Question: In Christianity there are specific gifts of the Holy Spirit ie: Wisdom, Understanding, Council, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety, and Fear of the Lord (see Isaiah 11:2). Also,we understand that the Spirit of God bestows additional gifts ie: prophecy, administration, giving, leadership, mercy, on each believer according to the mission that God has in mind for that person and in order that this gift be exercised for the building up and support of the community of believers. I am interested in learning more about how these gifts are understood in Judaism. Thank you for your consideration.

Answer: You’re calling Isaiah a Christian prophet, his message a Christian message, and you’re asking how his teachings compare with Jewish teachings?

Please allow me to quote Isaiah himself: Oy.

Look, in a nutshell, Isaiah would probably tell you that you and every person, whether Jew or Noahide (non-Jew), should endeavor to become a living Torah.

What’s a living Torah? A teacher and exemplar of God-consciousness – of the Torah’s principles of higher consciousness, including its rules for godly living, which are designed to bring the whole world, the whole universe, to higher levels of God-consciousness. Judaism is all about increasing one’s own and the world’s God-consciousness.

God-consciousness, we see from Torah, isn’t so much a matter of generalities – of “loving goodness,” say – as it is of quotidian concrete, daily, acts of justice and loving-kindness. Like, for instance, of eating only those animals that can be slaughtered painlessly and served as dinner in such a way as to eliminate any trace of cruelty.

God-consciousness, in Torah thought, isn’t so much a matter of grace – the Torah itself teaches, fit yourself to learn Torah, it doesn’t just come by inheritance – as of discipline, of deliberate, disciplined study. Even prayer is study; through prayer we learn who we are and where we stand in relation to God, how we should regard Him, and what we owe Him. By studying Torah, through prayer and other study, one can become a living Torah.

As we say, Study of Torah leads to precision, precision to zeal, zeal to cleanliness, cleanliness to restraint, restraint to purity, purity to holiness, holiness to meekness, meekness to fear of sin, fear of sin to saintliness, saintliness to the holy spirit [your phrase, the original Hebrew for it is ru’ach hakodesh, the holy spirit; in the Isaiah you just quoted, it’s ru’ach HaShem (God, the One, Y, H, V, and H)], the holy spirit to life eternal. (Quoted in the name of R’ Pinchas b. Yair, Talmud, Avodah Zorah 20b.)

Shalom,
Michael Dallen
[Read Rainbow Covenant, Torah and the Seven Universal Laws at 1stCovenant.com]