These are days which transcend material things and thoughts about them.

I appreciate that shuls need to raise money, and that some shuls that run these auctions do not charge for seats, but this sort of fundraising, on the holiest of days, goes against everything that Judaism says about tzedakah, fundraising and holyness. There are other more appropriate ways to raise money.

To embarass people, to glorify material wealth, to put price tags on these spiritual rituals completely violates the spirit of the day.

Unfortunately this is the time when most of the money needed to run a shul is made mainly because of 3X yr Jews. The weekly contributions or even membership (which can be even more difficult for the less fortunate)do not raise enough money.

We all know the auctions are not good – they create resentment, arrogance etc. I am still waiting for alternatives.

The reason I stopped going to so-called Orthodox synagogues was precisely disgust at the blatant hypocrisy of selling aliyot whether in terms of X times Chai or actually calling out the $$value. I left the Reform synagogue when I was given an envelope with suggested $$$ value after an aliya.

So I joined Kehillat Nitzan – a Masorti egalitarian (Conservative) Minyan in Melbourne there is NO expectation of monetary contributions for honours of any kind – in fact people are given honours to give Koved to their contributions big or small to the community in the widest possible sense.

What probably threw us was the messianic focus (particularly directed to the Jews as “they”). When I think about shul auctions (or anything good or bad that we as Jews do), I don’t always explicitly translate that to “will this bring/delay Moshiach?”, rather just in terms of whether it’s good or bad.

I think that you could have done a better job of introducing your opinion, as your initial sentiment granted the impression that you were coming from a messianic perspective. That said, I’m glad this has been cleared up. I no longer find anything within your comment that is worthy of argument. I may not share your vision of a messianic kingdom, nor even your concern as regards auctions (although I also never felt comfortable with auctions in synagogues myself), but I hear where you are coming from.

I still disagree with your appraisal of Jesus, as I don’t think that his religion makes him of necessary importance to Jews around the world. He may, indeed, have been a member of the Pharisaic community (one criticises only what one knows best), but the relationship between Pharisaism and Rabbanism is unclear. It is also unclear how many of Jesus’ indictments against the Pharisees would have even been said by him anyway.

I’m a big fan of the Gospels, as literature, and a big fan of Jesus as a mythologised sage. Like Moses, like the Buddha, and like Mohammad, we only really know what the tradition informs us. I share your interest in the man, but I lack your conviction that religious Jewish communities are ever going to adopt it as well.

My original comment was a criticism of the idea of auctioning the various honours on the High Holidays. I referenced a story from the New Testament in some naivete as to the reaction it would cause. I then further made a comment about the redemptive possibilities of the Jewish people.

to set the record straight: I do not believe that Jesus was the messiah. He obviously was not. None of the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament prophets have yet come true. The world is still quite obviously far from the Messianic state. Nor am I advocating a “belief” in Jesus in the Christian or Jews for Jesus sense.

What I am saying, or at least what I believe I am saying, is that Jesus is the most influential Jewish person, and quite possibly the most influential human, in the entirety of history. This is not something that can be easily dismissed, and it behooves anyone who is both interested in history and who believes that history is both guided from above and has a teleological structure, a position held by most ideologies of Orthodox Judaism, to examine with as unbiased eyes as possible what the possible meaning of this is.

It is no coincidence that Jesus was Jewish and that he lived in one of the most historically significant and intellectually fertile periods of Jewish history. It is all the more important because Jesus was quite probably part of the Rabbinic class that established the general framework of Halachic Judaism practiced up until today. It is also no coincidence that the religion started in the name of this Jew would have the most antagonistic and hostile relationship to the Jewish people.

To dismiss Jesus as a simple apostate who left the fold is to not fully grasp the importance and significance of this man, his teachings and his contribution to history.

This and this alone is my central point regarding Jesus.

As for auctions, I stand by what I said. They are corrosive to the soul, they reinforce social hierarchies based on wealth, they spur and encourage the baser emotions of the participants in the auctions and encourage the greed of those holding them. I can find no redeeming quality to them, and I would say that any people who can justify such activities through logic, reason, tradition or anything else, is simply not ready to be a part of the Messianic state.

To accept the harsh financial realities of this non-Messianic world is one thing. To glorify a ritual to Mammon is quite something else.

What I find most astonishing is that adherents of Judaism’s most vocal messianic movement of recent years should be so blinded to this inherent paradox within their own belief system. If you can explain how an auction serves to hasten the world to a state of peace and higher spiritual consciousness then you are capable of argumentative feats that I don’t think I would be able to understand.

Re segulahs, if you’d like to get past name-calling we might be able to have a meaningful discussion. Advocacy is very different from idolatory. The generation of Enosh made the original mistake of jumping from one to the other.

Kaporas is probably the most widely practiced ritual of this nature that remains controversial, and is branded “darkei emori” by some. It certainly does resemble voodoo, yet it also bears similarity to “smicha” done during Temple times on a sacrifice before it is slaughtered.

The original article was more about aliyot and other kibuddim that are auctioned, rather than the more esoteric segulahs that you are talking about.

I am calling your bluff. If you genuinely think that Jesus will one day take his place within the “pantheon” (?) of rabbinic scholars then you either know nothing about rabbinic Judaism or nothing about Jesus. You remind me of Fray Pul, the Jew who converted to Catholicism and who participated in the trial of Nachmanides. He went so far as to insist that the sages of the Talmud even acknowledged the greatness of Jesus themselves, and you don’t need to be Nachmanides to pull that argument apart.

It is evident to me that you enjoy writing, and you certainly write well. Nonetheless, until you learn how to read, this discussion is a waste of time. You are more concerned with sounding supercilious than you are with actually convincing anybody of anything, so I suspect that you take a moment to formulate your thoughts. If you are unable to disprove my assertion that the only information that we know about Jesus comes from the evangelists, ignoring it and telling me that we should evaluate Jesus independently of their bias is intellectually dishonest. Indeed, I am beginning to suspect that you are not so broadminded as you profess to be, and have a bit of an agenda of your own.

Who was Jesus to you, aside from the greatest rabbi of all time? The Davidic heir? The anointed king? The heavenly saviour, a la Daniel, who came to us on the clouds of heaven and now sits at the right hand of God? There are no wrong answers to this question, and nobody is going to jump down your throat for believing what you believe. Christianity is a marvelous religion with much to recommend it, but it’s not Judaism and Jews are unlikely to adopt its heroes as their own. The historical Jesus is a nebulous and intangible construct and, while isolating it might be uplifting and worthwhile for you, it is only a very insecure person who insists that others share his passion.

“However, it is now 2009. The time to hide behind anachronostic biases is long past…”

-noting of course that the largest Christian sect, the Catholics only last year revised their Latin Mass prayer to merely call for Jewish conversion…