From: heb_roots_chr@mail.geocities.com
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 1997 1:17 AM
To: Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup
Subject: A Messianic Jewish Perspective of the Torah
From: EbenAbram@aol.c
To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject: Re: Did Jesus do away with the Law ???
Shalom Alecheim
Perhaps this might clarify for Messianic Jews and Rooters common
clarifications and POV of some Messianic Jews. As Eddie pointed out see the
reason for usage of 'Some". Enjoy. This is remarkably well written
MESSIANIC JUDAISM AS IT IS EXPRESSED IN NEW YORK CITY THROUGH CONGREGATION
BETH EL OF MANHATTAN.
WebSite copyright 1996 - Congregation Beth El of Manhattan Inc.
Use and/or reproduction of materials NOT -FOR-PROFIT is permitted, provided
attribution is given.
The Bible's Teachings On Jewish Religious & Cultural Practices In
The Life Of The Jewish Follower Of Yeshua (Jesus) Of Nazareth.
A Position Paper
by Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction
The simplest statement of why Jewish people who believe in Yeshua
(Jesus) of Nazareth as the Messiah should keep their Jewish religious
and cultural identities is because the Bible (Old & New Testaments)
instructs them to do so. This truth, taught straightforwardly by Yeshua
and all His Shalichim (Apostles, or Emissaries) has not been not taught
in the non-Jewish "church" mostly because it does not apply to non-Jews.
The confusion of Jewish believers has arisen when they have been taught
that all the exact same directives God gave to non-Jewish believers
apply to the Jewish believers. This is not the case.
Some factions of Christianity teach that any Jewishness is virtually
antithetical to a New Testament faith-relationship to God. These
factions maintain that for a Jewish believer to hold onto any vestige of
relationship to the laws and festivals given by God to the Jewish
people or especially the cultural practices of the Jewish people, is to
fall under the "Galatians error" and to "come under the law" from which
we have been set free. Many further believe for Jewish followers of
Yeshua to hold onto any vestige of their cultural identity is to
"rebuild the partition wall" between Jewish believers and the "universal
church." Both these teachings are wrong scripturally, as you will see
further into this paper.
At best, what has been prevelant up to the rebirth of the Messianic
Jewish synagogual movement since 1970 is that the Church tolerates
whatever manifestation of Jewishness is necessary as a tool to bring
Jews into the Church. Expression of Jewishness is therefore an
acceptable technique for turning Jews into church-goers whose cultural
lives meld with the non-Jewish cultural stream of the church-world.
Toleration of some degree of Jewishness is at times taught in the church
as a viable life-style option among "Jewish Christians." However, the
heart and soul of church dogma is that Jewishness is passe, the Torah
has no bearing upon our lives except as a reminder of how much we need
Messiah, and the quasi-nation called "the church" is a place where
Jewish people who accept "Jesus" can forget about all that spiritual
bondage they were under as Jews.
The premises of this paper are as follows:
. The Jewish Messiah did not come to save Jewish people from Jewishness:
He came to save us (and all mankind) from sin.
. Jewishness is not a spiritual disease of which one is cured when he or
she is saved (rescued from sin).
. The "Judaizing" against which the New Testament teaches is the
doctrine that Gentiles must become Jews in order to be saved. We agree
that this is error.
. The clear teaching of the Holy Scriptures is that for Jewish believers
it is God's directly-stated will that we still practice whatever of the
Torah is able to be practiced, and our adherence to whatever customs of
our people (especially religious customs) which are not clearly
anti-Scriptural or against the spirit of the Scriptures, should still be
practiced. Jewish believers are not saved by their adherence to the Law;
however, contrary to popular opinion in the church, they are told
nowhere in the New Testament to abandon it. They are, in fact, not given
the "liberty" to do so, any more than non-Jewish "Christians" are given
the liberty to disregard what the Torah says about moral behavior.
Therefore, maintainence of Jewish identity is not a casual option of no
consequence for Jewish believers: it is a biblical incumbency of serious
import.
In order for Jewish believers in Yeshua (Jesus) to fulfill God's desire
for their lives, it is necessary that they gain a Scriptural
understanding of these issues, unsullied by two thousand years of
cultural confusion, or Gentile primacy-of-population in the Body of
Messiah.
I. What Did Yeshua (Jesus) Teach About The Relationship Of A Jewish
Believer To The Torah ("The Law" Or "The Five Books Of Moses")?
Yeshua The Messiah taught that as long as the sun and the stars held
their courses, not one yod or makkef (the smallest letter or stroke)
would disappear from the Torah or the Prophets "until all was
accomplished" (Matthew 5:15-17). Concerning the question as to whether
His coming and His work were intended to nullify the Torah or the
Prophets, He commands us not to think that! The Resurrection cannot be
the point at which all was accomplished because the sun and moon are
still in the heavens up to this day. Doctrinally, no ground exists for
maintaining that these verses mean anything other than what they plainly
state. All arguments I have seen attempting to nullify the clear sense
of this passage are extensive circumlocutions of the direct statements,
or allegorizing of the language. Yeshua meant what is stated here. The
least directive of the Torah was not negated by His coming: the curse of
the Law was altered by His coming (Galatians 3:13). We are no longer
"under the tutor" described in Galatians (a tutor imposes knowledge upon
a trainee from the outside, and penalizes him when he errs). Via the New
Covenant, we now have the Torah written in our hearts (Jeremiah 31:31ff,
Ezekiel 36:24ff). We are no longer under the tutor because He is now
within us (John 14:17). Since virtually all of the Old Testament
prophecies concerning the coming of the New Covenant speak of the Torah
being written on our hearts, and our being motivated by the in-dwelling
of God's Spirit to "walk in My statutes and obey My ordinances"
(Ezekiel 36:27/Jeremiah 31:31ff), I am hard-pressed to see how any
commentator upon a practical Messianic theology could posit that the
Word teaches us upon salvation 99% of the statutes and ordinances in the
Torah are things we can casually discard at will! Some of the statutes
and ordinances have truly been rendered impossible by God (because of
the destruction of the Temple and the priestly lineage-records); and
some cannot be practiced because we no longer live in a Torah-theocracy
(eg: we do exact the death penalty for adultery nor impose levirate
marriages). We cannot impose the juridical Torah upon a modern
non-theocratic, non-Israeli society. However, these are things outside
our control and personal ability to choose. Matthew 5 deals with persons
advocating the abandonment of the practice of the Torah which is within
the reach of Jews living outside of Israel, where all of the
Temple-related Torah was not possible to practice in any case. Practice
is the issue; hence ...
Yeshua went on to say that any person who abandons the practice (and
practice is the focus of this paper) of the least of the commandments
(mitzvoht) and teaches others to do the same, shall be least in the
kingdom of heaven. He seemed to be saying that you will not lose your
salvation over an unscriptural relationship to the Torah as a Jewish
believer, but you can severely affect your personal destiny!
Yeshua's rebuke directed towards a segment of the P'rushim (Pharisees)
in Matthew 23:23 is sometimes used to support the notion that Yeshua
taught an end to the entire Torah by ending practices like tithing. The
passage is a good example of how such Scriptures can be misapplied.
Yeshua ended His indictment by calling for an end to hypocrisy, not
tithing. His words are clear: "These things (tithing) you should have
done, and not neglected the others (justice and mercy). How some
theologians have bent those words into an end to the Torah is beyond me.
When Yeshua healed on the Shabbat (Sabbath), He did not annul the
commandment of the Sabbath; He challenged the rabbinic interpretation of
the Sabbath, which had gotten so far removed from the intent of the
Torah, that certain rabbinic leaders would not even allow a person to be
healed on the day of rest. (Luke 13:14-16) The Spirit of the Sabbath was
a day of rest and refreshment according to the Torah, not a day of
legalistic bondage and insensitivity.
Nowhere does Yeshua teach or example that either abandoning the Torah,
or teaching others to do so, is God's will; and since Yeshua was
addressing an almost exclusively Jewish audience, His meaning was clear.
The rulings of His Shalichim later affirm and expand upon this.
II. What Did The Shalichim (Apostles) Teach About Jewish Believers
Relationship To The Torah? Did Yeshua's Death and Resurrection Change
Things So That New Testament Teaching On This Subject Was Different
After Yeshua's Death Than Before It?
The Apostles taught (after the Resurrection of Yeshua) that for Jewish
believers, it was God's will that they retain their Torah-life and
Jewish cultural life which did not conflict with Scripture. What has
confused church-going Jewish believers is that the Apostles did
dis-obligate the non-Jewish believers from observing either the
ceremonial and separative laws in the Torah and the Jewish customs.
These edicts are recorded in Acts 15 and Acts 21. Let us examine them
here.
A. Acts 15
After Paul had won masses of non-Jews to faith in the Yeshua as Messiah
(or "Iyaysoos Kristos" as they called Him in the Greek-speaking world),
the question was raised as to whether or not the non-Jewish believers
had to "become Jews" by being circumcised, adopting the practice of the
entire Law of Moses, and observing Jewish ceremonial and festival
commandments (Acts 15:5).
The Apostles' concluded that God's will was not for non-Jews to become
Jews: it was for non-Jews to receive salvation. As long as the non-Jews
who believed repented from general immorality and idolatrous practices,
they did not need to adopt all that God has given to the Jewish nation
by way of covenant obligations. (Acts 15:19-20) The involvement of the
non-Jews in Jewish practice is made voluntary in verse 21, citing the
availability of Jewish synagogual worship everywhere. Hence, if they
wish to practice their faith in a Jewish context they have the means
within reach to do so. It is important to note that nowhere do any of
the Apostles condemn the existence or the use of Jewish worship
practices.
This entirely agrees with the teaching of the Torah, for the Torah
nowhere provides any mechanism by which a non-Jew can "become a Jew".
Biblically, there is no such thing as "conversion," if the word
conversion is taken to mean making a non-Jew into an actual Jew. The
most they can attain is the standing of what the Torah calls a "ger"
(male) or "gera" (female). The definition of such a person is a non-Jew
who feels a calling to live in and among the Jewish people, and adopt
our ways and practices. While God commands us to treat such a person in
a totally non-discriminatory way, He also draws certain limitations upon
the ingrafting. One example is that the ger can eat certain foods not
permitted to the Jewish people (Deuteronomy 14:21). Non-Jews were
permitted to affix themselves to the Jewish nation, and participate in
its spiritual inheritence, but they were never made "Jewish" (a
blood-descendant of Abraham) by such a choice.
B. Acts 21 . Circumcision, The Torah (Law) & Jewish Customs: Asked And
Answered
While Paul strongly defends the Gentiles from the error of seeking
salvation through observance of Jewish custom and rite, he goes out of
his way in Jerusalem to disprove rumors that he was "teaching Jews who
live among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, not to circumcise their sons,
nor to observe the customs (of the Jewish people)." (Acts 21:21) Let us
examine this text carefully, for its teaching has immense implications.
The doctrine mentioned above which Paul was accused to be teaching is
perfectly clear, and has two components:
i. Paul was rumored to be teaching Jews who live among non-Jews to
forsake the Torah, and even the rite of circumcision given to Abraham by
God.
ii. Paul was teaching the Jews who live among non-Jews to forsake the
customs (or in Greek, the eqesin ethee-seen) of the Jewish people.
It is imperative to note that Acts 21:15-25 is a definitive biblical
treatment of these doctrinal issues for all time. No matter what
seventeen centuries of church practice might say, if the Scriptures
teach otherwise, it is the seventeen centuries of tradition which must
be abandoned, not the Word of God!
The first false accusation was that Paul was teaching Jews to abandon
the Torah. If that were Paul's opinion, this would have been the perfect
time to state it. The Apostles also could have demanded that Paul make a
clear statement to the population of Jerusalem's Jewish leadership that
he was standing for a new approach; one in which Jewish customs and even
Torah observance were obsolete for Jewish followers of Yeshua
("Messianic Jews"). Instead, the Council of The Apostles makes the exact
opposite demand! They tell Paul that these rumors about him must be
shown to be false, and they give him a plan to follow which will make a
clear demonstration to all of Jerusalem that "... concerning these
things which they were told about you are nothing; but that you yourself
still walk in order, keeping the Torah." (Acts 21:24)
Is there anything unclear about this at all? Does it leave anything to
the imagination? Both the issues of Torah observance and Jewish custom
are raised, and we are given the opinions of the Apostles, James The
Just (or more accurately, Jacob the Tzaddik), and Paul. They all agree
without one dissenting voice! Some arguers against an New Testament
incumbency upon Jewish believers to retain the Acts 21 inventory say
that they are willing (how gracious of them) to observe circumcision
because it is "Abrahamic", or pre-dating the Mosaic Law: but the
Apostles made no such distinction in Acts 21. They dealt with
circumcision (Abrahamic Covenent), the Torah (Mosaic Covenant) and
Jewish customs (no covenantal source) in one lump. Clearly, their focus
was the preservation of the Jewish faith and national identities in the
face of a new phase of the plan of God. However, they also agreed, as
per the decisions in Acts 15, that heritage of Israel is not binding
upon non-Jews: only the general moral and anti-idolatrous directives
given there and repeated in Acts 21:25.
There is, therefore, perfect harmony between the teachings of the Yeshua
and His Apostles: they all agree upon this point: Messianic Jews are not
to cease to observe what Torah is possible to observe, and they are not
to abandon their Jewish culture for another culture when they become
believers in Yeshua. There is no unclarity to these teachings at all.
I have actually heard some sources in the church, in order to justify
the prevailing church-view towards "Judaizing", accuse Paul and the
Apostles of "slipping into 'man-pleasing'" here, and that this was not a
"good decision" by them. They were just giving in to their Jewish side,
and that the church developed into a better understanding of these
issues: an understanding which abolishes all the things Yeshua said He
did not come to abolish, says Yeshua's crucifixion fulfills "all things"
and entirely ignores the timing statement Yeshua put in His support of
Torah (it would endure as long as the sun and moon in the heaven held
their places in the heavens), and contradicts all that the Apostles
decided in two momentous councils held in Jerusalem! This view is very
hard to support biblically, and it is even harder to support
historically, as you will see in the next section.
III. What Does History Have To Say About The Life-styles Of The Jewish
Followers Of Yeshua In The Era After Yeshua and The Apostles Lived?
In the writings of Iraeneaus, a 2nd-century Messianic leader who was
taught by a student of the Apostles themselves, tells us of the Apostles
and the First-Century Messianic Jews, or "Nazarenes" as the were called:
"They themselves continued in the ancient observances: the Apostles
scrupulously acted in accord with the dispensation of Mosaic law."
AGAINST HERESIES III:23:15
Is that not perfectly clear statement? History outside the Bible records
that the Apostles acted just as Acts 21 says they did: they did not
abandon either "Moses" (the Torah) or "the customs" (of the Jewish
people), nor did they teach others to do so. In this they were following
The Master's (Yeshua's) teaching in Matthew 23:2-3.
Further on this point, the 4th-century historian Epiphanius records
about Yeshua's first-century to third-century followers ...
"They are mainly Jews and nothing else. They make use not only of the
New Testament, but the Old Testament of the Jews; they do not forbid the
books of the Torah, the Writings or the Prophets. So they are approved
by the Jews, from whom the Nazarenes do not differ in anything... except
they believe in (Yeshua as the) Messiah." PANARION XXX:18, XXXIV:7
So, Scripturally and historically the view that Jewish believers in
Yeshua should retain the bulk of their religious and cultural heritage
is on completely established ground. The view advocating or casually
permitting Jewish believers to abandon Jewish practice and identity is
not. It is simply confusing God's directives towards believing non-Jews
with God's directives towards Messianic Jews. The decrees in Acts 15 and
Acts 21, as well as Paul's behavior whenever he was ministering to his
own people, leave no room for doubt as to what the responsibilities of a
saved-Jew are. No Jew is saved by the Law, but no Jew is authorized to
casually abandon it, nor teach others to do so. This comes from the
mouth of Yeshua, Himself. (Matthew 5:17-19)
DISCLAIMER . The aforementioned conclusions do not translate into an
advocacy for Jewish believers to swallow talmudic Jewish practice whole!
I advocate the "SEA" test.
S = Scriptural. Is the practice in question biblically based, extracted,
or advised?
E = Elevating. Does the practice help spiritual life or hinder it?
A = Authentic/Accurate. Is the practice carefully or carelessly
undertaken? Is it being practiced in such a way as to engender a view of
Messianic Judaism as scholastically and culturally respectful of Jewish
life and culture; or does it taste of casualness, shallow research,
and/or lack of acquaintence with Jewish history and traditional
practice?
If the practices pass the SEA test, they are probably in the sphere of
practices a Messianic Jew or Messianic synagogue should embrace. While
there is no desire in any Messianic leadership fo which I am aware to
make mandatory the observances of Messianic assemblies denominationally,
there is a sincere desire in many Messianic leaders to see the amount of
spiritually life-radiant, credibly and authentically Jewish practice
increase among the synagogual movement's adherents.
IV. Why Does "The Church" Often Teach That Against The Doctrines Above
By Saying That To Maintain Either Torah-Pratice or Jewish Culture Is To
"Come Under The Law", and That "Judaizing" Is "Rebuilding The Partition
Wall"?
The simplest answer to that question is to point out that almost all of
"the Church" is non-Jewish. The things they are saying do indeed hold
true FOR THEM: if anyone were to teach non-Jews that in order to be
saved, or to walk out their salvation correctly, they need to be
circumcised (men only, of course) and/or to practice the ceremonial and
covenental laws in the Torah, they would be wrong. That would indeed be
bondage. It would be creating a separating wall between such non-Jewish
believers and the rest of the Church.
However, this teaching, which is entirely correct for non-Jewish
believers, is entirely incorrect for Jewish ones. The New Testament
never teaches anywhere that Jews are, upon accepting Yeshua, to abandon
even one iota of Torah practice which is possible to observe. It teaches
the exact opposite, and historical sources outside the Bible completely
confirm the accuracy of this statement. The Church's error has been to
apply God's directives concerning them to the Jews. Let us examine this
error in detail, and see what truth the Scriptures hold forth.
The Heart Of The Error Can Be Seen In How Galatians Is Misinterpreted
The primary error I have encountered in my years in the ministry is
well-embodied by the standard view of certain passages in the book of
Galatians. In his Letter To The Galatians, Shauel (Paul) writes to
address a problem: some mis-informed Jewish believers from Israel
visited Galatia and told the non-Jewish Galatian believers that if they
did not become Jews by circumcision and bypractice of the entire Torah,
they were not truly saved (Acts 15:24). THIS is what "Judaizing" truly
is, and it is wrong and it is bondage.
However, to apply this edict concerning Gentiles to the Jewish people is
to entirely ignore the rest Galatians, as well as the rest of the New
Testament! Galatians 3:28 is often misapplied by reciting the first part
of it, and not examining its entire sense: "There is (in the New
Testament dispensation) neither Jew nor Greek ..." is chanted to say
that there are now no differences between Jew and Gentile, and that all
differences in religious practice and national identity should therefore
be done away with. Yet, the passage does not end there.
It goes on to say " ... there is neither slave nor free, there is
neither male nor female; for you are all one in Messiah Yeshua." If we
were to apply the same logic as most of the church uses in the first
line to the rest of the verse, then it would naturally follow that since
there is no longer any difference between slave and free, all the
workers in any company can now go straight up to the executive suite and
sit down in the President's chair, kick back their feet on the desk ,
and light up one of his best cigars. Further, if there is no longer any
difference between male and female, then any saved person may now enter
the locker-room of the opposite sex any time they wish!
Of course, the worker mentioned in the first example will be fired, and
the locker-room visitor in the second example will go to jail. Why?
Because Galatians is not saying that these differences no longer exist
or have meaning in the real world ... Paul was writing that these things
mean nothing with regard to how a person gets saved! Jew, Greek, master,
worker, male, female all get saved the same way: by repenting from sin
and turning in faith to God to receive atonement through the finished
work of Yeshua The Messiah. Galatians does not teach that Jewishness is
wrong or bad. It teaches that Non-Jews are not required to adopt the
mandates upon the Jewish people in order to receive salvation.
V. Did God Nullify "Kosher" In Peter's Acts 10 Vision?
No, God did not. When people have cited this passage (Acts 10:9-28) to
support the idea that New Testament life is devoid of any Torah
observance, they treat this Scripture very carelessly, and ignore what
it states clearly. Peter had a problem left over from his days as a
rabbinically observant Jew (and he was such, as Acts 10:14 tells us
clearly!): he still had the rabbinic pattern of entire separation from
contact with Gentiles imbedded in his heart. Even though God had called
Peter as an apostle specifically sent to the Jewish people and NOT to
Gentiles (Galatians 2:7-8), God wanted him to have a heart of mercy
towards the Gentiles and not regard them as unclean. If Peter had
understood Isaiah 49:6ff more clearly, perhaps this whole episode might
have been unnecessary, but it seems that only Paul understood from the
start of his Messianic life that God had a heart for the Gentiles
(Ephesians 3:1-8) as God said in Isaiah 49.
So God spoke to Peter in a vision, in which all kinds of non-Kosher
animals were before Peter, and a voice came telling Peter to eat some of
this "trayf" (non-Kosher food). We are told by Peter that he "pondered
the vision to understand its meaning", and when he arrived at an
understanding of what God was trying to tell him, he states the message
for us clearly:
"You know it is (rabbinically) unlawful for a Jewish man to keep company
with Gentiles: but God has shown me that I should not call ANY MAN
common or unclean." Acts 10:28
What Peter's vision meant (10:17) is that Jews are not to regard
non-Jews as inherently unclean, or even common (Hebrew = hol, for lower,
unholy use). Messianic Jews are to fellowship with non-Jews ... but that
does translate into abandoning our culture and adopting theirs! It
cannot, when Messiah and all His Apostles taught against doing that very
thing! This passage is never explained by Peter or anyone as nullifying
the kosher laws for Jews!
When Paul talks about issues of freedom related to this in Romans, he
simply lays down the principle that a believer should not wound a
brother or refuse fellowship to him by making food an issue. This is a
common manner of relating to mitzvoht in the Torah ... putting people
ahead of ceremonial principles. The rabbis have a maxim called "P'kuach
Nefesh" or the "rescue of a soul," which permits any law to be broken if
a life or soul is rescued by such breakage. We get glimpses in the New
Testament of the apostles walking in this "freedom" [Romans 14:13-23,
Galatians 2:12], but these exceptions made for the sake of fellowship
can in no way be established as a new rule to abandon kashrut entirely,
and dine on lobster freely at whim! Again, to do so would be to directly
contradict the teaching of Yeshua in Matthew 7 and the Apostles in Acts
15 and 21.
VI. Didn't Yeshua Declare "All Foods Clean" In Mark 7:19? Doesn't That
Teach A Nullification Of Kosher Laws, and hence, The Torah?
This passage cannot teach a nulliication of the Torah or it would be a
direct contradiction of Yeshua's statement in Matthew concerning
"nullifying even the least of the Torah commandments, or teaching others
to do so." The end of the passage has been translated in some versions
of the Bible "Thus He declared all food to be clean." but that is not
what the greek text says. The words "Thus He declared" do not appear IN
THE GREEK TEXT of the New Testament! Those words are added by many
modern church-translators to convey the doctrinal position that Yeshua
was nullifying Kashrut (biblical kosher law). The Greek text simply
says:
"kai eis ton afedroma ekporeuetai katharizon[one] panta ta bromata"
"and into the drain (intestine) it (digested food) goes out (of the
body) purifying all the food"
Yeshua was simply teaching that eating foods without ritually washing
one's hands before eating had no power to defile your spirit. That was
the context of this teaching, by the way, and not the laws of Kashrut.
The issue of kosher never even entered into this discussion. I am sure
I do not need to spend large amounts of time defending a doctrine based
on words which have been ADDED to the text of Scripture. (For an
excellent treatment of this issue, I heartily recommend the paper on
Jewish Practice by Dr. John Fischer of Menorah Ministries, in Florida.)
I have seen arguers for disobligation from Kashrut attempt to say that
the sense of this passage concerning hand-washing cannot be "confined"
to its direct sense; it can and should be expanded to include kashrut..
I must disagree. The first rule of hermeneutics (biblical exposition) is
"It says what it says." To expand this principle beyond hand-washing
with no direct ground, in a quasi-rabbinic kal v'chomer (lower to higher
premise) reasoning, is unjustified. One could as easily reason that
because a man is allowed in the Torah to nullify his daughter's rash
vows, all people can at all times nullify all their vows. We cannot
nullify things of greater force (directly written Torah, like kashrut)
because things of lesser legal force (man-originated customs, like
ritual hand-washing) have been shown to be unnecessary. This is
hermeneutically and logically unsound.
VII. Are You Telling Me That As A New Testament Believing Jew, I Need To
Buy And Use Two Sets Of Dishes, Eat Only Foods From Kosher Markets, and
Observe All The Rituals That Orthodox Jews Do?
No, I am not saying that. Just as Yeshua did, we also must make a
distinction between Scripture and tradition. I, as a Messianic Jew, keep
Biblically kosher. I do not eat pork, shellfish, fish with no scales
(like shark) or any of the other foods which the Bible directly tells me
I, as a Jew, should not eat. I do not have to keep all the Talmudic
kosher rules, many of which are not directly based upon Scripture, but
upon the Talmudic rabbis' opinions. For example: I have no problem with
a cheeseburger, because I do not see any prohibition in the Scriptures
to eating milk and meat together: I see only one commandment not to boil
a calf in its own mother's milk (Exodus 23:19), and I do not believe
that fulfilling that commandment means never allowing milk and meat to
touch.