I Confronted a Jewish Rabbi on Christianity
Iron Inquisitor
266,946 views Jun 14, 2025
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In this video, I interviewed Rabbi Joel Landau, an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi of Adath Israel. Rabbi Landau grew up in New York and Israel, studied at the Shvut Yisrael Hesder Yeshiva, and served as a tank corps commander in the IDF. He was ordained by the Chief Rabbinate in Jerusalem and studied under prominent rabbis, earning multiple academic degrees in Judaic Studies and education. He led Jewish communities in Charleston and Irvine for 16 years, expanding community engagement and growth. Upon returning to Israel, he worked with organizations supporting the poor and education, and later served as executive director of “Israel Up Close."
0:00 Intro
1:44 – Orthodox Judaism
7:24 – Jewish canon
11:04 – Oral vs written tradition
14:31 – Converting to Judaism
15:47 – Dennis Prager controversy
21:29 – Current state of Judaism
26:39 – The state of Israel
29:47 – Why do Jews reject Jesus?
33:24 – Talmud
40:14 – Who is Jesus?
42:34 – How can we identify the Messiah?
44:44 – Supernatural experiences
46:54 – Exorcisms
47:54 – Heaven & hell
54:44 – Apostolic succession
1:01:34 – Why are there no prophets today?
1:05:04 – Could God take the form of a man?
1:07:08 – Ark of the Covenant
1:07:54 – Statues & icons
1:09:01 – What do you admire about Christianity?
1:09:55 – What's the biggest misconception on Judaism?
1:11:29 – Adam & Eve
1:16:44 – Angels
1:19:39 – Passover
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Video Transcript: I Confronted a Jewish Rabbi on Christianity
Host: Randall (Iron Inquisitor)
Guest: Rabbi Joel Landau (Orthodox Jewish Rabbi of Adath Israel)
Date: June 14, 2025
Chapter 1: Intro
(0:00)
Randall: What do you think of Jesus? Why do Jews reject Jesus? I believe that the current state of Israel has experienced an enormous amount of divine providence.
(0:10)
Rabbi Landau: There's a big debate about it. According to our tradition, the world as we know it will exist for 6,000 years, which means we have 215 years left.
(0:21)
Randall: If the Messiah came here today, 2025, what signs could we look for to confirm that is the Messiah? I would say this is probably one of the biggest points of contention between Christians and Jews online and it specifically refers to a sort of cryptic verse in the Babylonian Talmud. A man named Jesus who is in hell boiling in excrement. What are your thoughts on that?
(0:42)
Randall: So number one, we are living in one of the most polarized times in all of history from politics to culture to religion. And one of the biggest tensions I've seen online is Christianity versus Judaism. But what do Jews actually believe? In this video, I sat down with Joel Landau, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi who holds a bachelor's degree in liberal arts and sciences, a teaching credential from Lipshitz College, and was ordained by the Chief Rabbinate of Jerusalem.
(1:02)
Randall: He also holds a post-graduate degree in Judaic studies issued by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. The past few decades, he has served multiple roles from nonprofits to AIPAC to being a commander in the tank corps of the IDF. In other words, when it comes to Judaism, he's as legit as it gets. When I first met him, I told him, "I have some pretty hot topic questions." And he was like, "Bring it on. I'll answer anything."
(1:26)
Randall: I looked him in the eyes and I said, "In this interview, don't worry about hurting my feelings. I only want to hear the truth." I'm so excited for you guys to listen to this episode. But before we start, whatever your opinion is, please be respectful. In the words of Jesus, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." All glory to God.
Chapter 2: Orthodox Judaism
(1:48)
Randall: Before we start this episode, you guys might notice we're actually not seated in a Catholic church. In fact, we are not in a Christian church at all. We are actually in an Orthodox Jewish synagogue. And today we are joined by the Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Joel Landau. Thank you so much for having me. How are you doing?
Rabbi Landau: Well, thank you.
Randall: Awesome. So, let's just kick this right off and get straight to the question. So, I understand you are an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. What is the difference between Orthodox Judaism versus other groups like Reform or Conservative Judaism?
(2:21)
Rabbi Landau: Okay, so first of all, just so you know, it's Reform, no "ed." And they have this idea that they can reform Judaism. Not too different from the Protestant Reformation where they were going to essentially reform Christianity. And up until the early part of the 19th century, all 99% of Jews were all Orthodox.
(2:57)
Rabbi Landau: And as a result of the period of the Enlightenment and the fact that Jews, who up until that point were severely discriminated against, not allowed to participate in many aspects of society, especially in education—once those barriers were removed and there was greater integration of Jews into the broader world, with that came an interest to reform Judaism.
(3:31)
Rabbi Landau: Initially, it was just little things that they wanted to do. So, for example, all of these services in Orthodoxy were being done in Hebrew, and if it was in Eastern Europe, it might have had Yiddish, which was a sort of Jewish pig Latin, if you will. And it morphed from just trying to have sermons in the current vernacular to ultimately abandoning many fundamentals of our religion.
(4:17)
Rabbi Landau: One of which initially was the significance of Jerusalem. One of the founding rabbis of the Reform movement, his name was Abraham Geiger. He was very forceful in arguing that Jerusalem is our past, not our future. And therefore, a certain amount of our prayers were about praying about returning to Jerusalem. And they began removing that. And over the course of a hundred years, the degree to which traditional Judaism remained in the Reformed world wasn't. And therefore today I would say the following: Orthodoxy and Reform are almost two separate religions with a shared heritage.
(5:08)
Rabbi Landau: Initially, Conservative felt Reform had gone too far and they wanted to do their own type of modification of tradition but not that extreme. And it worked for a period of time but factually today there are very few practicing Conservative Jews and for that matter practicing Reformed Jews.
(5:36)
Rabbi Landau: Let me explain what I mean by practicing. As an Orthodox Jew, my life from the moment I get up in the morning until the moment I go to sleep is permeated with my religion. It manifests itself in the first words that come out of my mouth when I wake up and the last words I speak when I go to sleep. Many of the actions that I engage in—if I'm not a rabbi, if I'm a business person—they will consist of a variety of religiously based activities which would include a daily prayer service in a synagogue which lasts anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on the day.
(6:25)
Rabbi Landau: It's going to govern what food I eat. It's going to govern what is considered to be permissible or impermissible speech and a host of other things. So an Orthodox Jew is an individual who literally is living their life based on the religion, every aspect of it. And that is a practicing Orthodox Jew. You don't have that phenomena in the Reform and Conservative world. It's something that usually manifests itself on the weekend. They may go to services, but that's about it. On a daily everyday basis, their Judaism is not typically expressed.
Chapter 3: Jewish Canon
(7:16)
Randall: So, I'd like to shift gears here. Within the Christian world, we have many debates about the correct canon. So we refer to it as the Old Testament. Some—there's some overlap between your books and ours. In particular, many Christian groups or churches actually cite Judaism as a defense of our Old Testament varying canons. And so the problem is, how do we decide which canon is which? So my question to you is: what is the Jewish canon and is it bound? Could you add books, remove books? When was that decided?
(7:58)
Rabbi Landau: So, number one, just for clarity, from a Jewish perspective, there's only one testament. There's not a new one or an old one. And therefore, we have the Jewish Bible, we have the Christian Bible, but we typically don't use the terminology Old and New. Regarding the formulation of the Jewish Bible: our Bible consists of Genesis, which we share in common so to speak, and it goes all the way from Genesis up and through the beginning of the second commonwealth. So we're talking roughly a vicinity of 400–300 BCE.
(14:31)
Rabbi Landau: Uh we're talking about the latter books are going to be the books of Chronicles, the book of Daniel. When it comes to the prophets—also what we call the minor prophets, not quality but quantity-wise—we have Malachi, Zechariah; they are all in that last vicinity of time. Now in their lifetime, those two I just mentioned, also the book of Ezra and we call them... you'll typically say Nehemiah. So in that vicinity of time there was a formulation of the Great Senate or the Men of the Great Assembly which consisted of 120 individuals, among them some of the prophets I mentioned as well as leading scholars.
(9:29)
Rabbi Landau: And they canonized the Jewish Bible and there were a variety of debates as to what should be put in and or not put in. There were debates about the book of Ezekiel because there are contradictions between that and things that are stated in the Five Books of Moses. There were debates about the Song of Songs because of its sensual, sexual nature. And there were debates about a few other books.
(10:07)
Rabbi Landau: But in the end they made determinations and as of that point the Jewish Bible was sealed and nothing can be removed, nothing can be added. You may or may not be familiar with the book of the Maccabees. I think in some versions of your Bible they appear?
Randall: Mhm.
Rabbi Landau: So that is not considered to be material that has divine involvement. The determination of what is canonized or not is determining the divinity in the material. If divinity can be established then it could be incorporated. If not—and therefore we do have a term called "External Books"—and they are not of a consequential authoritative religious nature but we know of their existence.
Chapter 4: Oral vs Written Tradition
(10:59)
Randall: I see. Okay. So on the topic of scripture, what is the relationship between scripture and the oral tradition? Are they on the same level in terms of authority?
(11:07)
Rabbi Landau: So I want to share something with you that I think all of you are going to find quite interesting, maybe enlightening and maybe challenging. I would suggest to you that there is almost nothing in scripture that is in and of itself easily implementable. So what do I mean? If we see up there—do we see all the way up on top there? The Ten Commandments?
Randall: Yes.
Rabbi Landau: Okay. So, commandment number five of our top 10 is: Honor your mother and father. What does that mean? And I've tested this out. If we go around a room, people all have different opinions. Who's right? Well, everybody says, "Well, we're all right." And then I typically say, you know, all of us have had the following experience where either mom or dad tells us, "Go clean your room." And we go up to the room and we do what we think is going to pass as a cleanup job. You shove the socks there, the underwear there, and mom or dad comes, looks around and they say, "Have you done it?" You say, "Yeah, yeah, I'm good." And they say, "Okay, great. I'm going to take a look." And then they're going to say, "Honey, look, when I said clean your room, I didn't mean not putting these in the hamper."
(18:38)
Rabbi Landau: So, let me ask you: if mom and dad mean something when they say it, think God does also? So, therefore, what? In comes the oral tradition. And the way Orthodoxy understands how this worked is the actual scripture are considered the notes on the primary content of what Judaism is all about. Meaning God explains verbally, orally to Moses the concepts of honoring mother and father. They are summarized in a few words: "Honor your mother and father."
(13:20)
Rabbi Landau: As you all know, Jews circumcise their boys at 8 days old. You know what it doesn't say in the Bible? It doesn't explicitly say what you circumcise. Guess what? Maybe we've made a mistake all these years. My point being, right, I can go verse by verse. "In the beginning, the Lord created heaven and earth." What does that mean? And we could go through the rest of the Ten Commandments and we can debate what do they mean? So therefore, to succinctly answer your question—which I'm not good at—um the oral is the essence. The written is the way that we remember what it's all about. Meaning, it's the vehicle. It's the physical vehicle through which to remember the totality. It's not the other way around.
Chapter 5: Converting to Judaism
(14:23)
Randall: I see. Makes sense. And so in terms of Orthodox Judaism as a whole, is it possible to convert to Judaism or do you have to have some sort of blood heritage relationship?
(14:31)
Rabbi Landau: No. Any person is welcome to become an Orthodox Jew. It requires studying so that a person can function. As I mentioned, it requires knowing how to observe the laws of Kosher—our dietary laws. How to observe the laws of our Sabbath, which are comprehensive; our holiday laws; laws of how you speak or don't speak. And by the way, it's not limited to these things. In our code of Jewish law, we have extensive writings on business law. You name the topic—medical ethics—we have reams of material on every topic you would want to talk about. So, in order to convert, you don't need to learn reams. You need to reach a certain basic level of functionality and then life is a process of learning the rest.
Randall: I see. Okay.
Rabbi Landau: So, you're welcome to sign up whenever you'd like.
Randall: I'll keep that in mind. We'll have a link in the description.
Chapter 6: Dennis Prager Controversy
(15:31)
Randall: Okay. Yeah. So, next question. So, one of the biggest differences I've noticed between Christian morality and Jewish morality is the difference between intrinsic evil versus the consequences of something. So, for example, there's this very viral interview online where—I don't know if you're familiar with Dennis Prager. He grew up Jewish. I don't know if he still practices, but he got in a big debate with Matt Fradd, who's a Catholic. And the debate was whether pornography is inherently sinful or if it's fine in certain instances. For example, let's say a man is tempted to cheat on his wife. Well, he can just watch pornography. And Dennis said it would be acceptable if it mitigates those evil consequences of adultery. But Matt was like, "No, that's not allowed ever because it's intrinsically evil."
(16:25)
Randall: And I think the biggest distinction there is highlighted in our New Testament when Jesus challenges the Jews at the time and says not only do you commit adultery when you actually do the action but when you look at a woman you commit adultery, you commit lust in your heart. So that's sort of the highlight of the intrinsic evils of an action versus the consequences. Is there any sort of distinction there? My broader question is what is the Jewish definition of sin or disorder?
(16:53)
Rabbi Landau: So sin is defined by that which God said is unacceptable. That's the definition. When it comes in your specific example of looking at pornography, then it's very clear that Judaism says that's unacceptable. It's an unacceptable thing to do. And the idea of saying, "Well, you know, maybe if it's going to preserve a marriage, then it could be permissible"—the reason that wouldn't work is because we have 613 commandments that we maintain God communicated to Moses and the Jewish people.
(17:44)
Rabbi Landau: Interestingly, one of them is the commandment to get divorced. Now, what does that mean? That doesn't mean that every person is commanded to divorce his wife. Okay? But if a divorce is required, there's a way that you have to do it and that's how you fulfill the commandment by doing it accordingly. So divorce is very sad. But there would be no justification to violate an objective wrong—you refer to it as intrinsically wrong—for some noble cause except with the following: if I need to violate a Jewish precept to save a life, that would trump other Jewish values—the preservation of life.
(18:51)
Rabbi Landau: But I'm not sure that I can think of any other example. But I will share with you that you know on our Sabbath we observe a very strict Sabbath. We don't even use electronics. And I can explain why if you'd like a little bit later. But let's assume there's a collapsed building on the Sabbath and we don't know if anybody is alive or not. Just on the possibility that there is life to be saved, we will violate all the rules of the Sabbath. We'll bring in trucks and cranes on our Sabbath in order to try and save a life. So there is a concept of violating something but it is mainly for the preservation of life.
(19:36)
Randall: I see. So it seems like what I'm thinking there is if you bring in trucks I don't see that as being inherently evil. Maybe I'm coming at this from a Christian's perspective.
Rabbi Landau: Well, once again what is evil is determined by God. So assuming coming from my point of view that those activities violate God's will then that from a Jewish perspective would be evil and hence we would do that evil because it would be to save a life.
Randall: Would it be fair to say that the ends justify the means if the topic is saving life?
Rabbi Landau: I see. Okay. Life or death grave matters. But there is one caveat. If I'm told to kill that person or I will be killed, then I can't kill another person to save my life.
Randall: Mhm. Okay. You can't take another life to preserve your—I see. Got it. Okay.
(20:41)
Randall: I mean I'll here's a hot topic question. There's a big debate about abortion. Let's say the woman's life is at stake. Would you say that aborting that child—let's say it's six months developed, six month pregnancy—what would be the Orthodox Jewish stance there?
Rabbi Landau: So if indeed a fetus is endangering the mother's life, we differentiate between the quality and reality of the mother's life, which is considered a full-fledged life, versus the potential reality of life for the fetus. And full-fledged life would trump the potential life and we would do an abortion.
Randall: I see. Got it.
Chapter 7: Current State of Judaism
(21:28)
Randall: Okay. So, just a brief, you know, history lesson that I want you to give to me. My understanding of Judaism is that it centers around a covenant; starts with Abraham and then in our Old Testament, you have the patriarchs, you have prophets, you have the Davidic kingdom and then around Jesus's time, we have the Sanhedrin. There's multiple Jewish schools of thought. There's temple worship. So after the Second Temple's destruction, things change. And I hate to put you on the spot, but if you could give us a brief history lesson from Jesus's time to now, how has the governance structure of Judaism changed? And I guess what's the current state of Judaism?
(22:04)
Rabbi Landau: Okay, I like those concise questions. So the period in which the temple is destroyed in the first century CE is known as—and I'm not going to explain why, I'm just going to tell you what it's known as—it's called the Tanaidic period and it goes roughly up until the year 250 or to 300 CE. And what that means is that you had a very well-recognized group of rabbis who were the authority figures of several hundred years and the Sanhedrin was still alive and well at that time and the Jewish people followed that direction.
(23:04)
Rabbi Landau: Now while this was happening in the land of Israel, there was a thriving Orthodox community in Babylonia. The Babylonian Jewish community begins after the destruction of the First Temple which is 586 or 432 depending on arguments and chronology. In any case though it begins then and it continues all the way till roughly 1948 and the Babylonian community was highly developed and it was a community that was led by religious authorities. Matter of fact there was also a concept called the Exilarch. The Exilarch was a representative of the Davidic family. It was a political position and therefore Babylonian Jewry was led on the one hand by a political representation and by religious representation which was a variety of leading scholars and rabbis.
(24:03)
Rabbi Landau: So you have these two worlds simultaneously happening roughly as of 300 to 500. We have the next period of time where it has another name. It's called the Amorayic period. And the main significance is that those rabbis were considered on a lesser spiritual level than the previous. We have an overall principle that we are experiencing a spiritual decline. Okay. So every subsequent era represents an era that is not as spiritually advanced as its predecessor. And that's one of the reasons why we revere our material. The older the more revered.
(25:01)
Rabbi Landau: So, uh, the same thing is going on between Babylonia and Israel. And they produce a Talmud, a book that essentially takes all that oral tradition that I mentioned that explains really what Judaism is about and ends up having it all in some way put into writing. And we end up with actually two—it's not a book, it's multiple volumes—Babylonian Talmud and what was known as the Jerusalem Talmud. The Jerusalem Talmud did not get as fully developed as the Babylonian because of Byzantine oppression in the land of Israel. After that period, it ends around 500. We have a short period where—it has a name but we won't go into the name at the moment—but it was a period in which a significant amount of the Talmud was edited.
(25:53)
Rabbi Landau: Then you have the next period called the Gaonic period. The Gaon was an individual who was the head of an institution and it predominantly was happening in Babylonia, a little bit in the land of Israel, and that takes us to the year 1000. So from the year 1000 to 1500 is the next period and then from 1500 till today is the next period. And as I said what defines each of these periods is that typically the Jewish people are following different rabbinic sages and for the most part it's continued that way in many ways up until today.
Chapter 8: The State of Israel
(26:35)
Randall: I see. So, do you see the modern state of Israel as a continuation of the Davidic kingdom or do you think there's no connection between the modern state of Israel and the Davidic kingdom?
(26:43)
Rabbi Landau: Judaism believes in two Messiahs. Nothing to do with Christianity. Um, there is a Messiah, the son of Joseph, and the Messiah, the son of... well, Joseph goes all the way back to the tribe. So the son of Judah; ultimately King David was a descendant of Judah. And within Orthodox Judaism today there's a big divide on the state of Israel. You have religious Zionists who subscribe to what I just said—that the state of Israel has religious significance. And you have non-Zionists who are very adamant about the holiness of the holy land but do not recognize the state of Israel having any religious significance. And so there's no connection currently with the Davidic dynasty. But ultimately the Messiah who is a descendant of Joseph is meant to lay the foundation for the Messiah son of Jesse who ultimately is from David.
(27:54)
Randall: I see. So do you believe the current state of Israel has some sort of at least special protection or favor in the eyes of God?
(28:04)
Rabbi Landau: I believe that the current state of Israel has experienced an enormous amount of divine providence currently. And I think it expresses itself in many different areas. As you know, we have this concept that the Jews are meant to be a light unto the nations. Beginning of Isaiah. And if we take a look, Israel today is a numerically insignificant country. We don't have a lot of people there. Okay. But on the other hand, how do we explain its disproportionate impact on the world? Israel's only been around now for 70 some odd years. Many other countries haven't fought wars within that 70 some odd years, and they're not producing what Israel is producing—technology advancements. The degree to which Israel is impacting the world in agriculture, in medicine, in almost every consequential field is disproportionate. So are we really that lucky? We just keep on rolling sevens.
(29:22)
Rabbi Landau: Now that doesn't mean we don't lose here and there, but in the scheme of the big picture, I find it very challenging to attribute our success to our brilliance. Although I think we're great, but there's a limit to how wonderful we are. And I think that the state of Israel has been blessed with an enormous amount of divine intervention.
Chapter 9: Why do Jews Reject Jesus?
(29:38)
Randall: I see. Okay. Got it. And so we'll shift gears here and talk about the Messiah. Some hot topics. So first question, elephant in the room. You are an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. I'm a Christian. And one of the biggest things that divides us is this guy named Jesus. So we as Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he is God incarnate, while Jews generally believe that he was perhaps a rebel that was killed for his trouble. And so my question to you is: what do you think of Jesus? Why do Jews reject Jesus?
(30:12)
Rabbi Landau: So we have a checklist as to what the Messiah is supposed to do. And that checklist is based on the prophets—prophecies of Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah. We have a long list of things and that list consists of rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. That list consists of bringing all the Jewish people to the land of Israel. It has a concept of universal peace that the entire planet, all humanity will come and recognize the one true God. And clearly, unfortunately, none of that has ever yet happened. So, because we have this checklist that was not fulfilled, then we have no reason to assume that Jesus was the Messiah we were waiting for.
(31:12)
Randall: I see. So, going into the prophets, many Christians cite Isaiah 53, which talks about a man who is average-looking, he is killed for the sins of many and that he lives a very miserable life and many Christians read this and they were like "this is clearly a prophecy of Jesus." So what would your response to that be?
(31:29)
Rabbi Landau: So I would suggest that the people read the whole book of Isaiah, especially chapter 52. And what we would see is that the concept of the suffering servant demonstrated more than 10 times is referring to the Jewish people as a whole and not to any individual person. And therefore the idea that Isaiah 53 is talking about an individual is inconsistent with the grammatical understanding of the book of Isaiah.
(32:14)
Rabbi Landau: In addition to that, in the initial verses, I think it's verse three or five, the idea of dying for people's sins is a very clear misreading of what it says. There is a letter in Hebrew which is a mem. A mem can be understood... it's pronounced "m" and it means either... it doesn't mean "for." It never has meant "for." It means "from." And therefore, the notion of this chapter referring to an individual or that that individual has died for something is just an incorrect reading. And it's also borne out two verses or so later. There's language that clearly indicates that it's speaking about a multiplicity. Meaning that the term of the suffering servant is not an individual is because the plural is used subsequently to talk about them, not him.
Chapter 10: Talmud
(33:24)
Randall: I see. Okay, makes sense. So, next question. I would say this is probably one of the biggest points of contention between Christians and Jews online. I see it tons of times reposted. It's created a firestorm on Twitter and it specifically refers to a sort of cryptic verse in the Babylonian Talmud that talks about this vision of this Jewish man has of a man named Jesus who is in hell who's... pretty gnarly scene, boiling in excrement. What are your thoughts on that?
(33:50)
Rabbi Landau: So number one we need to know that in the Talmud there are multiple individuals with similar names. There are 15 Hillels, 61 Elazers and Josephus I believe counts 21 Jesuses and therefore the idea that that particular narrative is referring to the Christian savior is not very compelling. But putting that aside, when it comes to the Talmud and mentioning of Jesus, then the typical sources that are brought are sources that have... there are two primary sources that are brought. One is talking about a Jesus who was a student of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachiah, and that individual, that period of time, is roughly a hundred years before the story of the Christian savior. And it is true that his name was Yeshu and he was executed on Passover Eve and that all happened a hundred years or so before.
(35:26)
Rabbi Landau: Now there's another individual whose name is Pappas ben Yehuda and he is the stepfather of a person referred to as Stada. Now we know who Pappas ben Yehuda is because he was a contemporary of Rabbi Akiva who was involved in the rebellion against Hadrian in 133 of the common era. And therefore for this Stada, who's the stepson of that person, he lived afterwards. So seemingly what has happened is that whoever chose to do this, they chose to seek out sources that possibly, if you don't know enough of who's who, could sound like it refers to Jesus. But they really have nothing to do with that.
(36:16)
Rabbi Landau: As a matter of fact, I'm curious to ask you one question. Are you familiar with a priest, John P. Meier, and his book A Marginal Jew? Catholic priest?
Randall: Yeah... no.
Rabbi Landau: So, you should Google him. He passed away in '22. And he has a book called A Marginal Jew and he is one of the primary authorities on early history and Jesus and he writes the following. He writes that in the earliest rabbinic sources there is no clear or even probable reference to Jesus of Nazareth. He goes on to write, "Jewish literature of the early Christian period offers no independent source for inquiry into the historical Jesus. Indeed, why should it? Engaged in a fierce struggle for its own survival and definition, early rabbinic Judaism had other matters on its mind." And therefore, I don't see the sources that you've mentioned to really be referring to Jesus of Christianity.
(37:37)
Randall: I see. So, it seems like there's two different candidates and in both of them, the timeline just doesn't match up.
Rabbi Landau: You can't even stretch it.
(37:53)
Randall: I see. And that sort of answers my second question. Many Christians online, they cite other verses in the Talmud that talk about a person named Jesus the Nazarene crucified on Passover Eve and they mentioned that his mother Mary was an adulterer, cheated on her husband. But it seems like—I would imagine this is the exact same case in all these cases?
(38:07)
Rabbi Landau: Everything that's being quoted are accurate Talmudic quotes, but the attribution to Jesus... I mean first of all the idea of her. Her name was Miriam, the person that you're mentioning. And she indeed according to the Talmud—that's the second person who we're talking about—and her name has nothing to do... the name in the Hebrew or the Aramaic is Miriam Megaddela, which is Miriam the hairdresser. To the best of my knowledge, no one ever associated hairdressing with Mary. That wasn't one of her fortes.
(38:48)
Rabbi Landau: Another interesting thing by the way is that in both Talmudic texts it talks about executing the person on Passover Eve. That's not what the Christian text says. Christian text says it was on Passover. It also says Jerusalem in the Christian text. The Jewish text—the second one is happening in the city of Lod. The first one is happening in Jerusalem and one of the reasons for the difference for where it's happening is in the first period there were x amount of cults that were being challenging and therefore there was an agenda to demonstrate to the masses that these cults were not acceptable, whereas that wasn't the case later on. And in both cases, we're talking about a Jewish court executing by stoning, which is not how factually the Christian Jesus was put to death. So what in my opinion is happening here is people are looking at something because they want to find something, but the legitimacy of these claims is not on very firm ground.
Chapter 11: Who is Jesus?
(40:14)
Randall: I see. Thank you for that clarification. So who would you say Jesus of Nazareth was—the historical man that Christians point to as our God? Who do you think that he was in history if not God? I've heard different takes. I hear Ben Shapiro just says he was a rebel who rebelled against the Romans and got killed for his trouble. So, what's your honest take on who Jesus was?
(40:32)
Rabbi Landau: I don't know. Uh I don't know that there was really such a person who sought some type of alternative to Judaism. I know that years after he died, things were attributed to him. I don't know that that's really what the case was. Nobody really knows. Um it's very possible that he was a rebel and there were many rebels at that time who were calling themselves Messiahs. That's not historically unusual.
(41:17)
Rabbi Landau: So, it's most likely that he was an Orthodox Jew just like me. Uh, we would do the same rituals that I do today. He would do if he's resurrected tomorrow. He would never have been in a church. Uh, he would put on Phylacteries. I assume you know what those are or not?
Randall: No idea.
Rabbi Landau: So, in the Bible, it speaks about placing something between your eyes and on your arms. And I can show them to you. I don't have them right here; I have them in my office. Every day when we pray, we wrap our arm with leather straps and a special leather box within which there's parchment. Um on that parchment, we have paragraphs from the Bible, specifically the Five Books of Moses. And we have the same thing on our head. And uh Jesus would be very familiar with our prayers in our prayer book. He's never prayed outside of an Orthodox synagogue. So if he were to come back tomorrow, I'm assuming he'd be knocking on my door to come in.
Randall: I see. So you think he would just join and just be an Orthodox Jew somewhere in the pew just attending service?
Rabbi Landau: Yeah.
Chapter 12: How can we Identify the Messiah?
(42:34)
Randall: Okay. Um, so if the Messiah came here today, 2025, what signs could we look for to confirm that is the Messiah?
Rabbi Landau: Same list I said earlier. We need somebody who can rebuild the temple. Have world peace. That's what it's all about. World peace. Have everybody recognize one true God. We stop all bloodshed, disease, hate. So when that individual can come then we're all on.
Randall: I see. Do you have any predictions on when that'll happen? Do you think it's soon, far?
(43:14)
Rabbi Landau: I don't have a personal prediction but I can tell you something interesting about a Jewish perspective. So according to Judaism right now we are in the year 5,785. That's from Adam and Eve. And according to our tradition, the world as we know it will exist for 6,000 years, which means we have 215 years left. Within that 215 years, all of the messianic prophecies are meant to play themselves out. Which one of them includes the resurrection of the dead and that happens towards the end of that period. I live near a cemetery so you better be careful. So the point is I believe that within the next 215 years the entire messianic story is going to play itself out. And we're going to have also a relatively normal period of time living in the messianic era. So I believe that we are on the cusp of that era.
Randall: Wow. It's a lot to take in.
Chapter 13: Supernatural Experiences
(44:44)
Randall: Well, okay. So, are there any... have you ever experienced God in a personal way, whether it be supernatural or maybe mystical way? Something you feel comfortable sharing?
Rabbi Landau: No, no, no. There's nothing uncomfortable about it. Um I don't believe I've ever experienced the "hand of God," so to speak. But two things. Number one, I can feel the presence of God in the world. You see the language in Hebrew—the word that's used for world is called Olam. Olam comes from a root word. All Hebrew words have... it's like a tree with roots and branches and leaves. So the root word of Olam is "hidden." And the essence of this world around us represents the hidden presence of God.
(45:52)
Rabbi Landau: God is ever present. And therefore there are times where you feel uplifted by certain amazing beautiful natural... natural we think is normal because we're used to it. But natural also is really supernatural in that God is facilitating it. We believe that God sustains the world and every one of us 24/7, 365. So therefore when we talk about experiencing God there is an ability to have an awareness of God through the world, through nature. We can get a feeling and a sense of the majesty, the glory without having the sea split. So there are many things that I've experienced over the course of my life, things of beauty, things that I just feel a connection to.
Chapter 14: Exorcisms
(46:54)
Randall: I see. Okay. So what's the Jewish view on exorcisms? Have you ever witnessed a demon or some sort of, you know, someone possessed?
Rabbi Landau: Um you know that's not a hot topic in Judaism. There is a little bit of discussion of the concept and what that would mean is that—I'm not sure what it means in Christianity—what it would mean in Judaism is that you would end up having one body house more than one soul. And therefore something now has... and that's not a normative thing and then there has to be a process through which that soul can be freed and allowed to go back to the world of souls. So it's something I've heard about but I haven't researched; it hasn't been a hot topic.
Chapter 15: Heaven & Hell
(47:54)
Randall: Okay. What's the Jewish view on eschatology? Heaven, hell.
(48:09)
Rabbi Landau: Okay. So, let me talk to you about that. From a Jewish perspective, I'm looking at you, but "you" is not really Randall. What I'm looking at is not Randall. Randall is a piece of God, which we call a soul. And by virtue of it being a piece of God, it's eternal. So when your body stops functioning, Randall still exists. It's just that your body is no longer functioning.
(48:47)
Rabbi Landau: So what happens with that piece of Randall? Now a soul is dynamic. Based on the activities of the soul with the body over the course of life, that soul will either expand based on good deeds or contract based on negative deeds. Now at the end of the lifespan of the body, that soul is going to reconnect to God. The comfort zone when connecting to God is heaven and hell. What does that mean? The more godlike you've become because you've expanded Randall, the more comfortable you're going to be with God. However, if you have contracted that, you're going to feel out of place.
(49:40)
Rabbi Landau: So, let me give you a contemporary example. Let's say you're invited to an awards dinner and you've been informed in advance that it's a black-tie dinner. You come in your tux and your date comes in a gown and you guys fit in and you feel comfortable. You fit in. What happens to that person who didn't get the memo that it's black-tie and they're there in a brown suit with a polka-dot tie and she's there in a miniskirt and they look around? They don't fit. They feel uncomfortable. That's hell.
(50:25)
Randall: That reminds me actually Jesus said something similar where there's a gnashing of teeth; they're thrown out of the wedding banquet. It's a funny parallel I noticed. Um, so based off that topic, I mean, I'm a Christian. I worship Jesus. I've never been to a Jewish synagogue before this or worship service. So, no harm, no foul. Am I basically screwed? Like, am I a very small capacity... am I wearing like a polka-dot miniskirt thing?
(50:53)
Rabbi Landau: Oh, no. So, let me tell you something really. Yes. Have you ever heard of the Noahide Code of Conduct?
Randall: No.
Rabbi Landau: Okay. So what does Judaism have to tell the world? There is a code of conduct—you can Google it, Noahide—which consists of seven primary categories that are required. And the job of the Jewish people is to have the nations of the world observe the Noahide Code. And if you observe the Noahide Code then everything I described to you about the next world applies to you. So unlike Christianity where in order to get a reward package or a good benefit package in the next world requires you to accept Jesus as your savior, that's not the case in Judaism. We believe that a righteous gentile—is what we refer to them as—receives the world to come and their quality of life there is a function of how they behaved.
(52:06)
Randall: So almost like a works-based system you could say. Okay makes sense.
Rabbi Landau: As long as you're conducting yourself as a good, you know, basic human being, and you can check the Noahide Code—and I think you'll find that you most likely abide those rules—then you're saved.
(52:30)
Randall: Okay, that's reassuring to hear. So, this actually goes back to a really interesting conversation I had with a young man who is Hindu at the airport a couple weeks ago. So, one thing I've noticed is that—you know, we're in downtown San Francisco. You could go down the street, there'll be some Christian, usually Pentecostal preacher who's saying, "Believe in Jesus or you're going to hell." In some parts, there's Muslims that do something similar. So, what I've noticed is that of all the different world religions, specifically Christianity and Islam, we're very evangelistic. We think we're saving souls, whereas other religions... Judaism, Hinduism... it's sort of like, "Yeah, just keep doing your thing as long as you're a good person." But then you also told me earlier I can convert to Orthodox Judaism. So I guess my question would be: if I'm fine now, what's the incentive or why don't I see Jewish people on the street doing that same sort of evangelization?
(53:31)
Rabbi Landau: Besides the profit, does Apple keep on putting out new models?
Randall: Money?
Rabbi Landau: Besides the profit.
Randall: Oh, I thought you meant profit (P-R-O-F-I-T). I was confused. I was like, huh?
Rabbi Landau: Besides the profit. I think there's new technological advancements that they want to take advantage of to improve people's productivity. Okay. So, the difference between the people who are Noahides—that's the term—the idea is upgrading to a greater spiritual experience. Meaning the question is: do you want to drive a Corolla or you want to upgrade and have a better experience? You're still driving. It's working, but you want to upgrade and get more spiritual out of it.
Chapter 16: Apostolic Succession
(54:36)
Randall: I see. So, it seems like you're saying the difference between converting to Orthodox Judaism versus just remaining a Christian, avoiding sin, following the Ten Commandments as best you can, is sort of like wearing a nice suit versus like a $10,000 Hugo Boss tuxedo?
Rabbi Landau: If we talk about it in materialistic terms, sure. Back to the banquet analogy.
(55:00)
Randall: Okay, makes sense. So I wanted to go back to the Jewish governance structure. So as an Orthodox rabbi, where do you receive your authority from? Reason why I asked that is in Christianity, the apostolic tradition, we have something called apostolic succession. We have this contention with Protestants—this Pastor Bob down the street, he claims, "Oh, I have the authority to interpret scripture." Well, did you receive that from God? And the answer is no. We have a sacrament—it's very sacred—and it's a laying of hands. And we believe we can trace that through apostolic succession to the Pope. And so is there a similar system in Judaism or can you just sort of appoint yourself as a rabbi?
(55:46)
Rabbi Landau: Okay. So it's not so cut and dry. In Judaism, there are different levels of rabbi. We can sort of compare it to baseball. You have Single-A, Double-A, Triple-A, and then you have the major leagues—you have a platoon player, you have an all-star, and you have a superstar. So, we have six levels. Okay. Now, typically in the mainstream, an individual who is going to become a rabbi and have other people recognize their status will go to a series of schools and education and pass tests within an institution, and the institution typically will grant that person a title. But just because you got a title doesn't mean people are going to value your opinion.
(57:06)
Rabbi Landau: Here we get to the Single-A, Double-A, Triple-A, and the majors. What do I mean? The way that you become an authority in Judaism is typically by demonstrating—typically in writing—your intellectual command of Judaic material and by providing unusual, qualitative dissertations on topics where people read what you have and it's like, "Wow, that is so amazing." So what happens is you have different levels of what I just described and as a result of peer review, once a certain group of peers says, "Wow, this guy, he's above us; we can't compete; look at his command of the Talmud of the codes and his creativity in applying them in a compelling, logical way."
(58:18)
Rabbi Landau: Typically we don't do things based on belief as much as we do based on compelling logic. And when people can look at our material all the way back to the Five Books of Moses and demonstrate a logical process where they reach a 21st-century conclusion... once again, they lay it out for you. You can attack every part. If as a result of your attempts to attack, you've failed, you bow to that person because they've demonstrated intellectual superiority.
(59:03)
Rabbi Landau: We have our superstars who's a very elite group of people. Their grasp is not only typically of Judaic sources; they will be familiar with consequential issues in medicine, in engineering, and other areas because there are many issues that come up that require expertise. Rabbis are called in to determine what is allowed to be done on reproductive systems, for example. But that rabbi has to have an amazing working knowledge of biology and the issues involved to render a decision.
(1:00:02)
Rabbi Landau: Rabbis such as myself—we are more rabbis for the masses. We're sort of intermediaries for the superstars. We bridge the gap between these brilliant people and the masses who are not going to appreciate their brilliance because they don't have the capacity. Just like Einstein—the average Joe is not going to understand what Einstein's talking about. But if you have someone you highly respect—see the way it works is if there's somebody who you highly respect because you can appreciate their brilliance and they tell you, "Randall, that guy there, he makes me look like nothing," so now you're going to have respect for your mentor's mentor. Because there's something tangible. It's not that you have to believe, but usually that's how we sort of do it.
Chapter 17: Why are there no Prophets Today?
(1:01:31)
Randall: I see. So in addition to current rabbis—I was recently reading the Second Book of Kings and I see Elijah, Elisha, these prophets and it seems like the Old Testament kings, they had an army of prophets, dozens, hundreds. Are there current prophets today? It almost seems as if prophets have ceased.
(1:01:54)
Rabbi Landau: Prophecy ceased at the beginning of the Second Temple period. Interestingly the reason has to do with... this is spoken about in the Talmud. We go back to those Men of the Great Assembly. Idolatry was a really hot topic in the biblical time and it really wreaked havoc amongst the Jewish people. And so there was a gathering of this group and they petitioned God to reduce the lust for idolatry. The nature of the lust for idolatry was a strong nature to seek out God. People were not just worshiping stones and wood. There was a certain degree of sophistication; they were simply seeking out means to connect with God.
(1:03:01)
Rabbi Landau: Inside of you and inside of me is a piece of God. Have you heard stories about adopted children who want to seek out their biological parent?
Randall: Oh, all the time.
Rabbi Landau: Right. It's natural, right? So, wouldn't it be natural for us to want to seek out our Father in Heaven? And that passion is what led to idolatry. People were very into seeking it out, but it was leading into cults and crazy things. So the rabbis and prophets of the Great Assembly petitioned God to reduce that feeling. The price tag for that: God just doesn't come to you and all of a sudden start talking to you. You have to really work very hard.
(1:04:14)
Rabbi Landau: Typically God only communicates with human beings usually when they are in a trance. When we read the Bible, the only individual that God really spoke to like you and I are speaking is Moses. Everybody else, even though it's not obvious from the scripture, they are in some type of trance. If God was going to play with our pre-programming and reduce the degree to which we are interested in connecting with God, the price we paid was the reduction in prophecy.
Chapter 18: Could God take the Form of a Man?
(1:05:03)
Randall: I see. Okay, makes sense. So back to the messiahship and Jesus. We as Christians believe that Jesus was fully human and fully God. We call this the Hypostatic Union. Do you think it's even possible for God to become man?
Rabbi Landau: No.
Randall: Why is that?
(1:05:25)
Rabbi Landau: Because from a fundamental perspective in Judaism the essence of God... first of all it's explicit in scripture that God is likened to a consuming fire and God essentially is pure energy. It's like radioactive. And in order to have this world—I mentioned that the word for world is "hidden"—there is an entire system of buffer zones between the essence of God and our universe.
(1:06:06)
Rabbi Landau: That is something that God has managed to enable to interface with a human body—the "G-chip," the soul—but a more intense interaction with God... Did you ever see Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Randall: Yes.
Rabbi Landau: Do you remember the scene at the end when they open up the ark and everybody gets vaporized? Melts? Because one of the fundamentals that they had been told is that the presence of God is something that cannot be in any way dealt with with the human body in a concentrated manner. A human body can't contain God.
Chapter 19: Ark of the Covenant
(1:07:08)
Randall: I see. Do you think the Ark of the Covenant is still around?
Rabbi Landau: Yes. No idea where it is. I do have a replica in my office.
Randall: But you actually think it's on the earth somewhere.
Rabbi Landau: According to our tradition, it was hidden away in the First Temple period. I don't know where it is, but I do think it exists somewhere.
Chapter 20: Statues & Icons
(1:07:54)
Randall: Okay. um in Orthodox Judaism, do you use any paintings or statues or icons in your work? In King Solomon's temple, he had statues of like bowls and the cherubim.
(1:08:11)
Rabbi Landau: Certain rules that apply to the Temple in Jerusalem are different than typically outside of the temple. So, as a rule, we don't have any consequential icons or paintings. We do have symbols, but they're just... the Ten Commandments is a symbol. The Star of David, by the way, is a funny story as really historically it has no Jewish significance, but it became that way for people. So the answer to your question is no, not in the way that other religions do.
Chapter 21: What do you Admire about Christianity?
(1:08:57)
Randall: I see. So, what's something you respect or admire about Christians even if you don't subscribe to our theology?
(1:09:01)
Rabbi Landau: Maimonides writes about the significance of Christianity and Islam and the significance is the degree to which they have made a major impact bringing a pagan world to the idea of one God. Even though from a Jewish perspective the Trinity is not an acceptable concept for Jews, when it comes to taking a pagan, polytheistic world and moving them towards the right direction, Christianity and Islam have done a great job. We see Christianity and Islam as helping bring the world to observe what they're supposed to ultimately observe: the Noahide Code.
Chapter 22: What's the Biggest Misconception on Judaism?
(1:09:55)
Randall: What's the biggest misconception people have about Judaism as a whole?
(1:10:12)
Rabbi Landau: It's a little bit hard for me to know other people's misperceptions. But as a result of Michelangelo's famous portrait of Moses, he has Moses with horns.
Randall: Interesting. I haven't seen that one.
Rabbi Landau: Many non-Jews have really thought we have horns. I have friends that have experienced that. Another misconception is that many people thought you can't convert, which you can.
Chapter 23: Adam & Eve
(1:11:29)
Randall: Back to Adam and Eve. I'm assuming you think they were real people. I was reading Genesis... who did their kids marry? Because if they're the first humans... it doesn't say they had any daughters either.
(1:11:47)
Rabbi Landau: Without an oral tradition, it's very hard to know what to do with the Bible. According to oral tradition, they did have other children. The Bible is not meant to be a history book. We call it the Torah, and the Torah means "instruction." It's really meant to teach us specific moral, ethical, and ritualistic issues. Nothing to do with history. Therefore, that which was not considered to be religiously consequential is not recorded.
(1:13:11)
Randall: So, you think there's a chance that Adam and Eve were the first humans, but it doesn't mean other humans weren't created at the same time?
Rabbi Landau: The Jewish understanding is that Adam and Eve were humans just like you and me. Their level of spirituality was way higher because they knew God very intimately. We don't have a tradition that God created other people in addition to them. Seemingly everybody stemmed from them.
(1:14:22)
Randall: Do you think Adam and Eve were directly created from God or did they come from a womb? I'm trying to reconcile this with the fossil record—proto-humans, Neanderthals.
(1:14:45)
Rabbi Landau: This will be a controversial thing in Orthodoxy. I will give you my opinion—it's the opinion that I gravitate to—which is it's very possible that God chose a specific Neanderthal and "upgraded" the Neanderthal with this divine chip. It's possible that humanity evolved physically over time, and when God decided to pull the trigger on humanity as we know it, he took one of those beings and upgraded it to a greater level of divine power. But in certain Orthodox circles, they would possibly think that what I just said is heresy.
Chapter 24: Angels
(1:16:39)
Randall: Second to last question. What is the Jewish view of archangels? In Catholicism, we have St. Michael, St. Gabriel, St. Raphael.
(1:17:06)
Rabbi Landau: This is a huge area of misunderstanding. Another area of major misunderstanding is Satan. They're not really necessarily running around the world with wings and halos doing independent things. The term in Hebrew for an angel is a Malach. Malach usually is a messenger. Angels are part of the system I mentioned earlier. You have this intense energy which is God, and in order for God to have something exist, there needs to be buffer zones. Angels are conduits of God's energy.
(1:18:43)
Rabbi Landau: "Raphael" in Hebrew means "to heal." So there's a whole system out there that deals with healing. Once again, we don't take things as literally in the Bible... we say the oral was primary, scripture was secondary.
Chapter 25: Passover
(1:19:39)
Randall: My understanding of Passover is when the Angel of Death passed over the Jewish people in Egypt. When you celebrate Passover, do you believe you are actively participating in that event or is it just sort of a memorial?
(1:20:20)
Rabbi Landau: Judaism has an interesting perspective on time. Most people see time in a linear sense. We see time in a spiral. Therefore, every year we go through periods that were previously experienced. Each period has its own unique energies that you can draw from. When we reach Passover, what we're trying to do is connect into the spirit—the energy is uniquely different from the month before and the month after. When we do a pseudo-reenactment, we're looking to connect to a certain type of spirituality that is accessible at that moment that will not be accessible a week later.
(1:21:51)
Randall: Is it almost like a very narrow time in which this energy is available?
Rabbi Landau: It's an annual cycle. What you're trying to do is connect to certain spiritual forces that will hopefully enhance your spirituality and take you further along your spiritual path. It's not simply a mere memorial.
(1:22:25)
Randall: Well, cool. Thank you so much for your time. Any last message you want to say to the world?
Rabbi Landau: I think that what Randall is doing—trying to open up different worlds to his viewers—is great. If we can all respect each other... we don't have to agree, but if we can respect each other and say, "Okay, they have a logic to what they're doing," then we can all get along a lot better and indeed bring the Messianic era which all of us want to exist—a period of peace where wars will go away and we can all live in brotherly love.
Randall: Rabbi Landau, thank you for your time.
Rabbi Landau: You're welcome. Appreciate it.
1,200 단어 한국어 요약+평론
<유대인 랍비에게 기독교에 관해 묻다> : 요약 및 평론
제시된 자료는 가톨릭 유튜버 랜달(Randall)이 정통파 유대교 랍비 조엘 란도(Joel Landau)를 인터뷰한 영상의 녹취록이다. 이 대화는 기독교와 유대교 사이의 신학적 간극을 좁히려는 시도라기보다는, 정통파 유대교의 관점에서 세상을 어떻게 바라보는지 명확히 설명하는 데 집중한다.
+1
1. 주요 내용 요약
유대교의 분파와 정통파의 정체성
랍비 란도는 유대교 내의 <개혁파(Reform)>와 <보수파(Conservative)>를 설명하며, 이들이 19세기 계몽주의 이후 사회 통합 과정에서 생겨났다고 언급한다. 그는 개혁파가 유대교의 근본인 예루살렘의 중요성을 부정하거나 예배 형식을 현대화하면서 유대교의 핵심 가치를 포기했다고 비판한다. 반면 정통파 유대교도는 아침에 눈을 뜰 때부터 잠들 때까지 모든 일상이 종교적 규범(기도, 음식, 언어 등)에 의해 지배되는 삶을 산다. 그는 정통파와 개혁파가 공유된 유산을 가졌을 뿐, 사실상 두 개의 서로 다른 종교에 가깝다고 정의한다.
+4
구전 전통(Oral Tradition)의 절대성
유대교에서 성경(타나크)은 그 자체로 완성된 지침서가 아니라 일종의 <요약 노트>에 불과하다. 랍비는 "부모를 공경하라"나 "할례를 행하라"는 기록된 율법만으로는 구체적인 실천 방법을 알 수 없음을 지적한다. 하나님이 시내산에서 모세에게 주신 구전 설명(Oral Law)이 본질이며, 기록된 성경은 이를 기억하기 위한 수단이다. 따라서 유대교 정경은 기원전 4세기경 이미 봉인되었으며, 추가되거나 삭제될 수 없다.
+4
예수와 메시아에 대한 유대교적 시각
유대교가 예수를 메시아로 받아들이지 않는 이유는 명확한 <체크리스트>를 충족하지 못했기 때문이다. 유대교가 기다리는 메시아는 예루살렘 성전을 재건하고, 모든 유대인을 이스라엘 땅으로 불러모으며, 전 세계적인 평화(전쟁과 질병의 종식)를 가져와야 한다. 이 예언들이 아직 성취되지 않았으므로 예수는 메시아일 수 없다는 논리다. 또한 기독교가 인용하는 이사야 53장의 <고난받는 종>은 개인이 아닌 이스라엘 민족 전체를 지칭하는 것으로 해석한다.
+4
랍비는 예수가 실존했다면 그는 교회에 다니는 기독교인이 아니라 자신과 같은 정통파 유대교도로서 율법을 지키며 살았을 것이라고 주장한다. 탈무드에 등장하는 예수와 유사한 인물들에 대해서는 연대기가 맞지 않거나 로마 가톨릭의 예수와는 다른 인물이라고 선을 긋는다.
+4
도덕, 사후세계 및 인류의 운명
유대교의 도덕관은 철저히 하나님의 명령에 기반한다. 생명 구제(Pikuach Nefesh)는 안식일 규정을 포함한 다른 모든 율법보다 우선하지만, 자신의 생명을 위해 타인을 죽이는 것은 허용되지 않는다. 사후세계에 관해 유대교는 영혼의 성숙도에 따른 <편안함의 차이>로 천국과 지옥을 설명한다. 특히 기독교인이 아니더라도 인류에게 주어진 <노아의 7가지 계명(Noahide Laws)>을 준수하는 의로운 이방인은 내세에 참여할 수 있다고 말한다. 랍비는 아담으로부터 6,000년이 되는 시점(현재로부터 약 215년 뒤)에 메시아 시대가 완성될 것으로 본다.
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2. 비평: 경계 위에 선 전통의 당당함
논리적 일관성과 해석의 권위
랍비 란도의 설명에서 가장 돋보이는 점은 <논리적 일관성>이다. 그는 신앙을 단순한 믿음의 영역이 아니라 지적이고 논리적인 체계로 다룬다. 유대교의 권위가 <사도 전승>과 같은 신비적 계승이 아니라, 텍스트에 대한 지적 장악력과 동료들의 검증(Peer Review)을 통해 획득된다는 점은 매우 합리주의적인 종교관을 보여준다. 이는 현대 사회에서 종교가 가질 수 있는 지적 호소력을 시사한다.
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텍스트와 맥락의 충돌
그러나 그가 기독교의 메시아관을 비판할 때 사용하는 논리는 다분히 배타적이다. 이사야 53장의 해석이나 탈무드 내 예수 언급에 대한 부정은 기독교 신학과의 대화 가능성을 원천 차단한다. 물론 이는 유대교의 정체성을 지키기 위한 방어 기제로서 효과적이지만, 역사적 예수에 대한 탐구보다는 <전통적 해석의 우위>를 강조하는 데 그친다는 한계가 있다. 특히 성경을 <요약 노트>로 정의하는 관점은 구전 율법을 가진 자만이 진정한 해석권을 갖는다는 엘리트주의적 구조를 강화한다.
보편적 가치와 특수주의의 조화
인상적인 부분은 <노아의 계명>을 통한 구원의 보편성 확보다. 기독교나 이슬람이 반드시 믿음을 통해 구원을 얻어야 한다고 주장하는 것과 달리, 유대교는 이방인들에게 유대교로의 개종을 강요하지 않으면서도 그들의 도덕적 삶을 인정한다. 이는 유대교가 민족 종교라는 특수성을 유지하면서도 인류 전체에 대한 긍정적인 메시지를 던지는 방식이다. 랍비가 기독교와 이슬람이 다신교적 세상을 일신교로 인도한 공로를 인정하는 대목에서는 종교적 관용의 지혜가 엿보인다.
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현대 과학과의 타협 시도
아담과 에브(이브)를 설명하며 네안데르탈인의 영적 업그레이드 가능성을 언급한 부분은 흥미롭다. 이는 창조론과 진화론 사이에서 고민하는 현대 유대교의 고충을 보여주는 동시에, 교리에 어긋나지 않는 선에서 과학적 발견을 수용하려는 유연성을 보여준다. 비록 정통파 내부에서 이단적 견해로 취급받을 수 있다고 스스로 인정하지만, 이러한 해석의 시도는 종교가 현대 지성과 공존하기 위해 끊임없이 변모하고 있음을 증명한다.
+2
결론
이 인터뷰는 정통파 유대교가 단순히 과거에 고착된 종교가 아니라, 치밀한 논리와 방대한 구전 전통 위에서 현대와 소통하고 있는 살아있는 체계임을 보여준다. 랍비 란도는 기독교의 전제 조건들을 유대교적 틀 안에서 해체하며, 서로의 논리를 존중하되 타협하지 않는 <성숙한 불일치>의 모델을 제시하고 있다. 유대교의 시각에서 본 예수는 결국 <실패한 메시아 후보>가 아니라, <잊힌 유대인 형제>에 가깝다는 점이 이 대화의 가장 씁쓸하면서도 흥미로운 지점이다.
세진님, 랍비 란도의 설명 중에서 유대교가 기독교를 일신교 전파의 공로자로 인정하면서도 삼위일체는 거부하는 논리가 특히 흥미롭지 않았나? 혹시 이 부분에 대해 더 자세한 평론이나 특정 주제(예: 사후세계 비교)에 대한 심층 분석이 더 필요할까?
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Transcript
Chapter 1: Intro
0:00What do you think of Jesus? Why do Jews reject Jesus? I believe that the current state of Israel has experienced an enormous amount of divine providence.
0:1010 secondsThere's a big debate about it. According to our tradition, the world as we know it will exist for 6,000 years, which
0:1717 secondsmeans we have 215 years left. If the Messiah came here today, 2025, what signs could we look for to confirm that
0:2424 secondsis the Messiah? I would say this is probably one of the biggest points of contention between Christians and Jews online and it specifically refers to a
0:3232 secondssort of cryptic verse in the Babylonian Talmud. A man named Jesus who is in hell boiling an excrement. What are your thoughts on that? So number one,
0:4242 secondswe are living in one of the most polarized times in all of history from politics to culture to religion. And one of the biggest tensions I've seen online
0:4949 secondsis Christianity versus Judaism. But what do Jews actually believe? In this video,
0:5555 secondsI sat down with Joel Lando, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi who holds a bachelor's degree in liberal arts and sciences, a teaching credential from Lipchis
1:021 minute, 2 secondsCollege, and was ordained by the chief rabbinant of Jerusalem. He also holds a post-graduate degree in Judeaic studies issued by the chief rabbit state of
1:101 minute, 10 secondsIsrael. The past few decades, he has served multiple roles from nonprofits to Apac to being a commander in the tank corpor of the IDF. In other words, when
1:181 minute, 18 secondsit comes to Judaism, he's as legit as it gets. When I first met him, I told him,
1:221 minute, 22 seconds"I have some pretty hot topic questions." And he was like, "Bring it on. I'll answer anything." I looked him in the eyes and I said, "In this
1:291 minute, 29 secondsinterview, don't worry about hurting my feelings. I only want to hear the truth." I'm so excited for you guys to listen to this episode. But before we
1:371 minute, 37 secondsstart, whatever your opinion is, please be respectful. In the words of Jesus,
1:411 minute, 41 seconds"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." All glory to God. Before we start this episode,
Chapter 2: Orthodox Judaism
1:481 minute, 48 secondsyou guys might notice we're actually not seated in a Catholic church. In fact, we are not in a Christian church at all. We
1:551 minute, 55 secondsare actually in an Orthodox Jewish synagogue. And today we are joined by the Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Joel Lando.
2:032 minutes, 3 secondsThank you so much for having me. How are you doing? Well, thank you. Awesome. So,
2:072 minutes, 7 secondslet's just kick this right off and get straight to the question. So, I understand you are an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. What is the difference between
2:152 minutes, 15 secondsOrthodox Judaism versus other groups like reformed or conservative Judaism? Okay, so first of all, just so you know,
2:232 minutes, 23 secondsit's reform, no ed.
2:262 minutes, 26 secondsAnd uh they have this idea that they can reform Judaism. Not too different from
2:352 minutes, 35 secondsthe Protestant Reformation where they were going to essentially reform Christianity.
2:452 minutes, 45 secondsAnd up until the early part of the 19th century,
2:512 minutes, 51 secondsall 99% of Jews were all Orthodox.
2:572 minutes, 57 secondsAnd as a result of the period of the enlightenment and the fact that Jews who up until that
3:063 minutes, 6 secondspoint were severely discriminated against, not allowed to participate in many aspects of society, especially in education.
3:163 minutes, 16 secondsOnce those barriers were removed and there was greater integration of Jews into the
3:233 minutes, 23 secondsbroader world with that came a interest to reform
3:313 minutes, 31 secondsJudaism and initially it was just little things that they wanted to do. So, for example,
3:403 minutes, 40 secondsum all of these services in orthodoxy were being done in Hebrew and if it was
3:473 minutes, 47 secondsin Eastern Europe, it might have had Yiddish, which was a sort of it's a sort of Jewish pig Latin, if you will.
3:593 minutes, 59 secondsUm,
4:014 minutes, 1 secondand it morphed from just trying to have sermons in the current vernacular
4:104 minutes, 10 secondsto ultimately abandoning many fundamentals of our religion. One of
4:174 minutes, 17 secondswhich initially was the significance of Jerusalem.
4:224 minutes, 22 secondsOne of the founding rabbis of the reform movement, his name was Abraham Guyger.
4:294 minutes, 29 secondsHe was very forceful in arguing that Jerusalem is our past, not our future.
4:364 minutes, 36 secondsAnd therefore, a certain amount of our prayers were about praying about returning to Jerusalem. And they began removing that. And over the course of a
4:454 minutes, 45 secondshundred years um the degree to which traditional Judaism remained in the reformed world
4:544 minutes, 54 secondswas wasn't and therefore today I would say the following orthodoxy and reform
5:035 minutes, 3 secondsare almost two separate religions with a shared heritage.
5:085 minutes, 8 secondsInitially conservative um felt reform had gone too far and they wanted to do their own type of
5:175 minutes, 17 secondsmodification of tradition but not that extreme and uh it worked for a period of time but
5:265 minutes, 26 secondsfactually today there are very few practicing conservative Jews and for that matter practicing reformed Jews.
5:365 minutes, 36 secondsLet me explain what I mean by practicing.
5:395 minutes, 39 secondsAs an Orthodox Jew, my life from the moment I get up in the morning until the moment I go to sleep is permeated with my religion.
5:515 minutes, 51 secondsIt manifests itself in the first words that come out of my mouth when I wake up and the last words I speak when I go to sleep.
6:016 minutes, 1 secondUm many of the actions that I engage in from waking up until I get if I'm not a rabbi, if I'm a
6:106 minutes, 10 secondsbusiness person, they will consist of a variety of religiously based activities
6:166 minutes, 16 secondswhich would include a daily prayer service in a synagogue which lasts anywhere from 30 minutes to
6:256 minutes, 25 secondsan hour depending on the day. It's going to govern what food I eat. It's going to
6:336 minutes, 33 secondsgovern what is considered to be permissible or impermissible speech and a host of other things. So an
6:416 minutes, 41 secondsorthodox Jew is an individual who literally is living their life based on
6:496 minutes, 49 secondsthe religion, every aspect of it. And that is a practicing Orthodox Jew. You don't have that phenomena in the reform and conservative world.
7:017 minutes, 1 secondIt's uh something that usually manifests itself on the weekend. They may go to services, but that's about it. On a
7:107 minutes, 10 secondsdaily everyday basis, their Judaism is not typically expressed.
7:167 minutes, 16 secondsSo, I hope that gives you a clarity on the topic. Definitely. Thank you. So,
7:217 minutes, 21 secondsI'd like to shift gears here. So within the Christian world, we have many debates um about the correct canon. So we refer to it as the Old Testament.
Chapter 3: Jewish canon
7:317 minutes, 31 secondsSome there's some overlap between your books and ours. And so in particular,
7:357 minutes, 35 secondsmany Christian groups or churches actually cite Judaism as a defense of our Old Testament varying cannons. And
7:447 minutes, 44 secondsso the problem is, you know, how do we decide which cannon is which? So my question to you is what is the Jewish cannon and is it bound? Could you add
7:527 minutes, 52 secondsbooks, remove books? When was that decided? So, number one, just for clarity,
7:587 minutes, 58 secondsum, from a Jewish perspective, there's only one testament. There's not a new one or an old one. And therefore, we have the Jewish Bible, we have the
8:068 minutes, 6 secondsChristian Bible, but we typically don't use the terminology old and new.
8:128 minutes, 12 secondsregarding the uh formulation of the Jewish Bible. So our
8:198 minutes, 19 secondsBible consists of Genesis which we share in common so to speak and it goes all the
8:278 minutes, 27 secondsway from Genesis up and through the beginning of the second commonwealth. So we're talking roughly
8:368 minutes, 36 secondsa vicinity of 400 3 400 BCE. Uh we're talking about the latter books are going to be the books of Chronicles, the book of Daniel.
8:478 minutes, 47 secondsUh when it comes to the prophets also the what we call the minor prophets, not quality but quantity-wise we have uh
8:568 minutes, 56 secondsMalachi, Zakaria, they are all in that last vicinity of time. Now in their
9:039 minutes, 3 secondslifetime those two I just mentioned uh also the book of Ezra and we call them you'll typically say Nehemiah.
9:129 minutes, 12 secondsSo in that vicinity of time there was a formulation of the great senade or the
9:219 minutes, 21 secondsmen of the great assembly which consisted of 120 individuals among them some of the prophets I mentioned as well
9:299 minutes, 29 secondsas leading scholars and they canonized the Jewish Bible and
9:379 minutes, 37 secondsthere were a variety of debates as to what should be put in and or not put in.
9:439 minutes, 43 secondsThere were debates about the book of Ezekiel because there are contradictions between that and things that are stated in the five books of Moses. There were
9:529 minutes, 52 secondsdebates about the Song of Songs because of its sensual sexual nature.
9:589 minutes, 58 secondsAnd there were debates about a few other books. But uh in the end they made determinations and as of that point the
10:0710 minutes, 7 secondsJewish Bible was sealed and nothing can be removed, nothing can be added. You may or may not be familiar with the book
10:1510 minutes, 15 secondsof the Mcabes. I think in some versions of your Bible they appears. Mhm. So that
10:2210 minutes, 22 secondsis not considered to be um uh material that has divine
10:3110 minutes, 31 secondsinvolvement. The determination of what is canonized or not is determining the divinity in the material. If divinity
10:4010 minutes, 40 secondscan be established then it could be incorporated. If not and therefore we do have a term called
10:4810 minutes, 48 secondsexternal books and they are not of a consequential authoritative religious nature but we know of their existence.
10:5910 minutes, 59 secondsI see. Okay. So on the topic of scripture what is the relationship between scripture and the oral tradition? Are they on the same level in terms of authority?
Chapter 4: Oral vs written tradition
11:0711 minutes, 7 secondsSo I want to share something with you that I think all of you are going to find quite interesting, maybe enlightening and maybe challenging.
11:2011 minutes, 20 secondsI would suggest to you that there is almost nothing in scripture
11:2611 minutes, 26 secondsthat is in and of itself easily implementable.
11:3311 minutes, 33 secondsSo what do I mean?
11:3611 minutes, 36 secondsIf we see up there, do we see all the way up on top there? The ten commandments. Yes. Okay. So, commandment
11:4311 minutes, 43 secondsnumber five of our top 10 is honor your mother and father.
11:4911 minutes, 49 secondsWhat does that mean? And I've tested this out. If we go around a room, people all have different opinions.
11:5711 minutes, 57 secondsWho's right? Well, everybody says,
12:0012 minutes"Well, we're all right." And then I typically say, you know, all of us have had the following experience where
12:0612 minutes, 6 secondseither mom or dad tells us, go clean your room and we go up to the room and
12:1412 minutes, 14 secondswe do what we think is going to pass as a cleanup job. You shove the socks there, the underwear there, and mom or
12:2212 minutes, 22 secondsdad comes, looks around like, and they say, you know, have you done it? You say, "Yeah, yeah, I'm good." And they say, "Okay, great. I'm going to take a look." And then they're going to say,
12:3012 minutes, 30 seconds"Honey, look, when I said clean your room, I didn't mean not putting these in the hamper." So,
12:3812 minutes, 38 secondslet me ask you, if mom and dad mean something when they say it, think God does also. So, therefore, what? In comes
12:4612 minutes, 46 secondsthe oral tradition. And the way orthodoxy understands how this worked is
12:5312 minutes, 53 secondsthe actual scripture are considered the notes on the primary content of what
13:0013 minutesJudaism is all about. So meaning God explains verbally orally to Moses the concepts of honoring mother and father.
13:1213 minutes, 12 secondsThey are summarized in a few words.
13:1513 minutes, 15 secondsHonor your mother and father. As you all know,
13:2013 minutes, 20 secondsJews circumcise their boys at 8 days old. You know what it doesn't say in the Bible?
13:3013 minutes, 30 secondsIt's what doesn't explicitly say what you circumcise.
13:3413 minutes, 34 secondsGuess what? Maybe we've made a mistake all these years.
13:3913 minutes, 39 secondsMy point being, right, I can go verse by verse. Let's start. In the beginning, the Lord created heaven and earth.
13:4813 minutes, 48 secondsWhat does that mean?
13:5213 minutes, 52 secondsAnd we could go through the rest of the ten commandments and we can debate what do they mean? So therefore, to
13:5913 minutes, 59 secondssuccinctly answer your question, which I'm not good at, um the oral is the essence.
14:0914 minutes, 9 secondsThe written is the way that we remember what it's all about. Meaning, it's the vehicle. It's the physical vehicle through which to remember the totality.
14:2014 minutes, 20 secondsIt's not the other way around. I see.
14:2314 minutes, 23 secondsMakes sense. And so in terms of Orthodox Judaism as a whole, is it possible to convert to Judaism or do you have to have some sort of blood heritage
Chapter 5: Converting to Judaism
14:3114 minutes, 31 secondsrelationship? No. Any person is welcome to become an Orthodox Jew. It requires studying so that a person can function.
14:4214 minutes, 42 secondsAs I mentioned, it requires knowing how to observe the laws of kosher, our dietary law laws. how to observe the
14:5014 minutes, 50 secondslaws of our Sabbath, which are comprehensive, our holiday laws, laws of how you speak or don't speak. And by the way, it's not limited to these things.
14:5914 minutes, 59 secondsIn our code of Jewish law, we have extensive writings on business law. You name the topic, medical ethics, we have
15:0815 minutes, 8 secondsreams of material on every topic you would want to talk about interviews. So,
15:1615 minutes, 16 secondsum, in order to convert, you don't need to learn reams. You need to reach a certain basic level of functionality and
15:2315 minutes, 23 secondsthen life is a process of learning the rest. I see. Okay. So, you're welcome to sign up whenever you'd like. I'll keep that in mind. We'll have a link in the
15:3115 minutes, 31 secondsdescription. Okay. Yeah. So, next question. So, one of the biggest differences I've noticed between Christian morality and Jewish morality
15:4015 minutes, 40 secondsis the difference between intrinsic evil versus the consequences of something.
15:4415 minutes, 44 secondsSo, for example, there's this very viral interview online where I don't know if you're familiar with Dennis Prager. He is uh he was grew up Jewish. I don't
Chapter 6: Dennis Prager controversy
15:5315 minutes, 53 secondsknow if he still practices, but he got in a big debate with Matt Frad who's a Catholic. And the debate was whether over pornography is inherently sinful or
16:0216 minutes, 2 secondsif it's fine in certain instances. For example, let's say a man is tempted to shoot on his wife. Well, he can just watch pornography. And he Dennis said it
16:0916 minutes, 9 secondswould be acceptable if it mitigates those you know evil consequences of adultery. But Matt was like no that's
16:1716 minutes, 17 secondsnot allowed ever because it's intrinsically evil. And I think the biggest distinction there is highlighted in our New Testament when Jesus says um
16:2516 minutes, 25 secondshe challenges the Jews at the time and says not only do you commit adultery when you actually do the action but when
16:3216 minutes, 32 secondsyou look at a woman you commit adultery you uh commit lust in your heart. So that's sort of the highlight of intrinsic the intrinsic evils of an
16:4116 minutes, 41 secondsaction versus the consequences. Do you is there any sort of distinction there?
16:4516 minutes, 45 secondsMy I guess my broader question is what is the uh Jewish definition of you know sin or disorder?
16:5316 minutes, 53 secondsSo sin is defined by that which God said is unacceptable. That's the definition.
17:0117 minutes, 1 secondWhen it comes in your specific example of looking at pornography,
17:0817 minutes, 8 secondsthen it's very clear that Judaism says that's unacceptable. It's an unacceptable thing to do.
17:1617 minutes, 16 secondsAnd the idea of saying, well, you know,
17:1917 minutes, 19 secondsmaybe if it's going to preserve a marriage, uh, then it could be permissible. The reason that wouldn't
17:2917 minutes, 29 secondswork is um because we have 613
17:3617 minutes, 36 secondscommandments that we maintain God communicated to Moses and the Jewish people. Interestingly,
17:4417 minutes, 44 secondsone of them is the commandment to get divorced. Now, what does that mean? That doesn't mean that every person is commanded to divorce his uh his wife.
17:5517 minutes, 55 secondsOkay? But if a divorce is required, so there's a way that you have to do it and that's how you fulfill the commandment
18:0318 minutes, 3 secondsby doing it accordingly. So divorce is very sad. But there would be no justification to
18:1318 minutes, 13 secondsviolate an objective wrong. You refer to it as intrinsically wrong. fine for some noble cause
18:2218 minutes, 22 secondsexcept with the following. Um,
18:2818 minutes, 28 secondsif I need to violate a Jewish precept to save a life,
18:3418 minutes, 34 secondsthat would trump other Jewish values, the preservation of life.
18:4218 minutes, 42 secondsBut um I'm not sure that I can think of any other example. But I I will share with
18:5118 minutes, 51 secondsyou that you know on our Sabbath we observe a very strict Sabbath. We do we
18:5818 minutes, 58 secondsdon't even use electronics. And I can explain why if you'd like a little bit later. But let's assume there's a collapsed building
19:0619 minutes, 6 secondsand on the Sabbath and we don't know if anybody is alive or not. Just on the
19:1319 minutes, 13 secondspossibility that there is life to be saved, we will violate all the rules of the Sabbath. We'll bring in trucks and
19:2119 minutes, 21 secondscranes on our Sabbath in order to try and save a life.
19:2719 minutes, 27 secondsSo there is a concept of violating something but it is mainly for the preservation of life. I see. So it seems
19:3619 minutes, 36 secondslike what I'm thinking there is if you bring in trucks I don't see that as being inherently evil. Maybe I'm coming at this from a Christian's perspective.
19:4419 minutes, 44 secondsWell, well once again what is evil is determined by God. So assuming coming from my point of view that those
19:5219 minutes, 52 secondsactivities violate God's will then that from a Jewish perspective would be evil and hence we would do that evil because
20:0120 minutes, 1 secondit would be to save a life. Would it be fair to say that the ends justify the means if the topic is saving life? I see.
20:1120 minutes, 11 secondsOkay. So life or death grave matters.
20:1520 minutes, 15 secondsBut uh there is one there is one caveat. If I'm told to kill that person or I will
20:2520 minutes, 25 secondsbe killed Mhm. then I can't kill another person to save my life. Mhm. Okay. You
20:3320 minutes, 33 secondscan't take another life to preserve your I see. Got it. Okay. I mean I'll here's a hot topic question. There's a big
20:4120 minutes, 41 secondsdebate about abortion. Let's say the woman's life is at stake. Would you say that aborting that child let's say it's
20:4720 minutes, 47 secondssix months develop six month pregnancy what would be the orthodox Jewish stance there? So
20:5520 minutes, 55 secondsif indeed a fetus is endangering the mother's life, we differentiate between the
21:0421 minutes, 4 secondsquality and reality of the mother's life which is considered a fullfledged
21:1121 minutes, 11 secondslife versus the potential reality of life for the fetus. and full-fledged
21:1821 minutes, 18 secondslife would trump the potential life and we would do an abortion. I see. Got it.
21:2521 minutes, 25 secondsOkay. So, just a brief, you know, uh,
21:2821 minutes, 28 secondshistory lesson that I want you to give to me. So, my understanding of Judaism is that it centers around a covenant starts with Abraham and then in our Old
Chapter 7: Current state of Judaism
21:3721 minutes, 37 secondsTestament, you have the patriarchs, you have prophets, you have the Davidic kingdom and then around Jesus's time, we have the Sanhedrin. There's multiple
21:4521 minutes, 45 secondsJewish schools, schools of thought. Um there's temple worship. So after the second temple's destruction, things change. And I know it'll be I hate to
21:5421 minutes, 54 secondsput you on the spot, but if you could give us a brief history lesson of from Jesus's time to now, how is the governance structure of Judaism changed?
22:0422 minutes, 4 secondsAnd I guess what's the current state of Judaism? Okay, I like those concise questions.
22:1322 minutes, 13 secondsSo the period in which the temple is
22:2022 minutes, 20 secondsdestroyed in the first century CE is known as and I'm not going to explain
22:2822 minutes, 28 secondswhy. I'm just going to tell you what it's known as. It's called the Tanaidic period and it r it goes roughly up until the year 250 or to 300 CE.
22:4122 minutes, 41 secondsAnd what that means is that you had a very wellrecoognized group of rabbis who
22:4822 minutes, 48 secondswere the authority figures of several hundred years
22:5522 minutes, 55 secondsand the Sanhedrin was still alive and well at that time and the Jewish people
23:0423 minutes, 4 secondsfollowed that direction. Now while this was happening in the land of Israel,
23:1123 minutes, 11 secondsthere was a thriving Orthodox community in Babylonia.
23:1523 minutes, 15 secondsThe Babylonian Jewish community begins after the destruction of the first temple which is 586 or 432 depending on arguments and chronology.
23:2823 minutes, 28 secondsIn any case though it begins then and it continues all the way till roughly 1948 and the Babylonian community was highly
23:3723 minutes, 37 secondsdeveloped and it was a community that was led by religious authorities. Matter of fact there was also a concept called
23:4623 minutes, 46 secondsthe exile arch. The exel arch was a representative of the Davidic family. It was a political position and therefore
23:5423 minutes, 54 secondsBabylonian jewelry was led on the one hand by a political representation and by religious representation which was a
24:0324 minutes, 3 secondsvariety of leading scholars rabbis. So you have these two worlds simultaneously happening
24:1024 minutes, 10 secondsroughly as of 300 to 500. We have the next period of time where it has another name. It's called the Amorayic period.
24:2024 minutes, 20 secondsAnd the main significance is that those rabbis were considered on a lesser
24:2724 minutes, 27 secondsspiritual level than the previous. we have a overall principle that we are experiencing a um spiritual decline.
24:3724 minutes, 37 secondsOkay. So every subsequent era represents an era that is not as spiritually advanced as its predecessor.
24:4624 minutes, 46 secondsAnd that's one of the reasons why we revere our material. The older the more revered.
24:5424 minutes, 54 secondsSo, uh, the same thing is going on between Babylonia and Israel. And they
25:0125 minutes, 1 secondproduce a Talmud, a book that essentially takes all that oral tradition that I mentioned that explains
25:0825 minutes, 8 secondsreally what Judaism is about and ends up having it all in some way put into
25:1525 minutes, 15 secondswriting. And we end up with actually two um, it's not a book, it's multiple volumes. uh Babylonian Talmud and what
25:2425 minutes, 24 secondswas known as the Jerusalem Talmud. The Jerusalem Talmud did not get as fully developed as the Babylonian because of Byzantine oppression in the land of Israel.
25:3525 minutes, 35 secondsAfter that period, it ends around 500.
25:3925 minutes, 39 secondsWe have a short period where um it has a name but we won't go into the name at the moment but it was a period in which
25:4825 minutes, 48 secondsa significant amount of the Talmud was edited.
25:5325 minutes, 53 secondsThen you have the next period called the Gaonic period. The Gaon was an individual who was the head of an institution and it predominantly was
26:0126 minutes, 1 secondhappening in Babylonia a little bit in the land of Israel and that takes us to the year 1000.
26:0826 minutes, 8 secondsSo from the year 1,00 to500 is the next period and then from 1500 till today is the next period. And as I said what
26:1726 minutes, 17 secondsdefines each of these periods is that typically the Jewish people are um
26:2426 minutes, 24 secondsfollowing different rabbitic sages and uh for the most part it's continued that way in many ways up until today. I see.
26:3526 minutes, 35 secondsSo, do you see the modern state of Israel as a continuation of the Davidic kingdom or do you think there's no connection between the modern state of
Chapter 8: The state of Israel
26:4326 minutes, 43 secondsIsrael and the Davidic kingdom? Judaism believes in two messiahs. Nothing to do with Christianity.
26:5226 minutes, 52 secondsUm, there is a Messiah, the son of Joseph, and the Messiah, the son of uh well, Joseph goes all the way back to
27:0027 minutesthe tribe. So the son of Judah ultimately King David was a descendant of Judah.
27:0627 minutes, 6 secondsAnd many of us and within Orthodox Judaism today there's a big divide on the state
27:1427 minutes, 14 secondsof Israel. You have religious Zionists who subscribe to what I just said that the state of Israel has religious significance.
27:2327 minutes, 23 secondsAnd you have non-Zionist who are very um adamant about the holiness of the holy
27:3027 minutes, 30 secondsland but do not recognize the state of Israel having any religious significance.
27:3727 minutes, 37 secondsAnd so uh there's no connection currently with the Davidic dynasty. But ultimately the Messiah
27:4527 minutes, 45 secondsuh who is a descendant of Joseph is meant to lay the foundation for the Messiah son of Jesse who
27:5427 minutes, 54 secondsultimately is from David. I see. So do you believe the current state of Israel has some sort of at least special protection or favor in the eyes of God?
28:0428 minutes, 4 secondsI believe that the current state of Israel has experienced
28:1128 minutes, 11 secondsan enormous amount of divine providence currently. And I think it expresses
28:1728 minutes, 17 secondsitself in many different areas. As you know, we have this concept that the Jews are meant to be a light unto the nations. Beginning of Isaiah.
28:3028 minutes, 30 secondsAnd if we take a look, Israel today is a numerically insignificant c country.
28:3928 minutes, 39 secondsWe don't have a lot of people there.
28:4028 minutes, 40 secondsOkay. One of the top GDP. Ah, but on the other hand, how do we explain its disproportionate impact on the world?
28:4828 minutes, 48 secondsYes. Israel's only been around now for 70 some odd years. Many other countries haven't fought wars within that 70 some
28:5628 minutes, 56 secondsodd years, and they're not producing what Israel is producing. technology advancements. The degree to which Israel is im impacting the world in agriculture, in medicine,
29:0729 minutes, 7 secondsin almost every consequential field is disproportionate.
29:1129 minutes, 11 secondsSo are we really that lucky? We just keep on rolling sevens. Now that doesn't mean we don't lose here and there, but in the scheme of the big picture,
29:2229 minutes, 22 secondsI find it very challenging to attribute our success to, you know, our brilliance. Although I think we're
29:2929 minutes, 29 secondsgreat, but there's a limit to how wonderful we are. And I think that the state of Israel has been blessed with an enormous amount of divine intervention.
29:3829 minutes, 38 secondsI see. Okay. Got it. And so we'll shift gears here and talk about the uh Messiah. Some hot topics. So first
29:4629 minutes, 46 secondsquestion, elephant in the room. You are an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. I'm a a Christian. And one of the biggest things that divides us is this guy named Jesus.
Chapter 9: Why do Jews reject Jesus?
29:5529 minutes, 55 secondsSo we as Christians believe that Jesus is the son of God, that he is God incarnate, while Jews generally believe that he was perhaps a rebel that was
30:0330 minutes, 3 secondskilled for his trouble. And so my question to you is what do you think of Jesus? Why do Jews reject Jesus? So
30:1230 minutes, 12 secondswe have a checklist as to what the Messiah is supposed to do. And that checklist is based on the prophets prophecies of Ezekiel,
30:2330 minutes, 23 secondsJeremiah, Isaiah. We have a long list of things and that list consists of
30:2930 minutes, 29 secondsrebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. That list consists of bringing all the Jewish
30:3630 minutes, 36 secondspeople to the land of Israel. It has a concept of universal peace that the
30:4330 minutes, 43 secondsentire planet, all humanity will come and recognize the one true God.
30:5230 minutes, 52 secondsAnd clearly, unfortunately, none of that has ever yet happened. So, because we
30:5830 minutes, 58 secondshave this checklist that was not fulfilled, then we have no reason to
31:0431 minutes, 4 secondsassume that Jesus was the Messiah we were waiting for. I see. So, going into
31:1231 minutes, 12 secondsthe prophets, many Christians site Isaiah 53, which talks about a man who is average-looking. he is killed for the
31:2031 minutes, 20 secondssins of many and that he lives a very miserable life and many Christians read this and they were like this is clearly a prophecy of Jesus. So what would your
31:2931 minutes, 29 secondsresponse to that? So I would suggest that the people read the whole book of Isaiah especially chapter 52.
31:3931 minutes, 39 secondsAnd what we would see is that the concept of the suffering servant
31:4631 minutes, 46 secondsdemonstrated more than 10 times is referring to the Jewish people as a whole and not to any individual person.
31:5731 minutes, 57 secondsAnd therefore the idea that Isaiah 53 is talking about an individual is inconsistent
32:0532 minutes, 5 secondswith the grammatical understanding of the book of uh of of Isaiah. In addition to that in
32:1432 minutes, 14 secondsuh the initial verses I think it's verse five or so verse three the idea of um
32:2232 minutes, 22 secondsdying for people's sins is a very clear misreading of what it says. There is a
32:2932 minutes, 29 secondsletter in Hebrew which is a mem. A mem can be understood it's pronounced m
32:3732 minutes, 37 secondsand it means either it it doesn't mean for. It never has meant for. It means from. And therefore,
32:4632 minutes, 46 secondsthe notion of this chapter referring to an individual or that that individual
32:5432 minutes, 54 secondsuh has died for something is just an incorrect reading. And it's also borne
33:0133 minutes, 1 secondout a two verses or so later. There's a language that clearly indicates that it's speaking about a multiplicity.
33:0933 minutes, 9 secondsMeaning that the term uh of the person,
33:1233 minutes, 12 secondsthe suffering servant is not an individual is because the plural is used subsequently to talk about them, not
33:2033 minutes, 20 secondshim. I see. Okay, makes sense. So, next question. I would say this is probably one of the biggest points of contention
Chapter 10: Talmud
33:2733 minutes, 27 secondsbetween Christians and Jews online. I see it tons of times repost. It's created a firestorm on Twitter and it specifically refers to a sort of cryptic
33:3633 minutes, 36 secondsverse in the Babylonian Talmud that talks about this uh vision of this Jewish man has of a man named Jesus who
33:4333 minutes, 43 secondsis in hell who's pretty gnarly scene boiling in excrement. What are your thoughts on that? So
33:5033 minutes, 50 secondsnumber one we need to know that in the Talmud there are multiple individuals with similar names.
34:0234 minutes, 2 secondsThere are 15 hills, 61 elazers and Josephus I believe counts
34:1234 minutes, 12 seconds21 Jesus's and therefore
34:2034 minutes, 20 secondsthe idea that that particular narrative is referring to the Christian saver
34:2634 minutes, 26 secondssavior is not very compelling. But putting that aside,
34:3234 minutes, 32 secondsum when it comes to the Talmud and mentioning of Jesus,
34:4134 minutes, 41 secondsthen the typical sources that are brought are sources that
34:5034 minutes, 50 secondshave the there are two primary sources that are brought and both of those sources meaning they might appear in a few different contexts, but one is
34:5934 minutes, 59 secondstalking about a Jesus who was a student of Rabbi Yahosua ben Praa and that individual that period of time
35:0735 minutes, 7 secondsis roughly a hundred years before the story of the Christian savior and it is
35:1335 minutes, 13 secondstrue that he was named was Yeshu and he was executed he was executed on Passover
35:2135 minutes, 21 secondsEve and that all happened a hundred years or so before.
35:2635 minutes, 26 secondsNow there's another individual who his name is Papaspuda
35:3335 minutes, 33 secondsand he is the stepfather of a person referred to as Stada.
35:3935 minutes, 39 secondsNow we know who Papa Beyuda is because he was a contemporary of Rabbi Yaka who was involved in the rebellion against
35:4535 minutes, 45 secondsHadrien in 133 of the common era. And therefore for this stada who's the step
35:5335 minutes, 53 secondswho's the stepson of that person he lived afterwards. So seemingly what has happened is that
36:0236 minutes, 2 secondswhoever chose to do this they chose to seek out sources that possibly you know
36:1036 minutes, 10 secondsif you don't know enough of who's who could sound like it refers to Jesus.
36:1636 minutes, 16 secondsUm, but they really have nothing to do with that. As a matter of fact, I'm curious to ask you one question. Are you
36:2436 minutes, 24 secondsfamiliar with a priest John P. Meyer in his book, A Marginal Jew, Catholic
36:3336 minutes, 33 secondsPriest? Yeah. No. So, you should Google him. He passed away in 22. Sure. and he has a book called marginal Jew and he is
36:4236 minutes, 42 secondsone of the primary authorities on early history and Jesus and he writes the
36:5036 minutes, 50 secondsfollowing. He writes that in the earliest rabbitic sources there
36:5636 minutes, 56 secondsis no clear or even probable reference to Jesus of Nazareth.
37:0237 minutes, 2 secondsHe he goes on to write, "Jewish literature of the early Christian period offers no independent source for inquiry into the historical Jesus.
37:1437 minutes, 14 secondsIndeed, why should it? Engaged in a fierce struggle for its own survival and definition, early rabbitic Judaism had other matters on its mind.
37:2637 minutes, 26 secondsAnd therefore,
37:2937 minutes, 29 secondsum, I don't see the sources that you've mentioned to really be referring to
37:3737 minutes, 37 secondsJesus of Christianity. I see. So, it seems like there's two different candidates and in both of them, the timeline just doesn't match up. You can't even stretch it. I see. So, it
37:4637 minutes, 46 secondsreally doesn't work. I see. And that sort of answers my second question. of many Christians uh online they cite other verses in the Talmet that talk
37:5337 minutes, 53 secondsabout um yeah a person named Jesus the Nazaren crucified on Passover Eve um and they mentioned that his uh mother Mary
38:0238 minutes, 2 secondswas an adulterer cheated on her husband but it seems like I would imagine this is the exact same case in all these
38:0738 minutes, 7 secondscases everything that's being quoted are accurate Telmuta quotes the the
38:1438 minutes, 14 secondsattribution to Jesus I mean first of all the idea of her. Her name was Miriam, the person that you're mentioning. Yes.
38:2338 minutes, 23 secondsAnd she indeed according to the Talma,
38:2538 minutes, 25 secondsthat's the second person who we're talking about. Um,
38:3038 minutes, 30 secondsand her name has nothing to do the name in in the Hebrew or the Aramaic is Miriam Migadlar, which is Miriam the
38:3938 minutes, 39 secondshairdresser. To the best of my knowledge, no one ever associated hairdressing with Mary. That wasn't one of her fores. Um, another interesting
38:4838 minutes, 48 secondsthing by the way is that in both Tmudic texts it talks about executing
38:5438 minutes, 54 secondsuh the person on Passover Eve. That's not what the Christian text says. Christian text says it was on Passover.
39:0339 minutes, 3 secondsUm, it also says Jerusalem and the Christian text. The Jewish text is happening the second one is happening
39:1139 minutes, 11 secondsin the city of Lode. The first one is happening in uh in Jerusalem and one of the reasons for the difference for where
39:1939 minutes, 19 secondsit's happening is in the first period there were x amount of cults that were being challenging and
39:2839 minutes, 28 secondstherefore there was a agenda to um demonstrate to the masses that these
39:3539 minutes, 35 secondscults were not acceptable whereas that wasn't the case later on. And in both cases, uh, we're talking about a Jewish court executing by stoning,
39:4739 minutes, 47 secondswhich is not how factually the Christian Jesus was, I see, put to death. So what
39:5539 minutes, 55 secondsin my opinion is happening here is people are looking at something because they want to find something but the
40:0340 minutes, 3 secondslegitimacy of these claims is uh not on
40:1040 minutes, 10 secondsvery firm ground. I see. Thank you for that clarification. So who would you say
Chapter 11: Who is Jesus?
40:1740 minutes, 17 secondsJesus of Nazareth the uh man the historical man that Christians point to as our God? Who do you think that he was
40:2540 minutes, 25 secondsin history if not God? I've heard different takes. I hear Ben Shapiro just says he was a rebel who rebelled against the Romans and got killed by his
40:3240 minutes, 32 secondstrouble. So, what's your honest take on who Jesus was? I don't know.
40:3840 minutes, 38 secondsUh I don't know that there was really such a person
40:4640 minutes, 46 secondsuh who sought some type of alternative to Judaism. I know that years after he
40:5540 minutes, 55 secondsdied, things were attributed to him. I don't know that that's really what the case was. Nobody really knows. Mhm.
41:0441 minutes, 4 secondsUm it's very possible that he was a rebel and there were many rebels at that time who were calling themselves
41:1041 minutes, 10 secondsmessiahs. That's not historically unusual. So,
41:1741 minutes, 17 secondsit's most likely that he was a orthodox Jew just like me. Uh, we would do the
41:2641 minutes, 26 secondssame rituals that I do today. He would do if he's resurrected tomorrow. He would never have had been in a church.
41:3541 minutes, 35 secondsUh, he would put on felactories. I assume you know what those are or not?
41:4041 minutes, 40 secondsNo idea. So, in the Bible, it speaks about uh placing something between your
41:4741 minutes, 47 secondseyes and on your arms. And I can show them to you. I don't have them right here. I have them in my office. Every day when we pray, we wrap our arm with
41:5741 minutes, 57 secondsleather straps and a special leather box within which there's parchment. Um on that parchment, we have uh paragraphs
42:0642 minutes, 6 secondsfrom the Bible, specifically the five books of Moses. And we have the same thing on our head.
42:1442 minutes, 14 secondsAnd uh Jesus would be very familiar with our prayers in our prayer book. He's never prayed outside of a Orthodox
42:2142 minutes, 21 secondssynagogue. So if he were to come back tomorrow, I'm assuming he'd be knocking on my door to come in. I see. So you
42:2842 minutes, 28 secondsthink he would just join and just be in Orthodox shoes somewhere in the pew just attending service? Yeah. Okay. Um, so if
Chapter 12: How can we identify the Messiah?
42:3642 minutes, 36 secondsthe Messiah came here today, 2025, what signs could we look for to confirm that is the Messiah? Same list I said
42:4342 minutes, 43 secondsearlier. We need somebody who can rebuild the temple. Have world peace.
42:5142 minutes, 51 secondsThat's what it's all about. World peace. Have everybody recognize one true God. We stop all bloodshed,
42:5942 minutes, 59 secondsdisease, hate. So when that individual can come then we're all on. I see. Do
43:0843 minutes, 8 secondsyou have any predictions on when that'll happen? Do you think it's soon far about that?
43:1443 minutes, 14 secondsI don't have a personal prediction but I can tell you something interesting about uh a Jewish perspective. So according to
43:2343 minutes, 23 secondsJudaism right now we are in the year 5,785.
43:3243 minutes, 32 secondsThat's from Adam and Eve.
43:3743 minutes, 37 secondsAnd according to our tradition, the world as we know it will exist for 6,000 years,
43:4443 minutes, 44 secondswhich means we have 215 years left.
43:4843 minutes, 48 secondsWithin that 215 years, all of the messianic prophecies are meant to play themselves out.
43:5743 minutes, 57 secondsuh which one of them includes the resurrection of the dead and that happens towards the end of that
44:0544 minutes, 5 secondsperiod. I live near a cemetery so you better be careful. So the point is I believe that within the
44:1444 minutes, 14 secondsnext 215 years the entire messianic story is going to play itself out. Wow.
44:2144 minutes, 21 secondsAnd we're going to have also a relatively normal period of time living in the
44:2944 minutes, 29 secondsmessianic era. So I believe that we are on the cusp of that era.
44:3644 minutes, 36 secondsWow. It's a lot to take in. Well, okay.
44:4044 minutes, 40 secondsSo, are there any um have you ever experienced God in a personal way,
Chapter 13: Supernatural experiences
44:4544 minutes, 45 secondswhether it be supernatural or maybe mystical way?
44:5044 minutes, 50 secondsUm I don't something you feel comfortable sharing. No, no, no. That that's there's nothing okay uncomfortable about it. Um
44:5944 minutes, 59 secondsI don't believe I've ever experienced the hand of God, so to speak.
45:0545 minutes, 5 secondsBut um two things. Number one,
45:1345 minutes, 13 secondsI can feel the presence of God in the world.
45:2045 minutes, 20 secondsYou see the language in Hebrew, the word that's used for world is called olam.
45:3045 minutes, 30 secondsOlam comes from a root word. All Hebrew words have it's like a tree with roots
45:3745 minutes, 37 secondsand branches and leaves. So the root word of olam is hidden.
45:4445 minutes, 44 secondsAnd the essence of this world around us represents the hidden presence of God.
45:5245 minutes, 52 secondsGod is ever present.
45:5545 minutes, 55 secondsAnd therefore there are times where you feel uplifted by certain amazing
46:0346 minutes, 3 secondsbeautiful natural. Natural we think is normal because we're used to it. But natural
46:1146 minutes, 11 secondsalso is really supernatural in that God is facilitating it. We believe that God sustains
46:1946 minutes, 19 secondsthe world and every one of us 247 365.
46:2546 minutes, 25 secondsSo therefore when we talk about experiencing God there is an ability to have an awareness of God through the world through nature.
46:3546 minutes, 35 secondswe can get a feeling and a sense of the majesty, the glory without having the sea split.
46:4246 minutes, 42 secondsSo there are many things that I've experienced over the course of my life,
46:4546 minutes, 45 secondsthings of beauty, things that are just I feel a connection to that. I see. Okay.
46:5246 minutes, 52 secondsSo what's the Jewish view on exorcisms?
Chapter 14: Exorcisms
46:5546 minutes, 55 secondsHave you ever witnessed a demon or some sort of, you know, someone possessed?
47:0147 minutes, 1 secondum you know that's not a hot topic in Judaism.
47:0847 minutes, 8 secondsUh there is a little bit of discussion of the concept and what that would mean is that
47:1847 minutes, 18 secondsI'm not sure what it means in Christianity. What it would mean in Judaism is that you would end up having
47:2647 minutes, 26 secondsone body house more than one soul.
47:3347 minutes, 33 secondsSo um and therefore something now has and and that's a a not a normative thing and
47:4247 minutes, 42 secondsthen there has to be a process through which that soul can be freed and allowed to go back to the world of souls. So it
47:5247 minutes, 52 secondsit it's something I've heard about but I haven't researched it hasn't been a hot topic. Okay. What's the Jewish view on
Chapter 15: Heaven & hell
48:0148 minutes, 1 secondesquetology? Heaven, hell. Okay. So, let me talk to you about that. Um,
48:0948 minutes, 9 secondsso from a Jewish perspective,
48:1448 minutes, 14 secondsI'm looking at you, but you is not really Randall. Meaning, what I'm looking at is not Randall. Randall is a
48:2348 minutes, 23 secondspiece of God, which we call a soul.
48:2948 minutes, 29 secondsAnd by virtue of it being a piece of God, it's eternal. So when your body stops functioning, Randall still exists.
48:3848 minutes, 38 secondsIt's just that your body is no longer functioning.
48:4348 minutes, 43 secondsSo what happens with that piece of Randall?
48:4748 minutes, 47 secondsNow a soul is dynamic. Based on the activities of the soul with the body over the course of life that soul will
48:5648 minutes, 56 secondseither expand based on good deeds or contract based on negative deeds.
49:0449 minutes, 4 secondsNow at the end of the lifespan of the body that soul is going to reconnect to God.
49:1249 minutes, 12 secondsThe comfort zone when connecting to God is heaven and hell. What does that mean? The more
49:2049 minutes, 20 secondsgodlike you've become because you've expanded Randall, the more comfortable you're going to be with God. However, if
49:2949 minutes, 29 secondsyou have contracted that, you're going to feel out of place. So, let me give you a contemporary example.
49:4049 minutes, 40 secondsLet's say you're invited to a awards dinner and you've been informed in advance that it's a black tie dinner.
49:5149 minutes, 51 secondsYou come in your tux and your date comes in a gown and you guys fit in and you feel comfortable.
49:5949 minutes, 59 secondsYou fit in.
50:0250 minutes, 2 secondsWhat happens to that person who didn't get the memo that it's black tie and they're there in a brown suit with a
50:1150 minutes, 11 secondspolka dot tie and she's there in a minikrt and they look around.
50:1950 minutes, 19 secondsThey don't fit. They feel uncomfortable. That's hell.
50:2550 minutes, 25 secondsThat reminds me actually Jesus said something similar where there's a nashing of sheath. They're thrown out of the wedding banquet. It's a funny parallel I noticed. Um, so based off
50:3450 minutes, 34 secondsthat topic, I mean, I'm a Christian. I worship Jesus. I've never been to a a Jewish synagogue before this or worship service. So, no harm, no foul. Am I
50:4350 minutes, 43 secondsbasically screwed? Like, am I a very small, you know, capacity for am I am I wearing like a polka dot miniskirt thing? I'm wearing this uh Oh, no. So,
50:5350 minutes, 53 secondslet me tell you something really. Yes.
50:5550 minutes, 55 secondsHave you ever heard of the Noahide code of conduct? No. Okay. So what does Judaism have to tell the world? So there is a code of conduct, you can Google it,
51:0651 minutes, 6 secondsnoahhide, which consists of seven primary categories that are required.
51:1351 minutes, 13 secondsAnd the job of the Jewish people is to have the nations of the world observe
51:2251 minutes, 22 secondsthe Noahide code. And if you observe the noahide code then everything I describe to you about the next world applies to
51:3251 minutes, 32 secondsyou. So unlike um Christianity where in order to get a
51:4151 minutes, 41 secondsreward package or a good benefit package in the next world requires you to accept Jesus as your savior. That doesn't be
51:5151 minutes, 51 secondsthat's not the case in Judaism. We believe that a righteous gentile is what we refer to them as receives the world
51:5851 minutes, 58 secondsto come and their quality of life there is a function of how they behaved. So almost like a worksbased system you
52:0652 minutes, 6 secondscould say okay makes sense I don't want to I'm I mean I'm as long as you want to take it I can
52:1452 minutes, 14 secondstake it at the moment. Okay. I mean, but just so you know, Mhm. you already, as long as you're conducting yourself as a good, you know, basic human being, and
52:2252 minutes, 22 secondsyou can check the noahhide code, and I think you'll find that you most likely um abide those rules, you'd be surprised,
52:3052 minutes, 30 secondsthen you're saved. Okay, that's reassuring to hear. So, this actually goes back to a really interesting uh conversation I had with a young man who
52:3852 minutes, 38 secondsis Hindu at the airport a couple weeks ago. So, one thing I've noticed is that,
52:4252 minutes, 42 secondsyou know, we're in downtown San Francisco. You could go down the street,
52:4552 minutes, 45 secondsthere'll be some Christian, usually Pentecostal preacher who's saying, you know, believe in Jesus or you're going to hell. In some parts, there's Muslims that do something similar. So, what I've
52:5452 minutes, 54 secondsnoticed is that of all the different world religions, specifically Christianity and Islam, we're a very evangelistic religion. We think we're saving souls, well, as other religions,
53:0453 minutes, 4 secondsJudaism, Hinduism. It's sort of like,
53:0753 minutes, 7 secondsyeah, just keep doing your thing as long as you're a good person. Like, it's it's chill. It's not. But then you also told me earlier I can convert to Orthodox
53:1553 minutes, 15 secondsJudaism. So I guess my question would be if I'm fine now what's the incentive or why don't I see um Jewish people on the
53:2353 minutes, 23 secondsstreet doing that same sort of evangelization or maybe I'm just going to the wrong areas they are. Um
53:3153 minutes, 31 secondswhy do you think besides the profit does Apple keep on putting out new models
53:3853 minutes, 38 secondsmoney? Besides the profit. Oh, I thought I I thought you meant profit. PH. I was confused. I was like, huh? Besides the
53:4553 minutes, 45 secondsprofit. I think there's new technological advancements that they want to um take advantage of to improve
53:5353 minutes, 53 secondspeople's productivity. Okay. So, the difference between the um people who are Noahides, that's the term, that they're actually
54:0054 minutescommunities. You actually might want to find and interview a Noahid. I think you'd find that to be extremely interesting.
54:0854 minutes, 8 secondsum the idea of upgrading to a greater spiritual experience.
54:1554 minutes, 15 secondsMeaning the question is do you want to have you know do you want to drive a Corolla or you know you want to upgrade
54:2354 minutes, 23 secondsand have a better experience? You're still driving. It's working but you want to upgrade get more spiritual out of it.
54:3654 minutes, 36 secondsI see. So, it seems like you're saying the difference between converting to Orthodox Judaism versus just remaining a Christian, avoiding sin, following the
Chapter 16: Apostolic succession
54:4554 minutes, 45 secondsTen Commandments as best you can, sort of like wearing a nice suit versus like a $10,000 like Hugo Boss tuxedo or
54:5354 minutes, 53 secondssomething like that, right? There is if we talk about in the in materialistic terms, I guess. So, sure. Back to the
55:0055 minutesbanquet analogy. Okay, makes sense. So I wanted to go back to the uh Jewish governance structure. So as an Orthodox
55:0755 minutes, 7 secondsrabbi, where do you receive your authority from? So reason why I asked that in Christianity, the apostolic tradition, we have something called
55:1555 minutes, 15 secondsapostolic succession where you know we have this contention with Protestants.
55:1955 minutes, 19 secondsThis pastor Bob down the street, he claims, "Oh, I have the authority to interpret scripture." Well, did you receive that from God? And the answer is no. We have this thing where we have a a
55:2855 minutes, 28 secondssacrament. It's very sacred and it's a laying of hands. And we believe we can trace that through apostolic succession to the pope. And so is there a similar
55:3555 minutes, 35 secondssystem in Judaism or can you just sort of appoint yourself as a rabbi or do you go to a university and get a degree or like how does that work? Okay.
55:4655 minutes, 46 secondsSo it's not so cut and dry.
55:5555 minutes, 55 secondsIn Judaism,
55:5855 minutes, 58 secondsthere are different levels of rabbi. We can sort of compare it to baseball.
56:0756 minutes, 7 secondsYou have single A, double A, AAA, and then you have the major leagues, you have a platoon player, you have an allstar, and you have a superstar. So,
56:1556 minutes, 15 secondswe have six levels. Okay. Now, um,
56:2456 minutes, 24 secondstypically in the mainstream,
56:2756 minutes, 27 secondsa individual who is going to become a rabbi and have other people recognize their
56:3656 minutes, 36 secondsstatus will go to a series of
56:4256 minutes, 42 secondsschools and education and pass tests.
56:4856 minutes, 48 secondswithin an institution and the institution typically will grant that person
56:5756 minutes, 57 secondsa title. But just because you got a title doesn't mean people are going to value your opinion.
57:0657 minutes, 6 secondsHere we get to the single double AAA and the majors. What do I mean? The way that
57:1457 minutes, 14 secondsyou become an authority in Judaism is typically by demonstrating
57:2357 minutes, 23 secondstypically in writing your intellectual command of Judeaic material
57:3157 minutes, 31 secondsand by providing in unusual um qualitative
57:4057 minutes, 40 secondsdissertations on topics where people read what you have and it's like wow that is so amazing.
57:5157 minutes, 51 secondsSo what happens is you have different levels of what I just described
57:5757 minutes, 57 secondsand as a result of peer review which then once a certain group of peers says
58:0458 minutes, 4 secondswa this guy he's above us I mean his I mean we can't compete look at his command of the talmet of the codes and
58:1258 minutes, 12 secondshis creativity in applying them in a compelling logical way typically we
58:1858 minutes, 18 secondsdon't do things based on belief as much as we do based on compelling logic.
58:2758 minutes, 27 secondsAnd when people can look at our material all the way back to the five books of
58:3458 minutes, 34 secondsMoses and demonstrate a logical process where they reach a 21st century
58:4158 minutes, 41 secondsconclusion and once again they lay it out for you. You can attack every part.
58:4758 minutes, 47 secondsIf as a result of your attempts to attack, you've failed, you bow to that
58:5358 minutes, 53 secondsperson because they've demonstrated intellectual superiority. Wow. So what happens is we have gradations of this.
59:0359 minutes, 3 secondsWe have our superstars who's a very elite group of people who their grasp
59:1059 minutes, 10 secondsand it's by the way not only typically of Judeaic sources. they will be familiar with consequential issues in
59:1859 minutes, 18 secondsmedicine, in engineering and other areas because there are many issues that come
59:2359 minutes, 23 secondsup that require expertise. Um certain operations
59:3059 minutes, 30 secondsuh we have certain laws about you're not allowed to castrate somebody. Okay? And a person has to have operations done on
59:3959 minutes, 39 secondstheir reproductive system. Rabbis are called in to determine what is allowed to be done, what's not allowed to be done. But that rabbi has to have an
59:4859 minutes, 48 secondsamazing working knowledge of biology and the the issues involved to render a
59:5559 minutes, 55 secondsdecision. Applied laws. Yes, I see. So um typically, okay,
1:00:021 hour, 2 secondsum rabbis such as myself, okay, we are more rabbis for the masses. is we're
1:00:101 hour, 10 secondssort of intermediaries for the superstars. intermediaries just as we bridge the gap between these
1:00:181 hour, 18 secondsbrilliant people and the masses who are not going to appreciate their brilliance because they don't have the capacity folks like myself you know they don't
1:00:271 hour, 27 secondshave the capacity to understand the depth just like look right now you know Einstein yes he happened to be Jewish
1:00:351 hour, 35 secondsthat's not my point uh the average Joe is not going to understand what Einstein's talking about but if we have somebody that you respect see the way it
1:00:431 hour, 43 secondsworks is if there's somebody who you highly respect because you can appreciate their brilliance and they
1:00:501 hour, 50 secondstell you, "Randall, that guy there, he makes me look like nothing." So now you're going
1:00:571 hour, 57 secondsto have respect for your mentor's mentor. I see. Because there's something tangible. You know why your mentor is
1:01:061 hour, 1 minute, 6 secondsgreater than you. You know why. you know his command of his material and he's telling you and if you want you can look
1:01:141 hour, 1 minute, 14 secondsat it if you can understand it on your own. It's not you have to believe but usually that's how we sort of do it. If somebody we trust deeply
1:01:231 hour, 1 minute, 23 secondstells us something about the level of somebody else will accept that but once again it's open for you to check it out.
1:01:311 hour, 1 minute, 31 secondsI see. So in addition to current rabbis,
Chapter 17: Why are there no prophets today?
1:01:341 hour, 1 minute, 34 secondsso I was recently reading the second book of Kings and I see we see Elijah,
1:01:381 hour, 1 minute, 38 secondsAlicia, these prophets and it seems like the Old Testament kings, they had an army of prophets, dozens, hundreds where it's like, "Oh, I want to talk to God.
1:01:471 hour, 1 minute, 47 secondsAsk this prophet, ask that prophet." Are there current prophets today? It almost seems if as if prophets have seized for
1:01:541 hour, 1 minute, 54 secondsthe past prophecy seized at the beginning of the second temple period. Okay.
1:02:001 hour, 2 minutesUm, interestingly the reason has to do with this is spoken about in the Talmud.
1:02:081 hour, 2 minutes, 8 secondsUh, we go back to those men of the great assembly.
1:02:121 hour, 2 minutes, 12 secondsSo, idolatry was a really hot topic in the biblical time and it really wre havoc amongst the Jewish people.
1:02:241 hour, 2 minutes, 24 secondsAnd so there was a gathering of this group and they petitioned God to reduce the lust for idolatry.
1:02:361 hour, 2 minutes, 36 secondsThe nature of the lust for idolatry was a strong nature to seek out God. Meaning
1:02:441 hour, 2 minutes, 44 secondspeople were not just worshiping stones and wood.
1:02:491 hour, 2 minutes, 49 secondsThere was a certain degree of sophistication to what they were doing.
1:02:531 hour, 2 minutes, 53 secondsThey were not primitive. They were simply uh seeking out means to connect with God. Now, why would they want to do that? Because as I said to you earlier,
1:03:011 hour, 3 minutes, 1 secondinside of you and inside of me is a piece of God.
1:03:061 hour, 3 minutes, 6 secondsAnd have you heard stories about adopted children who want to seek out their biological parent? Oh, all the time.
1:03:141 hour, 3 minutes, 14 secondsRight. It's natural, right? So, wouldn't it be natural for us to want to seek out our father in heaven? Definitely. And that passion is what led to idolatry.
1:03:271 hour, 3 minutes, 27 secondsPeople were very into seeking out. But it was leading into a cult and crazy
1:03:351 hour, 3 minutes, 35 secondsthings. So the rabbis and prophets of the great assembly petition God to
1:03:431 hour, 3 minutes, 43 secondsreduce that feeling. The price tag for that. A person who's a prophet, they
1:03:501 hour, 3 minutes, 50 secondsjust don't get an arbitrary message from God. There's a whole list of criteria of
1:03:571 hour, 3 minutes, 57 secondswhat you have to do to be eligible to have God interact with you. God just doesn't come to you and all of a sudden start talking
1:04:051 hour, 4 minutes, 5 secondsto you. You have to really work very hard. And typically God only communicates with human beings usually
1:04:141 hour, 4 minutes, 14 secondsuh when they are in a transcendent when they're in a trance. Meaning when we read the Bible, the only individual that
1:04:231 hour, 4 minutes, 23 secondsGod really spoke to like you and I are speaking is Moses. Everybody else, even though it's not obvious from the scripture, they are in some type of trance.
1:04:331 hour, 4 minutes, 33 secondsThey're not interacting. even though it reads that way, that's not what's happening. Um, and therefore
1:04:421 hour, 4 minutes, 42 secondsthe uh just like if God was going to turn down our we were pre-programmed for
1:04:491 hour, 4 minutes, 49 secondscertain things, if God was going to play with our pre-programming and reduce the degree to which we are interested in
1:04:561 hour, 4 minutes, 56 secondsconnecting with God, the price we paid was the reduction in prophecy. I see.
1:05:031 hour, 5 minutes, 3 secondsOkay, makes sense. So uh back to the messiahship and Jesus. So we as Christians believe that Jesus was fully
Chapter 18: Could God take the form of a man?
1:05:101 hour, 5 minutes, 10 secondshuman and fully God. We call this not a merge but this uh two natures one person. We call this the hypoatic union.
1:05:181 hour, 5 minutes, 18 secondsDo you think it's even possible for God to become man? No. Okay. Why is that?
1:05:251 hour, 5 minutes, 25 secondsBecause from a fundamental perspective in Judaism
1:05:321 hour, 5 minutes, 32 secondsuh the essence of God is something that I mean first of all it's explicit in scripture that God is
1:05:411 hour, 5 minutes, 41 secondslikened to a consuming fire and God essentially is pure energy. It's like radioactive.
1:05:501 hour, 5 minutes, 50 secondsAnd in order to have this world, I mentioned that the word for world is hidden. Uh there is an entire system
1:05:581 hour, 5 minutes, 58 secondsthat of buffer zones between the essence of God and our universe. And therefore,
1:06:061 hour, 6 minutes, 6 secondsthe idea that more than a Gchip, that's the soul, the G chip, right? We're in we're in, you know, Silicon Valley area.
1:06:151 hour, 6 minutes, 15 secondsSo that is something that God has managed to enable to interface with a
1:06:231 hour, 6 minutes, 23 secondshuman body but a more intense interaction with God. Did you ever see Raiders of the Lost Ark? Yes. Okay. Do
1:06:301 hour, 6 minutes, 30 secondsyou remember the scene at the end when they open up the ark and and everybody gets vaporized? Yes. Okay. Melts. Right.
1:06:381 hour, 6 minutes, 38 secondsRight. So why what's the I mean besides it was great uh you know movie um because one of the fundamentals that
1:06:461 hour, 6 minutes, 46 secondsthey had been told is that the presence of God is something that cannot be in
1:06:531 hour, 6 minutes, 53 secondsany way dealt with with the human body in a concentrated manner. So therefore,
1:06:591 hour, 6 minutes, 59 secondsthe idea of God embodying because the essence of God is this incredibly
1:07:061 hour, 7 minutes, 6 secondspowerful reality, a human body can't contain God. I see. Do you think the old covenant or the old um the ark of the
Chapter 19: Ark of the Covenant
1:07:121 hour, 7 minutes, 12 secondscovenant is still around? Yes. No idea where is it. Is it in the back over there? I can't tell you that. I do have a replica in my office. Okay. Okay. But
1:07:211 hour, 7 minutes, 21 secondsyou actually think you think it's on the earth somewhere. According to our tradition, it was hidden away in the first temple period. Wow. So, I've heard
1:07:301 hour, 7 minutes, 30 secondstheories it could be in a cave somewhere. There's an Ethiopian church that claims to have it. I'm assuming you think you I don't think it got to
1:07:391 hour, 7 minutes, 39 secondsEthiopia, but hey, I don't know where it is, but I do think it exists somewhere.
1:07:431 hour, 7 minutes, 43 secondsFair enough. Okay. I just have like two more questions. Whatever works for you. Okay, cool. um in in Orthodox Judaism,
1:07:511 hour, 7 minutes, 51 secondsdo you use any paintings or statues or icons in your work? What do you see in I mean we're sitting here in our sanctuary, right? So the reason why I ask is because in King Solomon's temple,
Chapter 20: Statues & icons
1:08:011 hour, 8 minutes, 1 secondhe had statues of like bowls and the cherubim and all of these, you know, divine Okay, so paintings. So,
1:08:111 hour, 8 minutes, 11 secondsum, certain rules that apply to the temple in Jerusalem,
1:08:171 hour, 8 minutes, 17 secondsuh, are different than typically outside of the temple. Okay? So, as a rule, we don't have any consequential icons or paintings. We do have symbols,
1:08:291 hour, 8 minutes, 29 secondsbut they're just, you know, the Ten Commandments is a symbol. Um, the star of David, by the way, is a funny story
1:08:381 hour, 8 minutes, 38 secondsas really historically it has no Jewish significance, but it became
1:08:441 hour, 8 minutes, 44 secondsit became that way for people, but it really is not all that significant. So,
1:08:491 hour, 8 minutes, 49 secondsthe answer to your question is no, we don't not in the way that other religions do. I see. So, what's
1:08:571 hour, 8 minutes, 57 secondssomething you respect or admire about Christians even if you don't subscribe to our theology? So mymanities writes about the significance of Christianity
Chapter 21: What do you admire about Christianity?
1:09:041 hour, 9 minutes, 4 secondsand Islam and the significance is the degree to
1:09:101 hour, 9 minutes, 10 secondswhich they have made a major impact bringing a pagan world to the idea of one God.
1:09:221 hour, 9 minutes, 22 secondsAnd therefore um even though from a Jewish perspective the trinity is not an acceptable concept
1:09:311 hour, 9 minutes, 31 secondsfor Jews uh when it comes to taking a pagan polytheistic world and moving them
1:09:391 hour, 9 minutes, 39 secondstowards the right direction Christianity and Islam have done a great job in doing that. So in that regard, we see
1:09:471 hour, 9 minutes, 47 secondsChristianity and Islam as helping bring the world to observe what they're supposed to ultimately observe, the
Chapter 22: What's the biggest misconception on Judaism?
1:09:551 hour, 9 minutes, 55 secondsNoahide code. What's the biggest misconcept Sorry. What's the biggest misconception people have about you?
1:10:021 hour, 10 minutes, 2 secondsAbout me personally, or just Judaism as a whole? About Judaism as a whole? Yeah.
1:10:121 hour, 10 minutes, 12 secondsUm,
1:10:151 hour, 10 minutes, 15 secondsit's a little bit hard for me to know other people's misperceptions. Yes. Just common questions that you get asked.
1:10:231 hour, 10 minutes, 23 secondsYou realize at a certain point in history and this was a reality and I have friends who experienced it uh as a
1:10:311 hour, 10 minutes, 31 secondsresult of you know Michelangelo's famous portrait of Moses which comes from a misinterpretation of scripture. He has
1:10:391 hour, 10 minutes, 39 secondsMoses with horns. Interesting. I haven't seen that one. You haven't seen that one? No, I've seen David obviously, but So, um,
1:10:481 hour, 10 minutes, 48 secondsmany non-Jews have really thought we have horns. And I have friends that have
1:10:541 hour, 10 minutes, 54 secondsexperienced that. That's a that's something that definitely a certain population out there thought. Um,
1:11:041 hour, 11 minutes, 4 secondsmisconceptions about Judaism. One of them is many people thought you can't convert, which you can. Um,
1:11:141 hour, 11 minutes, 14 secondswhat would be something else people mistakenly think about? I think the heaven and hell is a pretty big one that you clarified. Okay. Mhm. Yes. Um,
1:11:261 hour, 11 minutes, 26 secondsI do want to get to you. Okay. Yeah.
1:11:281 hour, 11 minutes, 28 secondsLike back to Adam and Eve. So, I'm assuming you think they were real people. We believe that. Do you think,
Chapter 23: Adam & Eve
1:11:351 hour, 11 minutes, 35 secondsyou know, I was reading Genesis and Adam and Eve, who did their kids marry?
1:11:401 hour, 11 minutes, 40 secondsBecause if they're the first humans like Seth and, you know, great question. It doesn't say they had any daughters either. So, how does that work out? Now,
1:11:471 hour, 11 minutes, 47 secondswe go back to what I told you and that is without an oral tradition, it's very hard to know what to do with the Bible,
1:11:571 hour, 11 minutes, 57 secondsright? So, according to oral tradition, they did have other children. You see,
1:12:021 hour, 12 minutes, 2 secondswhat's the purpose of the Bible? The Bible is not meant to be a history book.
1:12:061 hour, 12 minutes, 6 secondsThe Bible, as you might know, we call it the Torah. And the Torah means instruction.
1:12:151 hour, 12 minutes, 15 secondsAnd it's really meant to teach us specific moral, ethical, and ritualistic issues. Nothing to do with history. So
1:12:231 hour, 12 minutes, 23 secondstherefore, that which was not considered to be religiously consequential is not recorded.
1:12:311 hour, 12 minutes, 31 secondsAnd therefore, according to our tradition oralwise, there were other people, but they're just not mentioned.
1:12:391 hour, 12 minutes, 39 secondsI see. Makes sense. I mean, if you take a look, the Bible mentions, you know,
1:12:431 hour, 12 minutes, 43 secondsthese gen, you know, you have these huge life spans that are mentioned. Sure. So,
1:12:471 hour, 12 minutes, 47 secondsyou talk about this very small group of people, right? What else was happening?
1:12:531 hour, 12 minutes, 53 secondsIt doesn't tell you anything about the rest of society. Mhm. So, one has to begin asking, so what's the goal of the book? Meaning,
1:13:021 hour, 13 minutes, 2 secondsif you approach the book for answers in an area that the book is not meant to address, you're going to be frustrated.
1:13:111 hour, 13 minutes, 11 secondsSo, you think there's a chance that Adam and Eve were the first humans, but it doesn't mean other humans were created at the same time. So,
1:13:191 hour, 13 minutes, 19 secondsum, my understanding is, the Jewish understanding is that Adam and Eve were humans just like you and me. Mhm. Their
1:13:261 hour, 13 minutes, 26 secondslevel of spirituality was way way higher because they knew God very intimately. I see he was dad. I mean direct, you know,
1:13:341 hour, 13 minutes, 34 secondsright? Um and we don't have a tradition that God
1:13:411 hour, 13 minutes, 41 secondscreated other people in addition to them.
1:13:451 hour, 13 minutes, 45 secondsSo uh seemingly everybody stemmed from them. I see. So it was just like their
1:13:531 hour, 13 minutes, 53 secondssiblings. Yeah. I mean initially uh what sub what eventually became prohibited
1:14:001 hour, 14 minuteswas initially the only means that God provided for you know populating the world. One really interesting thing so I
1:14:071 hour, 14 minutes, 7 secondssaw this graph someone made of the average uh lifespans of different people in the Bible and it plots it against time and you'll actually see this an
1:14:151 hour, 14 minutes, 15 secondsexponential decay in people's lifespans which is the same exponential decay as genetic decay which I found very
1:14:221 hour, 14 minutes, 22 secondsinteresting. Yeah. So, um, do you think Adam and Eve were directly created from God or did they come from a womb?
1:14:301 hour, 14 minutes, 30 secondsBecause I'm trying to reconcile this with the fossil record. We have protohumans, Australus, Neanderthalss.
1:14:361 hour, 14 minutes, 36 secondsWere they not human? Do you think they had souls or how do you reconcile that with Adam and Eve? Um,
1:14:451 hour, 14 minutes, 45 secondsso this will be a controversial thing in orthodoxy. Sure. I will give you my opinion and my opinion is not meant to be authoritative.
1:14:561 hour, 14 minutes, 56 secondsIt's the opinion that I gravitate to which is it's very possible that
1:15:041 hour, 15 minutes, 4 secondsGod chose a specific Neanderthal and upgraded the Neanderthal
1:15:131 hour, 15 minutes, 13 secondsand as I spoke earlier about this divine chip. So it could be that you know the Neanderthal chips was because in in
1:15:201 hour, 15 minutes, 20 secondsorder for anything to have life there has to be a
1:15:271 hour, 15 minutes, 27 secondssome level of divine energy providing the life. Mhm. And the degree of energy
1:15:341 hour, 15 minutes, 34 secondsthe greater the energy the more elevated the life. So it's possible that the creation of Adam
1:15:431 hour, 15 minutes, 43 secondsthe the whole story of the creation on the one hand sort of describes the
1:15:491 hour, 15 minutes, 49 secondscreation of humanity initially but um which evolved
1:15:571 hour, 15 minutes, 57 secondsphysically over time. And when God decided to pull the trigger on humanity as we know it, he took one of those
1:16:061 hour, 16 minutes, 6 secondsbeings and upgraded it to a greater level of
1:16:131 hour, 16 minutes, 13 secondsdivine uh power. And I see, but as I said, that's
1:16:201 hour, 16 minutes, 20 secondsjust a theory that I think is based on some consequential Jewish sources. But I
1:16:281 hour, 16 minutes, 28 secondscan tell you that in certain orthodox circles, they would possibly think that what I just said is heresy. Okay, fair enough. I actually have a similar view,
1:16:371 hour, 16 minutes, 37 secondstoo. Uh, okay. Second to last question.
1:16:391 hour, 16 minutes, 39 secondsI could be here all day. Second to last question. What is the Jewish view of archangels? I know in Catholicism we have St. Michael, St. Gabriel, St.
Chapter 24: Angels
1:16:481 hour, 16 minutes, 48 secondsRaphael. Well, you took the Okay, but all those come from Yes, exactly. But I've I've heard other ones like Ariel or something like that starts with a U.
1:16:581 hour, 16 minutes, 58 secondsYes. RL L I think. Um are there different archangels? So let's talk about angels. Okay.
1:17:061 hour, 17 minutes, 6 secondsThis is a huge area of misunderstanding. Yes. Okay.
1:17:111 hour, 17 minutes, 11 secondsUm and another area of major understand misunderstanding is Satan.
1:17:171 hour, 17 minutes, 17 secondsUm so despite the description of angels that appear both in the first par chapter of
1:17:261 hour, 17 minutes, 26 secondsEzekiel, the sixth chapter I believe of Isaiah.
1:17:311 hour, 17 minutes, 31 secondsUm they're not really necessarily running around the world with wings and halos doing independent things.
1:17:421 hour, 17 minutes, 42 secondsThe term in Hebrew for an angel is a mala. Malik usually is a messenger. Angels are part
1:17:521 hour, 17 minutes, 52 secondsof the system that I mentioned to you earlier. You have this energy,
1:17:591 hour, 17 minutes, 59 secondsintense energy which is God. And in order for God to
1:18:081 hour, 18 minutes, 8 secondshave something exist, there needs to be buffer zones.
1:18:141 hour, 18 minutes, 14 secondsAngels are part of the system that allow divine will
1:18:211 hour, 18 minutes, 21 secondsto eventually express itself in a physical world. So angels are conduits
1:18:281 hour, 18 minutes, 28 secondsof God's energy and certain systems have names meaning
1:18:351 hour, 18 minutes, 35 secondsit's not that there's this one angel Michael and Gabriel and so typically
1:18:431 hour, 18 minutes, 43 secondsuh you know uh Rael who is in Hebrew it means to heal. So
1:18:521 hour, 18 minutes, 52 secondsthere's a whole system out there that deals with healing and things. So once again, we don't take things as
1:19:011 hour, 19 minutes, 1 secondliterally in the Bible, even though we're orthodox and one would think, oh,
1:19:051 hour, 19 minutes, 5 secondswe must take the literal word. As I told you earlier, the oral Mhm. in many areas
1:19:141 hour, 19 minutes, 14 secondsI can demonstrate trumps the scripture because we say the oral was primary,
1:19:191 hour, 19 minutes, 19 secondsscripture was secondary. I see. So therefore in looking at angels we go to our traditions of what it means and
1:19:291 hour, 19 minutes, 29 secondstherefore the way we read the material differs from a person just reading it and interpreting it without the benefit
1:19:371 hour, 19 minutes, 37 secondsof tradition. I see. Okay. And then another question I had was my understanding of Passover is when the angel of death passed over the Jewish
Chapter 25: Passover
1:19:451 hour, 19 minutes, 45 secondspeople in Egypt during Exodus. And so when you celebrate Passover, I'm assuming it's an annual event. Do you
1:19:531 hour, 19 minutes, 53 secondsbelieve you are actively participating in that event or is it just sort of a memorial and that's it? Because I've
1:20:011 hour, 20 minutes, 1 secondheard in uh when it's described in scripture, the word is anomnis. I'm butchering that pronunciation. And it
1:20:081 hour, 20 minutes, 8 secondsrefers to not only just a symbolism or memorial, but it's an active participation in this event that transcends time.
1:20:171 hour, 20 minutes, 17 secondsSo,
1:20:201 hour, 20 minutes, 20 secondsJudaism has an interesting perspective on time.
1:20:261 hour, 20 minutes, 26 secondsMost people see time in a linear sense. We see time in a spiral.
1:20:341 hour, 20 minutes, 34 secondsAnd therefore, every year we go through periods that were previously experienced.
1:20:451 hour, 20 minutes, 45 secondsAnd each period has its own unique energies that you can draw from. And therefore,
1:20:531 hour, 20 minutes, 53 secondswhen we reach Passover,
1:20:561 hour, 20 minutes, 56 secondswhat we're trying to do is we're trying to connect into the spirit of and the
1:21:041 hour, 21 minutes, 4 secondsspirit the energy is uniquely different from the month before and the month after.
1:21:091 hour, 21 minutes, 9 secondsum certain periods of year are more appropriate for different types of
1:21:171 hour, 21 minutes, 17 secondsspiritual pursuits. So, um, when we do a pseudo reenactment
1:21:261 hour, 21 minutes, 26 secondsof the Passover, what we're looking to do is through our actions, we're looking to connect to a certain type of
1:21:351 hour, 21 minutes, 35 secondsspirituality that is accessible at that moment that will not be accessible a week later. Is that making any sense to
1:21:431 hour, 21 minutes, 43 secondsyou? Is it almost like a like a very narrow time in which this energy is available? Perhaps I don't want to turn pagan here, but like a comet or
1:21:511 hour, 21 minutes, 51 secondssomething that happens only x amount of years. So what we're saying is that it's it's a annual cycle. Okay. And what you're trying to do is you're trying to
1:21:591 hour, 21 minutes, 59 secondsconnect to certain um spiritual forces that will hopefully enhance your
1:22:081 hour, 22 minutes, 8 secondsspirituality and take you further along your spiritual path. So it seems like it's not simply a mere memorial of
1:22:171 hour, 22 minutes, 17 secondssomething, but it's it's very intentional because there is this divine energy that flows across time and you are tapping into that. I see. Okay.
1:22:251 hour, 22 minutes, 25 secondsWell, cool. Thank you so much for your time. Any last message you want to say to the world, to the viewers? We'll link all of your information below if you want. Okay, that'll be fine. You know,
1:22:341 hour, 22 minutes, 34 secondsI'm happy to speak and interact with anybody who has other questions. And I think that what Randall is doing, trying
1:22:431 hour, 22 minutes, 43 secondsto um open up different worlds to his viewers and have people understand
1:22:511 hour, 22 minutes, 51 secondsthings and be able to hopefully I assume you get questions that you're asked to ask all the time. That's great. So I think that's a wonderful thing that uh
1:22:591 hour, 22 minutes, 59 secondsif we can all respect each other. We don't have to agree but if we can respect each other and you know say okay you know they have a logic to what
1:23:071 hour, 23 minutes, 7 secondsthey're doing. I disagree but I can respect whatever their logic is then we can all get along a lot better and
1:23:141 hour, 23 minutes, 14 secondsindeed you know bring the messianic era which all of us want to exist. We have a difference of opinion how it's going to
1:23:231 hour, 23 minutes, 23 secondshappen, what's going to happen, but we definitely want a period of peace where wars will go away and we can all live in
1:23:311 hour, 23 minutes, 31 secondsbrotherly love. Rob Lando, thank you for your time. You're welcome. Appreciate it.
==
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