Posted by Navah on Mar 23, 2025 in Hebrew Study
Rabbeinu Nissim ben Reuven (Ran) of Gerona was a Spanish rabbi, Talmudic commentator, and philosopher. He said it very well: “The religions of all times promise rewards destined for the soul after its departure from the body, so as to distance the proof of their claims. Because they are not in possession of the truth, they cannot promise an imminent and tangible sign… But our Torah makes promises that can be confirmed in the here and now—something that no other...
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Posted by Navah on Mar 14, 2025 in Bible Study
A careful reading of the Hebrew Scripture shows that the Hebrew language has no particular words for matters private in nature. Instead, Hebrew uses euphemisms to only describe them in a figurative language, or to hint at, but never explicitly stated, in order that such things should be avoided when reading. In other words, Hebrew language being set-apart from all other languages has no particular names for the terms of intimate relation between a man and a woman. The use...
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Posted by Navah on Mar 5, 2025 in Bible Study
Idolatry undoubtedly is the most serious violation against the Creator of the universe. To Him and to Him alone, and to the exclusion of everyone else, honor is due. The most pronounced example of the prohibition of idolatry is what is spoken in the Covenant. The Eternal prohibited the making of images of any idol, of what is in heaven, what is in the earth, and what is in the water. Five chapters later, however, He told Mosheh to make two images of pure gold of what is in...
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Posted by Navah on Feb 22, 2025 in Bible Study
The whole subject of observing the laws of the Torah can become difficult to understand in detail, when we look only at what has been revealed to us in the Scriptural text. For instance, Torah says to cease labor on Shabbat and rest on the seventh day of the Creator but does not explicitly define what labor and rest are. Likewise with other commands. Mosheh in his last address to the nation asks us to love the Eternal with all we have and do His commands and statues, but...
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Posted by Navah on Feb 20, 2025 in The Exodus
The Bible is a book of questions, not of answers. Israel uniquely became a nation before it became a state. It had laws before it had a land. Thus, Israel can be counted as the only nation in the world that is an ethno-religious nation. Yet, we do not know her greatest leader’s Hebrew name. Exodus 2 tells us that a Levite married a woman from his tribe, and she conceived and bore a son. Later, Torah will tell us also that the man’s name was Amram, and the...
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Posted by Navah on Feb 16, 2025 in Hebrew Study
The Hebrew alphabet (aleph-bet) has 22 letters. Each of these 22 letters is correlated with a specific number, as there are no “numbers” in Hebrew as we know them today. Gematria is not a Hebrew word but Greek. Basically, gematria is the computation of individual letters of words, or entire phrases and sentences utilizing their numerical equivalence. For instance, the first letter has numerical value of 1, the second letter has 2, etc. The Biblical commentators believe that...
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Posted by Navah on Feb 9, 2025 in Bible Study
The historical events surrounding the festival of Chanukkah are described in two historical works called Maccabees I and Maccabees II. Both books tell the story of the liberation from the Greek rule of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes over the land of Judea and of the purification of the second Temple from the abominations the Greeks committed in the Temple. Vastly outnumbered, the Jews placed their trust in the Elohim of their fathers, and He gave them a miraculous...
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Posted by Navah on Jan 25, 2025 in Hebrew Study
The term “Jew” or “Jewish” is a Rabbinic misnomer that is supposedly developed from the name “Judah” or “Judea”. But “Jew” or “Jewish” is more than a mere Rabbinic misnomer designated to refer to the ancient Israelites as “Jews”. By substituting the term “Jews” for all Israelites, the Ten Tribes of the northern kingdom are thus erased from the commonwealth of Israel, and the...
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Posted by Navah on Jan 22, 2025 in Bible Study
There is a passage in Matthew 8 that always perplexes a sensitive reader who tends to read the Scripture carefully. Moreover, it is extremely confusing, when we look only at what has been revealed to us in the narration. We need to resort to the Torah to make better sense of this short episode in the Apostolic Writings. It is the object of this work, therefore, to explain what is not satisfactorily explained by the commentators and expose certain misconceptions that still...
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Posted by Navah on Jan 19, 2025 in The Exodus
The scroll of Genesis concludes with the death of the last patriarch, Ya’akov, and then by relates that Yoseph saw Ephrayim’s children to the third generation (Gen 50:23). But it does not tell anything about his brothers except that they were few in number when they descended to Egypt: only seventy souls including their father Ya’akov. Their fate however is revealed to the reader in the scroll of Exodus, which begins with listing their names again as in Chapter...
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Posted by Navah on Jan 11, 2025 in The Patriarchs' Saga
After Yoseph was sold in slavery and spent many years first as a slave and then in a prison accused unjustly, he rose to power in Egypt to become only second to Pharoah; he became the viceroy of Egypt. And Yoseph changed. Away from home and family, he was no longer the favored son of his father, who was reporting his brothers. In his encounter with his brothers, who came down to Egypt to buy grain on account of the famine in the land of Kana’an, he learned that his...
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Posted by Navah on Jan 5, 2025 in The Exiles, The Patriarchs' Saga
Yoseph administered Egypt during the seven years of famine, which are interrupted in order to describe how his family came to settle in Egypt. In the first year of the famine, there was no bread in the entire country, since the famine was very severe and all the grain that they had set aside as a reserve during the seven years of plenty had gone. And because the people languished due to the famine, Yoseph opened the granaries of Egypt. In Gen. 47:13-27, we learn that Yoseph...
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