Elijah the Prophet (Cont.)

Continued/expanded from here.
As we know, Elijah the Prophet was prophesied by Malachi and Ezra. The tradition that Elijah would return is engrained within the Jewish mind as much as the belief in Moshiach ben David (Messiah the Son of David). What is known of this Prophet, and what is known of his return?
Elijah was known as the Tishbite, or stranger (non-Jew) from Gilead. Gilead in the Bible refers to the area beyond the Jordan river in general; but in particular, the Balm of Gilead is also known as the Balm of Mecca. There are other indications that what is meant by Gilead in the Bible is the place of the sons of Ishmael:
Hosea 6:8 Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity, it is covered with footprints of blood.
This is certainly a valid description of Mecca before the Prophet Mohammad (saws) took it over. The city was full of idols, and the people had fought many battles against monotheism and shed the blood of many Muslims.
Micah 7:14 Tend Thy people with Thy staff, the flock of Thy heritage, that dwell solitarily, as a forest in the midst of the fruitful field; let them feed in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old.
For centuries, Jewish tribes had lived in the Arabian peninsula.
Yet Jeremiah is perhaps the most interesting: in his prophecies, he speaks of a Balm in Gilead that will restore monotheism:
Jeremiah 46:11 Go up into Gilead, and take balm, O virgin daughter of Egypt; in vain dost thou use many medicines; there is no cure for thee.
Out of Gilead came the cure--not out of many medicines (many gods), but out of one balm:
Jeremiah 8:17 For, behold, I will send serpents, basilisks, among you, which will not be charmed; and they shall bite you, saith the LORD. {S} 18 Though I would take comfort against sorrow, my heart is faint within me. 19 Behold the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people from a land far off: 'Is not the LORD in Zion? Is not her King in her?'--'Why have they provoked Me with their graven images, and with strange vanities?'-- 20 'The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.' 21 For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I seized with anguish; I am black, appalment hath taken hold on me. 22 Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? {S} 23 Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
Jeremiah 22:6 For thus saith the LORD concerning the house of the king of Judah: Thou art Gilead unto Me, the head of Lebanon; yet surely I will make thee a wilderness, cities which are not inhabited. 7 And I will prepare destroyers against thee, every one with his weapons; and they shall cut down thy choice cedars, and cast them into the fire. 8 And many nations shall pass by this city, and they shall say every man to his neighbour: 'Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this great city?' 9 Then they shall answer: 'Because they forsook the covenant of the LORD their God, and worshipped other gods, and served them.' 

The Jewish people rejected the Balm of Gilead, the return to monotheism-after having provoked the Lord God with their graven images and strange vanities; yet Egypt accepted the Balm, and was cured. This is the situation we see to this very day: Egypt has forsaken idolatry that was its heritage and clings to monotheism; yet Israel continues to practice strange magic and worships false gods.
Yet perhaps even more interesting still is that God counts Gilead among His children:
Psalm 108:8 God spoke in His holiness, that I would exult; that I would divide Shechem, and mete out the valley of Succoth. 9 Gilead is mine, Manasseh is mine; Ephraim also is the defence of my head; Judah is my sceptre.
God counts Gilead the same as He counts the sons of Israel as His own. Why would this be, if they had not returned to God completely and with purity of heart?

And what of the Gileadi, the Tishbite? What was prophesied of him? (to be continued.)

Response to Question from a Jew

Islam teaches the Torah as being the word of Hashem. However, I have a question for Saffiya, what do you do where your Muslim faith tells you to rebel against the Torah (e.g. permitting you to eat all food from the sea).
Dear Yosef,
Thank you for your very important question. There are several things I would like to say about this:
1. First, as I explained earlier on my blog, the Torah we have is not the original from Moses at Sinai. It was compiled and edited by Ezra, a good man and a prophet. Although Ezra did his best, he was not Moses; he was not one of the prophets to whom the laws of God were revealed. According to Avot b’Rabbi Natan 34, it was Elijah whom Ezra said would come and give us the correct teachings. I believe that this refers to the Prophet Mohammad, as he fulfilled the prophecies concerning Elijah (which is a post I still have to write, but I touched on here and here).
2. The basic teachings of Islam and Judaism--the belief in only one God, and the nature of the Divine--are very similar. However, over time, God can alter His decrees. As an observant Jew, I am sure you believe this, although you don’t realize it; otherwise there would be no point in fasting on Yom Kippur. I can also give numerous examples from the Bible, but I will just list a few verses for you to read at home: Exo. 32:14 & Isa. 38:1-5. Even during the time of the Prophet Muhammad (saws), the law changed from not allowing alcohol during prayer to not allowing it at all. However, the final version of Islam is the law of God for all people for the rest of time.
3. Islam was revealed for all people, not just for one tribe. As such, God made it accessible to all people. All people includes the Jewish people, but also includes the rest of the world. The prophets foretold a day when Abraham’s faith would be for all of mankind: Zech. 14:9, Zeph. 3:9, Isa. 56:7. Islam lifted the burden of previous generations, and gave a law accessible to all nations and tribes.

Hidden Knowledge in Judaism

 הַנִּסְתָּרֹת--לַיהוָה, אֱלֹהֵינוּ; וְהַנִּגְלֹת לָנוּ וּלְבָנֵינוּ, עַד-עוֹלָם--לַעֲשׂוֹת, אֶת-כָּל-דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת.

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God; but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.

People have been hounding me to write about the subject of hidden/secret knowledge within Judaism for ages, and I just haven't found the time. Many Muslims are of the belief that Jews commonly practice black magic. I want to differentiate between spiritualism/Kabbalah and black magic. I also want to differentiate between modern pseudo-Kabbalah and the original Kabbalah. Black magic is the casting of spells or incantations to hurt or help individuals, the invoking of jinns/angels/demons, or the making of covenants with evil spirits, including false gods. This practice has been condemned by the Jewish prophets with strong words, yet many Jews practiced it. 

Isaiah 28:15-18

Because ye have said: 'We have made a covenant with death, and with the nether-world are we at agreement; when the scouring scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us; for we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood have we hid ourselves'; Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD: Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a costly corner-stone of sure foundation; he that believeth shall not make haste. And I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plummet; and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding-place. And your covenant with death shall be disannulled and your agreement with the nether-world shall not stand; when the scouring scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it...

Jeremiah 44 also speaks about the sin the Jews offering sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven, a local deity, and Jeremiah's strong words against this sin. The Jewish people of his time told Jeremiah that they did not care about his words and would continue to offer sacrifices to this false goddess. The Jewish king Ahab was famous for introducing the worship of the pagan god Ba'al into Israel. Although this black magic was common among ancient Jews, it is not permitted or acceptable under Jewish law. The many prophets sent to the Jewish people condemned the practice and described God's contempt for it, yet it continued. 
Modern pseudo-Kabbalah derives almost entirely from the Zohar, a misguided book almost certainly written by Moses de Leon. Devotion to this book has led many from the path of righteousness. Mori Michael Shelomo Bar-Ron wrote a brilliant piece titled "The Zohar Controversy: A Crisis of Priorities" which he has unfortunately deleted. In it he delineated some of the ways that many modern Jews have been led astray, going so far as to declare modern men demi-gods and misguidedly failing to observe important Jewish holidays in favor of so-called mystical holidays. This deviance from the straight path is tragic.
Now that these two have been discussed, I can begin a discussion of legitimate hidden knowledge in Judaism. There are, as I have mentioned in other parts of my blog, two Torahs: the oral and the written. From what little we know of the original Oral Torah, it explained parts of the written Torah that are unclear, like the creation story in Genesis. The original Kaballah was part of this knowledge. It was to be taught only to extremely promising students studying to become rabbis who had attained forty years of age and were married. The rabbis famously warned in Hagigah 14b of the danger of the original Kabbalah: they spoke of four who entered Pardes (the Garden), by having received this knowledge. Of the four, one lost his mind, one lost his faith, one died, and only one escaped injury. This knowledge was considered so powerful and so destructive, that there were strict limits on who could learn it and teach it. Of those allowed to learn it, they were not even taught the full text: they were taught only chapter headings, and were meant to deduce the rest on their own. The original Kabbalah was a huge part of the hidden or secret knowledge within Judaism. Unfortunately, it did not survive to the present day. However, many of the quotes attributed to secret Jewish knowledge by Muslim scholars are similar to items within the Zohar, such as the foretelling of the rise of Islam. Whether the Zohar was written with the full knowledge of the rise of Islam or whether it was an organic, living oral tradition dating back to the time of Moses is unknown. 
Another part of secret/hidden Jewish knowledge is knowledge that is forbidden to be taught to non-Jews. An example of this is a story from the Talmud which it is nearly impossible to find a translation for in English, so I will paraphrase it for you. A man was flogged by the Jewish court, led by Rabbi Shila, for having had a sexual relationship with a non-Jewish woman. He appealed the case to the non-Jewish magistrate and demanded that the Jewish court be disbanded. The non-Jewish magistrate asked the Jewish court the reason they had illegally flogged the man, and they responded that he had had sexual intercourse with a donkey. The magistrate was so appalled that he questioned why they had not killed him instead, and went away. The man questioned the court about why they would lie about his conduct in front of the magistrate; Rabbi Shila said he had not lied, citing Ezekiel 23:20: "And she [Israel] doted upon concubinage with them [non-Jewish nations], whose flesh is as the flesh of donkeys, and whose issue is like the issue of horses." The man then went to inform the magistrate that Rabbi Shila had called him a donkey, and Rabbi Shila issued an instant ruling that since this would lead to his own death, it was permissible to kill the man, and he struck the man dead instantly. Any knowledge about Judaism that is likely to lead to hatred for Jews and the death of Jews is forbidden, on penalty of death, to be taught to non-Jews.
In summary, there are two main categories of sinful magic historically practiced by Jews: black magic and pseudo-Kabbalah; and there are two kinds of secret knowledge that are condoned within Judaism, the original Kabbalah and other parts of the Oral Torah, and knowledge that would be harmful to Jews if it became public knowledge. I hope this clarifies the subject of Jewish practice of magic and secret knowledge within Judaism for you. If you have any further questions, please do leave a comment. Or a complaint. I don't make it my policy to moderate comments.

Hating Ezra

Many people walk away from my blog with the mistaken belief that I hate Ezra for corrupting the Torah. Nothing could be further from the truth. Ezra was a good man, and a prophet, who was faced with a bad situation (the Torah had been destroyed). He did the best he could with a very bad situation; he rewrote the Torah from the scraps he had, filling in the blanks as best as he could, and charging the people to wait for Elijah to come to reveal the truth. He also, as I understand it, gave the charge to the Sanhedrin to protect the Torah. Before Ezra, the Sanhedrin was a weak group that didn't actually do very much that got recorded. After Ezra they gained significant power over interpreting the Torah. They essentially became a Torah preservation committee; as it was put by later writers, their function was to "build a fence around the Torah." Unfortunately, this acted as a pill wrapped in poison; although they did preserve Ezra's Torah and the knowledge that a Tishbite, a stranger, would come and restore it, they took tremendous liberties with the Torah, eventually making the permissible forbidden and the forbidden permissible. I will come back and edit this with details of some of those rulings later.

Muslims For Progressive Values

I came across a group called Muslims for Progressive Values and learned that they are contemplating creating their own madhab. While I may agree with them on some issues, and respect them as Muslims, I have some serious points to bring up about the idea of creating your own madhab, apparently just to be more liberal and accepting of homosexuality. Forming a new madhab, I believe, will just serve to create further division in the Ummah. The pressing need of the hour is solidarity among Muslims, not further division. Muslims are threatened on all sides; we do not need to be enemies of each other as well. Instead of setting sail from the mainland in a newly constructed canoe, I would suggest pouring more effort into repairing the existing cruise liners. There were times in the past that the Muslim community was much more liberal; even today, most Muslims are far more liberal than they would care to admit. There were times when the Muslim Caliphate did not punish homosexuality, and the other human rights you seem to believe have never existed before in the Muslim world were commonplace.
Nevertheless, if you are going to persist in this, there are some serious issues you must consider: How will you derive law? What method do you propose for creating a judicial structure? It is necessary for a madhab to have a method of deriving law; what will yours be?
And once you have your method, please consider the following issues:
Evolution: What is your stand on the origin of the universe and its age? How did humans come to be?
Mental Illness: What, in your opinion, are the causes of mental illness? Which illnesses exempt you from criminal accountability? How should mental illness be treated/cured? When is an individual considered cured? What is the status of an individual who commits suicide while suffering from a severe mental illness (such as depression or bipolar disorder)?
Prayer Method: You believe women can lead men in prayer; yet what about when a woman is menstruating? Is she required to pray or not? What is the correct way to pray (position of hands, etc)? How do you even decide this?
Rights of Men/Women towards each other: What are the standards of modesty required? What are the responsibilities of family members towards each other? What constitutes a family?
Divorce: Who can initiate a divorce? What is the necessary method? When is the couple considered divorced?
Marriage without a Wali: If you accept gay marriage, many parents will refuse to give their children in marriage even if it is acceptable in your madhab. Do you permit individuals to marry without a wali? Who is even required to have a wali?
Adoption/Surrogacy/IVF/Sperm Donation: When are you considered the parent of a child? What are your responsibilities towards your children? What are your children's responsibilities towards you?

These are just some of the issues I can think of off the top of my head. I may add more.

Comparative theocracy: The problem with Christian Theocracy

I've received a bajillion and two comments, emails, and IM's with questions/misunderstandings/general ignorance about comparative theocracy. So I'm going to do a series on what Jewish, Christian, and Muslim (Sunni) theocracies really look like, and the modern issues involved in each. Because I enjoy picking on Christians, and because this section is the easiest, I'm going to start here.
Judaism has the frameworks of how to build a viable theocracy (although it currently doesn't have one). The Jewish theocracy runs under a king and a religious court (the Sanhedrin or Beit Din Ha'Gadol). [There are actually two sanhedrins, the greater and lesser, but let's keep this simple, this one is an explanation to Christians, I'll go into more detail later when I discuss Jewish theocracy]. The Beit Din Ha'Gadol fills the legislative and judicial roles. All laws and judgments are derived based on the Torah (the oral Torah and the 613 of the written) and the rulings of earlier sages (although sometimes later judges will disagree with the earlier judges), and in all cases, the majority decides. The Oral Torah will get its own article eventually, when I get around to it. Donating using the paypal button on the side greatly increases the probability of me writing it sooner than later. Commenting also helps because I see people are reading what I'm writing. Anyway, back to the topic at hand: comparative theocracy.
Muslim courts also have a way to derive law. Muslim governments are under a caliph chosen for his knowledge and goodness. The courts rule and issue fatwas based on the precedents set in the Qur'an, hadith (sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad [saws]), and the consensus of other scholars, current and past. The madhab (school of thought) you subscribe to dictates the relative importance given to each of these categories and the credence you give to the narrators of various hadiths.
Christianity, especially Protestantism, lacks a way to derive jurisprudence. The problem stems back to the very earliest days of Christianity. The Christians tried, it seems, to have the apostles serve as a sort of Sanhedrin, deriving their rulings from existing Jewish law in combination with the teachings of Jesus and the prophecies of the Jewish prophets. An issue that faced the early church was whether or not gentile converts had to first convert to Judaism to be saved. Acts 15 reports the debate that went on among the apostles. In the end, they decided to write a simple letter to the gentile converts explaining their obligations as Christians:

²³And they wrote letters by them after this manner; The apostles and elders and brethren send greeting unto the brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia.
 ²⁴Forasmuch as we have heard, that certain which went out from us have troubled you with words, subverting your souls, saying, Ye must be circumcised, and keep the law: to whom we gave no such commandment:
 ²⁵It seemed good unto us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men unto you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul,
 ²⁶Men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
 ²⁷We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who shall also tell you the same things by mouth.
 ²⁸For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things;
 ²⁹That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well.

In summary, the gentile converts to Christianity were give three rules: Don't eat meat sacrificed to idols, make sure the meat is slaughtered by having its throat cut, not by strangulation; don't eat blood; and don't fornicate. Pretty simple. This is a good basis for a Christian theocracy to work from; a court considers options, includes the teachings of Jesus, the law of Moses, and when all else fails, direct divine revelation in the form of visions. This could have been the beginning of a Christian theocracy.
Insert Paul.
Paul writes to the Corinthians in 1 Cor. 8 that actually, it's ok to eat food sacrificed to idols; it's just that some people have a weak conscience. So as not to offend people with a weak conscience, don't eat the meat in front of them, but otherwise it's ok, no big deal. You can go to the grocery store and buy meat that was sacrificed to an idol, as long as you don't tell anyone. But in the same letter he upholds another of the four simple rules: in 1 Cor. 5, he lamblasts a couple who are husband and wife, but used to be son and step-mother. So apparently, the meat part isn't that important, but the fornication part is. Or is it? How can one be sure? According to 1 Cor. 8, basically anything goes as long as your conscience is ok with it. The rules given by the legitimate apostles can apparently be ignored; if they can be, what else can be? The problem is obvious today. Some of the laws of Moses are considered valid; others aren't because Christians claim to be under the "new covenant". Which ones are and are not valid? Apparently, the individual should be guided only by his conscience. This freedom of the individual to make and break laws as he sees convenient means that there can be no true Christian theocracy. In Judaism and Islam, if crazy judge X rules that X is permissible, but the majority of the scholars disagree with him, crazy judge X is discredited and his ruling can be ignored. In Christianity, crazy judge A has as much right to make a law as any other judge And that is the problem with Christian theocracy.