Truth or Consequences: The Risks of Spiritual Leadership

By Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin, Director www.jpi.org | Weekly Torah Portion of RE’EH.

The Torah portion of Re’eh is in the Book of Deuteronomy.

History, religion and literature have many examples of good and bad leaders but it gets very murky when trying to figure out good or bad spiritual leaders. As in all domains, one man’s bread is another man’s poison. One person’s hero is another person’s villain. And in today’s age of the relativity of truth, where everything is relative, even the worst leaders can somehow be accepted as great by some people. Extreme left wingers who are personally atheists can accept religious leaders they find appealing and likewise fanatical right-wingers can ally themselves with religious despots. So be it and such is life.

But there is something that has been on my mind for a long time and no doubt on yours as well. As people who have lived in a Christian culture we know too well that Jesus is a hero to Christianity but not to Judaism. But the reasons are varied why that is so. No doubt you have your own views on this subject. But allow me to present some of my own, make of them what you will. It hit me again when I reviewed the content of this week’s Torah reading, the parshat hashavua (“weekly Torah portion”) of Re’eh (that aptly openly opens with the notion of every person’s God-given FREEDOM OF CHOICE) as the subject of the “false prophet” comes up, see a full quote below.

Christianity maintains many things about its founder, among which was that he was a prophet. But here is just one big problem that according to Judaism prophecy ended with the destruction of the First Temple 500 to 600 years before Jesus was even born. In Judaism, prophecy and prophets ends with the period surrounding the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah – the Babylonian Exile – Return to Zion. The title and functions of a prophet or Navi ends with the Biblical greats of Malachi, Daniel, Ezra and Nechemia. After them there are no more prophets in the BIBLICAL Tanach sense among the Jewish people. The era of what is called Prophecy (“Nevuah”) ends and a new era of Wisdom “Chochmah” commences with the onset of the era of the Men of the Great Assembly (“anshei knesset hagedolah”) that launches the era of the Oral Law as the main focus, they decide what shall and shall not be part of the Tanach, and once they “seal” it, the Hebrew Bible remains fixed forever. Obviously this is totally incompatible with Christianity and its “new” additions and editions and its claims about its founder that claims to “supersede” what came before it and displace Judaism for a new religion subsequently known to the world  as Christianity.

The problem gets more serious because according to what Christianity teaches, its founder suffered a terrible death for maintaining his views about himself and much else. At this juncture it is fascinating to learn that there are strong scholarly Jewish teachings that of the five books of the Chumash its fifth and last book of Devarim (Deuteronomy) is interpreted as one grand prophecy by Moses – regarded as the greatest of all prophets bar none in Judaism – about the “end” of time, meaning the days of the last millennia. The Talmud divides world history, the affairs of people, into three vast eras of 2000 years each, and we are now in the Hebrew year 5773. The times when Christianity began are at the start of the last and still ongoing final “2000 year” period. During that time Christianity and Judaism have never caved in to each other. They have remained in rival positions for 2000 years.

In this week’s parsha it states that a “false prophet” must be put to death (see full quote below) it warns that Jews must be very careful to be wary of “false missionaries” who want to entice people to worship a “new god” and to have other “spiritual experiences” and that such missionaries must be dealt with very harshly. This is a very tough view and obviously while it cannot and should not be put into actual practice because Jews live in Christian societies and do not have the old Sanhedrin to rule on capital cases in modern Israel, but to be forewarned is to be forearmed, and throughout all the generations this was common knowledge where Jews were aware of these teachings.

Thus, according to Judaism as based on the Torah and as explicitly stated in this week’s parsha, Jesus could not have been a “prophet” because the era of prophets ended over 500 years before he was born. Any person claiming to be a “prophet” or a false messiah as has happened so often, faces severe sanctions. Missionaries that seek to take Jews away from the worship of their God are in the same category of false prophets.

The Torah is so prescient and speaks to us directly as a relevant and fresh subject.

Shabbat Shalom!

Here is the full relevant passage, contemporary translation from Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, taken from Deuteronomy, Chapter 13: 2-12:    

“[This is what you must do] when a prophet or a person who has visions in a dream arises among you. He may present you with a sign or miracle, and on the basis of that sign or miracle, say to you, 'Let us try out a different god. Let us serve it and have a new spiritual experience.' Do not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. God your Lord is testing you to see if you are truly able to love God your Lord with all your heart and all your soul. Follow God your Lord, remain in awe of Him, keep His commandments, obey Him and serve Him, and you will then be able to have a true spiritual experience through Him. That prophet or dreamer must be put to death for having spoken rebelliously against God your Lord, who brought you out of Egypt and liberated you from the place of slavery. He was trying to make you leave the path that God your Lord commanded you to walk, and you must destroy such evil from your midst. [This is what you must do] if your blood brother, your son, your daughter, your bosom wife, or your closest friend secretly tries to act as a missionary among you, and says, 'Let us go worship a new god. Let us have a spiritual experience previously unknown by you or your fathers.' [He may be enticing you with] the gods of the nations around you, far or near, or those that are found at one end of the world or another. Do not agree with him, and do not listen to him. Do not let your eyes pity him, do not show him any mercy, and do not try to cover up for him, since you must be the one to put him to death. Your hand must be the first against him to kill him, followed by the hands of the other people. Pelt him to death with stones, since he has tried to make you abandon God your Lord, who brought you out of the slave house that was Egypt. When all Israel hears about it, they will be afraid, and they will never again do such an evil thing among you.”