Recently in Judaism Category

Before Madonna, Ashton Kutchner, and The Kabbalah Center turned Jewish mysticism into the new Scientology, most of us had probably never heard of kabbalah (ed.’s note: I first read about it in Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum). But as with most things that are filtered through the prism of Hollywood, pop-kabbalah has little in common with the more traditional religious belief. According to Aaron from Aaron's Rantblog:

Now according to Jewish tradition, one shouldn’t learn kabbalah until one is 40, has already mastered scripture and Jewish law in the original Hebrew, and learns directly from a rabbi who is already a master of kabbalah in a class with no more than two pupils at a time. Typical kabbalistic masters are hardly well-off since directing its power selfishly is incongruous. Now you know why The Kabbalah Center is hardly kosher. Pop Kabbalah is like celebate orgy. It just ain’t what it’s named.

I don't know much about kabbalah. In fact, even though my favorite text is a collection of books, stories, histories, and wisdom written by or about Jews, I know far too little about Judaism in general. Fortunately, though, I know someone who does. When I need help discerning the "kosher" from the, er, non-kosher(?) I always turn to Leah Guildenstern. Leah is not only a solid, conservative blogger, she's also my primary resource in the blogosphere for rabbinic knowledge.

Unlike some of us, Leah isn't an obssesive blogger who feels the need to produce a daily stream of posts. Instead, she waits until she has something interesting to say. She rarely disappoints. Take, for example, her recent post in honor of Sephirat ha Omer, in which she developed a chart to classify different blogs according to the spheres on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. She graciously grouped me with Roger Simon and Little Green Footballs under the category of Yesod blogs:

With Chochma the idea was contracted and Bina expanded ideas, now that the ideas have been processed they must once again be summarized into a graspable concept that can be communicated to others. Yesod is this taking of the broad idea and encapsulating it into the seed of an idea to be passed on (and expanded once again.)

Interesting. Summarizing ideas that can be passed on into a graspable concept that can be communicated others. I like that. It sounds much better than saying that I take other people’s original ideas, put my insipid spin on them, and pass them on to the public.

Update: Aaron has taken Leah’s tree and put it into a graphical format:

As an evangelical Christian I have a deep-rooted affection for Judaism. Though my theological differences with the religion are profound, they cannot reduce the love I have for the children of Abraham and Moses. The story of the Hebrew people is, after all, my story too. So it saddens and frustrates me to see that my own belief denigrated by the very people I would give my life to defend.

The website of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, a group dedicated to strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship by emphasizing our nations shared values, presents some outrageous claims in an editorial on anti-Semitism:

The trouble with Mel Gibson's film "The Passion" is not the film itself, but the gospel story on which it's based. The gospel story, which has generated more anti-Semitism than the sum of all the other anti-Semitic writings ever written, created the climate in Christian Europe that led to the Holocaust. Long before the rise of Adolf Hitler, the gospel story about the life and death of Jesus had poisoned the bloodstream of European civilization.

The article then goes on to spout the usual nonsense about the 'historical Jesus" and pins the blame of anti-Semitic sentiment on Paul and the early Church. Finding this anti-Christian rant on the website of a respectable organization like the AICE is disturbing. Though they are not responsible for the sites content, I doubt the many members of the 'honorary committee" of the advisory board, which is composed of such esteemed members of Congress as Sen. Rick Santorum and Sen. Charles Shumer, would agree with the views of the editorial.

While Christian anti-Semitism has been a genuine threat throughout history, many Christians -- from Vatican II-era Catholics to American evangelicals -- have worked to prevent such attitudes from ever taking root again. To claim that our most sacred scriptures are the cause of this evil is not only counter-productive and disrespectful, but is itself an anti-Semitic claim. The Gospels, after all, are about the Christian God. A God who also happens to be a Jew.