#also love the idea of him teaching hebrew and jewish history!!

[buckybarnesisjewish]

Bucky being really involved with the youth at his synagogue. The kids always seem drawn to him and he finds himself roped into helping out with youth activities, but soon finds it’s something he enjoys. Teaching them to make challah the way his mother taught him. Helping the kids with their Hebrew studies. He’s a valuable resource of Jewish history. Sometimes he’ll talk to the teens about the war because they’re older and understand, but none of them ever press him to talk about his experiences. What the kids seem to be mainly interested in is how Jewish life has changed for kids since Bucky was a kid. They want to know how their shul compares to his, what games he played, and hear the stories he can pass on about living in a Jewish immigrant community. He often finds the kids ask the questions but the grown ups in the room are listening just as intently. 

[givemearmstopraywith]

as a nonbinary lesbian, i was curious how you navigate your faith whilst being queer - if that's something that's even a thing for you.

(thank you for the additional message about this!! i do identify as a nonbinary lesbian but the lesbian aspect is still something im learning about for myself x)

it's a huge thing! my queerness and my faith are completely interrelated and i dont think one would exist without the other- they are mutually enhanced by each other, but admittedly its very difficult in spaces where frequently the community of faith rejects or undermines my queerness, and honestly? the queer community frequently also rejects and undermines my faith. its weird! but i also know that the profundity of my identity mirrors the profundity of God's own- as much as people struggle to understand the depths of who God is and how he loves, i feel like queer people experience the same thing- the struggle of the hegemony to understand how they love and who they are. we refer to God as a he and we call jesus his son, but lesser known is the fact that shekinah, the spirit which is said to have covered mary at the immaculate conception, the force with allowed her body to carry a god, is written of in the original hebrew using feminine pronouns. which is such a small way of acknowledging how synonymous queer identity- particularly nonbinary or trans identity- is with the idea of God's identity.

in terms of navigating homophobia in the church and in faith, i think a lot of it is born out of ignorance and a long history of misinterpretation of the bible. many rabbis teach that the sins of sodom were not homosexuality, but economic injustice: the sexual element to the sin told in genesis was that the men of sodom wanted to have sex with angels, a grave sin rooted in ancient jewish mysticism. it was never about men having sex with men: it was about men having sex with angels, which is incidentally also the impetus in the jewish flood narrative for the destruction of humanity. and jonathan and david- i love, so deeply, how 1 samuel talks about their relationship, that jonathan loved david as his own soul, his own nephesh, a word that has no direct translation in english but in hebrew encompasses means life, self, person, desire, passion, appetite, emotion. psyche, sentience, breath. it is that which passed from God into man and made him alive. its a deep profundity of love, and it is between two people of the same gender, and to say that homosexual love exists in scripture in some capacity does not at all seem at odds with a god who is written in in a multitude of gender expressions. so that's the biblical foundation for navigating my faith and my identity: there is nothing in scripture at odds with me. and i'm sure there will be a christian who comes trotting into my inbox citing leviticus 18. leviticus 18 should be of no concern to christians. it is jewish law. you are not jewish: you are christian.

in terms of the church, i will not lie! i went for a job interview to be a children's minister and was passed over for the job because the church did not support inclusion. i am often scared of being blackballed because of my identity. i am privileged in that i pass as cis: trans is not a term i would ever apply to myself. and i've chosen to be single so i can focus on school, so my sexuality doesn't come up often. but i'm out to my school chaplain, and she's been incredibly supportive and encouraging. i am also fortunate that i live in a very liberal city and attend an anglican school, so i have never encountered direct homophobia or transphobia in terms of my schooling. in fact ive felt supported and loved by my peers- even in places that i think people don't expect to see it, like classes where there's three women, me, and twenty priests-in-training. and i am lucky and, i think, unusually lucky. i spent time as a child in spaces that were intensely homophobic- people who, when i expressed my joy at the legalization of gay marriage in the us, were horrified and said i would go to hell for my support. and as a young lesbian, as someone who knew i was different from my peers but couldn't quite figure out what, it was an awful experience that set my development back exponentially. i'm not going to say that the church as a monolith is a safe place for queer people. it's not. but God is profound love: God loves us. and there are many, growing places- as there have always been- in the church where queerness is not at odds with the practice of faith. so i carry my identity close to me, i don't advertise it, but i know that where humanity does not have the capacity to love me for who i am, God's profound love is capable of far more than i could ever imagine. and that comforts me a lot.

[docholligay]

Shamash Answers: The Children’s Corner

Question was:  Doc Holligay is now the host of a Children's show. What is the title and premise? Elaborate as much or as little as you care to. 

THE WINNERS

Doc Holligay and a ragtag group of children travel the universe in her spaceship, confronting and dismantling the lies adults tell to children (and to each other) trying to maintain the status quo. Jet Wolf is there as your talking animal sidekick. Let's call it STATUS NO.-- @thepreciousthing 

I need you to know the title of this made me laugh so hard, and also Jetty and I decided this is what my cheap puppet talking animal friend Jet Wolf looks like:

You’re hosting a circa 1990s Nickelodeon Kids’ Game Show themed around the Wild West (TM), complete with themed obstacle course and ‘historical’ quiz for the right to challenge the obstacle course (so we can claim it’s got educational content) which you have to read with a straight face. Said historical connections basically begin and end with ‘Billy the Kid was an outlaw and he was born in 1859.’ The obstacle course consists of about five discrete sections mixed and matched from the backlot, with names like the ‘Cactus Climb’ (in which the kids must climb large foam cactuses) and ‘Saloon Door Slam’ (getting through a series of very heavy-resistance saloon doors), all of which are sized for adults rather than twelve-year-olds. You managed to talk them out of the most blatantly racist obstacle sections. There is slime. Your cohost is a ‘talking buffalo’ in a custom fursuit that cost a good third of the total budget. You are standing between him and the slime. You are dead inside and regretting every moment you thought becoming an actor of all things was a good idea. Plaster on that smile, because it’s the Wild West Wilderness Trek with Doc Holligay and Buffalo Bill! -- Regalli

The ENTIRE time I was reading this, I was just cursing at you and saying “This is just Legends of the Hidden Temple! This is just Legends of the Hidden Temple!” and yet somehow yes, this is terrible and absolutely perfect, and also Jetty is the one in the Buffalo Bill suit. 

"Dr. Holligay's Big Book of Everything" - a life skills educational show in which the titular Dr. Holligay (our host) offers simple, easy to digest pieces of important life knowledge for kids as a foundation to be built upon, including things like "the names of car parts," "you may be too small to cook a full dish but here's how to crack an egg at least," etc., with the occasional wildlife/animal safety segment from Dr. Jill. Obviously this would work best in conjunction with the universe where you've also added home ec and shop class and other practical skills into the American school required curriculum, but I imagine it could be very useful on its own too!-- @wouldntyoulichentoknow​

YES. I get so frustrated with people sometimes, not always in a fair way, about not knowing stuff that I consider BASELINE, and if Sesame Street is there to help teach basic literacy, and Mr. Rogers there to teach basic empathy, I will be there to teach basic life skills. I would love it if no kid went to kindergarten not understanding how to make a grilled cheese and how the gas goes in the car. 

I can't think of a title, but I would actually love to see you do a Torah discussion and Jewish history/culture show for kids. I feel like, even though I did go to an evening/weekend Hebrew school as a kid, reading and discussing the torah (which I would have lapped up like a sponge) really wasn't their priority compared to singing songs I hated and telling super sanitized stories that I found boring. I understand that things do need to be age appropriate but I definitely think that the THREE DIFFERENT SYNAGOGUES I eventually was at all being dull pointed to there also being an issue in engagement. -- @dancinginredshoes​

An advantage or disadvantage Midge will have, depending on who you ask, is I am going to be a lot of her formal Jewish education, because we can’t afford a full time rabbi anymore and so have a rotating cast of students. I very much have my own ideas about how kids should be taught to engage with the Torah, and nice songs aren’t NOT a part of it, but I think past a point you have to be taught the level of questioning that Judaism is, at core, about. Luckily my community is pretty into this--last week, we had a little girl going around grilling the adults about what WE think God wants from us, and why God didn’t make EVERYONE Jewish, and why does God WANT us to be Jewish? And everyone was very much “What a great question! I think...” so I have some hope ALL THIS TO SAY YES, as Midgie gets bigger I may be taking over as the children’s educator (lol pour one out for every Jewish child in our radius) despite not growing up with a lot of formal Jewish education, so I have MANY thoughts on this. 

Holigay's Histories! This is an edutainment show similar to Bill Nye, only covering history. Two major things set this show apart and make it an instant smash hit: 1. You're allowed one swear word per episode. 2: You never really sugar coat the history, and are incredibly honest to the kids.-- @shavedjudomonkey

I would LOVE to be the history Bill Nye/Wishbone.

[noonymoon]

JUSTICE FOR JESUS — Misconceptions & Prejudices about the Faith in the Biblical Jesus Christ.

PART ONE: Christianity is not a Religion, it is God‘s plan to redeem mankind and have a relationship with us forever

I‘ve used to think that Jesus is about Religion, Church, Pastors, Dogma. When you look around in the world it makes sense: Everyone believes something different, all faiths are entirely valid for the people who practice them. Of course you throw Christianity in the same pot as Islam and Judaism, they‘re called „the Abrahamic Religions“ (because Abraham was the father of Isaac, who was the father of Jacob, and Jacob is „Israel“, but also Abraham was the father of Ishmael who was only born because Abraham and Sara didn‘t put their faith in God to have a child like God promised, they were impatient and didn‘t have faith, because Sara was already old and could actually not get pregnant anymore, so Sara suggested that Abraham should have a child with Hagar, the handmaiden of Sara; and from Ishmael‘s lineage basically the Arabs and Islam came along, since God had promised to make a great nation out of Abraham, this blessing went worth to both sons of Abraham) - so basically YES, Jews and Christians worship the same God. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as it is written all over the Old and New Testament. The only difference is that Christianity has been infiltrated by Satan a loooong time ago, and Judaism (for the most part) rejects Jesus as their Messiah, even though Jesus was prophesied from the FIRST LETTER of the FIRST WORD of the FIRST BOOK of the Bible/Torah FOR the Jews! When he finally arrived FOR the Jews, the Gospel (the message of Salvation) was preached to ONLY Jews for 7 years (3 and a half years of Jesus‘ ministry, 3 and a half years after His death preached by His Apostles) and only THEN (after the Jews for the most part rejected the Gospel and persecuted everyone who believed in Jesus; our best example for this is the Apostle Paul who was actually Sha‘ul; he was formerly an extremely Jewish Pharisee who relentlessly persecuted Christians but then Jesus Himself appeared in a vision to Him and asked Him „Why are you persecuting me?“ and by seeing Jesus‘ glory and majesty, He was born-again and wrote ~70% of the New Testament) God decided to spread the message of Salvation to Greeks/Gentiles as well, because He wants to save all humans, and His chosen people would not do the work that He hoped they would. God‘s priority was always Israel until they have entirely rejected the Salvation that is ONLY found in God‘s Son, the Messiah, the Anointed One: Jesus Christ. Gladly there are a lot of messianic Jews nowadays who do their best to bring Israel‘s saviour to the Jewish people, just like it was supposed to be.

Every single Religion or Faith that there is that does not teach that you can find Salvation in Jesus Christ, the literal Son of God, will not give you peace, love and the Truth, will not give you Eternal Life (and if „Heaven“ and „Eternal Life“ sounds too ethereal for you try „different non-linear dimension“ and „consciousness transferred into a spiritual body“ - because THAT‘S how it was supposed to be before our Earth fell into a linear timeline, away from God‘s presence) and that‘s just how it is. There are tons of Religions, Faiths, even pretty much ALL Christian denominations and all the Christian cults, each one of them has a different way of denying the only thing that leads to Salvation: Jesus is the LITERAL only-begotten Son of the one true God & He died for our sins & was raised to life again by God the Father. Satan literally tries in ANY way possible to deny the LITERAL Sonship of Christ whose Father is God Almighty, YHWH. [...by the way, if you believe in that Zecharia Sitchin nonsense, please visit http://sitchiniswrong.com/ - by an ACTUAL scholar of Biblical Hebrew and of Ancient Semitic Languages]. And for the people who don‘t even bother with Jesus at all, he developed a plethora of options, to believe in something else, his first and only goal is to keep people away from Jesus, and he literally does not care how he accomplishes it. Every single Faith that does not lead to Jesus and into the Kingdom of God, has its roots in Ancient Babylon and leads into the Kingdom of Darkness. There are literally only two options, and that’s the absolute Truth, no matter if “truth” today is a “subjective matter for everyone”; that’s exactly what Satan wanted to achieve, and he sure did it. People are always extremely offended when Christians claim to have the only true God, the One who brought all things into existence despite the circumstance that they don‘t even believe in the FACT that we were brought into existence by this one God through Jesus Christ (who is the „Word of God“, and as you all know „God said: Let there be light, and there was Light“ - basically God spoke things into existence BY his Word, and his word IS Jesus Christ, the Son of God).

People rather believe in an extremely ridiculous and propagated concept of a „Big Bang“ that caused things to just „happen over time“, that our Earth is millions or billions of years old, that it is sheer „luck“ that we can survive because if we were just a tiny bit closer or less close to the Sun we would either burn up or freeze, that we evolved from ape-like men who were not very intelligible, that our extreme complex languages also probably evolved from ape-like sounds (you have no idea how ridiculous all of this sounds, when you are awake, I can‘t even type it without putting it in „quotation marks“, and you literally can NOT UNSEE the Devil’s work once your eyes have been opened) when there is literally an abundance of undeniable evidence that the Creation by an intelligent and brilliant God is a LOT more plausible; or let‘s say: there is a LOT of evidence that the public narrative is simply a deception (for example, tons of GIANT human bones have been found since at least the 1800s but of course not a single person informs us about stuff like this, and of course we don‘t make an effort to research it, because we‘re all brainwashed until we realize the Truth; people who study their Bible know EXACTLY who these giants were and they also know exactly who all those other spiritual entities are which we see in Mythology from ancient cultures) - and when the public narrative is a deception, the only logical conclusion is that something different must be true. And which book contains the entire story from the very Beginning to the very End of humankind, which fulfilled a massive amount of prophecy throughout human history 100% accurate, and is by „sheer conincidence“ the most translated and printed book of ALL time? Exactly! The Bible!

„In the beginning (TIME) God created the heavens (SPACE) and the earth (MATTER)“ — Genesis 1:1 

(parantheses added)

Isn‘t it AMAZING how the inspired Word of God through the Prophets conveys complex scientific concepts in only a little sentence? THAT‘S how incredible God is! He is a Mastermind and good beyond ANYTHING. Sadly Satan has accomplished that the world sees our Creator like a hateful, narrow-minded, strict and arrogant Ruler who just wants to dominate us and put His Religion on us, but that could not be further away from the Truth. God, in fact, HATES Religion, all He ever wanted is to be loved by His people, acknowledged by His people and praised by His people (and honestly, He DESERVES praise for Everything He has done for us and for Everything that He is!) .. And then of course, you can look all around in nature! I swear, being born-again is like being a child again, before this world and our „education“ brainwashes you. When I walk outside, I just MARVEL at God‘s handiwork, it‘s literally AMAZING. When I look at flowers, veggies, fruits, animals, insects of all kinds (I even lost my fear of spiders and wasps and even hornets, it‘s just amazing to look at them), when I taste different kind of nuts, herbs and spices (by the way, isn‘t it amazing how there‘s a herb or plant for every health issue a human can have, just like the Bible says? if we really evolved from a Big Bang to THIS, how do we explain the miraculous powers of all of these things? Have they just „happened“...?) look at the funny shapes of everything; everything just blows my mind, it‘s incredible. Someday I really want to ask God what He thought when He created Romanesco Broccoli because each time I see that thing, I just marvel at its weirdness and beauty. The world is just so ridiculously beautiful and NO ONE can see it except born-again Christians (I‘m really excited for eternal Life because this Creation is in a fallen state and the Bible says that the actual glory of the actual Creation is even more magnificent, WHOA...!!!) and I sometimes literally cry because it‘s SO SAD what Satan has made us believe about our planet, about ourselves, about literally everything. And why? Just because he hates Jesus, he hates God and he most certainly hates EVERYONE else, you, me, everyone. He loves only himself and he doesn‘t care if he‘s robbing us from the most astonishing experience ever: Life! He enslaves us through spiritual warfare to desires that we would naturally not have (social status, money, power, career, material objects of all sorts, fame, success, other people no matter how toxic they are for our health, drugs, likings and addictions of all kinds, literally ANYTHING can be the work of spiritual warfare) and makes us believe on top of that that we‘re just a bunch of random Apes in a random world, that our purpose is to make money and survive in a society that grows more and more into cold robots each year, only so that at the end, we die, never knew Jesus, and perish in Hell with him. It‘s literally the saddest thing EVER.

So yes, „Religious Freedom“ is a thing; everyone CAN believe whatever they want and feel drawn to, but ONLY born-again believers in Jesus Christ will live with God forever and ever in a different dimension that is not bound to time. Just like God wanted to live with us from the very beginning! We are His masterpiece of creation! Did you know that we are more cherished than angels? He sent his LITERAL SON to die for us, ALL of us, just so that we can live with God! Isn‘t that incredible??? I’m just absolutely in Love with God and Jesus and I’ve never thought that I’d EVER say this, growing up as an Atheist and then, over 2 years deceived in a spiritual bubble that is not even real.

My prayer is that the people who are written in the book of Life and belong to God’s kingdom find Jesus Christ, and experience His Love, because once you have, there is not a single day that is sad or empty, not a single day that seems pointless, you will have peace and a blessed hope for eternity to come. Amen.

TESTIMONIES

From Buddha to Christ. Powerful Testimony.

Chinese Triad Gangster Finds Jesus In Death Encounters

SATANISM, WITCHCRAFT, DRUGZ, DEPRESSION this is my testimony

"New Age" Occult Practices Nearly Ruined My Life | Warning & Testimony

Raves, drugs, vanity, new age to Jesus Christ | My Testimony

[hadarmarkin]

The Sephardic Communities in Jerusalem - The Invisible Walls of the City

Diaspora is defined as the dispersion of the Jews beyond Israel or as Jews living outside Israel. Accordingly, this blog has thus far explored the life of Sephardic communities in various countries in the Mediterranean Basin and in the Middle East. This post, however, is a special one as it is dedicated to a group of Sephardic communities that have been residing in Israel for over 500 years. These Sephardic communities left their diasporic homes towards the ancient homeland starting in the 16th century, but still to this day operate within their old and somewhat isolated diasporic mode of speaking their own dialect, resolving conflicts in community structures, and marrying among themselves. As the holy capital, the city of Jerusalem became a hub for those types of Sephardic communities, and for that reason, it is the focus of this blog post.

A Peculiar City

As a sacred place for the three monotheistic religions, Jerusalem attracts people from a wide array of origins to settle in it. A short walk in the city streets reveals how incredibly diverse and complex it is. Every neighborhood encompasses a different world of language, culture, and worship. Sometimes within a distance of a few houses, the scenery changes dramatically: Arabic replaces Hebrew or Yiddish and affluent residences transform into low-income housing. It is not a rare sight, for instance, to witness an old Palestinian shepherd letting his sheep graze in the front lawn of an urban neighborhood. Being so hard to define or explain, no wonder that the late Amos Oz, one of Israel’s most renowned authors, called the city “one of the most peculiar places on earth.”

Unfortunately, as well reflected in global news, the relationships between the various ethnic and religious groups in the city are far from being harmonious. Clashes minor or major occur daily, fueling the already heated climate. The late Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, a longtime resident of Jerusalem, repeatedly lamented about the friction in his poems. Below is a passage from his poem “Jerusalem,” which beautifully captures the city’s animosity:

On a roof in the Old City

Laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight:

The white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,

The towel of a man who is my enemy,

To wipe off the sweat of his brow.

(Above- the different communities in the Old City)

Even within the Jewish context, there are invisible walls dividing the numerous religious sects and various ethnic groups, which exist beyond the obvious separation from the ultra-orthodox sector. The Sephardic community, as previously mentioned, is an umbrella name for multiple groups that are separated from each other linguistically and culturally, as they originated from various parts of the world, such as Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, Yemen, Iran, and more. Although these communities have maintained friendly relationships on the surface, there is a strong sense of segregation between the communities, each keeping its gates closed for outsiders. Even the formation of the State of Israel that unified everyone under the idea of one nation could not dissolve these firm barriers.  

This post will look into these communities and specifically showcase two distinct groups: the Ladino speaking community and the Bucharian (Uzbek) neighborhood,  through art and culinary.

Ladino Speaking Communities: Jewish, Latin, and Balkan Mixed Together

The 16th century marked major shifts in Jewish demography. In the wake of the expulsion from Spain (1492) and the forced conversion in Portugal (1497), Jews wandered eastwards around the Mediterranean basin. About 200,000 Jews found refuge in the Muslim-ruled Ottoman Empire, which at the time, extended from the Balkan regions of Europe to the vast lands of the Fertile Crescent. As a result, cities, which had little-to-no Jewish population, such as  Constantinople and Salonika, became significant centers both demographically and spiritually.

A sizable group of deportees also arrived to the land of Israel, then a province in the Ottoman Empire, and settled mostly in Jerusalem. Since the expulsion created an acute theological crisis, many sought resort in apocalyptic beliefs. Jerusalem was, therefore, the ultimate destination for those who connected their plight with the arrival of the Messiah.

In addition, to those who came directly to Jerusalem, a constant flow of Jews migrated towards Jerusalem from the Balkans and present day Turkey throughout the late 15th and 16th centuries. Therefore, by the mid-16th century, the number of Jews in the city doubled. New Sephardic synagogues were established inside the walls of the Old City, and these attracted well-known rabbis and scholars, such as Rabbi Ovadia Bertenura and Rabbi Solomon Sirili.

Little by little, the immigrants from Spain and the Ottoman Empire evolved into a community known as the Old Sephardic community in Jerusalem. This community prided itself for being Sephardim Tehorim–Pure Sephardic– direct descendants of the glorious community from Spain, which generated some of the greatest Jewish philosophers and poets. Being extremely connected to their heritage, the community zealously maintained the religious practices and language called Ladino, a blend of medieval Spanish with some Turkish and Arab words, written in Hebrew script.

(Above- a Sephardic family in the mid 19th century)

The Ladino speaking community, also known as the Spanyolitim, saw itself as the elite of the Jewish society in Israel. They negotiated with the Ottoman officials and the Muslim populaition in the country. Many of them were merchants, who traveled to other cities in the Ottoman empire - mainly Beirut and Damascus-  to import goods. Given their socio-economic status and their attempt to keep their lineage unmixed, the Spanyolitim refrain from marrying outside their community. Marital relationship with the Ashkenazi community was banned, and even engaging with other groups within the Sephardic community  (such as the Mograbim,the North African Sephardim) was unacceptable. Wedding celebrations, as well as other communal gatherings, took place in the four Sephardic synagogues in the Old City.

(Above- Yochanan Ben Zakai Sephardic synagogue in 1927)

The thread of keeping a tight and pure community is in the center of the novel the Beauty Queen of Jerusalem by Sarit Yishai Levi. The story takes place in the late 19th century and early 20th century and it centers the Armosa family  - an archetypical old Sephardic family: well to do with a prominent ancestry. The older son, the handsome Gabriel, is the promise and pride of the family. However, much to his parents' dismay, Gabriel falls in love with an Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox woman and attempts to elope with her.

At this point, the story very much resembles a famous Jerusalem’s love tale between Itamar Ben Avi and Leah Abushdid occurring in the mid 19th century.  Ben Avi, the grandson of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the father of modern Hebrew, was madly in love with Abushadid, a member of a distinguished Sephardic family. After years of persistent courting, Abushadid’s family finally gave its consent to the Shidduch, and the couple -at least as told- had a long and happy marriage. This love story became material for songs and novels in Israeli culture, but more so paved the way for “mixed” marriages.

Unfortunately, in the book The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, the end is far from being happy as Gabriel’s plan to escape ends in a fiasco: the death of his father from shame and grief. Guilt stricken, Gabriel returns to his mother’s house. Furious, his mother decides to teach Gabriel a lesson: a bad Sephardic Shidduch is better than a love based arrangement with someone “who is not one of us.” Accordingly, she forces him to marry the poor and unattractive, yet Sephardic, Rosa. From this point on, the motif of community pressure and unhappy marriage keeps echoing as the plot develops.

The novel walks the reader through some of the historical landmarks happening in the Sephardic community at the time. The first eminent one is the process of relocating outside of the Old City, known in Jewish history as “leaving the walls.” Given the poor sanitary conditions in the Old City, the Armosa family, like many other Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and non-Jewish families, moves outside of the Old City into a new neighborhood. The then new and today famous and classic neighborhoods, such as Yemin Moshe, Mishkenot Shaananim, and Ohel Moshe played an important role in shaping the unique landscape of modern Jerusalem as well as speeding social changes, westernization, and modernity among these old communities.  Another important development described in the book was the loss of supremacy to the Ashkenazi Jews, given the massive immigration waves from Eastern Europe throughout the early to mid 20th century. At the beginning of the book, Gabriel is portrayed as a strong,  business savvy, and revered young man, but as the novel prolongs his health and businesses deteriorate, and he is incapable to find his place in Mandatory Jerusalem, where Ashkenazi Zionist activists set the tone.   The analogy created through Gabriel’s character tells the sad story of many other Sephardic notable men, who were pushed aside and disregarded by Ashkenazi dominated Zionist leadership.

Beyond tragic love stories and unfortunate historical development, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem is a celebration of Sephardic culture and especially food. Dishes mentioned in the book, such as Sofrito and Avikas con Aroz (bean stew with rice) brings the reader back to Medieval Spain. But Sephardic Jerusalem food has more than a Spanish accent. Inevitably, Sephardic cooks incorporate ingredients used in the local Palestinian cuisine such as fresh sheep milk cheeses, garbanzo beans (used for hummus and other dishes), and lentils, into their home kitchen. Emulating their Muslim neighbors, they served their bitter coffee with overly sweet pastries and even added tamarind sauce to various dishes to obtain the sweet-sour flavor that is so prominent among the Spanyolitim. Another component in the Sephardic Jerusalem cuisine is the Balkan-Turkish influence brought by the Sephardic Jews, who lived in other regions of the Ottoman Empire before settling in Jerusalem. Dishes, such as Burekas filled with feta cheese, spinach, and Stoletch–rice pudding with dried fruit– are examples of the Balkan impact.

Perhaps the most important characteristic of Sephardic cuisine is resourcefulness. Living in a city that underwent numerous conquests, destruction, natural disasters, and famine,  the Spanyolitim learned the hard way how to source and prepare a wholesome meal with the local flora. In fact, it is said that during the siege on Jerusalem in 1948, in which the city suffered from great deficits, Sephardic women made bread, patties, and even omelets from Mallow, a local wild plant. Okra is another example of a vegetable popular among Spanyolit cooks as it is local, versatile, and nutritious. The traditional Sephardic way of cooking okra with acidic tomato sauce helps to diminish its texture, and highlights its nutritional value and flavor. Ironically, after years of having a bad reputation as a “grandma food,” Israeli chefs and dieticians are now embracing this vegetable and the Sephardic way of cooking it.

Okra in Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

3 cups of fresh or frozen okra

1 onion shredded in food processor

2 big tomatoes crushed

1 clove of garlic sliced

3 tbsp of olive oil

1.5 tbsp of sugar

2 tsp of pepper

Salt

½ cup of water

Juice from ½ a lemon

Making

Trim the edges of the okra

Warm the oil in the pan and add the onion, garlic and tomatoes. Once boiled, lower the heat and cover the pan.

Add the okra and the rest of the ingredients (except the lemon). Cook until softened but not mushy. 

Squeeze some lemon before serving.

Serve warm with rice or any other grain.

Uzbekistan

The Uzbeki community –known in Israeli as the Buchari community– in Jerusalem might be a tiny fragment of the overall population but it is a notable one. The Bucharim arrived in Jerusalem in several immigration waves from 1890 to 1914. The Russian conquest of Uzbekistan stimulated many to leave and because the community was observant by nature, Jerusalem was a natural choice for  resettlement.

Originally, the first Buchari immigrants opted to buy land in the Old City. However, the harsh living conditions behind the walls in addition to their needs as a young and culturally and linguistically unique community drove the Bucharim out to search for their own space. In 1894, after several years of community fundraising, a lot was purchased northwest of the Old City. The new immigrants initially named their new space Rechovot (meaning streets in Hebrew) but it was soon known by all as Shchunat Ha’Bucharim or the Buchari Quarter. Eager to replicate their old community life, the Bucharim hurried to establish communal facilities, such as a senior living home, orphanage, and several synagogues, including the Mosayof synagogue named after the community spiritual leader Rabbi Shlomo Mosayof. In addition, a Talmud Torah school teaching in both Hebrew and Parsi was founded to solve the language barrier problems that young Buchari boys were experiencing when visiting schools in other communities.  Unlike other new Jewish neighborhoods at the time that were built simply and in a haste, much thought and funds were put into the urban planning and architecture in the Buchari Quarter. Given the generosity of the wealthy members, the facades of the buildings were embellished with Jewish Stars and other decorations, trees were planted on the side of the roads, and empty lots were allocated for farming. Considered then exotic within the Jerusalem landscape, the quarter attracted visitors from within and outside of Jerusalem to admire its beauty and to explore its vivid community life.

(Above- The Davidof family, one of the most prominent families in the Buchari community, a portrait from the early 1920′s)

Today, Shchunat Ha’Bucharim is still a popular destination and several of the sites are protected by the Israeli Council of Historic Preservation. However, given various demographic and political shifts, the original Buchari population shrank and because of this, many of the structures suffer from neglect. As the quarter borders with Jerusalem’s Ultra-Orthodox residential complex, there is an increasing “invasion” of young Haredi families who cannot find housing in their overpopulated neighborhoods. The growing Ultra-Orthodox presence also impacts the moderate religious nature of the Buchari community, as shown in the Israeli film, The Women’s Balcony.

(Above- a street sign in the quarter)

(Above- an example of the Buchari’s quarter unique architecture- the Davidof “Palace”)

The Women’s Balcony (directed by Shlomit Nehama and Emil Ben-Shimon, 2016) is the story of the small but devoted community of the Mosayof synagogue. The men in the community compose a loyal Minyan, and take care of the synagogue maintenance. However, their wives are the burning candle, and the real power behind the joyous life cycle, holiday celebrations, and the community aid. One day, this peaceful life is disrupted. The synagogue ceiling collapses during a Bar Mitzvah ceremony, where the rabbi is badly injured and the structure itself requires serious work. Puzzled by this accident, the men in the community accept the authority of a young charismatic rabbi as their new spiritual leader. The new rabbi is indeed very knowledgeable and committed to repairing the damage, but his religious views are far more radical and do not match the community’s long tradition of religious moderation. The women are the first ones to be affected by his strict agenda. They are excluded from worship and are blamed for being overly permissive when it comes to modesty and Jewish laws. Caring deeply about their community, the women decided to fight back. For more on their struggle, watch the movie on Amazon prime video.

(Above- a scene from the movie)

Although food is not the focal point of the movie, many of the scenes  take place in Shuk Machne’ Yehuda, a traditional Middle Eastern Marketplace that is a destination for pre-Shabbat shopping as well as culinary tourism. Zion, one of the characters in the movie, is the owner of a spice store in the Shuck, and is also famous for making delicious fruit salads using fruit from the nearby stands. And indeed, as the movie portrays, the Buchari cuisine very much relies on the use of local and fresh produce as well as aromatic seasonings.  Given Uzbekistan’s location in central Asia on the  Silk Road, the Buchari food incorporates Russian, Turkish, and Iranian influences. The result is a cuisine that has bold flavors and rich seasonings. Lamb is the favorite meat, and its fat alongside some herbs and leafy green vegetables are highly used to flavor foods. Accordingly, the traditional dishes are Manto- meat dumplings with vegetables and Legman soup made with noodles, lamb and fresh veggies. Similar to the Iranian cuisine rice is the wide-used grain. Bachash, the traditional rice, has many variations from a green one with cilantro, dill, and spinach to a simple white version with thin noodles (or orzo in this case) at the bottom. The movie shows a quick glimpse of a basic white Bachash, and therefore this is the recipe I chose to highlight.

The recipe for Bachash is taken from the book Jerusalem. Palestinian chef Sami Tamimi and Israeli chef Yotam Ottolenghi pay homage to their hometown while curating a plethora of recipes from Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities. Their seminal groundwork into the Jerusalem cuisine truly helps with understanding the different influences and flavors that make Jerusalem a synonymous name for unique yet comforting food. The beautiful photos, as well as the interesting historical and cultural segments, make this book a nice possession even if not used for cooking.

Unlike many dishes in this book (or in other Ottolenghi’s books), this rice recipe is extremelya to make and does not require any speciality ingredients. My rice recipes are usually taken from the Persian cuisine, which requires longer cooking time and prep. When I made this dish, I was pleasantly surprised how incredibly quick and easy was the process without compromising the texture and flavor.  

White Bachash

Ingdientes:

1 ⅓ cup basmati rice

1 tbsp ghee (or butter)

1 tbsp sunflower oil

2 ½ cup chicken/ veggie stock

1 tsp salt

½ cup orzo*

Process:

Rinse rice and soak it for 30 minutes in cold water. Drain and rinse again.

Melt butter and oil on medium heat in the pot.

Add orzo and fry for  3-4 minutes or until orzo turns dark golden.

Add the stock , bring to a boil, and cook for 3 minutes.

Add the drained rice and salt, bring to a gentle boil, stir once or twice, cover the pan, and simmer over low heat for 15 minutes. Try not to uncover the pan- keeping it closed helps the rice to steam properly.

Turn off the heat, remove the lid, and cover the pot quickly with a clean kitchen towel. Place the lid back on top of the towel, and leave for 10 minutes.

Fluff the rice with a fork before serving.

* I used GF chickpea flour orzo, which I think added a nice flavor to the rice.

[confrontingbabble-on]

“A common point of criticism against the Bible is the Genesis creation narrative. According to young Earth creationism, which takes a literal view of the book of Genesis, the universe and all forms of life on Earth were created directly by God sometime between 5,700 and 10,000 years ago. This assertion is contradicted by radiocarbon dating of fossils, as well as modern understanding of genetics, evolution, and cosmology.[58]

For instance, astrophysical evidence suggests that the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old.[59]

Moreover, 10,000 years is not enough time to account for the current amount of genetic variation in humans. If all humans were descended from two individuals that lived less than 10,000 years ago, it would require an impossibly high rate of mutation to reach humanity's current level of genetic diversity.[60]

The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion, misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the ideas of their opponents.  — Bully for Brontosaurus by Stephen Jay Gould

According to one of the world's leading biblical archaeologists, William G. Dever,

Archaeology certainly doesn't prove literal readings of the Bible...It calls them into question, and that's what bothers some people. Most people really think that archaeology is out there to prove the Bible. No archaeologist thinks so. [...] From the beginnings of what we call biblical archeology, perhaps 150 years ago, scholars, mostly western scholars, have attempted to use archeological data to prove the Bible. And for a long time it was thought to work. William Albright, the great father of our discipline, often spoke of the "archeological revolution." Well, the revolution has come but not in the way that Albright thought. The truth of the matter today is that archeology raises more questions about the historicity of the Hebrew Bible and even the New Testament than it provides answers, and that's very disturbing to some people.[61]

Dever also wrote:

Archaeology as it is practiced today must be able to challenge, as well as confirm, the Bible stories. Some things described there really did happen, but others did not. The biblical narratives about Abraham, Moses, Joshua and Solomon probably reflect some historical memories of people and places, but the 'larger than life' portraits of the Bible are unrealistic and contradicted by the archaeological evidence....[62]

I am not reading the Bible as Scripture… I am in fact not even a theist. My view all along—and especially in the recent books—is first that the biblical narratives are indeed 'stories,' often fictional and almost always propagandistic, but that here and there they contain some valid historical information...[63]

According to Dever, the scholarly consensus is that the figure of Moses is legendary, and not historical.[64] However, he states that a "Moses-like figure" may have existed somewhere in the southern Transjordan in the mid-13th century BC.[65]

Tel Aviv University archaeologist Ze'ev Herzog wrote in the Haaretz newspaper:

This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel, YHWH, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai.[66][67]

Israel Finkelstein told the Jerusalem Post that Jewish archaeologists have found no historical or archaeological evidence to back the biblical narrative of the Exodus, the Jews' wandering in Sinai or Joshua's conquest of Canaan. On the alleged Temple of Solomon, Finkelstein said that there is no archaeological evidence to prove it really existed.[68]

Professor Yoni Mizrahi, an independent archaeologist who has worked with the International Atomic Energy Agency, agreed with Israel Finkelstein.[68]

Regarding the Exodus of Israelites from Egypt, Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass said:

Really, it's a myth [...] This is my career as an archaeologist. I should tell them the truth. If the people are upset, that is not my problem.[69]

Also...

Biblical archaeology has helped us understand a lot about the world of the Bible and clarified a considerable amount of what we find in the Bible. But the archaeological record has not been friendly for one vital issue, Israel's origins: the period of slavery in Egypt, the mass departure of Israelite slaves from Egypt, and the violent conquest of the land of Canaan by the Israelites. The strong consensus is that there is at best sparse indirect evidence for these biblical episodes, and for the conquest there is considerable evidence against it.  — Peter Enns.[20]

And...

much of the archaeological evidence demonstrates that the Hebrew Bible cannot in most cases be taken literally, many of the people, places and things probably did exist at some time or another.  — Jonathan Michael Golden.[22]

Many fields of study span the Bible and history; such fields range from archeology and astronomy to linguistics and comparative literature. Scholars also examine the historical context of Bible passages, the importance ascribed to events by the authors, and the contrast between the descriptions of these events and other historical evidence.

Archaeological discoveries since the 19th century are open to interpretation, but broadly speaking they lend support to few of the Old Testament's narratives as history and offer evidence to challenge others.[a][21][b][23][24]

Biblical minimalism is a label applied to a loosely knit group of scholars who hold that the Bible's version of history is not supported by any archaeological evidence so far unearthed, thus the Bible cannot be trusted as a history source.[25][26] Critics of the authenticity of the New Testament such as Richard Carrier and Paul N. Tobin argue that pseudepigrapha within the New Testament invalidates it as a reliable source of information.[27][28]  Author Richard I. Pervo details the non-historical sources of the Book of Acts.[29]

Elizabeth Anderson, a professor of philosophy and women's studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, states that "the Bible contains both good and evil teachings", and it is "morally inconsistent".[9]

Anderson criticizes commands God gave to men in the Old Testament, such as: kill adulterers, homosexuals, and "people who work on the Sabbath" (Leviticus 20:10; Leviticus 20:13; Exodus 35:2, respectively); to commit ethnic cleansing (Exodus 34:11-14, Leviticus 26:7-9); commit genocide (Numbers 21: 2-3, Numbers 21:33–35, Deuteronomy 2:26–35, and Joshua 1–12); and other mass killings.[10] Anderson considers the Bible to permit slavery, the beating of slaves, the rape of female captives in wartime, polygamy (for men), the killing of prisoners, and child sacrifice.[10] She also provides a number of examples to illustrate what she considers "God's moral character": "Routinely punishes people for the sins of others ... punishes all mothers by condemning them to painful childbirth", punishes four generations of descendants of those who worship other gods, kills 24,000 Israelites because some of them sinned (Numbers 25:1–9), kills 70,000 Israelites for the sin of David in 2 Samuel 24:10–15, and "sends two bears out of the woods to tear forty-two children to pieces" because they called someone names in 2 Kings 2:23–24.[11]

Anderson criticizes what she terms morally repugnant lessons of the New Testament. She claims that "Jesus tells us his mission is to make family members hate one another, so that they shall love him more than their kin" (Matt 10:35-37), that "Disciples must hate their parents, siblings, wives, and children (Luke 14:26)", and that Peter and Paul elevate men over their wives "who must obey their husbands as gods" (1 Corinthians 11:3, 14:34-5, Eph. 5:22-24, Col. 3:18, 1 Tim. 2: 11-2, 1 Pet. 3:1).[12] Anderson states that the Gospel of John implies that "infants and anyone who never had the opportunity to hear about Christ are damned [to hell], through no fault of their own".[13]

Simon Blackburn states that the "Bible can be read as giving us a carte blanche for harsh attitudes to children, the mentally handicapped, animals, the environment, the divorced, unbelievers, people with various sexual habits, and elderly women".[14]

Blackburn criticizes what he terms morally suspect themes of the New Testament.[15] He notes some "moral quirks" of Jesus: that he could be "sectarian" (Matt 10:5–6),[16] racist (Matt 15:26 and Mark 7:27), and placed no value on animal life (Luke 8: 27–33).

Blackburn provides examples of Old Testament moral criticisms, such as the phrase in Exodus 22:18, ("Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.") which he says has "helped to burn alive tens or hundreds of thousands of women in Europe and America". He states that the Old Testament God apparently has "no problems with a slave-owning society", considers birth control a crime punishable by death, and "is keen on child abuse".[17] Additional examples that are questioned today are: the prohibition on touching women during their "period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19–24)", the apparent approval of selling daughters into slavery (Exodus 21:7), and the obligation to put to death someone working on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2).[18]  “

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Bible

[araitsume]

The Desire of Ages, pp. 68-74: Chapter (7) As a Child

This chapter is based on Luke 2:39, 40.

The childhood and youth of Jesus were spent in a little mountain village. There was no place on earth that would not have been honored by His presence. The palaces of kings would have been privileged in receiving Him as a guest. But He passed by the homes of wealth, the courts of royalty, and the renowned seats of learning, to make His home in obscure and despised Nazareth.

Wonderful in its significance is the brief record of His early life: “The child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon Him.” In the sunlight of His Father's countenance, Jesus “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” Luke 2:52. His mind was active and penetrating, with a thoughtfulness and wisdom beyond His years. Yet His character was beautiful in its symmetry. The powers of mind and body developed gradually, in keeping with the laws of childhood.

As a child, Jesus manifested a peculiar loveliness of disposition. His willing hands were ever ready to serve others. He manifested a patience that nothing could disturb, and a truthfulness that would never sacrifice integrity. In principle firm as a rock, His life revealed the grace of unselfish courtesy.

With deep earnestness the mother of Jesus watched the unfolding of His powers, and beheld the impress of perfection upon His character. With delight she sought to encourage that bright, receptive mind. Through the Holy Spirit she received wisdom to co-operate with the heavenly agencies in the development of this child, who could claim only God as His Father.

From the earliest times the faithful in Israel had given much care to the education of the youth. The Lord had directed that even from babyhood the children should be taught of His goodness and His greatness, especially as revealed in His law, and shown in the history of Israel. Song and prayer and lessons from the Scriptures were to be adapted to the opening mind. Fathers and mothers were to instruct their children that the law of God is an expression of His character, and that as they received the principles of the law into the heart, the image of God was traced on mind and soul. Much of the teaching was oral; but the youth also learned to read the Hebrew writings; and the parchment rolls of the Old Testament Scriptures were open to their study.

In the days of Christ the town or city that did not provide for the religious instruction of the young was regarded as under the curse of God. Yet the teaching had become formal. Tradition had in a great degree supplanted the Scriptures. True education would lead the youth to “seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him.” Acts 17:27. But the Jewish teachers gave their attention to matters of ceremony. The mind was crowded with material that was worthless to the learner, and that would not be recognized in the higher school of the courts above. The experience which is obtained through a personal acceptance of God's word had no place in the educational system. Absorbed in the round of externals, the students found no quiet hours to spend with God. They did not hear His voice speaking to the heart. In their search after knowledge, they turned away from the Source of wisdom. The great essentials of the service of God were neglected. The principles of the law were obscured. That which was regarded as superior education was the greatest hindrance to real development. Under the training of the rabbis the powers of the youth were repressed. Their minds became cramped and narrow.

The child Jesus did not receive instruction in the synagogue schools. His mother was His first human teacher. From her lips and from the scrolls of the prophets, He learned of heavenly things. The very words which He Himself had spoken to Moses for Israel He was now taught at His mother's knee. As He advanced from childhood to youth, He did not seek the schools of the rabbis. He needed not the education to be obtained from such sources; for God was His instructor.

The question asked during the Saviour's ministry, “How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?” does not indicate that Jesus was unable to read, but merely that He had not received a rabbinical education. John 7:15. Since He gained knowledge as we may do, His intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures shows how diligently His early years were given to the study of God's word. And spread out before Him was the great library of God's created works. He who had made all things studied the lessons which His own hand had written in earth and sea and sky. Apart from the unholy ways of the world, He gathered stores of scientific knowledge from nature. He studied the life of plants and animals, and the life of man. From His earliest years He was possessed of one purpose; He lived to bless others. For this He found resources in nature; new ideas of ways and means flashed into His mind as He studied plant life and animal life. Continually He was seeking to draw from things seen illustrations by which to present the living oracles of God. The parables by which, during His ministry, He loved to teach His lessons of truth show how open His spirit was to the influences of nature, and how He had gathered the spiritual teaching from the surroundings of His daily life.

Thus to Jesus the significance of the word and the works of God was unfolded, as He was trying to understand the reason of things. Heavenly beings were His attendants, and the culture of holy thoughts and communings was His. From the first dawning of intelligence He was constantly growing in spiritual grace and knowledge of truth.

Every child may gain knowledge as Jesus did. As we try to become acquainted with our heavenly Father through His word, angels will draw near, our minds will be strengthened, our characters will be elevated and refined. We shall become more like our Saviour. And as we behold the beautiful and grand in nature, our affections go out after God. While the spirit is awed, the soul is invigorated by coming in contact with the Infinite through His works. Communion with God through prayer develops the mental and moral faculties, and the spiritual powers strengthen as we cultivate thoughts upon spiritual things.

The life of Jesus was a life in harmony with God. While He was a child, He thought and spoke as a child; but no trace of sin marred the image of God within Him. Yet He was not exempt from temptation. The inhabitants of Nazareth were proverbial for their wickedness. The low estimate in which they were generally held is shown by Nathanael's question, “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” John 1:46. Jesus was placed where His character would be tested. It was necessary for Him to be constantly on guard in order to preserve His purity. He was subject to all the conflicts which we have to meet, that He might be an example to us in childhood, youth, and manhood.

Satan was unwearied in his efforts to overcome the Child of Nazareth. From His earliest years Jesus was guarded by heavenly angels, yet His life was one long struggle against the powers of darkness. That there should be upon the earth one life free from the defilement of evil was an offense and a perplexity to the prince of darkness. He left no means untried to ensnare Jesus. No child of humanity will ever be called to live a holy life amid so fierce a conflict with temptation as was our Saviour.

The parents of Jesus were poor, and dependent upon their daily toil. He was familiar with poverty, self-denial, and privation. This experience was a safeguard to Him. In His industrious life there were no idle moments to invite temptation. No aimless hours opened the way for corrupting associations. So far as possible, He closed the door to the tempter. Neither gain nor pleasure, applause nor censure, could induce Him to consent to a wrong act. He was wise to discern evil, and strong to resist it.

Christ was the only sinless one who ever dwelt on earth; yet for nearly thirty years He lived among the wicked inhabitants of Nazareth. This fact is a rebuke to those who think themselves dependent upon place, fortune, or prosperity, in order to live a blameless life. Temptation, poverty, adversity, is the very discipline needed to develop purity and firmness.

Jesus lived in a peasant's home, and faithfully and cheerfully acted His part in bearing the burdens of the household. He had been the Commander of heaven, and angels had delighted to fulfill His word; now He was a willing servant, a loving, obedient son. He learned a trade, and with His own hands worked in the carpenter's shop with Joseph. In the simple garb of a common laborer He walked the streets of the little town, going to and returning from His humble work. He did not employ His divine power to lessen His burdens or to lighten His toil.

As Jesus worked in childhood and youth, mind and body were developed. He did not use His physical powers recklessly, but in such a way as to keep them in health, that He might do the best work in every line. He was not willing to be defective, even in the handling of tools. He was perfect as a workman, as He was perfect in character. By His own example He taught that it is our duty to be industrious, that our work should be performed with exactness and thoroughness, and that such labor is honorable. The exercise that teaches the hands to be useful and trains the young to bear their share of life's burdens gives physical strength, and develops every faculty. All should find something to do that will be beneficial to themselves and helpful to others. God appointed work as a blessing, and only the diligent worker finds the true glory and joy of life. The approval of God rests with loving assurance upon children and youth who cheerfully take their part in the duties of the household, sharing the burdens of father and mother. Such children will go out from the home to be useful members of society.

Throughout His life on earth, Jesus was an earnest and constant worker. He expected much; therefore He attempted much. After He had entered on His ministry, He said, “I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.” John 9:4. Jesus did not shirk care and responsibility, as do many who profess to be His followers. It is because they seek to evade this discipline that so many are weak and inefficient. They may possess precious and amiable traits, but they are nerveless and almost useless when difficulties are to be met or obstacles surmounted. The positiveness and energy, the solidity and strength of character, manifested in Christ are to be developed in us, through the same discipline that He endured. And the grace that He received is for us.

So long as He lived among men, our Saviour shared the lot of the poor. He knew by experience their cares and hardships, and He could comfort and encourage all humble workers. Those who have a true conception of the teaching of His life will never feel that a distinction must be made between classes, that the rich are to be honored above the worthy poor.

Jesus carried into His labor cheerfulness and tact. It requires much patience and spirituality to bring Bible religion into the home life and into the workshop, to bear the strain of worldly business, and yet keep the eye single to the glory of God. This is where Christ was a helper. He was never so full of worldly care as to have no time or thought for heavenly things. Often He expressed the gladness of His heart by singing psalms and heavenly songs. Often the dwellers in Nazareth heard His voice raised in praise and thanksgiving to God. He held communion with heaven in song; and as His companions complained of weariness from labor, they were cheered by the sweet melody from His lips. His praise seemed to banish the evil angels, and, like incense, fill the place with fragrance. The minds of His hearers were carried away from their earthly exile, to the heavenly home.

Jesus was the fountain of healing mercy for the world; and through all those secluded years at Nazareth, His life flowed out in currents of sympathy and tenderness. The aged, the sorrowing, and the sin-burdened, the children at play in their innocent joy, the little creatures of the groves, the patient beasts of burden,—all were happier for His presence. He whose word of power upheld the worlds would stoop to relieve a wounded bird. There was nothing beneath His notice, nothing to which He disdained to minister.

Thus as He grew in wisdom and stature, Jesus increased in favor with God and man. He drew the sympathy of all hearts by showing Himself capable of sympathizing with all. The atmosphere of hope and courage that surrounded Him made Him a blessing in every home. And often in the synagogue on the Sabbath day He was called upon to read the lesson from the prophets, and the hearts of the hearers thrilled as a new light shone out from the familiar words of the sacred text.

Yet Jesus shunned display. During all the years of His stay in Nazareth, He made no exhibition of His miraculous power. He sought no high position and assumed no titles. His quiet and simple life, and even the silence of the Scriptures concerning His early years, teach an important lesson. The more quiet and simple the life of the child,—the more free from artificial excitement, and the more in harmony with nature,—the more favorable is it to physical and mental vigor and to spiritual strength.

Jesus is our example. There are many who dwell with interest upon the period of His public ministry, while they pass unnoticed the teaching of His early years. But it is in His home life that He is the pattern for all children and youth. The Saviour condescended to poverty, that He might teach how closely we in a humble lot may walk with God. He lived to please, honor, and glorify His Father in the common things of life. His work began in consecrating the lowly trade of the craftsmen who toil for their daily bread. He was doing God's service just as much when laboring at the carpenter's bench as when working miracles for the multitude. And every youth who follows Christ's example of faithfulness and obedience in His lowly home may claim those words spoken of Him by the Father through the Holy Spirit, “Behold My Servant, whom I uphold; Mine Elect, in whom My soul delighteth.” Isaiah 42:1.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Word and deed in the Unification Church – Rabbi A. James Rudin investigates

A VIEW OF THE UNIFICATION CHURCH

Presented by Rabbi A. James Rudin

Assistant National Director of Interreligious Affairs, The American Jewish Committee 

at the American Academy of Religion Convention

San Francisco, California, December 29, 1977

Even as the Unification Church has every right in our pluralistic society to present its claims within the religious marketplace of ideas, so do we have every right to examine and analyze those claims in the light of our own studies, experiences, and faith commitments. I deeply believe that a religious movement must be judged not only by what it teaches but also by what it does; the deed is just as important as the creed. The Unification Church is no exception.

My paper will thus examine two aspects of the Unification Church:

1) Its specific teachings about Jews and Judaism and

2) the impact and results of the Unification Church’s teachings upon a significant number of its members. [revealing testimonies below]

In my study, (“Jews and Judaism in Reverend Moon’s Divine Principle,” The American Jewish Committee, December 1976) I assert that “my systematic analysis of this 536-page document (Divine Principle) reveals an orientation of almost unrelieved hostility toward, the Jewish people, exemplified in pejorative language, stereotyped imagery, and sweeping accusations of collective sin and guilt. Whether he is discussing the ‘Israelites’ of the Hebrew Bible or the ‘Jews’ as referred to in writings of the New Testament period, Reverend Moon portrays their behavior as reprobate, their intention evil (often diabolical), and their religious mission as eclipsed. There are over thirty-six specific references in Divine Principle to the Israelites of the Hebrew Bible—every one of them pejorative.” Three examples citing collective faithlessness make the point: “The Israelites all fell into faithlessness” (p. 315), “All the Israelites centering on Moses fell into faithlessness” (p. 319), and “The Israelites repeatedly fell into faithlessness” (p. 343). (Emphasis added)

Unification Church supporters claim that such references actually reflect the Hebrew Bible and present a fair description of early Israelite communal life. For me, it is a limp and highly defensive argument. In all cases of alleged Israelite errors and stubbornness, the hope of redemption and atonement was always present. The Hebrew Bible credits the people with the ability to repent. Divine Principle seeks to discredit the ancient Israelites in order to transfer God’s heritage to another people. Incidentally, the words “faithless” and “faithlessness” nowhere appear in the Hebrew Bible.

In similar fashion, Divine Principle records some sixty-five specific examples and references reflecting the attitudes and behavior of the Jewish people towards Jesus and its role in his crucifixion—again, every one of them is hostile and anti-Jewish. A few examples will suffice: “…due to the Jewish people’s disbelief in Jesus, all were destined to hell” (p. 146), …“we can see that Jesus’ crucifixion was the result of the ignorance and disbelief of the Jewish people…” (p. 145),  “As a matter of fact, Satan confronted Jesus, working through the Jewish people, centering on the chief priests and scribes who had fallen faithless, and especially through Judas Iscariot, the disciple who had betrayed Jesus” (p. 357), “Nevertheless, due to the Jewish people’s rebellion against him, the physical body of Jesus was delivered into the hands of Satan as the condition of ransom for the restoration of the Jews and the whole of mankind back to God’s bosom; his body was invaded by Satan” (p. 510). The last two statements, linking the Jews to Satan, go beyond even the infamous deicide charge—“Christ killer”—that has been hurled for so long against the Jewish people.

Apologists for the Unification Church claim that the Divine Principle passages dealing with this controversial subject have only indicted the “Jewish priests and leaders,” not the people. Yet the record speaks otherwise: the “Jewish people” in their collectivity are implicated time and time again in Divine Principle. The four examples cited here are illustrative of many other selections.

The anti-Jewish thrust of this theological document carries forth into an interpretation of Jewish history and of the current status of Jews and Judaism. There are nearly thirty such references and all are hostile, generally reflecting the worst aspects of traditional Christian displacement theology, and viewing the persecution of the Jews across the ages as punishment for their sins. Thus “Due to the Israelites’ faithlessness, the Jewish nation was destroyed” (p. 431), “God’s heritage has been taken, away from the Jewish people” (p. 519), and the “chosen nation of Israel has been punished for the sin of rejecting Jesus and crucifying Him” (p. 226). Reverend Moon brings the readers up to modern times:

Jesus came as the Messiah; but due to the disbelief of, and persecution by the people he was crucified. Since then the Jews have lost their qualification as the chosen people and have been scattered, suffering persecution through the present day. (p. 147)

Indeed, Moon declared in 1971 [in Master Speaks on February 14, 1974], “By killing one man, Jesus, the Jewish people had to suffer for 2,000 years. Countless numbers of people have been slaughtered. During the second World War, six million people were slaughtered to cleanse all the sins of the Jewish people from the time of Jesus,” In Moon’s linkage of the Nazi holocaust to the Jewish rejection of Jesus we have the total obscenity, the wicked result of a system of indemnity gone wild. This statement is a murderous update of the ancient malevolent deicide charge.

But there is more. Last December, the New York Times carried a full page advertisement signed by Reverend Moon in which Moon notes that if only the Jews had been members of the Unification Church they would have been spared Hitler’s actions. So, even in their death, the 6,000,000 slaughtered Jews are treated as theological pawns to be moved about on a Unification Church chessboard.

Thus, in Divine Principle and in other Unification Church documents, we are confronted with over 130 examples of an unrelenting litany of anti-Jewish teachings. Nowhere in Divine Principle does Reverend Moon acknowledge the continuing validity and authenticity of Jews and Judaism. From Abraham until the present day, Jews are seen as a people devoid of any genuine faith and spiritual qualities. “The inner contents are corrupt” (p. 532), Moon says of Judaism. He depicts the Jewish people as collectively responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus as allies of Satan. Jews have been replaced by a “second Israel” (who, interestingly enough, must soon be replaced by the “third Israel,” the followers of Reverend Moon). Furthermore, the Jews have lost God’s “heritage” and are still being “punished” for their many sins. The Unification Church’s basic teaching document is a feculent breeding ground for fostering and fomenting anti-Semitism.

The Unification Church’s response to my charges of anti-Semitism blandly noted that “Because there are almost no Jews in Korea, there was no danger of a careless phrase (sic!) abetting anti-Semitism as it might in other countries…” I believe I have shown that the anti-Semitism in Divine Principle is more than a “careless phrase,” and a total insensitivity to the Jewish people is patently clear in this tepid defense. Apparently it is all right to malign a group that does not dwell in one’s midst.

One must ask why the Unification Church has the need to transmit such hostility and anti-Semitism. In its announced attempt to build a new religious order, the Church states that “When a brighter light appears, the mission of the old one fades. Today’s religions have failed to lead the present generation out of the dark valley of death into the radiance of life, so there must now come a new truth that can shed a new light.” (p. 10). But as a student of religious history, and as a Jew, I must ask “What does the Unification Church intend to do, first, in a theological way and, then, in a political way with those religious communities who have seen, the “brighter light” but who have chosen to remain faithful to their “mission of the old”? Historically, Jews and Judaism have often stood alone against many of the world’s “brighter lights,” and many times the price for such action was death. That is why I, unlike some other observers of the Unification Church, am appalled and deeply concerned about the extant anti-Semitism in the Church’s teachings. Although it claims to wish to unite the human family in love and truth, the Unification Church continues to transmit in its sacred text and in other writings the same teachings about Jews and Judaism that have historically resulted in expulsions, pogroms, and murder.

Surely, we have the right to demand that the Unification Church, which professes a “New Adam,” a new life, not teach the same pathological untruths that earlier forms of Christianity did. If the Unification Church truly seeks to heal the human family, then its first obligation is to prevent the spread of anti-Semitism in all its forms. What is needed now is a complete revision of Divine Principle that eliminates every vestige of anti-Jewish teaching. No religion can bring harmony and peace to the world if its own soul is corrupted and filled with the poison of anti-Semitism.

And what about the non-Jewish world that does not accept the “new light” of the Unification Church mission? Does the Unification Church, which uses the principle of religious pluralism to justify its right to exist itself, allow for pluralism of belief? The statements of Reverend Moon are not encouraging. In an article in the New York Daily News of November 30, 1975, it is reported that Reverend Moon made the following statement at a private gathering:

So from this time [of peak] every people and organization that goes against the Unification Church will gradually come down or drastically come down and die. Many people will die—those who go against our movement. [Sun Myung Moon, Master Speaks February 14, 1974]

So much for the creed of the Unification Church; now let us look at the deed. What is the impact of the teachings of the Church on its members? How are the ideals of improving the world, of uniting mankind, carried out in the concrete actions of the Church and its followers?

I am convinced that the Unification Church uses dishonest recruiting techniques, hiding behind nearly seventy front groups, of which “Collegiate Association for the Research of Principle,” “Creative Community Project,” and “New Education Development Systems, Inc.” are three of the best known. Recruiters never identify themselves with Reverend Moon or the Unification Church until the potential member has already made a commitment. By the time the recruit realizes what he is really involved in, he is often so confused and disoriented from intensive weekend retreats, long seminars, sleeplessness, constant frenzied activity which is tightly supervised, non-nutritious food, and “love-bombing” that he may not have the will or strength to refute the demands of the group at that point. The skillful Unification Church members play on the recruit’s guilt, forcing him to renounce and remove himself from his past life, including job, school, and family. They weaken his identity, then, with strong guilt-oriented and approval-oriented sanctions, remake his identity according to Unification Church theology and role models.

After his initiation the new recruit is frequently put to work in what is called a “Mobile Fund-Raising Team [MFT].” He may work up to 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, collecting funds from the public, carrying out what is termed “heavenly deception” upon a generous and unsuspecting public. The new Unification Church member usually lies by stating that the collected funds are for various social welfare projects when, in fact, the large amounts of money go directly to Reverend Moon’s New York City bank to support the Church’s many real estate and media operations. Much of it goes also to support an increasingly luxurious life style for Reverend Moon and his chief aides, while the new Church members live in almost abject poverty, without privacy, often, without adequate medical or dental care, and without proper nourishment. Berkeley psychologist, Dr. Margaret Singer, has interviewed over 250 former Unification Church members. Her most shocking finding was the “psychological turning off of the hormonal process.” She has seen “repeated cases of menstruation ceasing in women and of men’s beards ceasing to grow.” Dr. Singer concludes: “These young adults have narrowed down their thought processes, constricted their vocabulary …and wouldn’t let their negative feelings show because of extreme pressure from those around them.”

The Unification Church’s theology and ideology has produced some disturbing actions among its members. Ellen Galligan remembers her MFT speeding across Michigan on a remote highway where one might pass another vehicle perhaps only once an hour. One early morning they passed an accident and they saw a “person flagging us down. Another man was standing there with blood all over his face. Our driver woke up our team leader, who said, ‘Don’t stop. Keep on going.’ You see we had to drive the whole night to get to the city the next morning for fund raising, and it was more important to keep going. There was never any concern about other people. I guess we just considered it was indemnity for salvation for them.”

In case after case, it is clear that the Unification Church’s zealous preoccupation with raising money transcends every other activity, even one of stopping on a lonely highway to assist an injured person.

Tony Gillard, a former Church member, “worked the ghettos. I would go in a migrant camp and take the last dollar from a poor family,” he says. “I did the same thing on Indian reservations.” Gillard, a black, was once brought before Rev. Moon for special praise because of his outstanding fund raising ability. “The Unification Church had its ‘house n*gger’”, Gillard notes, and he now considers the Church racist.

The record of forced separations of parents from children, monitored telephone conversations, intercepted mail, and even the threat of violence is now too well documented over and over again by former Church members to be dismissed as the usual “sour grapes” that any former group member may feel. The following story has been repeated by other Church members.

A CARP leader became involved in a serious automobile accident because of sheer fatigue (a common condition among many members). Faced with the possible loss of his legs and a serious operation, the Unification Church “Family” felt it could no longer tend to the young man’s needs. The Church called his parents, the “agents of Satan,” and they came to help their son. The Unification Church’s theology of love and caring apparently does not translate itself into the real world of accidents, illnesses, and medical operations.

Why do I deal with specific names and cases? What do they have to do with the cosmic theological claims of the Unification Church? I believe a clear pattern has emerged that shows the Unification Church, in its actual practice, to be an organization that is obsessed with raising money by means of “heavenly deception”, and through the efforts of thousands of drone-like members.

Earlier in this paper I called for the Unification Church to completely revise all its teaching materials in order to eradicate every vestige of anti-Semitism. I have two additional proposals to make. I urge that the Unification Church open its financial records to the general public and submit them to an independent audit so that the Church’s members, as well as others, can clearly learn how the Unification Church’s funds are raised and how they are spent. Only in this way can it begin to gain the credibility it so obviously and desperately seeks. Only in this way can the serious questions of fiscal integrity be resolved. If the Unification Church seeks to participate in our pluralistic religious society, these basic steps of openness and candor are absolutely necessary. Anything less than total public disclosure will only fan the flames of doubt and suspicion, and will prevent the Unification Church from gaining the sense of public legitimacy it craves.

I would also urge that a high level “blue ribbon” commission be appointed to investigate fully the many charges of human rights violations carried out by the Unification Church against its members. Such an independent commission would be composed of academic, legal, medical, and religious leaders who would undertake a comprehensive investigation of the Unification Church’s recruiting and educational methods and practices, as well as the Church’s treatment of its members. Even as we profess our deep commitment to the cause of human rights throughout the world, so, too, we must be just as vigorous in our own land in this struggle. If the Unification Church is, in fact, violating the human rights of any of its members, and if it is using coercive measures, then immediate legal remedial steps must be taken. If the alleged violations are not taking place, then I would be among the first to call for a cessation of the charges and counter-charges that are currently swirling about the Unification Church. Such charges, if false, do a grave disservice to all parties concerned.

As I indicated earlier, the Unification Church is free to proclaim its version of religious truth. It is free to press its claims and its doctrines. It is not free, however, in our society to perpetuate and transmit any form of anti-Semitism to its members. That grotesque pollution of the human spirit will continue to erode the Unification Church’s foundation. It is also not free to collect sums of money in America without any public accountability or disclosure. Such a closed system as currently practiced runs counter to the spirit of our open, and pluralistic society. Finally, the Unification Church is not free to violate the human rights of any potential or actual members. This is totally unacceptable, and it flies in the face of the Church’s professed doctrine of justice, love, and compassion, thus undermining the theological basis of the Church,

In Divine Principle we read: “Today’s religions have failed to lead the present generation out of the dark valley of death into the radiance of life, so there must now come a new truth that can shed a new light.” (p.10) That is the claim of the Unification Church, but I am deeply convinced that no new truth can emerge from a group whose teachings foster anti-Semitism, whose financial dealings are hidden from public view, and whose methods and style violate the human rights of others.

Sun Myung Moon:

“Our motto this time is for each of the fundraising teams to earn $12,000.00 a month, a high goal....If I mobilize 1,000 members, each earning $10,000.00, then we will make three million dollars a month, which is a usable sum. I will train the fund-raising team to make at least $3,000.00. When I mobilize 10,000 members, it means $30 million in a month. Then we can buy Pan American Airlines, and the Empire State Building. We shall buy Ford Motor Company, not to speak of the Empire State Building. That’s possible. …

In order for us to be able to do this would you prefer to sleep seven hours instead of six? (No.) We are used to sleeping, for instance, six hours. Would you prefer to sleep for seven hours or five hours? (Five.) Would you prefer to sleep four hours or five? (Four.) Would your prefer to go to work without sleeping? (Without sleeping.) I don’t want you to die so I will let you sleep barely enough to sustain your life.”

From MS-452, 9/22/74, Master Speaks, Where We Are Situated Now. Tarrytown, New York, September 22, 1974,

[dfroza]

A look at how God speaks to us

in the True illumination of the Son

Today’s reading of the Scriptures begins the first chapter of the book of Hebrews

[Jesus, the Language of God]

Throughout our history God has spoken to our ancestors by his prophets in many different ways. The revelation he gave them was only a fragment at a time, building one truth upon another. But to us living in these last days God now speaks to us openly in the language of a Son, the appointed Heir of everything, for through him God created the panorama of all things and all time.

The Son is the dazzling radiance of God’s splendor, the exact expression of God’s true nature—his mirror image! He holds the universe together and expands it by the mighty power of his spoken word. He accomplished for us the complete cleansing of sins, and then took his seat on the highest throne at the right hand of the majestic One.

He is infinitely greater than angels, for he inherited a rank and a Name far greater than theirs. For God has never said to any angel what he said to Jesus:

“You are my favored Son, today I have fathered you.”

And this:

“I will be the Father to him, and he will be the Son to me.”

And again, when he brought his firstborn Son into the world:

“Let all my angels bow down before him

and kiss him in worship.”

And about his angels he says,

“I make my angels swift winds,

and my ministers fiery flames.”

But about his Son, he called him “God,” saying,

“Your throne, O God, endures forever and ever

and you will rule your kingdom

with justice and righteousness,

For you have cherished righteousness

and detested lawlessness.

For this reason, God, your God, has anointed you

and poured out the oil of bliss on you

more than on any of your friends.”

And he called him Lord, saying,

“Lord, you formed the earth in the beginning

and with your own hands you crafted the cosmos.

They will both one day disappear,

but you will remain forever!

They will all fade like a worn-out garment,

And they will be changed like clothes,

and you will fold them up and put them away.

But you are ‘I AM.’

You never change, years without end!”

And God has never said this to any of his angels:

“Take your seat next to me at my right hand

until I force your whispering enemies

to be a rug under your feet.”

What role then, do the angels have? The angels are spirit-messengers sent by God to serve those who are going to be saved.

The Book of Hebrews, Chapter 1 (The Passion Translation)

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 7th chapter of First Chronicles that documents the Family Tree of Israel:

[The Family of Issachar]

The sons of Issachar were Tola, Puah, Jashub, and Shimron—four sons. The sons of Tola were Uzzi, Rephaiah, Jeriel, Jahmai, Ibsam, and Samuel—the chiefs of their families. During David’s reign, the Tola family counted 22,600 warriors in their lineage. The son of Uzzi was Izrahiah; the sons of Izrahiah were Michael, Obadiah, Joel, and Isshiah—five sons and all of them chiefs. They counted 36,000 warriors in their lineage because they had more wives and sons than their brothers. The extended families of Issachar accounted for 87,000 warriors—all of them listed in the family tree.

[The Family of Benjamin]

Benjamin had three sons: Bela, Beker, and Jediael. Bela had five: Ezbon, Uzzi, Uzziel, Jerimoth, and Iri, all of them chiefs and warriors. They counted 22,034 names in their family tree. Beker’s sons were Zemirah, Joash, Eliezer, Elioenai, Omri, Jeremoth, Abijah, Anathoth, and Alemeth. Through these chiefs their family tree listed 20,200 warriors. Jediael’s son was Bilhan and the sons of Bilhan were Jeush, Benjamin, Ehud, Kenaanah, Zethan, Tarshish, and Ahishahar—all sons of Jediael and family chiefs; they counted 17,200 combat-ready warriors. Shuppim and Huppim were the sons of Ir; Hushim were from the family of Aher.

[The Family of Naphtali]

The sons of Naphtali were Jahziel, Guni, Jezer, and Shallum; they are listed under the maternal line of Bilhah, their grandfather’s concubine.

[The Family of Manasseh]

Manasseh’s sons, born of his Aramean concubine, were Asriel and Makir the father of Gilead. Makir got his wife from the Huppites and Shuppites. His sister’s name was Maacah. Another son, Zelophehad, had only daughters. Makir’s wife Maacah bore a son whom she named Peresh; his brother’s name was Sheresh and his sons were Ulam and Rakem. Ulam’s son was Bedan. This accounts for the sons of Gilead son of Makir, the son of Manasseh. His sister Hammoleketh gave birth to Ishdod, Abiezer, and Mahlah. The sons of Shemida were Ahian, Shechem, Likhi, and Aniam.

[The Family of Ephraim]

The sons of Ephraim were Shuthelah, Bered his son, Tahath his son, Eleadah his son, Tahath his son, Zabad his son, Shuthelah his son, and Ezer and Elead, cattle-rustlers, killed on one of their raids by the natives of Gath. Their father Ephraim grieved a long time and his family gathered to give him comfort. Then he slept with his wife again. She conceived and produced a son. He named him Beriah (Unlucky), because of the bad luck that had come to his family. His daughter was Sheerah. She built Lower and Upper Beth Horon and Uzzen Sheerah.

Rephah was Ephraim’s son and also Resheph; Telah was his son, Tahan his son, Ladan his son, Ammihud his son, Elishama his son, Nun his son, and Joshua his son. They occupied Bethel and the neighboring country from Naaran on the east to Gezer and its villages on the west, along with Shechem and its villages, and extending as far as Ayyah and its villages. Stretched along the borders of Manasseh were Beth Shan, Taanach, Megiddo, and Dor, together with their satellite villages. The families descended from Joseph son of Israel lived in all these places.

[The Family of Asher]

The sons of Asher were Imnah, Ishvah, Ishvi, and Beriah; Serah was their sister. The sons of Beriah were Heber and Malkiel, who had Birzaith. Heber had Japhlet, Shomer, Hotham, and Shua their sister.

Japhlet had Pasach, Bimhal, and Ashvath. His brother Shomer had Rohgah, Hubbah, and Aram. His brother Helem had Zophah, Imna, Shelesh, and Amal. Zophah had Suah, Harnepher, Shual, Beri, Imrah, Bezer, Hod, Shamma, Shilshah, Ithran, and Beera. Jether had Jephunneh, Pispah, and Ara. Ulla had Arah, Hanniel, and Rizia. These were Asher’s sons, all of them responsible, excellent in character, and brave in battle—good leaders. They listed 26,000 combat-ready men in their family tree.

The Book of 1st Chronicles, Chapter 7 (The Message)

my personal reading of the Scriptures for Wednesday, january 6 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible, along with Today’s Psalms and Proverbs

A post by John Parsons about the True nature of the Scriptures:

Where is it written, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the godly one may be complete, equipped for every good work" (2 Tim. 3:16-17), it is to be noted that "the Scriptures" referred to here are the Jewish Scriptures (i.e., the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings), since they are the foundation, the context, and the overarching matrix for the later New Covenant revelation... These were the Scriptures Yeshua used to contextualize and explain his ministry to his followers: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Indeed when Paul wrote these words to Timothy the "New Testament" Scriptures had not yet been compiled by the leaders of the first-generation followers of Messiah.

How important is the Torah, friends? It is essential as the foundation for all that follows, including the very meaning of the gospel message! In other words, the Torah has both a logical, a linguistic, and a theological priority regarding our understanding of the New Testament, and the failure to read in context invariably leads to faulty interpretations and doctrinal errors of various kinds. “To the Jew first, and [then] to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16) is a principle not only of how the gospel message would transcend ethnic Israel to be offered to all the nations, but also about how we should approach the subject of Biblical hermeneutics. God “breathed out” (θεόπνευστος) his revelation in order, and the message itself must be understood in light of that order (Gal. 4:4-5). Moreover, since all of the New Testament finds its semantic roots in the Torah of Moses and the other Hebrew Scriptures, it is important to study Biblical Hebrew first before studying the Greek New Testament, since the Greek words were translated from the ideas originally given in the Hebrew texts of the Torah.

All of the Torah is amazingly wonderful; it is an inestimably great blessing! After all, what would we know of the creation of the universe and of humanity apart from its pages? What would we know of the reason for sin, sickness and death -- and therefore our need for salvation itself apart from the account of the fall of man as described in Book of Genesis? Or what we know of God's moral truth apart from the revelation of the law at Sinai? Or how could we undertand the need for sacrificial blood atonement apart from the sacrificial laws given in Leviticus? Or how would we understand the struggle of the journey of faith apart from the Book of Numbers? Or how would we appreciate the essential duty to love God with all our hearts -- the great Shema -- and the corresponding duty to love others as we love ourselves apart from the Book of Deuteronomy?

So the Torah provides the framework by which we read the Gospels, and apart from this framework we miss much of the original intent and meaning of the Bible... Again, that was Yeshua's approach to the Scriptures, after all. He *repeatedly* explained to his followers that would have to suffer and die, according to the Scriptures (see Luke 9:22, 9:44; Matt. 16:21; Mark 8:31). He told the disciples on the road of Emmaus: "All things had to be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me (Luke 24:27). Indeed Yeshua chided the rabbis of his day saying: "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; but it is they that bear witness about me" (John 5:39), and he also said, "If you would have believed Moses, you would believe in me, because he wrote about me" (John 5:46).

So love the Torah, friends; learn its message and study carefully its passages. That’s good New Testament theology, after all: "For everything that was written in former times was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and through encouragement of the Scriptures we may have hope" (Rom. 15:4). The Holy Spirit still speaks to the heart of those who love Yeshua, the everlasting King of the Jews: "Oh how I love your Torah (תּוֹרָה); it is my meditation all the day" (Psalm 119:97). For more on this topic, listen to the podcast (link below) or read the various articles on Torah on the Hebrew for Christians website. Shalom chaverim! [Hebrew for Christians]

https://hebrew4christians.com/

1.5.20 • Facebook

Today’s message from the Institute for Creation Research

January 6, 2021

My Strength and Victory

“And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

“Jesus! What a Friend for Sinners” verse two highlights His attribute of strength. David wrote of encountering and benefitting from it when he hid safely in Him. “For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock” (Psalm 27:5).

Jesus! what a Strength in weakness!

Let me hide myself in Him;

Tempted, tried, and sometimes failing,

He, my Strength, my vict’ry wins.

In times of opposition, we can go to Him for comfort and protection. In Psalm 23:4, we are comforted to read, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” We can likewise pass this along to bolster others in need, for “we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God” (2 Corinthians 1:4).

When conflict comes, our Friend for sinners provides a way out. “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Ultimately, victory is ours through His great strength and wisdom. In eternal glory, we are told that “now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night” (Revelation 12:10). Forever we will hide safely in Him. JDM

[scottyallenw]

𝙒𝙃𝙀𝙉 𝙄𝙎 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝘾𝙃𝙐𝙍𝘾𝙃 𝙂𝙊𝙄𝙉𝙂 𝙏𝙊 𝙂𝙍𝙊𝙒 𝘼 𝙋𝘼𝙄𝙍

(2,219 words)

Not long ago a female member of my extended family posted on social media the claim that President Trump fits the definition of a demagogue perfectly. I know that God has anointed Trump to shake up the Washington establishment, remove trade barriers, ignite political firestorms and prosecute widespread corruption. So I reacted angrily to the post. Fired up, I immediately typed the following comment on her post:

“Yes, Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus the Christ) fits the definition perfectly. He went out of his way to piss off a large portion of the populace, sorry ass religious leaders, lawyers and politicians. Yeshua knew what he was doing; he knew what his enemies would do. The rest is history: the Roman proconsul, afraid of a large angry mob, turned Yeshua over to his soldiers for execution. Then he washed his hands of the whole thing. Today we have a President who like Yeshua is taking a wrecking ball to the political establishment, hurting people’s feelings and with his Twitter feed exposing hypocrisy. In my opinion we need more people like Yeshua and Trump, turning the world upside down.”

Shortly after this, the woman deleted my comment. I was saddened, and asked myself if I was too brutal. But no, it is the truth that is brutal. Having thought it over, I had no remorse.

But does Scripture reveal Yeshua's true character? Absolutely. Yet Yeshua is widely misunderstood to be simply an easygoing advocate of love and peace, making no demands of His followers. My reading of the gospels recognizes a Yeshua not only with a prickly side, but a Messiah with a fighting spirit. His actions and remarks often cut into the hearts of His adversaries. He was and still is a soldier in a war against hypocrisy. Some day Mashiach will return and put the wicked out of business. But I'm sure the Master would prefer His people finish the job first.

To properly appraise Yeshua's character one must study the man in action. Consider the following account in Luke 6 where Yeshua encounters on the Sabbath a man whose hand is withered. He wants to heal the man, but He also notices scholars and Pharisees nearby hoping to accuse Him of working on Shabbat.

Yeshua defiantly leads the man to a place where everyone, but especially His potential accusers, can get a good look. Yeshua asks the man a question that He really intends for the ears of the religious leaders:

“What is correct on Shabbat: to cause good or to cause harm? To rescue life, or to harm?” Yeshua “looked around intently at all of them,” before healing the man.

The scholars and Pharisees “were wild with rage...” It is exactly the reaction Yeshua intended to incite. Perhaps Yeshua even relished the anger directed at Him. He knew they would plot His crucifixion. With the Shabbat healing He had handed them as it were the hammer and nails to do the job. But He also knew His time had not yet come, and so He slipped away through the crowd.

John 6 relates an episode that epitomizes the notion that Yeshua, like Trump, was born to offend. It involves a vast crowd which has grown about Yeshua during a series of the Master’s signs and miraculous healings. Yeshua understands that most of the new followers are fake. The masses care only about the spectacle of signs and wonders. They also want to declare Yeshua King. They lack any interest whatsoever in obeying His commands or hearing His interpretation of the Torah.

Yeshua conceives a shrewd plan to thin the crowds. He recognizes that Jewish familiarity with Torah is widespread, particularly its prohibition against consuming blood and human flesh. This is abhorrent to all Judeans. So Yeshua turns to the crowd and makes this startling declaration:

“Amen, amen, I say to you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life within you.”

The people are stunned by HaMashiach’s words and begin to murmur. Yeshua’s assertion strikes many as repugnant, and even the Master’s close followers are confused. The crowd begins to disperse. As Yeshua fully expected, little more than the core group of 12 disciples are left. Unlike many 21st century mega church pastors, Yeshua is less interested in numbers than in devotion. By deliberately offending the masses, Yeshua is left only with the loyal few.

Matthew 23 describes another public demonstration of Yeshua's remarkable choice of words: it involves the Messiah’s fiery confrontation in the Holy City with His favorite target audience—hypocritical religious leaders. The passage is popularly known as the Eight Woes. Most Christian translations quote Yeshua’s string of rebukes with these words: “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you...”

The original language of the New Testament is widely understood to be Greek. However scholars now believe the book of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew, and early manuscripts are being studied. The original language of Luke is also believed to be Hebrew and some scholars believe the entire New Testament was originally written in Hebrew.

A few years ago I was seated among a Grand Rapids, MI, congregation whose senior pastor had a background in Hebrew studies. The pastor explained what he regarded as a more accurate rendering of the Eight Woes passage. Yeshua's words are commonly translated from the Greek, “Woe to you...” Properly translated from Hebrew, Yeshua actually said, “GOD DAMN YOU, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites...,” (emphasis added). The pastor’s congregation was stunned by the language, as was I. The fighting words Yeshua used permanently altered my perception of the risen Savior.

Now imagine if you will a society in which ancient truths and assumptions once thought to be self-evident, are questioned and finally tossed aside. This of course is not hard to imagine; it is the current state of American society. Its citizens are told a man can be a wife, a woman can be a husband. and a man can bear a child.. Americans are even told an OB-GYN can treat a person with male genitalia—assertions which only decades ago would be thought absurd.. Such reckless claims are now accepted by a majority as fact!

The United States Declaration of Independence states: We hold these truths to be self-evident... Will these once-cherished convictions be among the next batch of truths to come under attack, and finally discarded?

The following few paragraphs will hopefully add clarity to what is at stake. High school geometry students are taught they must accept certain common sense assumptions on which to build a mathematical framework of theorems. Each of these are proved by a chain of reasoning. For example, students will readily accept the claim that two parallel lines will never intersect, even if the lines extend towards infinity. Widespread rejection of this common sense assumption would make the teaching of traditional geometry impossible.

College mathematics offers students a different perspective of not only geometry, but the nature of truth. A course called abstract geometry is built on a set of counterintuitive assumptions. To pass this course students must for several hours each week discard all notions of common sense. One proposition in this mathematical model is that two parallel lines will always intersect as they extend to infinity. If this is assumed along with other absurd truths, an entire universe of theorems can be proven. It works beautifully. I enjoyed the course. But after final exams we students set aside this nonsense and rejoined the real world. We realized abstract geometry is just mental acrobatics. It can't work in a functioning society. Could the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan have been built using this kind of math?

Abstract geometry is a type of an Orwellian world. It is similar to what our own society is becoming. Highly educated and experienced jurists have in recent decades rejected the bedrock truths of Mount Sinai in favor of new ideas that now enjoy widespread public acceptance. From the legalization of sodomy, these judges concluded by a chain of reasoning that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right. From the assumption that a human fetus is not a person, jurists rule abortion is a constitutional right. It's all perfect logic, but the proofs are based on false assumptions. Consider the following scripture:

“You shall not move your neighbor's boundary mark, which the ancestors have set...” (Deuteronomy 19:14)

Jewish sages explained long ago that this admonition has a metaphorical meaning in addition to its literal interpretation. It is a warning to elders and jurists: never overturn principles that have been widely accepted and have governed society for centuries, let alone millennia. One by one the courts have within less than an average human lifespan, torn down many of America's boundary markers.

Local school boards in California are already mandating indoctrination of children in Islamic and LGBT ideologies. Boys of believing parents possibly will be taught using artificial body parts how to sodomize another male. Officials are also talking about forcing believing parents who homeschool their children to do the same.

It's time for the Church to flex spiritual muscle. Our model is the biblical accounts of the Master Himself. Yeshua never allowed adversaries to force Him into a defensive posture. He stayed on offense. When accused, Yeshua responded with on-target scripture, a clever parable or pointed questions. He was unafraid to follow up with accusations of His own.

We live in an age when the ACLU regularly sues conservatives, Christian cake makers and flower arrangers for supposed anti-LGBT bias or religious expression in the public square. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for the same reason puts churches and other religious organizations on its well-circulated list of hate groups. Both of these organizations want the public to believe they stand for justice, civil rights and goodness. In reality these are wicked people who are relentless, full of hate and attempting to oppose the Church's every positive move in America.

Why is it the ACLU and SPLC rarely get sued? It's time for the Church to fight back. Let's force the enemy onto the defensive for a change. For that we need generous believers who have money, lots of it.  It's time for wealthy believers in Yeshua to step up. The Church needs its own version of George Soros.

“No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money as well,” Margaret Thatcher (the Iron Lady) said years ago.

While big money is needed, the most important battles will involve our own interactions with others, especially on social media. Many of our best soldiers regularly get kicked off these platforms. Others suffer more serious consequences for standing on God's Word.

Ruach HaKodesh (the Holy Spirit) will give us just the right words to powerfully respond to enemy attacks. I was seated once again years ago with that Grand Rapids congregation listening to the same pastor. This time he read the English translation of an ancient Roman court transcript from the time of the early Church. This was a time when the Roman Empire clamped down ruthlessly on the Church, putting many believers to death.

The case involved one of the believers in Yeshua whom the Romans placed on trial for his faith. The man knew the Romans were about to sentence him to death. He addressed the judge and prosecutor with chilling words that brought his modern listeners back nearly two millennia. It was like we were in that courtroom with him. The brave man’s statement, as recorded on the transcript, went something like this:

“A time will come when you will be sorry for what you have done here today. Both of you will stand in a courtroom much like this one. You will be on trial for your lives before a prosecutor and judge, just as I am today. And standing off to the side you will see me, quite alive and well. I will be there to testify against the both of you.”

In his six-volume memoir of the Second World War, the former British prime minister Winston Churchill recalls the dark days of Germany’s relentless bombing campaign against London and other large cities. For an extended period early in the war the cities were all but defenseless, there being no anti-aircraft weaponry available. But eventually large numbers of anti-aircraft

guns were placed throughout the populated areas. War-weary British citizens huddling in bomb shelters heard not only the explosions of German bombs—they were exhilarated by the overpowering blasts of countless heavy guns firing back at the German bombers. The knowledge they were finally fighting back against their merciless enemy did wonders for British moral, and contributed to bringing about eventual victory.

Is the Church up to the task of confronting the forces of evil in America? Will the job require a leader in the mold of Churchill? My choice rather would be a great spiritual leader in the mold of Yeshua Himself. We must view the conflict as Churchill early on wanted his people to view the Nazi threat looming just across the English Channel: “regard the menace of invasion with a steady gaze.” ##

* 𝙔𝙚𝙨𝙝𝙪𝙖 𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖 𝙩𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝 𝙘𝙧𝙤𝙬𝙙

[donveinot]

Who do you say that I am?

In Matthew 16:15 Jesus the Christ asks his disciples an all-important question with eternal consequences, “But who do you say that I am?” It was the follow-up question in an exchange we read in Matthew 16:13-18: Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” In this short interaction, we see a striking difference between those who know something about Christ but don’t know Him personally, and those Who know Him intimately and knew well His asserted identity. History is replete with many false teachers who hold up Jesus Christ as an idea but reject His deity and the clear biblical teaching about Who He is. For example, in the Fourth century, a church presbyter from North Africa by the name of Arius began to teach that the Son of God Who incarnated as the Messiah, Jesus, was not the eternal God, but came into existence at a point in time. This was the heretical view that led to the Council of Nicea where this theological error was addressed. The Early Church fathers took very seriously their mandate to guard the flock from false teaching. A modern version which espouses this particular heresy is the group known as “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” who receive their instruction from the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. Like Arius, they believe the Jesus Christ was brought into being at a point in time. Their belief is that Jesus was initially Michael the Archangel whom the Father created and then used to create everything else. At the time the Christ (Messiah) would be born into the world, Michael’s life force (they describe a “life force” as something like spiritual electricity which carries no characteristics of personality) was unplugged, at which time Michael ceased to exist. Their unitarian god Jehovah then created a new being to replace Michael - a human named Jesus - and plugged Michael’s “life force” into him. When the human Jesus was crucified, his life force was “unplugged,” and as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society teaches, Jesus is now “dead forever dead.” (It’s interesting that they talk about and write of Him as if He was still around, but their teaching is that there is no Jesus today and never will be again!) Jehovah than created another Michael to replace the previous Michael and the human Jesus, and stuck that very same life-force into this new creature.  It is all pretty complicated but provides a way to have a sort of Jesus without having to embrace the Jesus Christ of Scripture. Mormons also don’t like the Jesus Christ of history and Scripture and promote a new and improved version. For them, Jesus (and indeed all of us) were born on another planet to a Mormon God and one of his multitude of wives. Jesus came to earth when a human body was prepared for Him, which afforded him the opportunity to earn godhood as his father, and all other gods before him had done. So again, we have a Jesus who didn’t exist in eternity past. Once he came into being, he progressed and changed. By definition then, the Jesus of Mormonism is not immutable, i.e, unable to change, and therefore is not the God of Scripture. He isn’t Jesus the Christ. Neither of these examples are surprising. Most people, especially in Christian or formerly Christian cultures, have heard and believe that Jesus is an important religious figure. Therefore, nearly all false teachers feel the need to create a Jesus of one kind or another to enhance their credibility and persuade potential converts that they have a sort of Jesus Keeping Seal of Approval. Theirs is not the REAL Jesus, of course, but another Jesus who seems enough like Jesus to fool the uninformed masses. A newer player on the block is Franciscan Priest, Richard Rohr. He is a leader in the Contemplative Prayer Movement and is the primary mentor to those who have brought the Enneagram into the evangelical church. He is also the defacto chief resident theologian for Progressive and some evangelical churches. He too has a Jesus, but his “Jesus” is not THE Christ, but melded with “the Christ” about 2,000 years ago. The Christ, far more of a “material manifestation,” (the Cosmos is the Christ), than a “person” in Rohr’s view, came into being about 14.5 billion years ago. This concept is foundational to all of his teaching, but for just a glimpse into it, you could watch “Fr. Richard Rohr - Cosmic Christ.” Beginning about the 4 minute mark he says: To put it very concretely, the Christ is born the minute God decides to show Himself. The moment God decides to materialize. Now modern science would call that the Big Bang. The Big Bang is the birth of the Christ. 14.5 billion years ago. And this material manifestation has been revealing the glory of God, the nature of God, for at least 14.5 billion years. That’s the Cosmic Christ. So, in a moment of time, this Cosmic Christ is revealed to us in a human person that we could see and touch and hear and listen to and fall in love with. But in the first 2,000 years most of the work, except for the mystics, who largely got this, mainline Christianity Catholic and Protestant, has largely been concerned about Jesus the historical person. Which is good. But what we missed out on was the Cosmic Christ. Here we experienced a definitional variation which we should resolve before we move on. Different esoteric groups define “the Christ” a little differently. For Gnostics and New Agers, “the Christ” is a “consciousness,” something which settled on the human Jesus and can also settle on us. Rohr’s take is a bit different from typical New Age teaching on “the Christ.” A bit earlier in the video, Rohr does claim “the Christ” is eternal, but then, with a little sleight of hand he claims “the Christ” came into existence 14.5 billion years ago and is the creation itself. Rohr teaches that Creation was the first Incarnation of Christ. In his blog article, “Christ Since the Beginning,” Rohr writes: God spoke the Eternal Blueprint/Idea called Christ,“and so it was!” (Genesis 1:9). Two thousand years ago marks the Incarnation of God in Jesus, but before that there was the Incarnation through light, water, land, sun, moon, stars, plants, trees, fruit, birds, serpents, cattle, fish, and “every kind of wild beast” according to the Genesis creation story (1:3-25). This is the “Cosmic Christ” through which God has “let us know the mystery of God’s purpose, the hidden plan made from the beginning in Christ” (Ephesians 1:9-10). We repeat – The first Incarnation of “Christ” was Creation itself, according to Rohr. So, all Creation - including human beings - is in Christ and everyone and everything has “divine DNA,” as he informs his readers in his book, The Universal Christ. Since everyone is in Christ already, there is no need for salvation. What people need is to recognize their identity, to see themselves as the sinless beings they already are, which is Rohr claims is their “true self.” In Jewish and Christian understanding, the word Christ is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word, “Messiah” and both mean “anointed.” It isn’t a proclamation of who they are (like a name) but indicates they have been set aside for something. The REAL Jesus is the Son of God, Who incarnated or took on human nature. His “anointing” was to be the Savior of the world. Rohr and his followers have a decidedly different Jesus and different gospel. His teachings are wholly unbiblical. The Apostle Paul addressed this issue with the church in Corinth where at least some had also embraced a different Jesus and different gospel: But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. (2 Corinthians 11:3-4) Our friend, former Jehovah’s Witness, Lorri MacGregor, who founded MacGregor Ministries (now retired) would often say, “If you have the right Jesus, you are right for all eternity. If you have the wrong Jesus, you are wrong for all eternity.” How would you answer Jesus’ question, “But who do you say that I am?” Your eternity hinges on your answer.Ω

© 2020, Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc All rights reserved. Excerpts and links may be used if full and clear credit is given with specific direction to the original content. Read the full article

[maximuswolf]

What are your thoughts on this other philosophical/theological argument for Christianity? via /r/pagan

What are your thoughts on this other philosophical/theological argument for Christianity?

Here it is:

“My explanations make up for deficiencies you see in Christianity at large as a faith or a religious community; but we all benefit from a deeper mutual understanding. I am certainly richer as a Christian and a human being for my understanding of different Pagan practices and beliefs from my time as a practising Pagan (primarily of the Celtic variety).

It's absolutely true that there is no immediate contemporary evidence for the existence of Jesus but that truly isn't very remarkable. To non-Christian contemporaries Jesus was barely worth paying attention to - he was, in their minds as you say, the leader of a small fringe Jewish cult, and not someone the Romans or the Jews had much need to write about. There are similar problems with confirming the existence of Socrates or Alexander the Great: the truth is it's very difficult to find surviving records from most of these periods because no one was thinking "this will be big history in 2020!". For all three men, we rely on the accounts of people who knew them and/or lived soon after them to know about their lives. If you want to deny Jesus' existence based on a lack of contemporary documentary evidence, you probably need to also deny the existence of Socrates, Alexander the Great and a large number of other ancient figures.

If you were going to make up someone to follow, Jesus isn't terribly logical as a choice. You could invent a Messiah who much better fits the expectations of 1st Century Judaism - you would probably not have called him 'Jesus', for one, because as you note the name is utterly unremarkable. If your goal was power and influence, then you probably wouldn't have had Jesus give the authority to build a Church to Peter, a working class, illiterate fisherman. It's very doubtful you would have John the Baptist in your story at all as someone who is shown, even momentarily, to have some kind of role over Christ. You almost certainly wouldn't have your grand narrative of Jesus' life end in his brutal execution at the hands of the Roman authorities in Israel with the man who becomes the founder of the Church, Peter, depicted as a traitor to the cause who weeps with guilt at what he's done. Instead of having Jesus die and rise again, your story would probably focus on having Jesus win some immense miracle victory over the Romans and then ascend into Heaven triumphant - you would probably cut out the part where he dies and his followers despair. Scholars believe that the earliest books of the New Testament, some of the authentic letters of Paul, date to within two decades or less of Jesus' death; Paul, despite having been anti-Christian for some of his life, does not seem to be aware of any movement to deny Jesus lived. In the 3rd century the Pagan philosopher Porphyry wrote an extensive condemnation of Christianity; Porphyry did not attack the idea that Jesus existed but instead sought to depict Jesus as a false prophet. Bart Ehrman is one of the leading experts on early Christianity in the world: he is also an atheist. There isn't much of a case for suggesting Jesus didn't exist.

With regards to the burial of Jesus and the bribe, theserenitysystem is (totally understandably!) confusing two similar incidents. You're right that the Romans would not have taken the time to bury someone like Jesus. The Bible tells us that this was possible because a Christian sympathiser, possibly a Christian himself, who was in good standing within contemporary society went to Pilate on the night of the execution and asked if he could take Christ's body for burial, and this request was granted (Matthew 27:57 - 60; Mark 15:43 - 46; Luke 23:50 - 53; John 19:38 - 42). This is in fact directly relevant to your observation that crucifixion did not necessarily mean being nailed to a cross and often simply meant being hung or whipped to death on a tree. Ancient Jewish law held that the body of anyone executed on a tree was cursed, and that the land their body was kept on would be cursed until it was buried (Deuteronomy 21:22 - 23). Joseph - the follower who went to request the body - almost certainly persuaded Pilate to hand over the corpse of Jesus on the basis that if he did not do so, the local populace would think it an affront to their God and in keeping with Roman attitudes towards local religion, the best thing to do would be to let Joseph, as a man in good standing, bury the body safely (Joseph, of course, told the followers of Christ what he was doing and took care to give Jesus a decent burial). For Christians that Christ was executed in a way that is profoundly humiliating in ancient culture, and in a manner that the ancient Jews believed meant the deceased was cursed, is an important part of our understanding of what Jesus' sacrifice on the cross means: faced with God incarnate, instead of celebrating Him, we murdered him in the most violent, degrading, brutal way imaginable.

Matthew 25:29 is absolutely an interesting verse! But it's part of a parable; a simple, short story used to illustrate an ethical or moral perspective advocated by Jesus. It was one of the main methods of preaching employed by Christ in His earthly life. In this case, the passage you quote -Matthew 25:29 - is actually a call back to an earlier, identical saying of Jesus in Matthew 13:12. If you read 13:12 first you see that Jesus is using this phrase in reference to believers and non-believers. He explains to the Apostles that he teaches in parables so that those who do not truly listen to him will only hear the superficial story, whilst those who look for the deeper meaning - like the disciples did - will understand that within the story there are important moral and theological lessons. Matthew 25:14 - 29 is a parable that uses the imagery of money as an allegory for how Christians should behave in their faith on the understanding that the Earthly world will pass away; that they should be bold, knowing that change is coming. It follows on directly and explicitly from another parable about the faithful being prepared for the arrival of Christ in His Second Coming (Matthew 25:1 - 13). Just as that parable, which concerns itself with ten virgins, is not a literal story about ten virgins, neither is the parable of the talents concerned with financial affairs.

Matthew 26:8 - 11 has to be appreciated within the context of the particular event that moves Christ to say these things. In this situation, it is the Disciples chastising a well-meaning woman for wasting valuable ointment on Jesus when it could have been sold to benefit the poor. What the Disciples are doing here is not making the argument that these things are wasted economically; there is already the understanding and acceptance that Christ preaches the need to redistribute wealth and support the impoverished. Christ is instead accusing the Disciples of being unnecessarily harsh to the woman and focusing on the worth of her actions rather than considering the sincerity of her faith, and her genuine attempt to do something selfless. He is essentially saying "come on guys: are you really annoyed at the waste, or are you trying to show you're a better disciple than she is?". He is exposing pride disguising itself as charitable concern; concern trolling, essentially. The Lord's seemingly callous words here, about the poor always being with us, are in fact a call back to Deuteronomy 15:11 with its explicit instruction:

Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, "Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour in your land."

Matthew 10:34 - 37 is not a religious commandment to violence or division. First of all, 'hate' or its equivalent is not a word that appears in the original Greek text; a more literal translation is "whoever sees greater value in his mother or father than in me", not "whoever does not hate his family". The NRSV, the most widely accepted scholarly version of the Bible, renders the passage as "whoever loves father or mother more than me". This passage is a warning to followers of Christ that, at the time of Jesus' life, taking up his faith will make families cast them out and make parents turn against children. Christians are still called to answer this with the peace and love Christ commands in Matthew 22:39; the warning is that this peaceful evangelism will be met with exclusion, marginalisation and violence, as Christ himself demonstrated when his peaceful surrender to the authorities lead to his own brutal, torturous, slow murder at the hands of the Romans. The specific phrasing Jesus uses is a call back to Hebrew scripture once again, specifically to Micah 7:6, which describes a period of turbulence and violent unrest in ancient Judah in which "the son treats the father with contempt [...] your enemies are members of your own household". Christ is warning his followers that, just like in Micah's time, the Gospel will anger people so much they will condemn even their own children for following him. His message here is essentially: "Don't think I've come to cushion the truth just to make things easier. This is how things are, and if you want to follow me, people will marginalise and oppress you for it". The quote from Micah, incidentally, is further significant: Jesus quotes Micah twice, and one of the more notable parts of Micah is its condemnation of the hoarding of wealth (Micah 3:1-4), especially by religious leaders.

Matthew was written as a single volume to summarise its author's understanding of Christ's life and teachings from the source material available. Whilst passages out of context seem contradictory, read together, they make sense.”

Submitted September 14, 2020 at 03:10PM by Competitive_Bid7071 via reddit https://ift.tt/35ArKVf

[faithfulnews]

The Rebellion and Restoration of Israel

By Dan & Brenda Cathcart

The video version of this teaching is at: https://youtu.be/s61lkuLX4dc

The Scripture reading is: Isaiah 1:1-27

The last few weeks we have been focusing and studying the life and prophecies of Jeremiah. Jeremiah lived in Judea and Jerusalem at the time of king Josiah and later through the destruction of Jerusalem, the first temple and the subsequent exile of most of the inhabitants of Judea to Babylon. This week Shabbat falls on the ninth day of the month of Av, the very day that Jewish history records that both the first and second Temples were destroyed.

As we finish out the remainder of the year leading up to The Feast of Trumpets or Rosh Hashanah, we will be reading exclusively from the prophet Isaiah.  The opening chapter of the book of Isaiah is a kind of preface or table of contents to the rest of the book. Isaiah introduces us to himself and outlines the overarching themes of his dissertation.

Isaiah 1:1-2 NKJV 1 The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. 2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth! For the LORD has spoken: "I have nourished and brought up children, And they have rebelled against Me;

It all sounds so familiar. Although Isaiah lived some one hundred and thirty years prior to Jeremiah, the pattern is the same; rebellion against God, judgment, and restoration. On this ninth day of Av, the saddest day in history, there is still the hope of restoration.

In this Haftarah we are dealing with a very short passage of scripture, but it contains vitally important information about the state of Jerusalem and Judah. The entire scope of the book of Isaiah is about Judah’s rebellion and restoration and is summarized in this short reading. In it we will see the nature, the judgment, the remnant, and the cure of their rebellion along with their restoration.

Over the last several months and especially the last few weeks while studying the prophecies of Jeremiah, I have been amazed at how often the people of Israel and Judah, primarily the leadership, had repeated the pattern of sin against God and the amount of trouble it caused them. You would think they would learn!

Isaiah uses the term “rebel” or “rebellion” throughout his writings.  The Hebrew word is “paw-shah”, number 6586 in the Strong’s concordance meaning to break away, trespass, apostatize, or revolt. Israel, or in Isaiah’s situation, primarily Judah, was in a near constant state of rebellion.

In verse two Isaiah announces their rebellion to all of the heavens and earth. In verse three Isaiah indicates that even the ox and donkey know who their master is.

Isaiah 1:3 NKJV 3 The ox knows its owner And the donkey its master's crib; But Israel does not know, My people do not consider."

It might not be a good idea to open your argument by insulting the intelligence of your audience, but that is what Isaiah did by comparing them to oxen and donkeys. In calling on the witnesses of heaven and earth, Isaiah is reminding them of the covenant God made with them referring to some of the last words from God to the Children of Israel at the plain of Moab.

Deuteronomy 30:19-20 NKJV 19 "I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; 20 "that you may love the LORD your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them."

Isaiah then launches into a listing of the specific rebellions that Judah did beginning with forsaking the LORD.

Isaiah 1:4 NKJV 4 Alas, sinful nation, A people laden with iniquity, A brood of evildoers, Children who are corrupters! They have forsaken the LORD, They have provoked to anger The Holy One of Israel, They have turned away backward.

Israel was intended to be called a holy nation, set apart for God among all the nations of the earth to be priests to the nations and an example. Isaiah now calls them a “sinful nation.” They have abandoned and turned away from God and have become like the other nations around them. The Hebrew verbs used by Isaiah make for a particularly strong rebuke against Israel. They have literally “turned away backwards” in their heart, actions and words.

The concept of the holiness or separateness of God is a driving theme throughout the book of Isaiah. The prophet refers to God by the title “The Holy One of Israel” no less than thirty-nine times. By invoking this title, Isaiah is undoubtedly reminding Israel of the nature of God and their unique relationship to the creator of heaven and earth!

In verse seven, Isaiah changes the tone of his oratory from a metaphorical presentation to a present tense. He speaks as if the physical judgment that is coming as a result of their rebellion has already happened or is happening as he is writing.

Isaiah 1:7 NKJV 7 Your country is desolate, Your cities are burned with fire; Strangers devour your land in your presence; And it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.

The next type of rebellion that Isaiah speaks of is their practice of an empty religion.

Isaiah 1:11-12 NKJV 11 "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?" Says the LORD. "I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, Or of lambs or goats. 12 "When you come to appear before Me, Who has required this from your hand, To trample My courts?

God was not telling them to abolish the sacrificial system, but that they were abusing the system God put in place and had created an empty religious ritual from it. Perhaps their thoughts were if one sin offering was a good thing then ten was certainly better!  They were also just going through the motions of celebrating the new moons and the appointed festivals as if they were merely the right thing to do in their culture without giving consideration as to what their purpose was.

Isaiah 1:13-14 NKJV 13 Bring no more futile sacrifices; Incense is an abomination to Me. The New Moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies-I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting. 14 Your New Moons and your appointed feasts My soul hates; They are a trouble to Me, I am weary of bearing them.

These empty religious practices were going on for quite some time before Isaiah entered the picture. Many celebrations of the Feasts of the LORD are mentioned throughout the books of Kings and Chronicles, but by the time of Isaiah, they were practicing the appointed times in their own way, changing the very character, nature, and purpose of God’s Feast days and filling them with empty ritual.

In addition to the physical judgment because of their rebellion, they will experience a spiritual separation from God because of their empty religious practices.

Isaiah 1:15 NKJV 15 When you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.

Isaiah goes on to point out their lack of justice toward each other and the most vulnerable in their society.

Isaiah 1:16-17 NKJV 16 "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, 17 Learn to do good; Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor; Defend the fatherless, Plead for the widow.

The rulers and leaders of Judah and Jerusalem had become degenerate and corrupt.

Isaiah 1:21-23 NKJV 21 How the faithful city has become a harlot! It was full of justice; Righteousness lodged in it, But now murderers. 22 Your silver has become dross, Your wine mixed with water. 23 Your princes are rebellious, And companions of thieves; Everyone loves bribes, And follows after rewards. They do not defend the fatherless, Nor does the cause of the widow come before them.

We see some terrible consequences for their rebellion against the Holy One of Israel! We see the consequences of this rebellion throughout the book of Isaiah, but we also see the promise of healing. Chapter fifty-three, for example, in particular speaks volumes of the healing power of the Messiah and how He will minister to His people.

Isaiah 53:5-6 NKJV 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

The Hebrew word translated as “stripes” in fifty-three five is number 2250, khab-boo-raw, from the root word number 2266, khaw-bar meaning to couple together, to have fellowship with. Any healing from their rebellion can only be accomplished by entering into fellowship with Messiah, a personal relationship, not empty religious practices.

Back in chapter one verses eight and nine, Isaiah introduces us to the concept of a remnant.

Isaiah 1:8-9 NKJV 8 So the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, As a hut in a garden of cucumbers, As a besieged city. 9 Unless the LORD of hosts Had left to us a very small remnant, We would have become like Sodom, We would have been made like Gomorrah.

The image of the shelter in the vineyard and the watchman’s hut are like small islands of refuge in a sea of desolation and destruction. Sodom and Gomorrah did not have any righteous remnant left within them once Lot and his family were removed.  In chapter’s thirty-six through thirty-nine, Isaiah relates the story of the siege of Sennacharib during the reign of king Hezekiah where all of Judah was overrun and only Jerusalem remained. If it was not for the grace of God, Jerusalem would have been lost as well.

The existence of a remnant does not mean that God would not execute judgment on them for their unfaithfulness to the covenant. In verse ten, Isaiah addresses a warning to the remnant as if they were Sodom and Gomorrah.

Isaiah 1:10 NKJV 10 Hear the word of the LORD, You rulers of Sodom; Give ear to the law of our God, You people of Gomorrah:

The concept of a faithful remnant is seen throughout Isaiah. And we see that this remnant is a righteous remnant that owes its salvation and existence solely to the grace of God! We also see that this remnant is the preserved true believers and covenant keepers from Israel.

The apostle Paul also speaks of a remnant of those who were faithful and believed God’s word, at one point, quoting Isaiah.

Romans 9:27-29 NKJV 27 Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel: "Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, The remnant will be saved. 28 For He will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, Because the LORD will make a short work upon the earth." 29 And as Isaiah said before: "Unless the LORD of Sabaoth had left us a seed, We would have become like Sodom, And we would have been made like Gomorrah."

So far in the opening chapter of Isaiah, we have read about the nature, judgment, and remnant of Judah’s rebellion. But there is more, there is hope! There is a cure for their iniquity and rebellion should they choose to accept it. Part of the cure we already read, but it deserves repeating. Isaiah presents the cure in verses sixteen through twenty.

Isaiah 1:16-20 NKJV 16 "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, 17 Learn to do good; Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor; Defend the fatherless, Plead for the widow. 18 "Come now, and let us reason together," Says the LORD, "Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool. 19 If you are willing and obedient, You shall eat the good of the land; 20 But if you refuse and rebel, You shall be devoured by the sword"; For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Isaiah tells Israel of the path to spiritual and ritual purity.  Their sickness can be cured, and they can be counted as the remnant. The first step is that they must wash themselves from the stain of their sin. The second step is they must do good. Doing good is the outward sign of true repentance. Living a life reflecting God’s righteous acts is a characteristic of repentance.

In verse seventeen, Isaiah tells them that they must learn to do good. Learning involves the study of the ways of God through His word. The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation is God’s instruction in righteous living. The apostle Paul spoke of this to Timothy.

2 Timothy 2:15 NKJV 15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Just learning God’s word on an intellectual level is not good enough.  The people Isaiah and the other prophets address were primarily the leaders, priests, and kings. They had come to know the words, the forms, and the rituals, but little else beyond that. Their religious practices had little substance. If the leadership is practicing an empty religion, how can they properly teach the people the ways of the LORD?

Isaiah puts some emphasis behind his words when he says that doing good means physically practicing justice for the vulnerable and less fortunate of their society.

In verse eighteen of our Haftarah, Isaiah indicates that the stain of their sin can be washed away, and the curse removed. Their sin is a crimson stain that can be made white again.  This is exactly what John referred to in Revelation

Revelation 1:5 NKJV 5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood,

In verses nineteen and twenty, Isaiah reminds Israel of the benefits of repentance and returning to covenant faithfulness. Isaiah restates the conditions recorded in Deuteronomy. The wording that Isaiah chooses emphasizes that obedience will bring blessings and disobedience, disaster.  But the important thing to remember is that nowhere, in Isiah’s prophecies or anywhere else is there ever a dissolution of the covenant God made with the Children of Israel at Mount Sinai!

At the close of the Haftarah reading, Isaiah finishes with stating the things that God alone will do. He gives a hint to the Messianic Age yet to come!

Isaiah 1:24-27 NKJV 24 Therefore the Lord says, The LORD of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel, "Ah, I will rid Myself of My adversaries, And take vengeance on My enemies. 25 I will turn My hand against you, And thoroughly purge away your dross, And take away all your alloy. 26 I will restore your judges as at the first, And your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city." 27 Zion shall be redeemed with justice, And her penitents with righteousness.

Ultimately all these things will only happen in their fullness when Messiah returns to rule from the throne of David in Jerusalem. God declares that He will redeem Jerusalem with justice and put an end to all His enemies. At the same time God’s judgment will fall on the unfaithful and unrepentant.

What we see in this opening chapter of Isaiah is a hint at the central, overarching theme of his entire book: the coming of Messiah and His atonement for His people! What is clear from Isaiah is that God alone is the only one able to redeem Israel. The righteousness of Messiah Yeshua and His atoning blood is the only path to the ultimate salvation of Israel. And it is that salvation through Messiah, which is open to all who call upon the LORD God of Israel!

Study Questions:

1. Discuss the connection of this teaching to the Torah Portion Devarim, Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22.

2. Isaiah describes the leadership of Judah and Jerusalem as being apostates practicing a dead or empty religion. Describe the problem they had with their religious practices. Discuss how they fell into this state and how we too can be trapped in empty ritual. Share personal experience if you wish.

3. What is the remnant described by Isaiah? How does this remnant affect the rest of the nation?

4. What are the possible ways to understand verse 1:18?  What is your interpretation and why?

5. What is the difference between the ways God judges the ungodly nations and the way he judges His own people?

6. What new insight did you gain from this teaching? How do you respond to this new insight? How will you realign your life based on this new understanding?

© 2019 Moed Ministries International. All rights reserved.

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[confrontingbabble-on]

When you appreciate that NT fundamentalist Jews (Jesus/Peter/Paul) were arguing that the OT Law did not have to be followed anymore...

...it sure makes fundamentalist Christians (followers of Jesus/Peter/Paul!) look stupid and ignorant...trying to selectively enforce some OT rules...on believers and unbelievers alike...two thousand years later...!

'…I, Paul, am telling you that if you let yourselves be (coerced to follow a particular OT law, ie circumcision), Christ will be of no benefit to you. Once again I testify to every man who lets himself be (coerced to follow a particular OT law, ie circumcision) that he is obliged to obey THE ENTIRE (OT) law. You who want to be justified by the law have cut yourselves off (pun intended!) from Christ; you have fallen away (more graphic pun intended!!) from grace.' (Gal. 5:2-4)

******

“... the New Testament is clearly hostile to those who encourage circumcision, and opposes rather than encourages the procedure. The reasons for this are set out plainly in the text and can be seen in the words of Jesus, Saint Peter and Saint Paul. As a result, most Christians throughout history have not practiced circumcision...

When Jesus attributed circumcision to the patriarchs he downgraded the importance of this ancient ritual from a command that comes from God to a custom of the patriarchs. Customs of the patriarchs may be overturned; a command from God is not so easy to ignore. Describing circumcision as an ancient custom undermines the belief that circumcision came from God. It was quite a risky thing for Jesus to say (See John 7:25).

This paved the way for Peter to attack circumcision and Paul to attack those who promote it.

However, Jesus' teaching on circumcision is entirely consistent with Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and other places. He was against over-zealous Sabbath-keeping (John 7), but was stricter in his teaching on anger and murder (Matt. 5:20-22), on adultery and lust (Matt. 5:27-28), divorce (Matt. 5:31-32), the taking of oaths (Matt. 5:33-37), on revenge (Matt. 5:39-42) and loving even your enemies (Matt. 5:43-48).

When he referred to specific examples of the ancient law, Jesus only said: 'You have heard that it was said…!! (Matt. 5:21; 5:27, 5:33, 5:45)

Jesus' teaching on circumcision was also consistent with the Acts of the Apostles, where the ancient food laws and the restrictions on mixing with Gentiles were overthrown (Acts 10:9-16, 24-30, 11:1-14), and where contrary to the Torah (Deut. 23:1), eunuchs were welcomed into the Church (Acts 8:26-39). Indeed, the requirement for circumcision (Acts 15:7-10) was just one of a number of the requirements of the Law that was abolished. 

Despite...'God said to Abraham, "As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations.... Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. Throughout your generations every male among you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old, including the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring. Both the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money must be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."' (Genesis 17: 9-14),13  No one follows this to the letter. Why? Slavery has been abolished! Today, no Jew, no matter how pious, has the right to hold slaves, and if a master should be so bold as to forcibly circumcise his 'servant' there would be an outcry!

Animal sacrifices have also become obsolete for Christian and Jew alike... Paul warned against following Jewish myths(!) (Titus 1:14) However, as Paul and other early Christians had rejected other parts of the Jewish heritage of that time, he may have considered parts of the Torah as mythical. The idea of rejecting any of the Torah as mythical may strike us as radical, but it certainly was firmly in Jewish tradition. 

Look at the words of Jeremiah: “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel:… [I]n the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them, "Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you." (Jer. 7:22-26)

We might think that Jesus was radical in saying that circumcision came from 'the fathers' (John 7:22), or that Paul may have been referring to Jewish myths outside the Hebrew Scriptures. However, these passages from Jeremiah show that one of the Bible's greatest prophets explicitly rejected animal sacrifices and charged that the false pen of the scribes had made the law - the Torah - into a lie! 

(Paul) saw the Jewish law as being abolished, because of Jesus (Eph. 2: 11-20)

(Peter) called circumcision and the Mosaic law an 'unbearable yoke'.

Paul who circumcised Timothy, or at least had him circumcised18, was to become the fiercest critic and opponent of circumcision and circumcisers in the New Testament. As we trace what he said from letter to letter we can see that his feelings about circumcisers and circumcision became more hostile as time went on.

'Listen! I, Paul, am telling you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you. Once again I testify to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obliged to obey the entire law. You who want to be justified by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.' (Gal. 5:1-4) 

In a later letter, dated between A.D 61 and 63,34 Paul is even more scathing about those who push circumcision. He called them dogs. 

In another late letter, one that has been dated as late as A.D. 65 or even A.D. 68,35 Paul slams ‘those of the circumcision’: 

This was not the end of it. In a later letter (A.D. 61-63) he accused circumcisers of operating for sordid gain, sowing dissension in families and churches. Most startling of all, Paul called circumcisers mutilators (A.D. 65-68).  Note Paul's increasing hatred of circumcisers and circumcision.

In Galatians, Paul was furious with circumcision advocates for upsetting the congregation and leading them away from Jesus and also Christianity but he also raised questions about the sexual motivation of those who pushed circumcision. In Philippians he accused circumcisers of being sexually deviant mutilators. Finally, in Titus, he said they were in it for the money.”

From... http://www.cirp.org/pages/cultural/glass1/

[ibilenews]

Ultra-Orthodox and trans: 'I prayed to God to make me a girl'

When Abby Stein came out as trans, she sent shock waves through the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community. A direct descendant of Hasidic Judaism's founder, The Baal Shem Tov, Abby's parents considered her their first-born son and a future rabbi - but she was adamant that she was a girl.

My dad is a rabbi, and having a son was a big deal. He would always tell me that after five girls he had almost given up on having a boy, and how much it meant to him. I almost felt bad for him throughout my childhood - a feeling of: "I'm so sorry, but I can't give you what you want."

I didn't know there were other people like me, but I knew what I felt - I just saw myself as a girl.

I sometimes wish that I'd had a teacher who was transphobic, because that would have meant I knew trans people existed. In the Hasidic community they simply never spoke about it.

What kept me sane during my childhood was my imagination.

When I was six I started collecting newspaper clippings about organ transplants - lung, kidney, heart and so on. In my mind, the plan was simple: one day, I would go to a doctor, show them my impressive collection of newspaper clippings, and they would perform a full body transplant, turning me into a girl.

When I got a bit older, I realised that wasn't realistic, so I came up with my next idea, which was to ask God. I grew up in a very religious family, and we were told God could do anything.

So, aged nine, I wrote this prayer that I said every night: "Holy creator, I'm going to sleep now and I look like a boy. I am begging you, when I wake up in the morning I want to be a girl. I know that you can do anything and nothing is too hard for you...

"If you do that, I promise that I will be a good girl. I will dress in the most modest clothes. I will keep all the commandments girls have to keep.

"When I get older, I will be the best wife. I will help my husband study the Torah all day and all night. I will cook the best foods for him and my kids. Oh God, help me."

The Hasidic community is the most gender-segregated society I've ever known or heard about - and I have researched gender-segregated communities quite a bit.

There are even some Hasidic communities in upstate New York where men and women are told to walk on separate sides of the streets - it's the closest thing that exists now to a 19th Century Eastern European Jewish shtetl (village).

From the second you start preschool, the sexes are totally separated. Boys and girls are told not to play together.

Even though in Jewish law there is no prohibition against hugging or holding hands with your sister or mom, when I was growing up it was still considered something Hasidic boys shouldn't do.

I never saw anyone naked. I did not know that my sisters and I had different body parts down under. It was never discussed.

Even so, when I was four years old I had this intense feeling of anger towards my own private parts. They didn't feel like part of me. It was an extremely strong feeling that I cannot explain to this day.

At that time, my mom would prepare the bath and let me play with the toys in the bathtub.

She used to keep a small tray of safety pins in the cabinet by the sink, so I would sneak out and take these safety pins and prick this one very specific part of my body.

It's not something that I encourage anyone to do, but I wanted to make it feel pain, almost like punishing it.

One time my mom walked in on me as I was doing this and she freaked out. I don't remember what she said exactly, but it was a very clear message that: "You are a boy and you're supposed to act like one, and don't ever say anything that might challenge that."

At the age of three, Hasidic boys have their first haircut, called the upsherin, which is when you get the side curls, or payos. That's the first kind of physical manifestation that indicates to the world - and to yourself - that you are a boy.

I did not want to have that haircut. I was throwing a temper tantrum for hours. "I want to have long hair! Why can my sisters have long hair and I can't?"

At 13, I had my bar mitzvah, which is when a boy becomes a man - so that was very tough.

I have some positive memories of it, like having a party and getting lots of gifts, but the concept of: "You are now a man," was really challenging. It was a celebration I felt I shouldn't be having.

If you want to get a sense of how isolated the Hasidic community is, until I was 12 I thought that the majority of people in the world were Jewish and that the majority of Jews were ultra-Orthodox - neither of which is correct.

Take any aspect of pop culture of the 90s - Britney Spears, or Seinfeld - I didn't even know it existed.

I didn't speak English until I was 20, just Yiddish and Hebrew. At school we just learned the ABCs and how to write our names and addresses, and that only lasted from fourth to eighth grade, for an hour a day - and even that hour was split between English and maths. Maths only went up to the level of long division, and we never touched any science or history, outside of some Jewish history.

The expectation, growing up, was that I would work as a teacher or rabbinical judge.

If you lead a synagogue or teach at a school in the Hasidic community, you're also called a rabbi, regardless of whether you have been ordained or not - but I actually wanted to be ordained. There were several reasons why.

Part of it was that I wanted to know exactly what I was rebelling against - my struggle with my identity as a woman meant I questioned everything I was being told about religion and God. At school, they called me the "kosher rebel".

At the same time, another part of me was hoping that if I really gave my entire self to it, all these feelings about who I was were just magically going to go away.

When I was 16, I immersed myself in Jewish mysticism, called Kabbalah. That was where I first came across a religious text that justified my existence.

In a 16th Century study of human souls called The Door of Reincarnation, I read: "At times, a male will reincarnate in the body of a female, and a female will be in a male body."

It gave me hope that maybe I wasn't crazy.

Even though I knew I was really a woman, I had an arranged marriage like everyone in the Hasidic community. You're born, you eat, you breathe, you get married at age 18.

My parents set it up. My bride had to come from a rabbinical dynasty and adhere to the same dress codes, which in my family are extremely unusual - so much so that there were probably only 20 to 50 girls in the entire world that were acceptable matches.

Fraidy and I met for about 15 to 20 minutes, and then we were engaged. We didn't meet again until our wedding, a year later.

At first, things went well. I liked her, she's an amazing woman, really smart and loving. We had great conversations, we never fought. As far as arranged marriages go, it was perfect.

It was the first time I had lived with a woman, which felt good. She was quite fashionable, and when we went shopping it was a way of putting myself in her shoes and thinking: "Oh, what would I get?"

Hasidic men wear black and white clothes with almost no choices whatsoever. Women get to explore a bit more, although it has to be modest, and certain colours, like red and pink, are off-limits.

But when Fraidy got pregnant, I really struggled. It was as if everything - gender, religion, my family, my son - was collapsing in on me and punching me.

It was like gender was hitting me in the face, it was just so present - what kind of clothes we were going to buy for the baby, whether we were going to do a circumcision on the eighth day - it was impossible not to face it every second.

My son's birth was the final, knock-out punch. I wanted to give my child the best life possible, but how could I, if, by the age of 20, I didn't even know what "a good life" was?

So I went online.

I knew that there was a place called the internet where you could connect with people and find information. There was such a strong focus on telling us how not to connect to the internet by mistake that I had learned about Wi-Fi and Google.

I borrowed a friend's tablet and hid in a toilet cubicle at a shopping centre that had public Wi-Fi.

My first search was whether a boy could turn into a girl - in Hebrew, I didn't speak English at the time - and on the first or second page of the results, there was the Wikipedia page about transgender people. That was the first time I learned the term and realised there were other people who felt like me.

Imagine struggling with something, whether it's physical or emotional, and you go to a doctor or therapist who for the first time in your life tells you: "Oh, what you are feeling is called XYZ, and here is what you can do to feel better, to find your place in the world."

Another amazing discovery was that there was a community of people online who had left ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic communities and had not just survived, but thrived.

A few weeks later I stopped being religious. I don't think it was obvious to many people because I was still living a religious life outwardly, but I stopped observing - for example, I started using my phone on Shabbat... anything that people wouldn't see.

My wife was the first person in the community that I spoke to about it, about six months after our son's circumcision.

I didn't leave my marriage. For a year, we tried to save it, but my ex was forced to leave me by her family. They took her away, quite literally. I lived in our apartment for the next few weeks, hoping that she and my son would come back.

Then, for a while, I moved back in with my parents. When I came out to my dad as an atheist, he said, "No matter what happens, you are still my child."

Once I realised that there was no way for me to live with my son full-time, I decided there was nothing left in the community for me.

Leaving is like emigrating - not just to a new country, but a new continent. It's a new century. It's time travel!

Suddenly, I was in a world where there were unlimited options for food and clothing. I bought my first pair of jeans and a red-and-white checked shirt. I always sucked at male fashion.

Language was the biggest obstacle to overcome, because when you grow up in New York, people expect you to speak English.

For three years I didn't speak to anyone in my family about my gender. I came out to my dad on 11 November 2015, a few months after starting hormone therapy.

It took my dad about an hour to even grasp what I was telling him, and that was thanks to certain religious texts that I showed him - one of which was the passage about male and female souls that I had discovered when I was studying Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism.

My dad admitted that trans people exist, which was quite impressive, because a lot of fundamentalist religious communities don't.

Then he told me: "You need to have a person who has Holy Spirit, in order to be able to tell you if you are really trans."

My reaction was: "I think two therapists and a doctor are good enough."

But he obviously disagreed, and a few minutes after that he pretty much told me that he would never talk to me again.

At that moment, it really hurt. But the reality was that by the time I came out, it was already three years after I had left the Hasidic community. I had enrolled in college, and was a member of some extremely progressive and amazing Jewish and queer communities - so I didn't lose any friends and my life wasn't upended by the rift with my family.

I still text my parents every week - my dad, my mom doesn't even have text messages - and the day that they are ready to talk to me, I will talk with them.

My ex-wife was not allowed to speak to me from the second we got divorced. My son is the love of my life.

I like to focus on the silver lining: instead of thinking about the 10 siblings who don't speak to me, I focus on the two who do. Anyway, most people I know nowadays outside the Hasidic community only have two siblings, if that.

Life is actually better than I could have ever imagined. I used to struggle with depression almost non-stop. Since I came out, I haven't had a day of waking up and feeling that there's no reason for me to wake up. Before I transitioned, there were days that I felt like that.

Being out as ourselves, being trans, being LGBTQ, is something that creates a life worthy of celebration, not just worthy of living. It's beautiful.

I was the first person in the Hasidic community to come out as trans, but there have been quite a few people since, and obviously, I'm being blamed for that.

I definitely think I can take some credit for it - the Hasidic community is never going to be the same again.

Abby Stein's autobiography is called Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman

[rethinkingthefaith]

Rethinking the Purpose of the Crucifixion

The cross has long been the chief emblem of Christianity. The New Testament writings give it a preeminent place. The death of Christ is said to have reconciled us to God, defeated the principalities and powers, destroyed death, provided a ransom, removed our sins. Everywhere, we have language that conveys this idea: The death of Jesus has brought us life.

Out of this language have come elaborate theories of the atonement. These theological formulas attempt to explain how a Jewish preacher's death two millennia ago could remove our sins. Chief among these theories today is penal substitution. For multitudes of Christians, it is the only conceivable way to view the crucifixion; it is the dogma of evangelistic tracts and conservative preachers.

In a nutshell, the doctrine is as follows:

God, because He is infinitely holy, cannot look upon or tolerate sin in His creation.

At the same time, God loves us and desires our fellowship.

This poses a problem of sorts for God, because He must be true to His justice, which demands retribution against all sin.

The cross is a resolution to this problem. God poured out his wrath upon Jesus, who took our place at Calvary. He was punished in our stead.

Because of the cross, God's justice is satisfied and he is free to welcome us into His presence.

This idea draws support from passages that speak of Christ bearing our sins. According to penal substitution, God vicariously imputed our sins in some mysterious way to Jesus, who suffered for them—just as if he had been the guilty party.

Despite its popularity, the view has some serious difficulties.

For one thing, it asserts that Jesus bore the actual punishment due all people while he was on the cross. The punishment that rightly falls on us fell on him, we hear. But what is the punishment that conservative orthodoxy tells us awaits the sinner? To endure the agonies of a cross for several hours and expire?

I ask this with all gravity, knowing that we are speaking of something supremely solemn: What punishment did Jesus literally bear? The Adventist believes the punishment of sin is permanent extinction of being, annihilation. But Jesus was not annihilated forever—he lives on. The traditionalist believes that sinners will go to hell forever. But Jesus certainly did not do this, either.

Again, this is not an attempt to make light of something so profoundly serious. The point is to show how the penal substitution theory fails to connect the cross to the sinner's ultimate punishment in a literal way.

At this stage, we will get arguments about "equivalence of punishment." Christ's death on the cross may not be the same punishment as ours, but is equal to it because Jesus is the Son of God. All such speculation brings us far outside of Scripture, which never tells us that God exacts one debt from our substitute and a different one from us.

Another problem is that penal substitution undermines the concept of forgiveness. Forgiveness is the free discharge of a debt, not the exacting of payment from another. Suppose a landlord is ready to evict a tenant, but at the last minute receives payment from a tenant's friend. We can never say that the landlord forgave the debt—he didn't. He simply got paid by someone else. Penal substitution unintentionally contradicts the free forgiveness it proclaims.

"Be mindful of your mercy…. Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions," wrote the Psalmist. "According to your steadfast love remember me for your goodness' sake, O Lord" (Psalm 25:6-7). God here forgives because of His "mercy," "steadfast love" and "goodness." That benevolent disposition is always the ground of divine forgiveness. Jesus told us to pray, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" (Matt. 6:12). Do we withhold forgiveness until we have exacted payment, either from the transgressor or a substitute? No, we are bidden to forgive as God forgives: freely, abundantly and mercifully.

It is unreasonable to demand one simple explanation of Calvary and its relationship to our redemption. After all, many different views of the atonement have ascended, then fallen over the centuries of church history. The ransom-to-Satan theory, Anselm's theory and many others have come and gone.

The implications of the cross are too vast to fit into a credal "one liner." Christ's death is multi-faceted. The following is an attempt to approach the truth of that staggering event from several directions.

One of the aspects of the cross seldom appreciated by mainstream Christians is its role in defeating "the powers" or "the authorities." In Colossians, Paul writes, "[Jesus] disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it [the cross]" (2:15).

The system crucified Jesus. First, the religious authorities handed him over to be killed. Then the Roman government, the most powerful secular force on earth, carried out the deed. The evil system of this world –- the one that adheres to "might makes right," that seeks power over others and crushes its rivals—fastened our Lord to the tree. The authorities sought to wipe him out the way it had done with thousands of others: brute force.

Jesus stood up against the authorities with the weapons of humility, nonviolence and trust in his God. He defied the sword, the spear, the lash. And he triumphed. He started a movement that swept across the globe, despite all efforts of the system to destroy him. Now, the name of Caesar is little more than a curiosity of history buffs; the name of Jesus holds sway over millions.

In an act of nonviolent resistance, Jesus defied the evil world system of domination, and won out. Calvary’s cross has beaten the principalities and powers in a public display of meekness.

The cross is an open and graphic condemnation of the violent world system.

There is another simple way of looking at the cross, one that remains true to Hebrew figures of speech. It also takes seriously the ethics of Jesus as a crucial part of redemption. It is simply this: Jesus went about preaching the kingdom of God, calling his hearers to radical love, peace and selflessness. He introduced God as a loving Father in heaven. He befriended the lowest of sinners, urging them to repent. Throughout his ministry, Jesus wonderfully transformed lives and set people free. Despite his knowledge that certain death awaited him were he to continue his ministry, Jesus pressed on. He laid aside self-interest to do the will of his Father, and was crucified for it.

That death was a manifestation of everything God calls us to be. Like Jesus, we must lay aside our own interest for the imperatives of love. When we do this, we experience redemption from what we once were. Had Jesus lived out a long life, modifying his message to keep himself alive, his words may no longer reach us through the ages. But he sealed his words in his own blood, forever imprinting them on the human consciousness.

Jesus ratified a New Covenant with his death. His blood was the stamp upon the proclamation of a new era—an era of unmatched grace and forgiveness. The cross is a marker suspended in history, dividing the age of ethnic favor and the age of "whosoever will." Therefore, the blood of Christ cleanses us from our sins.

We sometimes hear this kind of language applied to patriotic themes. "The blood of the patriots has made us free," someone might say. Does he mean this in a mysterious sense, a literal sense? Everyone knows this is not the case; he is saying that the deaths of these people set in motion events that led to our freedom. If we can understand such usage in secular language, why not in sacred?

Calvary set in motion the events that gave birth to the Christian church. It was also a symbol of inclusiveness—the Old Testament sacrificial system that built walls between Jew and Gentile, male and female, was fulfilled. Christ was "hanged on a tree," a cursed condition under Old Covenant law (Gal. 3:13). Therefore, he could relate to the needs of the "cursed" Gentiles who wished to know God. The death of Christ, accordingly, brings redemption to those once shrouded in darkness.

The cross was also the vehicle to the resurrection appearances that so galvanized the disciples. Without his death, Jesus could not have risen. The hope of life beyond death is bound up in the fact that Jesus died and yet now lives. Therefore, the death of Christ brings us life.

Why do we need a doctrine of atonement beyond this? Is the beauty of Jesus' resignation to death not obscured when we turn it all into a cosmic transaction that automatically "fixes" our legal standing with God? With all due respect, penal substitution seems to turn us from the Hebrew thought world, with its grand figures of speech and metaphors, and usher us into the mist of Greek speculation.

And what of this dilemma within the nature of God, the alleged struggle between His justice and His love? This doctrine reduces the death of Christ to the fulfillment of a legal obligation to which God was supposedly bound. Strangely enough, this view suggests that the cross reconciled God to Himself—it furnished God with a kind of "escape clause" whereby He might now be merciful in a way He could not be before. But doesn't this turn the death of Jesus to a kind of divine legalism?

Yet, many will insist that the Bible clearly teaches penal substitution. They will point out, for example, that Scripture sometimes tells us that Christ "bore our sins." Is this not an indication that the early Christians believed in penal substitution? This is a possible interpretation, and such a view may be a "minority report" from Scripture. But this is not the only way to interpret such passages.

First of all, we must ask this question: Did Christ "bear" our sins (1) for the purpose of suffering for them in our stead, or (2) for the purpose of carrying them away from us (symbolic language)? The latter makes more sense, given the entire scope of the Bible's message.

One text sheds abundant light on this subject. During his healing ministry, Christ is said to have fulfilled the words of Isaiah, "He took our infirmities and bore our diseases." (Matt. 8:17) Note here that by healing, Jesus was "bearing" the people's diseases. Was he taking them upon himself and becoming sick in their stead? Not at all—he was "bearing" their sicknesses away from them by imparting wholeness. Metaphorically speaking, he was picking up their sicknesses and transporting them away from the sufferers.

In the same way, Christ's death carries our sins away from us by teaching us love, self-denial and goodness. An ethical view of the cross does justice to Christ's bearing of sin. This is consistent with the Old Testament image of the scapegoat, which symbolically carried away the sins of Israel into the wilderness.

Another argument commonly advanced in favor of penal substitution involves the burnt offerings of the Mosaic law. The sacrifices presumably took the place of the penitent, just as Christ takes our place. But the real point of the Old Covenant sacrifices was not the animal's death nor its sufferings. The bullock was not being "punished" in the place of the sinner. Its death was swift and sure, involving little agony.

The main issue of the sacrifice was the application of the blood. The death of the animal was itself only the beginning of the sacrifice. Elaborate ritual surrounding the use of blood was the essence of atonement, a practice fraught with mystery. Whatever its meaning, and however it may typify the crucifixion, the Mosaic sacrifices bear little resemblance to penal substitution.

I believe that we preserve the grandeur of Calvary when we view it as a means of sanctification. Jesus' death works a change in us so that we give up our sinful, self-absorbed life and walk in his steps. This is salvation, the life of cross-carrying discipleship. But for many Christians, the response here is automatic. Christianity is not about living right or being selfless, but simply about accepting Jesus as Savior and believing in his vicarious atonement. The death of Christ is more about getting us "off the hook" for our sins than about making us better people, they tell us.

The New Testament, however, supports the idea that Christ died chiefly to bring us into a state of transcendent goodness. Note the following:

"He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people who are zealous of good deeds." (Titus 2:14)

The cross is here set forth as a means of purification and good works, not a means of changing our legal standing in God's eyes.

"He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed." (1 Pet. 2:24)

Here we find the familiar idea of Jesus bearing sin, but for the purpose of making us "live for righteousness," not for the purpose of intercepting our punishment in a substitutionary way.

"And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them." (2 Cor. 5:15)

Clearly, the cross was designed to turn us away from self-centered living to follow Jesus.

The message of the cross should always be coupled with the message of discipleship. We must take up our cross and follow Christ in a life of servanthood and love. It is common for the New Testament authors to speak of the cross, then to speak of our need to "die" to sin and self-centeredness. And that is the crucial point—the grand objective of the crucifixion. It is for our sanctification that Jesus gave his life. Paul's declaration "I am crucified with Christ" should be ours.

But is there no place for the idea that Jesus in his death effected our redemption in a way that goes beyond ethics? Is the forgiveness of sins not tied in some way to Calvary? This I will not deny. I leave room for that possibility in my belief system. But I will say that such ideas must be regarded as mysteries hidden within the Divine.

When we speak of the crucifixion, we ought not devise theories, but sit in awe of such great condescension.