In this latest episode of Hebrew Voices #213 - A Bridge Between Worlds: Part 1, “Digital” Pastor Jim joins Nehemia to discuss common ground between Christians and Jews. Jim brings a very level-headed approach to promote meaningful interfaith dialogue.

I look forward to reading your comments!

PODCAST VERSION:

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: What’s your view on the Torah? Let’s start with that.

Jim: Yeah, so I think the Torah is the foundation of all Scripture. We interpret everything in Scripture, from a Christian perspective, from the Torah first. So, I look at the prophets from the Torah. I look at the New Testament from the Torah. The Apostle Paul, I think if you study him well you realize he wasn’t teaching against the Torah. Now, some denominations say that he was, but he wasn’t. Jesus, Yeshua, said, “I’ve not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to plerou them,” “to fulfill them.”

Nehemia: I’ve read that somewhere.

Jim: Yeah, I bet you have, yeah.

Nehemia: You’ve got there Matthew 5:17. Keep reading, guys, through like, verse 19. Don’t stop in 17.

Jim: Yeah, exactly.

Nehemia: Alright. Shalom and welcome to Hebrew Voices! I’m here with Digital Pastor Jim. Shalom, Jim. How are you doing?

Jim: Shalomie, my homie. How are you?

Nehemia: Pretty good. Jim, where are you located?

Jim: I’m in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Nehemia: Okay. I’m on the east coast of the U.S. right now, although behind me you see a virtual background, which is from the Bologna University Library. I took that photo there.

I’ve been following some of the stuff you do on TikTok, and what I was really fascinated about what I’m seeing is that you get clobbered from two different sides. And I think I’m kind of surprised at some of the interactions you’re getting. And look, that’s the nature of TikTok; people make a video and then somebody else stitches it, and so there’s this kind of confrontational dialogue.

But I wouldn’t have expected, I guess, coming from my perspective, that the people who are coming at you… and you tell me… well, why don’t you tell us? What are some of these interactions, whatever the word is, these interactions that you’re having with different perspectives online?

Jim: Yeah, yeah. I look at it as a healthy debate. Sometimes people get hostile, and I don’t appreciate hostility, but my goal is to respond in a kind, loving, in my opinion, a godly way, and not react with hostility towards those who attack me with hostility.

So, a little bit of my personal story. I was raised Lutheran originally, and I became a believer at 13 years old and got into Assembly of God. Pentecostal for a little while, Charismatic, Vineyard, Calvary Chapel, if you’re, like, any of those groups or denominations, it’s not important. And then I was a Calvary Chapel pastor here in Colorado Springs, an associate pastor for several years. And so, we teach chapter by chapter, verse by verse, Calvary Chapel, that’s their moniker, and we try to really ground people in a good biblical way.

Nehemia: What I know about Calvary Chapel, or what I think I know, because I’ve heard this from people, is that they’re pro-Israel, is that right?

Jim: Extremely pro-Israel.

Nehemia: Okay. I met a woman once who was Jewish, and she was a Messianic Jew, and she told me the way she ended up making aliyah and moving to Israel was that she was just a regular Sunday Christian in Calvary Chapel. And everyone’s like, “What are you doing here? We want all the Jews to move to Israel.” She’s like, “Why would I move to Israel?” And that’s how she ended up making aliyah eventually. So, that’s the only thing I know about Calvary Chapel.

Jim: Oh, yeah, yeah. Calvary Chapel is part of what’s called, usually euphemistically, the Jesus People Movement in the 70’s and 80’s…

Nehemia: Really?

Jim: …led by Pastor Chuck Smith in southern California.

Nehemia: I’m not sure I know fully what that is. Maybe we’ll come back to it, but alright. So, you were a pastor at Calvary Chapel.

Jim: Yeah, so technically it’s not a denomination, it’s an association. But we teach the Bible verse by verse, chapter by chapter. We’re very, very pro-Israel. And then one day I heard the Shema prayer for the first time, and I didn’t know what it meant. I had no idea, in Hebrew, and I wept.

Nehemia: Let’s assume some of the audience doesn’t know what it is. Why don’t you tell them?

Jim: Yeah. Shema prayer is Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 4 and 5. And I still get emotional, seven years ago, just thinking about it. It’s, “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might, with all your strength.” And of course, Jesus, Yeshua, quoted that when the Pharisees and Sadducees came and told him to sum up the Law and the Prophets, and then he added Leviticus 19:18, “And love your neighbor as yourself.” And so, I heard the Shema prayer, and I wept, I wept uncontrollably. And so, I had to find out what it meant. So, I started studying, and usually one of the first people you come across is Michael Rood on The Rood Awakening. You know Michael, and that’s where I saw you teach as well for the first time. And Michael is larger than life. I’m sure he’s like that in real life as well.

Nehemia: In real life he’s like that too! Like, sitting in his living room, there’s no difference! What you see is what you get! In his living room, it’s the same as him being on stage.

Jim: Yeah, I kind of figured that! And so, then I saw your interactions with him, and then I studied as many things as I could find, and over the course of the past several years my life’s changed a lot. I still believe the basic tenets of Christianity, but I also like to embrace the Torah. And I watched you on your broadcast quite a bit. You’re super informative. And the other gentleman that you do the study with, his name always slips my mind, the Methodist.

Nehemia: Keith Johnson.

Jim: Keith, yeah! Keith, buddy. How do I forget Keith?

Nehemia: Former Methodist.

Jim: Yeah, former Methodist, yes.

Nehemia: At this point, for sure.

Jim: And I learned so much from listening to you guys interact, and that taught me how to approach Orthodox Jewish people and talk to them in a loving, kind way, without being offensive with my own spiritual background…

Nehemia: Let’s stop there for a minute. I taught you how not to be offensive to Orthodox Jews. That’s a great compliment to me. I think a lot of times I offend Orthodox Jews, at this stage of my life, probably un-intentionally. When I was younger, perhaps intentionally. So, I take that as a compliment.

Jim: Yeah, and that’s what I appreciated so much about your interaction with Keith, because you guys talked about your tradition. And if you approach Orthodox people discussing your traditions, it’s way less offensive to them than if you talk about different theological points, is what I gathered. And so, I made friends with the Chabad rabbis here in town and built some rapport there.

Nehemia: Oh wow.

Jim: And so, about eight months ago, I was asked to take over a church here in Colorado Springs. I’m a senior pastor at Springs of Living Water Church, and we’re growing. We try to embrace the biblical expression of the feasts, the feasts of God. I don’t like to say the feasts of the Jews, because it’s really God’s feasts He gave to the Israelites. And then I love studying the different traditions, the Ashkenazic, the Sephardic, the Mizrahi, any tradition I can find, because it adds fullness to the picture. And then, of course, the Karaite traditions. I learned the perspective of the Karaites from listening to your teachings, and I’ve got a series of books, Karaite Jews in Egypt, by Mourad El-Kodisi.

Nehemia: Mourad El-Kodsi.

Jim: Yeah, I probably said it wrong. And so, yeah, I love it. I can’t get enough of it. And I had a Chabad rabbi say, “Jim, you have the Neshama of a Jew!”

Nehemia: Okay, that means, for those who don’t know, the spirit; spirit in the sense of the soul. The soul of a Jew.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nehemia: Wow, interesting. So, alright, I’ve seen you on TikTok, and I see you get clobbered from the one side. And maybe it’s not clobbered. Confrontational… it’s not necessarily confrontational, the fact… Well, we’ll get into it. So, you’re being challenged, put it that way, and maybe, like you said, it’s a healthy conversation. I just didn’t expect such a big push back from… and maybe this is me being in my little bubble; you get a really big push back, it seems, from Christians who say, “Jim, you’re putting people under the law. That’s done away with! There’s no more Passover, it’s Easter. Why are you doing that?”

And then I see you get pushback from the other side, and I’m laughing because those two guys could have a conversation with each other. And I don’t mean specific people, right? But those two perspectives could have a conversation with each other, which would be different than the conversations they’re having with you. So, the pushback I see from the other side is, “Yeshua was a Jewish rabbi. You have to follow what the Jewish rabbis teach. You can’t just follow the Bible without the traditions of the rabbis.”

So, I would love to see the conversation between the two sides that are pushing on you, because what an interesting conversation that would be! They would probably agree to a large extent. Well, no, I don’t think the other side would agree with the Christians.

Jim: Oh, no, they’re diametrically opposed.

Nehemia: But you’re kind of like… we have an expression in Yiddish, nisht ahin nisht aher, “You’re neither here nor there.” You don’t fit into either camp, in a sense.

Jim: Right.

Nehemia: And you’re getting push back from both sides. That’s what I find so interesting.

And I’ve seen other people go through that, like Michael Rood. But here you’re coming from, like… and you’re even now the pastor of a Sunday church. Am I right about that? Is that a Sunday church?

Jim: No, we meet on the Sabbath.

Nehemia: Oh, you meet on Shabbat. Okay.

Jim: Yeah.

Nehemia: Alright. And what’s the name of the church again?

Jim: It’s Springs of Living Water, and our website, if that’s okay, www.springsoflivingwater.co. And we do our service… it’s very different from a traditional church. So, we usually do it podcast style. There’ll be me and Caleb, who was here a few minutes ago. Caleb and I will teach from the Torah portion that week, and the Haftarah, and then also the Brit Ha’chadashah. Because with Christians, of course, we’re coming from very little background in the Torah, so I don’t have to go very deep to blow their mind and try to reintroduce them to, what is this book is all about?

One of my favorite memes on Facebook is a picture of a guy wearing tzitzit and a robe and a big beard, and he said, “Christians always forget; Jesus, Yeshua, was a tzitzit wearing, Torah teaching rabbi in Israel!”

Nehemia: It’s really interesting. I once read, I think it was a book or something or an article, and it talked about how in Western civilization… and not just Western civilization, even in China, there’s been this theme in the last couple hundred years of imposing whatever your view of the world is on Jesus.

So, Mao, who was, I guess, the founder of modern communist China, he portrayed Jesus as a communist revolutionary. So, in Acts chapter 2, when they were all sharing things in common, that’s the forerunners of the communist revolution. I mean, you hear that, you’re like, “What is this guy, crazy?” But it’s an example of how people impose whatever they kind of have on Jesus, on Yeshua. And Mao doesn’t need to do that. He doesn’t come from a Judeo-Christian culture.

Jim: No.

Nehemia: But this is just a thing people do. So, I don’t remember how we got into that, but… Oh yeah, you said that people forget that Yeshua wore tzitzit.

Jim: It’s right from the Torah.

Nehemia: Oh! And what that made me think of is the pope who recently had Jesus wrapped in a keffiyeh as a baby. Well, what’s that about? That’s a very deliberate political statement that Jesus came from Bethlehem, therefore, he was a Palestinian. Even though, if he was alive on October 7th in Kibbutz Be’eri, he would have been kidnapped and strangled to death with bare hands the way that Kfir Bibas was. I hope that didn’t just get us banned from YouTube, but that’s what happened guys.

So, okay. I think I want to understand better. I’ve had some interaction with… well, let me ask this; so, is your church… is it a church? Let’s start with that.

Jim: Yeah, it’s a church.

Nehemia: Okay, because I’ll hear people who will say, “Oh no, we’re Messianic Jews.” “Oh, your mother and father were Jewish?” “Oh no, I’m not Jewish.” “Then what do you mean you’re a Messianic Jew?” And I’m not knocking that, I’m just saying it’s extremely confusing to them, and even more so to me. So, you’re not saying you’re a Messianic Jew. You’re a Christian who has a church, but you meet on Shabbat. What’s your view on the Torah? Let’s start with that.

Jim: Yeah, so, I think the Torah is the foundation of all Scripture. We interpret everything in Scripture from a Christian perspective, from the Torah first. So, I look at the Prophets from the Torah. I look at the New Testament from the Torah. The Apostle Paul, I think if you study him well you realize he wasn’t teaching against the Torah. Now some denominations say that he was, but he wasn’t. Jesus, Yeshua, said, “I’ve not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to plerou them,” “to fulfill them.”

Nehemia: I’ve read that somewhere.

Jim: Yeah, I bet you have, yeah!

Nehemia: You’ve got there Matthew 5:17. Keep reading guys, through like, verse 19. Don’t stop in 17.

Jim: Yeah, exactly. So, in my mind I’m trying to hold those two opposing ideas, which some Christian churches think are opposing ideas, back together. The God of the Old Testament, of the Torah, He’s the God of mercy and compassion. And He loves people, and He wants them to come to Himself. And then He gives us a path to get there, and that’s through the Levitical priesthood and the offerings.

And as a Christian pastor, I couldn’t have told you seven years ago what the seven feasts of God were. I couldn’t have told you. I didn’t know. I went to Bible college; we just didn’t talk about it. But now I see there’s an integrated… Chuck Missler, a famous Bible teacher from many years ago, he’d say, “66 books by over 40 different authors.” And we now realize it’s an integrated message system from outside our time domain. It helps us understand how to get back what was lost in the garden 6,000 years ago. God wants to walk with all of us in the cool of the day. And we don’t throw out the Torah, we embrace the Torah.

And even things that are hard for me to understand from a Christian Western worldview, I’m trying to deconstruct my Christian Western worldview and step into a Hebraic worldview. You live in both worlds, probably more so than the average person, because you live in the United States and you spend a lot of time in Israel, et cetera. But that’s hard for us to embrace in the far Western world.

And so, that’s what I try to do, is reintroduce a very Hebraic worldview. It’s about honor-versus-dishonor instead of right-versus-wrong. It’s about understanding that God wants to restore what was lost.

Nehemia: … on that; it’s about honor-versus-dishonor. That’s really interesting. Talk about that.

Jim: Oh, yeah. Because there’s stories in the Torah that, if you look at it straight from a strict Western right-versus-wrong perspective, it’s confusing. But once you realize it’s about honor-versus-dishonor, like Judah and… was it Tamar? Is that her name?

Nehemia: Tamar, yeah.

Jim: That’s a confusing story from a Western perspective.

Nehemia: When I was in second grade, I was going to a Jewish day school. So, the whole morning was learning about Hebrew subjects, and we read through the book of Genesis from beginning to end. And years later I read it again myself and I’m like, “I never read that story. What happened?” And I realized that in second grade they skipped that chapter for obvious reasons. Well, they didn’t think we were mature enough to understand it.

Jim: It’s a hard one. It’s a hard one to understand.

Nehemia: So, tell me how that feeds into… well maybe… I don’t know that it’s a hard chapter. Maybe it’s hard for a second grader, and maybe it’s hard for an adult, but for different reasons. They thought we didn’t know about what a prostitute was, and how do you explain that to a second grader? So, tell me how that’s about honor-versus-dishonor.

Jim: So, from a strictly Christian Western worldview, we look at things culturally, especially the baby boomer generation and the Generation X, from a right-versus-wrong perspective. It’s wrong! She was prostituting herself to her father-in-law to have a baby after two of his sons died. But when you step out of our Western world and come into a near-Eastern worldview, you realize it’s about honor. She was being dishonored by her father-in-law. She wanted to raise a son up in the name of her dead husband, and that system of honor was so important to her that she was going to accomplish that goal, even by questionable means. And that’s why Judah… he was going to have her stoned to death for being a prostitute, but he was the one that impregnated her!

Nehemia: So, I think there’s some more complexities in that story that has to do with what they call in English the levirate marriage. I think that term comes from Latin. L-E-V-I-R is a Latin term. In Hebrew we call that yibbum, but let’s not get too deep into that story. What I think is most beautiful about that story is, she then sends him the proof that he was the one who had relations with her. And he says, “Hi tzadkah mi’meni,” which you could translate as “she was more righteous than me.” Which is, I think, a profound statement. He’s not saying she’s completely in the right, “but she’s more righteous than I am,” which is definitely the case here!

Jim: Yeah.

Nehemia: Because he was leaving her to languish. I don’t want to get too much into the story, I’ve talked about it before. Let’s move on. But no, I like how you’re looking at that, that’s really interesting. I took anthropology when I was in college, and there’s this concept of an honor culture. And if you can’t understand an honor culture, there’s a lot of things you can’t understand in the world today, where there’s these things called honor killings. It’s something that somebody who was raised in America, in a Western culture, let’s say, because you can be raised in America and not in a Western culture…

Jim: True.

Nehemia: …in a Judeo-Christian culture, let me be more accurate, has trouble understanding what an honor culture is. And I guess that’s not entirely true. If you grew up in rural Sicily, and in certain parts of America, you come from honor culture as well, actually.

Jim: Right.

Nehemia: But the example I’ve heard is like, let’s say, in prison. And thank God I’ve only been to prison doing ministry. But from what I understand, if, let’s say, somebody trips you in the lunch line or whatever, the response is to go and beat that person near the end of their life, because if you don’t, you’ve now made yourself a target. And that is entirely about honor culture, and a very extreme honor culture, obviously, in that context. But that’s how people end up murdering their sister or their daughter. And you’re like, “Wait. You killed your daughter to save the family honor?” It doesn’t even make sense to me. Does that make sense to you?

But that’s a Middle Eastern honor culture thing. I’m not sure that was going on in Torah times, but there’s overlap there. Meaning, it’s more of an honor culture in some ways than… Like where it talks about the redeemer of blood, which is: if somebody accidentally murders your close relative, then you have a familial duty to go kill that person. And so, they can go to the city of refuge and then they’re protected. Well, why would I kill some guy because he was swinging an ax and it killed my child, let’s say? That’s a horrible, tragic thing, but why would I… So, that was an honor culture thing. It wasn’t that you were required to by the Torah, but the Torah said, “Okay, we’ll let you do that because that’s part of the culture. But we’re not going to let you do it if they go to the city of refuge and the person’s protected.”

So, there’s definitely something to be said about the honor culture; there’s an aspect there. And then you look at stuff that happens in, let’s say in the Middle East… well, not just the Middle East. Pakistan leads the world, along with the Palestinian authority, in honor killings. And you’re like, “Why would you kill your sister?” That’s crazy. I have four sisters. I can’t even imagine… That dishonors your family, but to them, it protects the family honor.

Jim: Right.

Nehemia: So, there’s definitely a cultural divide. Some of it is maybe a good thing.

Jim: Sure.

Nehemia: But I think it helps to understand the culture of the Tanakh. I always say, “history, language and context.”

So, talk to me about the Christians… and let me ask this question. This is an important question. There’s some people in my audience who are hearing this and saying, “Oh, Digital Pastor Jim, he calls himself a Christian. I’m done. I’m out,” they’ll say. “I’m not a Christian,” they’ll say. They say, “We’re Torah keepers. We’re believers. We’re Hebrew roots. We’re Messianic Jews,” even though we’re not Jewish. What would be your response? I love how you’re so levelheaded, how you’re not punching people. You’re like, “Here’s my calm response.” What’s your levelheaded response to that, Jim?

Jim: So, I think whatever side is attacking me, whether it’s the evangelical Christian side, who’s saying, “Oh, you can’t put people under the law.” The law doesn’t bind me up, it sets me free! Knowing the rules of the process helps me understand how to live a better life. It’s not a bad thing! The Ten Commandments are beautiful, the ten words. And then Paul talks about following the spirit of the law as opposed to the letter of the law. And so, the letter of the law… I’ll never be a Levite. I’ll never do sacrifices in the Temple. As far as I know, I have no Jewish heritage. My great-grandmother was from Palermo, Sicily. And she insisted I be circumcised on the eighth day, so she was probably a converso.

Nehemia: She probably grew up in an honor culture, my guess would be. That’s the whole idea of vendettas… well, alright, go on.

Jim: Yeah, exactly. The Sicilianos, buongiorno. But the idea is, I think that what Yeshua taught is that, he said, “They will know you’re my disciples.” How? Because you say God’s holy name correctly? No. He could have said that. Because you follow the Ten Commandments correctly, or the Torah, or the oral written Torah? No, he could have said that. He said, “They’ll know you’re my disciples by your love, one for another.” Not because you agree on everything. Not because you got everything perfect and right. But because you have love for one another. And he said, “If you love me, you will follow my commandments.” And some people define that as just the two commandments, “Love your neighbor as yourself, Love the Lord your God”. But I see that as a summary of the original commandments that Moses was given.

Nehemia: Don’t a lot of Christians say, and correct me if I’m wrong, that that only applies to the commandments that are reiterated in the New Testament, along with ones that are added to them in the New Testament? Am I right about that?

Jim: Yeah, that’s what reformed theology will say.

Nehemia: Okay.

Jim: But I disagree. I think reform theology is neat and tidy; it’s very Western. All their theology fits in nice little boxes on the shelf and the boxes don’t touch each other. But the Hebraic worldview, everything overlaps and intertwines; it’s spirituality, physicality, it’s a very Eastern worldview. It’s all connected and interconnected. Where, in the Greco Roman Western worldview, we like everything divided up in neat, tidy little boxes.

Nehemia: Like in the Tanakh, you don’t have a soul, you are a soul. That’s an example.

Jim: Yeah, yeah. I love that Hebraic perspective, and its interconnectedness, not only just with it within yourself, but within your congregation, with your family, with your community at large, with the world around you.

What is considered the least of the commandments? Generally speaking, you know way better than I do, but that’s when you come across a mother bird with her nest, and if you have to eat one of them because you’re hungry on the road, you have to leave the mother alive and eat the eggs. I don’t know if that’s the correct understanding, but that’s the least of the commandments to my understanding. Why would the Father care so much about such a thing? Because He’s trying to communicate a message to us: show respect. What is the first commandment with a promise? Honor your father and mother. And to me that command to let the mother bird go, don’t kill the mother bird with the eggs so she can reproduce again. You’re honoring its mother so she can go and reproduce. And it almost brings tears to my eyes.

Nehemia: Let’s look at that verse, because I was just discussing this with my wife. We call that shiluach haken, “sending away the nest”. It’s in Deuteronomy; could you read that? Deuteronomy 22 verses 6 to 7. And the reason you bring that up… I don’t know this is deliberate; I think it probably is. So, there’s two commandments in Deuteronomy, it says if you do them, you’ll have a long life. One of them is honor your father and mother; it’s in the Ten Commandments. And the other is shiluach haken in Deuteronomy 22. In the Hebrew it’s verse 6 and 7, I don’t know about in the English.

Jim: Yeah. And I want to comment. Your wife’s name is Linnea? Is that how you pronounce her name?

Nehemia: Lynell.

Jim: Lynell. She is wonderful. I love her devotions on Facebook. I forward them to everybody. She’s so sweet. And one of my favorite videos…

Nehemia: They’re also on TikTok everybody, and on YouTube. We’re trying to get them on nehemiaswall.com

Jim: Yeah, I forward your stuff every chance I get. And I love the videos of you and her driving through Israel, and she says, “Nehemia, what happened over there?” And she’s just beaming, she’s glowing. And then you’re talking about what happened historically over there and over there…

Nehemia: And this literally happened, where we’re driving to some place, some romantic getaway, and she’s like, “Nehemia, what happened over there?” I’m like, “Oh, that’s where Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal.” She’s like, “Why aren’t we going there? Forget the romantic getaway!” And we ended up literally spending the day at a place called the Muhraka, which is the burnt ground on the top of Mount Carmel where Elijah defeated the prophet… literally, Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal, and it’s overlooking one of Israel’s main air bases, Ramat David. It’s a really dramatic place.

Jim: Yeah, yeah.

Nehemia: And it literally looks down on Megiddo, right? Armageddon. What a dramatic place there! It’s an incredible place! And I’m like, “Let’s go to the romantic spot,” because I’ve been there 30 times. And she’s like, “No, this is where I want to go.” And yeah, Israel is an amazing place. I’ve heard Christians describe it as the “fifth gospel”, because Israel is just this flood of information, which I, kind of, am used to because I lived there for over 20 years.

Jim: Right, right.

Nehemia: Alright, Deuteronomy 22, 6 through 7, let’s have a look at that.

Jim: Okay. “If, as you are walking along, you happen to see a bird’s nest in a tree or on the ground with chicks or eggs, and the mother bird is sitting on the chicks or the eggs, you are not to take the mother with the chicks. You must let the mother go. But you may take the chicks for yourself so that things will go well with you, and you will prolong your life.” I love that, it’s almost…

Nehemia: I’ve never heard that described as the least of the commandments, but I like the idea. And maybe there’s some literature on that somewhere that I’m not familiar with. But definitely, if you compare it to “honor your mother and father” it seems pretty trivial. Like, who cares about a bird? So, what an obscure thing! And look, I’ve been hit by this, by people in, I would call them maybe the fringe of the Hebrew roots’ movement, who will come at me and say, “Nehemia, do you really think God cares about mixing different fabrics? Do you think really God cares about…” And so, what they’ve done is, they go through the Hebrew roots process… I call it Hebrew roots; they may not call it that. They’ve come to try to understand the Hebrew roots of Christianity, and then they come out the other end spiritualizing everything. All of that has an allegorical meaning, and of course they can tell you what it is, and therefore it’s… and I’m not disputing that.

Jim: Sure.

Nehemia: But now in their eyes, it’s lost… not only lost, but never really had the literal meaning. And then they’ll say, “Does God really care what you eat? He doesn’t care if you eat pig. That’s all a metaphor.” And this is Hebrew roots people who will, like I said, maybe at the extreme, who… they came out of Christianity through Hebrew roots, came out the other end, and everything was not just spiritualized, but it was always meant spiritually. And my response is, “He seemed to care with Adam and Eve.”

Jim: Yeah.

Nehemia: I don’t know. I’m going to take Him at His word. So, let’s say this has a spiritual application we can come up with, but it’s also meant literally, and God actually apparently does care that you shoo away the bird before you take its eggs. And it’s talking about wild animals, of course. I don’t think it’s talking about domesticated chickens. Meaning, the alternative is I kill the mother and take the eggs. And it’s saying, don’t do that. Send away the mother. This is usually interpreted by Jews as mercy on the animal. I don’t know.

In any event, do you know the story, the famous Rabbinical story, about this?

Jim: No, go ahead and tell me.

Nehemia: So, there was a rabbi who’s referred to as “the other one”, and not in a nice way. It’s like “that guy”.

Jim: Right.

Nehemia: And his real name was Elisha ben Abuyah, and the story is that he was walking on the road, and he saw a father and a son who were walking in the opposite direction, and he overheard the father. The father pointed to a tree… stop me if you know this story.

Jim: No, no.

Nehemia: And he said to his son, “Go climb up the tree and shoo away that bird and take the eggs.” And the boy climbs up the tree, shoos away the bird and takes the eggs. And as he’s climbing down, he falls and breaks his neck and dies. And Elisha ben Abuyah, who was one of the greatest rabbis, he sees this, and he said, “It’s all a lie. God promised long life if you obey your parents… you honor your parents. And if you shoo away the bird when you take the eggs. And I see right in front of me, the boy died. It’s all a lie.” And he became what we would call today a deist. A deist is somebody who says, “Yeah, there’s a God in the universe, obviously. Everything came from somewhere. But He has nothing to do with us. He has no direct interaction with individual humans.” So, he became a heretic. And you can call it an apostate, but really, he just stopped believing in a God who interacts in the world. And I don’t know if the story is a true story. A lot of Rabbinical stories are parables to teach you a lesson.

Here’s what’s important about the lesson. What did Elisha ben Abuyah get wrong? What he got wrong was assuming that, when God promises long life, it means in this world. Because maybe it means in the world to come.

Jim: Ha’olam ha’bah.

Nehemia: It could be in this world or in Olam ha’bah, “the world to come.” It’s not like Elisha ben Abuyah didn’t know what the world to come was; he obviously did. It was a Rabbinical concept around for centuries, for sure, by the time he… and I believe it’s in the Tanakh as well, in Daniel 12:2, and Isaiah 66, and many other passages. But he was assuming it’s only in this world. And so, when he saw the boy die, he said, “Okay, God lied. And therefore, this isn’t from God.” Because he had imposed a paradigm on the Bible, and that paradigm didn’t fit reality so the Bible’s wrong, not my paradigm. What a profound story! To me, that’s such a profound story, whether it happened or not. It probably didn’t happen, but…

Jim: Right.

Nehemia: But it’s a great story. He did become a heretic, that’s probably true. Because otherwise, why do they keep talking about him?

Jim: Right.

Nehemia: But the specific thing he saw, I don’t know if that happened. But it’s a beautiful, profound story. And there’s an example where I’ll look to the rabbis and say, “I don’t have to agree with them or be bound by their authority, but they have profound wisdom I can learn from.” And it’s a lesson not to make the mistake of Elisha ben Abuyah, or the greater mistake of forcing my paradigm on the Bible. And then when it doesn’t fit, the Bible’s wrong. That’s dangerous.

Jim: That is, it is. When I first started, I heard the Shema, and then I met the local Chabad rabbi. I won’t mention his name just for privacy’s sake. He’s a wonderful man, but I don’t know if he wants everybody to know what his name is. So, when I went to him and I first started talking, I was like, “Rabbi,” I said, “I’m not here to teach you what I know. I want to know what you know. I want to see how you look at the Torah. You’ve been studying this your whole life, and your people have been saying this for 3,500 years.” A lot longer than me and my people. I come from a broken family. What does it say in Isaiah? “I’m a man of unclean lips, and I come from a people of unclean lips.”

Nehemia: Well, that was Isaiah talking about the Jews, and I would say that’s true about us as well, and maybe we can both learn from each other. But what I love about your interaction with this rabbi, from what you’re telling me, is that I see videos of this online where everything is going wrong. I saw a video recently: this woman’s in Israel, and she gets in the street in Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem, and she’s preaching with her microphone, “You Jews need to accept Yeshua!” And that’s a recipe for…

Jim: Disaster.

Nehemia: …hurt feelings. Because the feeling there is, “Okay, you’re trying to impose something on us. And it’s specifically something on us that my ancestors died not to accept, and you’re telling me I need to accept it.” You know what? Between you and me, maybe it’s right. Let’s leave that open as a possibility. I don’t think it is, or I would believe that. But do I believe it’s a possibility? A hundred percent.

But if you go to somebody and you say, “You have to accept this or you’re going to suffer forever in an eternal conscious torment in hell,” all I can think of is my ancestor who suffered from a physical torment here on earth, or my ancestor’s cousin, maybe. Because this is what we’re raised on in Jewish history, for better or for worse. And look, it’s not just Jewish history. Go look at October 7th.

Jim: I know, yeah.

Nehemia: Let’s not go into that.

Jim: Yeah, yeah.

Nehemia: But we’re hearing from some of the survivors about things that happened, and it really sounds like stories I’ve heard about from the First Crusade in the 11th century, when the crusaders in Germany said, “Why should we go all the way to the Holy Land? We have infidels here among us; the Jews! Let’s start with them!” And the stories I heard on October 7th, some of them were actually worse than the things I heard in history. And so, imagine if somebody came to me and said, “Allah is the greatest, and you have to accept it. You have to proclaim Allahu Akbar.” And all I can think of, whether right or wrong, all I can think of when I hear that is the people who shouted that on October 7th. And I’m not trying to compare Christians to Muslims, but think of it from the Jewish perspective, how much suffering there was.

Jim: Yeah.

Nehemia: And you could say, “Well, that was the Catholic Church.” The average Jew doesn’t know the difference between the Catholic and the non-Catholic.

Jim: We’re all Catholics to them. Right.

Nehemia: And you know what? There have been persecutions by the Protestants since 1517, when Martin Luther nailed The 95 Theses. A lot went on since then as well, some of it quite recently, relatively recently.

So, the point is, if you want to have a dialogue, coming at somebody and saying, “Well, you have to accept this or you’re going to suffer.” And all I can think of is the historical collective suffering that happened because of the thing you’re asking me to accept…

Jim: Right.

Nehemia: …that’s painful, and it’s not productive.

Jim: So, that’s why whenever I have a chance to talk to a rabbi, Orthodox rabbi, Chabad rabbi, I talk about the Torah portion. I talk about the Tanakh.

Nehemia: I love how levelheaded you are, and how you’re always so calm! That’s what I love! I’m like, “I’ve got to have this guy on the program because that’s a calmness I aspire to.” I used to be a hothead. I think I’m much more calm now, and much more level. But I used to be, “Well, I’m right, everybody else is wrong. Why don’t they see that I’m right?”

Jim: Right, right, why can’t they…

Nehemia: “I’ve got to beat it into them!” So, I’ve been wrong enough times where I’m like, “Okay, let’s leave open the possibility that I’m wrong and have more of a dialogue.”

Jim: Yeah. That’s what I love about the Jewish perspective on discussing things. You probably know how to say it in Hebrew, I just know the English translation, “This is Torah, and this is Torah. We’re both discussing Torah.” We may disagree…

Nehemia: Well, the expression is… There’s something I actually disagree with.

Jim: Okay.

Nehemia: It’s a Rabbinical idea. The story is that there was a debate between the House of Shammai, meaning the disciples of Shammai, which was around the time of Yeshua. Shammai and Hillel were about a generation before. The House of Shammai and the House of Hillel are exactly when Yeshua is being born and coming up in the world, around the year zero… or 1. There’s no year zero. And the story is that there was a great debate for three years between the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel, until one day a voice called out from heaven, a heavenly voice, what’s called a bat kol, an angelic voice, and said, “Elu v’elu divri Elohim chayim,” “Both these and those are the words of the living God.”

Now, if you take that story literally, I profoundly disagree with it because two things can’t be true. Let me rephrase that; two things can be true, but God is not going to say one thing and its opposite and have them both true at the same time.

So, one of the excuses that later rabbis came up with was that the opinion of the House of Hillel was true in this world, and in the world to come it’ll be the House of Shammai. That was a later, I would say, almost Karaite reaction. Because my Karaite reaction is, “No, there’s only one divine truth. We may not know what it is, but there’s only one divine truth.” That’s where I am today. So, this solution that later rabbis come up with is, “No, there can be two divine truths, just not at the same time. Or they’re not applicable. They can both be true at the same time, but they’re not both applicable at the same time.” So, that was the Rabbinical reaction.

But my position is, I don’t know what the truth is. I think I do, but I thought I did 30 years ago, and I’m pretty sure now I was wrong. So, what else am I not wrong about? That’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect. Have you heard of that?

Jim: No, I haven’t heard that phrase, no.

Nehemia: Guys, look this up. This is one of the most profound things I ever heard. I heard it years ago. So, Dunning and Kruger were these two psychologists, I guess. I don’t really know. The Dunning-Kruger effect is this idea that when people know a little bit, they think they know a lot. When you learn the first truth, you learn that… I’ll give you my Karaite reaction. The rabbis are wrong about a certain thing that I’m able to definitively prove, and I’ve read the Bible, and I can see they’re wrong. It says, “Don’t boil a kid in his mother’s milk,” and the rabbis say that means don’t eat meat and milk together. Well, I can see they’re wrong about that. I’ve read the Torah. I don’t see anywhere where it says that. So, therefore, I’m right about everything else.

That’s called being on Mount Stupid. It’s a graph; it goes up, and then for those listening, it’s a bell curve. You start out, you don’t know anything, and then you go up and then you’re on the top of Mount Stupid. Well, now I know everything, and everybody else is wrong. And as you learn more and more and more and more, you realize, “Wow, there’s a whole lot I don’t know.” And that’s, I forget what they call that, but that’s like a mature wisdom, in my view.

When I was 17, I had read the Bible in Hebrew twice, from beginning to end, the Tanakh in Hebrew, from beginning to end, and I thought, I know everything. I actually had this idea a few years later, “I’m going to go to Hebrew University, but why would I study Bible? I know the Bible. I am sure I know it better than the professors.” And then I learned Hebrew linguistics, and I realized there were libraries full of things I didn’t know. And I got to visit some of those libraries.

So, a lot of the people… I see this in religion, because it happened to me, they’re like, “Oh, I was lied to that Christmas isn’t in the New Testament.” And I don’t want to be insulting to anybody, but they think they know everything, and let’s be a little bit humble. I’ll speak for myself. I need to be humble, because I was wrong about a lot of things when I thought I knew everything. And I think that’s really important to be levelheaded and calm.

Jim: I agree.

Nehemia: And if somebody attacks you and says, “How could you say something so stupid? Don’t you know that such and such was done away with?” There’s this guy on TikTok, I won’t say his name, but this guy on TikTok, he knows everything. He’s got a PhD, he’s very knowledgeable! Everybody else is wrong, and everything else they say is stupid. And you know what? He doesn’t know as much as he thinks he knows. And again, I won’t say his name. It doesn’t matter who he is, there’s a million of him.

Jim: Sure, there is.

Nehemia: And look, what really bothers me, let’s put it that way, is when I’ll see somebody who isn’t coming from his agnostic, maybe atheist, secular perspective. There’s this one guy who comes from a Christian perspective. He’s an evangelical Christian, and he saw the formula of the agnostic guy with the PhD, and he’s like, “I’m going to do that as an evangelical, and I’ll just be this obnoxious person who goes through people’s videos and says why they’re wrong.” And it comes off to me, and I’m not a Christian, but it comes off to me as… I know this is cliché. “Where’s the love in that?”

Jim: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Nehemia: Maybe that appeals to… it gets a lot of views; it resonates with the TikTok algorithm. But I watch that, and I’m like, “That feels so dirty and so hateful.”

Jim: Agreed. Dr. Chuck Missler always used to say… he said, “The more you know, the more you learn, the more you realize how little you actually know.”

Nehemia: That’s the Dunning-Kruger effect!

Jim: Oh, is that what it’s called? Okay.

Nehemia: That’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect. That’s the fancy name for it.

Jim: Caleb, make a note.

Nehemia: Caleb, would you pop in and say hello?

Jim: Caleb, they want you to come say hi.

Caleb: I was just listening to your conversation.

Nehemia: Hey, Caleb, shalom. Are you over there at the, tell us what the name is, Spring of…?

Jim: Springs of Living Water.

Caleb: Yes, Springs of Living Water.

Jim: I just ordained Caleb last Shabbat as my assistant pastor.

Nehemia: Okay. Oh, wow.

Jim: Yeah.

Nehemia: Alright, guys, it’s there in Colorado Springs. Sounds like a really fascinating situation.

You have been listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon’s Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

We hope the above transcript has proven to be a helpful resource in your study. While much effort has been taken to provide you with this transcript, it should be noted that the text has not been reviewed by the speakers and its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. If you would like to support our efforts to transcribe the teachings on NehemiasWall.com, please visit our support page. All donations are tax-deductible (501c3) and help us empower people around the world with the Hebrew sources of their faith!

Subscribe to "Nehemia Gordon" on your favorite podcast app!
Apple Podcasts | 
Amazon Music
 | TuneIn
Pocket Casts | Podcast Addict | CastBox | iHeartRadio | Podchaser
 | Pandora

If you have found Nehemia Gordon’s teachings to be of value, please consider supporting his efforts through his ministry Makor Hebrew Foundation.

Make a lasting impact through the year by making your donation recurring.

Or support Makor Hebrew Foundation by becoming a member of the Scholar Club.

VERSES MENTIONED
Deuteronomy 6:4-5
Leviticus 19:18
Acts 2:44
Matthew 5:17-19
Genesis 38
Numbers 35
John 13:35
John 14:15
Matthew 22:36-40; Mark 12:28-31; Luke 10:25-28
Deuteronomy 22:6-7
Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 5:16
1 Kings 18
Leviticus 19:19; Deuteronomy 22:11
Babylonian Talmud Kiddushin 39b; Jerusalem Talmud Chagigah 2:1
Daniel 12:2; Isaiah 66
Isaiah 6:5
Babylonian Talmud Eruvin 13b
Matthew 23:24
Deuteronomy 26:5
Esther 8:17
Ezekiel 37

BOOKS MENTIONED
The Karaite Jews of Egypt
by Mourad El-Kodsi

Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
by Jonathan Swift

Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People
by Mark S. Kinzer

RELATED EPISODES
Hebrew Voices Episodes
Support Team Study – Remember the Bibas Babies

OTHER LINKS
Digital Pastor Jim’s socials:
YouTube
Springs Of Living Water
TikTok
Instagram
Facebook 

The post Hebrew Voices #213 – A Bridge Between Worlds: Part 1 appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.