Starve.Org White Noise Usenet Archive: "A Methodist Minister's Visceral Road To Judaism"

ASHER WADE:
A Methodist Minister's Visceral Road To Judaism

He admits that sometimes he feels like an oddball. As a Methodist minister
who has converted to Judaism, the curious questions come thick and fast;
and sometimes he wishes that he could close his ears to them and get on
with his life.

But most of the time, Asher Wade sees himself in a different light. Not a
freak, but as a man with a unique power to help preserve a tradition and a
people. "I recently read, in my daily Torah learning, this reference in the
Gemora; that a Ger Tzedek (sincere convert to Judaism) usually and more
than likely if he becomes a Torah observant Jew embarrasses the Jewish
people. How does he embarrass the Jewish people? Quite frankly, the Jewish
people who have had the tradition of 3300 years and have had the Torah
given to them and have their grandparents and parents always at Pesach
telling them of the story of God's redemptive power for them; that if they
are not Torah observant, when they see someone coming in from the outside
that has had no tradition and no history of this and had not had their
parents tell them about this, it is an embarrassment whenever they, the Ger
Tzedek, does anything more observant than they. I must give a disclaimer
and say that anything that I say, do or express by thought, I do not mean
this as any embarrassment but only as encouragement if I can help out in
any way I possibly can."

Wade tells his story slowly over the course of several hours in the home of
a Baltimore friend. It is a Saturday evening and Shabbat is long over;
candles are melted nubs of wax in the silver candelabra. Dressed in the
traditional white shirt and black trousers of the Orthodox, he sits at the
dining room table and speaks quietly and simply. From looking at his Kipah
and beard, one would never guess his background. From time to time, for
effect, he punctuates his speech with the cadence of a pastor in the
pulpit, but usually he talks with the traditional sing-song Jewish accent
known as 'Gemora Loshen'.

Born in 1949 to Methodist parents in Danville, Va., Wallace Wade was raised
as a devout Christian and learned little about Judaism in his youth. He
recalls peering into a religious book belonging to a Jewish classmate,
pointing to a picture of tefillin and asking her what they were.

What Wade also remembers is a an early hunger for spirituality. By the age
of 16 he knew he wanted to be a religious leader - a dream he fulfilled ten
years later when he was ordained a Methodist minister in Hamburg, West
Germany.

Yet in addition to his faith in God, Wade possessed an intensely
inquisitive, questioning mind. He said he was one of those students who
made trouble for his high school geometry teacher because he could never
just "accept" the axioms in geometry - those unprovable rules one must
acknowledge before moving on. Wade always wanted to know why.

Christianity did not escape the scrutiny of Wade's probing mind. The virgin
birth, the resurrection of Jesus, the Trinity, the Incarnation: How was he
to understand or accept these Christian mysteries?

He searched for answers all over the world - at universities in Edinburgh,
Rome and Berlin - and was studying for a doctorate in ontology, the field
of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being, reality and ultimate
substance, at the University of Hamburg when he was ordained in 1975. But
even as a minister, Wade said he continued to be troubled by questions and
doubts about his faith.

In fact it was his immersion in studying the New Testament that brought
many of these questions to the surface.

"To begin with there are problems with the text. Jesus is quoted as saying,
"I've been sent only to the lost tribes of Israel," and specifically told
his disciples to not go to the Gentiles. Yet the Gospels, the revealed word
of God that Jimmy Swaggart and the rest of them are talking about, what is
it written in? It's not written in the language of the Children of Israel.
It's written in the language of the Mediterranean world: common Greek,
called Koine Greek. This has to tell us not only to whom it's written, not
to Eretz Yisrael, not to the Jews there, but also by whom it's written, not
the guys that hung around with Mr. J., because they didn't speak the
language. Even if they did speak common Greek, none could have written it
down in such a literary fashion, in such glowing terms as they did.

"The earliest manuscript fragments in existence date to the second century,
more than 100 years after Jesus lived. And everything was copied by hand.
The Christian community had to make as many copies as possible to circulate
among their churches for their rapid spread. By copying by hand and by
speed copying you can well imagine there were errors, intentional and
unintentional. When I say intentional, I'm not making this up. I'm drawing
from Christian sources, written by Christians for Christians to understand
their own texts which they know pretty well that they will not read. These
intentional changes go from the harmless to the very, very problematic. The
harmless ones correct grammatical and geographical errors. Others adjust
quotations from the Tanach to correspond to the Greek Septuagint because,
after all, the Gospels were written for a non-Hebrew, Greek speaking
audience. Most damning, however, is where the copyists made intentional
changes so as to harmonize the three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and
Luke, so that there shouldn't be major differences."

Notwithstanding these attempts to edit the New Testament, Wade found
disturbing inconsistencies that mirrored his own growing doubt. "The two
genealogies of Jesus given in Luke and in Matthew don't agree with each
other and give two completely different lines of descent. Even the events
surrounding the birth of Jesus have problems. Joseph is engaged to Mary,
the mother of Jesus. In Matthew it says that Joseph found out that his
fiance, Mary, was "great with child," we know that as being pregnant. And
Matthew says that according to Torah law he was going to do the "proper
thing," divorce her for her obvious adultery. But an angel came and said,
"no, don't divorce her." In other words, don't do what the Torah tells you
to do. Don't do the 'proper thing'. Marry this young lady and call the
child's name "Immanuel", the quote from the Tanach (Is. 7:14). So Joseph
does the improper thing and marries her, he doesn't divorce her and he
follows the angel's message by marrying her, but he doesn't follow the
angel completely, because he doesn't name him Immanuel (God is with us). He
names him Jesus (save us).

"In 1st Corinthians 15:14 Paul talks about "if Jesus has not been raised,
then our faith is in vain." Paul, as the founder of Christianity say that
the entire upside down pyramid stands on one point: the resurrection of
Jesus. Everything else is either irrelevant or secondary to this point. Yet
at the end of Matthew (28:16-17), Jesus after he is resurrected presents
himself to the 11 disciples, the resurrected Christ upon which Paul says
the entire edifice stands, and "some doubted". I can accept that some two
thousand years later some guy in the street might say, "Well, I don't know,
I'm not too sure about this." But all of a sudden we have the disciples,
these people that for at least one full year, and some say three full years
of Jesus' ministry, were the closest to him. They left their wives, they
left their fathers, their livelihoods and they followed this guy and did
all these miracles and saw everything he did. He even promised that he
would come back and show them, and he did come back and show them, and some
doubted! After all, if some doubted, how much more faith should you have 20
centuries later, in a foreign land, that you should believe this? And yet
Paul says, if this is not so then our whole faith is in vain.

"I want to know why they doubted. Then I want to turn around and know why
the immediacy and the importance of me believing when they doubted. I want
to know on the basis of what was their faith. If some local yokel preacher
is going to tell me, "Well, the disciples' faith was not strong enough",
well, I say baloney - at that stage of the game you didn't need faith. The
disciples had the scientific proof of their senses standing right in front
of them. Yet they doubted something, and probably with good reason.

"We have to come to the conclusion that the writers of the Gospels were
convinced Christians, writing a Christian book, full of missionary tactics
to whom? Not to the Jews who might possibly remember Jesus, but to the
people of the Greek speaking Mediterranean world who never even knew him.

"Even after the Gospels were written, and by the way there are 38 known
Gospels and only four made it into the Christian Bible, there were problems
with the positions of the growing church. In the year 325, the council of
Nicea, under the emperor Constantine, made the concept of the incarnation
an article of faith. The incarnation doctrine as established and accepted
(I say accepted and not believed because nobody can understand it, and I
went across Europe and America and I found not one theologian that could
explain it, nor understand it) is called a "mystery of the church". It has
to be a mystery because it establishes that Jesus is 100% God and at the
same time 100% man. He has to be both, but you can't understand it, so it
has to be an axiom of the faith.

"I had a lot of conflict and unorthodox views as a Christian pastor," he
said. "I thought if some of the disciples doubted Christ's resurrection
from the dead, what is my basis for believing this stuff? Christianity had
this nice thing called a leap of faith, and I did a lot of leaping. But I
wanted to touch ground."

Wade's feet finally "touched ground" in 1978 when he opened books of Jewish
doctrine in the university library. For the first time he felt that the
words he was reading spoke with divine certainty.

Although it was the authority he sensed in Jewish doctrine that solidified
Asher's determination to convert, it was Jewish suffering that first led
him to examine the religion. The date was November 9, 1978, the 40th
anniversary of Kristallnacht in Germany. To commemorate the event, Hamburg
newspapers ran stories and photos that etched themselves deeply on Wade's
mind.

"It was the first time I had heard about it," says Wade. "Here I was in
Hamburg, where much of Kristallnacht had taken place, and it just shocked
me. It shocked me to know that every synagogue in Germany was set on fire
and vandalized, and every Jewish shop window was smashed and every shop
looted. And that every male Jew was marched to the police station and
registered."

Later that year, also in Germany, the American TV movie, The Holocaust, was
broadcast. Wade watched it with a group of German friends. Watching the
movie, he said, "hastened the immediacy of wanting to know about Judaism."

"From the problem that I'd had with Christian doctrine, this was like
authority come rushing in," said Wade, who added that it was then that he

knew he was a "latent Jew." He said that he was primed for his powerful
discovery of Judaism, "like someone with his foot in the door."

Wade attributes Judaism's authority to God's giving of the Torah to the
Jews at Mount Sinai. Unlike Christianity, which he said is theoretical, a
theology of the head, Judaism is practical, a theology of the gut. The task
of the Jew is not to try to know God, but to decide whether or not to love
God and observe his commandments.

He insists that anything of value in Christianity can be found earlier in
Judaism and that some of Jesus' teachings are unworkable. "They (Christian
ministers) will say the bottom line is, "All these problems in the New
Testament may be true but Jesus did give us one thing that's original, one
thing new: Love of enemy; love your enemies as yourself." Stop a minute.
First of all before you give something 'mission impossible' like that, even
on the TV program, Mission Impossible, at least he told them how to go
about doing this. Jesus never told you how to go about loving your enemy.
You don't necessarily love your enemy by turning your other cheek, you just
get smacked in the face a second time, that's what you get. You don't love
him that way. Torah, on the other hand, does actually tell us that. It
tells us not to necessarily love your enemy but Torah will show you how to
love your enemy. How many people know that? That the so-called one little
kernel of originality that Jesus taught was not even original because it
comes from Shemot, Exodus 23:4-5, if you'd like to read it. And it goes
something like this: "If you see your enemy's ox under a burden, you will
go over and release the burden." Because, as I believe it says in Pirke
Avot (The Ethics of the Fathers), you shall not confront your neighbor when
he is in anger, face to face. You always have to go by a median, by some
other means to an end. Because no matter what you say, your presence is
anathema to him. It's distasteful, he cannot see your face. You can be
nice, you can be neutral, you can be angry, everything is going to be
horrid to him. So you have to go by some other means. If you see you
enemies ox or donkey that's been lost, you shall take it back to him. At
least God, in His infinite wisdom, showed us how to love our neighbors and
enemies. He didn't just give us, "Go out and love your enemy" and get shot
while you're at it."

Attracted by this "theology of the gut," Wade threw himself headlong into
the study of Judaism. He devoured nearly all of the books on Judaism in the
University of Hamburg library and began to establish contacts with the
small Jewish community there. Eventually, feeling that his "search for the
most direct communication with God" was over, he withdrew from the
pastorate in 1979. In 1983, he and his German born wife, Dorle, officially
converted to Judaism.

His decision to convert, however, has exacted difficult sacrifices from him
and from his wife. He lost "about 95%" of his friends in Germany after
converting. "My friends weren't raging angry, they were just incredulous,"
he recalls. Perhaps the most painful sacrifice, was his Ph.D. and the eight
years of study that went into it. After deciding to convert, Asher informed
his professor of his decision. The professor, who turned out to be an
anti-Semite, succeeded in ensuring that Wade was unable to complete his
doctorate.

As Wade tells the story: "I went to graduate school at the University of
Edinburgh in Scotland and learned with some of the prominent British
theologians of the time. I then studied in Berlin followed by 8 1/2 years
and Hamburg University with some of the prominent German theologians. Eight
months away from finishing my Ph.D. I was unofficially ejected from the
university because of my plans to convert to Judaism - my plans and my
wife's plans. It was all done orally so that I had no legal recourse. And
to quote my 73 year old supervising professor, who also happened to have
been a chaplain in the Panzer tank division that rolled into Poland in
1939, "converting to Judaism happens to be the dumbest thing I've ever
heard in my life. And I would suggest to you to pack your bags and leave
because I have already contacted three out of five members on the
examination committee and before you even submit anything, I promise you,
you will not get through." That's what you call 'objective academic
research'.

"Immediately after that I ran across to the Orthodox Rabbi that I was
learning with. With tears in my eyes. And he sat there and listened to just
the story I told you, a little bit more in detail, and as I told it I saw
gradually a smile coming across his face and it got broader and broader and
this was not what I expected. And I asked him at the end, "Why is it that
you are smiling?" And he said, "Remember Asher, history doesn't end with
you and you are just one more brick in the wall as far as convincing me,
though I need not be convinced, that Torah is the truth. Had your
professor...," who was an ordained Lutheran pastor, the chaplain of the
entire university, the pastor or minister of one of the 5 major cathedrals
in Hamburg, a noted theologian, a writer of many, many books, and a well
respected head of the department. Why was it that even before I'd converted
to Judaism when I told him this that he quickly cast me out? As my Rabbi
told me, "It's quite obvious that he did not possess truth as he suggested.
Why is that? Because had a person accepted or assumed that he had absolute
truth, God's revealed truth, he most certainly would be merciful. He would
most certainly say, "Well, it's a very interesting idea" and he would have
taken you under his wing and shown you with love and compassion and
patience that maybe you had erred in your judgment. When a Jewish boy comes
to me and says, "I met this great looking girl and we're going to marry,
and she happens to be Catholic and I'm going to convert," I'd say "Let's
talk about it." I wouldn't tear Kriah or sit Shiva (Jewish mourning rites)
and say "Get out of here, you're dead." I know that God revealed the Torah
on Mt. Sinai and I it's the truth and what you're telling me substantiates
it. These great professors do not possess the truth!"

"And the Rabbi then said something else which was shattering. Shattering,
and you should know this. He said, "You want to know somebody else that
knows that you've stumbled onto the truth, because that's why your
professor did this. He knows that you've stumbled onto the truth. He has a
position to protect, he has his reputation. The man in Rome also knows the
truth and the truth is exactly which you have discovered."

"And then he said a most disconcerting thing to me. He said, "Asher, I
don't believe..., maybe you'll prove me wrong, I don't believe that you're
necessarily a perfect Tzadik. Someone that can resist all temptation. And
so I'm going to say the following thing. What troubles me is, and you
should think of this as well, you're a young man (at the time I was 33),
that does not have a reputation to protect and I'm afraid that had you
continued on in your studies, and gone back to America, gotten yourself a
church, had about 5 kids, had a pastorate, written a couple of books, had a
reputation and then later at the age of maybe 56 you started reading and
discovering and you came to the conclusion that you came to right now.
Asher, I'm afraid that you also might not have thrown it all overboard."

Wade reflected on the story and concluded, "The fact that Torah Judaism is
still alive, apart from the fact that it's on the growth, on the rise, is a
contradiction, I mean an absolute contradiction to the entire church. There
is still a covenental relationship with God's people and that cannot be
true and have the church exist at the same time, because the church
considers itself to be the New Israel and that's where they stand."

Life did not suddenly improve when the Wades converted. In August of 1983
they returned to the United States unemployed and without a home. For three
and a half months while searching for work, the couple lived in Danville,
Va. with Asher's parents, who were surprisingly very supportive of their
decision to convert. Nothing turned up, partially because they were
overqualified for many jobs, and partially because they could not accept
jobs that required working on Saturdays.

The pair were despairing and depressed over their situation, which seemed
to be leading nowhere. At one point, said Wade, he thought that he'd made a
mistake when he chose for himself the Hebrew name, "Asher" - which means
"happy" - when he converted. But in 1984, their luck changed. Invited by
their Danville rabbi to attend a Shabbaton in Virginia Beach, Asher and his
wife made contacts from Richmond which led to jobs there.

Although he arrived at his Judaism through books, participation in the
Jewish community is an important part of his faith. He attends shul
regularly and studies Halacha with members of his synagogue. He also
participates in Kiruv, or outreach, to unaffiliated Jews. Asher has become
active in counter-missionary work, battling groups like Jews for Jesus. He
has spoken on behalf of Jews For Judaism and acts as a resource for
activists in the counter-missionary field. With his expertise in the New
Testament, Wade has skills to offer these activists. As he puts it, "I like
to use their texts. I don't like to deviate or bring in any new material or
any new theories about it. I want to use exactly those texts and those
doctrines and beliefs that they hold true and fast and turn 'em around and
stick 'em in the gut with them. I read Christian material because I want to
accept that Christians have written enough incriminating evidence of their
own that I do not want to use 'outside' sources. I always use Christian
sources because they incriminate themselves so wonderfully. If I use
outside sources, thy say, "Ah! What does he know?" Right. I use absolutely
orthodox (Christian) sources to say, "if this is so and if this is so, then
please explain yourselves." I stick strictly to their Christian Bible. I
fight them in their backyard because that's where I grew up and I know
where every tree and bush is and they can't hide behind any of them."

Asher has never felt out of place among born Jews. Before leaving Germany,
he said that his rabbi advised him to always stick to the most observant
shul in town, because that's where he would be most warmly received, and no
mention would be made of his background. Asher states that his rabbi has
always been right in this regard. He and his wife keep kosher, observe
Shabbat and are raising their three children in a strictly Orthodox
fashion.

It was through the efforts of members of Baltimore's Jewish community that
Wade received an opportunity to study Torah in Israel. Having met officials
of Ner Israel Rabbinical College and Jews For Judaism, he impressed them
with his brilliance, sincerity and dedication. They saw him as a
potentially great asset to the community in both outreach and
counter-missionary work. However, it was felt by all, including Asher, that
he required a more thorough Jewish background in order to truly be of
service. So pooling their resources, the two organizations raised a
scholarship fund to send Asher and his family to Israel for two years so he
could learn in a Yeshiva.

This opportunity thrills him for he likens the Torah to the riches of a
kingdom and said that those riches are often overlooked by born Jews. "If
you're used to living in the king's palace, and eating off gold plates and
drinking out of silver goblets, then it doesn't mean anything to you," he
said. "But I was used to eating out of tin cans."

Often, his love for Judaism compels non-affiliated Jews to take a second
look at their religious heritage. "These people are obviously going to feel
something. They're going to think, 'Gosh, the guy came from a Methodist
background, and he knows more Torah than I do.'

"People tell me, 'You have seen something about Judaism that I haven't
seen. I'm willing to follow you back in if you show me what it is.' And
that's something I've got that most Jews don't have."

Hannah Storch, chairwoman of the board of Jews For Judaism in Baltimore,
agreed with Asher's self assessment.

"We feel that he will be a great asset to the Jewish community because he
is an exceptionally brilliant man, not just ordinary, and he's very
sincere," said Mrs. Storch. "He studied different religions and he came to
the conclusion that we are the true religion. No one forced him to
convert."

Rabbi Manual Poliakoff, who has been host to Asher and his family on
several occasions for Shabbat is especially impressed with his sincerity.
"It's hard to believe that he's not born Jewish. I see the way he conducts
himself with his children, teaching them prayers and encouraging them to
wear payess (sidecurls). When you spend time with someone, you can see if
he's putting something on, and he's not. I'm convinced that he's completely
and totally sincere."

Asher Wade says he wouldn't mind returning to the pulpit again someday -
except this time as a rabbi. The former minister has strong opinions about
what is needed in the Jewish community.

"The cause of the problems of assimilation and Jews embracing other
religions is from the failure of the Jewish community. The failure of the
Jewish community in essence, is that by not exposing them to the rich
spirituality that exists in Judaism we have not given enough Jews a reason
to be Jewish. We have not given them those things which they are seeking
elsewhere and which have been attractive to them. Anyone who is comfortable
with his situation in life, knowing the way the world is and the way world
Jewry is, has committed spiritual suicide somewhere along the way."

At the time of this writing, Asher Wade has completed two years of study at
the Ohr Somayach yeshiva in Jerusalem. He has impressed his teachers,
fellow students and the Israeli public with his diligence and that effort
is being rewarded as he is now making great progress in his Torah study. He
and his wife Dorle plan on making Israel the permanent home for their
family.

From :
"Wellsprings Magazine" (Published by Lubavitch Youth Organization
770 Eastern Parkway - Brooklyn, NY 11213 - 718-953-1000
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Miriam Wolfe
Lubavitch Youth Organization
770 Eastern Parkway - Brooklyn, NY