God is not a man that He should lie, nor is He a mortal that He should relent. Would He say and not do, speak and not fulfill?
Bamidbar 23:19
It never ceases to amaze me that, at the end of the non-Jewish year, our gentile brothers and sisters celebrate the birth of a Jewish child, one who turned the world on its head as no child has done before or since. Millions go to church and thank the good Lord for the birth of this Jewish child. If that were not enough, on the first of January, the world, without being aware of it, continues to celebrate him—this time on the day of his circumcision. [1]
Yet, what few seem to realize is that this was a child who went to Jewish schools, spoke Hebrew, ate kosher, shook the lulav on Sukkot, and probably had payot (sidelocks) behind his ears. That he is considered the mashiach in the eyes of millions but is utterly rejected as an apostate by his own people makes us wonder even more. What does this all mean?
Bilaam’s warning to the nations
An interesting Midrash may shed some light on all of this. On the verse, “There arose no more a prophet in Israel like Moshe, who knew God face to face.”[2] The Sages made a most unusual comment: “In Israel none arose, but among the gentiles one did arise. And who was that? Bilaam, son of Peor.”[3]
Since it is unthinkable that the Sages’ statement suggests that Bilaam rose to the level of Moshe Rabbenu, several commentators explain that the gentiles had someone whose status among the nations of the world was similar to that of Moshe among the Jewish people. Moshe was the great halakhic legislator, and the gentiles, too, had a man who held that level of authority in their eyes. That man was Bilaam.
While there is no allusion to this in the text of the Torah, the Midrash quotes a verse from Balaam’s blessing to the Jewish people: “God is not a man that He should lie.”[4] To this the Midrash adds: “Balaam foresaw that a man born from a woman would arise and proclaim himself a god. Therefore, Balaam’s voice was given the power to inform the gentiles: ‘Do not go astray after this man; God is not a man, and if he (a man) says he is God, he is lying.’”[5] In that sense, Balaam assumed the role of legislator among the gentiles.
A prophet for the nations
In fact, there is one interesting aggadah (Talmudic legend) [6] which seems to hint that Balaam may have been a code word for Jesus:
A sectarian once asked Rabbi Hanina, “Do you know how old Bilaam was when he died?”
[Rabbi Hanina] replied, “It is not actually stated, but since it is written ‘Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days’[7] he must have been 33 or 34.”
[The sectarian] replied, “You have spoken well; I personally have seen Bilaam’s chronicle in which it is stated that Balaam the lame, was 33 years old when Pinchas Lista’a (Pinchas the highwayman) killed him.”
What is “Bilaam’s chronicle”? No such book is known, but the Jewish historian Abraham Geiger suggests that this aggadah may allude to Jesus.[8] The latter was 33 years old when he was killed by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. The name Pinchas Lista’a may well be a reference to Pontius Pilate, who was widely reviled by the populous at the time. In that case, Balaam’s chronicle may refer to the Christian Bible.
Jesus is mentioned several times in the Talmud,[9] mostly in a negative light. It is extremely difficult, however, to know whether these stories actually refer to the Jesus of the Christian Bible. One of the many problems is that several dates do not correspond.
Some commentators view Jesus and Christianity more positively. For example, the Rambam wrote that the purpose of Christianity is “to prepare the way for Mashiach’s coming and the improvement of the entire world”, since through their missionary activity “The entire world has already become filled with the mention of Mashiach, Torah, and mitzvot,” paving the way for “the true Messianic king to arise and prove successful.”[10]
The great authority Rabbi Yaakov Emden (1697-1776)[11]and the famous Chief Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook made similar observations.[12]
A careless wave of the hand
The Talmud recounts a curious story of how Jesus was originally a student of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachiah, and that he became an apostate through a misunderstanding:
Our rabbis teach us: One should always push away with his left hand while drawing close with his right hand…unlike Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachiah who pushed Jesus away with both hands… (After Jesus had made an indecent comment about a woman and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachiah expelled him.) One day when he [Rabbi Yehoshua] was reciting the Shema [Hear, O Israel], he [Jesus] came before him. He, Rabbi Yehoshua, intended to receive him [and forgive him], and he gestured to him with a wave of his hand. He [Jesus] thought that he rejected him again [thinking that the gesture was dismissive]. He went and hung up a tile and worshipped it. He [Rabbi Yehoshua] said to him: “Return,” but he replied: “So I have understood from you that everyone who sins and causes the multitude to sin has no chance to repent.”[13], [14]
There is much in this passage that is unclear (Very likely parts of the original text are missing). Is it suggesting that had Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachiah shown more compassion toward Jesus, the latter may not have become an apostate and that Christianity as we know it today would not have developed as it did?[15]
Whatever the Sages may have had in mind, one cannot ignore the fact that they seem to be sending a strong warning to future generations: one careless gesture may spark an outburst of animosity that may result in a severe schism.
Ramban suggests something similar in his commentary on the incident where Sarah (then called Sarai) oppressed Hagar, which resulted in an ongoing Arab hatred of Jews.[16] The Talmud agrees and mentions the cause of Amalek’s hatred of Jews as being a gratuitous rejection of his mother, who wished to join the family of Avraham. [17]
In each of these cases, a lack of empathy contributed to a major antisemitic movement. Now clearly, this is not the whole story; antisemitism is a complex phenomenon. Western antisemitism may even be rooted in the fact that the Jews gave Jesus to the world, and not, as the antisemites claim, that the Jews killed him. This is because he taught the world Biblical ethics, for which the world was not—and perhaps is still not—ready.[18]
Overzealous rabbis
In his celebrated work Mekor Baruch, Rabbi Baruch HaLevi Epstein (1860-1941), best known for his Torah Temimacommentary on the Torah, notes that a harsh approach to those who are on the verge of leaving the fold has caused much damage:
This phenomenon, to our sadness, seems to repeat itself in almost every generation. Whenever people quarrel over matters related to ideology and faith, and a person discovers that his more lenient opinion is in the minority, all too often – although his original view differed only slightly from the majority – the total rejection he experiences pushes him over the brink. Gradually, his views become more and more irrational and he becomes disgusted with his opponents, their Torah and their practices, forsaking them completely.[19]
Rabbi Epstein goes on to discuss the case of Uriel da Costa (1585-1640), a Dutch Portuguese Spanish Jew who denied the authenticity of Oral Law. Rabbi Epstein criticizes the Jewish religious leaders of Amsterdam who excommunicated Uriel da Costa:
Instead of instructing him with love and patience and extricating him from his maze of doubts by showing him his mistake, they disparaged him. They pursued him with sanctions and excommunication, cursing him until he was eventually driven away completely from his people and his faith and committed suicide, ending his life in a most degrading way.[20]
Rabbi Epstein does not mention the excommunication of the well-known Jewish Dutch philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, who became a fierce critic of Judaism,[21] but he surely had him in mind. While Uriel da Costa did no real harm to Judaism, Spinoza became the father of a major philosophical school of thought that greatly damaged the image of Judaism and later encouraged anti-Jewish outbursts, similar to the case of Jesus and his followers thousands of years earlier. It is clear that some of Spinoza’s critique was totally unfounded and showed great ignorance of—and deliberate re-writing of —Judaism.[22] There can be little doubt that this attitude was the result of his animosity toward his former community and teachers after they excommunicated him. [23]
But Spinoza, too, was the victim of over-zealous rabbis – this time, the leaders of the Amsterdam Portuguese Spanish Jewish community. Once they heard his views on God and Torah, instead of drawing him closer and carefully listening to his insights, they threatened him and ultimately excommunicated him. This is the most famous ban ever issued in Jewish history.
It is impossible to know what would have happened to Jesus and Spinoza had the rabbis taken a more tolerant stand and continued to speak to them. Spinoza might not have written some of his most fierce critiques of the Jewish tradition and might have been more sympathetic to Judaism itself. (It seems that on some occasions Spinoza lost his equilibrium when attacking Judaism.) Similarly, Jesus’s attitude towards the Jewish tradition may quite well have been different, and Christianity under the influence of Paul might not have become as anti-Jewish.
Both men were exceptionally intelligent, and men of spirit. They could have become major spiritual forces in Judaism had they been granted the space to do so. How much might Judaism have benefited from such thinkers, had they been allowed to contribute to the tradition in which they were raised? Might one careless wave of a hand nearly 2,000 years ago been the cause of so much upheaval?
We may never know. We can only take the warning to heart.
Notes
[1] Whether this birthdate is accurate is a matter of scholarly debate.
[2] Devarim 34:10.
[3] Sifrei, ad loc.; Bamidbar Rabbah 14:20.
[4] Bamidbar 23:19.
[5] This appears in the first edition of Bamidbar Rabbah 23:8 (Yosef Gabai and Avraham Yerushalmi, 1512). It was censored in later editions. This midrash is also quoted by Rabbi Bachya ibn Asher in his commentary Rabenu Bachya on Bamidbar 23:19 from Midrash Tanchuma, Bamidbar, Masei 7. This was also omitted in later editions of the Tanchuma but appears in the first edition of Midrash Tanchuma (Shlomo ben Mazal Tov, 1520–1522), 197.
[6] See Sanhedrin 106b.
[7] Tehillim 55:24.
[8] See A. Geiger, “Bileam und Jesus,” Jüdische Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Leben 6 (1868): 31–37.
[9] See, for example, Berachot 17b; Shabbat 104b; Yevamot 49b; Sanhedrin 43a, 103a, 107b (uncensored).
[10] Mishneh Torah, Sefer Shoftim, Hilchot Melachim 11:4.
[11] Rabbi Yaakov Emden, Preface to Seder Olam.
[12] Rav Kook, Seder HaTechia, letter on June 29 to Rabbi Yaakov Wilowsky, the Ridbaz.
[13] Sanhedrin 107b. The passage was once censored by the Church but is now printed in nearly all the new editions.
[14] Another famous apostate, Elisha ben Abuyah, was a great sage who reportedly left the faith after a mystical encounter challenged his faith and his sanity. Other accounts have it that he turned from Judaism after witnessing Roman atrocities against the sages. He was ever after known as Acher (the “Other”). According to a Talmudic account, he believed himself beyond redemption after he heard a bat kol (heavenly voice) declare, “Return, O wayward children—except for Acher.”
[15] As mentioned, there are scholars who dispute that Jesus in the Talmud and Jesus in the New Testament are one and the same, since they seem to have lived in different periods. For an overview of this topic, see “Jesus,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed. (Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 11:249–251; Binyamin Shlomo Hamburger, Meshiche ha-Sheker u-Mitnagdehem(Machon Moreshes Ashkenaz, 2010), 645–664.
[16] Ramban on Bereshit 16:6.
[17] Sanhedrin 99b.
[18] See my– “Unmasking Anti-Semitism,” Thoughts to Ponder, no. 341, https://www.cardozoacademy.org/thoughts-to-ponder/unmasking-anti-semitism-ttp-341/.
[19] R. Baruch HaLevi Epstein, Mekor Baruch (Romm, 1928), 3:1308.
[20] Ibid.
[21] For a full treatment of the cherem/ban placed on Spinoza, see Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge University Press, 1999), chap. 6.
[22] For a discussion about the double standards that Spinoza applied in his critique of Judaism and his inauthentic portrayal of the Jewish tradition, see Emil L. Fackenheim, To Mend the World (Schocken Books, 1982), chap. 2.
[23] See my essay “Spinoza—It Is Time to Lift the Ban,” Thoughts to Ponder, https://www.cardozoacademy.org/thoughts-to-ponder/spinoza-it-is-time-to-lift-the-ban/.
Questions to Ponder
- This essay raises the stakes of responsibility — especially for those who claim to speak in the name of Jewish tradition. Rabbi Cardozo suggests that Judaism may have lost some of its greatest minds by rejecting them too harshly.
- Do you see this as a sign of moral failure, or an unavoidable cost of maintaining the boundaries of tradition?
- How do we distinguish between a dangerous heretic and a necessary internal critic — before history renders its verdict?
- A key theme of Rabbi Cardozo’s argument is the tension between preserving connection versus preserving ideology.
- To what extent should Jewish leadership prioritize preserving people over preserving ideas?
- Do you think excommunication is ever morally justified? If so, what ethical constraints should govern its use?
- What responsibility do we bear today toward Jews who stand at the edge of belief, practice, or belonging? Are we more afraid of losing them, or of what they might change if they stayed?
- Do you find this story of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachiah plausible as history, or powerful as moral warning regardless of historicity? Why do the Sages place such emphasis on how rejection happens, rather than simply thatrejection happens?
- Rabbi Epstein argues that harsh rejection radicalizes marginal thinkers. Do you see this dynamic at work in contemporary Jewish communities — or in broader ideological movements today?
