A Slichot Prayer to Yeshua

While praying the slichot this year, I remembered a little practice I began last year at this time. This isn’t really a teshuva or anything like that, just more of a personal minhag for anyone who finds it useful.

During the nefilat apayim section of slichot, there is a passage entitled machnisei rachamim, which requests angels or other heavenly intermediaries to deliver our prayers before God. The permissibility of using such intermediaries and addressing them in prayer is an area of halachic debate. However, one way or another, the prayer is still there.

Though I don’t think that anything in the prayer itself requires it to be changed, I certainly see in it a good opportunity to introduce prayer relating to Yeshua. This can be done simply enough by changing the plural terms addressing the intermediaries to singular (which is more extensive in Hebrew than in the English). An English version of this altered prayer is as follows [adapted from “The Complete Artscroll Selichos” (Minhag Lita), the first example can be found on pp. 46-7]:

O you who ushers in [pleas for] mercy, may you usher in our [plea for] mercy, before the Master of mercy. O you who cause prayer to be heard, may you cause our prayer to be heard, before the Hearer of prayer. O you who cause outcry to be heard, may you cause our outcry to be heard, before the Hearer of outcry. O you who usher in tears, may you usher in our tears, before the King Who finds favor through tears.

Exert yourself, and multiply supplication and petition, before the King, God, exalted and most high. Mention before Him, cause to be heard before Him, the Torah and good deeds of [the Patriarchs and Matriarchs] who dwelt in the dust.

May He remember their love and grant life to [their] offspring, that the remnant of Jacob not be lost. For the flock of the faithful shepherd [Moses] has become a disgrace; Israel, the unique nation, a parable and a simile.

Speedily answer us, O God of our salvation, and redeem us from all harsh decrees; and may You save, in your abundant mercy, Your righteous anointed and Your people.

Shanah Tovah and Chatimah Tovah

Is all of God not corporeal or is Yeshua just not incorporeal?

“I believe with complete faith that the Creator, Blessed is His Name is not physical and is not affected by physical phenomena, and that there is no comparison whatsoever to Him.” 3^rd Ikar

It is actually Rambam’s 3^rd ikar and not the 12^th that has proven most difficult for Messianic believers to explain. Exactly describing Yeshua’s make-up in relation to humanity and God has often proven difficult, even within Christian circles. The nuances can often be quite significant since we are discussing the very nature of God. This point is extremely important to remember, that even within a specific religious group, the theological or philosophical tools used to describe these metaphysics are not perfect. Their results are often also unstable. The theological results of one era may be overturned or refined by another. This can often be a difficult foundation on which to build fundamental pillars and, worse, is a very tricky arena for dialogue between groups when a polemic motivation is involved.

The method of via negativa (attempt to define God by what may not be said about him) dominates when it comes to defining who or what is God and who or what is humanity. These two entities are often defined by saying that they are not the other. Even though God may be said to not be all of creation, humanity is often the other against which he is negatively defined. The compliment is then returned by humanity as well. This creates the unique problem of discussing the interaction between these two entities. This difficulty exists on many levels. How do we describe the human encounter with the divine that results in anthropomorphic descriptions, for, one way or another, our descriptions will be based on something that is familiar and coherent to us and can never be fully not us. The question really is, “What lies between the two?” Our tool of via negativa is not fully equipped for this question.

What I would like to propose regarding this ikar is not the Messianic solution, but an answer that technically provides leeway for further interaction. There is a point where exploration of theological matters leaves the basics and has more in common with the intricacies of maasei merkava and maase bereshit. To have some overall understanding of who God is and how I should view him is a must. However, beyond this basic point we run the risk of entering two less certain, exploratory areas and confusing their in-capturable nature with this basic view. First, we may confuse our theological tools, which are a sort of theoretical physics that attempts to describe or hypothesize regarding the experienced nature of God and the world, with the simple building blocks of absolute certainty. Secondly, we may confuse the generally knowable with the less attainable exploration of God’s nature that is more the realm of maase bereshit and maase merkava. I don’t necessarily mean that it is just a realm of mysticism so much as to show the totally contrasting characters of the two. On the one hand, principles should be generally known and accepted, readily accessible and meant to be accessed. On the other, there is another knowledge of God and the world that is meant to be the exact opposite, almost unattainable and certainly not considered a fundamental requirement for faith.

It is important to not confuse the need to adhere to the 13 ikarim with an in depth debate of more esoterical matters. These can of course be explored but may not have to be fully worked out initially just in order to “qualify”, so to speak. As we can see, Rambam describes God here in a fully via negativa sense. Now, we would certainly agree that God, or some element of him is above and beyond all limitedness, that he is transcendent. However, not only believers in Yeshua but most of Judaism to varying degrees also believes in interaction with the divine and imminence as well. Rambam is known for his extremely removed view of God. So, at least to some extent, this ikar has to be explained by most adherents of Judaism, kabbalistic outlooks are the most prominent in this regard.

I suggest that minimally we make use of the via negativa method on a new level. We can minimally state that the God defined by Rambam is certainly not physical. Whether this is all that there is to God or to the heavenly powers is another question. In some sense, it could be said that the panentheistic God of the sefirot has, in some part, a connection with the physical. However, that system reserves the characteristics described in this ikar for the Ein Sof. More specifically, we can say with certainty that Yeshua is certainly not the “Ein Sof” as described in Rambam’s 3^rd ikar. We are taking the same assumption, to belabour the analogy, that kabbalah does regarding “God” as described in Rambam’s ikar.

However, this position must not be misunderstood as license to abandon a proper understanding of Yeshua’s nature. Essentially, since we are forced to use a definition of God that we could say is minimalist enough to be agreed upon by all, we must remember the limitations of this ikar even within Judaism. I can technically make statements regarding God that do not purposefully match with this ikar as long as I reserve some element that does match up. The ikar’s purpose could be said to be to preserve the important, universally agreed upon element of God’s nature that even the common person should affirm. However, it still leaves open the debate (especially in the way it has sometimes been historically treated) regarding the interaction between this transcendent God and humanity.

[Note: Even though I made an analogy with Kabbalah, I do not mean to suggest that the sefirotic systems needs to or should be incorporated. My comparison is between two systems. If system A is allowed to accomplish a certain result, so too should system B be allowed the same leeway.]