chazan of Nazareth synagogue

• chazan of Nazareth synagogue

123:5.9Through­out his years at the syn­a­gogue he was a bril­liant stu­dent, pos­sess­ing a great ad­van­tage since he was con­ver­sant with three lan­guages. The Naz­a­reth chazan, on the oc­ca­sion of Je­sus’ fin­ish­ing the course in his school, re­marked to Joseph that he feared he “had learned more from Je­sus’ search­ing ques­tions” than he had “been able to teach the lad.”

• chazan of Nazareth synagogue

124:1.4But trou­ble was again stirred up at school when one of the more back­ward pupils dis­cov­ered Je­sus draw­ing a char­coal pic­ture of the teacher on the floor of the school­room. There it was, plain as day, and many of the el­ders had viewed it be­fore the com­mit­tee went to call on Joseph to de­mand that some­thing be done to sup­press the law­less­ness of his el­dest son. And though this was not the first time com­plaints had come to Joseph and Mary about the do­ings of their ver­sa­tile and ag­gres­sive child, this was the most se­ri­ous of all the ac­cu­sa­tions which had thus far been lodged against him. Je­sus lis­tened to the in­dict­ment of his artis­tic ef­forts for some time, be­ing seated on a large stone just out­side the back door. He re­sented their blam­ing his fa­ther for his al­leged mis­deeds; so in he marched, fear­lessly con­fronting his ac­cusers. The el­ders were thrown into con­fu­sion. Some were in­clined to view the episode hu­mor­ously, while one or two seemed to think the boy was sac­ri­le­gious if not blas­phe­mous. Joseph was non­plused, Mary in­dig­nant, but Je­sus in­sisted on be­ing heard. He had his say, coura­geously de­fended his view­point, and with con­sum­mate self-con­trol an­nounced that he would abide by the de­ci­sion of his fa­ther in this as in all other mat­ters con­tro­ver­sial. And the com­mit­tee of el­ders de­parted in si­lence.

• chazan of Nazareth synagogue

124:2.2He en­tered the ad­vanced school of the syn­a­gogue in Au­gust. At school he was con­stantly cre­at­ing trou­ble by the ques­tions he per­sisted in ask­ing. In­creas­ingly he kept all Naz­a­reth in more or less of a hub­bub. His par­ents were loath to for­bid his ask­ing these dis­qui­et­ing ques­tions, and his chief teacher was greatly in­trigued by the lad’s cu­rios­ity, in­sight, and hunger for knowl­edge.

• chazan of Nazareth synagogue

124:3.5The chazan spent one evening each week with Je­sus, help­ing him to mas­ter the He­brew scrip­tures. He was greatly in­ter­ested in the prog­ress of his promis­ing pupil; there­fore was he will­ing to as­sist him in many ways. This Jew­ish ped­a­gogue ex­erted a great in­flu­ence upon this grow­ing mind, but he was never able to com­pre­hend why Je­sus was so in­dif­fer­ent to all his sug­ges­tions re­gard­ing the prospects of go­ing to Je­ru­sa­lem to con­tinue his ed­u­ca­tion un­der the learned rab­bis.

• chazan of Nazareth synagogue

127:2.7Je­sus’ po­si­tion was made more dif­fi­cult be­cause his mother and un­cle, and even his younger brother James, all urged him to join the na­tion­al­ist cause. All the bet­ter Jews of Naz­a­reth had en­listed, and those young men who had not joined the move­ment would all en­list the mo­ment Je­sus changed his mind. He had but one wise coun­selor in all Naz­a­reth, his old teacher, the chazan, who coun­seled him about his re­ply to the cit­i­zens’ com­mit­tee of Naz­a­reth when they came to ask for his an­swer to the pub­lic ap­peal which had been made. In all Je­sus’ young life this was the very first time he had con­sciously re­sorted to pub­lic strat­egy. Thereto­fore, al­ways had he de­pended upon a frank state­ment of truth to clar­ify the sit­u­a­tion, but now he could not de­clare the full truth. He could not in­ti­mate that he was more than a man; he could not dis­close his idea of the mis­sion which awaited his at­tain­ment of a riper man­hood. De­spite these lim­i­ta­tions his re­li­gious fealty and na­tional loy­alty were di­rectly chal­lenged. His fam­ily was in a tur­moil, his youth­ful friends in di­vi­sion, and the en­tire Jew­ish con­tin­gent of the town in a hub­bub. And to think that he was to blame for it all! And how in­no­cent he had been of all in­ten­tion to make trou­ble of any kind, much less a dis­tur­bance of this sort.

127:2.8Some­thing had to be done. He must state his po­si­tion, and this he did bravely and diplo­mat­i­cally to the sat­is­fac­tion of many, but not all. He ad­hered to the terms of his orig­i­nal plea, main­tain­ing that his first duty was to his fam­ily, that a wid­owed mother and eight broth­ers and sis­ters needed some­thing more than mere money could buy—the phys­i­cal ne­ces­si­ties of life—that they were en­ti­tled to a fa­ther’s watch­care and guid­ance, and that he could not in clear con­science re­lease him­self from the obli­ga­tion which a cruel ac­ci­dent had thrust upon him. He paid com­pli­ment to his mother and el­dest brother for be­ing will­ing to re­lease him but re­it­er­ated that loy­alty to a dead fa­ther for­bade his leav­ing the fam­ily no mat­ter how much money was forth­com­ing for their ma­te­rial sup­port, mak­ing his never-to-be-for­got­ten state­ment that “money can­not love.” In the course of this ad­dress Je­sus made sev­eral veiled ref­er­ences to his “life mis­sion” but ex­plained that, re­gard­less of whether or not it might be in­con­sis­tent with the mil­i­tary idea, it, along with ev­ery­thing else in his life, had been given up in or­der that he might be able to dis­charge faith­fully his obli­ga­tion to his fam­ily. Ev­ery­one in Naz­a­reth well knew he was a good fa­ther to his fam­ily, and this was a mat­ter so near the heart of ev­ery no­ble Jew that Je­sus’ plea found an ap­pre­cia­tive re­sponse in the hearts of many of his hear­ers; and some of those who were not thus minded were dis­armed by a speech made by James, which, while not on the pro­gram, was de­liv­ered at this time. That very day the chazan had re­hearsed James in his speech, but that was their se­cret.

150:7.4Most of the older of Je­sus’ friends, in­clud­ing the dot­ing chazan teacher of his youth, were dead or had left Naz­a­reth, and the younger gen­er­a­tion was prone to re­sent his fame with strong jeal­ousy. They failed to re­mem­ber his early de­vo­tion to his fa­ther’s fam­ily, and they were bit­ter in their crit­i­cism of his ne­glect to visit his brother and his mar­ried sis­ters liv­ing in Naz­a­reth. The at­ti­tude of Je­sus’ fam­ily to­ward him had also tended to in­crease this un­kind feel­ing of the cit­i­zenry. The or­tho­dox among the Jews even pre­sumed to crit­i­cize Je­sus be­cause he walked too fast on the way to the syn­a­gogue this Sab­bath morn­ing.

127:3.9About this time the chazan in­au­gu­rated a young men’s club for philo­sophic dis­cus­sion which met at the homes of dif­fer­ent mem­bers and of­ten at his own home, and Je­sus be­came a promi­nent mem­ber of this group. By this means he was en­abled to re­gain some of the lo­cal pres­tige which he had lost at the time of the re­cent na­tion­al­is­tic con­tro­ver­sies.

126:5.3The Naz­a­reth chazan con­tin­ued to cling to the be­lief that Je­sus was to be­come a great teacher, prob­a­bly the suc­ces­sor of the renowned Gamaliel at Je­ru­sa­lem.

123:5.3At Naz­a­reth the pupils sat on the floor in a semi­cir­cle, while their teacher, the chazan, an of­fi­cer of the syn­a­gogue, sat fac­ing them. Be­gin­ning with the Book of Leviti­cus, they passed on to the study of the other books of the law, fol­lowed by the study of the Proph­ets and the Psalms. The Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue pos­sessed a com­plete copy of the Scrip­tures in He­brew. Noth­ing but the Scrip­tures was stud­ied prior to the twelfth year. In the sum­mer months the hours for school were greatly short­ened.

150:1.1Of all the dar­ing things which Je­sus did in con­nec­tion with his earth ca­reer, the most amaz­ing was his sud­den an­nounce­ment on the evening of Jan­uary 16: “On the mor­row we will set apart ten women for the min­is­ter­ing work of the king­dom.” At the be­gin­ning of the two weeks’ pe­riod dur­ing which the apos­tles and the evan­ge­lists were to be ab­sent from Beth­saida on their fur­lough, Je­sus re­quested David to sum­mon his par­ents back to their home and to dis­patch mes­sen­gers call­ing to Beth­saida ten de­vout women who had served in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the for­mer en­camp­ment and the tented in­fir­mary. These women had all lis­tened to the in­struc­tion given the young evan­ge­lists, but it had never oc­curred to ei­ther them­selves or their teach­ers that Je­sus would dare to com­mis­sion women to teach the gospel of the king­dom and min­is­ter to the sick. These ten women se­lected and com­mis­sioned by Je­sus were: Su­sanna, the daugh­ter of the for­mer chazan of the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, the stew­ard of Herod An­tipas; Eliz­a­beth, the daugh­ter of a wealthy Jew of Tiberias and Sep­pho­ris; Martha, the el­der sis­ter of An­drew and Pe­ter; Rachel, the sis­ter-in-law of Jude, the Mas­ter’s brother in the flesh; Nas­anta, the daugh­ter of El­man, the Syr­ian physi­cian; Milcha, a cousin of the Apos­tle Thomas; Ruth, the el­dest daugh­ter of Mat­thew Levi; Celta, the daugh­ter of a Ro­man cen­tu­rion; and Aga­man, a widow of Da­mas­cus. Sub­se­quently, Je­sus added two other women to this group—Mary Mag­da­lene and Re­becca, the daugh­ter of Joseph of Ari­mathea.