Could The Holy Ghost Be Jewish?

 Christian Belief Can Be Traced Back to the Hebrew Bible

Robert J. Foley of Wilmington, N.C., sends me a copy of an open letter written by author and rabbi Rami Shapiro to Pope Francis. In it, Rabbi Shapiro hopes that “ruach ha-kodesh, the Holy Spirit, has called a new pope from the new world to lead the Catholic Church,” and Mr. Foley writes:
“Rabbi Shapiro… is alluding to an expression often used by the conclave of cardinals [which chose the new pope], to the effect that the Holy Spirit will guide them in their deliberations. In my cursory look at the meanings and interpretations of the Hebrew words ruach ha-kodesh, I was indeed struck by some of the similarities between them and the concept of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity. In forming this concept, to what extent do you think the early Christian writers and Church Fathers might have been influenced by Judaism?”

They were influenced by it a great deal. Although neither biblical nor rabbinic Judaism has anything like the Christian Trinity in its thinking about God, there can be no doubt that the ru’aḥ ha-kodesh (literally, “spirit of holiness”) of the Bible and rabbinic literature was the direct antecedent of the Christian concept of the Holy Spirit — or, as it was more commonly known in the English-speaking Catholic Church until recent times, the Holy Ghost. (“Ghost” is an Old English word for “spirit,” just as “a spirit” is a now archaic way of denoting a ghost. A ghost is nothing but a disembodied spirit, and the expression “to give up the ghost,” which has survived from medieval times, refers to the body’s sundering from the spirit at the time of death.)

In Hebrew, starting with the Bible and continuing to this day, ru’aḥ has the two meanings of “spirit” and “wind.” Historically, wind is clearly the older of the two, spirit being derived from it by analogy: As the wind, that is, is invisible but has the power to move visible things, so the spirit is conceived of as that unseen force in human beings or the world — the breath of life, as it were — that activates all that can be seen.

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The Calendar as Solace

After our daughter’s car accident, her recovery paralleled the holidays, from Purim to Passover to Shavuot

We were in downtown Chicago on Feb. 17 when my wife Galit got the first call. Our niece Maya, 24, had been in a bad car accident near our house, some 28 miles outside the city. Her parents were away, so we needed to come to the hospital. We were told that in the person driving the car was also injured, but that person was unconscious and the paramedics and police officers on the scene hadn’t been able to ascertain her identity.

It wasn’t a mystery for long. Minutes later, Galit’s phone rang again: The driver of the car was our daughter Becky, 23. Forty minutes later—an eternity—we were led to Becky and Maya’s bedsides.

Later that day, sequestered in Becky’s hospital room, shades drawn against the winter gloom, we were alone in a frigid, fluorescent ecosystem of monitors, IVs, and white lab coats. We were overwhelmed and lost track of time. Before long, we had to consult our phones just to remember what day it was. Becky—asleep or semiconscious most of the time, the entire left side of her body battered and lacerated—appeared pallid and unchanging, like her environment. Maya, whose jaw had been shattered, was conscious, but her face was swollen both from that impact and the reconstructive surgery that followed. For the next three days, the girls’ families settled into neighboring bunkers of anxiety, exhaustion, and vigilance, meeting with teams of doctors, responding to calls from worried friends and relatives, taking turns dashing home to keep our households from being swallowed by the chaos.

It was on one of those trips home, on Feb. 19, that I saw the Jewish calendar hung by our back door and realized that it would soon be Purim. How ironic, I thought: We’re supposed to be happy, to down some drinks, and give tzedakah—and here we were, miserable, sober, self-absorbed. In that moment, the holiday seemed more of a cruel joke than an object lesson in mindfulness and gratitude.

Little did I know at the time how important that calendar would become.

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Shavuot 2013

Everything you need to know to celebrate the holiday.

 

Shavuot begins at sunset on May 14, 2013 and will end on the evening of May 15th for Reform Jews and the evening of May 16th for Conservative and Orthodox Jews. Check your synagogue's practices. 

What is Shavuot? Shavuot, the feast of weeks, is celebrated seven weeks after the second Passover seder.

Although Shavuot began as an ancient grain harvest festival, the holiday has been identified since biblical times with the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

For more about the history of Shavuot click here.

What are some customs and practices for Shavuot?

- To commemorate the giving of the Torah at Sinai there is a tradition of staying up all night studying Jewish texts in what is called a tikun.
- On Shavuot the Book of Ruth is read.
- Traditionally dairy foods are eaten on Shavuot.
- In order to mark the agricultural history of Shavuot, some decorate their house and synagogues with a floral theme.

Shavuot, the end of the Transition

As we said in earlier articles, Passover is a time of transition, and the period of the Omer is a continuation of the transition. Shavuot is the final period of that transition.

There are two separate and distinct transitions that take place during the Passover to Shavuot period. Passover is the time of our liberation, our release from slavery and bondage. It is a celebration of the end of our physical slavery and our entering into being free men. But the release from forced labor was not an end to the miracle that G-d did for us; we were destined to greater glory than just being "free men." We were destined to receive the Torah which would transform us from merely being "free men" and elevate us to becoming noblemen, as the servants of G-d.

However in order to realize this lofty goal, we had to not just be free in body, but also free in mind. Passover was the freeing of the body, but Shavuot was the time of the freeing of the mind. The period between the two holidays, Passover and Shavuot, which we call the Omer period, was a time to transform ourselves from the lowly state of being slaves with its accompanying mentality and to prepare us for becoming noblemen and its totally different mentality.

Had we just been released from our slavery, we might have been free men, but it would be only in the physical. Mentally and spiritually we would remain the same. It would have taken many years to realize our potentials, since a slave, especially one who was born to parents who were slaves, has both a low opinion of his own potential to function and lacks the personal resources to achieve that potential.

As an example, when President Lincoln freed the Negro slaves and granted them equality under the law, it did not automatically make them equal to their former white masters. They lacked the educational background to function as an equal and they themselves knew in their hearts that they could not compete as equals, for they looked upon themselves as inferior.

So too, when the Jewish nation left the slavery of Egypt, they were unable to see themselves as capable functioning noblemen. Yet it was G-d's desires that this nation, the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were to become a holy nation. They were to be G-d's ministers. Like a great king who expects that his ministers be men of high character and education, G-d also required that we achieve our maximum. Hence it was necessary that we receive G-d's vital message to mankind of what was expected of us and how to act in a manner fitting G-d's ministers.

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