What is a Mezuzah?

From Hebrew For Christians:

A mezuzah (מְזוּזָה) is a kosher parchment scroll (inscribed with Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21 on one side and the word Shaddai on the other side) that is rolled up and inserted into a decorative case. The case is then affixed to a doorway in fulfillment of the commandment given in Deuteronomy 6:9, "And you shall write them upon the doorposts (mezuzot) of your house, and upon your gates."

"Mezuzah" is the Hebrew word for "doorpost" and is a reminder that the blood of the Lamb on the doorpost identified those within as belonging to God and protected from the angel of death. The purpose of the mezuzah is to both identify those who dwell in the house as Jewish (or, for some, Messianic) and remind the dwellers of who they are and what they believe.

It has also been said that the mezuzah on the doorpost is a reminder to be mindful of what we bring through that door, of what comes into our homes. From aish.com:

If we want our internal world to reflect Godly ideals, we have to protect it against the outside world at the point of interface: the doorway. This means monitoring the contents of books, games and video that we expose our children and ourselves to.

As well, having a mezuzah on each room means that whenever we move from one domain, one sphere of activity, to another, we must renew our consciousness of God's presence and act in a way that sanctifies His Name. 

Once learned, the lesson extends beyond our home and into all areas of life. Just as a house has doorways, so too we have eyes, ears, nose, and mouth ― portals to the external world. The values of the Torah call for our mouths to eat kosher food and speak "kosher" words; for our ears not to listen to gossip; for our eyes not to run after empty desires.

Biblical Referenes for Mourning Customs

There are several references throughout the Bible to periods of mourning lasting for specified periods of time:

Genesis 50:7-10

⁷ So Joseph went up to bury his father. With him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his household, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, ⁸ as well as all the household of Joseph, his brothers, and his father's household. Only their children, their flocks, and their herds were left in the land of Goshen. ⁹ And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen. It was a very great company. ¹⁰ When they came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan, they lamented there with a very great and grievous lamentation, and he made a mourning for his father seven days.

Numbers 20:29

²⁹ And when all the congregation saw that Aaron had perished, all the house of Israel wept for Aaron thirty days.

Deuteronomy 34:7-8

⁷ Moses was 120 years old when he died. His eye was undimmed, and his vigor unabated. ⁸ And the people of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days. Then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses were ended.

1 Samuel 31:13

¹³ And they took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh and fasted seven days.

There are also many, many references to the tearing of clothes, wearing sackcloth, going barefoot, and covering the head. These are too numerous to quote here. See this website: 100 Bible Verses About Mourning.

Stages of Jewish Mourning

The Jewish process of mourning involves 4 to 5 specific steps that guide the bereaved through the first days, months and years following a significant loss:

1. Aninut - From the death through the burial, this is a time for burial preparations to be made, for candles to be lit and for mourners to sit with the body until the burial is complete. Once the burial is finished, the community serves the family a condolence meal, not to be shared with the community.

2. Aveilut - After the burial is complete, those family members for whom the death was of a parent, spouse, sibling, or child have a period of 7 days called shiva. During these days, the bereaved will not work, leave the house, wear shoes, or bathe. They will sit on low stools and cover the mirrors in their houses. The community comes to visit them, brings food, and participates in the recitation of the Kaddish prayer.

The recitation of Kaddish requires a minyan (a gathering of 10 people). This keeps those in mourning from isolating themselves from the community, and the community is continually called upon to be aware of those who are mourning.

Interestingly, the Kaddish prayer is not so much a prayer of grief and mourning, but a prayer acknowledging the greatness of God:

Exalted and sanctified is God's great Name (Amen)
in the world which He has created according to His will,
and may He establish His kingdom in your lifetime
and during your days, and within the life of the entire House of Israel,
speedily and soon; and say, Amen. (Amen)
May His great Name be blessed forever and for all eternity.
Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled
and honored, elevated and lauded be the Name of the Holy One, blessed be He,
beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations
that are uttered in the world; and say, Amen. (Amen)
May there be great peace from heaven, and life, for us
and for all Israel; and say, Amen. (Amen)
May He who makes peace in His high places make peace within us
and for all Israel, and say ye: Amen (Amen)

It is thought that during this time mourners need a reminder of God's sovereignty and those reminder will bring comfort.  (For more on Kaddish, visit Hebrew For Christians - Mourner's Kaddish.)

3. Sheloshim - For 30 days from the day of the burial (for the 7 above mentioned relatives), mourners leave the house for work or other necessary errands, but they do not participate in festive gatherings, listen to music, or cut their hair. They continue to recite Kaddish daily.

4. Shanah - For 11 months from the time of burial for those who have lost a parent, the bereaved continues to avoid celebrations and to recite Kaddish daily.

5. Yahrzeit - The anniversary of the death date is observed annually with the lighting of a candle and the recitation of Kaddish. The loved one, who has died, is also remembered with the lighting of a candle on the afternoon before Yom Kippur, the last day of Passover, the last day of Shavuot, and the day following Sukkot.

(More info on the stages of mourning can be found at: aish.com and  Judaism 101.)

Mourning in Community - Questions for Reflection & Suggested Activity

An article summarizing Lauren Winner's discussion on Jewish Mourning practices can be found here: Mourning in Community.

In Winner's perspective, the church has lost the sense of community and communal practice that is essential in Judaism, and one of the places where this is most evident is in "the way Christians mourn:"

Winner's upbringing has led her to value communal practices, which are integral to Judaism but have largely been lost in translation to Christianity, where religious practice has moved from being communal (in Israel) to being philosophical (in Greece), institutional (in Rome), cultural (in Europe), and now to being corporate (in North America). In her writing, Winner has established a pattern of diagnosing Christian isolationism: what others do in community, we try to do alone. One of the strongest such examples is her vision of the way Christians mourn.

...

Later, Winner says that mourning “is never easy, but it is better done inside a communal grammar of bereavement” (28). Christianity, living as it does on this side of Easter, often fails to provide an honest and accurate assessment of the cruelness of death and loss. So Winner turns instead to the grammar of Judaism, which lives in between death and resurrection.

These questions for reflection are taken from the longer chapter by chapter study guide:

When was the last time you were at a funeral, who was there, and what you were aware of when you were there?

How were you taught to mourn? Is mourning a private process or a community pilgrimage?

When was the last time you, personally, had to mourn? How long did you let yourself mourn? How long did the community give you permission to mourn?

Who is mourning around you now? What does it mean to mourn with them?

Suggested activity:

Read Psalm 77 a few times - aloud and silently. Consider writing your own personal lament. You may want to lament something personally in your life or something globally. You could lament a death, a broken relationship, a natural disaster, a current event disaster.

Teaching Kids About Sabbath

Pat shared an article with me on Wednesday that she found in Today's Christian Woman. I found the article online and wanted to pass it on to all of you!

Teaching Kids About Sabbath

Despite the title, the article is for anyone finding a way to practice Sabbath, not just for those trying to pass the practice on to their children

Homework - Praying the Divine Hours

I mentioned on Wednesday that the suggested activity for the next session is to go to a website, find your time zone, and pray the divine hour prayer for the time. Here's the link:

http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/

You may recall that one of the Animate speakers, Phyllis Tickle, wrote a series of books called The Divine Hours. The above link features Tickle's books and several excerpts from them.

The study guide also offers some questions for reflection on the subject of prayer this week:

What does prayer mean to you?

How do you pray?

What forms of prayer are uncomfortable/comfortable for you? (spontaneous prayer, liturgical prayer, recited/memorized prayers) Why?

Think of an experience when you were aware of God's presence while praying. What colors, tastes, smells, feelings, etc... might you use to describe this time in prayer?

What Christians Can Learn From Keeping Kosher

I found yet another book excerpt from Mudhouse Sabbath! Session 3 will deal with both the practice of hospitality and that of keeping kosher. Here's a link to what Lauren Winner had to say in her book about keeping kosher:

What Christians Can Learn From Keeping Kosher

Of note:

Food is part of God's creation. A right relationship with food points us toward Him.
Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Books/2004/04/What-Christians-Can-Learn-From-Keeping-Kosher.aspx?p=2#ohCrOt6i55ljftva.99

 Food is part of God's creation. A right relationship with food points us toward Him.

And...

The table is not only a place where we can become present to God. The table is also a place where He becomes present to us.

Food is part of God's creation. A right relationship with food points us toward Him.
Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Books/2004/04/What-Christians-Can-Learn-From-Keeping-Kosher.aspx?p=2#ohCrOt6i55ljftva.99v

Mudhouse Sabbath Session 3 - Hospitality - Book Excerpt

For those of us, who do not have the book, here is a link to a portion of Lauren Winner's book regarding the practice of hospitality:

Spirituality and Practice: Book Excerpt: Mudhouse Sabbath, by Lauren Winner

A sneak peak:

Sociologists might suggest that Jews do hospitality so well because they have spent so many centuries being the stranger and the friendless.

And...

Early Christian communities continued these practices of hospitality, attempting to feed the poor, host travelers, visit the imprisoned, invite widows and orphans to join them at mealtime — all expressions of a capacious notion of hospitality. 

If Jesus was/is a Jew, then what are we?

After last week's discussion, I realized that one of the things we are going to run into in our discussion is the nature of the current relationship between Judaism and Christianity.  It would not be surprising at all to find that we have differing answers to that question. Various denominations of Christianity have taken different positions on this issue over time.

Some of the discussion we had was in response to ideas drawn from this article: If Jesus Was a Jew, Then Why are We Catholic? Namely:

The term Jew is used in at least two senses in Scripture: to refer to those who are ethnically Jews and to those who are religiously Jews. Jesus was a Jew in both senses. In fact, he completed the Jewish religion by serving as the Messiah (Christ) whom the prophets had long foretold. 

And this:

Christians are those who Paul refers to as being inwardly (religiously) Jewish, while non-Christian Jews are those who he refers to as being outwardly (ethnically) Jewish. The former condition, he stresses, is the more important.

From Hebrew For Christian article "Israel and the Church" by John Parsons:

When studying the Jewish roots of Christianity, certain questions often arise regarding the nature of the "Church," the nature of "Israel," and the relationship between them. Do Gentile Christians become "Jewish" on account of their relationship to Jesus?  Does the "Church" somehow replace the Jewish people in God's plan as the "new Israel"?  Exactly how should we understand the relationship between the Church and Israel today?

I recommend a full reading of the above article (Israel and the Church) to sort through the 3 different theological positions in response to those questions:

1) Replacement/Supercessionism/Fulfillment/Covenant Theology
2) Separation/Dispensationalism Theology
3) Remnant Theology

The article is long and includes a history lesson on Israel and the Church before getting into the relationship between the two. I recommend clicking on the "Printer Friendly PDF" link above the article's title and printing it if you don't like to read on the computer screen. Also note that the article takes a strong position in favor of remnant theology.

If by Rudyard Kipling

Ava shared with us last week her transformative experience this Easter, and she mentioned the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling. Such great words, they warrant repeating: 

If  by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!