Mishegas, Religion

Shlosha mi yodea–Who knows three?

And this from the Forward
The Passover Family Pack, which for $39.99 buys you two haggadot, a seder plate and a kiddush cup, is a messianic Haggadah which critics say is more of a disguised attempt at missionary work than it is a Haggadah.  Take this quote, for example:

One of the Messiah’s last earthly acts was the celebration of the Passover.  Gathering his disciples in a small room in Jerusalem, he led them in the seder.  “I have eagerly to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” (Luke 22:15) He passed the foods among them.  It was there, in the context of this celebration that Yeshua revealed to them the mystery of God’s plain redemption.  He spoke to them of his body and blood.  He explained to them that he would have to die.
It was no coincidence that Messiah chose the Passover for the setting of what is now celebrated as communion, the Lord’s supper.  For in the story of the Passover lamb, Yeshua could best communicate the course he would be taking over the confusing hours that were to follow.  Here, as we participate together in the Passover seder, may we experience  once again God’s great redemption.

Uhm… What now?  I’ve seen some crazy Haggadot in my days, but this one takes the thorny crown!  I’m actually pretty speechless right now.  So it seems to me that the issue is this– If they’re trying to “trick” Jews into buying this Haggadah and come to the surprise that it’s filled with Jesus references then this is a BIG problem.  If this is, as the publishers claim, an attempt to teach Christians about Jews… it’s still a BIG problem.
In my opinion, there is really no room for this kind of nonsense.  I can’t see how this encourages understanding of Jewish tradition at all, but rather seems to be a Judeo-philic appropriation that, at best, bastardizes our tradition and creates something which would surely have the Rabbis rolling in their k’varim.
But, hey, if the Rabbis could “out-Hellenize the Hellenists” by “Hebraicizing” the Symposium… I guess we had it coming.   But to quote a dear friend of mine, I suppose this can best be summed up by: “Ewh.”

14 thoughts on “Shlosha mi yodea–Who knows three?

  1. “…seems to be a Judeo-philic appropriation that, at best, bastardizes our tradition and creates something which would surely have the Rabbis rolling in their k’varim.”
    Yeah: Christianity.
    If this is a tool for getting Xians familiar with Jewish ritual and allowing them to make a Xian seder, they should market it as a Xian seder. But of course, this is the problem with J4J: they want to appropriate the name of Judaism, calling what they do Jewish even when it is Xian– and there is NO SUCH THING as a Jewish Xian.
    Stuff like this isn’t Judaizing the symposium– wherein the Rabbis took something non-Jewish, and radically transformed it into something Jewish, to the point where it was called something else, it had different rules, and it looked similar, but different– it’s just missionary mishugas, wherein a bunch of condescending Xians who think that they know best, and God will only love us if we do things Their Way, try to trick lonely, less-educated, spiritually seeking Jews into becoming Xians.
    Let’s be clear: most Xians I know are great people, fairly pluralist, very willing to believe that there are many paths to God. They don’t mess with my yiddishkeit, and I don’t mess with their jesuskeit. I’m not tarring all Christianity with one brush. But there are some who can’t seem to separate their faith from their chutzpah, and want to try and convert us all, even using trickery and deception. And these people have got to go.

  2. If you had enough faith in your own tradition, you wouldn’t be so alarmist about this. It’s not as if they’re forcing conversions by the sword.

  3. I don’t get this post. Plenty of Christians do Passover stuff with their churches, and there are also pockets of messianic Jews who do sedarim of various sorts. And I’m unclear why this book, of all things, is what would appall the sages – I saw a freaking S&M haggadah last year (as in, “last year, we were in bondage. This year, we are still in bondage!”). If we have various personal dislikes for certain things, than kol hakavod to us – but let’s not get on our sanctimonious “what would the rabbis say!” soapbox.
    And at the risk of starting an argument, I think that this statement…
    “there is NO SUCH THING as a Jewish Xian”
    …while understandable, is not that defensible, Jewishly speaking. But more importantly, I think that people might want to think less about who is and isn’t Jewish, and more about why they feel the need to determine who is and isn’t. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t good reasons to desire boundaries, but more to say that it wouldn’t kill us to do a little soul searching regarding our own fears and insecurities, instead of making declarations about others.

  4. miri-
    I’m not sure if your issue is with Amitai’s comment or my post, but my issue with the Haggadah is not that there are Christians who do s’darim, but rather that the Haggadah is packaged and presented in such a way that it is not apparent or clear that this is not intended for Jews, so much so that the book was put into Jewish sections of bookstores. That, to me, is the issue, not that non-Jews have an interest in Passover.

  5. lol. you guys are funny. just cause christians like to add some hebrew flavor to what they do doesn’t mean they’re all training to be undercover missionaries. you’re way too paranoid if you think that’s what stuff like this is about.

  6. just cause christians like to add some hebrew flavor to what they do doesn’t mean they’re all training to be undercover missionaries
    Actually, that’s exactly what some Jews for Yoshka groups do. They train and they study and plan and infiltrate shuls and target the less knowledgeable and the less social Jews. This is not a joke, it is very serious. One of the Jews in my shul was one of their top honchos for two decades. He practically wrote the manuals they use and every time he spots a J4Y in shul he drags him out by the ears.

  7. If you had enough faith in your own tradition, you wouldn’t be so alarmist about this.
    I’m not worried about me. I’m alarmed for the Jew who is unaffiliated and DOESN’T know enough to have faith in their tradition, and can be easily swayed by scoundrels who make it their life’s work to trick wayward Jews into worshiping Yoshka. This isn’t a joke. They’re not doing this for fun, and they have a track record. We should ALL be alarmed about J4Y groups and make our communities inhospitable to them.
    I think that people might want to think less about who is and isn’t Jewish, and more about why they feel the need to determine who is and isn’t.
    Some people should do as you say. Others should consider why they don’t feel the need to set those boundaries about who is and who is not Jewish.

  8. As someone who grew up very secular and ignorant about Judaism, I don’t actually worry about these because I feel that someone who would be taken in by something so transparent probably wants to be taken in. Whatever I didn’t know about being Jewish, one thing I knew for sure is that we absolutely were not Christian. And there’s always going to be people who are dissatisfied with their own tradition and find something else more meaningful. That’s their choice.
    But I don’t see these as benign, either. There’s been a big increase in this type of stuff and targeting of Jews for conversion by evangelical Christians, and it’s tied up with their ideas about the end of the world. They think widespread conversion of Jews is one of the signs of the End Times. So I do find it offensive that they view Jewish people basically as a tool for their ends, and I don’t see this as your friendly, neighborhood multiculturalism.

  9. it’s offensive and the idea of the blood of Jesus is a complete turn off. not part of Passover. they are nefarious. the arm twisting born agains are dangerous no matter how one’s faith.

  10. As a member of a relatively small Jewish community growing up, I helped lead model seders for some of my Christian classmates’ congregations. My family also invited Christian friends over for our own seders. I have now spent a good part of my academic career teaching Christians about Judaism, including Passover. The Christians in question wanted to know how a seder worked — whether because they were interested in recapturing what they imagined as Jesus’ observance, because they were curious about the Last Supper, or because they had been told it was part of their Sunday-school curriculum. But it was perfectly clear to everyone in those very different settings that seders were a Jewish thing and that explicitly Christian doctrine was not a normal part of a normal seder. What bothers me about the “Passover Family Pack” is that it violates both those norms. It’s not the first half of the first century C.E. (I’m sure everyone noticed the absence of the korban pesach last year), and at pretty much any point since then it would be — and is — remarkably disingenuous to claim that “Jewish Christians” are just another type of Jew.

  11. “Miri, is it being closed-minded to say that certain beliefs aren’t acceptable in Judaism?”
    Sure. And who said that being close-minded is always bad?
    But again, I think that we might want to attend more closely to the question of why we want to say that “certain beliefs aren’t acceptable in Judaism” such that if someone were to espouse such a thing, it would place them entirely outside the fold. Moreover, why are certain things beyond the pale, but other things that many Jews do daily (for instance, transgress the laws of kashrut, or reject the existence of G-d) perhaps problematic, but certainly not world-ending?

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