'MUDHOUSE SABBATH' Convert to Christianity retains Jewish practices

An author reflects on the values of Jewish observances.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
If a Jew becomes a Christian, what practices should she keep from her former faith?
One convert who wonders is author Lauren F. Winner, who worshipped as a teen at Congregation Beth Israel in Charlottesville, Va., and now attends Christ Episcopal Church two blocks away. In between, she switched from Reform to Orthodox Judaism before adopting Christianity.
Winner told that tale in the highly appealing spiritual autobiography "Girl Meets God" (2002). Her new little book "Mudhouse Sabbath" (Paraclete Press) reflects on the value Jewish observances have for Christians.
In Christianity, such observances don't save us and get us to heaven, she grants; only faith does that. But disciplines can teach "what it means to live as Christians."
About that title. The Mudhouse is a coffee bar where Winner might while away Sunday afternoons jotting notes in a book. As an Orthodox Jew, she couldn't write or buy coffee on Shabbat.
The 39 categories of forbidden activities also include cooking, carrying, listening to music and thinking about the work week ahead. Despite occasional boredom, she recollects, Shabbat observers are often sad when the day ends.
Winner doesn't say Gentile Christians should obey such strictures. But she decided Sundays at the Mudhouse were a mere "add-on to a busy week," not a God-oriented, "fundamental unit around which I organize my life," stopping "the rhythms of work and world."
Jesus observed the Sabbath in line with the Ten Commandments, she notes, though he challenged Jewish teachers on specifics.
What to do? Winner is starting small, swearing off Sunday shopping (a big sacrifice, she reports), visiting church shut-ins and attending a late-afternoon Bible study to round out a day that began with morning worship.
Observances
Other Winner observations on observances:
*Diet. Though Jewish kosher laws seem "curious," the habit "cultivates a profound attentiveness to food" and eating becomes "an act of faithfulness," not mere nutrition.
The New Testament makes kosher rules optional, but Winner thinks Christians should still recognize that "God cares about our dietary choices." So she's decided to shun out-of-season fruits and vegetables shipped to her supermarket from distant farms and greenhouses. The reason: Shipping requires the nation's second largest consumption of oil, next to cars.
*Fasting. Speaking of diet, Judaism designates six annual days of fasting (no food or drink) from sunup to sundown, plus the fast on the Day of Atonement. Christianity continued its own fasting disciplines but these have waned.
Winner confesses she has a hard time with this. She abstains on Fridays during Lent and hopes for the day when she will actually look forward to the regimen.
*Door posts. Jews affix a mezuzah to their door posts, a small scriptural parchment rolled inside a tube, to literally obey Deuteronomy 11:20. Christianity has no equivalent.
The inside of Winner's apartment is filled with crosses and Crucifixion scenes to "help me remember," but she realizes that isn't the same as Jews' subtle religious testament to outside passers-by.
Lately she has posted outside a small placard she found on a discarded door in Manhattan. It quotes Psalm 121:8: "The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore." Someone had scrawled on it in shaky handwriting, "Keep home safe thank God."
*Mourning. Unlike Christianity, Judaism has prescribed rituals marking stages after a loved one dies: seven days after burial, a month after, a year after and then on each annual anniversary.
Traditional Jews do this because God wills it, not for psychological benefit, Winner says, but it's a healthy concept worth emulating.
*Prayer. Like Muslims, observant Jews repeatedly recite set prayers at fixed daily hours. That's part of worship in the Bible and an aspect of Christian tradition. On "good days," Winner seeks to read from the prayer book morning, noon and evening, during which she lights a candle -- and turns off the telephone ringer.