Hitzonim, hebrew for outsiders, carries two salient meanings for this site: First, the rabbis of the Talmud referred to Sefarim Hitzonim, the “forbidden books” of the Second Temple Period, also called the apocrypha by many Christian communities. These texts were forbidden insofar as they were not directly from Torah or the interpretation of the same. Some rabbis argued for the study of these forbidden books under certain conditions that may be relevant to the individual. My deep engagement with gospel texts and drawing parallels with Talmudic writings feels a little forbidden. I think it’s good trouble.
The second salient sense is the suggestion that the name for the Second Temple sectarian group, the Essenes, may be called this by a transliteration of the same, hitzonim, channeling the “outsiders” idea, or those on the periphery. This sense matches with the lifestyle of the Essenes, eschewing the cosmopolitan draw of Jerusalem and its Temple for both ascetic and theological reasons.
The senses associated with this term, hitzonim, resonates deeply with me. I am someone who has felt very much on the outside of the religious traditions that I know best: Mainline Protestant Christianity and Judaism. I identify with both and with neither. Ethno-religiously and practically, I take myself to be a sort of paradigmatic diaspora Jew, working for justice and a better world. Through my childhood and continued faith-based organizing, my association with progressive Christianity is also part of my identity.
On the outside? My study in Historical Jesus scholarship and Second Temple Period Judaism informs much of the writing that I do, and I seek to continue to be with Christians in our shared pusuites for justice, but I do not adhere to Christian theological understanding of Jesus as messiah; neither do I consider the function of a holy meal or the cross to be divine. The bread and wine, a Jewish meal, and the cross, Roman state sanctioned capital punishment.
I’m not a Christian nor a messianic Jew. So, too, am I not traditionally Jewish by some definitions of our identity. I was not raised Jewish. Though, my mother and our family on that side are Jewish. I certainly identify as Jewish.
In this moment of deep disenfranchisement with religious affiliation (for good reason), coupled with the continued grip of alt-right politics on the Church and the rise of Christian Nationalism, replete with unchecked antisemitism, and an equal troubling right-wing Zionism coupled with Jewish Nationalism, we need more sober voices to speak with humanity, multiculturalism, new identity markers, and a sense of what is possible ahead of us and not what binds us from the past.
This space is my attempt to articulate a counter narrative to American-style Christianity and religious thought that traffics in greed, power, and certainty. This space is my attempt to welcome a new minyan of my siblings who leave the religious gatekeeping behind and celebrate our diversity.
Mutual aid, compassion, care of creation, reparation, communal ritual, justice, trust, vulnerability, being accountable to our ancestors and holding our ancestors to account, abiding law codes to enhance our life, not obligating ourselves to them at the expense of our lives, and finding the sacred in the mundane are the values I find when I look to the historical communities of the Bible.
Welcome to Hitzonim, Outsiders.
Hitzonim | Outsiders 