For the week of July 12, 2025 / 16 Tammuz 5785

Balak
Torah: B’midbar/Numbers 22:2 – 25:9
Haftarah: Micah 5:6 – 6:8 (English 5:7 – 6:8)
Originally posted the week of July 20, 2019 / 17 Tammuz 5779

Behold, a people has come out of Egypt. They cover the face of the earth, and they are dwelling opposite me. Come now, curse this people for me, since they are too mighty for me. Perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them from the land, for I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed. (B’midbar/Numbers 22:5-6)

Do you think of the people of Bible times as fundamentally superstitious? Merriam-Webster online defines “superstition” as “a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/superstition). It seems to me that “false conception of causation” really captures it. The superstitious person acts upon a belief that certain happenings occur because of certain other things even though there is no reliable evidence that there is an actual connection between the two. For example, when I was about eleven years old, I was eating lunch at home and somehow dropped my salmon sandwich on the floor. At the time, I thought nothing of it, picked it up, and ate it. By that evening I was sick with a stomach virus. It would be years before I would eat salmon again. Yet even if that which made me sick transferred from the floor to the sandwich to my stomach, which is highly unlikely, there is no reason to think that all salmon from that moment on was a potential threat to my health. I do eat salmon now, but I would be lying if I said, I don’t have to fight through at least a tinge of unreasonable fear to do so. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that “false conception of causation” like this is pretty common. Maybe not you, of course.

In spite of human propensity towards superstition, we tend to think of ancient folks as more superstitious than we are. This is how we would view the story of Balak and Bilam (English: Balaam). Balak was a Moabite king who felt threatened by the presence of the people of Israel. Thinking they were no match for them militarily, he wanted to hire Bilam, a diviner of some sort, to curse them. Balak believed that by Bilam’s pronouncing certain words, Israel’s defenses would be weakened. As it turned out, God stepped in and didn’t allow Bilam to curse Israel. Every time he prepared to recite his incantations, he blessed Israel instead.

I suspect that even Bible fans regard this scene as reflective of a superstitious culture. What difference would it have made if Bilam had cursed Israel anyway? Would God have allowed words of destruction toward his chosen people to have any effect? Do such words have any effect regardless? Isn’t this a case of “false conception of causation”? It’s a great story for ancient people, but we know better than to give any credence to such a worldview, right?

I could spend the time remaining exploring the power of words. So much can be said about words, pun intended. From God’s using words to create the universe to the difference words make in our personal lives, a case could be made for causation with regard to blessings and curses, however the mechanics might work. But instead of analyzing the legitimacy of the power of blessing and curses, I would rather look at a contemporary parallel to the Balak and Bilam story.

When Balak determined that his people’s normal military prowess would be insufficient, he resorted to cursing. Whatever he believed about its dynamics, he thought it would work. In this case, his plan backfired, but that’s not stopping many people today from following his example.

In our increasingly polarized culture, more and more people are resorting to cursing those with whom they disagree. Instead of engaging differences by providing intelligent reasons for a particular viewpoint, it is common to tear the other party down with insults, accusations, and insinuations. Often people are shamed publicly, held up to incessant mockery, and subject to death wishes.

It should be clear that like Balak, these verbal attacks are happening because people really believe they work. We could wish that falsehood when spoken evaporates into the air, but it doesn’t. Negative words potentially destroy lives. The causal relationship between the curses (or whatever you want to call them) and their devastating effects doesn’t matter as much as that it works.

I wonder how many of us are not standing for what is good and right today, because we are afraid of the potential curses we may have to endure. But let’s remember that if we are truly in the Messiah, then like Israel of old, we can be confident that God will not allow negative verbal assaults to have their way in our lives. As we read in Mishlei, the book of Proverbs: “Like a sparrow in its flitting, like a swallow in its flying, a curse that is causeless does not alight” (Mishlei/Proverbs 26:2).

Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version

For the week of July 5, 2025 / 9 Tammuz 5785

Chukat
Torah: B’midbar/Numbers 19:1 – 22:1
Haftarah: Shoftim/Judges 11:1-33
Originally posted the July 13, 2019 / 10 Tammuz 5779

So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live. (B’midbar/Numbers 21:9)

One of the prime focuses of the Hebrew Scriptures is the issue of idolatry that was expressed in ancient Israel in two ways: the worship of false gods as represented by an image or claiming that the true God was represented by an image. In either case, the essence of idolatry is it misrepresents reality and especially the reality of the God of Israel. The dynamics of idol worship is captured by the New Covenant Writings through this statement: “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!” (Romans 1:25).

Idolatry, whether it be through an actual figure associated with the true God or false gods, gives undo credence to a created thing instead of to the author of all creation. Putting one’s hope in an idol assumes that goodness can somehow be derived from the experience of engaging the thing, receiving blessing in other words. But blessing, as I just quoted, is derived from God, not things, even though God uses things to bless us. And therein lies the problem. It is so easy to confuse the instruments God uses with God himself.

This is exactly what happened with the Israelites and the bronze serpent, a story that took about eight hundred years to tell. During the wilderness wanderings under Moses, God punished the people for their grumblings by sending deadly snakes among them. In response to their humbling themselves, God prescribed an unusual remedy. He told Moses to set up a bronze serpent on a pole. All anyone bitten by a snake had to do was to look at the bronze serpent and they would be cured.

What we don’t know until the reign of Hezekiah eight centuries later was that not only did they hold on to the bronze serpent, but they made offerings to it, that is until Hezekiah smashed it (see 2 Melachim/2 Kings 18:4). For eight hundred years worship of this object had been tolerated! For eight hundred years “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.”

It isn’t difficult to understand why they did that. They believed, mistakenly so, that there was power in the object. What had begun as an act of faith unto God by following his instructions at the time, became an idol. They confused the source of power through his chosen instrument with the thing itself.

This is what underlies superstition. Superstition is believing that certain objects when related to in particular ways will empower us in some way. This is what happened with the bronze serpent. Looking to it was not originally superstition, since doing so was directed by God. It only became superstitious once the people assumed the power was in the object itself. They may have justified their misguided beliefs by claiming that if God used it in the past, then it’s appropriate to continue using it even after the occasion for which it was made was over and done with.

This is exactly where a lot of people of faith get stuck. We have a legitimate experience of God in the past and insist on revisiting it, thinking that we can continue to derive blessing from it when it’s outlived its intended purpose. We may not be doing this with a tangible object, but the dynamics are the same. Our precious moments with God were for the time allotted to them. To expect to derive the same blessings over and over again from what God did in an earlier time and place is to exchange the truth about God for a lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!

It is the Creator “who is blessed forever.” Blessing resides in God, not objects or experiences. He is free to use whatever he wishes to pour out blessings upon us. But if we confuse the One who blesses with that which he uses to bless, we will find ourselves living a lie and cut off from the very blessings we long for.

Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version

For the week of June 28, 2025 / 2 Tammuz 5785

Korach
Torah: B’midbar/Numbers 16:1 – 18:32
Haftarah: 1 Samuel 11:14 – 12:22
Updated version of “Go to God” from the week of June 23, 2001

They assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the LORD?” When Moses heard it, he fell on his face… (B’midbar/Numbers 16:3-4)

Moses went through a lot. He didn’t want this job in the first place. Many years earlier, he thought he would try to help his people by taking matters into his own hands. Now that he was older and wiser with the desire to be the Great Deliverer purged from his soul, it was God’s idea to send him back to Egypt. Although he resisted, God prevailed, and Moses became a leader.

I have heard it said that Moses’ being a shepherd in the wilderness was to prepare him to lead the people there one day. That may be true, but not in the way some people think. It wasn’t his knowledge of the wilderness itself that qualified him for the job. It wasn’t the day-in and day-out of sheep herding that taught him the group dynamics necessary to lead two million ex-slaves from bondage to conquest. The primary lesson he learned during those forty years prior to God’s call was to be dependent upon God.

Moses had gone from elite status in Pharaoh’s palace to the life of a fugitive, running for his life. Cut off from everything he knew, at age forty he had to start life all over again, so to speak, working a menial job.

This week’s portion includes an example of how he dealt with the predicaments he faced as God’s chosen leader of his people. When challenged by Korah and company, the Torah says, “When Moses heard it, he fell on his face” (B’midbar/Numbers 16:4). Only after that, did he give them an answer. Over and over again, whether Moses was confronting Pharaoh, speaking to the elders of Israel, or dealing with the people’s virtual incessant grumbling, he looked to God.

What a way to react to being confronted! He fell on his face! He wasn’t showing reverence to Korah, nor was he completely overwhelmed. This was Moses’ leadership posture. He looked to God. Then and only then did he deal with the situation.

We don’t find Moses finding guidance via his vast learning acquired in Pharaoh’s court or from his previous years of wilderness wanderings. Whenever he faced a situation he went to God. And it was God who gave him the wisdom he needed.

Isn’t this what we should all do? As we read in the New Covenant Writings:

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him (James 1:5).

So the next time you are in a situation where you need wisdom, maybe you should do what Moses did and get on your face.

Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version

For the week of June 21, 2025 / 25 Sivan 5785

Sh’lach L’kha
Torah: B’midbar/Numbers 13:1 – 15:41
Haftarah: Joshua 2:1-24
Originally posted the week of June 20, 2020 / 28 Sivan 5780

Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the LORD bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” And they said to one another, “Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.” (B’midbar/Numbers 14:1-4)

This week’s parsha (Torah reading portion) includes one of the greatest fails in the Torah. The people of Israel are on the cusp of acquiring the land God promised to their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, hundreds of years before. No other people in history had ever experienced the favor and power of God as they did. Having been subjected to the bitter bondage of slavery their whole lives, they saw their God pummel Egypt with devastating plagues until the stubborn king finally allowed them to leave. And that was just the beginning! They were then personally led by God by way of a pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night. He parted the sea, enabling them to cross to the other side on dry ground, from where they watched that same sea drown the Egyptian army, terminating that threat for good. Each day, except on Shabbat (English: the Sabbath), they woke up to a miraculous nutritious meal of manna. God also provided them with water when none was available be it by transforming poisoned water into fresh or bubbling forth from a rock. The one time they had to endure battle, their victory was in direct relationship to Moses’ prayers despite their complete lack of fighting experience, having been slaves until recently.

Many of these acts of God’s power occurred in the context of a great need or a dangerous situation. Yet, each and every time, God surprisingly and wonderfully came through for them. Now, they face their greatest challenge thus far, the conquest of the Promised Land. While the twelve scouts who were sent in ahead to check out the situation all affirmed God’s claim of the quality of the land, ten of them were overwhelmed by the land’s inhabitants and succeeded in intimidated the people to the point that they weren’t willing to face this challenge at all.

I have no personal quibble with the people. I cannot judge their fear as if I would have done anything different. Their assessment of the situation was reasonable based on the facts on the ground. Yes, God helped them in the other difficult situations, but nothing of this magnitude. They obviously lacked the manpower, the equipment, and the knowhow to face such a challenge.

But those are the facts on the ground. That’s not taking into consideration the facts in heaven. Had not God proved to them that he, the greatest power in the entire universe, was with them? If God had indeed directed them to take the Land, they couldn’t lose. Yet, it would take a level of trust in God that few people, if any, had ever exercised. They decided they wouldn’t either. The result was thirty-eight more years of wilderness wanderings until all the adults among them died out. This extremely difficult faith challenge would wait for the next generation. It would be no less difficult, but unlike their fathers and mothers, they would trust God and succeed.

But why would God subject his people to such a difficult task? While most of us will never face something as daunting as this, we all have to deal with various kinds of difficulties, many of which are extremely overwhelming. Why does life have to be so hard?

There’s no way that I can answer such a question adequately for everyone and every situation. There are all sorts of reasons why we face difficulties in life. Still, there is a universal principle that to ignore or to deny undermines our ability to effectively face such challenges. That universal principle is God is training all of us to be more than we are currently.

Human beings were originally designed by God to represent him and his interests on Planet Earth. When our first parents rebelled against him, the human family broke down. We became twisted, so to speak, and became subject to the very creation we were to rule over. Since then, God has sought to restore us to our assigned role of reflecting him. We haven’t been good at cooperating with his program. Regardless, he continues to work at reconstructing us.

What is true generally for all human beings is far more intense for those who are in close relationship with him. In the current age, that’s especially those who have been reconciled with him by faith in the Messiah. Believers at times tragically assume that “being saved,” puts us in a comfort bubble rather than a war zone. Yeshua followers shouldn’t be surprised or intimidated at finding ourselves on the cusp of battle, not necessarily a literal military one like ancient Israel in this week’s portion, but no less intense. God calls us daily to face down death and so become more and more the kind of people he wants us to be.

Scriptures taken from English Standard Version (ESV)

For the week of June 14, 2025 / 18 Sivan 5785

Beha’alotcha
Torah: B’midbar/Numbers 8:1 – 12:16
Haftarah: Zechariah 2:14 – 4:7 (English 2:10 – 4:7)
Originally posted the week of June 10, 2017 / 16 Sivan 5777

I am not able to carry all this people alone; the burden is too heavy for me. If you will treat me like this, kill me at once, if I find favor in your sight, that I may not see my wretchedness. (B’midbar/Numbers 11:14-15)

I think Moses is amazing. I know he didn’t get off to the greatest start, murdering the Egyptian and running for his life as he feared the wrath of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Note that he knew he was someone special, having miraculously survived the murder-all-the-baby-boys decree, rescued by Pharaoh’s own daughter no less. Killing the Egyptian was wrong, but it was the result of a good motive, as he reacted to his people’s ongoing oppression. The Torah doesn’t tell us how he learned he was a Hebrew or knew that he had a key role to fulfill, but like many people of destiny, he walked a twisted road to get there.

I don’t blame him for his resistance to God, when at age eighty he finally received his commission. Even though he was still afraid for his life, and in spite of his attempt to skirt his call, he went back to Egypt anyway. From that point on, with the exception of a couple of misguided actions due to frustration with the people (again no criticism from me about that), he performed magnificently in the face of Pharaoh’s stubborn short-sightedness and a fairly uncooperative, critical people to lead.

What made Moses such an effective leader was how he dealt with the problems he faced. Every time another issue arose, he would go to God for what he should do. Perhaps this is where Paul in the New Covenant Writings derives his encouragement to “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). While some may think Paul intended the believers in Thessalonica to utter barely audible prayers under their breath every waking second – nothing wrong with that if you can sustain such a thing – but more likely he was calling them (and by extension us), to regularly defer to God just as Moses did.

But there is more for us to learn from Moses’s prayers than the frequency thereof. He also “told it like it is,” so to speak. Moses’s prayer I quoted at the start was in response to one of the many occasions of the people’s complaining. This time a bunch of discontents got everyone riled up about the boring nature of their menu. The supernatural provision of the bread-like substance called manna wasn’t good enough for them. They demanded that Moses produce meat. This pushed him to the limit and he told God so, and that he couldn’t take it anymore, saying: “If you will treat me like this, kill me at once” (B’midbar/Numbers 11:15).

That’s not one of the nicest prayers I’ve ever read. It’s pretty confrontational and demanding, don’t you think? Note how he puts the blame squarely on God even though it was the people who were making life so difficult for him. Moses prayed that way because he knew something that we often fail to grasp: while people are responsible for their actions, our lives are ultimately in God’s hands.

His prayer is also pretty drastic: “resolve the problem or kill me!” If God is so in control, why not leave the resolution of the situation with him. But this is how Moses was feeling at the time. So that’s what he prayed. How did God respond? Did Moses get a lecture about appropriate piety and respectability? No; God heeded Moses’s desperate plea.

Why would God do that? Why didn’t he instead put Moses in his place for addressing him that way? Or at least ignore him (which, if we are honest, is probably the way we think God deals with us a good deal of the time)? God answered Moses because this is the kind of prayer God answers: direct and honest. Moses prayed a prayer of desperation because he was desperate. God knew that. Why pretend otherwise? Anything else would have been fake. God sees through fake. He isn’t offended by honesty. Unlike the complainers who put the onus on Moses, who had no ability to grant their request, Moses went to the only one who could do something about his difficult situation. And by baring his heart, he not only got an audience with the Sovereign of the Universe, he got the help he (and the whole community) needed.

The Messiah addresses this in his introduction to his model prayer:

And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him (Matthew 6:7-8).

He is not only addressing meaningless repetition here, but the emptiness of fake prayers as well. We need to tell it like it is when we pray. Anything else is just a show. That doesn’t mean there is no room for formal prayer, especially in public. But it better be sincere or else you’ll find yourself filling up space with “empty phrases” than truly conversing with your Heavenly Father. Perhaps it’s time to tell God how you really feel.

Scriptures taken from English Standard Version (ESV)

For the week of June 7, 2025 / 11 Sivan 5785

Naso
Torah:  B’midbar/Numbers 4:21 – 7:89
Haftarah: Shoftim/Judges 13:2-25

And when Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with the LORD, he heard the voice speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was on the ark of the testimony, from between the two cherubim; and it spoke to him. (B’midbar/Numbers 7:89)

I was really touched by something I read in my Scripture reading the other day. I am currently working through the Book of Acts. Chapter nine includes the Lord’s confronting Saul on his way to Damascus as he seeks to quash the fledgling messianic movement. Even though this is a very familiar passage to me, there was something I had never noticed before. It took my reading Richard Longenecker’s commentary (The Expositor’s Bible Commentary Revised Edition, 2007) to see it. When the Lord speaks to Saul, we read in the great majority of English translations, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4). That this happened at all is extraordinary, especially as the story unfolds. The Messiah not only confronts this zealous persecutor, but he does so by name, while revealing the true implications of his misguided actions, and commissions him to be his key spokesperson to the nations.

However, there is a subtle yet powerful element here that these English translations fail to convey. Acts, like the rest of the New Testament, is written in Greek. Rarely are there any indications that a speech or dialogue originated in a different language. For example, most, if not all, of the speeches and conversations by Jewish people, Yeshua included, would have been in Jewish Aramaic or Hebrew. Yet, there are very few instances where that fact is noted in the Greek. The way it’s done here is most fascinating, partly because most English translations ignore it.¹

First, as you are likely aware, personal names in a foreign context are often pronounced very differently from their original. Sometimes the differences can be drastic. For example, the French name Pierre is Peter in English. John in English is Jean in French, derived from the Hebrew Yochanan. We don’t have time to get into all the whys and wherefores of this phenomenon. A couple of factors are that languages don’t always include the sounds of other languages, and rules for word forms differ from one language to another. The Greek name for Saul is “Saulos” (pronounced sow’-los), representing the Hebrew “Shaul” (pronounced sha-ool’). The reason why we say “Saul” in English, even though we have a “sh” sound, is that the biblical names come down to us via Greek, which does not.

That said, there’s an interesting clue embedded in the Greek text of Acts 9:4. The four times prior when Saul is mentioned in Acts, its author, Luke, uses “Saulos,” the expected Greek derivation of his name. But when the Lord addresses him directly, Luke uses a different spelling, “Saoul” (pronounced sah-ool’). Despite the Greek language’s inability to fully represent Hebrew sounds, this is Luke’s way of telling the reader that God said, “Shaul, Shaul.” Thus, speaking to him in his mother tongue.

This form of his name is also used when he is addressed directly by Ananias, when he healed him of his blindness (Acts 9:17; see also 22:13); the one occurance of his namesake, King Saul (Acts 13:21); and the two times he recounts his encounter from chapter nine (Acts 22:7; 26:14). In the second of these retellings, he makes special mention of the language issue I am referring to, indicating that I am not making a big deal out of nothing (and that this language issue should have been more obvious to me)! Luke wanted people to know this. But why?

I imagine it could have been for accuracy’s sake. That’s what happened. So, tell it like it is. I think there’s more to it. I am writing this on the eve of Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks, one of the three major festivals on the biblical calendar. It was on this particular festival that God took his messianic restoration plan to the next stage, for it was on this holy day that he poured out his Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) on the believers in Jerusalem in fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy. God’s plans and purposes, so long incubated within a Jewish context, was going global. This was marked by the miraculous praising of God in a multiplicity of languages. The God of Israel was going to speak to the nations in their own languages.

No one knew, however, that God’s multilingual policy would backfire in that the Jewish Messiah’s Good News to the nations would become incomprehensible to those to whom it originally came. Why bother accurately demonstrating that Luke purposely wrote “Saul” in such a way as to indicate “Shaul,” when the Gospel has been severed from its Jewish roots? I guess few realize that a Gospel that is incomprehensible to the Jewish people is no Gospel at all.

Scriptures from English Standard Version

1. An exception being The Complete Jewish Bible, but wait until the end before checking it out!

For the week of May 31, 2025 / 4 Sivan 5785

B’midbar
Torah: B’midbar/Numbers 1:1 – 4:20
Haftarah: Hoshea/Hosea 2:1-22 (English: 1:10 – 2:20)

Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. (Hoshea/Hosea 2:16-17; English 2:14-15)

This week’s Haftarah (selected reading from the Hebrew Prophets) is from Hoshea, Hosea in English. It is a message of extremes, which is not unusual for God’s ancient spokespeople. The extremes are those of Israel’s great unfaithfulness and their eventual restoration to God. I think it is accurate to say that this is a core biblical theme, both in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Covenant Writings. From a New Covenant perspective, its reasonable to regard God’s restoration of the unfaithful as the theme of all Scripture. Despite the Hebrew Scriptures’ focus on a single nation, the people of Israel, New Covenant adherents tend to universalize God’s workings with Israel to the extent that the depictions of wayward Israel become a prototype of the general waywardness of the human race. For many Christians, the promised Jewish Messiah, the vehicle of Israel’s restoration, becomes the Savior of the whole world.

This connection is not only valid, it’s intentional. It fulfills God’s promise to Abraham, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Bereshit/Genesis 12:3). However, the fact of fulfillment has been leveraged in misguided ways. Many have concluded that this outworking of God’s covenantal commitment to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob nullifies its implications for its original recipients.

The universalization of God’s restorative work, as vividly depicted in Hoshea’s relationship with his wayward wife, if anything, should emphasize, not detract from, God’s faithfulness to the people Hoshea’s wife symbolized. In fact, denying God’s ongoing faithfulness to Israel undermines the basis of his restoration work among the nations. To deduce that the broader scope of restoring wayward Gentiles in some way makes God’s message through Hoshea to Israel obsolete is to not only deny Scripture but also misrepresents God.

Few seem to be aware of how destructive it is to deny God’s ongoing faithfulness to Israel. It wouldn’t be so bad if people would simply treat the Hebrew Scriptures as obsolete. It’s still wrong, just not as bad. This way of thinking sees God as working among Israel for a time, but whose purpose is complete once the Messiah comes. This approach might continue to use the Hebrew Scriptures for background information and to foreshadow New Covenant fulfillment, but that’s all. Come to think of it, that’s a very common approach. And even though it’s scripturally unsound, I wish it would end there. Yet, tragically, something very insidious usually happens instead, with passages such as our Haftarah being used against the Jewish people. In the name of obsolescence, God’s faithfulness to Israel is denied, while Israel’s waywardness remains.

In our Haftarah, the people of Israel are described in fairly negative terms. That’s pretty much par for the course throughout Hebrew Scripture. But that’s because they are normal people, just like everyone else. God didn’t choose Israel for Israel’s sake alone. He did so as part of his great worldwide restoration plan. A main feature of Israel’s function in the grand scheme of things was to demonstrate everyone’s need for the one true God. We (my being Jewish myself) do that by being both the historical vehicles of God’s Word and by being examples of human beings’ need for God. That’s why the Bible doesn’t only have teaching about God, but includes our stories of failure (and some successes).

But God didn’t broadcast our failures via the world’s all-time best-selling book in order to shame us. Instead, he wanted to vividly display his extraordinary graciousness for all to see. God’s faithfulness to wayward Israel is designed to demonstrate his faithfulness to wayward you! And yet, through the centuries, despite passages like this week’s Haftarah, the Church has denied the enormity of God’s faithful love. You can’t have it both ways. Either his covenantal commitment to Israel is secure or it’s not. And if not, what hope do any of us have?

For the week of May 24, 2025 / 26 Iyar 5785

Behar & Bechukotai
Torah: Vayikra/Leviticus 25:1 – 27:34
Haftarah: Jeremiah 16:19 – 17:14

O LORD, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of trouble, to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say: “Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit. Can man make for himself gods? Such are not gods!” (Jeremiah 16:19-20)

These words from God, spoken through the prophet Jeremiah, look forward to the day when the nations will acknowledge the uselessness of their ancestral traditions, including idol worship, and turn to him, the one true God, the God of Israel. This certainly foreshadows the Jewish messianic mission to the nations. From our vantage point, two thousand years after the coming of Yeshua, it’s challenging to comprehend the phenomenal revolutionary effect the early Messianic Jews had on their pagan neighbors. Led by God’s Spirit, they confronted one of the most powerful empires in history at its very foundation.

Take the great port city of Ephesus, in modern-day Turkey, for example. It was home to the so-called “great mother goddess” Artemis. It was here that a riot began because a messianic Pharisee named Paul was proclaiming that “gods made with hands are not gods” (see Acts 19:26). This is not a case of competing religions, but a cosmic clash between light and darkness. This clash has continued to the present day, to the extent that there are few places on earth where people have not turned from their empty traditions to the truth of the one and only God in the Messiah.

Perhaps you grew up in an environment that was friendly to biblical truth. It might be difficult to imagine the level of personal and societal upheaval associated with accepting the emptiness of one’s false gods. This is not so much due to the entities themselvesbut the structures of thought and social norms associated with them. It’s no wonder that even today, people lose jobs, friends, and family over accepting God’s truth.

But don’t be fooled. This dramatic, all-encompassing transformation isn’t just for those from cultures vastly different from a biblical view of the world. Not to take anything away from Jeremiah’s extraordinary prediction of Gentile nations turning from their false gods, notice that immediately preceding the beginning of this week’s Haftarah (weekly reading portion from the Hebrew prophets), we read of God’s punishing Israel for the very sin of idolatry. I like to say the Bible is always talking, not to someone else, but to the reader. No one is let off the hook. Our reading of Scripture should always result in an examination of self, not the other guy. I am pretty sure that Jeremiah’s prophecy about Gentiles turning from idols was designed to prompt Jewish repentance.

The Jewish expectation of pagans turning to the God of Israel was not to be a source of pride, but instead an opportunity to examine oneself and respond accordingly. All of us need to take a serious look at our own lives from a biblical frame of reference. Just because we claim to adhere to the truth doesn’t mean we do. We might try to assure ourselves we are okay just because we think we have the right words, attend the right congregation, have the right creed, or have the right associates. And perhaps they are the right words, and so on. Remember, even good things can become idols when we rely on them instead of God.

Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version

For the week of May 17, 2025 / 19 Iyar 5785

Emor
Torah: Vayikra/Leviticus 21:1 – 24:23
Hafatarah: Ezekiel 44:15-31
Originally posted the week of May 5, 2018 / 20 Iyar 5778 (updated)

Thus Moses declared to the people of Israel the appointed feasts of the LORD. (Vayikra/Leviticus 23:44)

According to Wikipedia, “Cultural appropriation is the inappropriate or unacknowledged adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity.” When cultural appropriation first came to my attention some time ago, I thought the strong objection to it was a bit strange, not because I don’t understand the concern, but because I am so used to it – sort of!

As a Jewish believer in the Messiah, whose spiritual relationships are mainly among non-Jews, I encounter cultural appropriation constantly. In fact, Christianity is and has always been an exercise in cultural appropriation. Generally, Jews and Christians are not aware of this, however, since most Christian cultural expression wouldn’t be recognized as Jewish. The fact is there is almost nothing within Christianity’s core beliefs that isn’t derived from the Jewish world. Some are more obvious than others. The primary document for Christians is the Bible, both Old and New Testaments written almost exclusively by Jews and focused on activities happening to or done by Jewish people. Even as global outreach developed, its development and implementation was in Jewish hands. The God of the Christians is the God of Israel. The religious and theological concepts adhered to by Christians are all Jewish in origin, such as sin, righteousness, sacrifice, and holiness. Then there’s the very center of all core concepts, the Messiah. While the Jewish and Christian worlds have traditionally been divided over the Messiah’s identity, Christianity is founded on the conviction that Yeshua (Jesus) is the Jewish Messiah. Using Greek-oriented instead of Hebrew-oriented terminology obscures the cultural connection. That many Jews and Christians aren’t conscious that Christ and Messiah, for example, are synonyms doesn’t negate the Jewish nature of the messianic concept.

Other key Jewish components of Christianity are not as obvious. Most people don’t realize that baptism was originally a Jewish custom that was done as part of the conversion process as well as when an estranged Jewish person wanted to return to God. The development of the church as the place of community teaching and prayer was based on the synagogue. Communion, also called the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper, is taken from Passover. The hope of the resurrection of the body was an exclusively Jewish concept. We could go on.

The early Jewish believers went out of their way to allow the Good News about the Messiah to function freely and fully in a non-Jewish context. Through God-given wisdom they freed the core of biblical faith from Jewish cultural control, allowing the nations to work out the essentials of biblical spirituality within their own contexts. What I don’t think the early believers envisioned is how far from a Jewish frame of reference the Church would go.

Many non-Jewish believers over the past hundred years or so have sought to re-contextualize Christianity within a Jewish frame of reference. Some correctly understand that the freedom to adapt biblical teaching within foreign cultures, while helpful in many ways, can tend to skew biblical truth, especially when cut off from its Jewish roots. At the same time, however, the passion to restore biblical faith to its ancient roots can go overboard. This is where appropriate cultural adaptation can become misappropriation. This happens in two ways: first, by confusing Jewish culture with biblical truth. Not everything that is Jewish is necessarily biblical. Much of Jewish culture found in the world today is recent in origin. While we don’t know the tunes of King David’s psalms, we are fairly certain that they were not anything close to what is thought of as Jewish music today. Similarly, Jewish foods are normally adaptations of local fare throughout the world where Jewish people have lived. Apart from the limits of kosher laws, there is nothing intrinsically biblical about the vast majority of Jewish cuisine.

The second type of misappropriation is in regard to actual biblical material. For example, take the feasts as listed in this week’s parsha (weekly Torah portion). It is tragic that this key component of the Books of Moses, like most of the Hebrew Scriptures, has been virtually ignored by Christians. There is so much to learn from the feasts as they teach us about God’s character and activities. Yet it is easy to go from a healthy renewed focus on Scripture to a misguided emphasis on cultural expression. Much of Jewish festival observance today is based on tradition, not Bible. Tradition isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is culturally bound to the people who developed it. People don’t often possess the level of sensitivity necessary to adapt cultural forms. That doesn’t mean it should never be done. Perhaps what needs to be done, be it non-Jewish Christians in relation to Jewish people or between other cultural groups is to truly get to know the people whose culture it is before we treat it as our own.

Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version

For the week of May 10, 2025 / 12 Iyar 5785

Aharei Mot & Kedoshim
Torah: Vayikra/Leviticus 16:1 – 20:27
Haftarah: Amos 9:7-15
Originally posted the week of April 24, 2010 / 10 Iyar 5770

You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. (Vayikra / Leviticus 19:17-18)

The Messiah was asked the question, “What is the greatest commandment?” (See Matthew 22:35-40; Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:25-37). It was popular among Jewish religious leaders to attempt to summarize the Torah. Here is Yeshua’s answer:

The most important is, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” The second is this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:29-31)

Some people take this to mean that unlike the people living under the Old Covenant, followers of Yeshua have only these minimal requirements to follow. But that completely misses the point. Yeshua’s summary statement is intended as a perspective by which to view God’s requirements, not a recipe by which to ignore them. Yeshua was reminding a people who had become obsessed with the Torah as an end in itself that its directives were intended as the means of loving God and other people. Losing sight of these primary commands results in the failure to properly keep the others. Loving God and loving people is what God’s commands are all about.

Hearing Yeshua highlight “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” should draw us to the context of what he was quoting, some of which we read at the beginning. Loving our neighbor is not a vague sentimental concept based on emotion. It has very practical and far reaching implications. For example we read, “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him.” This tells us first that when difficulties arise with someone with whom we have relationship, we are not to hate them. Hate is not simply negative and angry thoughts toward another person. It is the tendency to disregard them or not care about them. This may occur with very little emotion. God instructs us that instead of ignoring issues we have with others, we need to deal with them through open and honest discussion and thereby avoid even greater issues arising between one another. This is what “love your neighbor” is all about or it is at least one example.

It could be that “but you shall love your neighbor as yourself” sums up a larger Torah section (see Vayikra / Leviticus 19:9-18) that includes being mindful of the poor among us, not stealing, having fair business dealings, not lying to others, not using God’s name to justify wrong, not oppressing others or robbing them, paying wages on time, showing respect toward the physically handicapped, demonstrating justice in court without partiality, not slandering, and not taking vengeance or bearing grudges against others. This is not a complete list, though it makes it clear that loving our neighbor is far more and much deeper than what we may normally think it is.

Loving our neighbor is not just having warm affection toward others or showing kindness to them, though it may include those things. God’s version of loving others involves a deep understanding of his ways and how they relate to how we are to treat others. To love is to be true to our God-given responsibilities towards those with whom we have personal and work relationships, business and legal dealings, as well as the needy and vulnerable around us. Let’s not cheapen God’s Word by reducing it to anything less.

Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version