T H E N E X T S T E P:
Israelite
Communities
The House of Israel’s movement back to our roots has grown much over the past few years. The restoration of the ancient ways has gained great momentum. Some in Judah are beginning to recognize us and make overtures toward reconciliation. One might think we were at the point where the many prophecies of return to our ancestral Land could come about.
But, as things stand now, it wouldn’t work.
Why? Because the Land would spit us back out before very long. Remember, it’s not just any homeland. It’s the Holy Land. It’s YHWH’s own Land. It has high standards that we simply aren’t ready for yet.
We’re still disorganized. We’re not all on the same page. And as righteous as many of us might seem to be, if we apply the microscope, we’ll still find many germs of selfishness or other flaws lurking not far beneath the surface. We’d defile the Land if we came back in this condition.
So there’s another step that has to come first. We’ve reached the point where we can’t get any closer to YHWH and His Land without being gathered into a tight-knit community.
The Day of the Loner is Over!
If we read the Torah carefully, we’ll find that the emphasis of YHWH’s covenant is on the people of Israel as a whole—in unity—much more than on a personal relationship with YHWH. Although He may pick us out individually—“one from a city, two from a family” (Jeremiah 3:14), YHWH says that before we get home we will first be “assembled”. That’s the same Hebrew word from which we get the modern word "kibbutz" (“collective” or commune).
Israel assembled in unity: that’s the context in which the Torah was given. It’s the context for which the Torah was written. And it’s the only context in which the Torah can really be kept.
Even the Sabbath is by definition a “called-out gathering”. It therefore can’t truly be observed alone. How can YHWH to be in the “midst” of just one person?
Think about it: how can you love your neighbor as yourself if you do not have true neighbors? (The Hebrew word for “neighbor” means “one who feeds or is fed in the same pasture”. These are people of the same flock—not just those who live next door. That means fellow Israelites—nearby.)
Part of the reason for our exile was so we would learn what it is like to be isolated. We’re not supposed to get used to it or see it as the new “normal”. It’s here to make us appreciate what we lost and to make us hungry to be back in the right context. The Torah is the blueprint for an arrangement by which we can live together successfully. We have to move beyond celebrating it as the epic drama of our history to once again actually becoming what it prescribes.
Just How Important is Community?
When the famine finally became too severe in Canaan to hold Benjamin back from going to Egypt, Jacob said something very strange:
“Their father Israel said, ‘…Take some of the [best] produce of the land in your containers, and bring a present down to the man [Joseph]—a little balm, a little honey, some spices, myrrh, pistachio nuts, and almonds…’” (Gen. 43:11)
Wait a minute. They were starving, weren’t they? This tells us that they did have food after all--and delicacies at that. They also still had livestock, which meant they had meat and milk. But though the Land was bringing forth fruit, what they were missing was BREAD.
1 Corinthians 10:17 states plainly what all of Scripture hints at: bread is a picture of community, since it is one cohesive unit made from what started as many individual grains. And bread is one of the things we offer up to YHWH at His sanctuary.
No matter how tasty, healthful, or exotic it may be, the fruit of one individual is not enough to bring before the Father. Even if you are teaching deep treasures from Torah—the “pistachios, almonds, and honey”—to please YHWH and keep ascending closer to His presence, there are some steps that we simply can’t take alone; we need the bread of a whole community.
A Scriptural Precedent
It wasn’t possible to leave Egypt until the scattered Israelites came back together in Goshen—the place Joseph had originally given us because it was the best place to raise sheep. Goshen means “drawing near”. There, we were again able to learn to live together and develop a uniquely Israelite lifestyle instead of being just laborers mixed in among the Egyptians. As we prepare for the “exodus” that Jeremiah says is going to be much larger than the first, we need to come back to where fellow Israelites are our main influence, so that we can again learn to care for sheep.
Sheep and goats are both clean animals. But Yahshua judges between them. (Matthew 24) Goats are loners, while sheep stay together. Only those who know how to function as part of a flock will get the Kingdom, no matter how much they may love YHWH, because the other half of the Torah is “love your neighbor as yourself.”
What does YHWH Himself need from us anyway? Loving Him with all our heart, soul, and strength can only be practically demonstrated by caring for His people in the same way. “If you love me, feed my sheep.”
If you don’t have like-minded people near you with whom you can gather, it’s time to move to where you can!
But can’t we just feed one another through the Internet? To some extent you might, but are you giving them everything they need? You might be giving them appetizers all day, or you might be feeding those who are already full. How can you tell? And how can a “cyber-shepherd” really know when the wolves are threatening his sheep? And how can he intervene? We cannot truly carry out Torah at a keyboard or monitor. We have to work it out face-to-face.
Unless you are among those you are teaching, how will you know when they are hungry or what is lacking from their diet? We all need a well-rounded diet. And who is feeding you? We owe much to those who teach one thing in great depth, but we need to take it to the next level.
The Ideal Training Ground
The assembly of all Israel won’t come about overnight. But it has to start somewhere. The practical place to begin is with those with whom you already meet for the Sabbath and festivals.
A kosher animal chews the cud. This is a picture of meditating on Torah, as YHWH told Joshua to do. A ruminant animal has four stomachs rather than one. But each of us has only one. That means none of us can get the full benefit of the “milk and meat of YHWH’s Word” unless we are together with other “stomachs” so we can filter our ideas through one another’s sieves and see things from different angles so we get the full picture.
Just as you can never become great at a team sport if you play alone, no one can really practice Torah without other people, especially if you want to receive instruction and feedback for your actions. Community keeps us accountable in a way that is just not possible if we only see each other once a week. If we’re only together for Scriptural study on the Sabbath, we won’t be able to sharpen one another in the other practical skills that are needed for the job of building a physical nation.
This is Kingdom perspective, as contrasted with merely Hebraic perspective.
The latter is not bad, but the first is better. Not all clean animals are fit for YHWH’s altar. Gazelles and deer are wild, unlike the flocks and herds from which Temple offerings are drawn. They may eat from human hands with a fence in between, but normally they keep their distance. They are like the “lone rangers” who teach from remote locations. We can partake of their teachings, for they may be valid and important, bringing us some measure of nourishment. But to receive the fullness of YHWH’s presence, we need to bring “bread” that is fit for Him.
We all need so much refining, and it takes a long time to change. How will we ever get to the point of having twelve tribes function together as one unit and move “as one man”?
We have to get in order. And as nice as that sounds in theory, anyone who has raised children knows that this really only comes about through discipline. Yes, there’s self-discipline, but that’s the slow road. But look at how quickly an immature youth can become honorable and responsible when he joins the army. The key to that kind of order is being under authority.
That grates on modern ears. For those used to personal rights, it seems like several steps backward, especially for those who had to break away from the tyranny of the Church. But our goal is not freedom for its own sake, but pleasing YHWH. There’s a right context for rules added by men; when they’re founded on wisdom, they keep us from even coming close to violating the Torah. If we want to get past a certain point in our walk, there’s no choice but to trust YHWH to keep the leaders He’s chosen from abusing their position.
“Iron sharpens iron”, and there’s no faster track to that than community. Becoming “one bread” requires much “grinding” that sets our individual idiosyncrasies straight, keeping us from “majoring on the minors”.
Each local “cell” is small enough to know one another well enough to do that fine-tuning. It gives us a practice-ground in which to make our mistakes early on so we’ll be ready when it really counts. Community is the best place to burn away the selfishness—to cut the “what’s in it for me” out of each of us with precision, in a supportive context, where we can safely expose ourselves to constructive criticism, so we can genuinely change by the time it matters most.
But these humble beginnings are also prototypes for when we merge into the gathering of all Israel. In ancient Israelite cities, the gate complex was the place where rulings were made on how to apply the Torah to specific situations. By establishing “gates” —particular, cohesive communities--we can start restoring the ancient authority structures around which the Torah was built, so we have a context to live out what would otherwise be abstract commands. It makes our knowledge of the ancient ways practical again. As communities begin to interact with one another, the small beginnings—the “rulers of ten”—can then build back up to the Torah’s ideal of rulers over hundreds and thousands. All Things in Common?
When someone says “community” or “kibbutz”, it’s easy to immediately think of joint ownership of all possessions. The early followers of Yahshua in Jerusalem had the right priorities, but if we read Acts closely, the experiment does not seem to have been sustainable for the long haul. They ended up having to solicit contributions to support its continuance. So we haven’t gotten bogged down with requiring joint ownership. The Torah upholds private ownership, going to great lengths to assure justice in regard to property rights. Practically, though, the lines are blurred as we share what we have when someone else needs it.
The reason Avram and Lot could no longer live together was that they had too many possessions for the space they had available. (Genesis 13) If that shoe fits, put it on, but the issue was really the togetherness, not the possessions. “Love your neighbors AS yourself” doesn’t usually mean “instead of yourself”. As with the manna, gather all you can, make sure no one comes up short, and receive blessings from what others gather too.
There are indeed different ways of forming a community; the different kinds of bread offerings in Leviticus 2 uphold that. Our method at present is to have adjoining properties so that we’re close enough to help one another at a moment’s notice. This also has the side benefit that we don’t have to kindle the fire of a car engine on the Sabbath. If push comes to shove, meeting with others is a much weightier command than not lighting a fire, but with this kind of proximity, we no longer have to explain to our children why we must choose a “lesser of two evils”.
And as Passover (which started in Goshen) shows, our
children indeed are the reason we need to keep our heritage
intact. It’s much easier to guard that heritage from other
influences in a community context where there’s a strong
sense of Israelite identity. Raising them where they are
surrounded by Torah-keepers already puts them several
steps ahead of where we started out.
Keeping the Right Focus
Sadly, most of our ancestors did not go back to Goshen until the plagues pushed them to. We hope that this time it will not take great crises to force Israel back into being one people. YHWH wants the first pressing of the oil, not that which comes only when great pressure is applied. The door is open now to become a nation voluntarily, not because it’s dark everywhere else, but simply because the time is right.
As the economy dries up, many people will be “pushed” to see the value of community just to survive. But it’s not our purpose to be a soup kitchen for people who just want to take advantage of a refuge and contribute nothing.
But as the Church is exposed for what it is, there will be a huge influx of “spiritually homeless” people who have some inkling that Hebraic ways hold the key, and they will be looking for “cities set on a hill”. Yahshua said not to hide our light. He didn’t say to take it out into the streets, where it is likely to be blown out. He said to put it where it can give light to all who are IN THE HOUSE. (Mat. 5:15) So we have to be sure we have a “house” to bring them into.
How can we obey the Torah’s commands to provide for the sojourners and “strangers within our gates” unless we have “gates”—organized communities—ready to feed them the truth? It’s Not Out of Reach It is “easier said than done,” but it becomes easier when you actually set your hand to it. In fact, the idea that we simply can’t keep the whole Torah is just part of our exile mentality—a holdover from Gentile thinking. Community helps us get rid of that. It puts us in a position to actually be able to obey all His commands. No one can fully walk out this covenant by himself. But that’s just the point. He doesn’t want us to. The world tells us it is bad to be dependent on others, but YHWH values the interaction and cooperation among His people so highly that He gives us responsibilities that would crush us indeed if we tried to accomplish them alone. But if we “bear one another’s burdens” (Gal. 6:2), then indeed the burden will be light. (Mat. 11:30)YHWH Himself said His commands are not up in the sky, beyond our reach, because He gives us a handle by which to grasp them. What is it? Help from one another. (See Psalm 118:7.)
Together we can get the job done. Community is the next step.
