Parashat Shelach Lecha (Numbers 13–15) centers on the mission of the spies (meraglim), their report, the people’s response, and its consequences — a pivotal moment of doubt versus faith in entering and claiming the Land of Israel.

Rabbi David Fohrman’s “The Great Reprieve” beautifully expands this into deeper themes of belonging, ancestral connection, freedom (Yovel/Shmita), and the land as an extension of family/parental nurturing, echoing back to Sinai.

The spies saw the physical reality (strong people, fortified cities, fruitfulness) but lacked the spiritual vision to see the Land as the place where Israel truly belongs — where Torah flourishes and where the divine connection (as at Sinai) finds its full expression in everyday life. Their failure wasn’t just fear; it was a failure to recognize the profound, almost familial bond between the Jewish people and Eretz Yisrael.

The Torah teaching reframes this through Yovel: returning to ancestral land isn’t mere economics or relocation — it’s a homecoming to one’s “great existential parent,” reuniting people with the source that nourishes, shelters, and protects, mirroring the slave’s return to family.

The Tree of Life, DNA as a blueprint, and Torah-science integration. Just as Adam was formed from adamah (earth/land), with God contributing the soul (per Ramban), our genetic heritage carries echoes of that original connection.

Modern understandings of population genetics and ancestral DNA show how deeply rooted groups maintain ties to specific geographies over millennia — a scientific parallel to the Torah’s view of the Land as inherently linked to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For crypto-Jews and returnees (“the hidden ones” coming back as in Isaiah 56), this isn’t abstract: it’s a soul-level pull to reclaim that inheritance.

The Return Today (Isaiah 56)

Isaiah 56 speaks of foreigners (or those who have joined themselves to the Lord) who keep Shabbat, hold the covenant, and are brought to God’s holy mountain — a vision of inclusion and gathering in the end times.

For many with hidden Jewish heritage (like my family’s crypto-Jewish lines from Spain through Mexico/TX), this manifests as awakening to Torah, DNA evidence (e.g., Cohen Modal Haplotype or Levite markers), and the call to return.

Isaiah’s emphasis on “foreigner” (perhaps a specific family/group or reference to returnees) fits this prophetic ingathering. The spies’ sin was rejecting this belonging; today’s challenge is to embrace it despite practical obstacles.

Practical Realities of Return

How do we return? How to afford it? What about family/children here in Texas? These mirror the spies’ concerns but call for Caleb/Joshua-level faith combined with wisdom.

• Connections and Support: Organizations specialize in helping North Americans, including those from diverse backgrounds like returnees with Sephardic/crypto-Jewish roots:
  • Nefesh B’Nefesh (NBN): Excellent for US/Canada Olim. They streamline aliyah, offer financial grants, employment help, ulpan (Hebrew), housing assistance, and community integration. Call 1-866-4-ALIYAH. They have programs tailored for families.
  • Jewish Agency for Israel: Broad support for absorption, including for those discovering their heritage.
  • Groups like Shavei Israel or others focus on crypto-Jews/Bnei Anusim, helping with documentation, genealogy, and connection to Israeli communities.
  • Christian allies (e.g., ICEJ) sometimes assist with practical aid for Jewish return.

Many make aliyah from places like Texas, where local Jewish infrastructure is limited. Success often involves phased steps: visits first (birthright-style or exploratory trips), building networks online/in Israel, remote income (your POD, writing, teaching), and leveraging skills (your chaplaincy/Torah teaching is highly valued in Israel).

Building Bridges: Beit Hashoavah is seeking help for the “Foreniers” returnees (beithashoavah.org). Beit Hashoavah could host resources such as aliyah guides tied to Parsha insights, DNA-Torah connections, or virtual mentorship that links Amarillo-area folks to Israeli contacts. Collaborations with rabbis or organizations for webinars could create those “connections in our homeland.”

Family Considerations: For a family with special-care children like Elishava, Israel offers strong social services, disability support, and Torah-observant communities. Medical/accessibility resources can be better in some areas. Discuss with NBN about “24-Hour Care for Children”, Aliyah.

The Chiastic Heart of Lech Lecha

Fohrman shows how the passage in Genesis 17 is structured like a mirror:

• Outer layers: Avram falling on his face → parallel at the end.
• Next: Covenant and father of nations → Sarah as mother of nations.
• Name changes (Avram → Avraham; Sarai → Sarah).
• Multiplication into nations/kings vs. excision (karet) for those who break the brit.
• Eternal covenant in the flesh → land and divine relationship.
• Mini-chiasms centering on circumcision as the sign.
• True center: “You shall keep My covenant… this is My covenant which you shall keep.”

The message is profound: Nation (children coalescing into a people) and Land are not automatic or merely ethnic—they depend on the brit. Without it, individuals are “cut off” from the collective, and the claim to the promises dissolves.

This is why Joshua circumcised the new generation before entering the Land (Joshua 5). The spies’ failure in Shelach wasn’t just fear of giants; it was a breakdown in covenantal trust—the inability to see the Land as the covenantal home where the brit flourishes fully.

Tying to Land, DNA, and Return (Shelach + Yovel)

The Covenant of the Parts (Genesis 15), the Covenant of Circumcision (Genesis 17 with its chiastic structure), and Yovel from the later Torah laws. All of them point to the same core idea — the Land is not a side blessing. It’s locked into the covenant itself.

Here’s the clean connection:

• In Genesis 15, God walks alone between the split animals. Abraham is put to sleep because this covenant is unilateral — God is binding Himself to give the Land to Abraham’s descendants. The smoking oven and flaming torch passing through the pieces is God taking an oath on His own existence, so to speak.
• In Genesis 17, we get the reciprocal side — the chiastic structure Rabbi Fohrman showed makes this very clear. The center of the chiasm is “Keep My covenant.” Land and children/nationhood are both promised, but both are conditional on keeping the Brit. The structure itself teaches that you don’t get one without the other.
• Yovel is the practical outworking of this same covenant hundreds of years later. Every 50 years, the land returns to its original owners, debts are canceled, and slaves go free. It’s the Torah enforcing the original blueprint: the Land belongs to the covenant people, but only when they live inside the covenant.

This has nothing to do with Jesus walking between the pieces. That’s a later reading imposed on the text. The plain sense and the Torah’s own later commentary (especially the chiastic structure in chapter 17) show this is about the unbreakable link between covenant, people, and Land.

Adam: The Blueprint- The Tree of Life

The Blueprint View Genesis 15 — God swears to give the Land. Genesis 17 — God tells us the condition for keeping it: the covenant must be in our flesh and in our lives. Later in the Torah, Yovel and Shmita become the mechanisms that periodically reset everything to that original design.

It’s like looking at architectural drawings, then seeing the finished building centuries later and realizing every support beam is right where the blueprint said it would be.

This is exactly the kind of “Tree of Life blueprint” pattern you’ve been exploring with DNA and Torah. The pattern is set early, then it plays out in the laws, in history, and even in our own generation as people with hidden Jewish roots feel pulled back to the Land.

The Land That Calls Us Home: Covenant, Brit Milah, and the Jewish Soul’s Unbreakable Bond with Israel

Many people today are waking up to something deep inside them. They watch videos like the one titled “7 Hidden Signs Your Family Has Ancient Jewish Blood,” take a DNA test, and suddenly everything starts to make sense. Unexpected results showing Levantine markers, haplogroups like J1 or J2, family customs they never understood — lighting candles, avoiding pork, covering mirrors after a death — all begin pointing to a hidden Jewish past.

This is not random. This is covenant calling.

In Genesis 15, God made a unilateral promise to Abraham. While Abraham slept, the Divine Presence alone walked between the split pieces of the animals, swearing to give the Land to his descendants. Then in Genesis 17, God established the Covenant of Circumcision. As Rabbi David Fohrman brilliantly shows through the chiastic structure, everything in that chapter revolves around one central command: “Keep My covenant.” Both the promise of children who become a nation and the promise of the Land are tied directly to this covenant.

The Torah later gives us Yovel — the Jubilee — as the practical expression of that same blueprint. Every fifty years, the land returns to its ancestral family, debts are erased, and slaves go free. The Land itself is treated like family. It nourishes, shelters, and protects — just like the “great existential parent” we spoke about in Parashat Shelach.

We Were Born On It-The Land Of Israel

This is exactly the feeling Tom Joad had in The Grapes of Wrath when he clutched the dirt and said, “We were born on it, worked on it, died on it. That’s what makes it ours.” The Jewish people have carried that same unbreakable attachment for thousands of years.

Even after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, we never simply left. When Rome tried to rip us completely out of the Land during the Bar Kokhba revolt, it took their entire military machine years of brutal fighting to suppress Jewish resistance. That fight is rarely talked about, but it proves how deep this connection runs.

Today, that same covenant is stirring in people across the world. Hidden Jews, crypto-Jews, and descendants of the diaspora are discovering their DNA and feeling the pull to come home.

We Died On It- The Land Of Israel

This connection is so profound that even after the Temple’s destruction in 70 CE, the Jewish people refused to let go. As investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici explains in his recent video “Jews, Rome and the Pagan Messiah,” Rome did not view Judea as a minor backwater. They saw it as an existential ideological threat. Rome responded with overwhelming force and propaganda because Jewish monotheism challenged their entire pagan worldview.

The fight did not end in 70 CE. During the diaspora revolts of 115–117 CE under Trajan, the Romans took more than two years to suppress Jewish uprisings across multiple regions. Then came the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132 CE. It took Rome’s best legions and several years of brutal warfare to finally break Jewish resistance in the Land.

The fact that Rome had to fight that hard, for that long, to remove us from our soil proves how real this bond is.

49,000 Years Old -Cosmic Shemitot

In a recent interview conducted just before undergoing serious heart surgery, Graham Hancock laid out what he wanted to be among the last public statements of his life. Facing critics who dismiss him as a quack, he stood firmly by his life’s work: the idea that human civilization is far older than mainstream history admits, that advanced societies existed in the distant past, and that we are living at the end of a great cycle — one that previous civilizations may have failed, leading to catastrophe.

The Torah, remarkably, contains an ancient parallel.

Our sages speak of vast cycles of time known as cosmic Shemitot. Drawing from sources such as Sefer HaTemunah, Rabbeinu Bechaye’s commentary on Leviticus, and the Talmud’s mention of 974 generations that existed before Adam, Jewish tradition describes great epochs of 7,000 years each — 6,000 years of human civilization followed by a 1,000-year “Sabbatical” millennium of rest. These cycles themselves form larger cosmic Jubilees.

The Jewish National Revelation

This oral tradition, preserved for centuries, aligns with the very patterns Graham Hancock has spent decades pointing toward — the sense that we are not the first advanced civilization to walk this Earth, and that we stand at a dangerous threshold where humanity risks repeating past mistakes of self-destruction.

Yet the Torah does not leave us without hope or direction.

The answer lies in the blueprint given at Sinai — the Ten Commandments, the eternal covenant. These “Ten Sayings” were given not merely to one tribe, but to the entire human family. As Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson’s genetic research has shown, we are all far more closely related than many realize. We are literally cousins, from the same family, descended from common ancestors. The Torah’s instructions — honoring the Creator, keeping Shabbat (a concept already given to Noah), rejecting jealousy and idolatry — are the corrective code meant to heal the very flaws that lead civilizations to collapse.

This brings us full circle to our connection with the Land of Israel. Just as Yovel and Shmita periodically reset economic and social distortions, returning land to its ancestral families, the Jewish people’s return to our covenantal homeland is itself part of this greater cosmic correction. The same blueprint that ties circumcision, covenant, and Land together in Genesis 15 and 17 can guide a fractured humanity back to stability.

The awakening we see today — people discovering hidden Jewish DNA, feeling an inexplicable pull toward Torah and the Land of Israel — may be part of this reset. The covenant God swore to Abraham while he slept remains active. It calls not only to Jews, but ultimately to all who will listen.

USA -Jer-USA-lem- The Jew

We have, I don’t think there’s a state in this country where the Jewish people are not found. From New York to Texas, from Louisiana to New Mexico, from Kansas to California, our people are there. My own family has been in this land since the 1500s — long before the United States even existed.

We lost our identity. Many of us became Crypto-Jews, hiding who we were for centuries, yet we never truly left. The Jewish people have always had a presence here, just as we’ve always maintained some presence in the Land of Israel, no matter who ruled it.

And there is perhaps no other people who have contributed more to the building of this nation than the Jewish people — in medicine, science, law, business, arts, and civil rights. Yet despite all of this, something inside us has never been satisfied. There has always been a pull, a quiet longing that no amount of success in the diaspora could fill.

That pull is a covenant.

It is the same covenant God made with Abraham in Genesis 15, when He swore to give the Land to his descendants while Abraham himself slept. It is the same covenant sealed in Genesis 17 through brit milah, where the Torah’s chiastic structure makes clear that both nationhood and possession of the Land are inseparably tied to keeping God’s covenant.

This is why we have survived when, by every natural measure, we should not have. We are less than one percent of the world’s population. We have been scattered, persecuted, and expelled from country after country. And yet here we are — still here, still waking up, still feeling the call of the Land.

Because the God who chose us in Genesis is the same God calling us home today.

Why the Jewish People Can Never Let Go of Israel

In The Grapes of Wrath, Tom Joad grabs a handful of dirt and says through tears, “We were born on it, worked on it, died on it. That’s what makes it ours.” That same deep, family-like attachment lives in the Jewish soul — only stronger. It comes from the covenant.

God’s Blueprint Begins with Abraham

In Genesis 15, God made a unilateral promise to Abraham. While Abraham slept, the Divine Presence alone walked between the split pieces of the animals, swearing to give the Land to his descendants.

Then in Genesis 17, God established the Covenant of Circumcision. As Rabbi David Fohrman shows through the remarkable chiastic structure in that chapter, everything revolves around one central command: “Keep My covenant.” Both the promise of children who become a nation and the promise of the Land are inseparably tied to keeping the brit.

The Torah later gives us Yovel — the Jubilee — as the practical expression of this blueprint. Every fifty years, the Land returns to its ancestral families. The soil itself is treated like family. It nourishes us, shelters us, and protects us.

The Land Is Family

This connection runs so deep that even after the Temple’s destruction in 70 CE, the Jewish people refused to leave. Investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici makes a powerful case in his video “Jews, Rome and the Pagan Messiah.”

Rome was not simply fighting a small rebellious province. They were deeply afraid of the Jews, both militarily and theologically. As Simcha explains, 10 to 20 percent of the entire Roman Empire were either Jews or “God-fearers” — people who had accepted the God of Israel and monotheism but had not fully converted. Rome feared that if Judea succeeded, these people across the empire would rise up.

The Son Of God- Hannibal

Simcha traces Rome’s trauma back to Hannibal and the three Punic Wars against Carthage. Hannibal, the brilliant Carthaginian general, invaded Italy and nearly destroyed Rome. Even more threatening to the Roman mind, he presented himself as a pagan messiah — the “son of God,” a chosen figure backed by the gods. This idea of a foreign leader claiming divine backing left a deep scar on the Roman psyche.

When Rome later faced the Jews — a people speaking a similar Middle Eastern language who also claimed to be chosen by the one true God — that old trauma came roaring back. They responded with overwhelming force, propaganda like the “Judea Capta” coins, and total destruction.

And yet, in one of history’s great ironies, what Rome feared most actually came true. A Jewish sect that followed a Messiah named Jesus ultimately conquered Rome. The God of Israel triumphed over Jupiter — not through military victory, but through the spread of a message that began in Jerusalem.

We Should Not Be Here — But We Are

We Should Not Be Here — But We Are

What truly separates the Jewish people from everyone else in the world is a national revelation from God. All through the Bible, beginning in Genesis 15, God makes it clear that He has chosen a nation called Israel. He made an eternal covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — whose name became Israel.

That people, God has put His hand upon and has guided through history.

We should not be alive today. The Jewish people are less than 0.2% of the world’s population. We have been scattered to every corner of the earth, persecuted, expelled, and hunted. Yet here we are.

We lost our identity. We are in every state — Louisiana, Kansas, Philadelphia, Texas, and New Mexico. My own family has been in this land since the 1500s. There is hardly a state in America where Jewish people are not found, and perhaps no other group has contributed more to building this nation than the Jewish people.

Yet despite all our success in the diaspora, something inside us has never been satisfied. There has always been a pull — a quiet longing no amount of comfort could fill.

That pull is the covenant.

We Are Living in a Cosmic Reset-Shemitot

In a powerful interview given just before major heart surgery, Graham Hancock shared what he wanted to be one of the last messages of his life. He stood by his belief that advanced civilizations existed long before recorded history and that we are living at the end of a great cycle — one that previous societies failed to complete, leading to catastrophe.

Jewish tradition contains a striking parallel. Our sages speak of vast cosmic cycles — Shemitot of 7,000 years each. We are living near the end of one of those cycles.

The answer is not despair. The answer is the blueprint.

Harvard-trained geneticist Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson, in his peer-reviewed research and book Traced, has shown through DNA evidence that all humanity traces back to just three fathers and three mothers. Even more striking, he demonstrates that Abraham’s specific DNA signature is found only in certain population groups worldwide. Of the 70 nations, only the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, Abraham and Hagar, and Abraham and Keturah carry Abraham’s paternal DNA lineage. This genetic reality powerfully confirms the truth of the biblical account.

This is personal for my family. My grandfather, my two uncles, and all his male descendants carry the Cohen Modal Haplotype — the genetic marker strongly associated with the biblical priesthood descending from Aaron.

The Call to Return

Today, we are watching the ingathering. Hidden Jews, crypto-Jews, and those discovering their Jewish DNA are feeling the ancient pull to return to the Land and to the covenant.

The same God who swore to Abraham while he slept is still calling His children home. The Land is not just dirt. “Let us make Adam in our image,” that is, family. It is a parent. It is the physical expression of the covenant that defines us.

The blueprint is still active.

The question is — will we answer the call?

The Last Yovel

The last recorded Yovel (Jubilee year) took place in 69 CE — right before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.

After the Temple was destroyed, the full observance of Yovel became impossible because the laws of the Jubilee require the Temple, the Sanhedrin, and the ability to blow the shofar across the entire land of Israel on Yom Kippur of the 49th year. Since that time, it has not been observed in the classic biblical sense.

There’s a minority opinion that the last Yovel might have been slightly earlier, but the mainstream traditional view is that 69 CE was the final one.

Based on 69 CE as the last Yovel, here’s the calculation:

If the final observed Yovel was in 69 CE, then the next ones would fall every 50 years after that.

• Add 50 years repeatedly to 69 CE.
• The most recent Yovel year would have been in 2019 CE (69 + 39 × 50 = 69 + 1950 = 2019).

We are currently in the 7th year of the current 50-year Yovel cycle (2019 was the Yovel year, so 2020 started a new cycle, and 2026 is year 7 of that cycle).

According to the calculation based on 69 CE being the last observed Yovel, here’s the clear answer:

• Last Yovel: 2019
• Next Yovel: 2069

So the next one will be in 43 years from now (2069).

Free Bonus Hebrew Lesson

Orange – Vayipol Avram al panav (וַיִּפֹּל אַבְרָם עַל־פָּנָיו) “And Abram fell on his face” (verse 3) → Mirrors at the end: Vayipol Avraham al panav (verse 17)

Yellow – “You will be the father of many nations” (Av hamon goyim) → Mirrors with Sarah: She will become the mother of nations.

Green – Name change: “Your name will no longer be called Avram, but Avraham” → Mirrors with Sarah’s name change: “You shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.”

Blue – V’hifreiti otcha (וְהִפְרֵתִי אֹתְךָ) – “I will multiply you exceedingly” → Mirrors with hefar (הֵפַר) – “He has broken My covenant” (the one who does not circumcise is cut off).

Bonus Hebrew Lesson: The Chiastic Structure in Genesis 17

Rabbi David Fohrman teaches that the Torah sometimes uses a beautiful literary device called a chiasm (or atbash pattern). The ideas mirror each other like this: A B C — Center — C’ B’ A’.

Here’s a simplified color-coded version of the chiastic structure Rabbi Fohrman presents in Genesis 17:

Orange – Vayipol Avram al panav (וַיִּפֹּל אַבְרָם עַל־פָּנָיו) “And Abram fell on his face” (verse 3) → Mirrors at the end: Vayipol Avraham al panav (verse 17)

Yellow – “You will be the father of many nations” (Av hamon goyim) → Mirrors with Sarah: She will become the mother of nations.

Green – Name change: “Your name will no longer be called Avram, but Avraham” → Mirrors with Sarah’s name change: “You shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.”

Blue – V’hifreiti otcha (וְהִפְרֵתִי אֹתְךָ) – “I will multiply you exceedingly” → Mirrors with hefar (הֵפַר) – “He has broken My covenant” (the one who does not circumcise is cut off).

Mini-Chiasm within the Chiasm (the center section):

• “You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin”
• “It shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and you”
• “At eight days old every male among you shall be circumcised”

The very center of everything is the repeated command: “You shall keep My covenant” (V’ata et briti tishmor).

This structure is the Torah’s way of telling us: Everything revolves around keeping the covenant. Both the promise of becoming a nation and the promise of the Land depend on it.

Hazan Gavriel ben David