Hey Dickow- Scarf This!
Sunday, February 01, 2009
TBN- Gregory Dickow, Sunday Feb 1st @ 5:30 pm EST
For a gift of $38 or more, you get an "authentic reproduction" of the "prayer shawl Jesus wore". According to Mr. Dickow, you can "wear it as a scarf" because there is "no power in it" and it "doesn't mean anything" but it will "remind you" of His healing power.
Wear it... as a... scarf???????
It..doesn't...mean...anything?
(Farecht goyim.)
This is not the first time the tallit has been used as a fundraising gimmick by Christian tele-preachers. Yet, I'm not seeing any great outcry of "FOUL" from the Jewish community, so I feel the need to get up on my soapbox and state a few facts.
Misnomer #1: The Style of the Tallit The history of the Talit, from MyTalit.com
In early Judaism, Tzitzit were used for the corners of ordinary everyday clothing; most Jewish people at the time wore clothing which consisted of a sheet-like item wrapped around the body, comparable to the abayah (blanket) worn by the Bedouins for protection from sun and rain, and to the stola/toga of ancient Greece and Rome. As recorded in the Talmud, these were sometimes worn partly doubled, and sometimes with the ends thrown over the shoulders.So, Yeshua didn't wear the tallit that we are familiar with today. Therefore, it is completely incorrect for any Christian tele-preacher to hold up a contemporary tallit and say, "This is what Jesus wore." It is a stylistic fallacy. This could possibly be considered a minor point, I know, but it leads into...
After the 13th century CE, Tzitzit began to be worn on new inner garments, known as Arba Kanfos, rather than the outer garments. This inner garment was a 3ft by 1ft rectangle, with a hole in the center for the head to pass through; the modern Tallit evolved from this medieval item.
Misnomer #2: The Purpose of the Tallit The tallit is not a "scarf" that has "no real meaning". The tallit is a mode of expressing Israeli identity. Biblically speaking, the tallit was not the required garb. The tzitzit, or fringes, are the required fashion statement (Numbers 15:37-41) which had a very real purpose. At the time white fringes with a blue thread were required by G-d to be placed on the four corners of Israelite garments, ALL tribes in the region were using dyed fringes to identify themselves on the battlefield. Israel needed to identify herself, therefore, she needed her own set of fringes. If we are to translate Biblical wardrobe into contemporary prayer shawl, we must understand that the change in fashion did not change the command; on the contrary, by retaining a mode of wardrobe that allowed for the wearing of tzitzit, the Jewish people acknowledged the timelessness of the command to wear tzitzit. The wearing of the tallit is the literal, physical acknowledgment of Jewish identity for the whole world to see. Hence the meaning of the prophecy in Zechariah 8:23.
My challenge to the tallit-selling tele-preachers is this: If you want to sell it, why don't you start wearing it? And if you want to wear it, why don't you start living it, and fighting for it, and dying for it like the rest of us instead of just making money off of it like the same thieves in the Temple whom your Messiah lashed out against in fury?
The truth is, if even one of those Christian pastors had to be embroiled in the constant battle surrounding Jewish existence, they'd pull those Communion Cups out of storage and start selling them in an instant. The same Torah that holds the mitzvot of tzitzit says something about that as well: "Is there a man here who is afraid and fainthearted? He should go back home; otherwise his fear may demoralize his comrades as well." (Deut. 20:8)
These tele-preachers have no clue how offensive they are, let alone what a stumbling block they're being to the very people who gave them the Word of G-d. Do you notice how they spend so much time talking about the talit, but never the tzitzit? They want what the Jews have, but they don't want to have to be... Jewish. They want the G-d, the Messiah, the promises in the Book as their Pastors read it to them, but they don't want to be hated, mocked, reviled by the nations. They don't want to have to give up pork or Christmas. They don't want to stop being the kings of the hill.
Just like the Bible, they take this great Jewish gift, strip it down and re-fashion it to their own liking, then sell it at an overinflated price to desperate people searching for answers to real, devastating problems.
And we're supposed to be the shysters.
Stop re-appropriating my Torah for your pleasure. It's MY book, MY commands, MY covenant-- NOT yours. Sure, you can get in on it, but here's the deal: You have to play by the rules, just like the rest of us. If you can't handle that... GO HOME.
Labels: Dickow, Judaism, mitzvot, Prayer Shawls, Talit, TBN, Torah, tzitzit
posted by Shoshana @ 5:58 PM
