned was Rambam's Moreh Nevukhim.

Reuchlin did not hide his admiration for Rambam.
He repeatedly refers to Rabbi Moses. Reuchlin could read aspects of Rambam through a Kabbalistic lens, impacting not only his own Christian formulations, but those of a nephew, Philip Melanchthon.

Melanchthon was born Philipp Schwartzerdt. Reuchlin encouraged the young scholar's education and even gave him the Greek form of his surname by which history remembers him.

Sources describing Melanchthon's upbringing say that his relationship with his grand-uncle Reuchlin exerted an especially powerful influence upon his intellectual development as both his father and grandfather had passed while still a young man. And Philip Melanchthon would become one of the principal intellectual architects of the Lutheran Reformation.

Most importantly for our story, Melanchthon was the principal author of the Augsburg Confession of 1530, the foundational confession of Lutheran Christianity.

Now look at its very first article.

Before discussing sin, salvation, justification, sacraments or ecclesiology, the Augsburg Confession begins by defining G-d. Its Latin says:

Deus, aeternus, incorporeus, impartibilis...

G-d is eternal, without body, without parts...

Anyone familiar with Rambam should immediately hear the resonance.

Rambam had listed this affirmation as a fundamental principle of Jewish faith. His Third Principle declares that the Creator possesses no body and that none of the properties of bodies can properly be attributed to Him. And in Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah 1:7–8, Rambam explains the connection between these two ideas.
G-d is genuinely One.

Not “one” in the way that a body may be called one while still being divisible into parts. G-d possesses neither body nor corporeal form, and therefore His unity is not composite.

No body. No parts.

Within Melanchthon's own Reformation world, Rambam continued to be quoted and discussed. The Lutheran theologian Andreas Osiander corresponded with Melanchthon concerning Jewish law and explicitly invoked Rabbi Moses Maimonides and the Mishneh Torah.

This was an intellectual world in which Christian theologians could regard the Jewish sages as serious authorities worth consulting. The language spread and English Reformation expanded the formulation.

The Anglican Articles confessed that G-d is:
“without body, parts, or passions.”

The Westminster Confession of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches repeated it. The Congregationalist Savoy Declaration repeated it. The Baptist Confession of 1689 repeated it.

So language that appears in the Lutheran confession at Augsburg becomes part of the theological vocabulary of Anglican, Reformed, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Baptist and Methodist Christianity.

G-d is not a body.
G-d has no parts.

The idea of incarnation, doesn't challenge the principle. That's not how incarnation works.

I am not claiming that we possess a manuscript in which Melanchthon writes in the margin, “I copied these two Latin words from Rambam.” Historical influence is rarely that convenient.

But neither should we pretend that these men were operating in separate intellectual universes.
The Church was doing exactly what it should have done. Its first teachers were Jews. Its Scriptures came through Israel. Its language about G-d, creation, covenant, Messiah and redemption was inherited from Israel.

When Christians became confused about the meaning of Scripture, their greatest scholars returned to Jewish teachers to find the right words.

09/01/2026

Have you ever traveled through Europe and entered one of its old walled cities?

Sometimes, near the gate or marketplace, you can still find something curious affixed to the stone: an old measuring standard—the official length by which merchants and craftsmen were expected to measure their goods.

A measuring rod.

Keep the image in mind.

Two of the greatest Jewish teachers of the generation immediately preceding Yeshua were Hillel and Shammai. We usually remember them for their disagreements, but even the traditions concerning their occupations seem strangely appropriate to their personalities.

Hillel, tradition tells us, earned his living cutting wood. Shammai was an architect. The Talmud preserves several remarkable stories in which Gentiles approach these two teachers with unusual requests.

Again and again Shammai sends them away and Hillel draws them close.

In one famous account, a Gentile approaches Shammai and makes an audacious proposal:

“Convert me on condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I am standing on one foot.”

Shammai has had enough.

The Talmud says:

“Shammai pushed him away with the builder’s cubit in his hand.” (Shabbat 31a)

His measuring rod.

The Gentile then approaches Hillel with exactly the same request. Hillel receives him.

“That which is hateful to you do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is commentary. Go study.”

The resemblance to one of Yeshua’s most famous teachings is immediately obvious:

“Whatever you want others to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Torah and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12)

But there is an interesting difference.

Hillel gives the principle in the negative:

Don’t do to another what you would not want done to you.

Yeshua gives it in the positive:

Do to another what you would want done to you.

I’ve often heard Messianic Jews and Christians point to this distinction as evidence of the superiority of apostolic tradition. Hillel merely tells us what not to do, the argument goes. Yeshua goes further. He requires positive action.

It sounds persuasive. Until you read the Didache.

The Didache is an extremely early manual of discipleship associated with the teaching of the Twelve Apostles and addressed particularly to disciples from the Nations now learning the Way of Life.

And listen to how it teaches this principle:

“Whatever you do not want to happen to you, do not do to one another.” (Didache 1.2)

This isn’t Yeshua’s positive formulation.

It is the negative formulation of Hillel.

But if the negative formulation proves Hillel’s teaching inferior to Yeshua’s, what are we supposed to do when the apostles themselves choose to quote Hillel rather than our rabbi?

Perhaps we have misunderstood what the difference signifies.

Hillel was speaking to a Gentile standing at the beginning of his education in Torah. The Didache likewise addresses Gentile disciples being instructed in the Way of Life.

Yeshua, by contrast, was addressing Jewish disciples already living within a world shaped by Torah and mitzvot.

Perhaps the difference is not the superiority of one teacher over another but rather the quality of the student standing before the teacher.

Before a person can be taught to actively pursue every opportunity to do good, there is a more elementary discipline:

Learn first not to harm your fellow, but then—go and keep learning, because the Didache doesn’t stop there.

Immediately afterward, it begins expanding this teaching with the very words we recognize from Yeshua’s teaching:

Bless those who curse you.

Pray for your enemies.

Love those who hate you.

If someone strikes you on the cheek, turn the other.

If someone forces you to go one mile, go two.

Give to the one who asks.

So the negative formulation was never the destination, it was an entrance to a life of learning.

The Didache begins its instruction to Gentiles where Hillel began with his Gentile student—and then begins leading them into the demanding, positive discipleship taught by Yeshua.

Immediately before giving his own formulation of the Golden Rule, Yeshua warns his disciples about judging others:

“For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Matthew 7:2)

With the measure you use.

A measuring rod.

And suddenly Shammai’s measuring rod comes back into the story.

This should make us cautious about one of the assumptions we sometimes bring to these texts: that the apostolic tradition must necessarily be understood as superior to the rabbinic tradition.

The apostles were Jews. Their claim was not that they had escaped Israel’s world of Torah and interpretation, but that Israel’s Messiah had come—and the nations were now being invited to learn.

That was their calling, to extend Israel’s conversation about Torah to the nations. Yeshua warns us that the measure with which we measure others will become the measure by which we ourselves are measured.

Shammai had a measuring rod in his hand.

Hillel simply said:

“Go and learn.”

We should do the same.

08/31/2026

PAUL, HILLEL, SHAMMAI, AND ROMANS 14

Paul tells us that he was educated “at the feet of Gamliel” (Acts 22:3)—Rabban Gamliel the Elder, the grandson of Hillel and head of Beit Hillel in his generation.

That background is key when reading Romans 14.

There is a famous difference between rabbinic schools of Shammai and Hillel that helps us understand exactly what Paul is saying.

SHAMMAI AND HILLEL: SANCTIFICATION OF THE DAY

The Talmud tells us that Shammai would live his entire week with Shabbat in mind. If he found a choice animal, he would say:

“This is for Shabbat.”

If he later found a better animal, he would reserve the better one for Shabbat and eat the first.
Shammai's principle was:

“From the first day of the week, prepare for your Shabbat.” —b. Beitzah 16a

So if a Shammaite had more limited means and could afford only one animal during the week, he would reserve that animal for Shabbat. He could eat vegetables during the week while saving his meat—and the best provisions of the week, like wine—for the holy Shabbat meal.

Hillel did something radically different.

Standing upon Psalm 68:20/19, which reads:

“Bless the LORD, day by day.”

Hillel would eat what G-d had provided the day it was given.

If G-d gave him a good animal today, he ate it today and thanked G-d for it. He did not have to save it for Shabbat, because he had faith that G-d would provide again when Shabbat arrived. The Shabbat was inherently holy, by all accounts, but with the words "bless the LORD, day by day," Hillel could find the sanctity in every day.

For Shammai, because Shabbat was holy the weekday was profane. For Hillel the Shabbat became holy of holies when sanctity was found in the weekday as well.

The Talmud says:

“Hillel the Elder had a different way, for all his works were for the sake of Heaven.” —b. Beitzah 16a

The difference is not simply about food. It is about the sanctification of the mundane.

Shabbat was not made less holy, but the weekday was sanctified.

NOW READ ROMANS 14

Paul says:

“Accept the one weak in faith, without quarreling over disputable matters. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables.” —Romans 14:2

Why vegetables?

We already know.

One side reserves the meat for the holy day.
The other receives G-d's provision day by day.

Paul says:

“One person esteems one day, while another esteems all days.” —Romans 14:5

In many English translations the word "alike" is added to the end of the sentence, but the Shabbat can remain distinct, even while holiness is found in every day.

Two servants of G-d can disagree about how to sanctify their lives—and yet both can be acting for the sake of Heaven.

Paul had already seen the danger of turning such distinctions into factions:

“I am of Paul.”
“I am of Apollos.”
“I am of Mashiach.”
“Is Mashiach divided?” —1 Corinthians 1:12–13

Perhaps that is why Paul never names Hillel and Shammai.

In a generation destroyed by baseless hatred, Paul had no desire to encourage factional thinking. He wants us to understand the principle: The person who eats may do so for the sake of Heaven. The person who abstains may also do so for the sake of Heaven.

The disagreement never had anything to do with the desecration of Shabbat, but rather the sanctification of the week.

That is the heart of Romans 14.

08/30/2026

“These and These Are the Words of the Living G-d”

There is something important we have to remember about the people who wrote the New Testament.

They were Jewish.

They lived in a Jewish world in which different interpretations of the same sacred text were not automatically considered a contradiction of divine truth.

The rabbis could preserve different midrashim about the same passage of Torah—different explanations, different emphases, sometimes even different understandings of what had happened.

This same Jewish culture would eventually produce two Talmuds: the Bavli and the Yerushalmi, which sometimes preserve conflicting traditions and even contradictory statements concerning the same rabbis and the same events.

Judaism dose not fall apart because of this.
Quite the opposite.

Consider the famous disputes between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai. Their teachings could be radically opposed. And yet the Talmud says:

“These and these are the words of the living G-d.”
(Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 13b)

Sometimes a greater truth is preserved through multiple witnesses, perspectives, interpretations, and traditions.

This is the intellectual and religious world from which the Gospels emerged.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John do not read like four men sitting together and agreeing beforehand on exactly how every event must be described.
They emphasize different things. They arrange material differently. They sometimes preserve different details. John can present Yeshua's lifetime and work in a way that looks very different from Mark.

The Gospels writers were not writing in a culture that demanded that every sacred account be reduced to a single standardized narrative.

The early Church faced a more important question.

What writings represented the Jewish apostolic faith—and what writings represented heresy? That question became especially urgent because of Marcion.

Marcion did not simply offer another interpretation. He rejected the Torah and the G-d of Israel and constructed a radically edited collection of texts to support his theology.

The Church rejected him and preserved the apostolic writings of Jews that testified to the faith they had received. Those letters were then bound to Israel's scriptures, that there be no confusion. The narrative Gospels and apostolic letters would not remove the Torah.

They were not demanding that every Gospel tell the story the same way. The question was:

Does this writing preserve the faith of the apostles, or does it teach heresy?

That distinction is key. The Gospels are collections of aggadot, they did not need to use identical language, identical chronology, or identical literary presentation.

And that makes perfect sense in a Jewish context.
Because the people who gave us the New Testament came from the same religious culture that could say of opposing rabbinic traditions:

“These and these are the words of the living G-d.”

The question is whether the truth is there. And for the followers of Yeshua, that truth was found in Mashiach.

The apostles were proclaiming to the nations what they understood concerning the Jewish Messiah—and the Church preserved those apostolic witnesses precisely as a defense against those who wanted to sever Yeshua from Israel, from the Torah, and from the G-d of Israel.

That is why Christian scripture should never be understood like Marcion's Bible against the Tanakh. It was the apostolic testimony about the Jewish Messiah bound to the Jewish Scriptures, so that no mistake be made.

Christians sometimes become offended when Jews refer to the writings of the sages as “Torah,” as though Torah can only be found in the Five Books of Moses. The Alter Rebbe, in the fourth chapter of Tanya, describes G-d's will and wisdom as being invested not only in the commandments and their laws, but also:

“in the letter-combinations of Torah, Prophets and Writings, and in their expositions in the Aggadot and Midrashim of our Sages.”

In other words, within a Jewish understanding, the divine wisdom expressed through Torah is also encountered in the Aggadah, Midrash, and teachings of the sages.

That should make us stop and think.

Because this is what the Christian scriptures are, collections of Jewish Aggadah concerning the Rebbe from Nazareth —the remembered teachings, deeds, sayings, interpretations, and stories of those who followed him.

And what are Paul's letters?

They are Iggerot—letters written by a Jewish teacher to communities among the nations, explaining how he understood the meaning of the Messiah and the Torah for those communities. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul explicitly says he is giving his opinion, and that's okay.

We should therefore be very careful about imposing a modern Protestant category upon these writings and then demanding that they behave like a single, perfectly harmonized document.

There is an extraordinary testimony from Rambam that is relevant here. Rambam explains that Christians did not reject the Torah like Islam. This distinction is precisely why he could regard Christianity as seriously mistaken theologically while still recognizing that Christians stood upon the same scriptural foundation of Israel and because of this he ruled that while Jews were forbidden from teaching Muslims, they were permitted to teach Christians.

Think about the significance of that.

The early Christians did not have to throw away Israel's Scriptures in order to preserve their testimony about Yeshua. They did the opposite.
They attached their Messianic writings to the Scriptures of Israel.

The New Testament should not be understood as a second Bible standing in opposition to the first, but a Jewish apostolic library, which for Christians, carries the weight of the Torah as long as it remains bound to it.

Beth Immanuel

09/07/2026

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