Saturday, July 25, 1998

Christians adopt symbols from Jewish religious practice

By MAUREEN HAYDEN

Scripps Howard News Service

Steve Schweizer remembers the morning he picked up the ram's horn hooked around his work belt and blew it to begin his workday as a carpenter and contractor in Evansville, Ind.

A startled motorcyclist passing by pulled off to the side of the road and approached Schweizer.

"He said, 'You called my name. I heard you say my name,' " Schweizer said. "I told him, 'No, that was God calling you.' "

For Schweizer, the incident is just one example of how the ancient biblical instrument known in Hebrew as the "shofar" has been a powerful tool of his mission to bring people to his faith.

But while the shofar has long been considered a symbol of the Jewish faith, Schweizer is a Christian.

And while the shofar is traditionally used in a faith that still awaits the Messiah, Schweizer uses it to declare his belief that the kingdom of Jesus has already arrived.

For Schweizer and a growing number of evangelical Christians, the ancient symbols of Judaism are no longer the signs of a faith in conflict with theirs, but ritual objects to be incorporated into their own spiritual lives.

"God is calling us all to be closer to him," Schweizer said. "Christians and Jews."

It is not just the shofar that has been adopted and adapted by Christians.

All things Jewish seem to be drawing attention by those seeking their religious roots.

At the gift shop in Evansville's Jewish temple, Christian customers outnumber its Jewish patrons, said Rabbi David Feder.

And many of the students enrolled in the temple's adult Jewish education class are Christians with no intention of converting to Judaism.

On Friday nights, Feder can be found leading the Shabbat service at the Jewish temple on Washington Avenue, reading from the Torah and reciting prayers in ancient Hebrew. But down the road in Newburgh, a group of Christians who call themselves "messianic Jews" meet at the Adat Sar Shalom temple and read, too, from the Torah in a service led by a Christian who calls himself a rabbi.

Feder thinks it is both the coming millennium and the 50th anniversary this spring of Israel's independence that have spurred a new wave of interest in Judaism by Christians.

For many evangelical Christians, the anniversary is a biblical prophecy come true and a symbolic link to the ancient Israelite celebration of the jubilee.

Every 50 years in biblical Israel, the jubilee was celebrated with the release of all slaves and the return to its prior owner property obtained since the previous jubilee. The idea was to maintain a fair distribution of wealth and ensure that no Jew remained mired in perpetual servitude or poverty. At the beginning of each jubilee, shofars were sounded throughout the land, Feder said.

The shofar is both a powerful symbol and a tantalizing tool.

Made from the hollowed-out horn of a male sheep, the sound of a shofar is deep and resonating.

The shofar appears time and again in the Old Testament, though some translations of the Bible describe it as a cornet or trumpet.

It was blown as both a warning and a sound of rejoicing. The shofar is blown on the holidays Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

In Psalm 98, its sound is part of the new song to be sung to God, who "has remembered his love and his faithfulness to the house of Israel."

The psalm exhorts its readers to "shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music; make music to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing, with trumpets and the blast of the ram's horn - shout for joy before the Lord, the King."

Feder himself has sounded the shofar in interfaith celebrations. At this year's annual Crop Walk for the Hungry to benefit the Tri-State Food Bank, Feder was asked to begin the march by blowing the shofar.

It was a use he thought appropriate because it harked back to the ancient Jewish jubilee tradition of redistributing the wealth.

"The use of a shofar within the Christian context can be an expression that we have common roots," Feder said.

And in the Bible, the shofar is also to be used at the advent of the "messianic age, the beginning of true human cooperation," Feder said.

But it's when the shofar and other Jewish symbols and rituals are put into a Christian context and used in contrast with Jewish theology that Feder becomes wary.

"If it's an attempt (by Christians) to attract Jewish worshippers demonstrating only our similarities, then it's false advertising," he said.

In a recent appearance in Evansville, New York rabbi and author Marc Gelmann asked Christians to understand why Jews are so sensitive about symbols.

These were people murdered by cross-wearing Christian crusaders during the Middle Ages; forced to wear the Star of David as a sign of shame and identification for elimination during the Holocaust; and forced through history to watch their synagogues destroyed and symbols desecrated, often in the name of Christianity.

Yet for many evangelical Christians who embrace their Jewish roots, the fears are unfounded. They see their alliance with Jews as a fight to protect Jews and the Jewish homeland of Israel, which they believe will play a central role in the second coming of Jesus.

Among those who have attended messianic Jewish celebrations is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At Schweizer's church, Oak Hill Christian Center, the shofar is occasionally woven into the Sunday worship. It's treated with respect, said the Rev. Randy Hopkins, and used as a reminder of God's call to worship.

Schweizer is direct about his use of the shofar. He blows it almost daily, at work, while traveling and during leisure hours with friends and family.

This spring he sounded his shofar late one night near the University of Evansville campus, attracting a crowd of college students who had been partying. Many of the young men stopped and gathered with Schweizer in prayer. Several wept.

"I use the shofar to wake people up, to remind them to acknowledge God," Schweizer said. "I have seen people moved in the spirit."

For Feder, "messianic Judaism" is an oxymoron; you can't claim to be both Jewish and believe that Jesus is the Messiah.

He fears, too, that some Christians who use Jewish symbols and rituals don't do it out of respect, but rather the conviction that Christianity is the only legitimate religion. An evangelical Christian who called him recently to find out more about Judaism told him she believed Jews and Christians were divinely bound together to battle a common enemy. The enemy, she told Feder, was Islam.

To Feder, who worked with Evansville's Muslim community to promote interfaith understanding and respect, the call was deeply discouraging.

"I found the call frightening. To her, Muslims were the devil," he said.

(Maureen Hayden is a staff writer at The Courier in Evansville, Ind.)