I Visited the Haredim Again

Yestereday I went to a Haredi synagogue.  I didn't take my family.  Just went by myself.  I was mentally arranging Yiddish songs and my daughter looked at me and laughed and said, "Daddy, what are you doing?"  I think I probably had an intense expression.  But I smiled at her and said "I was just thinking of music."  And before that I'd been reading a book "Defenders of the Faith" which documents life in Haredim communities.

So as cheesy as it sounds, I just followed my heart to a Haredi synagogue.  I arrived a little late.  Grabbed a siddur.  Davened.

There was a great drash.  I hadn't been keeping up with the parsha cycle to be perfectly honest and last night just randomly was telling my daughter about Moshe hitting the rock rather than speaking to it...and sure enough that's what the drash was about.  I might talk more about that later.

Then there was a sponsored kiddush.  I saw someone I knew, a Messianic Jew (UMJC)....but he was very cold to me.  So either he's no longer Messianic (which I can see that an Orthodox Jew might eventually leave the UMJC to be with Jews who practice the halacha) or maybe he knows about me...  I hope he hasn't rejected Yeshua.  That's the vibe I got.  I think he was afraid I would blow his cover.

And then I got into it briefly with one of the rabbis.  The dreaded profiling.  I knew it was coming.  So when he came and sat down with me, I told him all the demographic info he needed to know before he could even ask:  Messianic Judaism background, attending Baptist Church, not identifying as Christian.   As you can imagine, he was very frank with me about his views on Messianic Judaism.  "Messianic Judaism is not Judaism!"  he said at one point.

But I met a nice Israeli man and had a good chat.  And there were a couple other guys that I really got along with.  So, overall, it was a good experience.

I gotta run but I'll talk more about this later...