All foods clean?

Something I come across regularly is the statement (by christians, even serious theologians and pastors) that Jesus declared all foods to be clean (Mark 7) and thus, there really isn’t any reason for me to bother with any dietary regulations and so forth.

I think that this passage is one of those passages who are frequently misunderstood and made to say something it doesn’t actually say.

In this passage, Yeshua eats with some Pharisees and Torah teachers. Some of his disciples didn’t wash their hands before eating, and some of the Pharisees took offense. Actually it was the priests who had the obligation to be ritually clean, and thus had to wash their hands ritually regularly. In trying to be some of the sanctity of the Temple to the home, amongst the pharisees it started to be customary to ritually wash the hands before eating, especially before eating bread. Hillel actually declared everybody to have impure hands, because one couldn’t be sure that one’s hands are clean (what had one touched? Or what had someone whom we have touched, touched?). The priest had to be in a ritually pure state also when he received and ate the Teruma, which was generally eaten in the form of bread – which is why washing before eating breads slowly became obligatory. It is very well possible that at Yeshua’s time not everybody did yet have the custom to ritually wash hands before eating, which could explain why some of Yeshua’s disciples washed, and some didn’t.

If your hands were indeed impure, and you touched the food with impure hands before eating it, the food would thus become impure, too (imagine impurity like a virus, or like dirt that spreads and contaminates whatever you touch unless it is purified again, disinfected so to say).

In such a context, Yeshua explains that it isn’t food that would have become impure in such a way that would make a human being unclean, but what makes someone unclean are the bad things that come out of his (or her) heart. This means that Yeshua did not mean to permit his disciples to eat any kind of food, such as pork or shellfish. The debate is not about kosher food, or what would make such permitted food unfit for consumption. In Matthew, Yeshua stated that the Torah won’t pass away -not even a yud- before heaven and earth have passed away, not even the least of the commandments. As far as I am concerned, heaven and earth have not yet passed away…

Another thing that can be considered here is language.
In hebrew, there is the word tamai which denotes an intrinsic uncleanness, and tahor, which means clean and/or pure. In greek, there are two words to express a certain kind of uncleanness, koinos and akathartos. Koinos means ritually impure (thus, a kosher food item could be koinos, ritually impure; just like a person could be koinos until purified again), whereas akathartos denotes the same intrinsic uncleanness as the hebrew tamai (something that is akathartos/tamai cannot be rendered clean or pure; animals considered tamai/akathartos are reptiles, pigs or bats and are contrasted from animals that are tahor, such as sheep or cows -animals that are acceptable for sacrifice).

The foods that the disciples ate were not unclean because they hadn’t washed their hands, according to Yeshua, not washing the hands before eating didn’t render the one eating unclean – but in my opinion, Yeshua speaks about what renders the human being ‘koinos’ – which are all the bad things that come out of his heart – the debate is not about kosher food.

On the importance of historical context

Most of us read newspapers or journals and magazines of some kind. There’s always a section I like to read, that is the reader’s letters to the magazine. But unless i know what those letter writers reacted to, their lines often make less sense to make, and some make hardly any sense at all. So if I want to really understand what those people wanted to say, I have to take the time to learn about the background of their letters, opinions, questions, appreciations or sometimes harsh reactions.

The same is true for the Bible. If we really want to understand better Torah, we have to take the time to delve into the times during which the Bible was written – which is quite a long time span. But all so often I see this dismissed as “too theoretical”, with the remark added that the “Bible is eternal” and speaks today the same as on the day it was written.

I don’t question at all the fact that God still speaks to us today through the Bible, and that his word is still as authoritative as it was, say, 2000 years ago – but I believe that to better grasp what the authors intended to say, and what happened, it is vital to learn about the historical and cultural background. Sometimes, even when words stay the same, their meaning can change, concepts evolve, things pass away and new understandings are born. Even if neither God nor the Bible have changed, our understanding of it and its concepts have changed, and if we don’t look at what certain things would have meant to the hearer or reader back then, there is a big danger to understand wrongly what was meant.

Why is Judaism called a historical religion? Because our story is grounded not just on some more or less vague metaphysical concepts, but on the manifestations of God in time, throughout history. It was at a particular moment in time that God told Abraham to leave Ur of the Chaldees, that he cut a covenant with the people of Israel through Moshe, and that Yeshua appeared taught, healed, called to repentance and “was crucified under Pontius Pilate”. This means also that to understand the life of Yeshua, or anyone else in the Bible, one must understand the historical context in which they lived, complete with their cultural struggles, practices, religious debates and so on.

There are different ways of learning about that time, even if it seems so far away from us. Of course, we cannot just jump the time-gap of more than 2,000 years, but there are ways and sources to make them seemingly come closer to us, and help us understand more the biblical times. There is, of course archeology and all the artifacts and historical places; there are the writings of contemporaries that have come down to us such as Josephus and Philo of Alexandria; there are, of course, the Dead Sea Scrolls and other writings such as First and Second Enoch, Talmudic Literature and Targumim, the Chreia, but also the religious traditions of the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians and Mesopotamians which are relatively well documented.

The background for understanding Yeshua begins with the Tanakh, which christians generally call the Old Testament. I have often encountered christians who sort of imagined “Jesus reading the Bible, both New and Old Testament”, and the first christians of course as well. Each time they read “Scriptures”, the thought of the same Bible they had in their hands (or bookshelves). However, what were the Scriptures for Yeshua, for Paul, for all those first followers of Yeshua was the Tanakh, and the Tanakh only. Yeshua and his talmidim, his disciples, were familiar with the stories of Adam and Eve, of Abraham, of Moshe and King David, and would have know the prophets and other writings, and these were not just records of past events not mattering anymore, but seen as speaking to them in their own time, of events they were living through as well – which is made explicit by Yeshua stating in Luke 4:21: “Today, as you heard it read, this passage of the Tanakh was fulfilled” (CJB).

My home, my sanctuary.

« … and write them on the door-frames of your house and on your gates. » (Devarim 6:9, CJB)

Generally, it is known that Judaism is more oriented towards the holiness of time, rather than the holiness of place (just read Heschel’s beautiful work on the Sabbath!).  There are many times, many occasions that we sanctify, but there are only very few places. Yet there is one very special exception to that: the Jewish home which is sanctified through the mitzvah of the mezuzah, which is a biblical commandment fond in Devarim 6 (Deuteronomy 6).

But makes a home Jewish? Is it merely the fact that mezuzot are affixed to the door-posts? I dare say no. The Jewish home is created by those who live within it – by their actions, their speech, their beliefs, the things they think, the things they do or don’t do.

Community is very important, but the base, the stronghold of the community has always been, and is, the home. The home is more than just some walls and a roof, more than just a place where we can eat and sleep, watch tv and read.

The Jewish home is called a miqdash me’at, a small sanctuary. The first sanctuary that the Israelites had was the tabernacle in the desert. God had commanded in Exodus 25:8 that the people build the sanctuary for him, so that He could dwell amongst them. The word for “amongst them”, בתוכם betocham, can also be translated as “in them”. This means that God does not literally dwell in the sanctuary, but amongst the people of Israel. Thus, the Sages have explained that this means that God dwells in the heart of every Jewish man and woman, and thus, each person is sacred and the home in which they dwell is also sacred.

After the sanctuary of the desert, the Jewish people had the temple in Jerusalem, and after its destruction, the home became designated as the small sanctuary, being not only the place where people lived, but also a place for special purposes such as Torah study, prayer or sometimes also a place of assembly. If you have ever been in a Jewish home, you will have surely remarked that books are a part of the furniture, and prayers and blessings are being recited all throughout the day, from getting up to going to sleep. The dinner table of the family replaced the altar, and as such, eating together is more than merely ingesting food. As such, the home is the first place not only for physical nourishment, but also for spiritual nourishment where children and adults learn together about values and godly behavior, and ideally study Torah and pray together – and have healthy doses of joy and fun as well!

Another important part of the Jewish home is the shalom bayit, peace and harmony in the home. It is at home where we are most tempted to lose our temper, to let go. Whereas at home we can be ourselves, without our masks, we should strive for peace and right relationships and respect among generations. This peace will then overflow into our relations outside the home: at work, with strangers, or in our communities. The Talmud warns about the danger of strife within the home (“Anger in the home is like worms in grain” Sotah 3b, “A home where there is dissension will not stand” Derekh Eretz Zutah 9:12).

Shalom. Peace. Peace is essential. Yeshua himself said “blessed are the peacemakers”, and Paul warned “For the whole of the Torah is summed up in this sentence: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’, but if you go on snapping at each other and tearing each other to pieces, watch out, or you will be destroyed by each other!” (Galatians 5:14-15 CJB). These admonitions are valuable for the community of believers, but also for the home – our lives and homes should be imitating the Prince of Peace, and the Sabbath peace should permeate the whole rest of the week. In such a home, guests will not only be welcomed, but feel welcome. Hospitality in such a home is a fundamental Jewish value, a great virtue that is mentioned both in the Tanakh as well as by Paul, and the Babylonian Talmud stresses the greatness of hospitality which is one of several important virtues (Shabbat 127a: There are six things, the fruit of which man eats in this world, while the principal remains for him for the world to come: Hospitality to wayfarers, visiting the sick, meditation in prayer, early attendance at the Beth Hamidrash, rearing one’s sons to the study of the Torah, and judging one’s neighbor in the scale of merit.).

Thus the Jewish home is truly a small Sanctuary. Like the Temple, it is a center for Torah, prayer and kindness and there, the Divine Presence dwells – in the home, and also in those who inhabit it. The idea that God dwells in those that inhabit such a home can be be found in the Torah, but also in the New Testament where it is stated that the body of the believer in Yeshua is a temple for the Holy Spirit.

G‑d pours blessings into the home, from which they spread to the world, shared through warm hospitality and acts of goodness and kindness. And not only the home and the believer are a sanctuary, but our God himself is our sanctuary, one that is with us wherever we go: “Therefore, say that Adonai ELOHIM says this: ‘True, I removed them far away among the nations, and scattered them among the countries; nevertheless, I have been a little sanctuary for them in the countries to which they have gone” (Ezechiel 11:16, CJB).