Month: August 2021

Mass Uncertainty and a Candle of Hope!

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A year and a half of uncertainty and lies has brought the world into a condition where the most intelligent see reality as, at best, a gray area. Mass psychosis is rampant among those who believe in personal freedom and basic human rights. On the other hand, those who have drunk the Kool-aid are confident that they are doing everything right and saving themselves and the world. Those who have resisted the fated shot are now the enemy. Nothing is working for those who are not vaccinated. Their sense of truth says that no compromise can be made with those who impose experimental medicine on individuals and use threats and bribes to accomplish compliance. And we are seeing this in every country on the map. We see behind this conspiracy a global power grab.

Even many simple folk, though they may not see the big picture, are not happy with government telling them that now they have no choice over their own health. And this group is fast becoming the object of universal excoriation. All the major media sources are zeroing in on the promotion of this totalitarian regime and the threats of more and more loss of freedoms and all “because of the unvaxinated.” Friends and family are now divided so that people don’t know whom they can trust. Public broadcasts from the health ministry speaks of those who refuse the shot as unwanted irredeemable lice in the hair of society. It becomes dangerous in many cases if they do not play along with the humiliating charade of masking and double masking. Video clips of violence are filmed and sent out. These, by the way, may be sent by well-meaning non-vaxxers who do not realize they are aiding and abetting the fear problem.

The temptation to act with pretense is immense: pretend to be something you are not in order slide by! And the urge to isolate after so many months of lock-downs has become an ingrained habit—one that leads to more and more psychosis.

Has anyone set aside his fear to scrutinize the war itself?– for it IS a war, a psychological war to subvert and imprison the souls of mankind. A war that encourages voluntary enlistment by the populace to hand over their rights to the control of the enemies of freedom. Threats, bribery, manipulation, confusion…all these are tools used to intimidate and control the masses. And they are succeeding, unfortunately, more than anyone knows.

But what is this war and how do we escape the weapons of their all invasive warfare? Must we become hermits and pretend to be what we are not? Should we go out one by one and face an unseen and unknown reality? And what are our weapons? How does anyone organize anything? When every device used by modern humanity is available to the all-seeing eye of Globalists, how can anyone do anything secretly?

Consider that whatever effort stems from a reaction to their methods is not a tool that will succeed in the war for truth and freedom.

What offensive weapons do we have? Indeed anything in our human arsenal has been tried and failed. Shall we allow the enemy to decide which tools we are to use? Protests, marches, exemptions from lawyers…? Where the rubber hits the road, logically speaking, is if the enemy is big enough and reason and laws of the constitutions of countries are not of value against the system that has arisen, either there must be more power on the side of those destined to slavery than there is on the side of the Globalist billionaires, or there must be Divine intervention. Do we think Trump is coming back to fix it? Really? After what happened on January 6? Do we think that the coup d’état that came into being and illegally rigged the 2019 US election, called for the impeachment of the 45th president of the USA and took over the government of America is going to listen to logic and reason? I beg to differ. Who stand in the courts that count?–Are there enough of them to make a difference? Are most of the good guys banished?

But, despite the shadowed outlook from a political and freedom standpoint—an outlook that holds almost zero hope, there is and must be hope available to us through Divine intervention. But! Will God deliver His people at this time? How can we conjure up spiritual assets when our God seems to be on vacation? What is required for us to be counted as His people? Is it our chosen blood-line that assures us of our destiny? The Torah says that blessings require obedience to the covenant, but which covenant? If we are somehow replacing God with the teachings of man, have we cloaked the Word of God in such a way as to not understand the clear path to deliverance?

Once we know that we are in close connection to Hashem and that we, as faulty as our past may have been, are now seeking Him with all our hearts, souls and minds, we must take hold of His strength with sheer will-power. Some of the tools include: Faith, optimism, truth, prayer, singing, trust, conversing with others of positive mind, helping the poor, the sick, the orphan and the widow…

Can we believe regardless of consequences? and can we, like Abraham, trust the voice that calls us to perform a sacrifice to stop the knife before we use it to destroy our destiny? Isn’t this all a test of our Emunah (faith) somehow? And what about Daniel who refused to stop praying at the open window when it was against the law under Darius the Mede, punishable by a night in the lion’s den? Are any of us that brave?

What about the 3 Hebrews that refused to bow to the image built by Nebuchadnezzar on the plains of Babylon and ended up in the furnace of fire. Who stands in their shoes today? It is high time we put our faith into practice.

If we do not hear Hashem’s voice, then our prayers need to be more direct. What if we secluded ourselves for an hour or more each day just to pray and listen, to understand what God is trying to say to us? Surely God understands our native language. Why pray in a language that He does not need and that does not speak from the depths of our hearts? Do we think He is limited to Hebrew in the case of Jews or Latin in the case of Catholics? There is no transformative magic power in the use of languages that do not touch our hearts!

Oh Israel, arise and conquer! We must not bow to the image that is everywhere. Stand together, hope in God and pray for one another. We must persevere until the enemy is vanquished!

Torah is Enough, or isn’t It?

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Time for Temple and Torah

My journey in the religious world often confronts me with challenges that go against a gut instinct, that for most of us defines truth. I am not saying that my gut is the standard of truth for it has been wrong in the past and has a need for fine-tuning just as a piano or navigational guidance system in planes or ships must be frequently adjusted.

But with the mind and matters as important as truth, what shall our compass be set to? What is our North Star? What IS our measure of ground zero truth? I often hear a voice in my head, the voice of my father who would say in a deep and dramatic tone: “Only those who have made the Bible their unyielding foundation of truth will be able to stand in the last battle.” And as my journey unfolds, I see many paths that branch off to one side or another, paths that seem to be right but are based on men’s assertions and interpretations of the Bible.

These paths are crooked paths and lead either to the steep cliff of unbelief or into a circling maze of religious confusion. In my study of Judaism, I more frequently than not am invited to study passages of the Talmud, the Gemara, the Mishnah—books which in themselves show the wisdom of the day in which they were written but are clearly not the original Tanakh and Torah. They are claimed to be the Oral Torah, equal to the written Torah of Moses and the true interpretation and codification of the Torah.

I have been pointed to the authority of the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud time and again and shown several passages in the Torah about the setting up of the Great Assembly, Sanhedrin, Seventy Elders, and the Shoftim (judges). What are these verses?

From the Parsha Shoftim (Deuteronomy) 16:18-19:

“Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, which the Lord thy God gives thee, throughout thy tribes: and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a bribe: for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise, and perverts the words of the righteous.”

Deuteronomy 17:8-13:

“If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between plague and plague, matters of controversy within thy gates: then shalt thou arise, and go up to the place which the Lord thy God shall choose; and thou shalt come to the priests the Levites, and to the judge that shall be in those days, and inquire; and they shall tell thee the sentence of judgment: according to the sentence of the Torah which they shall teach thee, and according to the judgment which they shall tell thee, thou shalt do: thou shalt not deviate from the sentence which they shall tell thee, to the right hand, or to the left.

And the man that will act presumptuously, and will not hearken to the priest that stands to minister there before the Lord thy God, or to the judge, that man shall die: and thou shalt put away the evil from Yisra᾽el. And all the people shall hear, and fear, and do no more presumptuously.”

Now that could be scary and is for most Jews. DO NOT defy the sages or you have a death sentence?!

But what is this really saying? Look closely! there are at least three qualifications:

“…come to the priests, the Levites, and to the judge that shall be in those days.” (1.The rabbis are not the priests and Levites as far as I know. 2. “in those days”: each time period has its own priests and Levites, not the counsel of long-dead sages. )

“according to the sentence of the Torah which they shall teach thee.” (3. most importantly! “ACCORDING TO THE SENTENCE OF THE TORAH,” the Torah is not speaking of any Torah other than the written Torah here. The Oral Torah that evolved over the centuries was not needed when this was written for Moshe was alive and understood the Torah perfectly.)

To summarize the above requirements; the group of judges, priests, and Levites compose the ultimate court which must judge from the place that Hashem has chosen (Jerusalem, and the Temple). They must be obeyed. They are present at the day when the judgment is needed and they base their judgment on the Torah of Moses, nothing more. Seems pretty simple, doesn’t it? But we don’t generally even know who the priests and Levites are in our day and there is no Temple yet, so what do we have?

But well-meaning rabbinic schools and rabbis that have been educated for many years in the writings of the sages, suggest that the Torah of Moshe had several laws that could not be understood as they are written and for this the Oral Torah came down from Moshe. (From history we know that the claim that the Oral Torah passed from Moshe to Joshua and onward is askew, we know that the Yeshivas in Babylon were where most of this started, we have the Babylonian Talmud, don’t we? And what existed before that?)

The arguments for Oral Torah base their logic on places where Elohim said to Moshe concerning a particular law, “as I have shown you on the Mount.” These included things like the slaughtering of Kosher animals for meat, the boiling of a kid in it’s mother’s milk, and the building of the Mishkan and other things.

So, let’s keep this simple; If the three guiding rules above are kept, all we need is to have a Temple, vetted and verified priests and Levites and a requirement that they make judgments based on the written Torah itself.

Is that even possible?

Deuteronomy 30:11-15:

“For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldst say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it, and do it? Nor is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldst say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it, and do it?

But the word is very near to thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayst do it. See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil;“

So if it is so simple, why do we need anything else?

Once we see that we need a temple in Jerusalem and that we need to reinstate the Levites and Cohenim to their rightful positions, then they are qualified to judge from the Torah itself any matter that concerns us and then we must be careful not to defy their judgment. We also read a warning about their decisions—they are not to be decided by majority rule if they pervert justice:

Exodus 23:2-3:

“Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to incline after a multitude to pervert justice: nor shalt thou favour a poor man in his cause.”

To a lot of us, this is simple enough… Why aren’t we doing it?