Zos HaBracha
Last week’s
Parsha ends where Moshe is commanded to go up Har Nebo and this is the blessing
before he climbs the mountain to enter the next world. The blessings for each
tribe I am skipping over as they repeat themselves on Simchas Torah.
33: 1 And
this is the blessing wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of
Israel before his death.
And this
is the blessing… [just] before his death: Very close to the time of his death.
— [see Sifrei 33: 1] “For, if not now, when?”
2 And he
said: The LORD came from Sinai, and rose from Seir unto them; He shined forth
from mount Paran, and He came from the myriads holy, at His right hand was a
fiery law unto them.
He said: The Lord came from Sinai: Moses initiated his blessing
by praising the Omnipresent, and then he addressed the needs of Israel. —
[Sifrei 33:2] The praise with which Moses commenced, mentions the merit of
Israel. All this was a way of conciliation, as if to say, “These people are
worthy that a blessing should rest upon them.” Came from Sinai: He came out
toward them when they came to stand at the foot of the mountain, as a
bridegroom goes forth to greet his bride, as it is said, “[And Moses brought
the people forth] toward God” (Exod. 19:17). We learn from this, that God came
out toward them (Mechilta 19:17). And shone forth from Seir to them: [Why did
He come from Seir?] Because God first offered the children of Esau [who dwelled
in Seir] that they accept the Torah, but they did not want [to accept it]. He
appeared: to them [Israel] From Mount Paran: [Why did God then come from
Paran?] Because He went there and offered the children of Ishmael [who dwelled
in Paran] to accept the Torah, but they [also] did not want [to accept it]. —
[A.Z. 2b] And came: to Israel. With some holy myriads: With God were only some
of the myriads of His holy angels, but not all of them, nor [even] most of
them. This is unlike the manner of a mortal, who displays all the splendor of
his riches and his glory on his wedding day. — [Sifrei 33:2] A fiery law for
them: It was originally written before God in [letters of] black fire upon [a
background of] white fire. — [Tanchuma Bereishith 1] He gave it to them on
tablets, inscribed, [as it were,] by His right hand [thus it is said here,
“from His right hand”]. Another explanation of אֵשׁ
דָּת : As the Targum renders it, that He gave it to them from amidst
the fire.
3 Yea, He
loves the peoples, all His holy ones--they are in Thy hand; and they sit down
at Thy feet, receiving of Thy words.
Indeed,
You showed love for peoples: [God] also displayed great
affection to the tribes, each one of whom were known as a people, for only
Benjamin was destined to be born when the Holy One, blessed is He, said to
Jacob, “A nation and a multitude of nations shall come into existence from you”
(Genesis 35:11). [Thus we see that Benjamin
alone was called “a nation.” “A multitude of nations” refers to Ephraim and
Manasseh. See Rashi on Gen. 35:11, 48:4.]- [Gen. Rabbah 82:4] All his holy ones are in Your
hand: [This
refers to] the souls of the righteous, which are hidden away with God, as it is
said, “But my lord’s soul shall be bound up in the bundle of life, with the
Lord, your God” (I Sam. 25:29). - [Sifrei 33:3] For they […] be centered at Your
feet: And
Israel is indeed worthy of this [privilege to have their souls hidden away with
God], because they placed themselves right in the middle (תּוֹךְ) of the bottom of the mountain at Your feet [figuratively
speaking] at Sinai. The word תֻּכּוּ is
in the passive conjugation, which has the meaning: הִתְוַכּוּ,
“They [allowed themselves] to be placed right in the middle (תּוֹךְ)” [of the underside of the mountain], between Your feet. Bearing Your utterances: They bore upon themselves
the yoke of Your Torah. — [Sifrei 33:3] Your Torah: Heb. מִדַּבְּרֹתֶיךָ. The mem in it [i.e., in this word] is
somewhat of a root letter [rather than a prefix], as in “And he heard the voice
speaking (מִדַּבֵּר) to him” (Num. 7:89);
and “And I heard what was being spoken (מִדַּבֵּר)
to me” (Ezek. 2:2). This form is similar to מִתְדַּבֵּר
אֵלַי, [speaking to Himself for me to hear, see Rashi on Num. 7:89].
This too, namely, the word מִדַּבְּרֹתֶיךָ,
means: “what You were speaking to let me know what to tell the children of
Israel.” Tes porparledurs in Old French. Onkelos, however, renders [the
phrase יִשָּׂא מִדַּבְּרֹתֶיךָ as: “they
traveled (יִשָּׂא like יִסַּע) according to Your commands (דַּבְּרֹתֶיךָ).”
Thus, the mem is a servile prefix, with the meaning of מִן, from. [Thus, according to Onkelos, the word מִדַּבְּרֹתֶיךָ literally means, from Your
utterances.] Another explanation [of this verse is as follows]: Indeed, You
showed love for peoples — even when You displayed Your affection towards the
nations of the world, showing them a smiling [friendly] face, and You delivered
Israel into their hands, All his holy ones are in Your
hand: All
Israel’s righteous and good people clung to You; they did not turn away from
You, and You guarded them. — [B.B. 8a)]
For they let themselves be
centered at your feet: And they placed themselves
right in the middle of, and entered beneath Your [protective] shadow; Bearing your utterances: And they gladly accepted
Your decrees and Your laws. — [see Tanchuma 5] And these were their words:
4 Moses
commanded us a law, an inheritance of the congregation of Jacob.
Moshe
appeared before the people this last time and this sentence is a reminder of
his life’s work.
5 And there
was a king in Jeshurun, when the heads of the people were gathered, all the
tribes of Israel together.
The Bnei
Yisrael accepted the Malchus of HASHEM together and became his subjects. Rashi
comments that the sovereignty was always upon them. They were one heart and one
people! Now Moshe blesses each tribe.
… 26 There
is none like unto God, O Jeshurun, who rides upon the heaven as thy help, and
in His Excellency on the skies.
The people
who were at the crossing of the sea saw more than Yechezkel’s vision as the
ones under 20 at the time were still alive 40 years later. The vision was still
embedded in their souls.
27 The
eternal God is a dwelling-place, and underneath are the everlasting arms; and
He thrust out the enemy from before thee, and said: 'Destroy.'
Although we
no longer observe like the generation that was originally redeemed we have seen
miracles and HASHEM is fighting our battles.
28 And
Israel dwells in safety, the fountain of Jacob alone, in a land of corn and
wine; yea, his heavens drop down dew. 29 Happy art thou, O Israel, who is like
unto thee? a people saved by the LORD, the shield of thy help, and that is the
sword of thy excellency! And thine enemies shall dwindle away before thee; and
thou shalt tread upon their high places.
Because of
all the anti-Semitism and being exiled for our past and continuing sins we
cannot view this to appreciate it.
34:1 And
Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah,
that is over against Jericho. And the LORD showed him all the land, even Gilead
as far as Dan; 2 and all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, and
all the land of Judah as far as the hinder sea; 3 and the South, and the Plain,
even the valley of Jericho the city of palm-trees, as far as Zoar. 4 And the
LORD said unto him: 'This is the land which I swore unto Abraham, unto Isaac,
and unto Jacob, saying: I will give it unto thy seed; I have caused thee to see
it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither.'
Moshe is
given a full view perhaps even miraculously telescopic like the legends of the
Baal Shem Tov and the Holy Ari tell us. Now his life was complete and he could
go to his eternal rest with this beautiful memory.
5 So Moses
the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word
of the LORD. 6 And he was buried in the valley in the land of Moab over against
Beth-peor; and no man knows of his sepulchre unto this day.
I can only
speculate that Moshe was commanded like Aaron to lie down in a cave, he
received a “kiss” or view of HASHEM and his soul departed. At this point an
earthquake buried the cave into the mountain rocks never to be disclosed until
the resurrection of the dead.
7 And Moses
was a hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his
natural force abated.
From here
and a Pasuk in regarding mankind in the days of Noach that the days will be 120
years we get the blessing - until 120 years.
8 And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab
thirty days; so the days of weeping in the mourning for Moses were ended. 9 And
Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom; for Moses had laid his
hands upon him; and the children of Israel hearkened unto him, and did as the
LORD commanded Moses. 10 And there hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel
like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face;
There will never be a Prophet who speaks to G-D face to face only
in a dream or thought entering one’s head.
11 in all the signs and the wonders, which the LORD sent him to do
in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land;
12 and in all the mighty hand, and in all the great terror, which Moses wrought
in the sight of all Israel.
Chazak – Chazak v’ nit Chazak
The Pastor who led his congregation from Jesus to
Judaism
By ASAF
ELIA-SHALEV/JTA https://www.jpost.com/judaism/article-760766
(JTA) – Richard Cortes can
trace his spiritual development to a class field trip at a Florida theme park.
It was 2008 and Cortes was
taking classes at a Pentecostal megachurch, on a path toward seminary and
eventually leading a congregation, when his group spent the day at Orlando’s Holy Land Experience.
The
creation of the park, which has since shuttered, had worried Jewish groups.
They were concerned it might be intended as a tool of proselytization because
its founder, Marvin Rosenthal, was a Jew who became a pastor, referred to
himself as a “Christian Hebrew” and engaged in missionary work.
For Cortes, the park had the
opposite effect. He marveled at the imaginative recreations of the biblical
world he had been studying, explored the Second
Temple-era replica of Jerusalem, and strolled through a scriptorium
that displayed Torah scrolls. But when he encountered a park employee playing
the character of Aaron, the biblical priest and brother of Moses, and heard the
blast of the shofar Aaron carried, something broke open deep inside Cortes. He
realized he wanted to experience religion the way Aaron did.
Cortes couldn’t sleep that
night, staying up in a fervor of weeping and prayer. His soul had been stirred
by the encounter, and the feeling was so intense he would later liken it to
being reunited with a long-lost parent. He was also a little embarrassed.
Traditional Christianity was now so clearly in his eyes a false religion that
he kicked himself for not having realized it sooner.
When the sun came up, he
woke up his wife, Alpha, and told her he could no longer return to the church.
He was determined to find a synagogue, he told her. A Christian herself, Alpha
resisted for months as her husband charted a path toward what is known as
Messianic Judaism, a religion rejected by all mainstream Jewish groups that
combines the practice of Jewish rituals with the worship of Jesus as the
messiah.
But she ultimately came
along, and over time, so did more and more people. By last year, Cortes was
leading a thriving Messianic community in a remote mountain town in Arizona.
Drawing from the area’s heavily Mormon and evangelical population, Cortes’
congregation was seen as a successful outpost in the wider Messianic movement.
Yet an uneasy feeling was
gnawing at Cortes. Messianism promised that he would find proof of Jesus’
divinity within Jewish texts, but the harder he looked, the less he could see,
leaving him in spiritual crisis. He was confused about how to proceed and
terrified about the reaction of his wife and congregants to his internal
transformation, but he knew he had to make a change.
Last month, Cortes and 20 of
his followers converted to Judaism. Dozens of others in his community are
considering doing the same.
Their mass conversion is an
event with few precedents in Jewish history and a seemingly unlikely outcome
for a group of people who live hours away from any Jewish community. The
presence in Phoenix of a rabbi with an open mind and unusual point of view and
the shifting of Jewish life online because of the pandemic opened doors that
might otherwise have been closed. But it was not only Cortes and his followers
undergoing a transformation: The very idea of who is a Jew, and how one becomes
Jewish, is changing, too.
On the day of their
conversion at a synagogue in a suburb of Phoenix last month, Cortes, 53, said
he regretted his prior association with the Messianic movement, accusing it not
only of inappropriately adopting symbols of Jewish religious observance like
the kippah and the shofar but also of masking its tenets in order to
proselytize to Jews.
“I never partook in
missionary activity but the fact is that I was involved in a movement that did
a lot of missionary work,” he said. “I am just completely appalled that I was a
part of it.”
Cortes
was wearing dress shirt and slacks and sported a close-cropped beard. His eyes
were shielded by athletic sunglasses as he lingered in the synagogue’s
sweltering courtyard, awaiting his turn to appear before a Jewish court,
immerse in a mikvah or ritual bath, and receive a Hebrew name.
Do
you have a remarkable story about your journey to Judaism? We want to hear
about it.
In
converting, he hoped to demonstrate the sincerity of his transformation, mark a
clean break with past worship and usher in a new and final phase in his
dramatic spiritual journey.
“This day is about righting a wrong and holding our hands
with our new brothers and sisters,” Cortes said. “We are so excited to be a
part of the Jewish community, and to prove ourselves to the Jewish community
that we are legitimate.”
The next day, Cortes would attend his first Shabbat dinner as a Jew; the day after
that, he’d be called up to the Torah for the first time, at Congregation Or
Tzion in Scottsdale, the Conservative synagogue whose rabbi, Andy Green, had
convened his conversion court. And then on Sunday Cortes and the other new Jews
of Show Low, Arizona, would head home to their mountain town in a remote corner
of the state to begin the rest of their lives as a Jewish community.
No Jewish denomination
regards the Messianic movement or belief in Jesus as compatible with Judaism.
Nevertheless, about 225,000 American adults identify as Messianic Jews,
according to data from a 2020 Pew Research Center study. (An additional,
unknown number of people belong to the Hebrew Roots movement, a related
denomination that also blends Jewish practice with Christian belief but differs
on some doctrinal issues.)
Experts say the
Messianic movement is growing rapidly in many places in the world, competing,
for example, with the evangelical church for lapsed Catholics in Latin America
and the Philippines. As it grows, however, the movement is also hemorrhaging
adherents who come to experience it as a stepping stone on the way to something
else.
Some turn to Noahides,
a pared-down version of Judaism that doesn’t require conversion. A concept that
comes from the book of Genesis and is developed through rabbinic discourse in
the Talmud about halacha, or Jewish law, Noahides stems from the story of Noah
and teaches that there are seven basic commandments applying to all people,
Jewish or not. A contemporary religion based on the seven Noahide commandments
is growing rapidly, says Rachel Z. Feldman, a professor of religion at
Dartmouth College and the author of a forthcoming book offering the first
comprehensive academic look at the phenomenon.
“A theological
and abstract concept that we’ve been talking about in the halacha for thousands
of years is now for the first time in history being transformed into a living
faith identity,” said Feldman, who does ethnographic research on Noahide
communities and estimates the number of followers in the tens of thousands
worldwide.
Feldman said the
Show Low group fits within the global trend she’s been examining.
“We’re talking
about a massive new movement of the Jewish world that not that many people know
about. Entire congregations, like the one in Arizona, are leaving Christianity,”
she said.
Others who leave
the Messianic movement ultimately hope to reach Judaism. But Judaism is not an
easy religion to join. Prospective converts must form relationships with rabbis
and convince them of their sincerity, which can be difficult in the many places
where there are no rabbis, no way to participate in Judaism’s communal
practices, and not even any Jews to learn from.
To make matters
more challenging, Messianics are deeply distrusted in the Jewish world. They
are often seen as agents of a Christian effort to proselytize by masquerading
as Jews — an effort that some Messianics embrace. Deceitful tactics by
Messianic missionaries since the movement was founded several decades ago,
especially the offshoot Jews for Jesus, echo a longer, painful history of
forced conversions by the church. Many even consider the movement antisemitic
for claiming that rabbinic scholars have intentionally suppressed the truth of
Jesus.
But experts also
say the Jewish community has become so accustomed to thinking of Messianics as
a potential threat that it’s failing to perceive an important new phenomenon:
Although covert Messianic missionaries do continue to exist, many more from the
movement seem to be abandoning Jesus with a genuine hope to engage with Jews.
“It is quite
possible that there is no group today more responsible for conversion to
Judaism than Jews for Jesus, than the Messianic movement,” said Tovia Singer,
an Orthodox rabbi who heads Outreach Judaism, a counter-missionary organization
that serves as one of the first ports of call for questioning and lapsed
Messianics.
“Richard’s case
seems like a very rare story, but there are many people like him,” said Pinchas
Taylor, a rabbi trained by the Hasidic Chabad movement who heads American Faith
Coalition, a group catering to spiritual seekers of all backgrounds. He said
he’s encountered thousands of people who have left Christianity and become
interested in learning Jewish wisdom, even if they are not always able or
seeking to convert.
“It’s sort of
ironic, right? This movement that was supposed to be so feared, you could say
is the greatest producer of new converts, probably in the world today,” Taylor
said.
Cortes was born
in New York City in 1971 and lived happily among Jews in Brooklyn and the Bronx
until his family moved him to Puerto Rico when he was a young teen. He attended
a Pentecostal church in his youth and became irreligious as an adult only to be
drawn back in, leading him in his late thirties to take preparatory classes to
join a seminary program at Victory Church in Lakeland, Florida. He left the
church following his epiphany at the Holy Land Experience theme park and
connected with a Messianic synagogue near his home in the Orlando area.
Richard immersed
himself in Jewish texts, reading the weekly Torah portion and studying Jewish
sages from Rashi to the Rambam. Hoping to delve deeper, he began to learn
Hebrew. He eventually became ordained as a Messianic pastor. On a trip to
Israel, he visited the Western Wall and, surrounded by Jewish worshippers, he
prayed about bridging the gap between his Messianic community and the Jewish
world. “I prayed, asking, ‘Why can’t the Jewish people just receive us?’ We
love the Torah. We’re not the church,” Cortes recalled.
About a decade
ago, Cortes and his wife Alpha left Florida and moved to Show Low in search of
a fresh start and a flock with which to share their creed. The town is known
for its unusual name and as a summer destination for people fleeing the Sonoran
Desert heat. (Show Low is named, according to legend, after a fateful game of
cards in the Old West, which ended when one rancher beat another by showing a
deuce of clubs.)
As he ran
errands in town, people noticed the tzitzit, fringes of a Jewish prayer shawl, hanging
from his clothes and the conversations that followed brought in some of his
first congregants. Cortes ministered to them out of a tent located on the rural
10-acre property he had bought.
The
congregation, which he called Foundation of the Word Outreach Ministries, grew
over time, eventually counting about 80 members, with more tuning in remotely.
Followers came to witness Cortes teach, as the congregation’s website put it,
the “Hebrew roots of the gospel” and help build a “Torah-based homestead
community” devoted to the worship of Messiah Yeshua, the Messianic name for
Jesus. Though they practiced Jewish customs and rituals and identified as Jews,
no stream of Judaism regarded them as such.
Cortes’
congregation was a success story for the Messianic movement. He had come to a
small town with no organized Messianic presence and well-established Mormon and
evangelical churches and founded a thriving house of worship; usually,
Messianic groups were organized as home fellowships and stayed that way if they
didn’t fall apart quickly after forming. He was invited to join an online group
of fellow Messianic leaders and regularly led workshops on his favorite topics
for them.
Even as he
preached, however, Cortes began to harbor doubts. “I was finding a lot of
discrepancies,” he said. “So, I decided to take my time and do an assessment.”
He announced to his congregation that he would stop teaching the New Testament
as he spent time studying it and focus in the meantime on lessons from Judaism.
The first time
Cortes heard the name Tovia Singer, it was uttered in online conversations
among leaders of the Messianic movement. They demonized the anti-missionary
rabbi and warned that he was leading many of their followers astray. “I was
already on the journey of saying goodbye to Yeshua, but of course, I didn’t
reveal that yet,” Cortes said.
Singer’s name
came up again a little while later. Cortes’ self-study was getting him only so
far and he began seeking out a teacher or guide. He began following online
content produced by Nissim Black, an African-American rapper and podcaster who
has spoken extensively about being raised a Christian and turning to Messianism
before converting to Orthodox Judaism. One day, Black’s YouTube talk show
publicized a new episode featuring Singer as a guest.
For two days,
Cortes couldn’t get himself to hit play. The voices cautioning against Singer
kept bouncing around in his head. “I started talking to myself and asking, ‘Why
am I so afraid?’” Cortes recalled. He finally decided to watch the video, “and
that was the beginning of the end.”
Cortes reached
out to Singer and they began studying together, dismantling lessons
internalized over the years. Singer had supported many people making a similar
transition but this situation stood out to him. For a leader of a congregation
to make such a drastic change knowing how it would shake his followers requires
“extraordinary heroism,” Singer said.
“Richard was a
huge leader in the Messianic movement and he saw through it, that they’re
masquerading as a Jewish sect and peddling in theological misdirection,” Singer
said.
To Cortes it
felt like he had been lied to twice, first by traditional Christianity, and now
by Messianism.
“We came out of
the church with a big disappointment,” he said. “Hatred for the Jewish people
that is really encoded in all the church’s teachings. You come into Messianic
Judaism and you’re like, ‘Oh, wow, this is amazing. More than likely, this is
how Yeshua prayed. He prayed like a Jew.’ But then, you say, ‘Wait a minute.
There’s still an element that’s the foundation of Christianity.’”
Cortes was
terrified to tell Alpha of his change of heart because of how challenging it
had been to drag her to Messianism. He put off the conversation for as long as
he could.
He asked to talk
and began by telling her about how he’d been studying.
“I really think
we are on the wrong path,” he said.
She asked him to
explain. He gathered his courage and continued.
He told her they
had been right to follow the Torah but that they had “missed the mark on the
messiah.”
She gave him a
puzzled look. “It’s about time,” she said.
He was confused.
What’s about time?
She revealed
that she had been having the same kind of internal conversion with herself and
was waiting for him to catch up. Both of them were deeply relieved at the
meeting of their souls.
“I was waiting
for him for two years,” Alpha later said.
“My wife and I
have always been best friends but this has unified us in such an amazing new
way,” Richard said.
They didn’t yet
know quite where they would land religiously once they exited the Messianic
movement. From Show Low, with the nearest Jewish presence hours away, Judaism
seemed out of reach, but Noahides was appealing.
They knew they
needed to tell the congregation about their transformation and they knew they
needed to do so carefully. The emotional turmoil that Cortes unleashed,
however, went far beyond his expectations. With his Facebook announcement last
December, most of his congregants immediately fell away.
Many of their
former friends and followers accused Richard of heresy and betrayal. “How could
you turn your back to Jesus?” they asked in agony, Cortes recalled. They said
he defrauded the community for having fundraised for a new building under
allegedly false pretenses. When word reached the wider Messianic movement,
community leaders put out what Cortes calls an “APB,” an alert that he was an
apostate to Messianic Judaism.
“And that word
went out to all the Messianic synagogues in the United States,” he said. “How I
know this is I started getting phone calls from people that I didn’t even know
that were asking me, ‘How can you forsake Jesus?’”
Cortes said that
in the reaction to his announcement, including a former congregant calling him
a “Christ killer,” he recognized a certain strand of hatred in the Messianic
movement he hadn’t allowed himself to see before: antisemitism.
While dozens
abandoned him, a core group remained, eager to take their Torah journey with
Cortes where it would lead. The congregants that would join him on conversion
day included Alpha; their 11-year-old son Israel; Richard’s mother, Nellie
Vienna; and a longtime family friend named Evelyn Lopez, as well as two other
families, the Birds and the Mosts.
The Birds had
moved to Show Low from Alaska a few years earlier and quickly discovered the
Foundation of the Word. Peter Bird supports his wife Audrey and five children
by working as an urban and wildland firefighter. Audrey homeschools the kids.
The Most family left Utah and moved to Show Low specifically to join Cortes’
congregation. David Most and his son Joel build custom log homes, and are
married to Linda and Stefani, respectively. The Most family includes five
children, who were born to Joel’s late former wife, Danielle, and who are also
homeschooled.
As a group, they
enrolled in an 18-week online class through the Miller Introduction to Judaism
Program at American Jewish University. Until recently, anyone interested in
taking the course, typically a prerequisite for conversion, would have had to
do so at the university’s Los Angeles campus or through one of the program’s
synagogue partners. But during the pandemic, the program went online.
The Show Low
contingent also began reaching out to rabbis online and in the Phoenix area,
the closest major Jewish community. Singer would eventually visit the community
for a daylong workshop in which he fielded questions and explained how
Messianic claims about Jesus’s place in Judaism were deceitful.
Taylor, of the
American Faith Coalition, would also pay them a visit and would be deeply
impressed with Cortes. “Think of the amount of bravery and sincerity it takes
to, as a community leader, admit you are going down a new line, which not only
affects you and your family and their decisions, but your entire community,”
Taylor said.
Not everyone was
as willing to hear the Show Low group out. Orthodox Jews in Phoenix were
especially reluctant to accept Cortes’ story, he said, because they had only
recently fallen victim to a pair of undercover Christian missionaries who posed
as rabbis and performed sacred rites. Cortes said he understood the suspicion:
“I might be a threat, I might be a missionary.”
Eventually,
Cortes found Rabbi Andy Green, who had taken up the pulpit at Congregation Or
Tzion in Scottsdale in 2021. In Green, Cortes found the perfect person to
welcome into Judaism a group of people with Messianic backgrounds. The rabbi
had had a lifetime of experiences that would prepare him for this moment.
Already as a
teenager, Green heard Singer, the counter-missionary rabbi, speak at his Jewish
high school in Los Angeles. He also encountered Bentzion Kravitz, a rabbi
working against the conversion of Jews to other religions, and in college Green
became a volunteer for Kravitz’s group, Jews for Judaism.
“Rabbi Kravitz
taught how to be proudly Jewish and not afraid to engage people with a
distorted idea of Judaism,” Green said. “I had quality training in being able
to understand missionaries and being able to be proud and articulate about my
Jewishness even when challenged by missionaries.”
Green even
developed a certain empathy for Messianics, as long as they were not
proselytizing to Jews. He gave the example of a person from his college’s
Hillel Jewish center whom he knew for years before learning of his Messianic
belief.
“He was very
secretive about his own background because he knew that if he outed himself as
believing in Jesus as messiah he would be kind of uninvited and alienated from
the Hillel Jewish space. But he never did anything that made us uncomfortable,”
Green said. Today, the classmate is a clergy member in the Messianic movement.
Green’s first
experience with how a welcoming attitude can create a congregant out of a
Messianic came a few years ago, before he joined Congregation Or Tzion, while
he was serving as an assistant rabbi in the Philadelphia area. A member of a
nearby Messianic center began attending events at his synagogue. Some
communities might have asked the visitor to leave, but Green’s congregation did
not — and she ended up converting to Judaism.
When members of
the Show Low group started reaching out, Green knew how to relate to them.
Rather than put up defenses, he listened and was stirred by their humility and
sincerity.
“When someone comes
from that kind of background, that can be an alarming and dangerous thing in
the American Jewish psyche,” he said. “But I was less threatened perhaps than a
colleague who had never had encounters or experiences with this in the past.”
Cortes and
others from Show Low began talking to Green on the phone and via email, sharing
their spiritual journeys and asking questions about Judaism and the conversion
process. They also began attending Or Tzion’s online Shabbat services weekly on
Zoom and made spirited contributions in the chat box. Appreciating their
energy, Green gave them shoutouts and began telling his congregants about the
Show Low group. The Cortes and Most families each paid a visit to Or Tzion for
Shabbat, spending a weekend with the congregation.
In Show Low,
Cortes and his community began making changes. Dropping “Outreach Ministries”
from its name, Cortes redefined Foundation of the Word as a Jewish learning
center. And they would eventually donate to Congregation Ohr Tzion, becoming
members once they were Jewish.
Before the
conversions could begin, the men and boys had to arrive a day early for a
special ceremony. They were brought into a private room at Green’s synagogue
where a congregant who is a physician was waiting. One by one, he drew a drop
of blood from their penises in a ritual, known as hatafat dam brit, that
symbolizes the covenant of circumcision for converts who are already
circumcised. A stained gauze and the doctor’s testimony were submitted as proof
to the conversion court, formed by Green, with his synagogue’s cantor, Dannah
Rubinstein, and education director, Andre Ivory.
The next day
started at 7:30 a.m. with a prayer service, which took place a short drive away
from Ohr Tzion, at Congregation Beth Israel, a Reform synagogue that houses the
only non-Orthodox mikvah, or ritual bath, in the area.
No one could
recall a day with more conversions in a single mikvah, not in Phoenix and maybe
not anywhere in the United States.
Throughout
history, few groups of any kind have converted en masse to Judaism. Some
evidence exists for a surge in converts in classical antiquity, but later, with
the rise of Christianity and Islam, Jewish proselytizing was largely prohibited
for centuries. In the early 2000s, rabbis formally converted hundreds of
members of the Abayudaya community in Uganda, but the Abayudaya had already
regarded themselves as Jewish for generations. In recent memory, the typical
convert has been a single individual marrying into an established Jewish
family.
It was the first
day of the month of Elul on the Hebrew calendar, marking the birth of a new
moon, and, Green noted, a propitious occasion for new beginnings. As the
service went on, he invited two of his congregants to join him on the bimah, or
synagogue stage, as he read from a Torah scroll.
“This is the
last service where it isn’t your privilege quite yet and that’s exciting,”
Green explained to the 21 men, women and children awaiting conversion.
Now came time
for the prospective converts to appear before the conversion court and answer a
series of questions about their intention and commitment. Only then, if the
court was satisfied, would they be permitted to immerse in a ritual bath of
living waters and emerge as Jews.
“I have
confidence that we would not have reached this moment and that you would not be
here if you weren’t going to pass that test. So, don’t be scared. It’s not
meant to be frightening,” Green said.
His words did
little to dispel their sense of anticipation on a day that many described as
among the most joyous and important in their lives.
For Audrey Bird,
the excitement had kept her from sleeping very deeply the night before. The
ding of a phone notification that she was usually able to ignore woke her up.
Any desire to fall back asleep faded away as soon as she saw it was the result
of the DNA test she had taken a few weeks earlier.
A former
Seventh-Day Adventist, Bird sensed she might have Jewish ancestry, and the
timing of getting the result, just hours before she was set to undergo
conversion, seemed almost too improbable to be a coincidence. The mystery of
her background, which was impossible to unravel using her family’s few
genealogical records, was about to end.
She clicked
through and learned that her DNA was 11% Ashkenazi. Elated, she woke up her husband,
Peter, and shoved the screen in his face.
“I felt such a
strong pull towards Judaism that there had to be Judaism in our background.
It’s not a huge percentage, but it shows that somewhere down the line of my
family someone stood at the foot of Mount Sinai,” she said, referring to the
location of God’s revelation to the Israelites in the Bible.
For Alpha
Cortes, who donned a festive pink hat for the occasion, the joy of the day was
mixed with a reckoning about a profound change to her relationship with her
Catholic mother and siblings. Although her path had taken her from Catholicism,
she had always shared a belief in Jesus with them.
“Religion is
what has bound my family together so this day feels like entering an abyss,”
Cortes said. “I’m mourning the abyss, but not because I have left their
religion, because this decision is actually making me very happy. I know I am
choosing the truth.”
She was tearing
up as she spoke, but where the makeup she normally wore on special occasions
would have smeared, her face was bare: Green instructed everyone that no
cosmetics, or fabric or jewelry, come between their body and the living waters
of the mikvah.
Each member of
the Show Low group went through the traditional steps of a conversion: an
interview with a court of Jewish law, a complete immersion in the ritual bath,
blessings and the bestowal of a Hebrew name. Alpha became Malka Rena; Richard,
Akiva.
Then, at a
ceremony marking the end of the day, the group added their own flourish to the
procession of rituals. Father and son David and Joel Most, sporting long bushy
beards, took out the shofars they brought from Show Low on Green’s invitation
and lifted them to their lips.
It was their
first time blowing the ram’s horn as Jews, but from the quality of the four
piercing blasts, which lasted nearly a minute, it was clear the instrument was
not new to them.
The shofar is
popular among Messianic groups precisely because it’s seen as a potent and
authentic Jewish symbol, David Most said. But looking back, he regretted how
his relationship with the shofar had developed.
“One of the
things that we didn’t know when we were in the Messianic Judaism was that
you’re not supposed to play the shofar on Shabbat — and we would open the
services with it,” he said.
The conversion
of the Show Low group and the unique perspective they bring to Jewish practice
is both a cause for celebration and a corrective to narratives of decline that
have taken hold in the Jewish community, according to Jeffrey Herbst, president
of American Jewish University.
Herbst has been
drumming up attention for a concept he refers to as the influx of “distant
relatives.” Whether it’s groups like the one in Show Low, individuals who
become curious about Jewishness after receiving the results of an ancestry test
or people from the former Soviet Union who realize they have significant Jewish
heritage that had been suppressed under communism, there are perhaps millions
of people with a newfound affinity to Judaism, he said.
In that spirit,
last year, AJU’s Miller Intro to Judaism Program started making its online
course available in Spanish.
“For the first
time since the Second Temple, people are coming to us,” Herbst said. “The
Jewish narrative is in part about a beleaguered demography. We’re so small and
maybe in some ways we’re shrinking. And I don’t want to trivialize those
concerns. But this is another perspective: There are people who want to either
join us formally or be related or be supporters and we should embrace that.”
For whatever
changes this trend may bring to Jewishness, Herbst suggests getting over
potential discomfort.
“There’s always
been more diversity, perhaps, than we’ve accounted for,” he said. “Within the
realm of people who are deeply committed, if they bring in somewhat different
traditions, I think we should celebrate it.”
Much of the
content at Foundation of the Word would be familiar to the average American
Jewish synagogue member. The Show Low group studies classic Jewish texts and
discusses the weekly Torah portion. They also read prayers from the
Conservative prayer book provided by Green and continue to livestream the
services he leads. His sermons call to mind the preacher he once was, but also
the cadence of Orthodox rabbis who upload their lessons to YouTube.
“They’re
adapting a kind of worship that’s more familiar to what they were doing before,
but directing it toward the God of Israel and authentic Jewish learning,” Green
said. “So instead of starting with the Christian rock songs that I’ve seen when
I visited mega-churches, they’re singing Jewish pop and rock songs by artists
like Benny Friedman and Mordechai Shapiro, and Nissim Black.”
For Cortes, who
is an experienced religious leader but new to Judaism, the current moment is a
bit daunting.
“We’re under a
different order now. We are no longer pretending to be Jews. Now that we are
part of the house, part of the people, we’re trying to figure out where we fit
in now that we are in Judaism,” he said. “We’re more cautious in how we do
things. We want to line up with traditional Judaism.”
One adjustment
is that, in accordance with halacha, they no longer write on Shabbat.
“That was
probably the day that we wrote the most because you come and you try to take
down good notes about everything that you’ve learned,” he said.
Cortes thought
he and others would go back to be with Congregation Ohr Tzion for Rosh
Hashanah, but he decided against doing so for the first holiday after their
conversion.
They instead
embarked on a full High Holidays program in Show Low, complete with honey
cakes. For Sukkot, the plan is to pitch a big Moroccan canvas tent with a roof
that allows starlight to shine through and spend the holiday together outdoors.
Green and Or Tzion’s educational director, Andre Ivory, hope to visit for a
day.
Cortes said
there’s also a scheduled visit to the Holocaust museum in Tucson, which should
provide one element of a standard education for American Jewish youth.
The plan for
giving the children a Jewish education throughout the year is still being
formulated, but the parents have already begun integrating materials provided
by Ivory into their homeschooling curriculum.
One source in
the Talmud outlines the Jewish infrastructure that must be established before a
community is suitable for a Torah scholar to take up residence: a synagogue, a
mikvah, a charity fund, a school, a kosher butcher and more. Show Low has none
of that. But their creation seems a lot less implausible today than it might
have before.
Show Low is a
small but growing community with a hospital, a regional airport and the most
robust water resources in a parched state. Locals hope that with an influx of
visitors coming for summer and winter outdoor recreation, the town can become
another Flagstaff. People from Phoenix decamp for Show Low when it’s too hot,
swelling the town’s summertime population. Show Low has also captured some of
the remote work crowd and is poised for more.
It’s still
remote enough that the Hasidic outreach group Chabad, known for its outposts
serving Jews living in or traveling to in far-flung locations, has no local
presence. But a small group from Chabad did visit the area a few weeks ago to
meet local Jews. They arrived as part of Roving Rabbis, a program for young
Chabad rabbis and rabbinical students during summer breaks and Jewish holidays.
Their visit to the Show Low area happened before the conversion of Cortes’
group, and it’s unclear whether they would make a stop at Foundation of the
Word in the future. As an Orthodox movement, Chabad has a complicated
relationship with conversions by Conservative and other non-Orthodox rabbis.
For his part,
Cortes says that while he continues to regard Green as a teacher and a leader,
he has not committed to an exclusive relationship with Conservative Judaism.
He’s already scheduled an introduction with Pinchas Allouche, the rabbi of an
Orthodox synagogue in Scottsdale.
Meanwhile, a
small group of Jews living in the area showed up at the Foundation of the Word
for Shabbat dinner recently after learning about their conversion to Judaism.
Afterward, one of them, Jan Perry, wrote about the experience on a Facebook
page for local Jews with 30 followers, gushing with praise about the community,
service, and food.
Cortes, whose
title within his community is now “Moreh” or teacher, was elated by the visit.
“It turns out,
there are a lot of more Jewish people here on the mountain,” he said. “Jan is
on a mission to let all of them know about us.”
The article was
published Sept. 29, ’23. Although Orthodox Judaism does not recognize
Conservative Conversion, just as they gradually moved to Judaism, I have a
feeling that they will move slowly to Orthodoxy.
Stranded in Kano By
R. Yerachmiel Tilles
http://ascentofsafed.com/Stories/Stories/5784/1345-02.html
I [David Ben-Dor] doubt if you know where Kano is. You can look it
up on the map of Nigeria in West Africa.[1] I was there in 1963. During the
Fall. But who in that climate of eternal heat, on the border of the Sahara
Desert, knows whether it is fall or spring? Only the vultures are circling
above, settling on the low, thatched roofs, waiting to come down into the
courtyard for a morsel of abandoned meat.
The plane leaves only in three days. And I still have to make my
rounds in the market of this Moslem town, where everybody but me prostrates
himself whenever one of their chieftains rides past in flowing robes on a coal
black horse.
The sun is hidden by clouds of sand blowing in from the Sahara,
restricting vision to a few yards. It is still early in the afternoon and
suddenly I remember:
G-d in heaven! It is Yom Kippur. How on earth did I get
stuck in this forsaken place? Why couldn't I have waited for another week to
make my tour to sell those tires? I had completely forgotten. There I was, at
the colonial rest house, watching the fan on the ceiling turn round and round;
thinking about atonement....
I got up, walked into the British manager's office, and asked him,
"Mr. Walker, could you please tell me if there are any Jews in Kano?"
"Jews?"
"Yes, sir, Jews."
"Well, now let me see. There is Mr. Rokei'ach, but he doesn't
want anybody to know that he's Jewish. Then there is Mr. Sidki, but for some
reason his store is closed today."
"Really? Where does Mr. Sidki live?"
"He lives above his store."
"Could you tell me where his store is?"
"Of course, sir. Walk down the main street and you will find
the house on the second corner to your right. It is the only two-story house on
the street. You can't miss it."
I started walking. The sand blew into my face. I hardly saw the
people in the street, but I finally reached the house. The shutters of the
store were rolled down. Everything was closed and quiet. I started banging on
the shutters with my fist, and suddenly a window on the first floor was opened.
"Who's there?" a man asked from above.
"Shalom Aleichem," I said.
"Aleichem shalom, baruch haba. Come up the stairs
behind the building. We are all waiting for you."
I didn't understand. They were all waiting for me? I never had met
the man. Until an hour ago I didn't know that there were Jews in Kano. What
made him say that? Slowly, lost in thought, I climbed the stairs.
When they opened the door, I beheld nine men with tallitot (prayer
shawls) on their shoulders, all greeting me in Hebrew, "baruch haba",
welcome.
Now I knew why they had all been waiting for me. I was the tenth
man to complete the minyan, the prayer quorum.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Source: Supplemented by
Yerachmiel Tilles from the first-hand report by David Ben-Dor in "B'Or
HaTorah Journal: Science, Art and Modern Life in the Light of Torah," as
posted on Chabad.org for Yom Kippur 2015.
Footnote:
[1] Kano is located near the northern border of Nigeria. It is the capital of
Kano State and the second largest city in Nigeria after Lagos, with a
population of over 4 million.
The Floating Sukkah By R. Yerachmiel Tilles
http://ascentofsafed.com/Stories/Stories/5784/1346-03.html
In the year 1915, the governor of
the Kiev district in Ukraine was General Dernatalin, a nasty anti-Semite of
German origin.
As the festival of Sukkot was
nearing the general sought ways to interfere with the preparation for the
festival by the Jews living in his district.
He was familiar with the Jewish
tradition of eating and spending time in the sukkah [1] that
they built in their gardens.
After deliberating and
consultation with the circle of his acquaintances of like mind, he decided on a
malevolent course of action.
Approximately a week before the
start of the festival, he publicized a proclamation that it was forbidden to
build sukkot in the district of Kiev. The sukkot constituted a fire hazard was
the official reason provided. Severe punishment was threatened to those who would
transgress the decree. The farmers of the district received separate orders not
to bring wood and branches into the city in the near future.
The city of Kiev was in upheaval;
whoever heard of such a thing! To prevent the Jewish people from celebrating the
festival of Sukkot according to halacha (Jewish law)?!
That same day a delegation was
organized, among them one of the richest Jewish citizens, one successful
business man and one well known and talented lawyer. They requested an urgent
meeting with the governor. But General Dernatalin, realizing why the meeting
was being called, refused to meet with them, giving a transparent excuse.
The overwhelming opinion among
the greatly indignant Jewish people was not to give in to the decree. But
transgressing it was also impossible. One cannot build a sukkah inside or in
other ways hide it from notice.
The police increased their
surveillance. Anything at all that might be construed as a possible start to
building a sukkah was immediately halted by them.
The city's rich and its
dignitaries called a meeting to find a solution. Abruptly the owner of the
local shipping company spoke up. "Many ships sail on the Dnieper
River," he said, "We will build a big sukkah on one of the ships, and
the Jewish citizens of the city will be invited to eat their meals there."
After some thought the lawyer
remarked that this idea wasn't a transgression of the governor's edict. After
all, he forbade to build sukkot on the ground of his district, nothing was said
about the water.
It also removed the reason for
the decree: the danger of a fire hazard, since that was not a threat on the
water as it was on land.
The participants of the meeting
were delighted with this solution. They made the decision to go forward with
the plan in total secrecy, so that not a whisper of it should reach the
general. They had no doubt that he would do everything in his power to obstruct
them.
Two days before the beginning of
the festival a place was prepared on one of the ships, and two huge sukkot were
built. One sukkah was built in the First Class section which was meant for the
rich of the town. Another sukkah was built in the Second Class section for all
the other Jewish persons.
The sukkot were built 100% in
accordance with the letter of halacha. The staff of the ship made the kitchens
kosher. Enormous amounts of food were prepared for the expected crowds of
people. The owner made it known that the meals were free of charge for anyone
who wanted to observe the mitzvah of "leishev be sukkah" -
'dwelling in the sukkah.'
The subterfuge was kept a secret
till the day before the beginning of the festival. Only then did a rumor start
making the rounds about sukkot that had been built on a ship, that the Jewish
people of Kiev were invited to observe the mitzvah of sitting in the sukkah.
Several hours before the
beginning of the festival the police discovered the sukkot on the ship. The
stared in astonishment at the sukkot, at a loss what to do. The orders they
were given had no instructions about what happened on the Dnieper. Neither did
they have a justification to order the dismantling of the sukkot on grounds of
being a fire hazard.
The Chief of police ran to the
governor to inform him of the unexpected turn of events. General Dernatalin,
stunned, couldn't believe his ears. He demanded to go see for himself the
sukkot built on the river.
The evening had begun and crowds
of Jewish people were making their way to the river in order to observe the
mitzvah of Sukkot according to the letter of the halacha.
The festive meal began with much
joy till the whispers started "Dernatalin is here!"
The latter was beside himself
with fury. He threatened to send everyone there to Siberia.
At that point, the Rabbi of Kiev
stood up to speak. "Sir, honorable Governor," he said, "you
should be aware that there is nothing that can cause a Jew to betray his
religion. There is no power in the world that is capable of uprooting from our
hearts the mitzvot of the Torah which we received from the Creator more than
three thousand years ago. Our holy Torah instructed us to sit in the sukkah,
and even though we have been in exile close to two thousand years, we will not
desert its commands."
The general listened attentively
to the words of the Rabbi. When the Rabbi finished his emotional address, the
general went over to him and, much to the surprise of everyone present, shook
his hand. Immediately after he silently departed, together with the police
officers.
That Sukkot was celebrated by the
Jewish people of Kiev with special joy. They celebrated the festival itself as
well as the victory over the people who wanted to prevent them observing the
mitzvot and instead were overcome.
From that day on a change was
noticeable in the governor. He stopped trying the cause trouble for the Jewish
people. He even annulled previous decrees he had passed against them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Source:
Adapted by Yerachmiel Tilles from the excellent first-draft translation by C.
R. Benami, long-time editorial assistant for AscentOfSafed.com, from
Sipureitzadikim@walla.com, Sukkot 5778 (Oct. 1, 2017) mailing.
Footnote:
[1]Many communities have the tradition of sleeping in the sukkah as well.
Inyanay Diyoma
I used to have in the
beginning of Inyanay Diyoma only material that I thought was pertaining to the
coming of Moshiach. When Gush Katif was evacuated I ran special coverage and a
few non-Israeli Newspaper Commentary like that of Emmanuel Winston Zal. (He
gave for free the engineering armor solution for the Merkava Tank to General
Tal.) From here and there a bit more. All the headlines for a week was between
4 to 10 articles.
The question is so what
has happened now to change all that? The answer is that as we get closer to
Moshiach, events happen faster. There are now days when we have 4 or 5
different terrorist attacks. The Arab Mafia had killings but they were not so
plenty. Now instead of a few or a few dozen murdered in a year, this year it
seems to project over 220 murders and that becomes a story in itself because
the thugs are stealing from Israeli Businesses and offering guard duty or
protection money.
This year a megalomaniac
Napoleon Type named Ehud Barak along with the man Eric Sharon called a snake
with glasses, Ehud Olmert, are leading with donations from abroad to the tune
of millions of dollars a protest funding campaign. It has become a obsession of
the legitimate worry about a man 16years as Prime Minister to Crime Minister.
There propaganda against
a legitimate Reform to prevent the unelected Supreme Court (Judges elect their
friends) from becoming the sole governing body in the country. Instead the
Reform wanted to make co-equal branches of government. Many of their funding is
coming from George Soros & Son’s J. Street and the Jewish versions of BDS.
You can hand out thousands of flags a week or fund hundreds of people to fly to
NY with millions not to mention the signs and other things being used by these
people.
In short, this section
of the Blogspot has almost become a headline Newspaper. I know a lot of my
foreign readers and Rabbis gather their information from here. Outside of some
Rabbinical Speeches, more on traffic and work accidents and a larger medical
advancement section, I have been almost the weekly Yeted Neeman.
Sept. 23-24
Terror cell in Bir-Zeit University
arrested. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377426
Fire Balloons from Gaza. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377431
Terrorist(s) shoot through a window.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377424
Rabbi Baruch Chaim Avraham Aryeh, one of the
Rabbis of the Hochmat Shlomo yeshiva in Jerusalem, collapsed last night and was
taken to a hospital after successful resuscitation. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377412
Megalomaniac who calls for blood in
the streets. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377246
Don Jr. account hacked. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377240
Netanyahu to CNN. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377381
IDF hits empty Hamas Post. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377383
Erdan moved Iranians who love
freedom. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377379
Soldier Wounded in battle. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377404
Disturbing things in Saudi Deal. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377399
We have to kill terrorists. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377396
Jewish woman hit by stray (Arab?)
bullet. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377387
Chabad puts Tephillin on Protestors. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377389
https://www.timesofisrael.com/syrias-assad-will-visit-china-as-beijing-boosts-reach-in-mideast/
Sept 25
Still there was massive outdoor
prayers. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377446
IDF strikes in Gaza. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377447
Over 3000 people treated on Yom
Kippur. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377451
Rabbi David Krasnjanski, the father-in-law of
popular singer Avraham Fried, has passed away in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377429
An 18-year-old young woman who was in the
emergency room before surgery at Meir Hospital was amazed to discover that the
head of the terrorist organization Lions' Den, Khaled Tabila, was lying in bed
next to her, accompanied by two soldiers and tied to the bed with a piece of
cloth. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377430
Canada accidently honors Waffen SS
man. https://www.timesofisrael.com/canadas-parliament-trudeau-and-zelensky-give-inadvertent-ovation-to-nazi-war-veteran/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-study-suggests-anti-covid-drug-may-be-causing-virus-to-mutate/
Sept. 26th
If I get in English, I will bring
this down. Ben Dror Yemeni is a non-religious quite to the left individual and
a patriot. He writes about the non-religious trying to force their ways on the
religious. Use Google Translate if you can. https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/yokra13605857
Headline
translation: Under secular coercion. A parade of folly led to Yom Kippur of free hate in
Tel Aviv. The municipality, the court and the worshipers made wrong decisions,
and there was still no justification for the mental bullying.
His main point: But they are taking over us with their
religion, and with dark types of the type of Abi Maoz, a friend told me, that I
value her opinion. In many areas, the right-wing ultra-Orthodox bloc is
annihilated by me. Canceling the outline of the Western Wall, through
ultra-Orthodox coercion, is a disgrace. But prayer in the form accepted by the
majority of those in Israel who want to pray, is also religion and compulsion?
After all, this is the basis of the basis of religious freedom. This time it
was the other way around. Thugs from the fringes of the protest, and perhaps not
only the fringes, engaged in secular coercion, and blew up a traditional Jewish
prayer in Israel. Who is it good for?
On Tuesday, terrorists fired at a military post adjacent to the town of Shuweika. IDF soldiers who were
at the military post responded with live fire. No injuries were reported and no
damage was caused to the post. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377490
Nikki Haley shows politicians. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377483
Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu sent harsh criticism to the leftist Yariv
Oppenheimer, who wondered why the Rosh Yehudi organization insisted on holding
a Yom Kippur service with separate seating for men and women in Dizengoff Circle
in Tel Aviv. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377486
Op-Ed Jonathan Pollard. The American
Visa Exemption is not good for Israel. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377466
Tourist Min. visits Saudia. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-september-26-2023/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/at-least-20-dead-200-injured-in-nagorno-karabakh-fuel-depot-explosion/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-cyberstarts-closes-480m-fund-for-cybersecurity-investments/
Instead of outreach intimidation and
violence. https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bjekiwelt#autoplay
Synagogue was full and Odesa shook. https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sk1m911xx6#autoplay
Snakes or the Galil. https://www.ynetnews.com/environment/article/hyiowbxlt#autoplay
High Blood Pressure is rising. https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/by00twgxe6
Op-Ed Termed MAD, for
Mutual Assured Destruction in ME. https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sksnodpya
Sept. 27th
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in recent
days signed a letter recommending that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro
Mayorkas allow Israel to join the US Visa Waiver Program. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377523
Milwidsky attacked the leaders of the protest.
"This handful of crazy extremists are determined to lead us all to a civil
war. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377531
According to the report, Dr. Sefi (Yosef)
Mendelovich, Deputy Director General of Israel's Health Ministry, met with a
Saudi Arabian minister. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377530
Iran must de-escalate its Nuke
Program. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377527
Main Arab Party opposes Saudi Deal. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377522
#11 bitten. US President Joe Biden’s younger dog,
Commander, bit another US Secret Service agent at the White House. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377525
Tel Aviv thinking of canceling
Sukkos Events. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377512
IDF Post set on fire near Gaza. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377501
A new poll published tonight (Tuesday) on Channel 12 News shows
that the Likud, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, continues to gain
strength. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377517
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited the
contractual (Heskemit) nature reserve today together with Mayor of the Gush
Etzion Regional Council, Shlomo Neeman, where the Palestinian Authority is
constructing an illegal new city. Minister Gallant said, “An endeavor to
construct a city is taking place with the aim of becoming the jewel of Gush
Etzion.” https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377515
Error no shooting occurred. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377487
Mission stop Biden from Falling. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377496
https://www.timesofisrael.com/gallant-heads-to-berlin-to-sign-3-5-billion-arrow-3-air-defense-deal/
Two State Solution disillusional. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-760542
Biden’s Book Ban Czar Progressive
Jew. https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-760594
Singapore blows up 100kg bomb. https://www.jpost.com/international/article-760493
How cancers avoid body immunity. https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-760510
New research conducted by scientists in
the UK suggests that extreme heat could potentially lead to
the extinction of humans and nearly all other mammals in approximately 250
million years, which is earlier than previously anticipated by other models. https://www.jpost.com/environment-and-climate-change/article-760412
New Covid has 30 variants. https://www.jpost.com/podcast/inside-israeli-innovation/article-757139
Sept. 28-29
Op-Ed Bederman Woman’s Liberation
was not meant to liberate but tp enslave. https://dianebederman.com/femi-not/
Mike Pompeo Best Christian Friend of
Israel 2023. https://www.jpost.com/christianworld/article-760883
https://www.foxnews.com/us/elon-musk-livestreams-border-give-people-firsthand-account-migrant-crisis
Op-Ed Iran’s Penetration of
Washington. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377651
Municipal Elections soon proves he
is anti-religious mayor bans public Sukkahs and Torah Dancing. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377624
Iranian Navy aimed laser at US helicopter.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377642
Mayors who are affiliated with the Likud Party
recently approached former minister Ayelet Shaked with a request that she join
the ranks of the ruling party and run in its primaries before the next
elections. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377638
Man nearly lynched banned from Yesha
for 6mos. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377649
Drug seedlings burned. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377654
New Poll blocks remain the same. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377656
Threats on Yesha Leader. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377598
Shaked: Supreme Court need not
interfere in everything. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377600
No Draft Law no Judicial Reform. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377591
Stopping Terror Balloons. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377605
https://www.timesofisrael.com/4-soldiers-arrested-on-suspicion-of-beating-3-arab-israelis/
Bad
Parenting. https://www.timesofisrael.com/court-convicts-4-in-2020-eilat-gang-rape-7-more-guilty-of-aiding-assault/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/breakaway-republic-of-karabakh-says-it-will-cease-to-exist/
Chag Samayach a happy Sukkos
and a peaceful and restful Shabbos.
Rachamim Pauli
