"I looked for thorns and gathered roses" - Rabbi Lichtenstein

Rabbi Isaac Lichtenstein (1824 – 1908)

Rabbi Lichtenstein was an Hungarian Orthodox Rabbi by the age of 20. After over thirty to forty years of great service to his local community he came to read the New Testament (in German), a copy of which had been gathering dust at the back of one of his bookshelves for all these many years.

Perhaps as a result of his journey to this point, his response was most unusual. As he himself would write: "I looked for thorns and gathered roses".

Because of the serious anti-Semitism he experienced, he expected to find little to his likely and little in accord with his Jewish orthodox foundations.

But instead he was transformed!

And so he wrote: "From every line (in the New Testament), from every word, the Jewish spirit streamed forth light, life, power, endurance, faith, hope, love, charity, limitless and indestructible faith in God, kindness to prodigality, moderation to self-denial, content to the exclusion of all sense of need, pity, gentleness, consideration of others, with extreme
strictness as regards self; all these were to be found pervading the book.”

He also went on to write:

“Every noble principle, every pure moral teaching, all patriarchal virtues with which Israel was adorned in its prime, and is still to some extent adorned as heir of the community of Jacob, I found in this book of books refined and simplified, and that in it there is balsam for every pain of soul, comfort for every sorrow, healing for every moral hurt – renewal of faith and resurrection to a new life well-pleasing to God.”

He speaks of the Gospel message travelling to every corner of the world and then it:
“will only come to a stop when it has reached the point of commencement – when it once more has reached (returned to) Israel.

“The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north;

it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.” – Ecc 1:5-6”

He also writes that he is “firmly convinced that Yeshua will yet appear to the Jews as a shining star, as the genius of mankind, the anchor of salvation from the storms of time, as the sun of pure faith, renewing and renewed in heavenly glory.”

What I found in reading a little of his efforts in these two articles, was a most impressive, uplifting and inspirational turn of phrase. I have now read his Two Letters’ (a letter from and to his doctor son) and his ‘Jewish Mirror’, a plea to his fellow Jewish brethren.

In both, I see the great joy of a man who has been through much; who was once honoured and revered by his community for many years, but who is now, in his old age, seen as having ‘lost his marbles’. And yet, he speaks with great joy and eloquence, despite the fact that he was now shunned and ridiculed by many.

It is important, as always, to consider the time and place of his birth and journey so as to better understand why he reaches the conclusions he has.

He speaks before the founding of the modern State of Israel and the great return of the Jewish people from the Diaspora to Israel. He speaks at a time when the Jewish people were therefore still in many ways a downtrodden and seemingly rejected people, despite the amazing and unbelievable achievements of many of their sons and daughters.

He speaks at a time, and from a place, where he appears not to have had the wisdom and counsel of great Christian scholars and great Jewish scholars who have tried to reach across the divide between Judaism and Christianity to better understand each other, and to better interpret the New Testament that has been so seriously corrupted over the centuries.

[As an aside I believe that the NT is now a better and more accurate document than it was a century ago - though still a seriously misunderstood and misinterpreted document.

The discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other great archeological finds, have slowing filtered through to Bible translation scholarship and begun to impact it. At the same time we are now better placed, and able to understand the many significant Hebraisms that even the Jewish people themselves appear to have ‘lost’ from their collective memory to some degree.

Again the incredible lifelong scholarship of great orthodox Jews like the late Prof. David Flusser have helped with this re-discovery and increasing removal of the dirt and grime of many centuries of Hellenistic distortions that have covered the pristine jewel of the Jewish Apostolic Writings  (the NT).

I believe we still have a long way to go, but I am encouraged by the progress I do see.]

So it is with this understanding that I can read these amazing words of Rabbi Isaac Lichtenstein and not be too troubled by his mischaracterization and misidentification of his blessed Messiah Yeshua with a Trinitarian God (though here we may be somewhat led astray by the translator of his German works into English). For example, he identifies Yeshua as a ‘mirror’ of God; an image of God. If this analogy has any foundational truth then Yeshua can not be the Almighty, the Creator of the Universe and Father of all the faithful.

So, despite this unfortunate misunderstanding that I read in these two works of the Rabbi, there is so much joy, beauty, clarity and wisdom in what he has written, as well as much that should encourage others.

For example, he speaks of the message of God going out from Israel to one day return home again (see this quoted above). I believe this is the reality of the times we live in today. The Almighty has returned His people to the Land and has begun to circumcise their hearts and return them to Him. When the time and circumstances are right I believe that the Jewish people ‘en masse’, may experience such an epiphany as Rabbi Lichtenstein had.

This may of course only occur when a Torah observant Jewish man enters Jerusalem and the city trembles before his power and authority as he stands on the Mount of Olives.

I have no fear for the faithful Jewish people when this event arrives on some Yom Teruah in the coming years, rather I fear for the great majority of those say they believe in the ‘Christ’ and who think they follow Yeshua, the Torah observant Jew.

Will these blinded and sadly deluded anti-Torah Hellenists also leap for joy when the Torah is finally written onto the hearts of the 12 Tribes of Israel. May they also wake up and be enlightened by the true Messiah who came to turn the lost sheep of the House of Israel back to YHVH and to also be a banner, a beacon of truth and mercy, of justice and grace to the Gentiles, both through his sacrificial life and his resurrected reality.

For a brief bio on Rabbi Lichtenstein see http://www.messianicassociation.org/bio-lichtenstein.htm