Quotes of Rabbi Tovia Singer Part 2

I say this to the Christian listeners. Just use the same kind of critical thinking you’ve used to reject Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, the J Witnesses, use the same critical thinking for Christianity. But it is difficult because (something I will say over and over again), it took me years to get this: Christians love Jesus, and they don’t want to reject him. And stories about Jesus that is so gripping for the Christian, that’s the hardest part. In fact, people have told me that even after they had realised Christianity may not be the truth, it was just so hard, for weeks they, how do you separate yourself from Jesus? Because Jesus was their best friend, he was the one they were praying to, talking to all their lives, they don’t know what to do with him. Who then was Jesus? Because of that attachment to Jesus. It’s not because of Isaiah 53, it is because of the story-telling of the gospels. Very powerful stories that contain really terrific, I mean well-formed character development. You’ve got your villain, you’ve got your hero, it’s all there for all to see. 

 

The Jews suffer from Goyim. The question is why? Why is this? And the answer is that we actually cause it. We cause the Goyim to attack us, how is that possible? Because what our job is, is to be a light to the Gentiles, that’s our role, is to be a light to the nations. What happens when we fail at that task? We’re not observing Torah, instead we are reading the New York Times, and worse, following the New York Times, following Tom Friedman, ha, we’re following Noam Chomsky, we’re following those who do not know the God of Israel. So what happens? That means we don’t provide the light for the Goyim, so what do the Goyim do if they don’t have the light? They turn against God. Now, if you want to go to war with God, what are you going to do? How are you going to express your hatred for God, are you going to flail your fists in the air and ‘hit’ God? You can’t do that. So what you do in turn is you go to war with His son, His firstborn son, and that’s Israel…In classical Jewish thought, we bring about antisemitism, we spark it. 

 

Always take the reciprocal and say, let’s go with that and see what would happen. If in fact that didn’t happen, where thousands of Jews were [not] converting to Christianity, I would question the veracity of the Torah and I would question Judaism. It is the fact that large number of Jews are worshipping idolatry in our day tells me that the Torah is in fact an eternal document. Because that is exactly what the Torah predicts would happen. The Torah tells us you will be in exile, and there you will worship gods of wood and stone. Very interesting, wood and stone, you know that is not the typical type of idolatry, people usually would say gold and silver, but the Torah says no, wood and stone…Read Deuteronomy 28:64…The Torah predicts this is exactly what would happen: The Lord will scatter you in all the nations of the world, from one end of the world to the other…Torah says the following, I am going to scatter you among all the nations; anywhere you go you will find Jews…And there you will worship in your exile, you’ll worship this whole new kind of idolatry which you never knew about, something new. And your fathers didn’t know about it…specifically god that is represented by the wood, and that which is represented by the stone. Can this be an allusion to Calvary and the Kaaba? Maybe. I don’t know, but I will tell you this, Torah says this is what the Jews would do in their exile, follow other gods that you and your fathers did not know. Therefore, if I did not see any Jews today worshiping idolatry, I would actually have to question the veracity and the trustworthiness of the Torah. Because Torah says that’s what will happen. And just like in biblical times the vast majority of the Jews worshipped idols. In fact, I think they were more successful back then, Baal, which was worshipped through defecation, you heard me right, was much more successful than Christianity is. Read Isaiah 46:1-5 so you know I’m not making that up. There were only 7,000 Jews that didn’t worship Baal, so what would you have said back then in the days of Elijah? Would you have said, “Look at all the Jews who are coming to know Baal as their lord and saviour, so why don’t you come and worship Baal too?”…How many Jews were living in the world, a million? You know what percentage that is? 7,000 out of a million? 

 

So how would I respond to a Christian who said that? With a big smile and say, “You’re going to turn to the God of Israel.” Because that means a Christian is studying the Torah. That’s really good. I’d go, “Wonderful, wonderful.” Wow, ah! More Christians studying Torah, [then] they would understand these things. Why? So they can do teshuva, so they can repent, that’s so good. 

 

The only commandment [in the Christian bible] that’s unsupported from the Ten Commandments is, guess? Which one is it? You figured it out. It’s the Sabbath. Why? Because that’s a ritual commandment. And the church is going to teach that you don’t have to keep the Sabbath any longer. Paul is going to teach this. Paul is going to say literally, ‘Let no one tell you about keeping the new moons and the sabbath.’ Literally he is going to say that, Shabbes is done. Colossians 2:16. 

 

This is the reason why Christians stay in the church, is they are terrified of going to hell…When you go back to your friends and family and say, ‘I realise that I am going to worship the One God of Israel and that Jesus is not the Messiah.’ What happens is they’re going to [say], ‘You’re going to go to hell.’…Christians resort to the unfalsifiable proof, and that comes up right away…People are told that you should be a Christian because it’s in the bible. But then what happens is when they go, ‘I’m not sure if I believe in this.’ They go, ‘But you’re going to go to hell.’ So the sell begins with something that you can test and verify, is it in the bible or not in the bible? And then when you look in the bible and it’s not there [i.e. fulfilled Messianic prophecies], they then go to the unfalsifiable argument…Every religion except for Judaism is obsessed with hell. I mean even the Hindus are. I don’t usually pick on Hindus, I am not trying to now but it’s all about what happens after you die. Why? Because you can’t verify it. You can’t test it.  

 

I would think a passage that would demonstrate that in the view of the writers of the New Testament (we don’t know who wrote the gospels). It’s not that they are falsely attributed or these are pseudepigraphas [as if] they claim to be written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The books are all anonymously written and the late second century Catholic church fathers, particularly Irenaeus, would identify these gospels with these evangelists. But that’s much, much later. If you were looking for passages in the gospels which illustrate that the writers of these four books did not believe that Jesus was equal to the Father, you would use passages like in John 5:30 where Jesus says, ‘I can’t do anything of my own but only of the one who sent me.’ Well there he is very explicitly subordinate to the Father. Bear in mind as you explore this with me that Christians don’t believe that Jesus was half human and half divine; so that was the human part of him rather than the divine part of him. Christians insist that Jesus is rather 100% divine and 100% human and therefore his humanity does not rob him of his divinity. This is important. Christians argued over this as you can imagine because it’s a man-made religion. If I were looking to show that in the view of the writers of the New Testament that Jesus was not equal to the Father I would use a passage in John where Jesus concedes that the Father is greater than me. Well that’s about as explicit as it gets. 

 

When God creates Adam in His image in Genesis 1:26-27, if image means that it’s somehow the same that man is Godly then how could man come to sin then? If that is what ‘image’ is conveying…God created man in His image. Whatever that means, I think instinctively, intuitively we have a sense that man has a divine spark, a divine soul, a part of God is in every person. In some way when you look at man, it’s not the same as looking at a zebra. In a zebra you could see the wonder of God in a zebra but man has a divine spark in him. And God breathed that in him; we see that in more detail in Genesis chapter 2…I understand that a human being is sacred. 

 

If you’re like me, you consider Daniel to be one of the most beloved personalities in human history. If you’re like me, you love Avraham Avinu, Abraham our father. Doesn’t it make sense to read about their lives? Read Daniel chapter 6. It’s in the Bible! Daniel was a tzadik. How did he do it? If he is infected with the original sin then how did he pull it off? Now why do I ‘pick’ on Daniel?…Daniel didn’t bring sacrifices…He didn’t live when the Temple stood [in context of chapter 6]. He lived during the Babylonian exile. I carefully selected this man of God because he didn’t have any blood to atone for his sins, got it? And that is what you need to think about. And I am talking to you, the Christian. If you’re not a Christian you can listen in but this is not for you. I want to speak to the Christians…I know you know about the story of Daniel in the lions’ den. I know that, it’s very moving. Did you ever read it? If you did, why didn’t it spark a curiosity within you? Now, I’ll tell you possibly why. It’s because the story is so moving and gripping that you get caught up in the story and you just don’t even see what’s going on. So I don’t blame you. I’m not picking on you. But it’s true that we have Daniel 5, the fall of the Babylonian empire, hand on the wall. Chapter 6 Daniel is a tzadik. So the story is so gripping that we sometimes don’t notice somethings…Daniel chapter 6 reads very well (forgive me, God), what I meant by that is it’s very easy to read. Daniel chapter 1-6 is very easy to read. You have no excuse for not reading those six chapters…If Daniel, there was no Beis HaMikdash, no Temple, no sacrifices, no blood; well how did Daniel pull it off? That’s how Jews today pull it off. We don’t have a sacrifice yet a Jewish person and a Gentile (ben Noach), we can turn to the God of Israel, love Him, bow to Him alone (and no one else), no one else!! No son, nothing like that. Nothing. And that’s how we have our salvation. Through a direct personal relationship with God, and through obedience to His Torah.