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My husband and I flew to Colorado last week to visit his twin sister and her husband and celebrate their 13-year-old granddaughter’s bat mitzvah.
We cherished the invitation to attend her coming-of-age transition into adulthood at Temple Sinai, a Reform Jewish synagogue in Denver. And we were even more honored when my husband’s nephew invited us to participate in the Jewish ritual by reciting a prayer for the United States and one for Israel.
My husband and his sister grew up in a nondenominational Christian tradition, attending Sunday services occasionally at the one-room Victor Sunday School erected in 1927 outside Bellingham in Whatcom County. When my sister-in-law’s eldest son met and married a Jewish woman, they merged two religious traditions into their family.
Their daughter and son attended preschool at Temple Sinai and public schools. They’ve celebrated Christmas and Easter as well as Jewish holy days.
We joined the families for a rehearsal on Friday morning, where we learned from the rabbi how the bat mitzvah would unfold. As I listened to him and our great-niece share portions of the Torah in Hebrew, I thought back to the thousands of generations who have heard those same words recited from handwritten scrolls.
I’ve never understood how people could be antisemitic, especially Christians.
After all, Jesus was a Jew. He knew Hebrew and the Torah.
And the first five books of the Christian Bible are the same as the Jewish holy book, the Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Our faiths share stories of Adam and Eve, Noah’s ark, Abraham and Isaac, Jacob who wrestled with God, the enslavement of Israelites in Egypt and their rescue by Moses, the parting of the Red Sea and delivery of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, ritual laws and priestly instructions, the 40-year sojourn in the wilderness searching for the Promised Land, nourished by manna from heaven, and God’s covenant with his people, the Israelites.
When I think of the persecution of the Jewish people over the centuries, my heart breaks. Why? Is it because of their monotheistic faith and the rules and rituals governing it? Or anger over the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Messiah recognized by Christians? Or jealousy over their education or wealth? Was it a racial hatred that led to Russian pogroms and the state-sponsored genocide directed at the Jewish people by the Nazis?
I’m no theologian, simply a follower of Jesus Christ. I was raised Catholic and even attended parochial school for three years. I felt guilty at the thought of worshiping elsewhere, but then nearly two decades ago, after participating in an adult class while my children attended Vacation Bible School, I joined Toledo First Baptist Church.
I’ve loved learning about the Jewish faith through dozens of biblical fiction books written by Brock and Bodie Thoene — the Zion Covenant (nine books), the Zion Chronicles (five books), the Zion Legacy (six books), the A.D. Chronicles (12 books), and the Jerusalem Chronicles (three books).
In 2013, I joined my husband’s cousin and a group of Messianic Jews on a tour of Israel, which provided an even deeper understanding of Judaism, the foundation of Christianity, and the holy city of Jerusalem seen as the cradle of faith for Jews, Christians, and Muslims throughout the world.
I remember experiencing awe and reverence as I stood before David’s tomb on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, thinking of the warrior king’s love for God, evidenced in the composition of so many beautiful psalms in the Bible. Resting on a large boulder near a waterfall in Ein Gedi, on the western shore of the Dead Sea where he hid from King Saul, I wondered whether David had sat on that same boulder among the Nubian ibex and rock hyraxes composing love letters to God.
I’ll never understand hatred spewed toward others, especially by those who profess to follow Christ. Jesus gave us the greatest commandment — to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength — and the second greatest commandment — to love your neighbor as yourself.
Love, not hate.
As I reflected on these thoughts Friday evening, I opened my You Version Bible app to read my devotions and Scriptures. I’ve been following the Bible Project’s year-long reading plan called “One Story That Leads to Jesus.” They say the Lord works in mysterious ways, and the timing for me couldn’t have been better.
In reviewing Paul’s letter to the Romans, the devotional spoke of the Torah, the law given by Moses and the first five books of the Bible. Paul, who was Jewish and a Roman citizen, described the Torah’s commands as good but noted Israel broke them because of sinful human hearts.
“God’s goal was to make it crystal clear that it’s evil that’s hijacked the human heart, and that the Torah, good as it is, could not do a thing about it,” the devotional stated. “But Paul says in Chapter 8 the solution has arrived in Jesus and the Spirit.”
According to the devotional, Torah commands acted like a magnifying glass that focused the problem of the human condition into one place — the people of Israel — but that Israel’s representative, Jesus the Messiah, paid for and dealt with all sin through his death and his resurrection. Jesus released his spirit into his new family to transform their hearts so they could truly fulfill the call of all the Torah’s commands to love God and neighbor.
The devotional also spoke of Jewish people who didn’t embrace Jesus as their Messiah and the Gentiles who did, with Paul describing God’s family as a big olive tree with some branches broken off and others grafted into it.
“However, Paul says, one day Jesus will be acknowledged by his own people,” the devotional states. “He doesn’t offer any details about how. Paul simply trusts God’s character and promise that he won’t give up on his covenant people.”
In the heat of a nasty election season, with accusations flung far and wide, sometimes diving into the gutter, the bat mitzvah offered a good reminder of Christianity’s roots and its call to love one another.
As I visited with the other grandparents and their friends, I discovered how modern the bat mitzvah is compared with the centuries-old tradition of bar mitzvahs, the coming-of-age ritual for boys. The first bat mitzvah in the United States took place in 1922, but girls initially weren’t permitted to chant verses from the Torah. Bat mitzvahs for girls didn’t become common until the 1970s.
An evening celebration followed the ceremony, with a catered meal, music, and dancing, complete with the high-energy Hora. Our great-niece sat on a chair while strong men lifted her into the air and guests joined hands and danced in a circle. Then they lifted her mother, her brother, her father, and her grandfathers.
After the rehearsal on Friday, we enjoyed donuts in another room. Sitting by my sister-in-law’s grandson, I asked if he was excited for his bar mitzvah in a couple of years. He teetered his hand, indicating yes and no. Then, my heart melted when he said, “You better come.”
“I will if we’re invited.”
“You’re invited, so you’d better come.”
We would be honored.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
