Shabbat shalom everyone,
Perhaps it’s just the feeling of needing to tell people things I’ve held back until now, especially after my health crisis at the end of last year, when I almost died, with so much unsaid. Perhaps it’s a need to let people know what has really motivated and directed my mission; but the strong, compelling urge came into my head just now, that I should finally tell people the real story of how the words ‘Talmidi’ and ‘Talmidaism’ came into being.
I have always explained it to people as if it had only ever been the product of an intellectual exercise, coming from the Aramaic word talmīdā, and the Hebrew word talmīd, both having the meanings of ‘follower’, ‘disciple’ and ‘student’, in honourable recollection of how the very first community of Yeshua’s followers called themselves, ‘Followers of the Way’ (Acts 22:4, 24:14). However, that was the end process, a kind of intellectual ‘verification’ and justification. But that’s not how I got the words originally.
Now, I really don’t expect people to believe me in this – to accept anything I’m about to say. I’m not using it as a reason why any of you should accept it, or of any kind of ‘proof’. I’m simply telling you the truth of what happened by my perception of reality; I assure you, I’m not mad, and I’m not crazy. I guess I just needed to open up about it.
In 1996, I was blest with a well-paid job with AT&T in London (a job I had for about 5 years). I saved up for a holiday to Israel – my first time there. I eventually spent three weeks there at the end of June and the beginning of July in 1998. My base was a guest-house in Jerusalem, about a half-hour’s walk from Temple Mount. This was a deliberate choice on my part.
By this time in my life, I had joined Shemayah’s community of Ebionites (he was based in Tennessee, I was in London). I had been a member for a couple of years, and learned many things from the wonderful group of learned scholars who belonged to his group. There were a number of decisions that his group took which I still follow and adhere to, such as the decision to leave the Talmud behind, and follow Karaite jurisprudence – it just made logical sense, given what Yeshua said about the Oral Law. Nehemiah Gordan, a very famous Karaite Jewish teacher, was a guest speaker on several occasions, and we had several Karaite scholars as members of the group.
However, the group was very conservative, and I could never describe myself in a million years as a conservative (on most issues I am a centrist moderate). Cracks began to develop, and by the time of my visit to Israel, I had left the Ebionite community. Shemayah made it clear that I was forbidden to use the name ‘Ebionite’ for myself or my ministry, and I willingly agreed to this condition. I was surprisingly OK with it.
I decided to call my ministry ‘Massorite’ (not to be confused with ‘Masorete’ or ‘Masorti’). It comes from the Aramaic word, ‘massorāh’, which means ‘tradition’. While Shemayah’s community proudly and justifiably connected themselves to the second-century Ebionites, I chose instead to connect myself to the very first Jewish Followers of the Way in the first century, the lowly Galilean Jews who first heard Yeshua speak while he was still alive – thus binding myself to our very earliest faith ‘tradition’, right at the beginning of our movement.
This divergence created a naming problem for our community overall. What would we call ourselves collectively? My heartfelt motivation was that I didn’t want our community to fracture, just because of a separation in nomenclature. We needed a kind of umbrella term to cover us all – Ebionites and Massorites, as sisters and brothers together. After all, in ancient times, Ebionites were not the only Jewish-Christian sect – not even in James’s time was there just one sect. There was of course the academic term, ‘Jewish-Christianity’, but none of us ever liked it or felt comfortable with it, because we were not Christians. In our minds, there was a general consensus that it was Paul of Tarsus who founded Christianity, and we were not followers of Paul. As you know, our movement has a shared, common rejection of Paul, a historical trait we had even in ancient times.
So I went to Israel with many goals in mind. One of which was to earnestly and solemnly pray, in the place where our community once thrived, in the hope that I would come to some kind of conclusion as to what word or name could best replace the terms, ‘Jewish-Christian’ and ‘Jewish-Christianity’.
I think it was my second excursion up to Temple Mount that my unusual experience happened. Not having access to a mikveh, I had immersed myself in a tub of water that morning, and poured water over my head three times, in the hope that this would be acceptable to ritually prepare me for my visit to such a holy place.
While you are on Temple Mount, non-Muslims are absolutely forbidden to pray. If a Muslim catches you seemingly in the process of prayer, and you cannot prove you are a Muslim, you will be forcibly ejected by the Muslim authorities. There are members of the Muslim Waqf patrolling the grounds, and on my previous visit, I had a very rude cleric come up to me and aggressively ask me, “Where are you from?” I replied, “Sri Lanka.” That shut him up; I don’t think he had ever heard of the country of my birth, even less what religions came from there! He looked annoyed but confused, so I took the opportunity to walk away.
Anyway, I was determined that on my second visit, I urgently needed to decide upon some term to replace ‘Jewish-Christian’ and ‘Jewish-Christianity’. I took the decision to pray while walking around with my eyes open, intently pleading for an answer. I came to a halt in the middle of Temple Mount, looked up at the Dome of the Rock, and then I looked down at the ground, and closed my eyes just for a couple of seconds. When I looked up again, all the crowds had disappeared. I looked around, and all was silent – not even the sound of any birds or traffic.
This is not the first time in my life that such a strange, other-worldly occurrence happened to me. I had a similar ‘timeslip‘ experience when I was about six years old, but I won’t distract you with the details of that here. Needless to say, the previous incident informed me that something not quite of this world was now going on, and of how to react.
I knew that it would only last a few seconds, so I said, “Beloved Yahveh, my Friend, I implore You, what name should I call us? You know the future – what names will we be using in the future? I want to keep us united, and not fall apart!”
As I completed the last word, a Voice surrounded me and said to me, “Talmidi”. There was a couple of seconds pause, then, “Talmidaism”. I interpreted this as meaning that we would become known as Talmidis, and our collective faith would be known as Talmidaism. I did actually then ask, “Are these the names you want us to use?“ but there was no further response.
The accent of the Voice was neither British nor American. The quality of the vowels was more Semitic, Middle-Eastern: taal-MEE-dee, taal-mee-DAY-izz-um (the ‘aa’ as in father, and the stressed syllables were those I‘ve indicated in bold capitals; that is the best way I can describe to you how I heard the words).
A couple of seconds more passed, and the sounds of people resumed around me; I could see people all around me once again. Just like the time-shift experience I had when I was six, the reality of this world resumed, as if time had been stopped and then restarted for me. I thanked and blest God for blessing me with this experience. Then I saw that there was an angry Waqf man heading towards me, so I hurriedly left at a quick walking speed.
I have never told anyone, because I don’t want people to make it into a big deal, or see me as anything special – I have a strong aversion to being put on a pedestal, and a fear of being seen as a total nutjob. Nor am I the type of person who uses my spiritual experiences as proof of anything, or to convince anyone of anything. If I were to do that, I am always conscious of being perceived as a charlatan and a fraud, and I am ever aware of such a bad reputation being reflected back onto God – I never want that to happen. I have always wanted to protect the reputation of God, so I came up with a logical, rational, linguistically-derived reason for the names, and that is what I presented to my own group, as well as to Shemayah. He wasn’t too pleased, but he begrudgingly accepted use of the name to describe us both. We would always continue to call ourselves ‘Ebionites’ and ‘Massorites’, but when referring to us both, as a common identifier, we could use ‘Talmidi’ instead of ‘Jewish-Christian’ (but as far as I know, he has never used it himself, I got the impression he resented using it).
That’s it. I genuinely do not expect anyone to accept that I had such an experience, and that’s fine by me – I expect most of you to completely dismiss it all out of hand as some kind of hallucination, a product of an addled imagination. I’m OK with that. It’s just that I had this sudden, really strong and unsuppressable urge this evening, for some reason, to tell you about it (maybe I just didn’t want to go to my grave without telling someone about this). God’s Will be done, if perchance you should think less of me; I am but YHVH’s humble and willing servant.
Shabbat blessings, in the holy Name of YHVH,
Your brother
Shmuliq