New King James Version
And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty, and your faith is also empty.

This is what every Christian must ask themselves: now what do I do?

The evidence is clear.

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The Torah Blueprint Analysis

Milestone 21: The Journey from Sinai to Zion Undertaken When the Lord Leads to the Place of Rest on the Third Day: “So they departed from the mount of the Lord on a journey of three days; and the ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them for the three days’ journey, to search out a resting place for them.

And the cloud of the Lord was above them by day when they set out from the camp. So it was, whenever the ark set out, that Moses said: “Arise, O Lord, and let your enemies be scattered!” (Num 10:33–35) The movement of Israel from the encampment of Mount Sinai was undertaken to seek a “place of rest.” That “rest” will afterward be identified as situated upon Mount Zion.

Solomon will dedicate the temple with the cry, “Arise, O Lord God, to your resting place, you and the Ark of your power; let your priests, O Lord God, be clothed with salvation and let your godly ones rejoice in what is good” (2 Chron 6:41). And the psalmist will likewise sing, “the Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his dwelling place. ‘This is my resting place forever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it’ ” (Psa 132:4).

All true Israel will find her final resting place in Christ, the Root of Jesse and Israel’s true Temple, “and his resting place will be glorious” (Isa 11:10) when he builds the eternal Temple by arising on the third day, the day of his victory, when all his enemies are scattered (John 2:19). It is the third day when Jesus leads forth his people from the Jerusalem below, which is Sinai (Gal 4:25), to bring them to the Jerusalem above, which is his eternal rest.

Gage, W. A. (2011). Milestones to Emmaus: The Third Day Resurrection in the Old Testament (p. 54). Warren A. Gage.

The Torah Blueprint Addresses the Claim

Warren Gage anchors this claim in Numbers 10:33–35, where Israel departs from Sinai on a three-day journey with the ark going before them “to search out a resting place.” Gage then links that resting place to Zion, the Temple, Isaiah 11:10, and finally to Jesus rising on the third day as the true Temple and true rest for “all true Israel.”

This is a sweeping theological move. It takes a historical narrative about Israel’s physical journey and turns it into a prophecy of national replacement and individual resurrection. Using the method of careful historical and textual scrutiny (the approach popularized by scholars such as Jay Smith for testing later religious claims against earlier sources), we will examine whether the claim aligns with the facts on the ground in the Hebrew text.

The Plain Reading of Numbers 10:33–35

The text is straightforward:

“So they departed from the mount of the Lord on a journey of three days; and the ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them for the three days’ journey, to search out a resting place for them… So it was, whenever the ark set out, that Moses said: ‘Arise, O Lord, and let Your enemies be scattered!’”

This is a travel notice. After receiving the Torah at Sinai, Israel begins the next stage of the wilderness journey. The ark goes ahead to find a suitable camping place. Moses’ prayer is a call for divine protection on the march. The “three days” is simply the length of this leg of the journey. Nothing in the passage speaks of resurrection, a dying Messiah, a new Temple made of a person, or the redefinition of Israel.

Later texts identify Zion as the place of God’s rest (Psalm 132; 2 Chronicles 6:41). Isaiah 11:10 speaks of the Root of Jesse standing as a banner for the peoples and of his glorious resting place. These are real verses. The question is whether they form a continuous prophetic chain that culminates in Jesus rising on the third day and becoming the final resting place for a redefined “true Israel.”

Applying a Jay Smith-Style Examination

Jay Smith’s method insists on four basic questions when a later tradition claims to fulfill or complete an earlier revelation:

• How did the claim arise? The claim arises by reading the New Testament (especially John 2:19 and Galatians 4:25) backward into the Torah. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” is treated as the interpretive key for Numbers 10, Isaiah 11, and the entire Sinai-to-Zion movement. The three-day journey becomes a type of the three days in the tomb. This is a classic case of later theology controlling earlier text rather than the earlier text generating the later claim.
• What does the full picture of the original sources actually show? Numbers 10 is about physical movement and divine guidance in the wilderness. Zion becomes the resting place of the ark and the Temple under David and Solomon. Isaiah 11 is a royal, messianic vision of a Davidic king who restores justice and gathers the nations. Nowhere does the Tanakh say that the resting place is a person who dies and rises, or that Sinai itself is a form of spiritual bondage (as Galatians 4:25 asserts). The Hebrew Bible consistently presents the Torah given at Sinai as life, light, and the path of blessing (Deuteronomy 30:15–20; Psalm 19; Proverbs 3:18).
• Was there enough time and continuity for this interpretation to be the original meaning? For more than a thousand years after the events of Numbers, Jewish readers understood the three-day journey as historical travel and Zion as the chosen place of God’s presence among Israel. The idea that the journey points to a third-day resurrection that redefines Israel as those who rest in Christ appears only after the rise of the Christian movement. There is no continuous chain of interpretation from the prophets through the Second Temple period that reads Numbers 10 this way.
• Does the reading match the original blueprint? The original blueprint given in Genesis and developed through the Torah presents Israel as Hashem’s firstborn son, servant, and light to the nations. The goal is not the replacement of Israel but the nations coming to the light of Israel and the Torah (Isaiah 2:2–4; 42:6; 49:6). Redemption is tied to covenant faithfulness, repentance (teshuvah), and the preservation of the original design. Gage’s claim requires that the original servant people find their true identity only by being absorbed into a later figure. That is not the trajectory of the Tanakh.

The Ten Sayings and the Path of Redemption

If we want to know how redemption comes to the world according to the Torah, we must look at the Ten Sayings given at Sinai—the very mountain from which the three-day journey begins.

The Ten Sayings are not temporary scaffolding. They are the practical expression of the blueprint for human society and relationship with Hashem:

• The First and Second Sayings establish exclusive loyalty to the one God and forbid the creation of substitutes. Creating a new mediator or a new “true Israel” that replaces the original covenant people violates the prohibition against other gods and graven images of divine reality.
• The Third Saying forbids taking God’s name in vain. Using the name of the God of Israel to authorize a narrative that erases or redefines Israel is a form of taking the Name lightly.
• The Fourth Saying (Shabbat) points to the true rest: a weekly reminder that creation is complete and that human beings find rest in the rhythm established by the Creator, not in a later historical event such as the resurrection.
• The Fifth Saying commands honor for father and mother. In the larger family of humanity, this includes honoring the original firstborn son—Israel—rather than declaring him replaced.
• The remaining Sayings (murder, adultery, theft, false witness, coveting) protect the integrity of human relationships and property. A theology that reassigns Israel’s identity and inheritance without clear warrant from the original text raises serious questions under the Ninth Saying (false witness).

Redemption, according to the Torah, comes when the nations learn these ways of life from the people who received them. It does not come by declaring that the original recipients of the covenant must find their final resting place only by becoming something else.

Israel as Servant and the Resting Place

Isaiah repeatedly calls Israel “My servant” (Isaiah 41:8–9; 43:10; 44:1–2; 49:3). The servant is the nation through whom the light goes to the Gentiles. Isaiah 11:10 speaks of the Root of Jesse as a banner for the peoples; it does not say that the Root replaces the people or becomes their only possible resting place. The resting place of Hashem remains connected to Zion and to the covenant people who dwell there in faithfulness.

When Gage asserts that “all true Israel will find her final resting place in Christ,” he is not summarizing the Hebrew text. He is imposing a later theological conclusion upon it. The original design does not require Israel to die and rise in a single representative in order to reach rest. It requires Israel to walk in the ways given at Sinai and to be a light that draws the nations to the same path.

Verdict

The three-day journey in Numbers 10 is a historical travel notice. The resting place sought by the ark is the next campsite, later identified with Zion and the Temple. Isaiah 11 is a vision of Davidic restoration and universal recognition. None of these texts, read in their own context, teach that the final resting place of Israel is a third-day resurrection of a figure who redefines the identity of the people.

The claim that Jesus leads “true Israel” from the “Jerusalem below” (Sinai) to the “Jerusalem above” rests on Pauline allegory, not on the plain sense of the Torah and Prophets. When the original sources are allowed to speak for themselves, the evidence for Gage’s reading is absent.

The Tree of Life—the Torah—was never lost. The original blueprint remains. Redemption still comes through return to that blueprint and through Israel’s role as servant and light to the nations.

The silence of the Tanakh when asked for clear, plain-text receipts for this third-day replacement reading continues to speak.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

• The Fourth Commandment in Toldot: “Stay With Laban a Few Days” – The First Shabbat in Exile
• Why Christianity Never Got Out of the Garden
• The Tree of Life Blueprint: What the Spies, Manna, and Our Family Struggles Reveal Today
• Matot-Masei: Why God Cares About Your Broken Windows – The 42 Journeys
• Becoming Aware of Your Soul: The Tree of Life Blueprint Christianity Never Answered

In Parshat Shoftim, the Torah commands:

The earthly court in the Torah is called “elohim,” God. The court represents Hashem, and they are held to a higher standard. Today, look at our courts and ask yourself, where is Mishpat Tzedek?

Come, Hashem, and restore our judges as at first.

“Judges and officers shall you appoint in all your gates… and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment… Justice, justice shall you pursue” (Deuteronomy 16:18–20). The parsha continues with the higher court that sits in “the place which the LORD your God shall choose.” This is the Sanhedrin whose rulings bind the nation. Earthly justice is not optional.

It is the concrete expression of the covenant that began with Abraham. His descendants were to “keep the way of the LORD, to do righteousness and justice” (Genesis 18:19).

This week the same Torah that establishes human courts also reveals, through the equidistant letter sequences uncovered by Rabbi Matityahu Glazerson, that the ultimate court already sits in session. The Day of Universal Judgment is not a later invention. In fact, it is written into the opening chapters of Genesis.

Rabbi Glazerson’s Discovery in Genesis 5

In the continuous letter stream of Genesis chapter 5—the “book of the generations of Adam”—Rabbi Glazerson has shown sequences in which the phrases connected to Rosh Hashanah appear. These sequences appear together with language of the universe standing in judgment.

The relevant stretch runs roughly from verses 13 through 33, covering the generations from Kenan through Noah. At minimal letter skips (including a documented 39-letter and related 76-letter intervals), the codes cluster around the head of the year. They also cluster around the world’s judgment.

The surface text is already a family register: Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah. The hidden text declares that the same family will one day stand before the Judge of all the earth. The book whose name means “In the Beginning” already encodes the day on which the entire created order is weighed. The rabbis did not invent the character of Rosh Hashanah; they recognized what the letters themselves contain.

The Human Family on Trial: Edom, Ishmael, and Israel

The judgment is familial. The seventy nations that descend from Noah are divided, in classical sources and in the sacrificial order of Sukkot, between the dominion associated with Ishmael and the dominion associated with Esau/Edom. Christianity grew within the civilizational orbit of Edom. Moreover, Islam arose from the line of Ishmael. Both claim Abraham. However, both contest the covenant’s unique status that runs from Isaac and Jacob to the House of David and the city of Jerusalem.

The codes do not invent this tension; they confirm that the Torah never hid it. The struggle that began with the twins in Rebecca’s womb and the expulsion of Hagar continues until the end of days. Reconciliation is promised—Esau falling on Jacob’s neck, Isaac and Ishmael together at Abraham’s burial—but it comes after a hard reckoning. In fact, the letters of Genesis already contain both the conflict and the healing.

Iran as a Key in the Code

Within these same tables, Iran appears as a contemporary key. Classical sources identify Persia with forces that rise again in the final period. The Talmud and later commentators speak of Persia (and by extension the Islamic world centered in modern Iran) extending its reach until the days of Mashiach. In addition, Rabbi Glazerson’s matrices place Iran inside the larger pattern of Ishmael’s role in the end of days—sometimes as the power that intensifies the pressure on Israel, sometimes as the force that forces the final clarification between the claims of Edom, Ishmael, and the covenant people.

The codes do not predict dates with mechanical precision. However, they do reveal that the ancient text already knew the actors who would stand on the stage when the universal judgment becomes visible in history.

From Shoftim to the Heavenly Court

Parshat Shoftim teaches us how to build earthly courts that pursue tzedek. The codes in Genesis 5 remind us that those courts are training for a higher one. On Rosh Hashanah, the Judge of all the earth opens the books. The standard is the same standard given to Abraham: righteousness and justice. The family that began with Adam is called to account according to the blueprint set forth in the first chapters of the Torah.

As Elul continues and we approach the Days of Awe, the message is practical. Appoint righteous judges in your gates. Pursue justice without partiality. And remember that the same letters that command earthly courts also declare that the entire universe stands in judgment on the day the Torah itself calls the head of the year.

The Book is still speaking. The codes are not curiosities. Instead, they are reminders that the Blueprint was complete from the beginning—and that the family of Adam is being summoned, once again, to return to it.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

Rabbi Matityahu Glazerson has repeatedly shown that the Torah codes of Genesis are not random curiosities. In tables drawn from the continuous letter stream of Bereshit, the phrase “Rosh Hashanah” (or its clear equivalents for the head of the year) appears together with “universe in time of judgment.”

These sequences cluster with minimal skips inside the creation narrative itself. The very book whose name means “In the Beginning” already encodes the day on which the entire world stands in judgment. Someone had to know this for the Rabbis to assign the biblical Yom Teruah of the seventh month the name and character of universal judgment. Thus, the day is not an invention. It is a revelation already present in the blueprint.

The Whole Torah Contained in the First Word

The Vilna Gaon taught that the entire Torah is contained in its first book, the first book in its first portion, the first portion in its first verse, and the first verse in its first word—Bereshit. He demonstrated the principle on the spot when challenged about the mitzvah of pidyon haben. The letters of בראשית form the acronym: Ben Rishon Achar Sheloshim Yom Tifdeh—“a firstborn son after thirty days you shall redeem.”

The Gaon’s insight is not clever wordplay. It is the recognition that the Torah is a single, unified organism. Everything that will unfold in history, law, and redemption is already latent in the opening word. The codes that Glazerson uncovers are simply the same principle operating at the level of equidistant letter sequences. The minimal skip is the most concentrated expression of that latent design.

Sukkot, the Seventy Bulls, and the Two Houses of the Nations

The same design appears in the sacrificial order of Sukkot. Over seven days the Torah commands a descending number of bulls that total exactly seventy—corresponding to the seventy nations that descended from Noah. The Vilna Gaon noticed a further precision in the accompanying sin-offerings.

On some days the text says “a kid of goats”; on others simply “a kid.” The days whose offerings are linked to “kid of goats” total thirty-five bulls; the remaining days also total thirty-five. One set corresponds to the nations under Ishmael’s dominion. The other to the nations under the dominion of Esau (Edom).

The human family is already divided in the sacrificial map of the seventh month. The seventy bulls are Israel’s priestly intercession for the whole family of Adam. The thirty-five and thirty-five mark the two great branches that will contend with Jerusalem until the end.

Adam, the Blueprint, and the Tree of Life

This division is not abstract geopolitics. It is family history written into the structure of creation itself. In the teachings developed in Adam, the Blueprint of Creation and the Tree of Life, Adam is not merely the first man. Instead, he is the living template. The Tree of Life is the architecture through which the divine letters organize reality—DNA as living Torah, roots as elemental forces, branches as the unfolding of history.

The human family is real. Every nation is a descendant. The judgment that falls on Rosh Hashanah is therefore a family judgment. The Ten Sayings (the Ten Commandments) are the moral code of that family. The original fracture is a family problem. It is the struggle between the house of Esau/Edom and the house of Jacob centered in Jerusalem, and the parallel struggle between Ishmael and the covenant line that runs through Isaac to the House of David.

Islam (Ishmael) and the Christian civilization that grew from Edom both claim a relationship to Abraham while contesting the unique status of Jerusalem and the Davidic promise. The Torah never hides the coming conflict. It narrates the twins’ birth, the theft of the blessing, the long separation, and the eventual embrace. The same story is written large across the nations.

The Reconciliation on the Neck

Rabbi David Fohrman, in his series A Book Like No Other on Shavuot, brings the brothers’ story into sharp focus. Around the moment corresponding to the nineteenth minute of the relevant discussion, he notes what happens when Jacob and Esau finally meet. Esau runs, falls on Jacob’s neck, and kisses him; they weep.

The earlier blessing had placed a yoke on Esau’s neck—“you shall serve your brother, yet you will break his yoke from your neck.” In the reconciliation, the yoke is gone. The zero-sum game is over. There is no longer “I rise only if you fall.” There is only one neck against another, two brothers crying together. The competitive blessing is transcended. The family can breathe again.

This is the trajectory the prophets describe. Hosea 1 speaks of children who will be called “sons of the living God.” Ezekiel 37 takes two sticks—one for Judah, one for Joseph/Ephraim—and joins them into one in the hand of the prophet. The two trees become one Tree. The divided family is restored.

The War That Still Comes

Yet the Torah and the prophets are honest. Before that full reconciliation there is a hard war. The codes that place “universe in time of judgment” inside Genesis do not cancel the coming conflict; they locate it inside the same creation narrative that already contains the possibility of healing. Rosh Hashanah is the annual rehearsal of that final accounting.

The nations under Ishmael and the nations under Edom, the forces that contend with Jerusalem and the House of David, stand before the Judge together with Israel. The human family is real. It will be judged by the Ten Sayings that were spoken into the same letter-stream that begins with Bereshit.

The Vilna Gaon showed that everything is already in the first word. Glazerson’s tables show that the Day of Universal Judgment is already named in the book of creation. The seventy bulls and the thirty-five and thirty-five map the divided family.

Fohrman’s reading of the brothers’ embrace shows the goal: the yoke removed, the zero-sum game ended, necks joined in tears rather than in domination. Between the present and that goal stands a hard war. Rosh Hashanah summons every member of the family—Jew, descendant of the Ten Tribes, Noahide, Ishmaelite, and Edomite—to turn while there is still time.

The end was declared from the beginning. The letters have not forgotten. The family is still called to come home.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

• The Raising Lion
• Rosh Hashanah, Universal Judgment, and the Call to the Ten Tribes: The Torah’s Design from Beginning to End
• The True Story of King David: Unraveling Misconceptions in Jewish Tradition
• Rosh HaShana “Seder” and symbolic actions.
• Bible Codes Israel and Ishmael: Professor Glazerson, DNA Evidence, and the 70 Nations

As Elul opens and we stand thirty days from Rosh Hashanah, the Day of Universal Judgment, a familiar challenge rises from those who once stood near the Jewish people and then turned away. As a former Messianic Christian, I have heard it from hundreds: “Rosh Hashanah is made up by the Rabbis.

You Jews are always changing things in the Bible.” The claim is false. The day itself is written in the Torah. The deeper meaning of judgment, kingship, and return is the faithful transmission of what the Torah already contains.

Yom Teruah Is Not a Rabbinic Invention

Leviticus 23:23–25 commands: “In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a rest, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation.” Numbers 29:1 repeats it as “a day of teruah.” The Torah itself establishes the day.

The name “Rosh Hashanah” and its identification as the Day of Judgment and the beginning of the year for counting years appear in the Oral Torah, yet they rest on the biblical foundation. The shofar, the call to remembrance, and the themes of kingship already echo through the Tanakh.

Psalms of divine kingship and the prophetic insistence that Hashem judges the world supply the substance. Jews did not invent a new holiday; they preserved and illuminated the one Hashem gave.

On this day we crown Hashem as King. The liturgy of Malchuyot is not an addition foreign to Scripture; it is the public acknowledgment that the God who created the world continues to rule it. Rosh Hashanah is the day the entire human family, not only Israel, stands before the Judge. That is why the urgency of these thirty days reaches far beyond the Jewish people.

Declaring the End from the Beginning

Isaiah 46:9–10 states: “Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure.”

The Torah itself is the primary demonstration of this principle. Before Persia (Iran), before the modern nation of Israel, before Edom and the civilization that grew from it and called itself Christian, the letters of Genesis already contained the pattern.

Researchers of equidistant letter sequences (ELS), often called Torah codes, have shown that related words appear in Genesis at statistically significant proximity when measured by minimal skip distance. A minimal skip is the smallest equidistant interval at which a given word or phrase appears in the continuous letter stream of the text.

When that minimal-skip occurrence clusters with other relevant terms inside the same chapter or thematic section, the design becomes visible. The codes are not random noise; they sit within the narrative flow of the book, which begins with creation and already maps the later history of the nations.

The Alef-Bet is the operating system. Every letter is a building block. The fact that these sequences remain readable after more than three millennia of transmission is itself evidence that the text was guarded with extraordinary care throughout the long exile.

The Alef-Bet Confirms Transmission

Jewish children learn Hashem through the Alef-Bet because the letters are the blueprint of creation. The same twenty-two letters that form the words of Genesis are the letters that form every subsequent book of the Torah.

The precision required to keep the text letter-perfect across centuries of dispersion is the practical proof that the people who carried it never abandoned it. The claim that “the Jews changed the Bible” collapses under the weight of the manuscript evidence and the living tradition that still reads the same consonants today that were read in antiquity.

The Time of the Ten Tribes and the Noahides

This is the season when the Ten Tribes and the Noahides of the nations are called to do teshuvah and return to their father and mother, Abraham and Sarah. The Vilna Gaon’s circle understood that the beginning of the Redemption requires the awakening of the lost brothers.

The 1830 letter of Rabbi Yisrael of Shklov to the Ten Tribes was not a curiosity; it was a summons. The Gaon’s students called the scattered tribes to come and assist in the restoration. Today that call is louder. The Land is being rebuilt. The Hebrew language has returned. The fruit of the Land is appearing.

These are among the seven pillars taught in Kol HaTor: the gathering of the exiles (including the Ten Tribes), the building of Jerusalem, the cleansing of the Land through planting and the mitzvot dependent on it, the raising up of people of truth, the spread of Torah from Zion, the war against Amalek, and the healing of Zion.

Noahides, the righteous of the nations who accept the seven laws given to the children of Noah, are also summoned. Abraham and Sarah are the parents of the multitude of nations. The return is not conversion for its own sake; it is recognition of the God of Abraham and the moral order revealed at the beginning. Rosh Hashanah is the universal day of judgment precisely so that every human being may crown Hashem as King and turn.

Combining the Urgency

The two ideas belong together. The footsteps of Mashiach ben Yosef, the return of the Ten Tribes, and the call to the nations coincide with the annual Day of Judgment. Isaiah’s declaration that the end is told from the beginning is not abstract theology; it is written into the letter structure of Genesis itself. The same Torah that the Jewish people have kept through exile is the Torah that now calls the lost tribes and the righteous among the nations to return while there is still time.

Elul is the month of preparation. The shofar of Rosh Hashanah will soon sound. The Judge is also the King who desires the return of His children. Jews and their descendants remain bound to the Torah for life. The Ten Tribes are being stirred. Noahides are being invited. The design of the Torah, visible in its minimal skips and in the unbroken transmission of the Alef-Bet, confirms that nothing essential has been lost and that the counsel of Hashem still stands.

The day is approaching. Make Hashem King. Return to the Father and Mother of the multitude. The end was declared from the beginning. The time to act is now.

Selected Sources

• Leviticus 23:23–25; Numbers 29:1
• Isaiah 46:9–10
• Kol HaTor (Voice of the Turtle Dove)
• Letter of Rabbi Yisrael of Shklov to the Ten Tribes (1830)
• Studies on equidistant letter sequences in Genesis (Witztum–Rips–Rosenberg and subsequent research on minimal-skip significance)

Hazan Gavriel ben David

• The True Story of King David: Unraveling Misconceptions in Jewish Tradition
• A Dialogue on the Noahide Laws: Understanding the Seven Laws of Noah in Judaism
• Was the Great Assembly Invented? Testing the Claim
• Rosh HaShana “Seder” and symbolic actions.
• 606 + 7= Ruth, The Code

As the month of Elul begins and we stand thirty days from the universal judgment of Rosh Hashanah, the Torah portion of Shoftim and its Haftarah from Isaiah 51 call us with urgent clarity. “I, I am He who comforts you,” declares Hashem.¹ We have paid for our sins through centuries of exile, suffering, and faithfulness.

The arm of Hashem is visible in our days. Jews and their descendants—whether of known lineage or the hidden ones returning—carry a lifelong obligation to the Torah. This is not optional culture or ethnic identity. It is the covenant sealed at Sinai. It was witnessed by those who heard the Voice. In addition, it is preserved in the Hebrew letters that form the very blueprint of creation.

The Alef-Bet: How Jewish Children Know Hashem

One of the primary reasons Jewish children know Hashem is the Alef-Bet. The twenty-two letters are not mere symbols for communication. They are the instruments through which Hashem spoke the world into being. “By the word of Hashem the heavens were made” (Psalm 33:6).

The Sages teach that the Torah preceded creation and served as its blueprint.² Every letter, every combination, every root carries creative force. When a child learns to form the letters, to sound the vowels, to read the words of the Living God, that child is being initiated into the architecture of reality itself.

This is why the Hebrew language remains holy even when spoken imperfectly. It is why the return of the language in the Land is itself a sign. Christianity and Islam, for all their claims, stand on the outside of this reality. Both systems treat the Jewish people as having been replaced—two sides of the same replacement coin. They assert that the covenant has been superseded. They claim that the “old” Israel has been set aside for a new spiritual body or a final prophet.

Yet the Jewish people still possess the Book handed down from those who saw and heard “the words of Hashem.” We remain His witnesses, as Isaiah declares: “You are My witnesses… and My servant whom I have chosen” (Isaiah 43:10).³ No later claim can erase the testimony of those who stood at Sinai.

This Shabbat: Shoftim and Isaiah 51

Parashat Shoftim opens with the command to appoint judges and officers who will pursue justice. It continues with the laws of kings, prophets, cities of refuge, and warfare. The portion insists on righteousness in the land and fidelity to the Torah.

The accompanying Haftarah (Isaiah 51:12–52:12), the fourth of the seven Haftarot of Consolation, answers the cry of exile with divine comfort. Jerusalem will rise, the cup of trembling will pass from her hand, and Hashem will bare His holy arm before the eyes of the nations.⁴

We have paid. The long exile, the pogroms, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and the ongoing war against the Jewish people have exacted their price. The righteous among our ancestors prayed that their descendants would live to see Hashem’s arm revealed in these days. Some of us are the answer to those prayers. I am one such descendant. The obligation that rests upon us is therefore not abstract. It is personal, generational, and irrevocable.

The Lifelong Obligation of Jews and Their Descendants

Every Jew and every descendant who discovers Jewish roots is bound to the Torah for life. The covenant is not a temporary contract that can be annulled by history or theology. Deuteronomy repeatedly warns that the commandments are neither too hard nor too far away. They are in our mouth and heart to do them (Deuteronomy 30:11–14).

The return of hidden Jews, crypto-Jews, and those whose DNA or family memory points back to Israel is part of the same process. Isaiah 56 speaks of the foreigners and the eunuchs who join themselves to Hashem, keep the Sabbath, and hold fast to the covenant. The obligation is lifelong because the relationship is lifelong.

Kol HaTor: The Voice of the Turtle Dove and the Seven Things That Must Happen

The Vilna Gaon and his disciples taught that the beginning of the Redemption unfolds through the “footsteps of the Mashiach,” guided by the principle of Mashiach ben Yosef. The book Kol HaTor (“The Voice of the Turtle Dove”), attributed to Rabbi Hillel of Shklov, a disciple of the Gaon, draws its title from Song of Songs 2:12: “The voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land.”⁵ The Gaon saw in this verse the signal of the awakening from below. There are designated deeds, designated times, and designated emissaries working together.

According to the teachings preserved in Kol HaTor, the beginning of the Redemption rests upon seven major pillars or principles:⁶

Seven Pillars: Seven Days of Creation

1. Gathering in the exiles – the return of the Jewish people to the Land, including the awakening of the Ten Tribes.
2. Building Jerusalem – the physical and spiritual reconstruction of the holy city.
3. Eradicating the impure spirit from Eretz Israel by planting the Land and fulfilling the commandments dependent upon it. The Talmud already notes that the land bearing its fruit is one of the clearest signs of redemption (Sanhedrin 98a).
4. Setting up people of truth in order to redeem the truth and sanctify the Name of God.
5. Promoting the spread of Torah from Zion.
6. Waging war against Amalek – in the heart (the evil inclination), in the spiritual realm, and against the physical forces that seek Israel’s destruction.
7. Healing Zion – the restoration and consolation of the Land and people.

These are not abstract ideas. They are the practical work of the beginning of the Redemption, carried out modestly, step by step, through human effort that draws down heavenly assistance.

The Gaon insisted that the process begins from below, as it did in the days of Cyrus. In addition, Mashiach ben Yosef’s mission includes materially strengthening Israel so that Mashiach ben David can complete the spiritual redemption.

The Letters to the Ten Lost Tribes

The disciples of the Vilna Gaon did not merely study these ideas. They acted. In 1830, Rabbi Yisrael of Shklov, one of the Gaon’s close students and a leader of the Perushim community in Safed and Jerusalem, composed and sent a letter to the Ten Lost Tribes.⁷ The letter informed them of the state of the Jewish people, the development of halakhah, and the urgent need for their return.

A Cry For Help To The Ten Tribes

It called upon them to come and help—specifically to participate in the restoration of a proper Sanhedrin of ordained judges, which the Gaon’s circle believed was necessary for the beginning of the Redemption. The letter is filled with longing and fraternal appeal. Reading even a short portion of it moves the heart. The cry of a remnant calling to its brothers across centuries is unmistakable.

The Gaon and his students understood that the full ingathering includes both Judah and the House of Joseph. The awakening of the Ten Tribes is not a side note; it is one of the prerequisites. Today we see fragments of that awakening in the growing number of people discovering Jewish roots, returning to Torah, and identifying with Israel’s destiny. The process is unfolding exactly as the Sages and the Gaon described. The Land is being rebuilt and bearing fruit; Jerusalem is being restored; Torah is spreading from Zion. Moreover, the battle against the spiritual and physical heirs of Amalek continues.

The Call of This Hour

Elul is the month of return. Thirty days remain until we stand before the King. The Alef-Bet still teaches our children Who created the world. The Book is still in our hands. The witnesses have not been silenced. Replacement theologies have not nullified the covenant. The Voice of the Turtle Dove is being heard in the Land.

The Hidden Ones From Sinai – Nitzavim

Jews and their descendants—known and hidden—carry a lifelong obligation to the Torah. That obligation is not a burden to be escaped but the very reason our ancestors prayed we would be here: to see the arm of Hashem and to take our place in the work of redemption. The seven pillars stand before us. The letters to the lost brothers still echo. The time to act is now.

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Footnotes

1. Isaiah 51:12.
2. See Genesis Rabbah 1:1 and related midrashim on the Torah as blueprint.
3. Isaiah 43:10–12; see also Isaiah 44:8.
4. Isaiah 51:12–52:12; the fourth of the Sheva d’Nechemta.
5. Song of Songs 2:12. The title Kol HaTor is drawn from this verse.
6. Kol HaTor, Chapter 6 and related sections, listing the seven pillars of the beginning of the Redemption: gathering the exiles, building Jerusalem, eradicating impurity through planting and land mitzvot, establishing the people of truth, spreading Torah from Zion, waging war against Amalek, and healing Zion. English translations and discussions appear in various editions and studies of the text.
7. Letter to the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel by Rabbi Yisrael ben Shmuel of Shklov, Safed/Jerusalem, 1830. Available on Sefaria and in collections of Eretz Israel letters (e.g., Yaari, Igrot Eretz Yisrael).

Selected Books and Sources

• Kol HaTor (The Voice of the Turtle Dove), attributed to Rabbi Hillel of Shklov (various Hebrew editions and English translations).
• Letter to the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, Rabbi Yisrael of Shklov (Sefaria; also in Yaari, Igrot Eretz Yisrael).
• Isaiah, Chapters 43, 51–52, and related prophetic texts.
• Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin 98a (on the land bearing fruit as a sign).
• Studies and discussions of the Vilna Gaon’s messianic teachings and the Aliyah of his disciples (historical works by Aryeh Morgenstern and others).
• Classical midrashic collections on the Torah as blueprint of creation (Genesis Rabbah and parallel sources).

May Hashem open our eyes to see His arm in these days, and may we fulfill our obligation with joy and faithfulness.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

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Rabbi Chaim Richman became my first Rabbi in 2002 when he was talking about the Torah’s Most Deliberate Mystery. It was also my first time in Israel. The Temple Institute was where I met my family in Israel.

At that time, I had no idea my grandfather was a Cohen. I was a Christian (30 years). I had just discovered our family secret. Sephardic Jews from Spain on my mother’s side. I was Jerusalem-bound at 35 years old in 2002 to meet Rabbi Chaim Richman of the Temple Institute.

What Other Book Makes It So Plain: Jerusalem

Mainstream scholars and casual readers often make a bold claim: the Torah never mentions Jerusalem. They are technically correct. The name “Jerusalem” does not appear even once in the Five Books of Moses.

Yet this absence is not an oversight. It is one of the most intentional literary decisions in the entire Torah. Instead of naming the city, Moshe Rabbeinu repeatedly points to a mysterious location with a single recurring phrase: ha-makom asher yivchar Hashem — “the place that Hashem will choose.”

According to careful counts across the commentaries, this phrase (and its close variants) appears approximately twenty to twenty-one times, almost all of them in Sefer Devarim, and the majority clustered in Parashat Re’eh and the chapters that follow. The Torah keeps pointing, again and again, without ever saying the name.

Why?

The Place Adam Already Knew

Traditional Jewish sources, including the Rambam in Hilchot Beit HaBechirah, teach that the site of the future altar on Mount Moriah is the same place where Adam himself brought an offering after he was created. It is the place where Cain and Abel offered, where Noah built an altar after the Flood, and where Abraham bound Isaac.

In other words, the “place that Hashem will choose” is not a new discovery. It is the original ground of human history — the place connected to the first human being who carried the Blueprint of Creation.

In my book Adam: The Blueprint of Creation and the Tree of Life, I argue that Adam was never automatically immortal. The Tree of Life stood freely available in the Garden. Eternal life required relationship, trust, and the choice to eat from that Tree. The same principle reappears here. The permanent House of God would only be built when the nation was ready — when there was peace from surrounding enemies, when the people could truly “seek His dwelling” (leshichno tidreshu).

The Temple and the Tree of Life are parallel. Both are places of life. A required human partnership with Hashem. Both are given, yet both must be chosen and approached with intention.

Lebanon — The Temple That Whitens

When Moshe begged to enter the Land, he asked to see “this good mountain and the Lebanon” (Deuteronomy 3:25). Our Sages explain that “Lebanon” is a name for the Holy Temple. Why? Because the root lavan means “white.” The Temple malbin — it whitened — the sins of Israel.

Throughout the prophets and the writings of the Sages, the Temple is repeatedly called Lebanon. The same wood that built the House of God was the cedar of Lebanon. The same place that purified the nation is the place that first received the Blueprint through Adam.

The Shoulder of Judah and Benjamin

The eventual site sits on the border — the “shoulder” — between the territories of Judah and Benjamin. It is a shared inheritance, a place that belongs to the whole people even while it rests in a specific tribal allotment. This detail itself is part of the deliberate mystery: the place is chosen by Hashem, yet it emerges only through the history and seeking of the nation.

1. The Center

The Tree of Life stood in the midst of the Garden — the absolute center.

Jewish tradition places the Temple at the same cosmic center. Midrash after midrash describes the world as having a navel: the Land of Israel is the navel of the world, Jerusalem the navel of the Land, the Temple the navel of Jerusalem, the Holy of Holies the navel of the Temple, and the Even Shetiyah (Foundation Stone) the point from which the world itself was founded.

One center. One Tree. One Place.

2. Adam and the Original Ground

According to the Rambam and earlier midrashim, the site of the future altar on Mount Moriah is the very place where Adam brought an offering after his creation. It is also the place associated with the dust from which Adam was formed.

The first human being who carried the Blueprint of Creation stood on the ground that would later become the permanent House of God. The “place that Hashem will choose” is not a later invention. It is the original ground of human history.

3. Availability and Access

Eden (aligned with Rabbi Fohrman’s approach), the Tree of Life was freely present. Adam was not created immortal by default. Eternal life required a relationship of trust and the choice to eat from that Tree.

The same pattern appears with the Temple. The Torah never names Jerusalem. Instead it repeats, twenty-plus times, “the place that Hashem will choose.” The place is designated, yet it is only revealed and established through human seeking (leshichno tidreshu — “you shall seek His dwelling”).

Both the Tree and the Place are given by Hashem. Both require partnership and readiness on the human side.

4. Source of Life and Living Waters

Midrash teaches that all the waters of creation branch out from beneath the Tree of Life.

The Foundation Stone under the Temple is likewise associated with the source of the world’s waters and the point from which the earth was spread. The Temple becomes the place where spiritual life — atonement, the whitening of sins (“Lebanon”), the presence of the Shekhinah — flows out to the people and ultimately to the nations.

5. Cherubim and Guarding the Way

After the expulsion, cherubim with a flaming sword guard the way to the Tree of Life.

In the Mishkan and later in the Temple, cherubim stand over the Ark in the Holy of Holies. The same symbolic guardians appear at the threshold of the most intense divine presence. Access is protected, not forbidden forever.

6. Torah as the Continuing Tree of Life

Proverbs 3:18 calls wisdom (understood by the Sages as Torah) “a tree of life to those who grasp her.”

Once physical access to the Garden was closed, the Torah itself becomes the ongoing Tree of Life. The Temple is the place where that Tree is most fully lived, taught, and guarded (the Sanhedrin sat near the Temple; the Torah was read and taught there). The permanent House and the permanent Tree are meant to stand together.

7. One vs. Many

Eden had one Tree of Life in the center.

Deuteronomy insists on one Place among all the tribes. The centralizing formula is the Torah’s way of saying: just as there was one Tree of Life, there will be one House where Hashem places His Name. Multiplicity of altars is the path of the nations; the single Place is the path of the Blueprint. The Foundation Stone (Even ha-Shetiyah)

The Even ha-Shetiyah (אבן השתייה) is one of the most powerful and layered symbols in Jewish tradition. It sits at the intersection of creation, the Temple, Adam, and the cosmic center of the world.

What the Sources Say

In the Mishnah (Yoma 5:2), we read that after the Ark of the Covenant was no longer present, there remained a stone in the Holy of Holies “from the days of the early prophets.” It stood three fingerbreadths higher than the ground and was called Shetiyah. On Yom Kippur the High Priest placed the incense pan upon it.

Rabbi Yose explains the name: the world was founded (or “woven”) from it. The word shetiyah carries the sense of foundation and also of the warp threads of a loom—the starting point from which everything else is stretched out. Later midrashim expand this: the Holy One cast a precious stone into the deep, fixed it from above to below, and from that point the world expanded in every direction. It is the center point of the earth.

The Navel of the World

A classic midrashic sequence (found in Tanhuma and elsewhere) places the Stone at the absolute center:

• The Land of Israel is the navel of the world
• Jerusalem is the navel of the Land
• The Temple is the navel of Jerusalem
• The Sanctuary is the navel of the Temple
• The Holy of Holies is the navel of the Sanctuary
• The Foundation Stone stands before it, for from it the world was founded

This is the same language used of the Tree of Life standing “in the midst” of the Garden. Both are axis mundi—the vertical point where heaven, earth, and the deep meet.

Connection to Adam and the Patriarchs

Traditions link the site closely to the beginning of humanity. The earth from which Adam was formed was taken from this place (or near the future altar site). Adam offered sacrifices there. The same ground later became the site of the Binding of Isaac and the place where Jacob slept, set up a stone pillar, and declared, “This is none other than the House of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Some sources identify Jacob’s stone with the Even ha-Shetiyah itself.

In other words, the first human who carried the Blueprint of Creation stood on the same ground that would later hold the permanent House of Hashem.

Waters of the Deep

Later layers of the tradition associate the Stone with the sealing of the tehom—the subterranean waters of the abyss. When David dug the foundations for the Temple, he reached these waters and had to reseal them. The Stone is thus both the starting point of dry land and the lid that holds the chaotic deep in place. Parallel traditions speak of all the world’s waters originating from or flowing in connection with this point—echoing the midrash that all the waters of creation branch out from beneath the Tree of Life.

Parallel to the Tree of Life

The parallels are striking:

• Both stand at the absolute center.
• Both are the source-point of life and order.
• Both mark the place where the divine presence is most intensely accessible.
• Both require human approach and partnership—the Tree was available yet had to be chosen; the Place is designated yet must be sought.
• Both connect the first human (Adam) to the ultimate House of God.

The Foundation Stone is the physical, earthly counterpart to the Tree of Life’s role in Eden. Where the Tree offered the possibility of eternal life through relationship, the Stone marks the permanent ground from which that relationship can be restored and sustained for the whole world.

In the language of the Blueprint theme, the Stone is the original “place” already present at the beginning—long before the Torah ever names Jerusalem. The repeated, unnamed “place that Hashem will choose” in Deuteronomy points back to this same ground that Adam already knew.

8. Future Restoration

The prophets look forward to a time when the nations themselves will say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of Hashem, to the house of the God of Jacob” (Isaiah 2). The seeking that began with Israel becomes universal.

In that vision, the life that was once centered in the Tree of Eden flows again from the restored House in Jerusalem.

1. The Absolute Center

The Tree of Life stood in the midst of the Garden — the precise center.

The Foundation Stone is described as the navel of the world. The classic sequence in Midrash Tanhuma and parallel sources ends with the Stone itself: the world was founded from it. It is the earthly fixed point that corresponds to the Tree’s position in the center of Eden. Both function as axis mundi — the vertical axis where heaven, earth, and the deep meet.

2. Source of the Waters of Life

Midrashim on the Tree of Life state that all the waters of creation branch out from beneath it (Bereshit Rabbah and Zohar).

The Foundation Stone is linked to the same idea. It is the first solid point that rose from the waters of creation, and later traditions associate it with sealing (and therefore controlling) the waters of the tehom. The life-giving waters that flowed from under the Tree have their earthly counterpart in the Stone that both originates and restrains the deep.

3. Origin Point of Ordered Existence

The Tree of Life represents the possibility of sustained, eternal life in relationship with Hashem.

The Foundation Stone is the point from which the entire ordered world was “woven” or founded. It is the first act of structure against chaos. In both cases we meet the same pattern: divine initiative that establishes a center of life and order, which then becomes available to humanity.

4. Adam and the Beginning

Adam was formed from the dust of this site (or offered sacrifice there). He stood on the ground of the future Foundation Stone while the Tree of Life still stood accessible in the Garden.

The Stone therefore marks the physical place of the first human encounter with the Blueprint of Creation — the same Blueprint whose central living symbol was the Tree of Life.

5. The Temple as Restored Access

Once the way to the Tree was guarded by cherubim, the Temple (built over the Stone) becomes the place where the divine presence is again made accessible in a structured, covenantal way. The cherubim reappear over the Ark that rested on (or near) the Stone. The single Place that Hashem chooses in Deuteronomy continues the single Tree that stood in the midst of the Garden.

In short: the Foundation Stone is the earthly, permanent, and historical counterpart to the Tree of Life. The Tree offered life through relationship in the beginning. The Stone marks the ground from which that same possibility of life is to be restored and extended to the world through the House of Hashem.

A Developing Reality

The Torah does not present Jerusalem as a finished fact. It presents it as a developing reality. First the people must conquer and settle the Land. Then they must achieve rest from their enemies. Only then does the permanent House appear.

David yearned for that House. Psalm 132 records his oath and his searching: “I will not give sleep to my eyes… until I find a place for Hashem, a dwelling for the Mighty One of Jacob.” The contrast with Rome (or any other power that claims centrality) is sharp. One place is sought in humility and covenant; the other is imposed by force.

Isaiah later opens the vision that fulfills the Torah’s hint:

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of Hashem, to the house of the God of Jacob… for from Zion shall go forth Torah, and the word of Hashem from Jerusalem” (Isaiah 2:3).

Notice the language. The nations themselves will say, “Let us go up.” The seeking that began with Israel becomes the invitation of the whole world.

Partnership with Hashem

The verse in Re’eh that introduces the mystery says: leshichno tidreshu — “you shall seek His dwelling.” The place is chosen by Hashem, yet it is revealed through human seeking. David and Samuel later identify it. Solomon builds it. But the Torah already planted the seed in the repeated, unnamed phrase.

This is the same pattern as the Tree of Life. The Tree is given. The relationship must be chosen. The House is designated. The people must seek it and partner in its building.

Why the Silence?

Rambam offers practical reasons: if the nations had known the exact location in advance, they would have fought over it or desecrated it before Israel was ready. More deeply, the silence forces every generation to seek. The mystery itself becomes a teacher.

In our day the same call remains. The place still waits. The Blueprint first given to Adam still stands. The Tree of Life is still offered. And the nation — and ultimately the world — is still invited to come up to the mountain of the House of the God of Jacob.

Re’eh — See. Seek His dwelling. The place has been waiting since the beginning.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

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“See, I set before you today a blessing and a curse.” Re’eh. Singular. You. See.

This is not a suggestion. It is the command that opens the portion we read this Shabbat, 25 Av 5786. Hashem places two paths in front of every person and every nation and demands that we open our eyes. In a world that insists there are many truths, many paths, and many gods, Parashat Re’eh insists there is only one Blueprint.

That Blueprint begins in the Garden.

The Tree of Life Was Always Available

In my book Adam: The Blueprint of Creation and the Tree of Life, I return again and again to a simple, devastating observation taught by Rabbi David Fohrman. In the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life stood in the middle of the Garden. It was not hidden. Two angels now invite you into the Covenant contained in the Tree of Life, with the same two Angels with no sword. It was freely available.

Adam was never going to live forever by default. Eternal life was not automatic. He had to eat from the Tree of Life. Hashem gave only one direct prohibition — do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil — and remained silent about the Tree of Life. Why? Because trust and relationship are built through experience, not through constant commands. Adam was meant to live, to return to his Father, to share what he had learned, and then, having grown into that relationship, to take from the Tree of Life and live forever.

This is the opposite of the theology that later claimed man was created immortal and then “fell.” The Torah’s picture is different. Mortality was the starting condition. The Tree of Life was the offered solution. The Blueprint was already there.

How Do You Get Jesus From The Tree of Life

Christianity never left the Garden. It built an entire system around a different reading of those first chapters and then claimed the original Blueprint had been replaced. Islam took another path of replacement. Both claim to stand on Abraham while setting aside the very structure Hashem gave in the beginning. That is why I titled the series on my site “Two Sides of the Same Coin.” They look different, but both fail the same Torah tests: the falsifiable national witness of Israel, the unbroken covenantal line through Sarah, and the Tree of Life itself as the unchanging Blueprint for all humanity.

One Family, Written in DNA

Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson’s research in Traced confirms what Genesis already told us. All human Y-chromosome DNA traces back to three men — the sons of Noah — and mitochondrial DNA to three women. We are one family. The seventy nations of Genesis 10 are brothers and cousins. The divine image placed in Adam was never erased. It is carried in every human being.

This is why the Torah can say, without contradiction, that every human is created in the image of God and that Hashem chose one family to guard the Blueprint for the sake of every family. The choice of Abraham through Sarah was never about superiority. It was about responsibility. The Tree of Life was entrusted to a people so that it would not be lost.

Where the Distinction Begins: Genesis 25

The portion of Re’eh does not appear in a vacuum. The distinction between the children of Hashem and the nations is already visible in the story of Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Esau. Two nations are in Rebecca’s womb. Two paths. One will carry the covenant; the other will walk a different road. The Ten Sayings later given at Sinai are the public, national expression of the same Blueprint that began with Adam and was protected through the line of Jacob.

When Parashat Re’eh says “You are children of the Lord your God; you shall not cut yourselves or make any baldness on your heads for the dead” (Deuteronomy 14:1), it is speaking from that same Blueprint. Because the soul is eternal, and because the Tree of Life remains available, we do not mutilate the body in despair. The body is the temporary vehicle. The soul is the passenger who will one day step out. Extreme self-harm is a denial of the Blueprint.

The Visible Distinction in Our Day

This past week, the world watched a man livestream himself cutting his own flesh while declaring he wanted to die. Commentators reached for the language of demons and the devil. The Torah does not. Isaiah 45:7 is clear: “I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil — I, the Lord, do all these things.” There is no independent rival power. Everything requires permission from the One.

The same portion that forbids self-mutilation because we are children of Hashem also places blessing and curse before us and demands that we see. The wars, the slaughter in places like Sudan and Nigeria, the hidden systems that treat human life as disposable, the rising claims of parallel revelations — all of it is the stage on which the distinction is being made visible again.

Ezekiel 38–39 tells us the nations will come against the mountains of Israel so that two things will become clear: the nations will know that Hashem is God, and the house of Israel will know that He is the Lord their God. There can only be one truth. Either the Torah’s Blueprint is correct, or it is not. Christianity and Islam cannot both be true while the Tree of Life still stands as the original offer of eternal life through relationship with the Creator who spoke at Sinai.

Choose the Tree of Life

Re’eh means see. See that Adam was offered the Tree of Life and had to choose it. Remember that the same offer remains. Behold that the children of Hashem are forbidden to destroy the vessel that carries the soul because the soul is immortal and the Blueprint is still given. See that the family of Abraham was chosen to protect that Blueprint for every family on earth. See that replacement theologies, however powerful they appear, fail the Torah’s own tests.

The blessing and the curse are still set before us. The Tree of Life is still available. The question is the same one that stood in the Garden: Will we eat from it?

Hazan Gavriel ben David

Shabbat Shalom.

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“See, I set before you today a blessing and a curse.” Those are the opening words of Parashat Re’eh (Deuteronomy 11:26). The Hebrew is Re’eh—singular. Moses is speaking to each of us individually: You—see. Not merely hear. Not merely know in theory. See. This parasha also addresses the Parashat Re’eh distinction between the children of Hashem and others.

This Shabbat, 25 Av 5786 (August 8, 2026), the portion lands with unusual force. The world is loud with blood, confusion, and competing claims about who God is and what He requires. In the middle of that noise, the Torah quietly but firmly draws a line and says: Look carefully. There is a difference between My children and the practices of the nations.

You Are Children of Hashem

In the heart of the portion we read:

“You are children of the Lord your God. You shall not cut yourselves or shave the front of your heads for the dead. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be His treasured people out of all the peoples on the face of the earth.” (Deuteronomy 14:1–2)

This is one of the rare places in the entire Torah where Israel is explicitly called banim laHashem—children of Hashem. The prohibition against self-mutilation and extreme mourning practices is not an arbitrary rule. It flows directly from identity. Because you are My children, you do not treat the body—the temporary vessel that carries the soul—as something to be gashed, torn, or destroyed in grief or despair.

Rabbi David Fohrman has shown the deep linguistic and thematic connection between this verse and the earlier rebellion of Korach. The name Korach itself echoes the forbidden korcha—the bald spot torn out in mourning. Korach’s rebellion was, at its deepest level, grief that turned into rage and then into communal self-destruction. The people had just been told that an entire generation would die in the wilderness. That grief was real. But the Torah forbids turning that grief against the head of the people or against one’s own body. When a community mourns the loss of its future by attacking its leadership and tearing itself apart, it is practicing the very korcha the Torah prohibits.

The sons of Korach did not die (Numbers 26:11). The Torah is careful not to shame the children for the father’s rebellion. Later, in Deuteronomy 24:16, the principle is stated with perfect clarity: “Parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their parents; each is to die for their own sin.” Ezekiel 18 repeats the same truth with even greater force. This is the opposite of the idea that guilt is automatically transferred or that some independent evil force possesses people against their will.

The Tragic Spectacle and the False Diagnosis

This past week, the world watched a man livestream himself covered in blood, cutting his own flesh while declaring he wanted to die. Platforms delayed removing the stream. Commentators, including Glenn Beck on his program, reached for the language of “demonic spirit” or “the devil.”

That language is understandable from a certain worldview. It is not the language of the Torah.

In the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we were never taught that an independent devil or army of demons operates freely against the will of Hashem. Isaiah 45:7 is unambiguous:

“I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil—I, the Lord, do all these things.”

Everything that occurs in this world requires permission from the Creator. There is no second god, no rival power that can act without the One who said: “I am.” When a human being destroys his own flesh in public, the Torah does not diagnose a demon. It diagnoses a soul that has lost sight of the fact that it is a child of the Eternal, that the body is a temporary garment, and that the soul itself is immortal.

Rabbi Chaim Richman has taught for decades that the prohibition in Deuteronomy 14 is rooted in the immortality of the soul. Because the soul continues, extreme mourning that mutilates the body is a denial of reality. The body is the vehicle; the soul is the passenger who will one day step out of the vehicle. To slash the vehicle in despair is to forget who we are.

We Are a Family, Not a Religion

Judaism is not a religion in the way the nations understand religion. We are a family. Isaiah 51:1–2 tells us to look to Abraham, our father, and Sarah, who bore us. We were hewn from them. We come in every color, every language, every cuisine, every cultural expression—yet we remain one family. Rabbi Chaim Richman has repeated this truth throughout his teachings: we are not religious; we are a family chosen to teach the rest of the children of the world what the Father wants from all of them.

That is why the rebellion of Korach still echoes. Korach’s cry—“The entire congregation is holy; why do you raise yourselves above the assembly of Hashem?”—sounds egalitarian and spiritual. In reality, it was an attack on the structure Hashem Himself established. The same spirit appears whenever people claim that every practice is equally holy, that every path leads to the same place, or that the distinctions the Torah draws are somehow elitist or outdated.

The Torah draws distinctions because love draws distinctions. A father does not treat his own children the same way he treats strangers on the street. He holds his children to a higher standard precisely because they are his.

The Larger Distinction in Our Day

The portion begins with the choice between blessing and curse. It continues with the command to destroy the places of idolatry in the Land, to centralize worship in the place Hashem chooses, and to refuse the practices of the nations. The Exodus itself was a public distinction: “I will make a distinction between My people and your people” (Exodus 8:19). The plagues did not fall equally on everyone. Hashem was teaching the world—and Israel—that there is a difference.

We are watching a similar distinction unfold on a global scale. Wars rage. In 2025 alone, battle-related deaths reached levels not seen since the Cold War, with Sudan driving horrific civilian casualties and Nigeria seeing continued targeting of Christian communities. Hidden financial and political systems operate with almost no accountability. A man who once advised the highest levels of government invoked the Fifth Amendment repeatedly while under scrutiny. The systems that claimed to protect life have, in many places, shown themselves indifferent to it.

Ezekiel 38–39 describes a future confrontation involving nations from the north that will come against the mountains of Israel. Rabbi Tovia Singer has long pointed out the dual purpose of that confrontation: so that the nations will know that Hashem is God, and so that the house of Israel will know that He is the Lord their God. The conflict with Iran and the broader realignments of our time are not random. They are part of the process by which Hashem is again making a distinction.

The Exodus was a microcosm. The final redemption will be the full reality. Freedom from the systems that enslave the world—financial, ideological, spiritual—will come the same way the first freedom came: by the hand of the God who took us out of Egypt.

What We Are Called to See

Re’eh means “see.” Not just with the eyes, but with the heart that recognizes the difference.

See that self-mutilation—whether physical or spiritual—is foreign to the children of Hashem. See that there is no independent devil who can force a human being against the will of the Creator. Understand that we are a family, not a creed to be joined or a set of ideas to be debated. Know that the sons do not pay for the sins of the fathers, and that even in the darkest rebellion a place of repentance remains. See that the chaos of the nations is not proof that God has lost control; it is the stage on which He is making His distinction clear once again.

The blessing and the curse are still set before us. The choice is still real. The call is still singular: Re’eh—you, see.

May we have eyes to see the difference between the ways of the world and the ways of the Father who calls us His children. And may the whole world, in the end, see the same thing: that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the only God, and that His children were chosen not for privilege but for responsibility—to teach the rest of His children how to live.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

Shabbat Shalom.

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Christianity and Islam present themselves as the true continuation or final form of the revelation given to Israel. Each claims the Torah (or “previous scriptures”) as foundational yet incomplete, corrupted, or superseded.

When their own arguments and criteria are applied rigorously—using the historical-critical methods one side uses against the other, the archaeological record, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Y-chromosome DNA research, and the Torah’s own measurable claims—both systems collapse under the same weight.

They are two sides of the same coin: derivative traditions that borrow selectively from the original blueprint while introducing elements foreign to it.

The Torah presents itself not as mystical poetry or private inspiration but as a public, historical, and therefore falsifiable blueprint of creation and covenant. That is the central thesis of Adam, the Blueprint of Creation and the Tree of Life: the patterns given to Adam, expanded at Sinai, and lived out in the history of one family are testable.

If the land does not respond as promised, if no nation ever heard the Creator’s voice as described, if the Jewish people do not uniquely fit the prophecies of exile, preservation, and restoration, the claims fall. The evidence shows they stand.

The Unique National Revelation No Other Faith Can Claim

Deuteronomy 4 issues a challenge that remains unanswered:

“Ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from the one end of heaven unto the other, whether there has been any such thing as this great thing is, or has been heard like it? Did ever a people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and live?” (Deut 4:32–33).

Approximately three million people (the census figures of the wilderness generation and their households) stood at Sinai and heard the voice. No other nation in history claims—or has ever claimed—a comparable public, national theophany.

Christianity’s foundational events are private (resurrection appearances to a small circle) or later ecclesiastical constructions. Islam’s revelation is private to one man in a cave, later compiled and standardized under political authority. The Torah’s claim is public and therefore falsifiable: either such an event occurred before a nation, or it did not. No parallel exists.

Rabbi Tovia Singer has repeatedly emphasized that the measuring rod for any claim about Israel’s God must be the Hebrew Scriptures themselves. Christianity cannot be true if the Tanakh is false, because its messianic claims rest on reinterpretations of those same texts. The reverse is possible: Judaism can stand while Christian claims fall.

The Land That Responds Only to the Jewish People

The Torah and Prophets repeatedly state that the Land of Israel is under the Creator’s direct control and responds to the presence or absence of the covenant people. When Israel is exiled for covenant violation, the land becomes desolate; when they return, it awakens (Lev 26; Deut 28–30; Ezek 36; etc.).

Nineteenth-century travelers recorded the fulfillment of the desolation phase with striking clarity. Mark Twain, writing in The Innocents Abroad (1869) after his 1867 journey, described Palestine as “a desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given wholly to weeds… a silent mournful expanse… Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes.” He explicitly linked the barrenness to the biblical curse.

The same land, once Jews returned in significant numbers and began intensive cultivation, drainage, and reforestation, became productive again—exactly as the restoration prophecies require. No other people in history have had their ancestral land remain largely desolate under successive conquerors for centuries, only to revive under the returning covenant nation. This is a public, observable, falsifiable claim. It has not been falsified.

DNA Evidence and the Table of Nations

Dr. Nathaniel T. Jeanson (Harvard Ph.D. in cell and developmental biology; research biologist, Answers in Genesis) has mapped global Y-chromosome variation onto the genealogies of Genesis 10. In Traced: Human DNA’s Big Surprise, he demonstrates that the major Y-chromosome branches align with the three sons of Noah and subsequent dispersions in a timeframe consistent with a recent common ancestry.

Jewish and Cohen lineages show distinctive signatures (including the Cohen Modal Haplotype within haplogroup J) that track with the biblical priestly and Israelite lines descending from Shem through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

This does not “prove” every detail of the narrative, but it falsifies the evolutionary deep-time model of human origins and supplies independent genetic support for the Torah’s family tree. Christianity and Islam both affirm a common origin in Adam/Noah yet detach their ultimate claims from the specific, testable Israelite lineage and land promises that the DNA and history continue to illuminate.

Beyond Simple Numbers: Spacetime, Wormholes, and the Torah as Living Cosmic Blueprint

(Drawing on Rabbi Efraim Palvanov)

The evidence for the Torah as blueprint is not limited to isolated gematria values or striking numerical correspondences. Rabbi Efraim Palvanov (Torah educator, researcher with degrees in biology and education, and teacher of authentic Kabbalah integrated with science) demonstrates that the Torah encodes structural principles of reality that modern physics is only now approaching.

Central to this is the concept of kefitzat haderekh (“contraction of the path” or “jumping the road”), recorded in the Talmud and Midrash regarding Eliezer (Abraham’s servant), Jacob, and Avishai. In these cases the earth itself contracted, allowing journeys of hundreds of miles to be completed in a single day or less. This is not presented as a mere miracle for its own sake; it is a description of spacetime behaving in a non-classical way.

Palvanov shows the precise parallel in Einstein’s special relativity (length contraction as velocity approaches the speed of light) and, more powerfully, in general relativity’s prediction of wormholes—Einstein-Rosen bridges that fold spacetime and create shortcuts between distant points.

The Torah Identifies Locations

Scientists produced microscopic wormholes in laboratory conditions in 2017; the theoretical possibility of larger traversable ones has been taken seriously for decades. The Talmudic description of the land contracting is functionally identical to a wormhole or spacetime fold.

The Torah further identifies specific locations as portals or “stargates” between heaven and earth: the Garden of Eden (guarded by cherubim), Mount Sinai (where Moses ascended and the heavens opened), Jacob’s ladder at Beit El (described as spanning thousands of parasas), the Temple Mount, the Cave of the Patriarchs, and others.

These align with the seven heavens detailed in the Talmud (Chagigah), each with distinct functions, and with the lower sefirot. The generation of the Tower of Babel is portrayed not merely as builders of a tall structure but as attempting to construct a technological gateway or flying apparatus to reach the heavens—an early recognition that physical portals between realms are possible.

Even Adam’s 930-year lifespan receives a coherent explanation through time dilation: travel or existence near light-speed contracts experienced time relative to an earthly frame of reference. What appears as an impossible lifespan under ordinary conditions becomes consistent once the Torah’s own description of Adam as originally clothed in light and capable of traversing the cosmos is taken seriously.

The Torah Blueprint

These are not “a few numbers that show up.” They are repeated, structural features of the Torah’s cosmology that describe the fabric of spacetime, the possibility of portals, the hierarchical structure of the heavens, and the relationship between light, time, and distance—features that align with discoveries in physics millennia later.

The Torah functions as a genuine blueprint of creation: its language and narratives encode physical principles that were inaccessible to the ancient world by ordinary means. This deepens the falsifiability claim. A text that accurately anticipates the topology of spacetime and the possibility of wormholes is not easily dismissed as late human invention or random coincidence.

The Dead Sea Scrolls and Textual Stability

The Dead Sea Scrolls (discovered 1947–1956, dating primarily from the third century BCE to the first century CE) include multiple copies of Torah books and a complete Isaiah scroll (1QIsaᵃ). The Great Isaiah Scroll is substantially the same text later standardized in the Masoretic tradition (roughly 1,000 years later), with differences largely orthographic, stylistic, or minor.

The scrolls demonstrate that the Hebrew text of the Torah and Prophets was already stable and widely circulated centuries before the rise of Christianity and a full millennium before the standardization of the Quranic text.

Both later faiths have claimed the earlier scriptures were corrupted. The physical evidence from Qumran contradicts wholesale corruption theories. Variant literary editions exist (as expected in a living textual tradition), but the core content of the Torah that both Christianity and Islam claim to fulfill or correct was already fixed in essentially its present form long before either religion emerged.

Applying Their Own Criteria: Both Faiths Fail

Christianity’s internal criteria. Rabbi Tovia Singer’s multi-volume work Let’s Get Biblical systematically demonstrates that the New Testament’s use of the Hebrew Bible relies on mistranslation, decontextualization, and invention.

The classic messianic criteria in the Prophets—universal knowledge of God, end of war, ingathering of the exiles under a Davidic king who rebuilds the Temple and establishes justice—remain unfulfilled in the Christian reading. If the Hebrew Bible is the measuring rod (as Christians claim when arguing against Judaism), the Christian messiah fails the test the Prophets themselves set.

Islam’s internal criteria. Christian apologist and historian Dr. Jay Smith and others applying historical-critical methods to early Islamic sources have highlighted the late composition of the sīra and hadith literature, the absence of contemporary non-Muslim attestation for key elements of the Standard Islamic Narrative (including a seventh-century Meccan cult center matching the traditional description), and the complex manuscript history of the Quran prior to later standardization.

Islam claims the previous scriptures were corrupted yet simultaneously claims continuity with Abraham, Moses, and the prophets. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the continuous Jewish textual tradition undermine the corruption claim. The historical and archaeological record does not support the early Islamic narrative with the same clarity that the Jewish connection to the Land and people exhibits.

Thus each side’s strongest critical tools, when turned on the other and on itself against the Torah’s public claims, leave both systems wanting. They are two sides of the same coin: both dependent on the Hebrew revelation, both altering its plain meaning, both failing the falsifiability tests the Torah itself invites.

The Fasts That Become Joy

Zechariah 8:19 declares:

“Thus says the Lord of hosts: The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts; therefore love truth and peace.”

These commemorate the breaches, the burning of the Temple, the murder of Gedaliah, and the beginning of the siege. The prophecy is specific to Judah. Its ultimate fulfillment is tied to the restoration of the Jewish people in the Land under the Creator’s covenant. No parallel national fast-to-feast transformation is promised to any other people.

Conclusion

The Torah offers a blueprint that can be tested: a unique national revelation, a land under divine control that responds to the covenant people, a preserved genetic and textual lineage, structural descriptions of spacetime and portals that anticipate modern physics, and prophecies that only one nation has historically fulfilled in their particularity.

Christianity and Islam, for all their numerical success and internal coherence within their own frameworks, do not survive the application of the very historical, textual, and prophetic criteria they sometimes invoke against each other or against Judaism. They remain two sides of the same coin—impressive human constructions built upon, yet diverging from, the original, falsifiable, and still-standing blueprint given to Adam and clarified at Sinai for the family of Israel and, through them, for the world.

Hazan Gavriel ben David Esnoga Beit HaShoavah