Why and Where Did the Ten Commandments Come From?

In last week’s parsha, we meet the Aseret HaDibrot, the Ten Sayings given at Sinai. A natural question arises: why these particular words, and why in this form? The Torah itself supplies the answer in Genesis 27. The Ten Sayings emerge from a family dispute—the anguish between brothers, a father’s incomplete blessing, and the wounds that followed. The whole of humanity is one family, the family of Adam. The only way to heal the nations is to live these Sayings when we rise up, when we lie down, and when we walk by the way, and to teach our children the family history recorded in the Bible.

Rabbi David Fohrman’s exploration in A Book Like No Other (Season 4 – Matan Torah) reveals an astonishing literary architecture. The revelation narrative and the Ten Commandments track the Yaakov story with dozens of ordered parallels. Vertical relationships with the Creator bleed into horizontal relationships with brothers, wives, and neighbors.

Every rupture in the second tablet—murder, adultery-like interference, theft, false testimony, coveting—roots in a prior failure of relationship with a parent figure, whether Yitzchak or Lavan. The final commandment, לא תחמוד (“You shall not covet”), closes the circle at the reconciliation of Yaakov and Eisav.

The Healing of Two Nations: Now The World

In Genesis 33, Yaakov presses the gift upon Eisav with the enigmatic words: כי על כן ראיתי פניך כראות פני אלהים ותרצני “For therefore I have seen your face as one sees the face of God, and you have accepted me.”

Yaakov treats his older brother’s acceptance of the gift as the healing of the original wound: the father’s love that once felt zero-sum. Eisav’s restraint from murder years earlier, after overhearing that Yaakov had gone to Padan Aram, already embodied the energy of כבד את אביך ואת אמך powering לא תרצח.

The same parental love that restrains murder now becomes the horizontal love that overcomes envy. The producer of the series noted the mind-blowing symmetry: the first tablet begins with the problem that you cannot see God with the senses; the tenth commandment ends with Yaakov declaring that you can see the face of God in the reconciled brother.

The same pattern appears with Lavan. Rachel steals the terafim (ויגנב רחל את התרפים), and Yaakov “steals the heart” of Lavan by departing secretly (ויגנב יעקב את לב לבן). Theft is not only of objects but of trust. The commandment against adultery finds its surprising paradigm not in a simple marital betrayal but in Lavan’s interposition of Leah into the intimate relationship Yaakov intended with Rachel—

an interference the Torah later describes with the precise language of איש אשר ינאף את אשת רעהו (Leviticus 20:10), echoing the ish and re’eihu of the Gal-ed covenant. The “adulterous” spirit is the father-in-law who inserts himself where he does not belong. Healing requires restoring the proper boundaries of family.

These textual links are not ornamental. They teach that the Ten Sayings are the operating system for repairing the human family. When vertical love is fractured, horizontal relationships fracture. When brothers learn to renounce zero-sum thinking and see the divine spark in one another, the family is made whole again. That wholeness is what God “looks like.”

One Family from Adam through Noah

The Bible is the only continuous written record of the entire human family. Genesis 1–11 presents Adam and Chava as the single origin, then the Flood, then the Table of Nations descending from Shem, Ham, and Yefet. Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson’s work in Traced supplies independent scientific corroboration. Using Y-chromosome mutation rates calibrated to known historical timelines rather than deep-time assumptions, Jeanson reconstructs a global paternal tree whose major branches align with the three sons of Noah.

Every living male lineage ultimately traces to one of those three. The Jewish priestly and broader Semitic lines cluster within the Shem branches; other populations map to Ham or Yefet in patterns consistent with the biblical dispersion after Babel. The data do not require evolutionary timescales of hundreds of thousands of years; they fit a recent origin and a single family tree.

This is not merely interesting genetics. It means every conflict between nations is a family quarrel. Every act of violence, exploitation, or idolatry is a repetition of the original sibling and parental wounds. The Canaanite practices listed in Deuteronomy 18—child sacrifice, sorcery, the full catalog of idolatry and sexual inversion—are the extreme expression of a family that has forgotten its Parent. Hashem therefore chooses Israel not as a superior race but as a servant people whose task is to model a different way.

What “Chosen” Actually Means

Rabbi Ephraim’s teaching on the meaning of chosenness is direct and bracing. Deuteronomy 7 and 14 and Exodus 19 declare Israel a treasured people, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation—precisely because the whole earth belongs to God. The surrounding nations were steeped in the very crimes the Torah forbids. Israel was chosen to elevate the moral level of the world, to be a light that dispels darkness, to fight evil, and to bring about the messianic age of peace and prosperity for all.

Chosenness is service, not privilege. God calls Israel His servant. When Jews fail to live the mission—when they promote the opposite of godliness, justice, and morality—it becomes a chillul Hashem that fans the flames of antisemitism and makes the name of God and Torah desecrated. The nations are meant to look at Israel and say, “What a wise and understanding people.” The original plan was that every Jew would function as a priest for the world. That remains the job description.

The progress of history itself testifies to the partial success of the mission. From the Greco-Roman world of gladiatorial death, temple prostitution, and casual infant exposure, humanity has moved—unevenly, with tragic setbacks—toward higher valuations of life, monotheism, and basic human dignity. Relative to any previous age, we live in an era of unprecedented prosperity and reduced large-scale warfare. The finish line of tikkun olam is closer than it has ever been.

The Shema and Daily Incorporation of the Ten Sayings

The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4–9) strengthens every point. “Hear, O Israel: Hashem is our God, Hashem is One.” The oneness of God underwrites the oneness of the human family. Then the command: these words which I command you today shall be upon your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall speak of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and as frontlets between your eyes. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

The Ten Sayings are not a museum piece. They are the daily curriculum of family life. When a father rises and recites the Shema, when a mother walks with a child and discusses why we do not covet or bear false witness, when a household lies down at night having practiced reconciliation rather than zero-sum competition, the healing of the nations is advanced one household at a time. The Bible is the family album; the Ten Sayings are the house rules that keep the family from tearing itself apart.

Gematria of Unity and Prayer

The numerical value 515 appears at decisive moments of longing for unity. Va’etchanan (ואתחנן) equals 515—the number of prayers Moshe offered to enter the Land. The same number is the gematria of tefillah (תפלה). Remarkably, the names Yitzchak (יצחק = 208) and Rivkah (רבקה = 307) also total 515, equal to basar echad (בשר אחד), “one flesh.”

Adam and Chava were created to become one flesh; Yitzchak and Rivkah model the prayerful unity that restores what was fractured. Moshe’s 515 prayers were not primarily for personal entry into the Land but for the ultimate redemption of the people and the healing of creation. The unfinished 516th prayer, some suggest, lives on as the hope (hatikvah = 516) that continues until the family is fully restored.

These numerical echoes are not magic. They are literary signals that the Torah’s deepest theme is the restoration of the original oneness—God’s oneness reflected in the human family that was meant to be one.

Teaching the Children Our Shared Story

The only way to heal the world is to incorporate the Ten Sayings into ordinary life and to teach the next generation the family history. The Bible is not one religion’s private mythology; it is the sole continuous record of how all peoples descend from a common pair, survive a common Flood, and receive a common moral charter. DNA evidence from Y-chromosome studies now makes the same claim in the language of modern science. When children learn that the stranger across the border is a distant cousin whose branch of the tree split at Shem, Ham, or Yefet, the psychological foundation for zero-sum hatred begins to erode.

Yaakov and Eisav’s The Ten Sayings

Yaakov and Eisav’s reconciliation shows the practical path: renounce the fantasy that another’s existence is the obstacle to one’s own blessing; offer the gift; accept the gift; see the face of God in the former adversary. The same movement scales from brothers to nations. The kingdom of priests is not a closed club; it is a training ground whose graduates are meant to serve the entire household of Adam.

We are closer than ever. The moral capital accumulated over three millennia of Torah influence has already raised the baseline of human civilization. The remaining work is the daily, unglamorous incorporation of the Ten Sayings—when we rise, when we walk, when we lie down—and the faithful transmission of the family story to the children who will finish the job. That is what it means to be chosen. That is how the nations are healed.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

• What the World Missed: The Star of Yaakov and the Quiet Dawn of Redemption
• Daily Torah Lesson: Insights from Beit HaShoavah
• The Middle Pathway : The Ten Sayings and the Healing of a Family
• Milestone 20: Moses Offering Himself as a Substitute for the Sins of the People on the Third Day After the Golden Calf
• A Series of Lectures on Truth.

One of our oldest traditions teaches that whatever happens to the fathers will happen to the sons—ma’aseh avot siman lebanim. The patterns set in the Torah are not mere history; they are blueprints that reappear in later generations until the final redemption. I was thinking recently about the ten spies who entered the Land of Israel and returned with a bad report. Is there a thematic or intertextual connection between those ten men and the ten matei who later went into exile? The answer, I believe, is yes. Furthermore, it opens a prophetic window onto our own time.

The Ten Spies and the Two Faithful Voices

In Numbers 13–14, twelve men, one from each matei, scout the Land. Ten return with a report of fear: the people are too strong, the cities too fortified, the giants too great. Only two stand against the majority. Kalev (Caleb) of the matei of Yehudah and Yehoshua (Joshua) of the matei of Ephraim insist that the Land is good and that Hashem will give it into their hands. Their minority report costs them nothing less than the future of the generation. The people side with the ten, and that generation dies in the wilderness.

What stands out is not only the courage of the two but their tribal identity. Kalev represents Yehudah. Yehoshua represents Ephraim, the leading matei of the northern kingdom that would later be lost. The Torah itself is already pointing forward. In the end of days, these two matei—Judah and Ephraim—will again be the ones who stand with Hashem and speak what He wants into existence. The ten who brought the bad report foreshadow the ten matei who were later carried into exile by Assyria and disappeared among the nations. The two who brought the good report foreshadow the reunion that the prophets promise.

The Question That Must Be Answered: Who Is Ephraim Today?

Ephraim was not with Yehudah, Levi, and Benjamin after the Assyrian exile. He was lost among the ten matei. Hosea, whom our sages call one of the greatest of the prophets, speaks directly to this lost house. In that day, he says, those who were called “not My people” shall be called “My people,” and where it was said of them “You are not My people,” it shall be said, “You are the sons of the living God.” The northern kingdom would be joined again with Yehudah, and they would choose a king.

All the other major prophetic markers have already come to pass. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, and the rest have described the return, the rebirth of the Land, and the ingathering from the nations. They also describe the pressure surrounding Jerusalem that we are living through right now. If we are in those days, then the question that must be answered is: Who is Ephraim today? Whoever he is, he must be connected to the Torah, know the prophecies, and understand his place in the world.

Ezekiel 37: The Two Sticks Become One

The clearest picture is given in Ezekiel 37:15–28. The full text reads:

The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, take a stick of wood and write on it, ‘Belonging to Judah and the Israelites associated with him.’ Then take another stick of wood, and write on it, ‘Belonging to Joseph (that is, to Ephraim) and all the Israelites associated with him.’

Join them together into one stick so that they will become one in your hand. When your people ask you, ‘Won’t you tell us what you mean by this?’ say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am going to take the stick of Joseph—which is in Ephraim’s hand—and of the Israelite tribes associated with him, and join it to the stick of Judah. I will make them into one stick… I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone.

I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land. I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. There will be one king over all of them and they will never again be two nations or be divided into two kingdoms. They will no longer defile themselves with their idols… They will be my people, and I will be their God. My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd.

They will follow my laws and be careful to keep my decrees. They will live in the land I gave to my servant Jacob… forever… I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers, and I will put my sanctuary among them forever. My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people. Then the nations will know that I the Lord make Israel holy, when my sanctuary is among them forever.’”

The structure is unmistakable. First comes the symbolic action of the two sticks. Then the explanation: God Himself will unite the divided house. To the ingathering from the nations. Then the cleansing from idolatry. Then one king—My servant David—over one nation in the Land forever, with the sanctuary in their midst. This is not replacement. This is restoration.

Obadiah’s Fire and Flame Against Edom

Obadiah 1:18 places this reunion in the context of a final confrontation: “The house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau stubble; they shall burn them and consume them, and there shall be no survivor for the house of Esau.” Jacob (Judah) is the fire. Joseph (Ephraim) is the flame. Together they consume Esau.

Our sages have long identified Esau with Rome and, by extension, with the Christian West that rode on Rome’s back. The Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox together still form the two largest Christian bodies on earth. Christianity did not merely inherit Rome’s power; it used Rome as the vehicle to conquer the world with a theology that removes the Jewish people from the center of God’s plan. Islam does the same with a different final revelation. Both systems claim the inheritance while declaring that the original covenant with Israel and the Land has been superseded.

In our day, the power center of that Edomite system has been the City of London and the network of European powers that drew the modern borders of the Middle East, created the Muslim Brotherhood, and controlled oil routes through the Strait of Hormuz. They also sold the same land to multiple claimants. Britain, France, Germany, and their allies are the kingdoms that have shaped the last two centuries. Spain’s leaders still speak against the Jewish state. The European Union, the United Nations, and the International Criminal Court have issued warrant after warrant and resolution after resolution against Israel. Jerusalem remains the most contested piece of real estate on earth precisely because every replacement theology has its eyes fixed on it.

The United States: The Open Question

Against this background stands one nation that, more than any other, still treats the Tanakh as the literal word of God, sends archaeologists to prove its truth, and continues to stand with Israel when almost every other nation has turned away. The United States represents only about four or five percent of the world’s population. Yet its Christian and Jewish communities together hold the overwhelming majority of Nobel prizes. After October 7, large numbers of Christians began questioning the foundations of their own religion as they watched the blood libels return and the prophecies they had been told would never happen unfold before their eyes.

DNA studies have repeatedly shown unexpected Jewish genetic signatures in early American populations, especially in regions such as Pennsylvania. Many families discovered ancestors who had forgotten they were Jewish and simply became Christians of one denomination or another. Is this the beginning of the return of those once called “not My people”?

If the United States is merely another expression of Edom, then it too will be judged. If it is Ephraim—the flame that stands with the fire of Judah—then the prophecy of the two sticks is already taking visible form. The evidence is not hidden. One set of nations consistently seeks to replace the Jewish people and deny their claim to the Land and to Jerusalem. Another nation, for all its flaws, still proclaims the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and refuses to abandon the Jewish state.

Presenting the Evidence and Leaving the Decision

This essay does not force a conclusion. It presents the evidence.

On one side stands the traditional identification of Edom with Rome and its modern political and religious extensions: the City of London, the European powers, the United Nations system, and the two great replacement theologies that still claim the inheritance while writing Israel out of the final plan.

On the other side stands the prophetic portrait of Ephraim: a people once lost among the nations, connected to the Torah and the prophecies, able to stand with Judah, and destined to become one stick with him under one king in the Land.

The reader must decide where the United States belongs. The same decision applies to every other nation that has joined itself against Israel and Jerusalem. The patterns set by the fathers continue to play out. The ten spies and the ten matei, the two faithful voices of Judah and Ephraim, the fire and the flame of Obadiah, and the two sticks of Ezekiel are no longer distant texts. Instead, they are the living map of our generation.

The sanctuary will stand among them forever. The nations will know that the Lord has made Israel holy. The only remaining question is which stick each of us chooses to hold.

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Footnotes

1. Numbers 13–14.
2. Hosea 1:9–10; 2:23.
3. Ezekiel 37:15–28.
4. Obadiah 1:18.
5. Bereishit Rabbah 42:2 and parallel midrashim on the four kingdoms.
6. Traditional rabbinic identification of Edom with Rome (see, for example, the discussions in the Talmud and later midrashim, and the five-part series by Rabbi Ephraim Palvanov, “Understanding Edom”).
7. Historical record of Sykes-Picot, the creation of modern Middle Eastern borders, and the role of the City of London in oil and finance.
8. Trudy Gold, J-TV interview on the origins of the blood libel and Christianity’s use of Rome (quoted in full on beithashoavah.org).
9. DNA studies of early American populations showing elevated Jewish genetic markers in certain regions.
10. Post-October 7 public shifts among Christian audiences regarding the historicity of their own scriptures and the centrality of Israel.

The Torah is a Book Like No Other. Its letters form living codes that still speak today. In a recent teaching, Professor Matityahu Glazerson revealed powerful equidistant letter sequences (ELS) connecting Israel, Ishmael, the covenant with Isaac, Jerusalem, and the Son of Jesse. These codes point to the End of Darkness and the return of the Jewish people to HaShem.

This post brings together every major insight from our study: the Glazerson codes, the scientific confirmation of the biblical family tree through DNA research by Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson, the corrected count of the seventy nations in Genesis 10, and the deep significance of the number seventy itself.

Professor Glazerson and the Bible Codes in Genesis 17

Professor Matityahu Glazerson has spent decades asking the Torah the same question the High Priest once asked with the Urim and Thummim: Where are the clear answers today? The stones on the breastplate no longer light up. The Torah itself answered through Bible codes — equidistant letter sequences hidden in the continuous stream of Hebrew letters.

In the video “Israel and Ishmael in the End of Days,” the codes appear inside Genesis 17–18, the very chapter of the everlasting covenant. Key phrases that surface include:

• “Son of Jesse Returning to G-d”
• “I will maintain My covenant with Isaac”
• The Hebrew year 5726 / 1966 (the eve of the Six-Day War and the return of Jerusalem)
• Ishmael and Israel appearing together
• “Joy & Happiness”
• Jerusalem

The surface text already declares the truth: “But My covenant I will maintain with Isaac” (Genesis 17:19, 21). Ishmael receives a great blessing and twelve princes, yet the everlasting covenant and the Land promise remain exclusively with Isaac and his seed — Israel.

Hebrew, ELS, and Gematria Lessons

Hebrew lesson

• ישמעאל (Yishma-el) = “God will hear”
• ישראל (Yisra-el) = “He who struggles/prevails with God”
• ברית (Brit) = covenant
• בן ישי (Ben Yishai) = Son of Jesse (the Davidic line leading to Mashiach)

ELS lesson: An equidistant letter sequence (ELS) is formed by starting at a letter and then skipping a fixed number of letters. In Glazerson’s tables, the related words cluster tightly — far tighter than random text allows. The year 5726 appears near the covenant language and near “Son of Jesse.”

Gematria lesson: Gematria is the numerical value of Hebrew letters. Related codes have shown numerical connections between the blessing of Ishmael and the historical length of control over Jerusalem (roughly 640–1967 CE). The year 5726 itself marks the beginning of the restoration of Jerusalem to the children of Isaac.

The Scientific Blueprint: DNA Codes Prove the Tanach

Professor Glazerson shows that the letters of the Torah still speak. Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson (Harvard PhD in cell and developmental biology) shows that the same Creator left a second living code inside every male: the Y chromosome.

The Y chromosome is passed almost unchanged from father to son. It accumulates mutations at a measurable rate. When thousands of modern Y chromosomes are sequenced and arranged into a family tree, the pattern is startling:

• The entire human Y-chromosome tree collapses to one single male ancestor only a few thousand years ago.
• That tree then splits into three major branches — exactly matching Noah’s three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Genesis 9–10).
• The branching pattern and geographic spread line up with the Table of Nations in Genesis 10.

Any man who takes a full Y-chromosome test can, in principle, be placed on this tree and traced back to one of Noah’s sons. Jewish priestly (Cohen) lineages, including the Cohen Modal Haplotype, cluster tightly within the Shem branch.

This is independent scientific confirmation that the biblical genealogies are historical. The same Book that encodes “Son of Jesse returning to G-d” also contains the accurate generational map of the human family.

Seventy Nations in Genesis 10

The traditional Jewish counting of the 70 nations is:

• Japheth: 14
• Ham: 30
• Shem: 26
• Total: 70

Japheth (14) Sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, Tiras (7) Sons of Gomer: Ashkenaz, Riphath, Togarmah (3) Sons of Javan: Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, Dodanim/Rodanim (4)

Ham (30) Sons of Ham: Cush, Mizraim, Put, Canaan (4) Sons of Cush + Raamah: 7 Sons of Mizraim: 7 Sons of Canaan: 11

Shem (26) Sons of Shem: Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud, Aram (5) Sons of Aram: 4 Sons of Joktan: 13

This produces the classic 70 nations that the Sages associate with the 70 languages and the 70 bulls offered on Sukkot for the nations of the world.

Modern populations are heavily mixed, yet the three major branches of the human family still roughly correspond to these three sons.

The Deep Significance of the Number Seventy

The number seventy (shiv‘im) is one of the most symbolically rich numbers in the Tanach.

1. The Seventy Nations (Genesis 10) represent the totality of humanity after the Flood.
2. Deuteronomy 32:8 links the boundaries of the nations to the number of the sons of Israel (the seventy members of Jacob’s family who went down to Egypt).
3. The Seventy Elders of Israel (Exodus 24; Numbers 11) became the prototype for the Great Sanhedrin.
4. The Seventy Bulls of Sukkot (Numbers 29) were offered on behalf of the seventy nations of the world. Israel, as the priestly nation, intercedes for all humanity.
5. Other appearances include the seventy years of the Babylonian Exile and Daniel’s seventy weeks.

Seventy stands for the complete family of humanity. Israel is the priestly people within that family, charged with bringing knowledge of HaShem to the rest of the world.

The Covenant Is Only with Israel

Abraham had children from Sarah (Isaac), Hagar (Ishmael), and later Keturah. The Torah is explicit: the everlasting covenant, the Land, and the seed through whom the nations are blessed run only through Isaac → Jacob → Israel.

Christianity later spiritualized this into “faith of Abraham.” Islam claimed the primary line runs through Ishmael. Both claims stand outside the plain text of the Torah. The book Adam, the Blueprint of Creation and the Tree of Life examines the historical and textual evidence that both Christianity and Islam are later constructs — powerful, yet derivative. The original blueprint remains the Torah given at Sinai, with its living codes still speaking.

Conclusion: The End of Darkness

When the codes in Genesis 17 highlight both Ishmael and Israel together with the year Jerusalem returned and the call of the Son of Jesse, they are not speaking in a vacuum. They are speaking inside a living Book whose historical claims are independently verified by the DNA of the nations.

We are watching partial fulfillments (Jewish return to the Land, rising awareness of hidden Jewish roots) alongside intense pressure from the children of Ishmael. The codes insist the final resolution is spiritual: Israel must return fully to HaShem. When that happens, the End of Darkness arrives, the Son of Jesse is revealed, and joy and happiness fill the land.

Study the codes. Read Genesis 17 slowly in Hebrew. Look at the DNA evidence. The Book is still speaking.

Hazan Gavriel ben David Beit HaShoavah

• The Star of Jacob That Broke the Silence
• Milestone 12: The Three Days of Darkness in Egypt – Resurrection Foreshadowing or Divine Judgment?
• Behold, Your King is Coming to You
• Bible Codes Revealed at Yiboneh with Rabbi Moshe Zeldman
• Chapter Five: The Wild Donkey Falls – Ishmael, Not Your Messiah

Was the Great Assembly Invented? Testing the Claim Against the Evidence

A recent video argues that Jewish history is fabricated, built on a single claim: there is no independent historical record of the Anshei Knesset HaGedolah — the “Great Assembly” of 120 sages that Jewish tradition credits with shaping Judaism after the Babylonian exile. Moreover, no outside source names them, the argument goes. Therefore, the whole chain of oral tradition that produced rabbinic Judaism must be a later invention.

It’s a claim worth taking seriously rather than dismissing. Yet it rests on an assumption that doesn’t hold up once you test it. That assumption is that silence from outside sources equals fabrication. Furthermore, it assumes that the oral transmission process behind the claim has no other track record we can check. Both of those assumptions can actually be tested. Here’s what the evidence shows when we do.

The Burden of Proof This Argument Assumes

Start with the standard being applied. The claim is that because no Persian, Greek, or other contemporary record names a 120-member Jewish legislative body, it didn’t exist.

That standard would disqualify a lot of history nobody seriously doubts. For example, ancient internal institutions are almost always known only through the culture that produced them. Roman colleges of pontiffs are known mainly from Roman sources. Likewise, Persian court bureaucratic structures are known mainly from Persian and Greek administrative sources, not from outside corroboration. Priestly councils across the ancient Near East are documented internally. They are not cross-referenced by neighboring empires who had no particular reason to catalog another people’s religious institutions.

An internal legislative or scholarly body leaving no trace in outside records is the normal condition for this kind of history, not a red flag unique to this claim. That doesn’t prove the Great Assembly existed exactly as described. On the other hand, it does mean “no outside record” can’t carry the full weight of “therefore fabricated” on its own. The argument needs something more.

A Testable Claim: The Cohen Modal Haplotype

So test the actual mechanism in question — oral transmission — somewhere it can be checked against independent, physical evidence.

Jewish communities that identify as Kohanim (descendants of Aaron the High Priest) have transmitted that identity for centuries the same way: father to son, by word alone, with no written genealogical registry to verify against. Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Yemenite, and other Jewish communities carried this claim independently. Often, they did so after a thousand years or more of total geographic separation. Moreover, there was no contact with one another.

In 1997, geneticist Karl Skorecki and colleagues tested this. Men who identified as Kohanim across these separated communities shared a Y-chromosome signature — now known as the Cohen Modal Haplotype — at a rate far beyond chance, consistent with a common paternal ancestor within a plausible biblical-era timeframe. Later work (Hammer et al., 2009) refined the picture further, and the dating carries real error bars, as any coalescence estimate does. However, the core finding stands: an oral chain of transmission, with no external checks available to the people carrying it, tracked real biological descent with striking fidelity across dozens of generations.

This doesn’t prove the Great Assembly’s exact composition. What it demonstrates is something more foundational. This specific kind of Jewish oral transmission, tested against hard data in the one place it can be tested, holds up.

A Second Independent Check: The Calendar

The tradition also makes a specific, checkable technical claim. The Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 25a) records a calculation, passed down as part of this same transmission chain, for the length of the lunar month: 29.53059 days. Modern astronomical measurement of the synodic month puts the figure at 29.530588 days.

That’s not a claim that can be fudged after the fact to fit modern science — it’s a specific number, transmitted through the same oral and textual chain being questioned, that can be checked directly against independent measurement. It matches to five decimal places.

What This Actually Proves — and What It Doesn’t

None of this is a smoking-gun discovery of the Great Assembly itself. No genetic test or calendar calculation can dig up a 2,400-year-old meeting and photograph it. That’s worth stating plainly rather than overclaiming.

What it does establish is this: the transmission process being called fabricated has been tested in the specific places where testing is possible. It has held up both times. Consequently, a process that proves reliable everywhere it can be independently verified deserves more benefit of the doubt in the places it can’t be directly verified than an untested claim would. That’s not certainty. It’s a reasonable inference to the best explanation — which is a stronger position than “no outside record, therefore invented,” because that claim isn’t actually an argument. In fact, it’s an assumption wearing an argument’s clothes.

The Real Question

The video’s real target isn’t just one assembly of sages. It’s the reliability of Jewish oral tradition as a whole. By extension, it’s also about whether rabbinic Judaism has any legitimate claim to represent what it says it transmits.

That question deserves a real answer, not a dismissal in either direction. And the answer, when you actually test the transmission mechanism against outside data instead of just noting what outside sources don’t mention, is that it has passed the tests available to it. Thus, that’s the case worth making — not because it forecloses every hard question, but because it’s the part of the argument that can actually survive scrutiny.

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• The Abandonment: Why I Left Messianic Judaism.
• “The Hidden Blueprint: How the Names of Jacob’s Sons Reveal the Entire Torah Narrative –
• The Bias of Torah. Then and Now.
• Scripture Only, Please
• The Two Messiahs and World War III: A Jewish Perspective on Christianity, Islam, and Biblical Prophecy

Hazan Gavriel ben David

The Tree of Knowledge and Haman in the Torah? In the rich tapestry of Torah intertextuality, a single phrase unlocks profound connections across the Tanakh. When God asks Adam, “Hamin ha’etz—from the tree that I commanded you not to eat—have you eaten?” (Genesis 3:11), the Rabbis hear an echo of Haman ha’etz—“Haman from the tree.” This is no mere wordplay. It reveals Haman as a latter-day archetype of post-Eden humanity, fixated on the forbidden while surrounded by abundance.

As explored in teachings from Rabbi David Fohrman and Rabbi Akiva Tatz, this parallel illuminates the deeper drama of the Garden and its rectification through the Torah—the true Tree of Life.

Adam in the Garden: Abundance Ignored for the One Forbidden Thing

God elevated Adam above all creation, granting him dominion and open access: “From all the trees of the Garden you may surely eat” (Genesis 2:16). Paradise was his to enjoy in the presence of the King of Kings. Yet the narrative centers on the one tree they could not touch—the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

We find no record of Adam and Eve delighting in the permitted fruits. Their focus narrowed to the exception. This is the essence of the challenge: when knowledge of duality enters, desire distorts gratitude. The permitted becomes invisible; the forbidden defines everything.

Haman: The Adam-like Obsession in the Megillah

Fast-forward to the Persian palace. Haman, like Adam, is elevated above all the king’s servants—riches, sons, honor, and exclusive access to the king (Esther 5:11). Everyone bows except Mordechai. Haman’s response mirrors Adam’s fixation:

“All this avails me nothing as long as I see Mordechai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate” (Esther 5:13).

He gathers his family to boast, yet one refusal renders it meaningless. His wife Zeresh urges him to “make an etz (tree/gallows) fifty cubits high” and hang Mordechai (Esther 5:14). The same word etz—the Garden tree—reappears. Haman reaches for the “forbidden fruit” of total control, building the instrument of his own death.

The king, returning to his garden (Esther 7:7), learns of the gallows and Mordechai’s loyalty. Haman hangs on the very etz he prepared. “On the day you eat from it, you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17) finds its echo: reaching for the one forbidden thing seals mortality.

“Sin as Mitzvah”: The Deeper Drive (Rabbi Akiva Tatz)

Rabbi Tatz, drawing on Izhbitzer teachings, reframes Adam’s act not as simple rebellion but as a misdirected mitzvah. The root desire—to elevate, unify, or transcend duality—was holy. Yet without the proper vessel of Torah and timing, it fractured creation, introducing shame, exile, and death.

Haman embodies the unredeemed version: a twisted drive for “kingship” without limits, conflating personal desire with objective good. He pretends to own the Garden, making his will the law. This is the soul of the Tree of Knowledge challenge.

The Torah: Our Tree of Life and the Rectification

Moses closes the Torah with the antidote: “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil… choose life!” (Deuteronomy 30:15, 19). The mitzvot are not distant—they are the accessible Tree of Life (Proverbs 3:18), guarded by cherubim on the Ark just as the original was guarded after the fall.

Where Haman (and unredeemed Adam) grasped for false kingship, Mordechai and Esther model the correction: fidelity within limits, hidden providence, and collective teshuvah. The etz of death becomes the gallows of justice, turning Purim into redemption.

Living the Tree of Life Today

This intertextuality is more than ancient story—it is a blueprint. In a world of distractions and forbidden obsessions, the Torah calls us to value the abundant permitted, to align desire with divine will, and to choose life through action (“receipts” of observance, study, and love of neighbor).

As we teach in the spirit of the Tree of Life—integrating Torah, creation’s blueprint, archaeology, and prophecy—the path from Eden’s fracture to redemption remains open. Haman’s fall reminds us: the one thing we cannot have on our own terms is exactly what Torah transforms into eternal life when grasped with humility.

Choose life. Grasp the Tree of Life.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

• The Tree of Knowledge, Haman ha’Etz, and the Path to the Tree of Life: Lessons from Eden to Esther for Our Redemption
• The Hidden Hand of Hashem: Partnership, Not a Zero-Sum Game
• From Haman to Khamenei: The Hidden Hand of Hashem and the Jewish Witness in the End of Days
• Shabbat Shalom — Parshat Emor: The Pathways to You Are Always on Their Heart
• Milestone 7: Esther Delivered from Death on the Third Day

The Mechitza is not merely a partition of cloth or wood separating men and women in the synagogue. It is an ot—a sign—written into the blueprint of Torah and revealed only when the generation living through the prophecy finally sees it.

Rambam teaches (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melachim 12:2) that the details of the prophets remain undefined until the generation experiences them: “All these and similar matters cannot be clearly known by man until they occur, for they are undefined in the words of the prophets.” Only that generation can see and know the signs. We are that generation.

The Talmud (Sukkah 51b–52a) derives the very institution of the Mechitza from Zechariah 12:12–14:

“The land will mourn, each family by itself: the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of Nathan by itself and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Levi by itself and their wives by themselves… and all the families who remain, each family by itself and their wives by themselves.”

Rabbi Jeremy Gimple and The Mechitza

One of the Jews who came into my life when I was a Messianic Jewish Christian was Jeremy Gimple. Jeremy would come to Amarillo, Texas, and share his dream for the land of Israel. How important the land was to the Jewish people and how the land was connected to every Jew.

Right after Oct 7th, my wife and I were watching a video about what was happening in the land during the first few days, Oct 8th and 9th. How the bodies of our brothers and sisters were being recovered. One of the ladies speaking said her husband, Jeremy, was preparing the bodies of holy Jews after they were murdered and burned and were cut into pieces. Every woman was rapped she said.

In Judaism, every body has to have a special burial, Tahara. Mrs. Gimple said that her husband, Jeremy, had been busy for days preparing the bodies of the men. She said that the men and the women are separated. The men take care of the men and the women take care of the women.

So different than the Christian Bible.

Rav explains: if even in the ultimate national mourning after the war of Gog u’Magog the families must separate men and women, how much more so must we separate them in joy at the Simchat Beit HaShoeivah in the Temple. The Mechitza is therefore not a later custom; it is the architectural echo of the end-of-days mourning for Mashiach ben Yosef.

That mourning is described two verses earlier (Zechariah 12:10):

“I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication, so that they will look to Me concerning those whom they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only son…”

The Talmud (Sukkah 52a) identifies the slain figure as Mashiach ben Yosef, killed in the wars preceding the final redemption. The mourning is national, collective, and gendered—families and wives separate. October 7, 5784 (Simchat Torah) was that piercing. The hostages in the tunnels, the slaughtered families, the national keening that still has not ended—this is the misped of Zechariah 12. The Mechitza is the permanent ot that marks the space where that mourning is remembered and where the next stage of redemption is prepared.

Beit Hashoavah’s First Mechitza

Our little synagogue in Amarillo, Esnoga Beit HaShoavah, received its Mechitza eight years ago. I returned with my good friends Eliezer and Have Peña—Sephardic Jews whose families had walked together for hundreds of years in the South. We have studied Torah side by side for twenty-three years. We are the only two Jews in Amarillo who fully understand that the Christian faith is a human creation.

Only Hashem’s faithfulness to His Jewish people keeps us still standing inside a building that once carried Messianic labels. We installed the Mechitza because the blueprint required it. Torah is a blueprint exactly as DNA is a blueprint. Today I see from a place possible only because I returned home to my family, the Jewish people.

“Ask your father, and he will tell you; ask your elders, and they will teach you” (Devarim 32:7). The Mechitza is the sign Zechariah gave so that every honest Christian, looking at the prophets for the first time without the filter of replacement theology, must confront the truth: their book never knew what the end of days would actually look like.

The Failed Prophecies of the Church and the Miracle That Refutes Them

For nearly two thousand years, the Church taught that the Jews were eternally cursed for “killing God.” Church Fathers, councils, and popular preaching produced lists of punishments: perpetual exile, degradation, no return to the Land, no restoration of sovereignty, no Temple, and eventual conversion or annihilation. The Jews would never again be a nation. Jerusalem would remain forever under Gentile dominion. The “New Israel” had inherited the covenants.

Every one of those prophecies has failed.

Rabbi Tovia Singer has documented this spiritual battle for decades. The Church’s own history is a record of hatred written into doctrine: the Jews as “Christ-killers,” as children of the devil (John 8:44), as eternal wanderers under divine curse. Replacement theology was not a fringe opinion; it was the air the Church breathed.

When the State of Israel was reborn in 1948, when Jerusalem was reunited in 1967, when Jews returned from the four corners of the earth, the theological house of cards collapsed. The Church has nowhere left to turn. Its end-times charts—built on the assumption that the Jews would never return and that a rebuilt Temple would exist only so that a false messiah could deceive them into the Tribulation—have been emptied of predictive power.

Rabbi Pinchas Winston, whose teachings on the unfolding geulah are essential viewing (“These Prophecies Are Happening NOW”), shows the other side of the coin: the miracle of Jewish survival and return is itself the greatest living prophecy. Against every natural law, against every empire that tried to erase us, the Jewish people stand again in their land, speaking their language, fighting biblical wars.

We are in Messianic times. The birth pangs are real. The war is biblical precisely because Christianity still claims to be the sole inheritor of the New Covenant and still needs the Jews to build the Third Temple so that its own eschatological drama can play out—Jews deceived by the Antichrist, Jews going through the Tribulation, Jews finally “seeing” Jesus in Zechariah 12. That script is not Torah. It is a later invention that collides with the plain reading of the prophets and with the living reality of October 7.

Blood Libel: The Oldest Christian Accusation Still Alive

The hatred did not begin with the modern progressive campus or the Islamist. It was incubated inside the Church. Historian Trudy Gold lays it out with devastating clarity (J-TV interview):

“The first one recorded against the Jews was in 1144 in Norwich… the notion of your enemy killing babies for their blood… takes us back into pagan times where there was this fertility notion… What is the most precious thing? The blood of a baby… It’s used for Passover bread. The main blood libels always occur at Passover…

Once it enters history against the Jews, there are blood libels in every society in the Christian world… it then is borrowed by Islam, and it’s still present today… It’s a very, very dangerous thing, and it’s very much tied up with why on earth do people hate Jews… They don’t hate Jews in the Indian world.

They don’t hate Jews in the Chinese world. It is in the world of monotheism, particularly in the world of Christianity… Christianity took on board the Hebrew Bible… But the problem was the Jews did not accept Yeshua of Nazareth, Jesus, as Messiah. Because a Messiah, the notion of a person becoming a God is so alien to Judaism…

I’d like to bring the attention of your viewers to the first commandment: ‘I am the Lord thy God that brought thee out of the land of Egypt. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’ The notion of a man becoming God is completely alien to Judaism… Who is a Messiah in the Jewish world? A leader who would lead the people to freedom.

He will be ben Adam… The tragedy was that Christianity becomes the religion of Rome… and with it written into the church fathers, actually in the gospels themselves, in St. John’s gospel, ‘you are of your father the devil.’ The Jews are singled out as the enemies of Christendom… Jews are therefore pushed into… completely marginalized professions… they are the arch heretics.”

Trudy Gold’s point is decisive: there can never be a way for Jews to “expect Jesus,” because God Himself spoke to us at Sinai and gave us His Torah. The First Commandment is not negotiable. A man-God is idolatry. The blood libel—pagan fertility magic baptized by the Church, first recorded in Norwich 1144, forever tied to Passover—became the perpetual justification for expulsions, massacres, and the theological claim that Jewish suffering was deserved. That same libel, mutated, walks the streets and the social-media feeds after October 7.

1 Thessalonians 2

¹⁴ For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews ¹⁵ who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to everyone ¹⁶ in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.^[b]

Tisha B’Av: You Never Fast While Mourning

Tisha B’Av (the Ninth of Av) is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar — a 25-hour fast of mourning, deprivation, and reflection. Tradition teaches that this date was fixed for tragedy from the very beginning of our national story. The Mishnah (Ta’anit 4:6) lists five foundational calamities that occurred on this day. Over the centuries, more disasters clustered around it, turning the Ninth of Av into a day that seems set aside by Heaven for national suffering.

The Ancient Foundations

The Sin of the Spies (traditional dating ~1313–1312 BCE): Moses sent twelve spies into the Land of Canaan. Ten returned with a fearful, negative report. The people wept that night in despair and rejected the Land. God declared that this generation would die in the wilderness and that the date of their baseless weeping would become a night of weeping for future generations. The Midrash states that God fixed Tisha B’Av as a day of tragedy from that moment.

Destruction of the First Temple (586/587 BCE historical; traditional Jewish chronology ~423 BCE): Nebuchadnezzar’s forces breached Jerusalem. The Temple built by Solomon was set ablaze and burned. The Babylonian exile began. Biblical sources give dates of the 7th or 10th of Av for the burning; the Sages established the 9th as the day of national mourning.

Destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE): Roman legions under Titus destroyed Herod’s Temple after a long siege. The fire again began on the 9th of Av. This destruction ended the sacrificial service and launched the long exile that has lasted nearly two thousand years. The Western Wall is the surviving remnant of the Temple Mount platform.

Fall of Betar (135 CE): During the Bar Kokhba revolt, the last major stronghold of Jewish resistance, Betar, fell to the Romans on Tisha B’Av. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were slaughtered. The Talmud records the horror of the massacre.

The Temple Mount Plowed Over (135 CE): Roman commander Quintus Tineius Rufus ordered the Temple Mount and surrounding areas plowed under, fulfilling the prophecy that Zion would be “plowed like a field.”

Medieval and Later Tragedies

First Crusade massacres (1096): As the Crusaders marched, they slaughtered Jewish communities in the Rhineland and France. Many of the massacres and forced conversions occurred in the weeks surrounding Tisha B’Av.

Expulsion from England (1290): King Edward I issued the Edict of Expulsion on or very near Tisha B’Av. England’s Jews were forced to leave after centuries of residence, pogroms, and confiscation of property.

Expulsion from Spain (1492): The Alhambra Decree gave Jews until the end of July to leave Spain. The final deadline fell on or immediately around Tisha B’Av. Rabbi Isaac Abravanel and others recorded that the last Jews departed on the Ninth of Av. This expulsion ended the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry and scattered Sephardic communities across the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire.

Modern Era

Outbreak of World War I (1914): On Tisha B’Av 5674 (August 1–2, 1914), Germany declared war on Russia. The war that followed reshaped Europe, destroyed Jewish communities in the East, and created the conditions that led to World War II and the Holocaust.

Holocaust connections (1941–1942): On or near Tisha B’Av 1941, Himmler received approval for the “Final Solution.” On Tisha B’Av 1942 (July 23), the mass deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka began. Kinnot (lamentations) for the six million are now recited on this day.

Gush Katif Disengagement (2005) Tisha B’Av 5765 fell on August 13–14, 2005. The Israeli government had postponed the actual evacuation of the Gaza settlements so it would not fall precisely on the fast day. Nevertheless, the final orders and the entry of forces into Gush Katif began immediately afterward (August 15). For many Religious Zionists, the forced removal of thousands of Jews from their homes in the Land of Israel — homes built with faith and sacrifice — felt like another national trauma on the same calendar day of destruction. You lived that moment directly, raising money for the families being uprooted. That experience sits inside the long chain of Tisha B’Av tragedies.

The Pattern and the Hope

The Sages teach that the First and Second Temples were destroyed primarily because of sinat chinam — baseless hatred among Jews. The spies’ report was an earlier expression of lack of faith and unity. Every subsequent disaster on this date is seen through that lens: a day when the consequences of internal division and external hatred converge.

Yet Tisha B’Av is not only about mourning. The afternoon of the fast turns toward consolation. The Book of Lamentations ends with the plea “Restore us to You, O Lord, that we may be restored; renew our days as of old.” The prophets promise that the fast days will one day become days of joy. The same calendar that records destruction also points toward the rebuilding of the Temple and the final redemption.

This year Tisha B’Av begins at sundown tonight, Wednesday, July 22, 2026 (8 Av 5786), and the fast continues through Thursday, July 23. As we sit on the floor, read Eicha, and recite the kinnot, we remember every link in the chain — from the spies in the wilderness to the families of Gush Katif and everything in between. We also remember that the same God who fixed this day for weeping has promised that it will not remain a day of weeping forever.

May this year’s fast bring us closer to genuine unity, deeper faith, and the day when Tisha B’Av itself is transformed into a festival of joy.

The Call Across the Mechitza

We, the Jewish people, are calling to the Christian world: open your eyes. Look at what is happening before your very eyes—Jew-hatred, blood libel reborn, the oldest Christian accusation recycled by progressives and Islamists alike. Look at Zechariah 12 without the later overlay.

See the Mechitza standing in every authentic synagogue as the physical reminder of the mourning that has already begun and of the separation that holiness requires. That every Christian prophecy of permanent Jewish exile has been shattered by Jewish return.

See that the Torah is the living blueprint, and DNA is its biological twin. See that Hashem’s faithfulness to the Jewish people is the only reason any of us are still here.

We are not waiting for a man-God to return. We are walking through the birth pangs of Mashiach ben Yosef so that Mashiach ben David can be revealed. The Mechitza is the ot. October 7 was the piercing. The generation that sees it is the generation that finally understands the prophets.

Ask your elders. They will teach you.

Hazan Gavriel ben David Esnoga Beit HaShoavah beithashoavah.org

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Beloved friends, talmidim, and fellow travelers on the derech —

Rabbi Fohrman’s core thesis is that the Torah presents two seemingly contradictory accounts of why Moses could not enter the Land—not as a textual flaw, but as complementary perspectives that reveal deeper truths about leadership, faith, intimacy with God, distance/separation, and the transition from the miraculous desert life to settled life in Israel.

This essay weaves in Miriam, Korach’s rebellion, the intermediate judges (from Jethro), the spies, and themes of kal vachomer, Eichah (lament/distance), and faith.

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I want to speak from the heart about the most painful verse in the Torah for anyone who loves Moshe Rabbeinu. At the end of his life, standing on Har Nevo, looking out over the Land he had carried in his heart for forty years, Moshe hears the words that break the heart of every sensitive reader: “For your sake, Hashem was angry with me.”

Not “because of what I did.” Not even “because I hit the rock.” “Because of you.”

How do we understand this? How does the man who gave everything — who stood in the breach at the Golden Calf, who taught Torah to a stiff-necked people for forty years, who begged God to erase him rather than destroy them — end up excluded from the very Land he was bringing them to?

The answer is not simple. It is not one story. It is two stories that the Torah deliberately places in tension. Because of this, we will struggle with them until they reveal a single, searing truth.

The Numbers Perspective: The Rock and the Missed Lesson

In Bamidbar 20, after Miriam dies, the well stops. The people who had been carried for thirty-eight years by her merit suddenly face thirst again. God tells Moshe: Take the staff (Aharon’s staff, the sign against rebellion from the days of Korach), gather the people, and speak to the rock.

Moshe gathers them. He looks at them — still speaking the language of Korach, still calling themselves “rebels” — and cries out in anguish: “Listen, you rebels — can we really get water from this rock?”

There is a double entendre here that only someone who has lost a sister can fully feel. The word הַמֹּרִים can be revocalized as addressing Miriam herself: “Listen, Miriam — how can we possibly draw water without you?”

Broader Context: Three Water Crises & Miriam’s Central Role

The story is the third of three desert water crises:

• Crisis 1 (Exodus 15, right after the Red Sea): Bitter waters at Marah. Miriam sings her song immediately before.
• Crisis 2 (Exodus 17): God commands Moses to hit a rock with his staff → becomes Miriam’s well.
• Crisis 3 (Numbers 20): Miriam dies → the well stops. God commands us to speak to “the rock.”

Miriam’s name permutations (Hebrew anagram play, no vowels in Torah scroll):

• מרים → מרים (marim = bitter) — Marah waters.
• מרים → מרים (merim = lift up) — Moses lifts his hand to strike.
• מרים → מרים (morim = rebels) — “Listen, you rebels.”

Every possible reading appears exactly in these stories, and Miriam herself appears (singing or dying) right before each crisis. This is not a coincidence; it signals her deep, behind-the-scenes role.

Fohrman begins exploring Miriam’s early life (the Nile story and the Sea of Reeds song) for further insight. He notes the odd phrasing “Miriam the prophetess, sister of Aaron” and her separate women’s song after the main Song of the Sea — questions the Midrash addresses.

The Story Re-Read with Full Context

After Miriam dies at Kadesh (the “topic sentence” of the chapter), the Well of Miriam stops. For the first time in 40 years, there is no water. The people immediately fall into rebellion, language lifted straight from Korach:

• They congregate/gather against Moses and Aaron (וַיִּקָּהֲלוּ… עַל מֹשֶׁה וְעַל אַהֲרֹן) — the exact rare phrasing from Korach’s rebellion.
• They cry: “If only we had died with our brethren…” and complain about being brought into this terrible desert with no water or fruit.

In the Korach story, this exact sequence led God to tell Moses and Aaron to separate themselves so He could destroy the congregation. Here, the same setup occurs — the people gather against the leaders, Moses and Aaron retreat to the Tent of Meeting and fall on their faces, the glory of God appears — but God does something completely different.

God’s Counter-Plan

Instead of destruction, God gives a counter-offensive against the rebellion:

• Take the staff — specifically Aaron’s staff that had been placed before the Ark as a sign (אוֹת לִבְנֵי מֶרִי) for future rebels. It is “Lecture #59” — the visual reminder of Korach, so they never have to relive that trauma.
• You and Aaron gather the congregation (הַקְהֵל אֶת הָעֵדָה) — reverse the rebellion. Don’t let them gather against you; take the initiative and gather them for the miracle.
• Speak to the rock before their eyes — the same rock that had been struck 40 years earlier and had become Miriam’s Well. It will give its water.

This is the new paradigm for a post-Miriam world.

Moses’ Despair and the Double Entendre

Moses takes the staff as commanded and gathers the people, but then he speaks these haunting words:

שִׁמְעוּ נָא הַמֹּרִים הַמִּן הַסֶּלַע הַזֶּה נוֹצִיא לָכֶם מָיִם “Listen, you rebels — can we really draw water from this rock for you?”

Fohrman shows this is not skepticism about miracles (Moses has performed plenty). It is despair born of deep understanding:

• Miracles require either extraordinary faith (placing oneself vulnerably in God’s hands) or Miriam’s sustaining merit/well.
• The people are in full Korach-style rebellion — the opposite of faith — and Miriam is dead. The well has stopped.
• Moses sees no path forward.

There is a chilling double entendre in הַמֹּרִים (“rebels,” spelled unusually without the vav). Revocalized, it becomes מִרְיָם — Miriam. Moses is almost crying out to his dead sister:

“Listen, Miriam — how can we possibly get water from this rock without you?”

He then does the only thing he knows from the old paradigm: he lifts his hand and strikes the rock with his staff (the same staff from 40 years ago), trying desperately to restart Miriam’s Well the old way. Water comes — but God declares he failed to sanctify His name through faith.

The Deeper Meaning of Rashi’s Kal Vachomer

This is the key payoff. In a world where Miriam carried the people with her faith (the daily miraculous well), the rock had one final lesson to teach before they entered the Land:

If a rock — which does not speak, does not hear, needs nothing from God, receives neither reward nor punishment — still obeys when God speaks to it, then kal vachomer we, who do receive reward and punishment, should listen and obey.

The rock represents life without Miriam. The people must now learn to live with direct, daily faith and obedience rather than being carried by a tzaddik’s merit. Hitting the rock was clinging to the old way; speaking would have modeled the new way and taught the lesson publicly.

Fohrman supports this with a beautiful Midrash (Seder Olam): The three siblings provided three daily miraculous gifts for basic survival in the desert —

• Well (Miriam) — water to drink
• Cloud (Aaron) — guidance on where to camp
• Manna (Moses) — food to eat

Life in the desert was “miraculous on a mundane level.” These were not one-time spectacular events like the Red Sea; they were everyday sustenance. With Miriam gone, that sustaining system begins to end. The rock’s lesson is how to continue in a relationship with God when the “easy” daily miracles that a tzaddik carries are no longer there.

The Eichah Midrashim

Fohrman highlights two ancient Midrashim that treat Eichah as more than a coincidence:

1. Three prophets used the language of Eichah (Eichah Rabbah):
   • Moses (Deut. 1:12): “How can I bear your burden alone?” (about introducing judges).Isaiah: “How has she become a harlot?” (Israel’s spiritual betrayal).Jeremiah (Lamentations 1:1): “How does she sit in solitude?” (Jerusalem’s destruction).
   The Midrash compares this to three women seeing the same noble matron at different stages: in tranquility (Moses), in moral/spiritual “travail” (Isaiah), and in utter degradation/exile (Jeremiah). Jewish tradition even reads the relevant Deuteronomy verses with the mournful Eichah cantillation on the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av.
2. Connection to Adam (play on Ayekah / אַיֶּכָּה — “Where are you?”): Same four letters as Eichah. God asks Adam, “Where are you?” after the sin, and he laments his expulsion from the Garden. The Midrash parallels this with God bringing Israel into the Land (their “paradise”), commanding them, their failure, and His lament with Eichah when He casts them out. Both are laments over separation and distance from an intimate relationship with God.

These Midrashim frame Eichah as a word of lament over distance — not just sadness, but the pain of relational rupture. This sets up the entire speech in Deuteronomy.

The Theme of Deuteronomy 1

The speech’s introduction is deliberately odd: it lists many places but highlights one with a time marker — they are only 11 days’ journey from Chorev (Sinai), yet this is the 40th year.

The central question the speech poses: Why did it take 40 years to travel what should have been an 11-day journey?

The answer, from everything we know in the Torah, is the sin of the spies. The speech is Moses’ retrospective on how that failure (and its roots) shaped everything.

Multiple Textual Connections: Judges + Spies

Fohrman shows that Deuteronomy 1 does not treat the spies in isolation. It deliberately weaves in the story of the intermediate judges (from Jethro in Exodus 18) with striking parallels. He lists at least six clear connections (and hints there are more):

1. Whose idea was it?
   • Judges: Originally Jethro’s idea (Exodus). In Deuteronomy, Moses presents it as his own.
   • Spies: Originally God’s command (Numbers). In Deuteronomy, the people propose it.
2. “It was good in my eyes” / “a good thing” — identical language of approval for both proposals.
3. Tribal representatives — judges chosen from heads of tribes; spies are one from each tribe.
4. “Bring the difficult things to me” — Moses tells judges to bring hard cases to him. The spies’ story opens with the people coming to Moses with their difficult request (“Let us send spies”).
5. Big people / small people — Judges are instructed to treat the great and small equally. Spies’ story features giants (big) vs. people who feel like grasshoppers (small).
6. “Do not be afraid — God is with you” — Moses reassures judges that God stands behind justice. He gives the exact same reassurance to the people about conquering the Land (“God goes before you and will fight for you”).

These are not random overlaps. Fohrman argues this is a deliberate Torah technique: two stories linked by multiple textual “waves” of connection. Each story illuminates the other. Understanding the judges’ episode helps explain the spies (and vice versa), and both together explain why Moses could not enter the Land.

He gives a model from elsewhere in the Torah (Joseph & brothers paralleled with Deuteronomy 21’s laws of the “loved” vs. “hated” wife, recognition/yakir, “found to him,” and “first of his loins”) to show how Deuteronomy sometimes functions as commentary on earlier stories.

How This Fits the Larger Series

• Mei Merivah / hitting the rock. Moses fails to model the transition from a world sustained by Miriam’s merit/faith to one of direct obedience and faith. He is barred as a leader.
• The spies (and their roots in the judges episode) introduce distance when closeness to God feels too burdensome. Moses sees himself implicated (“God was angry with me because of you”). Eichah is the lament over that distance.

Faith as intimate trust vs. the introduction of intermediaries/distance, and the consequences for entering the Land.

The Eichah Midrashim, the lament-over-distance theme, and the “wave encoding” of parallel stories are excellent for shiurim, especially around Tisha B’Av, Parshat Devarim, or themes of leadership and faith transitions.

Moshe does the only thing he knows from the old paradigm. He lifts his hand and strikes the rock with his staff — the same staff that had worked forty years earlier when Miriam was still alive. Water comes. But God says: You did not believe in Me to sanctify My name.

Rashi, quoting the Midrash, tells us what was lost. Had Moshe spoken to the rock, the people would have witnessed a living kal vachomer. If a rock — which neither speaks nor hears, which needs nothing from God and receives neither reward nor punishment — still obeys when God speaks, then how much more should we listen and obey?

That lesson was never taught. Moshe tried to restart the old miracle rather than model the new relationship the people would need in the Land. In other words, this relationship was one of direct obedience without the daily burden of carrying a tzaddik. In that moment, he was barred from leading them in.

The Devarim Perspective: “Because of You”

But Moshe himself, forty years later, does not speak about the rock. He speaks about the spies. And he says something astonishing: “For your sake, Hashem was angry with me.”

When we look carefully at Devarim 1, we see that the story of the spies is not told in isolation. It is deliberately woven together with another story — the story of the intermediate judges that Moshe accepted from his father-in-law Yitro.

Here are just some of the textual threads the Torah places between them:

• In both cases, someone proposes a “solution” to a burden that feels too heavy.
• In both cases, the response is “It was good in my eyes.”
• In both cases, tribal representatives are chosen.
• In both cases, the language appears: “Bring the difficult things to me.”
• In both cases, we hear about “big” and “small” — giants versus grasshoppers; great people versus small people who must be treated equally.
• In both cases, Moshe reassures: “Do not be afraid — God goes before you.”

The Precedent In Our Generation

These are not coincidences. They are the Torah’s way of telling us that the spies were not an isolated failure. They grew out of a precedent set years earlier. Specifically, this happened when Moshe accepted the introduction of intermediaries between himself and the people — and between the people and God.

When closeness felt too burdensome, a technical solution was introduced. The people learned that when the direct relationship with God feels overwhelming, you can ask for something in between. The spies were given the same request, now on a national scale. “Send men ahead of us”—give us a buffer, give us reconnaissance, give us something that makes the terrifying intimacy of “God will fight for you” feel more manageable.

Moshe, looking back, sees that he himself had opened that door. And so, even though every fiber of his being fought against the spies, he was included in the decree. “For your sake, Hashem was angry with me.”

The Single Root: Distance and the Lament of Eichah

Both failures — the rock and the spies — are about the same thing: the introduction of distance when intimacy felt too costly.

The Midrashim on אֵיכָה (Eichah) make this explicit. The same letters that appear when God laments Adam’s expulsion from the Garden (“Ayekah — where are you?”) appear when Moshe laments the burden of the people. They also appear when Isaiah laments Israel’s spiritual harlotry and when Jeremiah laments Jerusalem sitting in solitude. Eichah is the sound of separation — the pain of a relationship that was meant to be direct and has become mediated, distant, or broken.

Moshe’s tragedy is that at two critical moments — once by accepting the judges and once by striking instead of speaking — he participated in that distancing. Even if only by not fully resisting it, he was part of it. And because he was God’s closest servant, the standard was absolute.

What This Means for Us

My friends, this is not a story that lets us off the hook. It is a story that demands receipts.

The people wanted water without having to place themselves in God’s hands. They wanted spies instead of raw trust. They wanted judges between themselves and Moshe, and between themselves and God. And at key moments, even Moshe went along with the technical solution instead of insisting on the direct one.

The Land was never going to be entered by people who still needed to be carried. It was going to be entered by people willing to speak to the rock — to obey even when the daily miracles of the wilderness were withdrawn.

That is the lesson Moshe was meant to teach and could not fully model. That is why, in the end, he could only see the Land from afar.

But here is the hope that burns in my own heart as I teach these parshiyot in prison, in our small Beit Midrash, and to my own family:

The Torah: Return to Me, and I will return to You.

The same Torah that records Moshe’s exclusion also records his final song, his final blessing, and the promise that a prophet like him will arise. The distance he helped introduce — and the distance he suffered — is not the last word. The Tree of Life still stands. The hidden sparks are still returning. And the One who lamented “Ayekah” and “Eichah” is the same One who says, even now: “Return to Me, and I will return to you.”

May we have the courage to speak to the rock in our own lives — to choose the direct relationship, the uncomfortable intimacy, the “receipts” of real faith — so that when our own Nevo comes, we will not only see the Land, but enter it.

For your sake, Hashem was angry with me. May we learn from his pain what it truly costs to keep the relationship direct.

With love and with hope for the full redemption, Hazan Gavriel ben David Esnoga Beit HaShoavah — Amarillo

• Return to the Rock: What Did Adam Really Look Like According to the Torah?
• Parashat Shemot
• An Autobiography of Hashem’s Will
• “Take Words: Reclaiming Loving Guidance Before It’s Too Late” Find A Friend
• Daily Torah Lesson: Insights from Beit HaShoavah

Parshat Devarim and Haftarat Chazon

Find a friend and take loving guidance before it is too late.

Rabbi Goldstein:

“The ultimate goal must come from a place where I’ve expressed the verse, ‘ You shall love the Lord your G-D, which means that the name of Heaven should be beloved to you.

In other words, what is the ultimate goal of kedish Hashem? That people should love Hashem is the ultimate goal, and so a person who truly loves Hashem will want other people to love Hashem”.

1. THESE ARE the words which Moses spoke unto all Israel beyond the Jordan; in the wilderness, in the Arabah, over against Suph, between Paran and Tophel, and Laban, and Hazeroth, and Di-zahab.

א׳. אֵלֶּה הַדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר מֹשֶׁה אֶל־כָּל־יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּעֵבֶר הַיַּרְדֵּן בַּמִּדְבָּר בָּעֲרָבָה מוֹל סוּף בֵּין־פָּארָן וּבֵין־תֹּפֶל וְלָבָן וַחֲצֵרֹת וְדִי זָהָב׃

2. It is eleven days journey from Horeb unto Kadesh-barnea by the way of mount Seir.

ב׳. אַחַד עָשָׂר יוֹם מֵחֹרֵב דֶּרֶךְ הַר־שֵׂעִיר עַד קָדֵשׁ בַּרְנֵעַ׃

3. And it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spoke unto the children of Israel, according unto all that the LORD had given him in commandment unto them;

ג׳. וַיְהִי בְּאַרְבָּעִים שָׁנָה בְּעַשְׁתֵּי־עָשָׂר חֹדֶשׁ בְּאֶחָד לַחֹדֶשׁ דִּבֶּר מֹשֶׁה אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל כְּכֹל אֲשֶׁר צִוָּה יְהוָה אֹתוֹ אֲלֵהֶם׃

List of Questions Introduced, Answered, and Not Answered

Questions Introduced & Answered in This Podcast/Lesson:

• What is Sefer Devarim really (vs. popular “review” assumption)? → Answered: Collection of speeches, centered on the main mitzvot speech for the Land.
• Why does the book open with confusing geographic/timing verses (1:1-5)? → Answered: Double introduction to main speech + first speech; references prior teachings and current renewal.
• What does “devarim” (these words) refer to? → Answered: Primarily the mitzvot/laws of the main speech (with rebuke elements).
• What is the overall structure? → Answered: Four speeches; main one in 5–26.
• Why study Devarim this way (start from the middle)? → Answered: Books like this are best understood after full reading; the main content unlocks the intro.
• How does this fit Chumash’s progression? → Answered: Completes the Sinai covenant by providing practical laws for nationhood in the Land.

Questions Introduced but Not Fully Answered (Teased for Later Lessons):

• Why do details in Devarim’s narratives sometimes differ from those in Shemot/Bamidbar (apparent contradictions)? → Teased: Due to the introductory speech’s rebuke/motivational purpose for the new generation (deeper in the next shiur on the first speech).
• Exact internal structure of the main speech (e.g., how laws relate to the Ten Commandments)? → Teased: Follows Dibrot framework; more in subsequent classes.
• Full meaning of the name ” Mishneh Torah “? → Partially answered (not a simple repeat), but deeper implications later.
• Specifics of the first speech’s content, and why is the 40-year delay emphasized? → Outlined but detailed analysis next.
• Broader theological implications (e.g., for daily Shema, teshuva, nation-building)? → Introduced as key but expanded later.

Detailed Outline of the Introduction Lesson

Broader Purpose: Prepares the nation for covenantal life; explains differences in details (rebuke angle for new generation).

Common Misunderstanding: Devarim is a farewell review of Chumash (quick test: compare content — laws, narratives don’t match a simple repeat).

Logical Approach: Read the book in context. “Cheat” by starting at ch. 5 to see the long speech of laws (continues to ch. 26).

Main Speech Identified: Chs. 5–26 — laws from Sinai (with Ten Commandments framework), for life in the Land. Moshe reviews/teaches them finally.

Introductory Speech: Chs. 1–4 — history to explain the delay and motivate.

Opening Verses Explained: As above — double intro; “devarim” refers to the mitzvot of the main speech, taught in multiple places/times.

Parashat Davarim: Rebukes

Parshat Devarim opens with Moshe’s words to a new generation poised to enter the Land. Rabbi Menachem Leibtag’s introduction reveals that these verses are not a confusing list of geographic terms but a deliberate double introduction. Verses 1:1–4 introduce the entire book and its main speech of mitzvot (chapters 5–26), while 1:5 introduces the first speech itself.

The “devarim” are the laws Moshe taught during the ideal eleven-day journey from Horev to Kadesh Barnea—now renewed after forty years of delay caused by the spies’ failure. This backward reading—from the main speech to the opening—unlocks the pesukim and shows Devarim as purposeful preparation, not mere review.

The Haftarah for Shabbat Chazon, Isaiah 1:1–27, echoes the same rebuke. God declares: “I raised children and exalted them, but they have rebelled against Me” (1:2).

The people have become like Sodom and Gomorrah; their rituals are empty while justice for the orphan and widow is ignored (1:10–17). Yet the prophet offers hope:

“Come, let us reason together” (1:18), and redemption comes through justice and teshuvah (1:27). The parallel is unmistakable—both Moshe and Isaiah speak words of loving correction before national catastrophe.

Hashem Our Boss: Rabbi Goldstein

Rabbi Warren Goldstein deepens this through Pirkei Avot. Criticism is not harsh judgment but an act of friendship. Pirkei Avot 1:6 commands, “Acquire for yourself a friend”—a chaver who learns with you, advises, and corrects your errors because we are biased about ourselves. Pirkei Avot 2:13 adds that the proper path includes becoming a good friend who guides.

True tochacha must begin with self-work: self-awareness, humility, and the willingness to receive correction even more than to give it. It flows from generosity of spirit and love for Hashem, so that “the name of Heaven should be beloved to you” (Pirkei Avot 4:5, via the Gemara on Kiddush Hashem). The ultimate goal is inspiration, not fear—helping others love Hashem and fulfill their potential.

Perkei Avot

Pirkei Avot 5:21 crowns this vision: the highest level is one who brings merit to the many, mazake et ha-rabbim, by inspiring mitzvot, connection, and love. Moshe is the model; the opposite—causing many to sin—brings the greatest harm. Thus, criticism is reframed as “bringing merit,” building greatness in children, spouses, and communities.

Here, the essay turns to our generation’s failure. As parents and as Adam without the Bible, we have outsourced our primary duty—“Hear, O Israel, teach your children”—to systems and cultures that do not have our children’s best interests at heart. The result is a documented crisis: record teen depression, anxiety, and despair. Without the Tree of Life blueprint, humanity drifts, its frequency lowered, its energy drained. We have failed to give the words that create worlds and build resilience.

Yet the prophets do not leave us in despair. Hosea 14:2, read with the Haftarah, commands: “Take for yourselves words and return to Hashem… instead of bulls, the offering of our lips.” The frequency of Torah words restores what criticism alone might drain. Hearing rebuke is hard, but when it comes from love—as from a true chaver or from Moshe—it calls us to repent and reclaim our role. We must become the mazake, the one who builds up, who sees the greatness in our children and inspires them to love Hashem and one another.

The sky is the limit when guidance flows from self-refinement and love for Hashem. Then we sanctify His Name, spread connection, and show how much we care. The opening lines of Devarim finally make sense: these are the words we must take, speak, and live—so that the next generation enters the Land not delayed by our failures, but empowered by our loving inheritance.

Pirkei Avot 1:6 — “Joshua ben Perachia said: Acquire for yourself a friend [K’neh l’cha chaver], acquire for yourself a teacher, and judge everyone favorably.”

• Footnote/Context: Fundamental for criticism. A true chaver (friend) learns Torah with you, advises, and corrects your errors. We are biased toward ourselves; friends provide objectivity. Criticism from friendship is a duty of love, not harm. (Rabbenu Yonah elaborates the three purposes.) This sets the relational model for all guidance.

Pirkei Avot 2:13 (in the context of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai’s students) — Students discuss the proper path. One emphasizes chaver tov (good friend).

• Footnote/Context: Seek a correcting friend and become one. Applies to marriage (“beloved friends”), parenting, leadership. True friendship includes uncomfortable guidance for success in Torah life.

Pirkei Avot 4:5 (on Kiddush Hashem) — Emphasizes actions that make Heaven’s Name beloved through ethical conduct.

Pirkei Avot 5:21 — “Whoever brings merit to the many [mazake et ha-rabbim], sin is not attributed to him… Whoever causes the many to sin [machati et ha-rabbim] is not given the opportunity to repent.” (Contrast: Moshe as ultimate mazake.)

• Footnote/Context: Highest achievement — inspire many toward mitzvot, connection, love (Hashem, self, others). Builds up greatness. Opposite destroys. Moshe exemplifies this through guidance. Criticism/guidance is really “bringing merit” and inspiration.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

• Parashat Shemot
• What the Tanakh Says About Today’s Events: Lessons from Parshat Chukat-Balak, Rabbi Tovia Singer & Rabbi Matityahu Glazerson
• An Autobiography of Hashem’s Will
• The Torah’s Hidden Clock
• Scripture Only, Please

Hazan Gavriel ben David Esnoga Beit HaShoavah, Amarillo, Texas 17 Tammuz 5786

In a world drowning in substitutions and lies, Christianity and Islam are two sides of the same coin, and they rewrite the original Hebrew Torah, which stands as the unalterable blueprint.

Part Five of this series examines one of the most systematic and consequential acts of textual tampering in history: the deliberate alterations found in the Greek Septuagint and the way later Christian theology relied upon them.

This is not an innocent translation error. It is a criminal rewriting of the very words Hashem gave at Sinai.

The Septuagint: From Legend to Christian Tool

The Septuagint began as a Greek translation of the Torah for Hellenistic Jews in Alexandria, Egypt, around the 3rd century BCE. The legendary Letter of Aristeas claims that Ptolemy II commissioned 72 Jewish scholars to complete the Torah in 72 days with miraculous accuracy. In reality, this was a practical translation for Greek-speaking Jews. The Prophets and Writings were translated later by different hands, producing a collection of uneven quality.

Centuries later, Origen of Alexandria (c. 184–253 CE), a prolific Christian scholar, created the Hexapla — a massive six-column comparative Bible. It placed the Hebrew text alongside Greek translations, including his own critically edited Septuagint.

Origen worked long after Christianity had emerged and was shaping its theology. His recension became highly influential in the Church. The Greek text many Christian apologists quote today is not the pure pre-Christian Septuagint but a later, edited Christian version.

This history matters. The original Hebrew is the best evidence — the language Hashem chose. When discrepancies arise, we do not correct the Hebrew with the Greek. We recognize the substitution.

The Law of Best Evidence

In courts of law, the “best evidence rule” demands the original document when proving its contents. Copies, translations, or secondary accounts carry far less weight. Applied to Scripture, the Hebrew Tanakh is the original. The Septuagint and its recensions are translations produced and edited centuries later. Relying on the Greek when it contradicts the Hebrew violates this foundational principle of truth-seeking.

The Generations of Adam: Rewriting the Blueprint

One of the most revealing corruptions Tovia Singer highlights appears in Genesis 5 and 11 — the generations of Adam. In The Blueprint of Creation and the Tree of Life, I show that the Torah is far more than narrative. It is a precise mathematical and spiritual blueprint, encoded like DNA, with gematria, chiastic structures, and perfect numerical harmony revealing the Tree of Life pattern from Adam onward.

Here, the substitution is blatant:

Hebrew Masoretic Text (the Blueprint):

• Adam fathers Seth at 130 years
• Seth at 105
• Enosh at 90
• Kenan at 70
• Mahalalel at 65
• Jared at 162
• Enoch at 65
• Methuselah at 187
• Lamech at 182

Greek Septuagint (the altered version): Most early patriarchs receive an artificial +100 years added to their begetting age, shifting the entire chronology from Creation to the Flood by roughly 600 years. An extra name (Cainan) is inserted into Genesis 11, a name not found in the Hebrew text.

The total lifespans remain similar, but the critical timing — when each man passed the seed of the covenant — is changed. This is not a scribal error. It is a deliberate substitution that disrupts the precise numerical architecture of the Tree of Life blueprint.

If the Torah is the operating system of creation, altering these generations is like editing the source code. The original Hebrew preserves the integrity. The Greeks introduced the concept of corruption.

Specific Criminal Rewritings (Side-by-Side)

1. Psalm 22:16 – “They Pierced My Hands and My Feet” Hebrew: … כָּאֲרִי יָדַי וְרַגְלָי (ka’ari — “like a lion [are] my hands and my feet”). Christian rendering (following later Septuagint tradition): “They pierced my hands and my feet.”

“Ka’ari” (like a lion) is consistently translated as lion imagery throughout the Tanakh (Isaiah 38:13, Ezekiel 22:25, etc.). The “pierced” reading relies on a minority variant and 2nd-century interpretive choices to create a crucifixion prophecy. Context: a psalm of David’s suffering, not a distant future event.

2. Isaiah 7:14 – The Young Woman Hebrew: הִנֵּה הָעַלְמָה (ha’almah — “the young woman”) is pregnant… Christian/Matthew 1:23 (Septuagint): “Behold, a virgin shall conceive…”

Definite article removed, almah (young woman) changed to parthenos (virgin), and immediate historical context (sign to King Ahaz) stripped away.

3. Daniel 9 – Timeline Manipulation: The Hebrew text speaks of 70 weeks (490 years) leading to events culminating in the destruction of the Second Temple. Christian interpretations adjust start dates, impose 360-day “prophetic years,” and force the timeline onto the 1st century to fit a messianic claim.

Patterns of Alteration: Pronoun shifts, removal/insertion of definite articles, context-stripping, and heavy reliance on later Greek recensions when the Hebrew does not cooperate.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

These Christian-side textual substitutions mirror the gradual evolution and codification we see on the Islamic side (Umayyad inscriptions reinterpreting “Muhammad,” Abbasid standardization of earlier Syriac/Christian materials). Both traditions borrow from the Hebrew source but layer substitutions to create new identities and theologies.

Ephraim’s Return and the Call Home

For those of us awakening as hidden Ephraim — those who love Hashem and His Torah but were raised in derivative systems — this is liberation. My own journey began on 9/11/2001 when my mother revealed our Jewish heritage and secret practices. It was sealed on October 7, 2023.

The tzitz of the High Priest that Rabbi Chaim Richman brought to Amarillo (one of the first places it touched American soil) was a tangible sign: the priesthood is awakening. My grandfather’s confirmed Kohen DNA and our family’s crypto-Jewish roots are part of this return.

Esnoga Beit HaShoavah has supported the Temple Institute for years. On this 17th of Tammuz, as we remember breached walls, we also see the walls of illusion crumbling. America, at 250 years, stands at a covenantal crossroads — a nation that intuitively understands the Temple.

The call to Ephraim is clear: return not through altered texts or substituted blueprints, but to the original Hebrew Torah. Love Hashem. Keep His mitzvot. Support the rebuilding. The Tree of Life blueprint remains perfect in Hebrew. Come home.

Zechariah: The Book of The End of Days- Today

As we prepare our hearts for the Ninth of Av. Many are asking who Israel is. The answer is very clear, let the Bible speak for itself:

 Zech 8 13 And it shall come to pass, that as ye were a curse among the heathen, O house of Judah, and house of Israel; so will I save you, and ye shall be a blessing: fear not, but let your hands be strong.

Zech 8 And the word of the Lord of hosts came unto me, saying,

¹⁹ Thus saith 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 the truth and peace.

How many Christian or Messianic congregations keep the fast of Zechariah 8?

You tell me?

Hazan Gavriel ben David

• Confession of an Ex-Messianic
• Two Sides of the Same Coin – Part 3: The French Revisionist School and the Christian Roots of the Quran
• How Can Christianity and Judaism Be “Two Sides of the Same Coin” When One Looks Nothing Like the Original Blueprint?
• The Torah’s Hidden Clock
• Two Sides of the Same Coin Part 4: Ishmael, Edom, Rome, and the End-Time Blueprint

Introduction: The King, His Scribe, and the Blueprint That Does Not Lie

Hashem is the King of kings. When a sovereign issues a decree, He employs faithful record-keepers to preserve it in an official book. The Torah itself testifies to this: the Creator does not leave His word unrecorded or unfulfilled.

A Book In Heaven Exodus 32:31-33

And Moses returned to the Lord and said: “Please! This people has committed a grave sin. They have made themselves a god of gold.		לאוַיָּ֧שָׁב משֶׁ֛ה אֶל־יְהֹוָ֖ה וַיֹּאמַ֑ר אָ֣נָּ֗א חָטָ֞א הָעָ֤ם הַזֶּה֙ חֲטָאָ֣ה גְדֹלָ֔ה וַיַּֽעֲשׂ֥וּ לָהֶ֖ם אֱלֹהֵ֥י זָהָֽב:
32And now, if You forgive their sin But if not, erase me now from Your book, which You have written.”		לבוְעַתָּ֖ה אִם־תִּשָּׂ֣א חַטָּאתָ֑ם וְאִם־אַ֕יִן מְחֵ֣נִי נָ֔א מִסִּפְרְךָ֖ אֲשֶׁ֥ר כָּתָֽבְתָּ:
33And the Lord said to Moses: “Whoever has sinned against Me, him I will erase from My book!”		לגוַיֹּ֥אמֶר יְהֹוָ֖ה אֶל־משֶׁ֑ה מִ֚י אֲשֶׁ֣ר חָֽטָא־לִ֔י אֶמְחֶ֖נּוּ מִסִּפְרִֽי:

Isaiah 55:11

so shall be My word that emanates from My mouth; it shall not return to Me empty, unless it has done what I desire and has made prosperous the one to whom I sent it.

יאכֵּ֣ן יִֽהְיֶ֚ה דְבָרִי֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר יֵצֵ֣א מִפִּ֔י לֹֽא־יָשׁ֥וּב אֵלַ֖י רֵיקָ֑ם כִּ֚י אִם־עָשָׂה֙ אֶת־אֲשֶׁ֣ר חָפַ֔צְתִּי וְהִצְלִ֖יחַ אֲשֶׁ֥ר שְׁלַחְתִּֽיו:

Isaiah 43:10

“You are My witnesses,” says the Lord, “and My servant whom I chose,” in order that you know and believe Me, and understand that I am He; before Me no god was formed and after Me none shall be.

יאַתֶּ֚ם עֵדַי֙ נְאֻם־יְהֹוָ֔ה וְעַבְדִּ֖י אֲשֶׁ֣ר בָּחָ֑רְתִּי לְמַ֣עַן תֵּ֠דְעוּ וְתַֽאֲמִ֨ינוּ לִ֚י וְתָבִ֙ינוּ֙ כִּֽי־אֲנִ֣י ה֔וּא לְפָנַי֙ לֹֽא־נ֣וֹצַר אֵ֔ל

Isaiah 46:10 declares: “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.’”

The Bible: Who Is It To and What Is It For

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The Torah begins with purpose, not randomness. “Bereishit” is understood as for the sake of the Torah and Israel. Adam represents the archetype; Israel carries the mission. The Tree of Life in Eden and its echoes symbolize the Torah as the path to life and connection with the Creator. Chiastic and numeric patterns organize the text like a living code — informational, relational, and creational.

Hashem wants humanity to see this truth. The opening statement is visible because it was meant to be seen.

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As Rabbi Manis Friedman powerfully teaches in his podcast series, the Writer of the Torah explicitly reveals to the world who it was for and who it was to. The opening of Genesis (“Bereishit”) is classically understood as “For the sake of Israel” or “With the Torah [divine wisdom], Hashem created the heavens and the earth.”

Israel stands as the purpose; Adam (humanity) is the archetype. The Torah is the blueprint of creation — a DNA-like informational code that encodes purpose, relationship, and reality itself. It does not lie.

Bereshit/ With The Torah

Rashi on the very first verse brings exactly that—בְּרֵאשִׁית can be read as בִּשְׁבִיל רֵאשִׁית, meaning “for the sake of the beginning,” or “for the sake of Torah” and “for the sake of Israel,” both called reshit in other verses.

The bet prefix sometimes carries this causal or purposeful sense, like “for the sake of,” “because of,” or “on account of.” Here are five solid Torah examples where a prefixed bet works that way:

• Genesis 18:26 – “If I find fifty righteous people in (be) the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.” The bet ties the forgiveness directly to them.
• Genesis 12:13 – “Say you are my sister, so that (ba’avur) it may go well with me because of you (biglalech).” Similar causal bet idea.
• Exodus 32:12 – Moses pleads with God to relent from His anger “because of (al) the evil against Your people,” but the surrounding language uses bet-like purpose for the sake of God’s name and reputation.
• Numbers 11:29 – Moses says he wishes all God’s people were prophets, using language of purpose and cause tied to the spirit.
• Deuteronomy 4:21 – God’s oath and anger “because of you” (biglalkhem), showing the bet in compounds for “for your sake / on your account.

Meyer/Kennedy Discoveries (Part 1 & Part 2) and Their Support for Biblical Accuracy

Part 1 Key Discoveries:

• Amarna Letters (14th century BCE): Canaanite kings plead with Pharaoh for help against “Habiru” invaders attacking cities like Jerusalem, Gezer, and Lachish. The king of Shechem is accused of handing over land without battle — matching Joshua 8 & 24’s peaceful covenant renewal.
• Demographic & Cultural Shifts: Sudden population changes and new hill-country settlements in Late Bronze Age Canaan, with distinctive features— the absence of pig bones, temples, and idols—mark early Israelite material culture.
• Soleb Temple Inscription: Earliest extra-biblical mention of “Yahweh” (~1400 BCE), referring to “nomads of Yahweh” in the correct region between Egypt and Canaan.

Part 2 Key Discoveries:

• Hidden/Rarely Documented Yahweh Inscription: A pillar (from New Kingdom Egypt) explicitly links nomads associated with Yahweh to the precise geographic corridor (Edom/Moab/Transjordan) and timeframe of the biblical wilderness wandering (~1400 BCE). This is direct evidence of a Yahweh-worshipping group exactly where the Torah places the Israelites.
• Amenhotep II Anomalies: Sudden cessation of major military campaigns (possible loss of army/chariots at the Sea), a massive slave raid to replenish the workforce, and abrupt abandonment of a major palace complex — circumstantial fits for a post-Exodus Egypt in crisis.
• Ipuwer Papyrus Parallels: Ancient Egyptian text describes the Nile as blood, darkness (Ra unseen), boils/suffering, destroyed crops/livestock, social collapse, and slaves taking valuables — striking parallels to the Ten Plagues.

How These Show the Bible’s Incredible Accuracy These finds provide external, contemporaneous corroboration for the Torah’s historical framework. They place a distinct Yahweh-associated people in the right time and place for the Exodus, wilderness wandering, and conquest — contradicting minimalist claims that Israelites were a late Iron Age invention with no Egyptian ties.

The material culture (no pigs/idols), peaceful Shechem transfer, sudden destruction/settlement patterns, and plague-like descriptions align precisely with Joshua and Exodus without requiring later fabrication. The Yahweh inscriptions are particularly devastating to skeptics because they name the God uniquely tied to Israel centuries earlier than many secular timelines allow. Together, they demonstrate that the Torah is not a legendary embellishment but is rooted in real events preserved with remarkable fidelity.

Why Secular Scholarship Timelines Often Dismiss Jewish History

Secular scholarship has long employed compressed or late-dated timelines that systematically sideline Jewish historical claims rooted in the Torah. Minimalist approaches frequently push the emergence of a recognizable Israelite people and their monotheistic worship of Yahweh into the Iron Age (roughly 1000 BCE or later), portraying the Exodus, wilderness wandering, and conquest as largely mythical or heavily exaggerated.

This dismissal ignores or downplays contemporaneous evidence such as the Amarna Letters’ Habiru invaders, the Soleb and hidden pillar inscriptions naming Yahweh-linked nomads in the exact 14th-century BCE corridor between Egypt and Canaan, Amenhotep II’s military and labor anomalies, and Ipuwer Papyrus parallels to the plagues. By favoring models that minimize supernatural elements and early Jewish distinctiveness, these timelines effectively erase the Torah’s eyewitness national revelation and the Jewish people’s role as God’s witnesses (Isaiah 43:10-12).

Yet as Meyer and Kennedy demonstrate, when archaeology is allowed to speak without presupposed skepticism, the record repeatedly catches up to the biblical narrative — affirming rather than undermining the accuracy of our ancient history and covenantal identity. The data increasingly vindicates the Torah’s timeline, reminding us that the Jewish people’s story is not a late invention but a divinely preserved witness across millennia.

Two Views Same Answer – Truth

In “How Do We Know the Torah Is from God? Rabbi Singer Answers”, Rabbi Tovia Singer highlights the unique national revelation at Sinai and the miraculous perseverance of the Jewish people.

In the Meyer/Kennedy series — including the original discussion and Part 2 exploration — fresh evidence from a rarely documented “Yahweh” inscription and Exodus-era anomalies emerges.

Science, archaeology, mathematics, physics, medicine, and genetics are catching up to what the ancient scribes recorded under divine inspiration. The evidence converges without a shadow of a doubt: the Torah is true.

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The Unique Authorship and National Revelation (Rabbi Tovia Singer)

Who wrote the Bible? Rabbi Tovia Singer answers with clarity. Unlike other ancient texts built on solitary visions, the Torah rests on national revelation at Sinai — witnessed by the entire people (Deuteronomy 4:9-13, 32-36). An entire nation heard Hashem’s voice and saw the fire. Inventing such a collective event would collapse under its own weight; the text commands remembrance across generations (“Ask your father…” — Deuteronomy 32:7).

The Torah also predicts and fulfills the Jewish people’s unparalleled history: exile, suffering, and supernatural survival and restoration (Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28-30). They remain “a people that dwells alone” (Numbers 23:9) yet endure as God’s witnesses (Isaiah 43:10-12). This perseverance is the living signature of the Author who declares the end from the beginning.

Rabbi Manis Friedman deepens this in his teachings: the Torah is not merely a rulebook but God explaining Himself — inviting humanity into relationship. The opening statement reveals its purpose: the Torah was given to Israel (and, through them, to the world), with Adam/Israel as the focal point of creation’s blueprint.

Science Catches Up: Professor Haim Shore’s Mathematical Proofs

Professor Haim Shore demonstrates through rigorous statistical analysis that biblical Hebrew encodes modern scientific data with a precision impossible by chance. His work (detailed in books and the documentary Math Unveils the Truth) reveals Torah words correlating with physical realities discovered much later.

The Evidence That Defies Random Chance

• Sun, Moon & Earth: The Hebrew words shemesh (sun = 640), yareach (moon = 218), and eretz (earth = 291) produce a linear correlation of 0.999 with their actual diameters. Probability this happened by random: 0.2%. Changing even one letter destroys the alignment.
• All Nine Planets: Hebrew names match NASA data for diameter, mass, volume, and orbital angular momentum with correlations of 0.977–0.982. Probabilities under 0.5% each.
• Physical Constants Hidden in Words:
  • Or (light) = exact speed of light: 299,792,458 m/s
  • Kol (sound) = 343.26 m/s
  • Damama (stillness) = 0 m/s Correlation: 0.9938
• Colors & Frequencies: Hebrew color words (zahov = yellow, ya’akon = green, etc.) match actual light wavelengths with a correlation of 0.9981.
• Water Phases: Karach (ice), mayim (water), and kotzer (steam) exhibit specific heat capacities that correlate at 0.9995.
• Metals & Atomic Weights: Gold (zahav), silver (kesef), and others match atomic weights or their reciprocals, with correlations of 0.991–0.9997.

The interpretations use classic Kabbalistic techniques on the letters themselves:

• Notarikon — splitting the word or taking initial letters to form new phrases.
• Temurah / permutations & rearrangements — anagrams or re-readings of the letters (e.g., בראשית → ירא שבת).
• Gematria & numerical correspondences — values and equivalences (e.g., 70 = sod).
• Connections to sefirot, colors of divine light/radiance, Shekhinah as “daughter” (bat, drawn from ב-ת in the word), covenant (brit), and cosmic rectification (tikkun).
• Broader Zohar on Bereshit adds the primordial “spark” or point engraving supernal light, the tehiru (vacated space), and emanation from the infinite.

Hebrew: The DNA Of Creation

• Celestial bodies: Hebrew terms correlate numerically (via gematria and related measures) with planetary diameters and masses on logarithmic scales used in astronomy (correlations near 0.999).
• Pregnancy: Heraion has a value of 271 — matching the median human pregnancy length.
• Time and anatomy: Shanah (year) aligns with 355 days; words for “ear” and “balance” share a root — a connection scientifically confirmed only in the late 19th century.

These are not arbitrary wordplays; they reveal how the Hebrew letters are building blocks of creation (echoing Sefer Yetzirah), with every layer pointing back to divine unity, the blueprint of reality, and the path to redemption.

These are statistically validated alignments across datasets. The Torah functions as an informational blueprint — like DNA encoding life — embedding scientific truth in its language long before human discovery.

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The Yovel Was Jericho: The Return Of The Land

Archaeology has long been portrayed as skeptical of the Bible, yet refined dating, new documentation, and contextual analysis increasingly align with the Torah. Conflicting older interpretations are giving way to evidence that supports the biblical timeline and details.

Jericho — The Walls That Fell Joshua 6 records the walls collapsing after seven days, followed by burning. Excavations reveal massive mudbrick walls that collapsed outward, or “fell beneath themselves,” onto the stone revetment — precisely matching the description. A thick burnt destruction layer exists.

Rabbi David Fohrman (Aleph Beta) masterfully reveals profound structural and thematic parallels between the Yovel (Jubilee year, Leviticus 25) and the miraculous conquest of Jericho (Joshua 6), showing how both events embody the Torah’s pattern of sevens, liberation, shofar blasts, and divine encirclement.

These are not coincidences but deliberate echoes of the same underlying blueprint — cycles of completion, release, and return to the Creator’s order.

The Numerical and Ritual Parallel (Sevens and the Shofar)

At Jericho, the Israelites march around the city once per day for six days. On the seventh day, they circle it seven times, led by seven Kohanim carrying seven shofars (ram’s horns) before the Ark. The climactic moment comes with the long shofar blast (teki’ah gedolah), followed by the people’s shout — and the walls collapse (Joshua 6:3-5, 15-16).

Fohrman highlights the overwhelming repetition of seven: seven days, seven circuits on the seventh day, seven Kohanim, seven shofars. This mirrors the Yovel cycle — seven times seven years (49 years) culminating in the 50th year of Jubilee, announced by a shofar blast on Yom Kippur (Leviticus 25:8-9). Both events end with the shofar as the instrument of release and breakthrough: freedom from bondage (slaves return to family land in Yovel; the “stronghold” of Jericho falls before Israel’s entry into the Promised Land).

Linguistic and Symbolic Connections (“Causing to Pass” and Yovel Shofars)

The Torah uses strikingly similar language for the shofar in both contexts. At Jericho: “When the shofar of the yovel sounds a long blast… the people shall ascend” (Joshua 6:5 — bimshech bekeren hayovel). The shofars themselves are explicitly called shofrot hayovelim — “Yovel shofars” (Joshua 6:4, 6, 8, 13).

This echoes the Yovel law: “You shall cause the shofar of the yovel to pass [or sound] throughout your land” (Leviticus 25:9 — veha’avarta shofar teruah). The verb ha’avir / meshoch (causing to pass or drawing out the blast) links the physical motion of the shofars circling Jericho with the proclamation that “passes” across the entire land in the Jubilee year. Fohrman notes this is the same terminology used at Sinai for the shofar that signals the revelation (Exodus 19:13, 19 — bimshech hayovel). Encirclement and the “Off-Limits” Holiness

Sinai and Jericho

Both Sinai and Jericho involve encirclement that creates a zone of divine restriction:

At Sinai, the mountain is encircled with boundaries (vehigbalta et hahar saviv — Exodus 19:12); touching it brings death.
At Jericho, the city is encircled (vesavav et ha’ir — Joshua 6); Joshua curses anyone who rebuilds it (Joshua 6:26), imposing a similar “off-limits” sanctity with deadly consequences.

This shared motif of surrounding and setting apart underscores holiness and judgment — the mountain as the site of revelation, the city as the first conquest in the Land.Deeper Meaning: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Fohrman concludes that Sinai (revelation and receiving the Torah) and Jericho (conquest and entry into the Land) function as two sides of the same coin — both Yovel-like events. The Jubilee laws reveal the connection: release from servitude, return to ancestral inheritance, and the shofar as the herald of freedom and restoration.

Fifty Years

Just as Yovel resets economic and social order every 50 years, these events reset Israel’s relationship with Hashem and the Land — from slavery in Egypt to freedom at Sinai, and from wandering to possession at Jericho.
The patterns of sevens (completion) and the shofar (breakthrough and proclamation) are not ornamental; they point to the Torah’s architectural blueprint. Cycles of seven culminate in divine intervention, bringing liberation and holiness. This reinforces the idea that the Torah encodes recurring divine rhythms — from Creation (seven days) to history — that echo the Yovel’s ultimate promise of redemption.

The Hidden “Yahweh” Inscription — Explosive New Evidence from Part 2

armstronginstitute.org

The Soleb Inscription: Earliest-Discovered Use of the Name ‘Yahweh’ | ArmstrongInstitute.org

In this Part 2 discussion, Dr. Stephen Meyer and archaeologist Dr. Titus Kennedy highlight a rarely photographed and documented Egyptian pillar inscription referencing nomads associated with “Yahweh” in the region between Egypt and Canaan (Edom/Moab/Transjordan) during the biblical wilderness wandering period (~1400 BCE).

This is the earliest extra-biblical mention of Yahweh, uniquely identifying the group with the Israelites — no other ancient people worshipped Yahweh. It places them exactly where and when the Torah describes: after leaving Egypt, before entering Canaan, as a nomadic people tied to their God.

This directly challenges minimalist theories that claim the Israelites emerged only centuries later in Canaan, with no Egyptian origins or early association with Yahweh. As Kennedy notes, this inscription “places the Israelites right where they should be according to the biblical account.”

The Pharaoh of Moses, Amenhotep II Anomalies

Amenhotep II Anomalies — Fitting the Exodus Pharaoh. The same discussion examines Pharaoh Amenhotep II (fitting the timeline after a long-reigning predecessor). His reign shows:

• Sudden cessation of major military campaigns for decades (possible loss of forces and chariots at the Reed Sea).
• A massive slave raid claiming over 100,000 prisoners — possibly to replenish a depleted workforce post-Exodus.
• Abrupt abandonment of a major palace complex at Tel el-Daba with no clear conventional explanation.

This “strange sequence of historical anomalies” aligns circumstantially with a post-Exodus Egypt in recovery.

Ipuwer Papyrus — Parallels to the Plagues The ancient Egyptian poem describes the Nile turning to blood, widespread destruction of crops and livestock, boils/suffering, darkness (day not dawning, Ra unseen), social upheaval, and slaves taking gold and silver — mirroring the Ten Plagues in Exodus with striking detail. While mainstream scholarship often dismisses both as non-historical genres, the correlations are too precise to ignore and add another layer of corroboration.

Archaeology: The Science That Proves The Bible

Archaeology is catching up. The hidden Yahweh inscription and these synchronisms powerfully affirm the Torah’s historical blueprint for Israelite origins, the Exodus, and the conquest.

creation.com

The walls of Jericho · Creation.com

Conclusion: Irrefutable Convergence — The Torah Is True

From Rabbi Tovia Singer on national revelation and Jewish survival, to Rabbi Manis Friedman on the Writer revealing purpose and relationship; from archaeology’s Jericho walls, Amarna synchronisms, the hidden Yahweh inscription (placing Israelites exactly where the Torah says during the wandering), Amenhotep II anomalies, and Ipuwer parallels; from Professor Haim Shore’s mathematical impossibilities and Rabbi Glazerson’s codes; from DNA’s priestly signature to the informational blueprint mirroring DNA and the Tree of Life — the evidence converges from every direction.

Archaeology once seemed in tension; refined finds and Part 2-level documentation are catching up and affirming the record. Science once appeared silent; it now speaks in precise Hebrew correlations. The hard sciences are confirming what the ancient scribes declared under inspiration.

The King issued the decree. The Scribes preserved it faithfully. The Torah tells the end from the beginning and fulfills it. Like Abraham — one against the world — the truth stands.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

Further Resources

• Rabbi Tovia Singer: https://youtu.be/GPG4B8vvKmE
• Meyer/Kennedy Part 1 & Part 2: https://youtu.be/fgeCyAVvd88 and https://youtu.be/9XEDu3IqD-Y
• Haim Shore’s research and math unveil the Truth
• Rabbi Glazerson Torah codes (YouTube)
• Rabbi Manis Friedman’s teachings/podcasts on Torah purpose

May this updated essay strengthen faith and reach seekers. Shalom.

To understand the whole, you first have to master the parts, one by one, on their own terms. Think of it like a machine: you can’t grasp how an engine works without knowing pistons, valves, and fuel injectors separately—how each moves, what each needs, where it fails. Only after you truly get every piece in isolation can you see how they lock together into something bigger.

It’s the same with ideas, systems, or even people. You study one element deeply, without letting the others bleed in and confuse it. Then the next. And the next. That’s the only way the full picture stops being fuzzy. Skip this step and you’re just guessing at connections that aren’t really there. Gotta earn the whole by earning each part first.

Here’s the full list of the 42 Stations from this week’s Torah portion:

1. Rameses (רעמסס) – The starting point of the Exodus, where evil began to melt away.
2. Sukkot (סוכות) – Temporary dwellings: our first taste of living in transition.
3. Eitam (אתם) – On the edge of the wilderness; a place of boldness and decision.
4. Pi Hahirot (פי החירות) – “Mouth of Freedom”; the place of true liberation.
5. Migdol (מגדל) – “Tower” or “Build up”; a time of strengthening.
6. Marah (מרה) – “Bitter”; the place of bitter waters and first tests.
7. Elim (אילם) – Place of twelve springs and seventy palms; abundance and rest.
8. Yam Suf (ים סוף) – By the Red Sea; site of the great miracle.
9. Midbar Sin (מדבר סין) – Wilderness of Sin; a place of emptiness and dependence.
10. Dofkah (דפקה) – “Beating” or “Striking”; a place of pressure and testing.
11. Alush (אלוש) – A place associated with gathering and preparation.
12. Rephidim (רפידים) – “Weak hands”- where Torah commitment weakened, and Amalek attacked.
13. Midbar Sinai (מדבר סיני) – The Wilderness of Sinai, where the Torah was given.
14. Kivrot Hata’avah (קברות התאוה) – “Graves of Lust”; where desire led to downfall.
15. Chatzerot (חצרות) – “Courtyards”: a place of community and order.
16. Ritmah (רתמה) – A place of binding or judgment.
17. Rimmon Peretz (רמון פרץ) – “Pomegranate Breach”; a place of breakthrough.
18. Livnah (לבנה) – “White” or “Purity.”
19. Rissah (רסה) – “Crushed” or “Broken.”
20. Kehelatah (קהלתה) – “Assembly”; a place of gathering together.
21. Mount Shefer (הר שפר) – “Beautiful Mountain.”
22. Charadah (חרדה) – “Trembling” or “Fear.”
23. Makhelot (מקהלות) – “Congregations”; place of community division or unity.
24. Tachath (תחת) – “Below” or “Low point.”
25. Terach (תרח) – A place of delay or wandering.
26. Mitkah (מתקה) – “Sweetness.”
27. Hashmonah (השמונה) – Associated with the number eight and strength.
28. Moserot (מסרות) – “Chains” or “Discipline.”
29. Bnei Yaakan (בני יעקן) – “Sons of Yaakan”; a place of heritage.
30. Chor Hagidgad (חור הגדגד) – “Cave of Gidgad,”; a place of revelation in darkness.
31. Yotvatah (יטבתה) – “A good place”; pleasantness.
32. Avronah (עברנה) – Place of crossing over.
33. Etzion Gever (עציון גבר) – “Giant’s Backbone”; a place of strength.
34. Kadesh (קדש) – “Holiness”; site of major events, including Miriam’s death.
35. Mount Hor (הר ההר) – Where Aaron died; a place of transition and loss.
36. Tzalmonah (צלמנה) – A place of shade or darkness.
37. Punon (פונן) – Associated with punishment or refining.
38. Ovot (אבות) – “Ghosts” or ancestral spirits.
39. Iyyei HaAvarim (עיי העברים) – “Ruins of Avarim”; wasteland on the border.
40. Divon Gad (דיבן גד) – Connected to fortune or betrayal.
41. Almon Divlatayim (עלמן דבלתים) – A place of many journeys or cakes.
42. Mount Nebo / Plains of Moab (ערבות מואב) – The final station before entering the Land, overlooking the Promised Land.

These 42 stations are Hashem’s loving record of every stop — the bitter ones, the sweet ones, and the quiet ones — exactly like a father recounting every stage of his child’s healing journey.

Matot-Masei The World We Create

In Parshat Masei, the Torah lists all 42 specific journeys the Jewish people took through the wilderness — forty-two deliberate stops. Many of them had no miracles, no drama — just a name and a location. Rabbi Goldstein points out: if Hashem records every single one of these stations in the Torah, it means He cares deeply about the small details of our lives.

This Shabbat, we read the double portion Matot-Masei. In his powerful lecture this week, Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein teaches that life is not linear. We all want the quickest, straightest path from where we are to where we want to be, but the Torah shows us something much deeper.

Last night at Beit Midrash, this truth came alive in a very real way. David came in frustrated, telling us how annoying his week had been. A bad storm broke two windows at his job. He had to order replacements, go pick them up, arrange installation — one frustration after another. When I asked him how this week’s Torah portion connected to his experience and whether he had asked Hashem why those windows broke, he said, “God is not concerned with small details like that.”

But Matot-Masei teaches exactly the opposite. If Hashem writes down every encampment in the desert, even the ones where nothing dramatic happened, then He certainly cares about the broken windows in our own lives.

This same message appears very early in the Torah. After Kayin kills his brother, Hashem asks him, “Why is your countenance fallen?” Then He says: “If you do well, will you not be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin crouches at the door — yet you can rule over it.” Hashem was telling Kayin, “You have your whole life to improve.” The journey itself is the point.

Da’at – Becoming Aware of the Soul (Rabbi Akiva Tatz)

Rabbi Akiva Tatz, in his lecture Da’at – Inner Knowledge, begins with a powerful and honest admission. He says it is “almost by definition impossible to find the words for this subject.”

Da’at (דעת) means intrinsic wisdom or inner knowledge. It is not information you collect or facts you memorize with your intellect. You learn a deeper way of knowing — something you know from within, through a faculty of the soul. It becomes the part of you that knows you exist, that knows right from wrong without external proof, that knows “now” is now, and that knows Hashem is real.

He explains the fundamental problem: “The words needed to transmit the subject, by definition, are inadequate. That means the subject cannot be put into words — yet the only medium we have is words.”

This is why, Rabbi Tatz teaches, if a fundamental concept has no word for it in the Torah, it is ultimately a human-created idea. For example, there is no biblical Hebrew word for “believe” in the Western sense of blind faith, nor is there a word for “doubt.” The common terms used today — safek for doubt and vadai for certainty — are later rabbinic coinages, not found in the Torah itself. In the Torah’s worldview, these are not primary realities.

In contrast, da’at is the inner eye of the soul. Rabbi Tatz illustrates this with the classic bicycle example. You can explain the physics of balance, the mechanics of pedaling, and steering for hours, but no amount of talking will teach you how to ride. The father holds the seat at the beginning — that initial support is a gift. But at a certain point, he lets go. You wobble, you fall, you get back up — and suddenly you feel it. That moment when balance becomes part of you is da’at. It cannot be explained. It can only be experienced through doing.

Da’at (דעת) means intrinsic wisdom or inner knowledge — not information you gather with your intellect, but something you know from within, through a deeper faculty of the soul.

He explains the paradox clearly: The words needed to transmit this subject are, by definition, inadequate. That means the subject cannot be put into words — yet the only medium we have to share it is words themselves. So the very first problem is that da’at is not readily expressible verbally. You can only understand it by having your own inner understanding.

The Garden

In Rabbi David Fohrman’s A Book Like No Other series on Eden, he points out how uniquely Eve describes the tree in Genesis 3:6.

God had described the trees as “pleasant to the sight and good for food.” But Eve flips the order—she sees the tree as first “good for eating,” then “a delight to the eyes,” and “desirable for gaining wisdom.” She turns pure appreciation into utility and lust, starting with the practical benefit instead of beauty. That’s what leads her to eat it. It’s a subtle but powerful shift in perspective.

Nechmad Lemar’eh Tov Lema’achal

In Genesis 2, God describes the trees as “pleasant to the sight and good for food.” But when Eve looks at the Tree of Knowledge, she flips that order: she sees it first as good for eating, then a delight to the eyes, and desirable for wisdom. That shift from beauty-first to utility- and craving-first is exactly what Rabbi Fohrman highlights as the key change in perspective. It turns appreciation into lust.

God describes the trees in Genesis 2:9 as nechmad lemar’eh — pleasant to behold — and then tov lema’achal — good for food. Beauty first, then utility.

Eve flips it in Genesis 3:6. She sees the tree as tov lema’achal first — good for eating — then a delight to the eyes and desirable for wisdom. She starts with craving and utility, turning appreciation into lust. That shift in perspective is what Rabbi Fohrman zeroes in on.

“This week’s double portion, Matot-Masei, lists the 42 journeys the Jewish people took through the wilderness. Not 40 years of constant wandering, but 42 specific stops—each one a deliberate stage. The Torah wants us to see that every stop mattered.

This mirrors exactly what we’ve been exploring with Adam and Eve. Hashem doesn’t push. He brings us to the edge, like a father holding the bike seat just long enough, then letting go. The command ‘do not eat’ brought them right to the moment of choice. Eating wasn’t rebellion—it was stepping into the wilderness of ups and downs, failures and heartaches, so we could learn what it means to truly live.

Just as those 42 stops weren’t random, neither was their choice. The path of knowing good and bad, tasting both life and death, is how we grow into who we’re meant to become. No shortcuts. No staying safe like angels in the garden.

The Torah never calls what Adam and Eve did a sin. It calls it a journey. And every journey has its stations.”

This process of becoming aware of the soul is exactly what our personal 42 journeys are for. Every stop, every broken window, every frustration is an opportunity to move from intellectual knowledge to inner da’at — from being carried to riding on your own.

Rabbi Goldstein on Becoming Aware of Your Soul

In another powerful teaching, Rabbi Warren Goldstein explores “Becoming Aware of Your Soul.” He challenges us to rethink our very identity and what it truly means to be human. The soul is not an add-on to the body; the body is the vehicle, and the soul is the essence. Becoming aware of it means learning to see life through that inner faculty — the same faculty Eve reached for in the Garden, the same one Kayin was being called to develop.

This awareness doesn’t come in a straight line. It comes through the detours, the falls, the seemingly insignificant stops. That is why Hashem records every single one of the 42 journeys. Each one is a love letter reminding us that the soul grows precisely in those moments we might otherwise dismiss as annoying or meaningless.

During our discussion last night, David became upset when I quoted verses also found in the Christian Bible. I explained that I do not recommend the Christian Bible as a spiritual guide. However, I do sometimes use it to help Christians see that their book is not independent — it constantly draws on the Tanakh.

One example I gave was “turn the other cheek” in Matthew, which echoes themes in Lamentations where Hashem reminds the Jewish people that the true source of their suffering was not Babylon but their own failure to follow Torah and keep the Shemitah. Another was from the book of James, chapter 4 — a midrash on the fight between Cain and Abel.

James writes: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, carry on business and make a profit.’ Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”

Notice the Hebrew wordplay. Kayin comes from the root kinyan — to obtain, to acquire, to grab. Hevel means vapor, something here one moment and gone the next. James is describing the same brotherly conflict we see in Genesis — the arrogance of thinking we control tomorrow while chasing material gain.

This is why I wake up motivated every day. Since 2012, I’ve listened to Rabbi Tovia Singer daily. His teachings opened my eyes to a painful truth: 99% of Christians have never been shown what their Bible actually says in its original Jewish context. A foreign story has been laid over the text that simply isn’t there.

We are all one family. Adam and Eve are the father and mother of all humanity. After the flood, only Noah and his three sons — Shem, Ham, and Japheth — survived. Modern DNA confirms all males today trace back to three primary paternal lines. That means you and I are either brothers or cousins.

So why do brothers fight? Why do brothers murder? Why do we not show kindness to one another?

The whole world is connected. The Ten Commandments are the only way to fix this broken world — by realizing we are truly one family.

Every stop in your personal 42 journeys matters. Even the broken windows. Hashem is paying attention to all of them, and each one is an invitation to become more aware of your soul.

• Series: Part II That Which You Have Not Heard.
• The Eternal Struggle of Self: Reincarnation, the Expanding “I,” and the Soul’s Never-Ending Journey
• Creating a Vessel of Worship: The Midbar of Silence, the Question of Justice, and the Song of the New Generation
• Parashat Chukat 5786: The 38 Years of Silence and Singing Your Own Song
• Becoming Aware of Your Soul: The Tree of Life Blueprint Christianity Never Answered

A deep dive into the plain meaning of Scripture, inspired by Rabbi Tovia Singer’s powerful conversation with ex-pastor Justin (Deconstruction Zone)

“Context is king.” — Rabbi Tovia Singer, in the February 2025 interview on Isaiah 53

What if pastors opened their Bibles and simply let the text speak — without later theological overlays? What if they read the Tanach the way they claim to believe it: as the inspired, consistent Word of God?

Rabbi Tovia Singer recently sat down with Justin, an ex-pastor on a journey of deconstruction, for a remarkable conversation centered on Isaiah 53. Throughout the discussion, Singer repeatedly demonstrated a single, stunning reality: the Tanach never loses sight of its subject. That subject is Israel — the nation descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Israel is repeatedly called Hashem’s servant, witnesses, firstborn son, bride, and the people before whom He bares His holy arm for all the nations to see.

No other entity — no individual messiah figure detached from the nation, no later “church” or “body of Christ” — is ever given these titles in the Hebrew Scriptures. The Tanach is laser-focused. When read in context, the message is unmistakable.

This blog expands on the key passages highlighted in that conversation, broadens them with history, archaeology, and classical Torah commentaries (Rashi, Abarbanel, and insights aligned with Baal HaTurim’s textual precision), and invites every sincere Bible reader to do what the podcast title suggests: read the Bible as you believe it.

The Podcast’s Core Revelation: Four Servant Songs, One Consistent Subject

The interview focused on Isaiah 40–55 (often called Deutero-Isaiah or Second Isaiah). These chapters form a cohesive literary unit of comfort and redemption after the Babylonian exile. Within them are four “Servant Songs.” The fourth song (Isaiah 52:13–53:12) is famous in Christian circles. But as Singer emphasized, you cannot rip it from its context.

Here are the explicit identifications of the servant spoken about or directly referenced in the podcast and surrounding discussion:

Explicit Servant Passages in Isaiah 40–55

• Isaiah 41:8-9 “But you, Israel, My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, descendant of Abraham My friend, you whom I have taken from the ends of the earth… and said to you, ‘You are My servant, I have chosen you and not rejected you.’”
• Isaiah 43:10 “You are My witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and My servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe Me and understand that I am He.”
• Isaiah 44:1-2, 21 “But now listen, Jacob, My servant, Israel, whom I have chosen… Do not fear, Jacob, my servant… I have formed you; you are My servant, Israel; you will not be forgotten by Me.”
• Isaiah 45:4 “For the sake of My servant Jacob, and Israel My chosen one, I have called you by your name; I have given you a title of honor, though you have not known Me.” (Addressed to Cyrus, but for Israel’s sake.)
• Isaiah 48:20 “Go forth from Babylon… The Lord has redeemed His servant Jacob.”
• Isaiah 49:3 “He said to Me, ‘You are My servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.’”

These are not ambiguous. The prophet repeatedly names Israel/Jacob as the servant. The podcast highlighted how Christian readings of Isaiah 53 often skip these explicit markers and the entire preceding context of comfort to Jerusalem (Isaiah 40:1-2) and redemption from exile.

Rabbi Singer noted that, on his count, there are multiple direct instances in which the servant is identified as Israel in these chapters. The fourth song continues the same story: the servant who was despised and afflicted will be exalted, and the nations will be astonished.

The Holy Arm Bared Before All Nations — Isaiah 52:9-10

The podcast opened a key window with Isaiah 52:9-10:

“Break forth, shout together for joy, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has bared His holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.”

This is the immediate prelude to the famous “servant” description in 52:13–53:12. The holy arm is not a new concept. It echoes the Exodus:

“Therefore, say to the children of Israel: I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians… with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm…” (Exodus 6:6)

Throughout the Tanach, when Hashem reveals His arm or mighty hand, it is to redeem Israel in the sight of the nations. The podcast connected this directly: the salvation the nations witness is Israel’s redemption and restoration. The “arm of the Lord” (Isaiah 53:1) is revealed in the vindication of the servant people.

Classical commentary connection: Rashi and others tie the “arm of the Lord” language to the visible, public redemption of Israel that causes the nations to reconsider their previous assumptions about Israel’s suffering.

Isaiah 53 in Context: The Nations’ Astonishment at Israel’s Vindication

When the full context is restored, Isaiah 53 becomes the nations’ stunned realization:

“Who would have believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” (Isaiah 53:1)

The “we” in verses 4-6 (“Surely our diseases he did bear… the chastisement of our peace was upon him…”) is the nations speaking. They confess that what they thought was Israel being punished by God for its own sins was actually part of a larger divine plan. Through Israel’s suffering and survival, the world comes to know the true God and, ultimately, peace and healing.

Rashi’s Commentary

Rashi’s commentary on Isaiah 53 (widely influential) reads the chapter as referring to Israel:

• Verse 3: The servant “was despised and forsaken of men” — Israel in exile.
• Verse 4: “Surely our diseases he did bear” — The nations admit that Israel’s afflictions brought atonement or peace to the world (or that they had misjudged the cause of Israel’s suffering).
• The servant “shall see offspring; he shall prolong his days” (v. 10) — The nation survives and thrives after seeming destruction.

Rashi’s approach was not isolated. While some earlier midrashim and Targum Jonathan lean toward a messianic or individual reading in certain verses, the plain contextual reading championed by Rashi, Ibn Ezra (in many passages), and later rationalists consistently identifies the subject as the people of Israel. Abarbanel, writing after the expulsion from Spain, frames these chapters within the grand arc of Israel’s national redemption and ingathering — even while engaging messianic hopes.

Baal HaTurim (Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher), known for his precise textual and gematria insights, would appreciate how the literary structure of Isaiah 40–55 creates unbreakable links between the named servant (Israel) and the suffering/exalted figure of chapter 53. The repetition of key roots and phrases binds the unit together — a chiastic or intertextual “hyperlink” style beloved in Torah study.

The servant survives (“prolong his days”), sees “offspring,” and is “exalted” (52:13). This does not describe a crucified individual who dies young without physical descendants in the plain sense. It describes a people who endure exile, appear destroyed, and are miraculously restored — exactly Israel’s story.

Broader Tanach: Israel Is Consistently the Subject

The podcast’s insight scales across the entire Tanach. Israel is:

• Firstborn Son: “Thus says the Lord: Israel is My son, My firstborn” (Exodus 4:22). Hosea 11:1 applies the same language to the nation’s exodus from Egypt.
• Bride / Wife: The prophets repeatedly portray the covenant as a marriage. Hosea is commanded to marry a wayward wife as a living parable of Hashem and Israel. Ezekiel 16 tells the story of Jerusalem as an abandoned infant whom God marries and adorns. Song of Songs is traditionally read as the love song between God and Israel (or the community of Israel).
• Witnesses: Isaiah 43:10 and 44:8 explicitly call Israel “My witnesses.” They are the living testimony to the one true God in history.
• Light to the Nations: “I will make you a light of the nations, to bring My salvation to the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6; also 42:6, 60:1-3). Zechariah 8:23 envisions ten men from the nations grabbing the cloak of a Jew, saying, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”

Nowhere does the Tanach transfer these titles to another people, another religion, or an individual detached from the covenant nation as a replacement. The subject remains Israel — sometimes the whole nation, sometimes the faithful remnant — through whom the nations are ultimately blessed (Genesis 12:3; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14).

History and Archaeology Confirm the Narrative

The suffering-servant story is not abstract theology. It is Israel’s biography:

• Babylonian Exile and Return: Isaiah 45 names Cyrus as the one who would allow the return — a prophecy so precise that some critics claim it must be post-event. The Cyrus Cylinder (discovered in 1879) confirms the historical policy: Cyrus allowed exiled peoples to return to their homelands and rebuild temples. Judah’s return under Ezra and Nehemiah matches the prophetic hope.
• The Great Isaiah Scroll (Dead Sea Scrolls): Dated to approximately 125–100 BCE, this nearly complete manuscript of Isaiah is virtually identical to the Masoretic Text used today. There has been no Christian-era tampering with the text. The servant songs stand exactly as they have for over 2,000 years.
• Merneptah Stele (~1200 BCE): The earliest extra-biblical mention of “Israel” as a people in Canaan.
• Assyrian and Babylonian records corroborate the exiles of the northern and southern kingdoms.
• Modern era: The rebirth of the State of Israel in 1948, the ingathering of exiles from over 100 countries, the survival against overwhelming odds in multiple wars, and the astonishing technological and agricultural contributions to the world — all while facing global opposition — mirror the “who would have believed our report?” astonishment of Isaiah 53.

Archaeology and history do not “prove” theology, but they demonstrate that the Tanach’s subject — a specific people with a specific covenant and a specific land — has a continuous, verifiable story unlike any other.

What Changes When We Read with Israel as the Subject?

Everything.

• Atonement and Forgiveness: The Tanach teaches forgiveness through repentance, justice, and returning to God (Isaiah 1:27 — “Zion shall be redeemed with justice and righteousness”; Isaiah 55:6-9 — “Let the wicked forsake his way… for He will abundantly pardon”). The podcast contrasted this with later claims that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22), a principle absent from the Tanach’s plain teaching on repentance.
• Monotheism: Isaiah 45:5-7 declares that Hashem creates light and darkness, peace and evil (calamity) — radical ethical monotheism. No dualism or trinity.
• Afterlife and Resurrection: Rare but present (Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2). Not used as threats of eternal torment in the same way later developed.
• Prophecy and Current Events: The ingathering, the survival of Israel, the nations’ mixed reactions — these are not footnotes. They are the continuation of the servant’s story.

Practical Invitation

Rabbi Tovia Singer’s conversation with the ex-pastor models intellectual honesty and textual fidelity. It does not attack faith — it calls people back to the text they claim to revere.

If you are a pastor, a Christian reader, or anyone who loves the Bible:

1. Read Isaiah 40–55 in one sitting.
2. Note every time “My servant,” “Jacob,” “Israel,” “Zion,” or “Jerusalem” appears.
3. Ask: Does the text ever change its subject?
4. Compare with classical Jewish commentaries on Sefaria (Rashi on Isaiah is eye-opening).
5. Watch the full interview: Search “Ex-Pastor Powerful interview with Rabbi Tovia Singer on Isaiah 53” on YouTube (Tovia Singer channel).

The Tanach is not a wax nose to be shaped into later theologies. It is a coherent revelation with a consistent protagonist: the people of Israel, through whom the knowledge of the one God and ultimate redemption flow to all humanity.

When pastors and believers read it this way — as they say they believe it — the beauty, the faithfulness, and the living reality of God’s covenant with Israel become unmistakable.

May we all merit to see the full vindication of the servant, when “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9).

• The Suffering Servant: Israel as the True Embodiment of Isaiah 53
• Milestone 19: The Lord Descending in Power upon Sinai on the Third Day
• The Torah: A Book Like No Other – October 7 Prophecy & The Tree of Life Blueprint
• The Fourth Commandment in Toldot: “Stay With Laban a Few Days” – The First Shabbat in Exile
• The Jewish Prophets Words

A War Is Coming – Purim Is Coming

In a powerful recent interview, Baba Baruch Abuhatzeira — son of the revered Moroccan-Israeli tzaddik and miracle-worker known as the Baba Sali (Rabbi Israel Abuhatzeira) — shared a dream message he received from his father about the current war and its trajectory.

The core message is stark and clear: The Jewish nation must stand alone. “Don’t trust anybody,” the dream conveyed. Even if political figures (explicitly including hopes pinned on leaders like President Trump) appear supportive for a time, betrayal or a new problem from elsewhere will arise. The Jewish people cannot ultimately rely on any human alliance or superpower. They must place their complete trust in God alone — echoing the words of the prophet Balaam in the Torah.

Baba Baruch emphasized that we are already in (or at the threshold of) the War of Gog and Magog. From this war, Mashiach will come. The current conflict with Iran and its proxies is not an isolated event or a pause that ends the story; it is part of a larger, divinely orchestrated process leading to the final redemption. “We’re at the very precipice. We’re at the very end. And it’s coming very quickly.”

A striking call to spiritual posture runs through the teaching: Calm down. Nobody should have fear. What is coming will be very scary, but fear itself is the wrong response. The key avodah (spiritual work) is emunah — perfect faith and confidence in God. The three-stage path outlined is Aleph (Emunah/faith), Bet (praise or the corresponding step of drawing close), and Gimel (Geulah/redemption).

The Purim Story: The Living Template

The Purim story is invoked as a living template. Just as in the days of Esther and Mordechai, when the Jewish people faced a decree of annihilation, divine justice operates on a higher plane. The one who “sells” or betrays the Jews ultimately faces ruin. Mordechai’s charge to Esther — “for such a time as this” —

And Esther’s courageous decision to act (“if I perish, I perish”) models the call to rise to the moment. The user’s phrasing “Choose this day, as Esther was told by Mordechai, her uncle” beautifully captures this urgency: now is the time to choose emunah, to act with bold trust in the divine plan rather than human calculations, and to recognize that the redemption process is already unfolding.

Rabbi Aron Sokol’s commentary (in the broader context of these discussions) underscores the imminence and the spiritual demand of the hour. These events are not random geopolitics; they are the labor pains of Geulah. The world — and especially the Jewish people — must awaken to the reality that only God is orchestrating the outcome. Reliance on any other power is illusory. The call is for inner preparation: emunah that produces calm even when headlines terrify, and a recognition that the war itself is the vehicle through which God’s name will ultimately be sanctified.

October 7th 2023, Simchat Torah

Events chronicled in “The Star of Jacob” series and since the prophetic stirrings around the Star of Jacob. Since October 7, 2023 (the Simchat Torah attack that shattered the calendar), every major development has aligned with the trajectory these sages describe. The surprise assault on peaceful civilians at the Nova festival and in unwalled communities directly echoes the prophetic description of an attack on a “quiet people who dwell securely… without walls, bars, or gates.”

The war rapidly expanded to multiple fronts — Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen (Houthis), and direct Iranian missile barrages — drawing in the coalition forces foretold. Israel has been forced to stand increasingly alone, relying on its own strength and, ultimately, on divine protection amid shifting international support.

The Star Of Jacob

In the writings and teachings of “The Star of Jacob” (including on beithashoavah.org), these events are presented as the visible unfolding of Balaam’s ancient prophecy (Numbers 24:17): “A star shall come out of Jacob…” The light of redemption is rising from Jacob even in — and through — the darkness of war.

Torah codes researched and presented by Rabbi Matityahu Glazerson have repeatedly surfaced hidden references to “October 7,” “Hamas invasion,” “Iran,” “Gog,” “Magog,” and “Magog begins,” clustered with statistically extraordinary significance alongside terms of redemption and Messiah. Recent 5786 (2026) matrices link Iran threats/war, repentance (teshuvah), and the appearance of Mashiach patterns, especially around Adar, Nisan/Passover, and Purim themes — hidden miracles in the end-times pattern.

The Zohar End Times

The Zohar speaks of the end-times judgment of the nations, dovetailing with Ezekiel’s Gog and Magog prophecy (particularly in connection with parashat Tzav and related sections). The current global upheaval and the way God’s hand has been seen in Israel’s survival and operations are viewed by many as the beginning of that sanctification of the Divine Name among the nations.

The “Star of Jacob” series has tracked how these codes, celestial and prophetic stirrings (including anticipations around signs in 2024), family and national return narratives, and the ongoing wars form one coherent redemptive arc: exile’s sins addressed, ingathering underway, trials intensifying, and the light of Mashiach emerging.

Rabbi Tovia Singer’s commentary on Gog u Magog (with Rabbi Aron Sokol)

In a companion teaching, Rabbi Tovia Singer (joined by Rabbi Aron Sokol) delivers a clear, text-driven explanation of Ezekiel 38–39 for the Yeshiva world and beyond. He stresses that these prophecies could not be fully understood for most of history; only in our generation — with the miraculous return of the Jewish people to a sovereign land after long desolation, and with modern Iran (Persia) as a central adversary — do the details snap into focus.

How to Understand the Prophets

Tanakh frequently reveals the ultimate outcome or grand vision first, then backs up to fill in the details and the process. Ezekiel 37 gives the breathtaking Messianic overview: the dry bones vision (national revival and ingathering), the two sticks (Judah and Joseph/Ephraim) becoming one under a single Davidic king (Mashiach), full observance of the Torah, and the building of the eternal Temple/covenant. Only after this overview does the text detail the war of Gog and Magog that occurs in the “latter years/days” as part of that redemptive process

The Prophets Speak

• Ezekiel 37 (full context): Dry bones (37:1-14) — restoration of the people as a living nation/army. Two sticks united (37:15-28) — Mashiach ben David reigns; all Israel keeps Torah and mitzvot; an everlasting covenant of peace; the Temple rebuilt in their midst. “My servant David shall be king over them… I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”
• Ezekiel 38:4 — “I will turn you around and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out…” God Himself draws the coalition into the conflict for His purposes.
• Ezekiel 38:5 — Persia, Cush, and Put are listed; Persia (Iran) is named explicitly as the chief or leading element in the adversarial coalition.
• Ezekiel 38:8 — “In the latter years you will come into the land that is restored from war, the land whose people were gathered from many peoples upon the mountains of Israel, which had been a continual waste…” The Jews return after exile (caused by their sins), the land is no longer desolate, and they dwell there.
• Ezekiel 38:8-9 — The returned people are attacked after having recovered/returned from great wars and desolation. The land had long been waste because of sin and expulsion.
• Ezekiel 38:11 — The invaders say: “I will go up against the land of unwalled villages… against a quiet/people at ease who dwell securely, all of them dwelling without walls and having no bars or gates.” Rabbi Singer directly connects this to the October 7 attack on peaceful civilians singing and dancing at an unwalled festival site.
• Ezekiel 39 (especially 39:4, 9-10, 12, 21-23) — Utter defeat of the invaders on the mountains of Israel. Weapons provide firewood for seven years; the dead are buried for over seven months. The nations see God’s glory and judgment. “The house of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God from that day forward. And the nations shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity… now I have gathered them to their own land… and I will not hide My face from them anymore.”

Ancient Persia and The War

Ancient Persia and the war Tovia brings to the Yeshiva world: Historically, Persia under Cyrus the Great was the most benevolent of the empires toward the Jewish people after the Babylonian exile. Cyrus is explicitly called “His anointed” (mashiach) in Isaiah 45:1 and issues the famous decree allowing the Jews to return and rebuild the Temple (Ezra 1, etc.).

This sets up the profound prophetic irony: the same nation whose ancient king facilitated the first return and Temple becomes, in the end times, the named head of the coalition attacking the restored Jewish people in their land. Rabbi Singer brings this to the Yeshiva world precisely because these Nevi’im passages are no longer abstract — they now describe realities that are visible. He urges that they be taught seriously in yeshivot rather than sidelined.

Tovia notes that many leading Torah sages (“every giant/gadol”) affirm that we are already in the Geulah (redemption) process. The return to the land, the wars, the miracles of survival, and the global attention all point to the unfolding of the prophets’ words.

God uses even Iran — despite its current enmity — for larger redemptive purposes; after the defeat, the teaching suggests, Iran’s people may turn toward the God of Israel, and the world will witness and do teshuvah. The ultimate result is the sanctification of God’s name and Israel’s full recognition of their God who had hidden His face during the exile but now brings them home permanently.

Two Teachings

These two teachings — the intimate, urgent message from Baba Sali via his son and Rabbi Tovia Singer’s clear textual walkthrough with Rabbi Aron Sokol — complement each other powerfully. The Jewish people are called to stand alone in emunah, without fear, choosing this day to trust God completely (as Esther and Mordechai modeled). The war of Gog and Magog is the mechanism through which the final redemption emerges; the nations recognize the hand of Heaven, and Israel knows their God in a new and permanent way.

May we merit to see the complete Geulah — Mashiach, the rebuilt Temple, universal knowledge of God, and true peace — speedily in our days. The prophecies are not meant to frighten but to strengthen emunah and guide us through the birth pangs into the light of the Star of Jacob.

• History Through Truth: Why We Must Trust the Torah Over Science
• October Seventh – The Holiday That Broke the Calendar
• Chapter Nine: Codes That Don’t Lie – Glazerson’s Torah Oracle
• From Messianic Jew to Ally: My 21-Year Journey with Tovia Singer and Tamar Yonah
• From Counter-Missionary to Ally: My 21-Year Journey with Tovia Singer and Tamar Yonah

Hosea 3:4-5 (Tanakh): “For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, without a sacrifice, and without an image [or pillar], and without an ephod, and without teraphim. Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the LORD their God, and David their king; and shall fear the LORD and His goodness in the latter days.”

This passage forms part of a symbolic drama: Hosea taking back an unfaithful wife, mirroring God’s relationship with Israel. The “many days” describe a prolonged judgment on the northern kingdom (and by extension all Israel) for idolatry and covenant-breaking—lacking legitimate leadership, Temple worship, and even pagan substitutes.

If Christianity (and Islam) Fulfill the Bible’s Promises—How Do They Fit the Prophecies?

A common claim asserts that Jesus provides the King, High Priest, and final Sacrifice, with the Church as the “new Temple,” supposedly fulfilling or ending the old system before 70 CE. Islam similarly positions itself as the final Abrahamic correction. Yet applying Dr. Robert Carter’s Four Questions reveals the claim has no solid basis and lacks developmental time within the prophetic framework. The fit collapses under honest scrutiny.

1. How did the claim arise? It stems from typological re-readings—projecting New Testament (and Quranic) lenses backward onto Tanakh texts like Daniel 9 and Hosea 3. Christianity sees Jesus ending the sacrificial order; Islam views Muhammad as sealing the prophets. Both emerged centuries after the biblical prophets, in contexts distant from Israel’s land, language, and covenant. This is classic anachronistic eisegesis rather than letting the prophets speak on their own terms.

2. What does the full picture actually show? The Tanakh presents a consistent arc: exile and deprivation (Hosea 3:4) as judgment and purification, followed by national repentance, ingathering, and restoration under a Davidic king with a physical Temple, priesthood, and sacrifices in the latter days (Ezekiel 40–48; Zechariah 14; Isaiah 2, 11, 60–66). Hallmarks include:

• Visible return of God’s Glory to a House in Jerusalem.
• A life-giving river flowing eastward from the Temple.
• Tribal land reallocation and Gentiles attaching to Israel (not replacing her — Isaiah 56:3-7).
• Elevation of Torah as light to the nations, not obsolescence.

Systems Developed Sincere Parallals

Christian and Islamic systems developed sincere parallel traditions but lack these covenantal specifics: no Davidic monarchy over restored Israel, no Third Temple with Zadokite service and altar, no full land boundaries or universal Torah from Zion. Their spiritualized “fulfillments” require redefining plain prophetic language.

3. & 4. Contextual/Historical Analysis and Implications for Torah Continuity The historical timeline exposes the mismatch: nearly 2,000 years since 70 CE with no restoration markers, yet Jewish identity and Torah observance preserved amid dispersion. Ezekiel’s measurements (vast square complex dwarfing Solomon’s, with precise gates, chambers, and river) have no counterpart in Church institutions or Islamic holy sites. Forcing a fit ignores priestly genealogies (Kohanim/DNA lines), Shabbat/halakhah continuity, and the prophets’ call to return to Torah (not transcend it).

Implication: These traditions reflect partial truths borrowed from the root and human longing for redemption, but they do not satisfy the blueprint. True fulfillment awaits the “latter days”—Third Temple, Mashiach ben David, and all flesh knowing YHWH—consistent with the Star of Jacob rising over Jacob’s descendants (Numbers 24:17). Archaeology (Vendyl Jones), DNA (Jeanson’s Traced), gematria, and chiastic structures affirm Israel’s ongoing role, not replacement.

Jewish Perspective on Fulfillment

This prophecy describes historical reality after the First Temple (586 BCE) and especially the Second (70 CE):

• No king: Davidic line ended; no independent Jewish sovereign (Herod was not Davidic).
• No Temple/sacrifices: Central altar worship ceased. Rabbinic Judaism adapted with prayer, study, and mitzvot (Hosea 14:2).
• No functioning priesthood: Kohanim retain genealogy but lack Urim/Thummim and sacrifices.
• “Many days”: ~1,950+ years, fitting the latter-days return to seek “David their king.”

Historical Perspective on Fulfillment

From a traditional Jewish viewpoint (aligned with your role as Hazan and Torah teacher), this prophecy describes the historical reality of the Jewish people after the destruction of the First Temple (586 BCE) and especially the Second Temple (70 CE):

• No king: The Davidic monarchy ended with the Babylonian exile; no independent Jewish king since then (Herod was Idumean, not Davidic).
• No Temple/sacrifices: The central sanctuary and altar-based sacrifices ceased in 70 CE. Rabbinic Judaism shifted to prayer, study, and mitzvot as substitutes (per Hosea 14:2 and prophets).
• No functioning priesthood (ephod/priestly service): The Kohanim’s Temple role ended; genealogical claims persist but without sacrifices or Urim/Thummim.
• “Many days”: This has lasted ~1,950+ years since 70 CE, fitting the “latter days” return and seeking “David their king” (messianic hope).

This underscores exile, preservation amid dispersion, and future redemption with the Third Temple and Mashiach. It does not transfer these roles to another people or institution.

The Church Question

Christianity developed its own institutions (earthly kings/popes, Eucharist as memorial/re-presentation, spiritual Temple in believers). These lack continuity with Hosea’s Torah system—no literal Davidic national king, no physical altar with Levitical sacrifices. The distinction between original covenant and later adaptations remains clear.

Beloved readers, family, prison ministry friends, and those tracing crypto-Jewish roots: Torah words create worlds with precision—not vague spiritualizations. The prophets call us back to the Tree of Life blueprint. What “receipts” do we see in history and today? Study, observe mitzvot, and await the Glory returning to Zion.

Questions for Reflection: How does this align with your family DNA journey or Parsha insights? Share below or request study guides/PDFs at beithashoavah.org.

Shabbat Shalom u’Mevorach — Am Israel Chai! Hazan Gavriel ben David

• A Jewish Perspective on the Spiritual War and Hashem’s End from the Beginning
• Milestone 17: Hosea’s Plea that the Lord Would Grant Life to Repentant Israel on the Third Day
• To Strengthen Judah. 2 Chronicles 11:17
• About
• The True Story of King David: Unraveling Misconceptions in Jewish Tradition

You stood at Har Sinai (Mount Sinai). You heard the voice of יְהוָה (Hashem) declare: “אָנֹכִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ” — “I am the Lord your God.” You entered the covenant. You received the Torah. In Jewish tradition, there is also the concept of Mashiach ben Yosef, a precursor to the final redemption. You know there is only One Redeemer, only One who fulfills the promises to David at the end of days—מָשִׁיחַ בֶּן־דָּוִד (Mashiach ben David).

Yet generation after generation, when people do not know the Torah’s living timeline or the context of מָשִׁיחַ בֶּן־יוֹסֵף (Mashiach ben Yosef), they create a false messiah—again and again. They take prophecies meant for the end of days, when Israel is once more a sovereign nation in her land, and force them onto a man who lived 2,000 years ago. This is not an interpretation. This is עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה (avodah zarah)—idolatry. It replaces the covenant you received at Sinai with a human-centered story that cannot fulfill the conditions the prophets laid out.

The Torah itself warns us. Its very sentences align with the years of history, speaking directly to our generation.

The Secret of the Sentences: 5708 / 1948 — The Ingathering Begins

Count the verses of the Torah from the beginning. The 5,708th verse is in סֵפֶר דְּבָרִים (Sefer Devarim / Deuteronomy) פֶּרֶק ל פָּסוּק ג:

וְשָׁב יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֶת־שְׁבוּתְךָ וְרִחֲמֶךָ וְשָׁב וְקִבֶּצְךָ מִכָּל־הָעַמִּים אֲשֶׁר הֱפִיצְךָ יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ שָׁמָּה V’shav Hashem Elohecha et-shvut’cha v’richamecha v’shav v’kibetzecha mikol-ha’amim asher hefitzecha Hashem Elohecha shamah. “Then the Lord your God will restore your captivity and have compassion on you, and He will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you.”

This is the Hebrew year 5708—1948 in the Gregorian calendar. The modern State of Israel was reborn. The ingathering of exiles began after 2,000 years. This is the physical, preparatory stage—מָשִׁיחַ בֶּן־יוֹסֵף as the era of building, defending, and returning to the land. It fulfills the covenant conditions you received at Sinai: return, compassion, gathering.

5783–5784: The Verse of Horror and the Call to Wisdom

Move forward to the years leading up to 7 October 2023 (Simchat Torah 5784). The verses aligned with 5783–5784 describe the violation and suffering of the old and the young together—exactly matching the reported atrocities of that day. In the same chapter, דְּבָרִים לב:כט declares:

לוּ חָכְמוּ יַשְׂכִּילוּ זֹאת יָבִינוּ לְאַחֲרִיתָם Lu chachmu yaskilu zot yavinu l’achritam. “If only they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern their latter end.”

The Torah is not speaking of events 2,000 years ago. It is speaking to the end of days, when Israel is a nation again, when Jerusalem is in Jewish hands, and when a catastrophic attack brings national mourning and awakening. This is the process of מָשִׁיחַ בֶּן־יוֹסֵף.

Zechariah 12 and Mashiach ben Yosef: The End-of-Days Reality

זְכַרְיָה יב:י (Zechariah 12:10) describes the end-times war when nations attack restored Israel:

וְשָׁפַכְתִּי עַל־בֵּית דָּוִיד וְעַל יוֹשֵׁב יְרוּשָׁלִָם רוּחַ חֵן וְתַחֲנוּנִים וְהִבִּיטוּ אֵלַי אֵת אֲשֶׁר־דָּקָרוּ וְסָפְדוּ עָלָיו כְּמִסְפֵּד עַל־הַיָּחִיד V’shafachti al-beit David v’al yoshev Yerushalayim ruach chen v’tachnunim v’hibit u elai et asher-dakaru v’safdu alav k’misped al-ha-yachid. “I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication, so that they will look to Me concerning those whom they have pierced through, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only son…”

The Talmud (סוכה נב ע״א — Sukkah 52a) explicitly links this mourning to מָשִׁיחַ בֶּן־יוֹסֵף who is slain in the war of the end times. Rabbi Tovia Singer explains with crystal clarity: this is not one individual man centuries ago. דָּקָרוּ is plural—“those who have been thrust through.” It refers to the many Jews killed in a horrific end-times attack on a restored Jewish state in the land. The mourning unifies the nation and turns hearts back to Hashem, paving the way for מָשִׁיחַ בֶּן־דָּוִד.

October 7, 2023—on Simchat Torah, when Israel is once again a sovereign nation—fits this prophetic pattern. It is part of the חֶבְלֵי מָשִׁיחַ (birth pangs of the Messiah), not a fulfillment 2,000 years ago.

Why Misreading Creates a False Messiah — Again and Again — And Why It Is Idolatry

When people do not know the lecture—the full context of the Torah, the Talmud, Zechariah in the end-of-days setting when Israel is a nation—they create a false messiah. They take verses meant for the future war, mourning, and national return, and apply them to a man who died before Israel was restored, before the conditions of the prophets were met.

This is עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה. It elevates a human figure (or a misidentified past event) as the ultimate redeemer, violating the covenant you received at Sinai: “You shall have no other gods before Me.” It replaces the One who spoke from the fire with a story that cannot fulfill the ingathering, the Temple, universal knowledge of Hashem, or world peace—prophecies still unfulfilled.

The pattern repeats because people skip the plain reading and the rabbinic sources. They create a “suffering servant” who has already come, rather than seeing the collective suffering and awakening of מָשִׁיחַ בֶּן־יוֹסֵף in our time. This is not scholarship. This is idolatry dressed in proof-texts.

Miracles of Timing and the Living Torah

As Rabbi Uri Pilichowski teaches, miracles are often defined by when they occur. The splitting of the sea happened at the exact moment of greatest need. So too the rebirth of Israel in 1948, the victories since, and the alignment of Torah verses with these years. Rabbi Matityahu Glazerson’s Torah codes reveal “Seventh of October,” Gog and Magog patterns, and redemption timelines—all pointing to now.

You who stood at Sinai know: the Torah is alive. Its sentences speak to our generation because we are in the end of days when Israel is a nation again.

The Call: Teshuvah, Receipts, and Covenant Renewal

The Torah does not leave us in despair. It calls us to תְּשׁוּבָה (teshuvah)—return. It demands receipts: fidelity, Torah study, love of neighbor, and building for redemption. Strengthen your families. Teach your children. Unite as one people.

Do not create another false messiah. Do not repeat the idolatry of the ages. Read the sources in context. See Zechariah 12 and the Talmud for what they are—end-of-days prophecy for a restored Israel.

The redemption is unfolding. The birth pangs are real. The covenant you received at Sinai still stands.

May we merit to see the full geulah speedily in our days.

Hazan Gavriel ben David Esnoga Beit HaShoavah • beithashoavah.org

• The Torah’s Living Timeline: Verses That Speak Our Generation’s Story – From 1948 to October 7 and Beyond
• From Messianic Jew to Ally: My 21-Year Journey with Tovia Singer and Tamar Yonah
• From Counter-Missionary to Ally: My 21-Year Journey with Tovia Singer and Tamar Yonah
• From Shadows to Truth: My Journey Back to Torah – Exposing the Replacement Lie in Messianic Teachings
• Toldot Consequences Book 1

I would like to examine the claim written in a book and taught in the highest Colleges and Seminaries. Here is their evidence:

Milestone 20: Moses Sees the Glory of God after Having Offered Himself to the Lord as a Substitute for the Sins of the People on the Third Day After the Sin of the Golden Calf “On the next day Moses said to the people, ‘You have committed a great sin; and now I am going up to the Lord, perhaps I can make atonement for your sin” (Exod 32:30). Moses was the prophet of God, mighty in words and deeds (Acts 7:22).

He was in the presence of God for forty days and nights during which he neither ate bread nor drank water (Exod 34:28). Moses had worked many mighty signs before the people. The beginning of his signs was turning water into blood, the emblem of death (Exod 7:20). At his word darkness came into Egypt (Exod 10:21–22), but Moses gave light to the people in Goshen (Exod 10:23), that they might not stumble in darkness.

Moses caused Israel to slay the Passover Lamb (Exod 12:6) and to partake of a feast to celebrate the liberty God was giving them through his prophet (Exod 12:14). Moses led the people through the baptismal waters of the sea, and gave the people bread in the wilderness, and likewise a spiritual drink from the rock (1 Cor 10:1–4). He had come to his own people in bondage with the promise of liberty in a well-favored land of a good and pleasant inheritance. But this great prophet was disregarded by Israel.

“Who made you a prince to rule over us?” they said (Exod 2:14). They considered him a slight thing, and thought him dead after his separation from them for forty days. Although he had worked so many signs in their midst, they said, “We know not what has become of him” (Exod 32:1). And so they rejected the God of Moses and made themselves a god of gold (Exod 32:31).

Even the Levites and the High Priest Aaron revolted against God and his prophet. They fashioned a golden god and Aaron said, “This is Yahweh, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt” (Exod 32:4). The next day they made a feast to “Yahweh,” and sacrificed to their god (Exod 32:5). But Moses came down from the mount and saw the disobedience of the people. Moses had brought with him the word of God written on tablets of stone (Exod 32:15–16).

In great wrath, Moses broke the word of God written on stone because of the disobedience of the people (Exod 32:19). Moses in great anger ground their golden god into powder and made the people partake of the bitter communion of “Yahweh,” their idol abomination (Exod 32:20). Then great judgment came into the camp and three thousand died that one day (Exod 32:28). On the morrow of the third day after Israel’s great idolatry, Moses went up to God on the mountain to make intercession for the sins of the people, to make atonement for them (Exod 32:30).

He offered to take their judgment upon himself if only God would spare the people and forgive them their great sin (Exod 32:31–32). So God listened to his prophet’s plea and Israel passed from death to life that day. God forgave his people, and swore to go before them to bring them at last to the inheritance he had promised their fathers (Exod 32:34). Afterward God took Moses and revealed his glory to him. The Lord came in power that day, and spoke of his justice and mercy (Exod 34:6–7).

God’s prophet was entombed within a cleft in the rock as God’s glory was manifested to him (Exod 33:22). When Moses came forth from the rock, he had seen God’s glory. And God wrote again his word on the tablets of stone and gave them to Moses (Exod 34:1). So Moses took the word of God, which had been broken but was now restored whole, and placed it in the Ark within the tent of meeting (Deut 10:2), that the word of God might tabernacle among his people, that they might behold his glory (Exod 40:34–35).

And thus the word of God, now no longer broken, was restored to them, and dwelt among them (Exod 40:36–38). Now in the fullness of time the Lord Jesus came as a prophet like Moses, according to the word of the Lord (Deut 18:18). He was a prophet who was mighty in deed and word (Luke 24:19). Now Jesus was in the presence of the Lord for forty days and nights during which he fasted (Matt 4:2). Jesus worked many miracles, wonders and signs in the midst of the people (Acts 2:22).

The beginning of his signs was turning water into wine, the emblem of life and joy (John 2:7–11). He came into darkness as a light unto men (John 1:9), that they might not stumble in the night (John 11:10). He was the Passover Lamb slain for his people (1 Cor 5:7), who became a feast to them to celebrate the freedom for which he had made his people free (Gal 5:1). Further, Jesus caused his people to be baptized (Matt 28:19) and gave them a spiritual bread and a spiritual drink (1 Cor 10:1–4; cf. 11:23–26).

He promised his own people liberty and the possession of a good and pleasant inheritance (John 14:2). But even so great a prophet as Jesus was despised by Israel. “We will not have this man to rule over us,” they said (Luke 19:14). “Away with him! Crucify him!” they cried (John 19:15). Although he had worked so many signs among them (John 20:30), they called him a deceiver (Matt 27:63). And so they sold cheap the Christ of God, not for gold, but for silver (Matt 26:15). Even the Levites and the High Priest of Aaron’s line joined in the sacrilege (Mark 14:53–64).

And so they prepared him as a lamb for the sacrifice that Passover, even a sacrifice to Yahweh. Jesus, who was the word of God made flesh, now suffered his own flesh to be broken for the sacrifice (1 Cor 11:24). In great wrath against the sin of his people, God crushed Jesus according to the prophecy (Isa 53:10). His body was made into emblematic bread, his blood made into emblematic wine, and the people of God were invited to partake of the feast of Christ (1 Cor 11:24–26).

And so great blessing came upon the people because of the sacrifice, and thereafter three thousand were saved on one day (Acts 2:41). Now Christ was laid in a tomb hewed out as a cleft in the rock (Luke 23:53). But on the morning of the third day after Israel’s great apostasy, Jesus arose in glory, having interceded for his people (John 17:9) and having accomplished their atonement (Rom 5:11), and having offered himself in their place if God would spare his people and forgive them their great sin.

And so his people passed from death to life that day (2 Tim 1:10). God forgave his people, and promised them a heavenly inheritance (Heb 11:16, 39–40). And just as the word of God written on the tablets of stone and broken for the sins of the people was restored, so Jesus, who is the word of God, was likewise broken in death for the sins of his people. But God restored him in resurrection. And soon the tabernacle of God will be among men, and we will dwell with him forever (Rev 21:3).

Gage, W. A. (2011). Milestones to Emmaus: The Third Day Resurrection in the Old Testament (pp. 51–54). Warren A. Gage.

Rabbi Gottlieb’s Golden Calf Analysis – A Deeper Exploration

Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb’s teaching on the Golden Calf (available on SimpleToRemember.com) is one of the most careful and honest examinations of Exodus 32 in the English-speaking world. His analysis challenges both the traditional Christian typological reading (which Warren Gage relies on) and some overly harsh Jewish interpretations.

Here is a clear summary of Rabbi Gottlieb’s main points, followed by how they impact Milestone 20 and the larger “Blueprint” argument.

1. The People Were Not Trying to Replace God

A common reading (both Christian and some Jewish) portrays the Golden Calf as a complete rejection of Hashem in favor of pagan idolatry. Rabbi Gottlieb argues this is not accurate.

• The people said: “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4). They were still using God’s name.
• They were terrified because Moses had been gone for 40 days. They assumed he was dead.
• They were desperately trying to create a visible mediator to stand between them and God — something tangible they could see and follow, since their human leader (Moses) appeared to be gone.

In other words, the sin was not primarily idolatry in the pagan sense but impatience, lack of trust, and the creation of a substitute mediator.

2. Aaron’s Role Was More Complex Than Often Taught

Rabbi Gottlieb points out that Aaron was in an impossible situation. He tried to stall the people (“Tomorrow is a festival to the Lord”) and even tried to redirect their energy. While Aaron clearly sinned, the text does not present him as a willing architect of full-blown idolatry. He was managing a crisis.

3. The Nature of the Sin

According to Rabbi Gottlieb, the core sin was:

• Creating a substitute for God’s chosen leadership and timing.
• Refusing to wait and trust in the process God had established (Moses on the mountain).
• Attempting to control the relationship with God on their own terms rather than submitting to the covenant structure.

This is very different from the Christian reading that often presents the Golden Calf as proof of humanity’s total depravity and need for a divine substitute.

4. Connection to Moses’ Third-Day Intercession (Milestone 20)

This analysis significantly weakens Gage’s typological reading:

• Moses offers himself (“Blot me out of Your book”) on the third day after the sin.
• God does not accept Moses as a permanent substitute. He forgives the people after judgment and a renewed covenant.
• The story ends with covenant restoration and the renewal of the tablets — not with Moses dying in the people’s place.

If the sin was primarily about creating a false mediator and refusing to trust God’s process, then the solution is proper leadership, repentance, and covenant fidelity — not the introduction of a new divine-human substitute (Jesus) who replaces the original system.

5. How This Challenges the Christian Narrative

Rabbi Gottlieb’s reading exposes a key problem in Gage’s approach:

Gage needs the Golden Calf to represent total human failure that can only be fixed by a dying-and-rising divine savior. Rabbi Gottlieb shows that the text presents something more nuanced:

• A serious but specific failure of trust and patience.
• A sin that is addressed through intercession, judgment, and covenant renewal.
• The Torah (the broken and then restored tablets) remains central.

This fits the larger pattern we have been documenting: Christianity often takes a story about national failure and repair through teshuvah and rewrites it as proof of inherited total depravity requiring a divine blood sacrifice.

Summary – Rabbi Gottlieb’s Contribution to the Series

Rabbi Gottlieb’s analysis helps us see that:

• The Golden Calf was a sin of substitution and impatience, not a complete rejection of God.
• Moses’ third-day intercession was about covenant restoration, not substitutionary atonement in the Christian sense.
• The solution in the text is a renewed relationship with the Torah and proper leadership — not the introduction of a new mediator who replaces the original blueprint.

This directly supports the central argument of your book and this series: the original Hebrew blueprint was never broken as Christianity claims. The path of repair through teshuvah, covenant, and the Torah was always present.

How the Ten Sayings Would Have Healed the Nation — Then and Now

The Torah does not leave us without a solution. The Ten Sayings given at Sinai were never meant to be a burden — they are the practical blueprint for healing brokenness in families and the nation. During the Golden Calf crisis, several of the Sayings directly addressed the root issues:

You Shall Not Take The Name

• The Third Saying (“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain”) warned against using God’s name or authority to support a false mediator or a rewritten story. The people and Aaron misused God’s name (“This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from Egypt”) to justify their impatience and substitute. Keeping this Saying would have prevented them from creating a golden image and calling it “Yahweh.”
• The Fifth Saying (“Honor your father and your mother”) called the people to honor God’s appointed leadership (Moses) and the original covenant process instead of replacing it with something visible and comfortable. Their failure to wait and honor the structure God had established led directly to the sin.

Today, the same Sayings heal the deeper wound of replacement theology. The Fifth Saying demands that later religious systems honor the original firstborn son — Israel — rather than declaring the Church or any other entity as the new heir. The Third Saying forbids taking God’s name and Word to create new narratives that rewrite the Torah’s blueprint. When nations and faiths keep these Sayings, they stop manufacturing substitutes and return to the original covenant relationship.

Rabbi David Fohrman has shown that the Ten Sayings are fundamentally about repairing brokenness in families. Had the people at the Golden Calf kept even these two Sayings, the crisis could have been avoided. Had later traditions kept them, the family of humanity would not be so deeply divided today. The Torah’s solution has always been simple: honor what came first, do not misuse God’s name or Word, and return (teshuvah) to the original blueprint. The path to the Tree of Life remains open.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

•  The Tree of Life Is Still Here
• Milestone 19: The Lord Descending in Power upon Sinai on the Third Day
• A Plumber Named Aaron: DNA, Abraham, and the Question Every Christian Should Answer
• The Middle Pathway: The Ten Sayings and the Healing of a Family
• A Letter from a Kohen to Kohen: A Letter from One Kohen to Another: Why I Cannot Accept the New Testament

Aaron The Light Barrier

The other day, a Lowe’s installation technician named Aaron came to our home in Amarillo to hook up our new stove. And I asked him a question every Christian should answer. He was professional, friendly, and clearly a family man. As we talked while he worked, the conversation turned to matters of faith.

Aaron is a Christian, and I am a Jewish chazan who leads a small Beit Midrash and teaches Torah in prison. What unfolded was one of those divine appointments that remind me how the Torah is alive — not ancient history, but our family story playing out in kitchens and living rooms today.

I first asked Aaron what his name meant. Aaron did not know. It just so happened that it is my great-grandfather’s name. The brother of Moses. I asked him a simple question I often pose to my Christian friends: “Do you believe the Bible?” “Do you believe you and I are related?”

Aaron smiled and gave the expected biblical answer: “Well, we all come from Adam.” I nodded but pressed gently. “No, Aaron — I mean, do you believe you and I are brothers or cousins in a more direct way? Do you believe the Bible is true history?”

My Uncle Moses Wrote The Torah

He said yes.

That opened the door.

I shared with him the groundbreaking work of Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson, a geneticist who analyzed Y-chromosome DNA from over 260 men across diverse populations worldwide. Jeanson’s research in Traced demonstrates that humanity traces back to three primary paternal and maternal lines — precisely matching the biblical account of Noah’s three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives. All humans share this deep relatedness. But the patterns go further.

We talked about Genesis 10, the Table of the Seventy Nations after the Flood. Of those ancient peoples, only two lines explicitly claim direct descent from Abraham in the biblical narrative and historical record: the Jewish people through Isaac and Jacob, and the Arab peoples primarily through Ishmael. Of Abraham’s descendants, only one carries a distinctive genetic marker tied to the priestly line of Aaron the High Priest.

The Special Marker Only Aaron’s Sons Have

That marker is the Cohen Modal Haplotype. It appears at significantly higher frequencies among Jewish men who trace their lineage to the Kohanim — the priestly family. My own family DNA research connects to this ancient priestly signature (J-FT235823 and related haplotypes). It is a living echo of the Torah’s command that the priesthood descend patrilineally from Aaron.

“Aaron,” I said to the plumber standing in my kitchen, “you are named after the High Priest. Your name carries that legacy. And yet some teachings say the Church has replaced the Jewish people as God’s chosen. How does that fit when the Bible’s own genetic and historical signature still rests on us?”

Is not the Church fighting against God (Hashem)?

He was dumbfounded. You could see the wheels turning. Here was a man with seven children — three in college — who homeschools his family and takes the Bible seriously. The conversation wasn’t adversarial. It was real.

I continued: The fundamental difference between us is this — my grandfather is Aaron. The Torah is not an allegory or a collection of moral stories for me and my people. It is our family album, our constitution, our living blueprint. We have carried it through exile, the Inquisition, pogroms, and the Holocaust. We still bless our children with the Aaronic blessing from Numbers 6, and we still study the words that created the world.

The Tree Of Life Moses Told Us About

The Tree of Life, which some say was lost after Eden or after the Cross, is not gone. Proverbs 3:18 tells us the Torah itself is a Tree of Life to those who grasp it. It flows through the Jewish people’s continued existence, our return to the Land of Israel, and our fidelity to the mitzvot. The same Torah that begins with Creation and the Garden ends with the promise of return and redemption. It has not been superseded; it has been preserved.

This is why the world’s attention is so intensely focused on the Jewish people and the State of Israel right now. Scripture describes a time when nations will rage against God’s covenant people. Two nations and the forces aligned with them seem determined to remove us from the stage of history. But the Bible is clear: a war must come to prove that Hashem — the God of Israel — is true. The same God who split the sea, who gave the Torah at Sinai, who promised that the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would endure as long as the sun, moon, and stars remain in their courses (Jeremiah 31:35-37).

Aaron listened. He has a plumber’s practicality — hands that fix what is broken in the real world. I appreciated that. Faith without works is dead, as his own New Testament says (James 2:26). But the Torah demands both: hearing and doing. “Na’aseh v’nishma” — we will do, and we will hear.

The Timeline of Everything The Torah

Our conversation reminded me of Parshat Shlach, which we read recently. The spies were sent to scout the Land. Ten of them brought back a bad report, slandering the very gift God had promised. The people wept that night — the 9th of Av — for no reason. That night of baseless tears became the template for future tragedy on Tisha B’Av, including the destruction of both Temples. Gematria links the word שלח (Shlach, “send”), with a value of 338, to the traditional year 3338 from Creation, when the First Temple fell. The patterns are there if we have eyes to see.

Yet two men — Caleb and Joshua — saw differently. They trusted the Word of God over the giants in the Land. Caleb, in particular, drew strength from the caves of the Patriarchs. Faith anchored in history and covenant overcomes fear.

I see the same dynamic today. Many good Christians like Aaron love the God of the Bible. They read the same Scriptures. But layers of interpretation — centuries of replacement theology in some traditions — can obscure the plain meaning: God has not cast off His people Israel (Romans 11:1). The Jewish people’s survival, return to the Land, and the flourishing of Torah study in our day are not accidents. They are fulfillments.

The plumber finished installing the stove. We shook hands. I thanked him for his work and for the conversation. He left thoughtfully. I pray the seeds planted bear fruit — not for debate, but for deeper love of truth.

Who is Looking for Truth

To my Christian friends reading this: We are family. Descended from the same fathers. The Bible we both cherish records one continuous story. Abraham’s covenant was everlasting. The priesthood of Aaron continues in the Jewish people. The Torah is a Tree of Life. And the God who keeps covenant with Israel is the same God you worship.

Let us read the text honestly together. Let us recognize the Jewish people not as replaced, but as the root that supports the branches (Romans 11:18). In a world trying to erase us, this recognition is not just theology — it is solidarity with the God of history.

(By the way, the Mishna says it is forbidden to graft a wild branch onto a natural branch.) This is a Torah Law!

We have a new stove now, and every time I cook on it, I remember the plumber named Aaron and the conversation that turned a routine home installation into a moment of eternity. May more such moments come — in kitchens, prisons, synagogues, and churches — until we all see clearly that Hashem is One, His Torah is true, and His people Israel have a role that no one can replace.

The words are real. The history is our family story. And the future? It belongs to the God who keeps every promise.

Shabbat Shalom and blessings to you all.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

• A Letter from a Kohen to Kohen: A Letter from One Kohen to Another: Why I Cannot Accept the New Testament
• Scripture Only, Please
• Jewish History
• Bible Codes Revealed at Yiboneh with Rabbi Moshe Zeldman
• Milestone 14: The Third Day as the Day of Life and Death for Saul and Amalek

By Hazan Gavriel Ben David (in the spirit of Torah teaching for our generation)

Bereishit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve’et ha’aretz — “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

One word. Bereishit. The entire history of history is compressed into a single declaration: Everything begins with the Creator’s intentional Blueprint. The Tree of Life. The code is embedded in creation itself. Words that create worlds. A family of Adam — one humanity from one source — is tasked with partnership in perfecting the world.

YouTube favors timely, urgent, pattern-revealing content. This essay is a timely journey showing how the same ancient lies from Egypt are replayed today under new names — “One World Order,” global agendas, hidden harms to children, dehumanization of truth-tellers, and “hate Jews” headlines — yet the Torah’s Bereishit framework reveals the pattern, the receipts, and the promised redemption.

As Rabbi Tovia Singer urges, let the Bible speak. As Rabbi David Fohrman unpacked the three signs at the burning bush, God saw the lies and is redeeming them. Elijah turns the hearts (Malachi 3:24). The stone smashes the statue (Daniel 2). The family of Adam returns to the Tree.

This is not abstract theology. At 60 years, looking across a life of Torah return, family DNA revelations, prison teaching, and watching the world, the pattern screams from every headline. The Egyptians of our day run the same scam. But Bereishit tells us how it ends.

Bereishit — The Creation Code: One Family, One Blueprint, Infinite Blessing (Genesis 1–11)

History does not begin with random chaos or evolutionary accident. It begins with deliberate speech: “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3). Ten utterances (ma’amarot) structure reality. Adam is placed in the Garden to “work it and guard it” (Genesis 2:15) — partnership in the Tree of Life.

Humanity is one: “male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27), all bearing the divine image. Noah’s sons — Shem, Ham, Japheth — restart the family after the Flood. Gematria, chiastic structure, intertextual hyperlinks — the Torah is the operating system of creation.

Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson’s Traced (Y-chromosome work) and traditional sources align: common ancestry; shared stories of creation, the flood, and sky visions (Ezekiel’s chariot) across cultures, because all descend from those who knew the original wisdom.

If we all once had one language and one blueprint, would not all generations over the past 49000 years know the same information? The same UFOs, the story of giants, dragons, and sea monsters. What about the 974 generations before ours? Only one system in the world is telling the world the truth. We are all chosen.

Resources are abundant: “The world is an endless source of blessing” when aligned with the Creator. No lack — but every decision has a cost (free will, midah k’neged midah). “Nothing in this world is free.” Relationship with Hashem, not self-defined “good and bad,” unlocks it (Genesis 2–3).

This is the positive pole. The negative — the serpent, the evil inclination — introduces deception, hiding, and death. “You shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). Impostor wisdom. Dehumanization begins here. The pattern of Bereishit is set: Creation → Fall into lies → Exile → Redemption arc. All history is commentary on this.

Egypt: The Archetype of the Scam — Three Lies Against the Future (Exodus 1–4)

As Fohrman brilliantly shows, the three signs at the burning bush mirror Egypt’s three escalating crimes/lies against Israel — attacks on the family, the children, the truth:

1. Staff to Snake: Dehumanization. Israel multiplies (paru, vayishretzu, vaya’atzmu — Exodus 1:7). Pharaoh calls them a threat, cunning, not fully human — “snakes” in the mind. Propaganda justifies oppression (Exodus 1:9-10). Receipt: The serpent recycled (Genesis 3). Modern echo: Dissenters, traditional believers, and especially Jews labeled “extremists,” “hate,” or threats to the “agenda.” Headlines “hate Jews” surge amid rising antisemitism.
2. Leprous Hand (Tzara’at): Secret killing of children. Midwives were ordered to murder boys and claim them “stillborn” (Exodus 1:15-16). Aaron’s prayer links leprosy to stillbirth (Numbers 12:12). Fake death is exposed and healed in the sign. Receipt: Attack on the next generation’s goals. Modern parallel: Abortion scale, trafficking, and environmental/chemical assaults on youth (as in Mexico City studies showing early Alzheimer’s-like brain changes from pollution).
3. Nile Water to Blood: Hiding the crime. Boys thrown in the river; waters cover bodies by day (Exodus 1:22). The shimmering “normalcy” gaslights victims. The first plague reveals the blood. Receipt: Psalm 106:37-38 on shedding innocent blood polluting the land. Modern: Censorship and narrative control hide data on harms.

God pakad — remembered and visited the affliction and the lies (Exodus 4:31). The people believed not in abstract power but in divine empathy for their specific trauma. The plagues redeem each lie. Israel emerges through a bloody doorway — birth reversing the stillborn deception (Exodus 12).

Bereishit frames it: Egypt as anti-creation — slavery instead of partnership, death instead of life, lies instead of truth. Yet “the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied” (Exodus 1:12). The Blueprint prevails.

From Egypt to Now: The 3300-Year Replay of the Same Lies Under New Names

History repeats the Bereishit pattern because the yetzer hara and the powers’ temptations persist. Empires rise (Daniel 2 statue: gold Babylon → silver Persia → bronze Greece → iron Rome → feet of iron/clay — divided modern powers). The “feet” phase feels like our era: strong technology mixed with brittle division, global coordination masking control.

Modern Dehumanization (“Snakes”): “One World Order” narratives (or critiques of globalism) often label resisters “threats to democracy,” “conspiracy theorists,” or “haters.” Jews face selective outrage — “hate Jews” spikes while biblical Israel is delegitimized. Receipt: “They hate me without cause” (Psalm 69:4). Tovia Singer: Nations gather against Jerusalem (Zechariah 12), but this proves the prophets true. The serpent’s lie scales globally.

Modern Killing of Children (Stillborn Lie): The Mexico City studies (Calderón-Garcidueñas) are receipts in real time — pollution causing Alzheimer’s-like changes in children’s brains via autopsies. PM2.5 particles seed tau/amyloid from early childhood. Slow neuro-poisoning undermines the next generation’s ability to pursue Torah goals. Broader: Industrial-scale abortion, trafficking, and environmental toxins mirror Pharaoh’s attack on the future. Receipt: “Shed innocent blood… the land was polluted” (Psalm 106:38). Children are the carriers of Bereishit wisdom.

Modern Hiding Crimes (Nile Cover): Censorship, algorithmic suppression, and narrative control make the “river” look normal. Data on policy harms, trafficking networks, or pollution effects disappear. Receipt: Blood cries from the ground (Genesis 4:10). Plagues (exposures) reveal it.

Vaccines: 17 million COVID

On vaccines and “OWO” population control “in all their writings”: This is a common interpretive lens in some circles, often citing misread Gates quotes (2010 TED: better health/vaccines reduce future growth rates via lower child mortality leading to smaller families — demographic fact, not killing) or UN sustainability docs.

The “One World Order” as modern Pharaoh: Centralized power, surveillance, debt, and cultural conformity echo Egyptian total control. Daniel’s divided kingdom fits fragmented globalism. Yet Bereishit promises the stone — uncut by human hands — smashes it (Daniel 2:34-35).

Our Sages on Reincarnation and the End of Days — Jeremiah 16 Hunters and the Lies of the Nations

Our sages teach that at the end of days, many souls will return through gilgul (reincarnation) so that all may experience the final redemption. The generation that perished in the wilderness — those who doubted and did not enter the Land — will be reborn to witness and participate in the geulah they missed.

Likewise, the enemies of Israel throughout history (Amalek, Edom/Rome, and their spiritual heirs) will be reincarnated to face judgment, rectification, or the ultimate recognition of truth. This is not random; it fulfills the Bereishit arc of return and tikkun. Jeremiah 16 speaks directly to our moment: After the ingathering, God declares He will send “fishers” to gently draw Israel back, then “hunters” who will hunt them from every mountain, hill, and hiding place (Jeremiah 16:16).

The Mayor of New York- The World – Who’s Next

Persecution and pressure force the return from exile and assimilation — exactly as we see today with rising global antisemitism and events forcing aliyah and Jewish self-identification. The mayor of New York and leaders worldwide proclaim lies; nations declare, “Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit.

Shall a man make gods unto himself, and they are no gods?” (Jeremiah 16:19-20). Yet these same nations — our spiritual brothers in the family of Adam — will ultimately confess the falsehood of their idols and cling to the tzitzit of the Jew (Zechariah 8:23).

The hunters drive the hidden ones home; the fishers welcome them. As in the video teaching by Rabbi Tovia Singer on Jewish civil war and redemption, external hatred (post-October 7 realities and beyond) forces the unity we need.

Jeremiah 16: Fishers and Hunters

Zechariah 12 and the Wound of October 7, 2023 — Messiah ben Yosef and the Changing of the Heart.

The Torah’s pattern reaches its climax in Zechariah chapter 12. The prophet declares that in the end of days, all the nations will gather against Jerusalem and Judah to wage war. Then comes the pivotal moment: “They shall look unto Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only son” (Zechariah 12:10). Rabbi Tovia Singer and Rabbi Glazerson have both pointed out that this verse carries a profound connection to October 7, 2023.

That day was the piercing wound — the brutal attack that tore open the heart of the Jewish people. The unspeakable atrocities, the murdered families, the hostages, the images seared into our souls — it was a collective piercing that changed Israel forever. What followed was exactly what Zechariah foretold: a national mourning, a softening of hearts, a return to Hashem and to one another that had not been seen in generations. The wound of October 7 awakened the spirit of grace and supplication (Zechariah 12:10).

It began fulfilling the prophecy that the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem would receive a new heart. This is the work of Mashiach ben Yosef — the suffering, fighting Messiah who comes first to gather the exiles and confront the enemies, often at great cost. October 7 was that moment of piercing, and the mourning and teshuva that followed are the direct fulfillment of Zechariah’s words. The heart of Israel is changing before our eyes.

One Heart Israel One Adam

Now we must become one in heart, as the Book of Ezra describes: The returning exiles gathered “as one man” (ish echad) to build the altar and renew offerings despite fear and opposition (Ezra 3:1-6). Baseless hatred destroyed the Second Temple; unity will rebuild it. Overcoming internal division — the “Jewish civil war” that Singer highlights — is the final preparation.

The hunters (persecution) and fishers (encouragement) are already at work. Our brothers among the nations confess the lies of false gods. The wilderness generation returns to taste redemption. Enemies are reincarnated for the great reckoning and potential tikkun. The family of Adam reunites.

Bereishit Fulfilled: Elijah, Redemption, and the Family of Adam Returning

The arc of history is not endless oppression. Bereishit points to return. Elijah heals generational rupture so children fulfill the fathers’ goals in Torah (Malachi 3:24). Tovia Singer: The Bible is our family album. Prophecies unfold — ingathering, nations recognizing truth, war proving Hashem’s sovereignty, then universal knowledge of God (Isaiah 2, Zechariah 14). Israel, as Or LaGoyim, shares the wisdom each nation was assigned in the family of Adam.

The Mexico pollution crisis, rising “hate Jews,” hidden harms — these are birth pangs. The lies surface. The Nile turns to blood. The stone strikes. No lack in Hashem’s universe when aligned. Decisions cost, but relationships unlock blessings. “You and Hashem” — direct connection, not an external savior alone.

As a people of receipts, we document the pattern, teach in prisons and small synagogues, preserve family DNA stories, create content, and build. POD shirts, websites, books — modern matteh (staff/tribe) exposing the snake.

Call to Action: Live Bereishit Now

See the pattern. Protect children (physically, spiritually, cognitively). Reject dehumanization. Expose hidden crimes with the truth. Share Torah wisdom universally. Raise goal-oriented generations. Become one in heart like Ezra. The Tree of Life is the antidote. The world is full of blessings when we guard creation.

Bereishit is the history of history because it contains the end in the beginning. The same God who saw Egypt’s lies sees ours. The redemption is unfolding. Let the Bible speak. Turn hearts. Build the Temple in our time — inner and outer — for the family of Adam.

May we merit the full geulah speedily.

The Blueprint holds. Chazak ve’ematz.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

• Bereishit as History
• The Atom and The Man
• Jewish History
• “You Shall Not Bear False Witness” – The Goatskin Lie That Told the Truth
• From Shadows to Truth: My Journey Back to Torah – Exposing the Replacement Lie in Messianic Teachings