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 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 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 4, 2025 in The Patriarchs' Saga
Yoseph was sold in Egypt as a slave. But the Elohim of his father was with him and did not abandon him as his brothers did. Now raised to the highest rank in Egypt, only second to Pharaoh himself, Yoseph could set his thought on his family in the land of Kana’an. On account of the famine that was throughout the whole land, his brothers came down to Egypt to buy grain, for grain could be found only in Egypt. Yoseph was expecting them to come for the famine was very great....
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Posted by Navah on Dec 25, 2024 in The Messiah
Psalm 2 is written as a psalm without a heading in honor of a particular king. Its content and visionary language indicate that it is not describing a specific king but rather depicts a prophetic vision of the future redeemer, Melech haMashiach, King Messiah, as it is written: “This day I have brought you forth”. The psalmist penned his Psalm as a mirrored picture of what he saw and as an echo of what he heard. In the prophecy given through Natan the prophet...
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Posted by Navah on Dec 20, 2024 in The Patriarchs' Saga
No matter how we will read the narratives of Ya’akov and Yoseph, we still will not know the entire story. And the story reads well until we start reading it carefully. Then, several questions start presenting themselves to the careful reader. And the Yoseph story begins in Genesis 37, wherein we learn that his father, Ya’akov, moved to the land of Kana’an, the land of his father, as we read, These are the generations of Ya’akov. Yoseph, being...
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Posted by Navah on Dec 10, 2024 in The Exiles, The Patriarchs' Saga
Why did the Eternal move Israel and his family from the land of Kana’an to Egypt? The reason why Israel moved to Egypt, which turned to slavery, is not explicitly stated in the Torah. Was it an exile and if so, why? We have the reason to believe that it was an exile but why? Because of the famine? In the issue of famine in the entire land, there is a common mistake made when it is asserted that it caused the relocation of Israel to Egypt, where there was plenty of food. And...
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Posted by Navah on Nov 30, 2024 in The Patriarchs' Saga
No one in his proper mind would agree that a person can wound someone else in order to save his/her own life. Then, why in a “civilized” society like ours can a pregnant woman wound her baby for the sake of “improving” her own health? Because abortion is a matter of “healthcare”, and a baby is a mere part of the mother’s body through the umbilical cord? The liberal culture claims that a fetus is not a conscious being and can...
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Posted by Navah on Nov 24, 2024 in The Patriarchs' Saga
The Eternal told Avraham to leave his homeland and to go to an unknown land he would inherit. He promised Avraham to make him a father of many nations, innumerous as the stars. But as Avraham entered the promised land, he was wandering childless for twenty-four years. Then, Avraham was promised he would have a son, only one son. A year later Yitschak the promised son was born. At the age of thirty-seven, Yitschak was still childless, not even married, when the Eternal...
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Posted by Navah on Nov 5, 2024 in The Origin
The whole narrative in Genesis 6 concerning the building of the ark seems quite simple and easy to understand, when we read only at what has been revealed to us on the surface. But the Hebrew text draws attention with its peculiarities and raises questions for whose answers we need to resort to the writings of the Sages to make better sense of what is meant in the narrative. We will show that the question of the design of the ark Noach built is far from being trivial and...
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