Response from Gila: 16th August 2006

B^^H

Dear Simon

Thank you for taking the trouble to read my message and for replying to me and raising various points.

Gila: Judaism is entirely different conceptually from any Christian or Messianic understandings or versions of it.  If you believe in the theology of G-d, the Holy Spirit and Yeshua and that you need blood atonement for your sins in the shape of a Jewish man nailed to a cross then you are a Christian, whether you consider yourself Messianic, Jewish, Hebrew or not.  Such a theology is complete anathema to the Jewish understanding of the Tanach.

Simon: Thanks for replying back but I see you have failed to answer my points I raised earlier by reference to any Biblical verse. 

You do make blanket statements but fail to backup with even one scripture reference.  Can you give me a reference for this so called theology of God you mention in the Tenach?  Can you also point me where in the Tenach it says I am a Christian based on what you assumed above?  Scripture, reference, verse please?

I might say some people have the eyes to see it and some don’t but I won’t accuse you of spiritual blindness since you fail to see what is read almost daily in synagogues the very theology you deny is in Genesis chapter 22 what is termed the Akeedah.  You know without atonement the destiny of any man/woman is Sheol right now and lake of fire later and you can never come out of that punishment no matter how much Judaism you follow.

Exo 29:36    "And each day you shall offer a bull as a sin offering for atonement, and you shall purify the altar when you make atonement for it; and you shall anoint it to consecrate it.

Who is your high priest and where is your Temple?  NO High Priest, No Temple!  We have a high priest Yahu-Shua and He fulfils this important mitzvoth or me for my eternity.

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Gila: I would refer you to a book clearly and sensitively showing the differences between us conceptually called The Teacher and the Preacher.  You can order it via http://www.shorashim-emagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=6&id=16&Itemid=52

It is designed to be read by Jews and Christians alike and gives a Jewish response to all the major disagreements and faulty translations of the Hebrew that Christians tend to use.

Simon:  Yes I would love to read another polemic but the discussion at hand is THE WAY to Yahuweh, you said you don’t believe in Messiah or blood atonement and you referred to this as Christian.

Gila: While I am delighted that you have found the right path for you to G-d and that He has shown you what that is for you, I would argue strongly for the existence of more than one path to Him.   He has clearly shown me something else - I have not begun to go into all the things that happened along the way to bring me to become the Jew I was supposed to be, how what came alive inside myself as well as the incredible help of Hashem to find my true path made it impossible to be anything else. 

Simon:  I would like for you once again to show me verse reference for this alternative path please?

Gila: But there is a very big difference since I have been to the mikvah.  There I truly received a new soul - a higher, more whole, peaceful one than the one that I had before.  Accepting all 613 mitzvot before 3 shomer shabbat Jewish dayanim and then going to the mikvah and affirming my complete acceptance also before 3 shomer shabbat Jewish dayanim as well as the full disavowal of any previous religion is what allowed that transformation to happen. 

Simon:  To be blunt, in the Tenach this is termed apostasy since you rejected the Messiah and have simply adopted Rabbinic oral Torah.  I once again implore you to show me how is your soul different to mine according to scripture?

Gila: But that was after a tremendously difficult and life-changing process which took some considerable time.  And in addition, what I essentially had in my soul before that - the Jewish spark inside which Hashem brought to life and helped to grow - had to be there from the very beginning to allow me to reach the place where I simply HAD to be a Jew and to be a part of the Jewish people in order to be whole and to have the relationship with Hashem that I was always meant to have. 

Simon:  A Jewish spark this seems very Rabbinic thought.  So if the God of Israel did not create someone as a Jew to be saved then can we accuse him of bigotry?  I am afraid you are mistaken about this Jewish spark.  There are only two types of souls in the world and this is what prophet Daniel termed those that will rise to eternal life or those that will rise for damnation (Dan 12:2), I fear you are on the ones to everlasting shame ladder and you need to re-examine your whole outlook.  The principle for any soul Jew or otherwise is blood atonement, I have it you don’t.

Gila: As someone who has some good memories of some very good, wonderful and loving people within Christianity, I am pleased that a former Muslim such as yourself has found fellowship amongst such people. 

Simon:  There is good and bad everywhere and we Christian people also have our shortcomings just like the Jewish people but least we have the Messiah Yahushua unlike my dying Judahite brothers/sisters have nothing but good memories.  Memories won’t help in Sheol.

Gila: But if you were not born of a Jewish mother or have had a halachic legal conversion to Judaism, then you are not Jewish, whatever may be your understanding of what is written in the NT which is not part of the Jewish holy writings. 

Simon:  This halacha I am afraid is a man made one because Yahuweh does not see it this way and you simply bought in the misinformation from the Rabbis.  Whether you see NT as scripture or not the difference is having the Messiah/Son or not and sadly you do not have the Messiah/Son thus do not have eternal life but you have been warned and you have no excuse.

Gila: There is no concept of being grafted in unless you go through a halachic orthodox conversion to Judaism. 

Simon:  Can you tell me what halachic conversion did Abraham go through?

What about Isaac?  This interpretation is a twisted one made up by orthodox Rabbis and has no validity according to the Tenach.  Yahushua was right they neither enter the kingdom of Yahuweh nor let others enter in (Matt 23:13).

Gila: I would not dream of suggesting, if you were not born of a Jewish mother, that you should become a Jew.  It is a demanding but also very rewarding path for those for whom it is designed. 

Simon:  Why would I want to become a Jew?  Yet all the Jews recite in their prayers to remember their father Abraham who was an Assyrian by the way (Deut 9:27, Joshua 24:2) funny isn’t it?

I am a Hebrew and am perfectly happy to be like my father Abraham (Gen 14:13).

Gila: But no Jew would ever suggest to a gentile - and a gentile simply means a non-Jew, whatever that person~s religion - that he or she should take on more than the seven Noachide laws required by G-d. 

Simon: Then why is it that Yahuweh called Israel “goy” Gen 35:11 the so called term for gentiles?  Can you give me scripture reference where it says people who live according to the Rabbinical created Noachide laws would be qualified righteous?

Gila: You need to follow the path that Hashem has shown you.  But please do not assume that that means that path is the right one for everybody, because it most definitely is not. 

Simon:  I certainly am and will do and is the right path for All people in the world but those that are stubborn like yourself there is only one way and that is down in Sheol sorry to say.

Gila: Being Jewish does not necessarily mean being of the tribe of Judah, even though that is the derivation of the word.  It is to do with a particular type of soul.  You are either born it or become one.  Period. 

Simon:  You have put a smile on my face thanks be to Yahuweh I was not born Jew but am accepted into the family of Messiah just like father Abraham by faith.  I would rather come from a Muslim background than a backslidden Jew who has no eternity and that soul you keep talking about can only go one way without the blood atonement Lev 17:11 and that is down into Sheol.  The way Yahuweh sees it Jew is Judah only and yes you can argue today for Benjamin but that is still a tribe even if a small one, you do not convert to become a Jew but an Israelite of the twelve tribes yet you have no knowledge on this.

Gila: Yes there are the ten tribes who were lost, and maybe those of us who are converting are actually descendants of those people (in my case, there was definitely some Jewish blood on my father~s side from some way back, but because my mother was not a Jew I still needed to convert in order to become one and to take on all the legal obligations given in the Torah for Jews).  Your quotation from Genesis 12 misses the point. 

Simon:  I am sorry there is no such thing as become a Jew because now you simply contradict your earlier statement.  You become Hebrew not Jew or you become an Israelite and again not Jew and yes you are right Judah is the race and not the religion but lets not confuse the issue, a sinning Jew is no better than a sinning gentile.

Gila: All the families of the earth have or will be blessed by Abraham~s calling by and response to G-d. 

Simon:  Yes and I have made that response.  Hallelu-Yah.

Gila: The Jews are the light unto the nations, and from the Jews have ultimately come all the major ethical teachings of sanctity of human life, equal justice, family values, world peace etc. 

Simon:  Sorry Gila I don’t want to sound anti-Semitic but yes Jews have given the world much but the Jews are not the light of the world but Israel is and that means the 12 tribes, the Jews, Judah is but only one tribe so don’t fool yourself.  Please go study your Tenach.

Gila: even if two other major religions that came later and which have taken these values from the Jews and spread them across the world - Christianity and Islam - have skewed the Jewish theological understanding somewhat.  If Hashem revealed Himself to Abraham to any degree how He revealed Himself to me, then there was nothing physical whatsoever about it. 

Simon:  I am sorry but Islam has no part in with true Biblical faith and as for Judaism in its various orthodox flavors today people following it cannot enter the kingdom of Yahuweh and are only setting themselves up for satanic deception.  Yahuweh revealed Himself to Abraham physically as a man and Gen 18 is proof text that no Rabbi can refute whether you believe it or not it is your eternity you are taking a chance on.  What you are following the hybrid Judaism will never get you on the other side but all I can say is nice try but it won’t work.

Gila: My own experience lay totally in the spiritual realm and I was literally in the infinite presence of the One True G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 

Simon:  Once again you contradict yourself since you do not even believe in His physical presence.

Gila: The passage you mention in Genesis 18 does not have anything to do with any existence of a triune being.  My understanding of Abraham~s attention to the three men is that it shows how highly important he understood the meeting of needs of human beings, even leaving his communion with Hashem temporarily to attend to their needs. 

Simon:  You only regurgitate what the orthodox Rabbis say and frankly they were or are ALL wrong and right now crying for mercy.

Gila: This is reflected in the high importance within Judaism of loving one~s fellow human being as oneself (JC was NOT the originator of this idea).

Simon:  Yahushua is the creator and is the originator and the ender of this idea.

Gila: The rabbinic system is simply designed to fulfill the desires of Hashem expressed in the Torah as completely, healthily and wholly as possible.

Simon:  How about men deceiving themselves to do something just not possible. 

Gila: There is a very different understanding of the role of sacrifices in Judaism from that of Christianity - for a start many, such as incense and the flour offering, had nothing to do with blood in the first place.  Human sacrifice is expressly forbidden in Judaism.  And for intentional, as opposed to unintentional, sins only one way of atonement sufficed - remedy for the wrong done to a human being to be made first to that person, true repentance to G-d and a resolve not to repeat the wrong.  Sin does not separate G-d from man, but it separates man from G-d - a crucial difference of understanding between us.  And there are many references to how G-d forgives sins in the Tanach - I would refer you to the book I mentioned above which explains this whole misunderstanding by Christians of atonement is not that understood in the Jewish tradition of the Tanach.

Simon:  Either way to cut the chase without the Temple you cannot atone for your sin.  No Yom Kippur no sin removal, sorry no pass go, no collect 200, go to jail, remember monopoly.

Gila: The suffering servant in Isaiah 42 and 53 refers to Israel, the Jews.

Simon:  No they don’t since Israel never suffered and Israel did not pay for the penalty of my sin, it will be foolish to call Israel “a man of sorrorws”  “cut off” , what stripes did Israel take on my behalf, last time I went to the Israeli airport they in fact gave me plenty of grief instead.   If it refers to Israel then Isaiah must be a gentile and last I checked he wasn’t so you only deceive yourself.

Gila: There is a completely different conception of the Messiah within Judaism from that understood in Christianity.  Basically the early Christians, whom you might describe as Messianic Jews, changed that concept and found every text they could in the Tanach to try to make JC fit.  But he did not restore the Temple (which  had not yet been destroyed) or usher in a period of world peace and was never conceived as being a divine being, which as only the incorporeal G-d is deserving of our worship - to worship any human being is idol worship - a divine human being is complete anathema to the Jewish understanding of the Tanach.

Simon:  He did not have to, He will do these things on His return so your understanding is wrong just like your forefathers standing in Jerusalem who rejected Him. 

Gila: Simon, I fear we are never going to begin to agree.  But before you criticize true Judaism - and orthodox simply means correct practice - I would suggest that you spend some time studying what Jews truly believe and if you can find the opportunity, also very importantly, of living it.  You have to live it and immerse yourself in it because Judaism is all about how we live our lives to come closer to Hashem - but it will make complete sense to you, over time, if it is the right path for you.

Simon:  I know enough about Judaism to know that this Judaism is nothing but men’s ideas.  I already live true Biblical Judaism with my Messiah without which you have no hope. 

Gila: I trust Hashem as to what happens when we die.  I have followed him with all my heart on the path that He has made clear to me, and will continue to do so.  There is only One G-d who declares in Isaiah that it is He and only He who creates good and creates evil and there is no Saviour or Redeemer apart from Him.  I think I~m in pretty good hands in trusting the Creator of the entire Universe.

Simon:  If you truly trusted Him then why did you reject His only Son?  You are full of contradictions, trusting in Him requires accepting His Son. 

Gila: My Hashem bless you on the path that He is leading you on to become a better person and to draw closer to Him, but may He also grant you (and all of us) the humility to see that He is infinite, His ways are not our ways, and none of us ultimately has the right to tell another how we should relate to Him.  We are all different, and each of us has a different relationship with Him, the way that a Jew relates to Hashem is different from that of a gentile, and I am truly glad to be a Jew.

With blessings from Jerusalem

Gila

Simon:  Yes may He open up your understanding and may you find truth in Messiah Yahu who truly saves.  Of course we have a right to tell people since we have the whole Bible then the scriptures are there to teach truth without which you cannot live the life you claim but I pray you come to a correct understanding before your death then it will be too late.  Blessings to you from London.

Shalom Shalom

Rav Simon