Parasha Beshalach

As I was reading this weeks parasha we are remembering the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a generation that no longer is with us.  This event is very pertinent because it is tied to many events described in the Torah, Pharaoh tried to destroy Israel, Amelek tried to destroy Israel, so many other villains have tried. This puts me at a place where I saw myself in front of the sea of reeds, literally I have been there it is a nice place, it was warm full of tourists, just like most resorts.   However in life we come face to face wit a situation where we are faced with an insurmountable situation a sea in front of us we cannot cross nor overcome.  Additionally we have a pursuing enemy in our backs and every time we turn back to look we see our impending doom.  So far the picture is bleak and not very encouraging, your mind must be saying, where are you going with this rabbi?

Follow me for a second and I will try and explain my thoughts, you see I am aware that many of us are almost willing to give up.  I’ll just sounder and let it be, but sometimes our enemy is way too cruel, and its not death that it wants from us but extreme suffering.  What comes to mind is that today I was reading about a prominent Christian rock leader that did just that look around and gave up, now he decries the existence of HaShem, all because he looked around and looked at what others were doing.  He gave up on G-d and it sounds absurd and even obtuse, its like saying  I give up on air and renouncing its existence therefore there is no wind.   You see this individual stood at the edge of his sea and looked back and gave up, better a slave in Egypt that a free man in the wilderness.

You see perception is everything, in the case of this individual that gave up on G-d and looked to science to reject G-d, I look at science and I see G-d everywhere.  Its about perception, we perceive according to our circumstances, if we are alone and our vision of the world is dim then our perception is small and dim. n However if we stand on the foundation of HaShem and Torah, then our perception is limitless.  The Sons of Israel were looking from a dim perception, even though they had seen miracles, however, they were miracles at a distance and not yet at a personal level.  

As you stand like Israel did in front of a sea, do not look at the sea from your perspective but try your hardest to look at it from HaShem’s perspective, then your perception is limitless.  Then you will see, the sea part open and you will walk in dry land and your enemies will drown in the sea that was trapping you.  Not only that as we cross over the sea we enter the wilderness, where the bitter waters become sweet, mana is given and even quail, but above all Torah is given, Instruction for eternal life, the living torah is given and comes to live in you.

What is my sea in front of me?

Who is my enemy perusing me?

What is my perception based on?

Am I ready to enter the wilderness?

What’s in a name?

As I study this parasha I cannot but stop and wonder , what’s on a name.  We are so accustomed to today’s regimes to labelling everything we do and see.  in our tendency of labelling everything we come up with names such as, old trusty, thumper, swifty just to name a few. even our congregation we like to identify ourselves as Aleph Tav, meaning we are followers of Messiah Yeshua, he was the Aleph and the Tav, encompassing the whole of creation.  The reason behind I suppose is that it gives us a certain degree of comfort, as we can then identify ourselves which that surrounding us.

In this parasha HaShem takes particular care to reveal to us, that the new Pharaoh did not know Joseph, I guess history was not his forte.  So I stated whats in a name, well, in ancient times the name represented the character of the individual, it described the person as well as his character, it was common also that a person would go through name changes as he lived life and influential events took place in their lives.  To this day some of these customs still applies, in Judaism and Catholicism is the case.  For example a new pope always undergoes a name change, and at this stage you are probably thinking whats the pope got to do with parasha, everything and nothing, its just an illustration on how ancient customs still remains.

So the new ruler of Egypt did not know or did not wanted to know, what is evident is that he feared the Bnei Yisrael, the children of Israel. The saviour of Egypt no longer relevant, and now his family are being persecuted due to fear.  additionally this teaches us that perception of one self can make a big difference on our outcome, and as in this case the overseers over the children of Israel were in most cases Israelites themselves, as it was thecae during the holocaust. Fear drives men to do unspeakable things. Not knowing whom we are causes us to fear, to move our focus from our dependance, HaShem, and into self, our own strength and ego, thus fear creeps in and leads us into the path of destruction of self as the individual, and self as a whole.

In Messiah’s time a similar theme occurred, the leaders of Israel, the Sadducees, and some Pharisees rejected and falsely accused messiah Yeshua, they went as far as instigating and handing over Yeshua to Gentiles for his execution.  You they did not know HaShem and had forgotten his name, His character.  To the point that the high priest was no longer of the Aaronic blood line, and the status of high priest was bought and sold as a commodity, to the highest bidder.

Two thousand years have elapsed since Yeshua came, gave his life, as atonement for the whole of humanity, ascended to the right hand of the father and we await his return, the question now remains, are we like pharaoh have we forgotten his name, his character.  Are we willing to place a burden on His children, to execute his young, enslave his people out fear of our own self inflicted ignorance?  These are some of the questions we need to ask ourselves.

Miketz ‘at the end’

Well this week has been rather heavy for our nation, we’ve seen innocent people taken from our mist.  From what we are told both of these brother and sister, acted with courage and bravery, putting their lives in the line in order to save others.  I believe that is befitting to remember them and their families, as this parasha deals with the life of one placed in front of the life of many.  All heroes in my eyes no matter what people may say, the bravery and unselfish acts speaks what this nation was based on, Torah.   As Australians we call ourselves Christians, in terms that we understand in Judaism we say we are founded in messianism, with Yeshua at the very core of our foundation.

In this parasha we find that there are so many foreshadows of being displayed by Joseph, about the one that was to come and redeem all from our sorry state of despair.  You see Joseph was falsely accused of impropriety and was thrown into jail, two years went by and he was still there waiting for someone to speak favourably about him and released from his confinement.  All the suffering and isolation, the rejection and the fact that at anyone time Joseph would have thought, I will never see my father again nor my family etc.  Yet he had the assurance that whatever his situation, HaShem was in control.  Joseph’s two years is a foreshadow  of what Messiah had to go through, He, Messiah too was rejected by his own kind his hebrew brothers, the people of Israel.  

How He, was falsely accused and handed over to the enemy, the non people  and they in turn imprisoned him and eventually executed him with a gruesome death.  At this stage I have to say this is my own interpretation from what I read in the Torah and the Apostolic writings.  You see HaShem says one year is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one year.  It has been approximately two thousands years since messiah ascended to the right hand of the Father, and and if the pattern, as its usually the case,  repeats its self, we then come to the realisation that just as the brothers of Joseph met him and did not recognise him, so too the Jewish nation do not recognise Yeshua the Messiah.  

You see, Joseph, was assimilated into the Egyptian culture and people, to the point that he no longer looked , acted, nor sounded Hebrew.  Right now in the Western world, the same can be said of Yeshua, He is no longer recognised by His own people, Yeshua is considered the Gentile Messiah, and not the Jewish Messiah.  In our current times the Jesus that is presented to the the Jewish people is a foreign man, not Jewish at all, a Hellenistic figure or character, one that fits the description of Deuteronomy 13.  One that comes to test, to proof, the children of Israel to see if they will leave and follow after other’s peoples gods.

How we present Yeshua (Jesus) to the Jewish people makes a significant difference, whether He is going to be accepted or rejected.  Yeshua is the Jewish Messiah, the one that teaches us how to observe and keep Torah, the way it was meant to be.  As Joseph ended up being the one that rescued and saved his family from certain deaths, so is Yeshua, the one that saves us from certain spiritual death, a far more serious case at hand.  As a Jew I feel more complete, knowing that Yeshua is the Jewish Messiah, my aim is to be a better chassid than the Chassid's.  As Messianic gentile, one that has been grafted into the vine the root of Israel, your aim is to also learn from the root of vine and its people, to be a chassid, to act as the people, that you are now, part of one of tribe, to bring honour and glory to HaShem, by living Kiddush HaShem.

Questions to ponder

How do I live Kiddush HaShem

What does it mean to be Grafted in

What other foreshadow do we find in this parasha

Looking at Joseph’s life. What is my purpose in this life

Miketz, at the end have we lived our purpose?

Parasha Vayetze

Parasha Vayetze

So here we are, rushing through life one appointment after another. Is life getting the best of you?  Well it should, this week’s parasha is jam packed with goodies, we have so much that it will be impossible to study all of it in one week. Take for example my wife, she is still stuck two parasha’s ago with her reading, as she slowly progresses through it she is unravelling it one word at a time and savouring every spiritual morsel she can.  So what does that have to do with this week’s parasha, you may ask? Well a lot, this week’s parasha starts with the statement  that Yaakov left his house and was on his way to Haran, to his relatives.  

We all know the story, he rests his head on rock and has a dream, where as some of us rest our rock on a pillow.  The story continues that Yaakov arrives and greets his relatives, waters the flock and falls in love.  He agrees to work for his love and is deceived, his love is so great that he is prepared to work a further seven years for his love.  In the meantime, the two sisters have a small competition running, who is going to bless Yaakov the most with sons.  

The contest is even, greater as to who Yaakov will show the most attention. Further to this he now sees his blessing and how his house and everything he does is being blessed, so he strikes another deal to work for wages and to see the hand of God deal plentifully with him.  He worked hard, used unusual methods and had increase in the number of flocks, that would be his wages.  So much so that his relatives started a campaign of disinformation, and libel accusations.  It is at this stage that I make this connection with how my wife is dealing with her parasha reading, you see I can observe her growth in knowledge by the time and effort, she puts in her Torah study.  

Prosperity is a biblical concept that is sometimes misunderstood; the way one prospers according to this passage is through hard work.  Yaakov was promised a blessing and an inheritance, but if he just sat there by the rock, then he would be minus the wives, the children, the flock, the servants and the wealth acquired.  For one to prosper there needs to be obedience, commitment, trust and hard work. 

This leads us to another interesting part of this parasha; we see that when HaShem told Yaakov that it was time to return his land and his family, trust waivered, first in telling his father in-law, then when it was time to meet his brother.

He may have had cause to fear his brother but he had more cause to trust his God, our God that will keep His promise to prosper and care for him.  He was promised the inheritance and the land and the blessing of all nations to be blessed in him, same as father Abraham, Yitsak.  He had also promised God that upon his return he would give a tithe of all that he was given by HaShem.  This is crucial because he failed to do just that, instead he gave his tithe to his brother Esau for fear of being killed and losing his family.  Yet even though he failed to do what he promised, HaShem kept his promise and protected him.  However he had to pay for his non-compliance and was therefore banished from the land of his promise to Mitzrayim (Egypt), not forcibly by vanquishing enemy but by the hand of HaShem.  Yaakov had two  evictions from the land both of them at the hand of HaShem, Similarly his children have had two diasporas, I am a child of the dispersion, as are so many more that don’t know it yet. A heavy price to pay for lack of trust and disobedience and or a combination of both.

Insidiousness

Insidiousness

What is more insidious, the murder of Jews at the hand of the inquisition, pogroms, the ovens of the holocaust and at the hands of muslim terrorists or the destruction of the Jewish soul, the insidiousness of psychological persecution.  Psychological persecution caused the forced conversion and eventual walk away from the faith and trust of HaShem, resulting of the loss of the Jewish soul and identity.  The physical destruction of complete families was a complete catastrophe, but a greater catastrophe is the loss of a single Jewish soul let alone a complete family line through assimilation.

Today I am grateful for HaShem’s grace, for He redeemed me, like He redeemed my forefathers out of Egypt; He became the shield of my salvation, like He was to my Fathers Abraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov. He has done so, so many times I can only be grateful and it’s my mission to teach as many people as possible of HaShem’s greatness, compassion and love, that He looked down on me through the generations that were lost to the faith, how my closest ancestors hid their Jewishness and suppressed the memory of where we came from.  HaShem brought us back to this time, this generation, to rekindle the Jewish spark within me, He rekindled the special Jewish soul within me.  You see first he rescued me through Messiah Yeshua, when I thought I was a just a gentile, He then proceeded to rescue me back from the world, back to my family, back to the Jewish home, to restore my Jewish soul, He returned to me a precious pearl found within the identity of my people.

Once again what is more insidious the murder of the Jewish body or the murder of the Jewish soul? To me it is clear they are both insidious but the murder of the Jewish soul is more gravely insidious, it happened before and is still happening, my job is to stop it and to declare that we are His people and without him we are lost forever.  To reignite the special spark of the Jewish soul, which he has gifted His people that is my calling that is my mission and may He give the strength and the wisdom to fulfil my mission.

Odd Answer

We sometimes read a passage in the Torah or the apostolic writings and the wording seems odd, just does not make plane sense at all.  I guess if we travel back in time and use words such as email, or tweeter me, we know because it was wickipedia, it would make absolute nonsense to the audience of yesteryears.  It is for this reason that I started looking at some these passages that at face value make and do not make any sense at all. 

Now let me warn you! as Jew I make a few statements "in judaism", the reason for this is that the Torah and the Apostolic writings were written, under the guidance of the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit of HaShem), by Jews for Jews.  Therefore they need to understood under the cultural lens of a Hebrew mindset, otherwise it will be misrepresented or misunderstood. 

In Yohanan (John) 3:1-7 Yeshua is talking to a teacher of the Torah, and makes a profound statement, "unless one is born of water and spirit, he can't enter into the Kingdom of God!".  We all know this story, we have heard it at Sunday school, from the pulpit on countless teaching.  Very well used in many teachings and preaching a as part of evangelism.  I have heard so many angles on this but most of these revolve around two typical concepts.

One- The concept that first you must have a physical birth, in other words you must be born.  No rocket science here, if you are not born, then you cannot be born again, that makes sense one logic follows the other.  A lot has been taught that we are dead because of sin. Therefore in order to look at this passage we need to define some things.  First lets start with Torah, it does not equal law, it means instruction, guidance from the root word Yarah a term used in archery, meaning to hit the mark.  Sin, Chatah in Hebrew, is the opposite to Torah, is missing the mark.  So now that we have a couple of definitions we can continue with this odd statement.  

So we are born in the flesh but are dead in the spirit, we need to be born again, but it says that we need to be born of water and of the spirit.  So the Nicodemus was right to be puzzled, how can one be born again in the flesh and be alive in the spirit?  It is a logical question that requires some thought. Two- What was Yeshua talking about, what does it mean being born of water?  In the physical and I have heard this many times in churches and sermon's, when we are in the womb we are suspended in water, hence before our birth the breaking of water.  In Judaism the mikvah (a body of water that one can be fully immersed) has to be in natural running water termed מים חיים   mayim chayim "living water" so in order to tevilah (Immerse ) the waters must be living waters. Judaism has the same concept that being in the water is like being in the womb and once we come out the third time out of the water, the sages say we are reborn to the world.  For the same token when one goes under the waters of in the act of tevilah, one must be as he came into the world no personal belongings and it is a very private occasion.  Ofcourese if you are making a public testament by your actions decorum and modesty must prevail. So the connection has always being made to the waters of immersion to the first part, being born of water, the association is made to tevilah or commonly known as baptism from the Greek language, that means immersion. On the surface this is a good analogy, but I believe that there is more to it.

Let me explain why, I believe there is a deeper meaning and Yeshua choses this terminology for a good reason.  In Judaism it is common to use word association to describe sacred objects or names or persons of repute. As you know the name of G-d is spelled by four Hebrew letters that to this day there is all kinds of disputes as to how it should be pronounced, no I am not going to tackle this now, but I will use it as an example. יהוה YHVH in Hebrew letters as it is written is never pronounced out loud for fear of taking His name in vane or profaning His name.  Therefore there are a number of ways of saying the name without saying it, examples are HaShem the Name, Adonai my Master, HaShamayim The Heavens etc, you get the drift. 

In Judaism the Torah is sometimes referred to as water, in other words come drink of the waters of life, implies come partake of the Torah, He plants me by the water, Psalms 1:3: He will be like a tree planted by the streams of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also does not wither. Whatever he does shall prosper. Additionally he also uses the analogy of living water when he addresses the Samaritan woman, Yohanan 4:10: Yeshua answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”  In the same Book of Yohanan (John) it starts with the assertion: Yohanan 1:1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Yohanan 1:2: The same was in the beginning with God. Yohanan 1:3: All things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that has been made. Yohanan 1:4: In him was life, and the life was the light of men. Yohanan 1:5: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn’t overcome it. 

Again the word here is Torah, same as living water. One more resource that speaks of Torah being synonymous with water, Thirsty For Torah It is the midrash that lifts the episode out of the ordinary. On the verse, "They travelled three days in the wilderness and found no water" (22), some mystically inclined Rabbis opined: "Water actually stands for Torah, as it is said (by Isaiah, 55:1), 'Ho, all who are thirsty, come for water.' Having gone for three days without Torah, the prophets among them stepped forth and legislated that the Torah should be read on the second and fifth days of the week as well as on Shabbat so that they would not let three days pass without Torah" (Babylonian Talmud, BavaKama 82a), (Source http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/bshalah_jts.shtml).

So if we now take Yeshua’s statement "unless one is born of water and spirit, he can't enter into the Kingdom of God!" we can re write it as "unless one is born of the Torah and spirit, he can't enter into the Kingdom of God!".  Yeshua came to uphold the Torah and not do away with it, He Yeshua is the doorway to HaShem, the Father.  Through Teshuvah, that is repentance, turning away from our own ways and facing HaShem, we can only be born of the Torah, which then makes us be born of the spirit through his mercy and grace, as we were dead in the spirit but now we are alive in and through Yeshua.  The operative word here is teshuvah, repentance, with true repentance then we can be born of the living Torah, a new creature a member of the kingdom of HaShem. Remember repentance is not just a once off it is a constant check and balance of our life and our guide the Torah is the mirror by which we guide ourselves.

The sign of Yonah (Jonah)

The sign of Yonah, why mention it?

Well here we are 2014, and I was talking to my wife this morning as we usually do on Shabbat.  The conversation kind of started with the Torah, based on this weeks parasha, and some how it progressed towards the Apostolic writings and today's worldly current affair.  As we usually do on Shabbat mornings conversations, no rush, no need to be making lunches and running after the dogs trying to take them out as we leave in our daily routine.  But on Shabbats, we all chill, we talk, the dogs sleep, and we concentrate on talking Torah.  So what does this got to do with Jonah, you may think?  Well you see it started with the Sh’ma, it followed on with Deuteronomy 11:13 and we ended with Yeshua saying the sign of the son of man is the sign of Jonah.

Here it refers to the son of man what is really saying is the son of the most-high G-d the one which HaShem himself endowed with a special soul to be the one like unto Moses. This is not the aim of this article but rather the concept of the sign of Jonah.  Whilst reading it in context we see that it may refer to the fact that Yonah was in the belly of a sea animal for three days and three nights, right?  But what if there was another message other than the three days and three nights, for example what was the overall message of the Apostolic writings? 

Lets examine that, before we tackle Yonah, before Yeshua even taught anything we find that a close relative of Yeshua, Yohanan the immerser, was on the other side of the Yarden (Jordan) teaching repentance and crying in the wilderness, repent for the Kingdom of G-d is at hand.  There is so much information on this passage that we could have a nice all nigh conversation about this topic.  First of all where was Yohanan when he started his ministry, on which side of the Yarden are we talking about here?  The other side of the Yarden, is Moabite country, the wilderness, going back in time, just as the children of Israel were coming from the wilderness they camped in Moab and received a final address from Moshe, hence the topic of our discussion on Shabbat morning. Here they are recapping the Torah, often referred to as Mishnah Torah (repeating Torah), the topic of our conversation was the fact that in Deuteronomy 6:4 the Sh’ma addresses each individual but in Deuteronomy 11:13 the address is a corporate call to obey in unity.  The “you” in 11:13 in Hebrew is in plural,       (something the English language lacks), that all together in unity are we to obey the Torah. Yohanan, here is re-enacting that which happened in the physical, so many generations past, he now is doing and calling on the same instructions but with a spiritual implication that the Israelites that remained in the land, are called to return to HaShem, to restore the Kingdom because it is near so near. 

Here comes Yeshua he crosses over the Yarden into the wilderness, meets Yohanan and is immersed in living waters, and after the immersion returns to the land, he crosses over (Hebber) into the land, to His ministry of teaching that Kingdom of G-d is at hand, the very same message of Yohanan, same message, in unity with the Torah.  The core of the message is repentance, pure and simple, repent and turn to G-d.  His ministry continues and at a point some people demand a sign, almost to the point of either looking for confirmation of Deuteronomy 13:1-11 or on contradiction of such passage. If they were asking to follow Him for the signs and wonders then they would be in contradiction of the Torah, if they were looking for him to show a sign and wonder and then teach another god then they would have grounds for killing him.  The motive is the key to this passage.  No different than today we have people that are looking and following signs and wonders, instead of the signs and wonders following them.  Yeshua's response was a little puzzling for some of them then and even today it may be a little puzzling, if not looked in cultural context.  Our first reaction is to look retrospectively  and we see the most obvious thing Jonah was swallowed by a sea animal and was later vomited out after three days and three nights. Straightforward case closed, lets move on, this is what has been taught for centuries. Three days and three nights in the belly, three days and three nights in the tomb.

But lets stop for a minute and let us look at what Jonah's message was to Nineveh, current day Mosul in Iraq.  The instructions to Yonah were simple, go to the great city of Nineveh and preach that G-d will utterly destroy them, we know the story, he refused, the sea animal ate him, he survives, he then preaches and they repent. So the message of Jonah was repentance, same message of Yohanan the immerser, the same message of Yeshua.  The sign is repentance, and lo and behold, Yonah was on the news not so long ago.  ISIS has taken over the city of Mosul (Nineveh) and the first thing they did was to destroy the memory of Yonah, the memory that if we turn from our sins we are forgiven.  

The message today is the same repent, turn from our sins, face G-d and in the name of Yeshua the chosen one, the one sent to us for repentance, we are forgiven.  If in the time of Yohanan, the time of Yeshua, the kingdom of G-d was near, how much near is it now?  The footsteps of Messiah can be heard, its time to be found ready, like the wise virgins, with oil ready to enter into the wedding chamber.  There is still time, but do not let time go past for the time is very near.