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that was odd

Several years ago, I wrote an article for an SCA newsletter on how to build a yurt (aka ger), the Mongolian round semi-portable structure. I and some friends built one for camping in at Pennsic, so I wrote down what I did and shared it. Every now and then I get random questions and/or thanks from people who've found the article.

The most recent message is from someone who said he does "Roman and Bible reenactment" and had just built a yurt. (Unknown: what a yurt has to do with either.) Its first use was to be for his sukkah. He closed with "Shalom in Jesus".

Um, ok. A Christian? A "Jew for Jesus"? A re-enactor whose re-enactment extends to holidays?

I wrote back to thank him for the message and answer a question. And just to be helpful, I pointed out a couple halachic issues he might consider in using a yurt for Sukkot. I did not translate the Hebrew for terms that a Jew or a scholar would likely know. I didn't really expect to hear from him again.

He wrote back, citing a tertiary (at best) source for alternate interpretations. He also gave a cite for a round, domed sukkah in Amsterdam in 1722. This doesn't match up with anything either of us is trying to recreate, of course, but it sounds interesting. (Not interesting enough to go out and chase, though. It's a curiosity to me, nothing more.) He didn't say what they used for the roof cover or how it was attached.

He also described himself as Jewish, messianic, and a karaite. I didn't know there were still karaites out there. I'm not certain what the combination of messianic and karaite means, but I'm not going to ask him.

Karaites were a "sect", for lack of a better term, that accepted the written law but none of the oral law. They spent Shabbat in the cold and dark because they interpreted "kindle no fire" as "have no fire" rather than "light it in advance". It sounds like it must have been miserable. I thought they all died out several hundred years ago. Maybe this is a "neo-karaite" in the sense that we have "neo-pagans" who aren't tied to the original pagans?

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This is going to be harsh, because I feel very strongly about it and i'm weaning off of caffiene right now-
There is no such thing as a "Messianic Jew". The proper term is "Christian".

This peeves me as much as Christians who seem to think that Jesus was one, too.

You'll get no argument from me. That's why I put "Jews for Jesus" in quotes whenever I refer to them. (That's the name of an organization. They prey on Jews and try to convert them to Christianity. Slimy, slimy folks. I'm told they're funded by the Southern Baptists, but I haven't verified that.)

While, technically, I suppose one could be a Jew by birth and a Christian (Jesus-follower) by faith, what we call that is a Christian or an apostate.

This peeves me as much as Christians who seem to think that Jesus was one, too.

Have you seen the take on "what would Jesus do?" that addresses this? Daven three times a day, keep kosher, keep Shabbat... :-)

Most Karaites these days live in Israel, you'll occasionally see them pop up in the news because they have animal sacrifices before Pesach each year.

Hmm, yes, I guess a karaite would not believe that animal sacrifices require the temple. I didn't realize there were people today who self-identify as karaites; thanks for letting me know.

I found a Jewish Bulletin Online article (http://www.jewishsf.com/bk991210/1ackariate.shtml) on modern Karaites, as well as an encylopaedia-entry looking thing (http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/judaism/kara.html) that mentions that the Israeli population is particularly concentrated around Ramleh. There's also a www.karaites.org that supposedly corresponds to a congregation in Daily City, CA, but its account is currently suspended.

[Of course, I can't speak to the quality of any of those references, but they seemed to be the ones most clearly talking about a modern rather than a historical movement.]

He closed with "Shalom in Jesus".

I'm sorry, the only thing that comes to my mind after reading this is, "Why did Jesus eat my friend Shalom?"

I'm sorry... :-)

I had two friends in high school that were karaites (they were cousins). The main things I remember about them was that their kashrus was different (it would have to be since they reject the Talmud), they didn't celebrate Chanukah, and that every summer they went to a "Karaite Camp" which I believe most of the karaite kids throughout the US went to, but I could be wrong. Ostensibly, this was a way to socialize with other young karaites. But really, my friends said, it was a way to find a spouse.

Neither of my friends married karaites, nor did they marry rabbinic Jews, so I suppose their legacy will be erased through time. I imagine if you reject the Talmud, defining "who is a jew" would be dependent on who the father is.

Carrie, is this you?

I thought you (

arib) also work with a Karaite?

Does this mean that the person is a karaite "J for J"? It sounds like an odd combination to me.
"

ROTFL on the subject line!

Diane, this is not Carrie, this is someone else.
If Carrie wants you to contact her, she will let you know.

Sorry, I did not mean to start things. Geeze!

Nope, sorry. I'm Monica (SCA: She'erah, formerly Ellisif).

Oh, Hi. I saw you a few times. I'm sure you know I am LordAndrei's sister. Have a nice one!

That seems to be the claim. I'm confused by it too, but I am not about to say anything to him that he might interpret as an invitation to prosyletize. (He has not done so thus far; don't get me wrong. But why invite it?)

Hi. I don't think we've met, though sometimes my memory for names and faces rebels against me so I could be wrong.

Thanks. I bet this got easier after I corrected my spelling error. :-) (Typo, really, but once it got into the fingers it just wouldn't leave.)

And I guess they would observe Yom Kippur but Rosh Hashana would be just another Rosh Chodesh. That must be weird; for us today the holidays are linked at the hip.

No, he's a Black Israelite, it's different, his is a more recent movement by far.

I've never heard of the combination of the two, but what the heck do I know? It seems very odd to me. It sounds like perhaps he was born a karaite, and then decided that wasn't what he wanted and the best fit for him (though I think it's a terrible fit for anyone) was J4J. It could be that it wasn't the best fit for him, but that he got inundated with J4J material and decided "what the heck"...

Well, the last time I was at dance practice was in Feb. of this year. I don't know if I am coming back, to dance. I may re-start going to fighting practice.

Anyway, I am just LordAndrei sister, that is if yuo rememeber him. LOL!

I had seen the WWJD thing that you're referring to, and *love* it.

I ran into the Jews for Jesus Downtown a few years ago, and they were unable to tell me the difference between their movement and Christianity. The bulk of their arguement was, "we believe that Jesus is the Christ, but we're Jews." Nothing actually intelligent, just various repetitions of that phrase in response to any actual probing questions.

It stunned me that *anyone* would join that movement, then again, i'm confused by the Christian Fundamentalist movement as well.

There are a lot of Jews out there who think it's important to "be Jews", but they don't practice and either they don't believe or they've never gotten around to thinking about it. J4J targets this group in an effort to convert them to Christianity while assuring them that they're still Jews. J4J services have a lot of the trappings of Jewish services -- they use an ark and something that fills the role of a Torah scroll (I don't know what's on it -- gospels?), and they've adapted some of the liturgy, and of course many of the symbols like the magen david (star of David) and stuff like that. I imagine that there's a fair bit of Hebrew. The idea is to make the Jew feel at home in a synagogue like the one he grew up attending. It is fraud to the core and it preys mostly on the uneducated, with a secondary market in immigrant Jews whose English isn't so good yet. Honest Christians seeking converts are one thing; deceptive ones are quite another.

Jews for Judaism is one response to this. You can find Jews for Jesus at the predictable URL. It's been a while since I've perused either site.

I'm often considered a neo-Karaite, because I consider Written Torah as the law absolute, and Oral Torah as simply advice written by human beings. Often good advice, occasionally crazy advice, but just advice, and it's up to me to decide what to do with it. The direct, plaintext interpretation of written Torah and the rejection of halakhic process is often tagged 'Karaite' in its modern as well as its medieval forms.

I did trace the money once, and as I recall, they're funded by the Missouri Synod Lutherans. A nasty little group with a bee in its bonnet about Jews in general, they are the same people who once sent busloads of missionaries into the Soviet Jewish immigrant community of Brighton Beach and told the new immigrants that they were from the government, and that this was a Christian country and they would have to convert to Christianity or be deported back to Russia.

Missouri Synod Lutherans and not Southern Baptists? Thanks for the correction.

Whoever funds J4J also published a pamphlet a few years back, right before the High Holy Days, for their own people (I mean pastors et al, not the laity) on how to target Jews. I remember seeing it (someone scanned it and posted it on the web) and being surprised by the amount of misinformation it contained, but I no longer remember any details.

It was the first-person usage of the term that particularly surprised me. I'm used to people calling other people karaites, especially on the net.

It's possible that it was a different band of "Messianic Jews" that the Missouri Synod sponsored, which is why I said "as I recall." I lose track of which group has which backer. I have never heard of a group of "Messianic Jews" of whatever sort or name which were not sponsored by a Christian sect.

Point; I've seen it more often used as an insult than a self-assessment. I used to use it as a self-assessment, but found that it raised more questions than it answers, so I usually just call myself an observant but nontraditional Jew now if I have to say anything. More often still, I call myself a nationalist Jew and leave the religion out of it; while I am religious I don't consider it the important part of my Jewish identity.

I am sure that there's a discussion of round sukkahs in the Mishna, because I studied it once. I seem to recall a fun bit of geometry (including the rabbis defining pi as 3). It was a while ago, though, and I don't have the sources any more.

I'm guessing the issues you mentioned had less to do with the roundness of the structure and more to do with the yurtness...

Interesting. I was under the impression that a sukkah is required to have at least 3 walls (one can be small), which would seem to rule out round structures. There's nothing else inherently questionable with a yurt as far as I know, assuming you don't use the canvas roof and don't set it up under a tree. So I questioned roundness and pointed out that the rafters by themselves wouldn't be sufficient for s'chach (insufficient cover). (I wonder how you would get more s'chach to stay in place on a sloped roof. Tied in place, I suppose.)

Many years ago a group called "Jews for Yeshua" ("we are not 'Jews for Jesus' -- we're different!") went after a few of us. I was invited by my friend Hilary, who at the time was a member, to go to "a gathering of me and a few friends" one Sunday. I had no idea what I was in for till I got there.

I was grateful my friend Bob had also been invited. He and I clung together watching what I can only describe as insanity. Here were people claiming to be Jews who also believed Jesus was the Messiah. It was the standard ploy for nabbing folks into cults, too. They had sweet wine, cakes, cookies, and sugar on top of sugar to eat when you got there. Bob and I grabbed cups and made a beeline to the kitchen faucet for something that wasn't sugared. (The sugar does things to the alpha brainwaves of folks with normal metabolisms that makes them more receptive to input.)

After that they had folks from their organization telling us what they were about and trying to make it sound convincing. Bob and I both saw the folks as people who were in desparate need of being loved. They did a lot of hugging and hugging on top of hugging.

Neither of us got brainwashed, but it was an entertaining day, and eventually Hilary left the cult.

I tried doing something logical: looking it up. I'm crippled by the fact that I don't have the copy of the Mishnah that I was studying, but I was able to find something that looks like it here. Unfortunately, while I was able to find the mishnah which says you have to have 3 walls, and one which said a conical roof is bad, I wasn't able to find several which I distinctly recall. So now I'm confused.

Oop. I feel foolish. I couldn't find it in the Mishnah, because it wasn't. It was Gemarah[1]. Probably within a few pages of Sukkah 3a. I should have realized that it was Gemarah, because what I remembered was much more verbose than the Mishnah is.

[1] Gemarah is commentary, explanation, digressions, and elaboration of the Mishnah; together they make up the Talmud. On any given page of the Talmud, the Mishnah's the central text (in big type); the Gemarah takes up most of the rest of the page (in smaller type), while other commentators are in smaller type yet in the margins and bottom of the page. Rashi (a french commentator of the middle ages) even gets his own wacky "rashi script", a font which was, as far as I can tell, designed to be confusing.

Thanks for the pointer. I have to stop by the bookstore tonight anyway, so I'll see if they have the correct volume of Talmud and see if I can find this in it.

Sadly, the correct tractate wasn't on the shelves tonight, and as I wasn't planning to buy it I didn't feel it appropriate to ask them to dig one out.

I did get the book that sent me there in the first place, at least.

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that was odd

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To the Googlemobile, Robin...

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Karaites

Carrie?

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I'm confused

snort :^)

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not Baptists?

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Round Sukkahs...

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