Sometimes I wish I were Jewish.

It seems to me every time I see scripture from its Jewish roots it becomes that much richer.

I'm reading Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell (the NOOMA video guy). He has a section on rabbis that fascinates me. I'll mention a few in case you find Jewish stuff as useful as I do.

"Now the rabbis understood that the Bible is open-ended and has to be interpreted...Different rabbis had different sets of rules, which were really different lists of what they forbade and what they permitted. A rabbi's set of rules and lists, which was really that rabbi's interpretation of how to live the Torah, was called that rabbi's yoke...And when you followed that rabbi, you were taking up that rabbi's yoke."

(Matthew 11:29, 30 - Jesus says "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me...For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.")

Also, "Rabbis would spend hours discussing with their students what it meant to live out a certain text. If...the rabbi thought the student had totally missed the point, the rabbi would say, "You have abolished the Torah,"...if the student got it right,...that rabbi would say, "You have fulfilled the Torah.""

(This sounds familiar: Matthew 5:17.)

He also explains that most rabbis taught the yoke of a well-respected rabbi who came before him. But if someone came along with a new yoke, or a new interpretation, he needed the authority of two other rabbis. He compares this with Jesus' baptism where he has John and the voice of God affirming his authority.

Here is another interesting item. "Now the rabbis had technical terms for this endless process of forbidding and permitting and making interpretations. They called it "binding and loosing". To "bind" something was to forbid it. To "loose" something was to allow it...And when he gave his disciples the authority to bind and loose, it was called "giving the keys of the kingdom".

(Matthew 16:18 and 18:18)

That's cool. I'm closer to getting it now. There's lots more but that seems like more than enough for me to say since none of it is my idea.