Jesus's Torah

a juDADAist reading of the Beatitudes for Pentecost

Today is Pentecost Sunday, the fiftieth day after the crucified Jesus’s resurrection, when, in Second Temple times, thousands of Jews from throughout the diaspora gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate Shavuot, the fiftieth day after Passover, on which the Torah (in the form of the Ten Commandments) was given to the Jews.

According to the Book of Acts, the apostles were sitting together in a house when a sound like a violent sandstorm filled the room. A fiery tongue rested on each of them, filling them all with the Holy Spirit and causing each apostle to speak in a foreign language (Acts 2:1-4).

The website Catholic Answers explains that “this miracle (speaking in foreign languages) showed that the gospel was not meant for one tribe, one nation, or one language.”

Perhaps, but it is odd that the only people who heard the apostles’ words were “devout Jews,” both native-born and converts, gathered in Jerusalem for Shavuot from throughout the diaspora: “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs” (Acts 2:5-11).

Clearly, the good news was multilingual, but was it truly universal? Not if only Jews were speaking and hearing the gospel, as Peter makes clear when he addresses the crowd outside the house as “fellow Jews” (Acts 2:14) and “fellow Israelites” (Acts 2:22).

Could it be that the Good News, like the Hebrew Bible, was meant solely for the Jews? If so, this might explain Christian hatred of Jews throughout the centuries, since our very existence reminds them of that fact. It might also explain why so many Christians can hate Jews and love Israel. It’s like liberals in the United States and Canada opening their gatherings with land acknowledgments without ever intending to return the land to the people from whom their ancestors stole it.

Putting all this aside, I thought that since Shavuot and Pentecost almost overlap this year and I posted my juDADAist take on Moses’ Torah last Friday, I would listen for God’s haboob (sandstorm), invite the fiery tongue of the Holy Spirit to rest upon me, and share my juDADAist version of Jesus’s Torah, the Beatitudes, from Matthew 5:3-12:

Now it’s your turn. Sit quietly. Listen for the haboob. Read the Beatitudes and write with a pen of fire what you see within them.