Rico Cortes (Wisdom in Torah) is a Hebrew Roots teacher.

Rico Cortes (Wisdom in Torah) is a Hebrew Roots teacher. In the video “Part 1 companion,” he argues a technically correct point from Leviticus: the Pesach lamb is a shelamim (peace/fellowship offering), not a chatat (sin offering).

He then still applies John 1:29 (“the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”) to Yeshua by blending other images—Isaiah 53, Yom Kippur, ransom language, and Hebrews. That combination is exactly where the Levitical system is left behind.

Here is the list of Leviticus prohibitions and structural rules that teaching runs against. These are the ones most directly in play when a man is presented as the lamb that removes the world’s sin and when that lamb is treated as a picture to look at.

Unauthorized slaughter and blood outside the designated place

• Leviticus 17:3–4, 8–9: Anyone who slaughters an ox, lamb, or goat and does not bring it to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting to present it as an offering to Hashem—bloodguilt is on that person. The blood must be brought to the altar.
• Leviticus 17:11: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement…” Atonement by blood is tied to the altar, the priesthood, and the specific animal brought by the offerer or the community. A death that occurs outside that system does not fulfill the verse.

No human being may be offered

• Leviticus 18:21 and 20:2–5: Do not give any of your offspring to Molech. Human sacrifice is an abomination. The Torah never authorizes a man—even a righteous man—to function as the korban. The animals in Leviticus 1–7 and 16 are animals. Substituting a human for them inverts the entire category.

Each person bears his own sin; no transfer of guilt onto another human

• The Levitical system has the sinner (or the community via the high priest) bring the prescribed animal. The two goats of Leviticus 16 work inside that framework; they do not license a later human to “take away the sin of the world.” Ezekiel 18 (which restates the same principle) is consistent with Leviticus: the soul that sins shall die.

Images and likenesses

• Leviticus 19:4: “Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves molten gods.”
• Leviticus 26:1: “You shall not make idols for yourselves, or set up a carved image or a standing stone… to bow down to it.”
• The Second Saying (Exodus 20:4 / Deuteronomy 5:8) is the same commandment restated: no likeness of anything in the heavens, on the earth, or in the waters. A lamb presented as “the picture of Messiah” or “the man coming like a lamb to die for our sins” is precisely a likeness made to be looked at and meditated upon. That is the thing the commandment forbids.

Priestly and ritual boundaries

• Only descendants of Aaron may handle the blood and the offerings (Leviticus 6–7, 16). A teacher who assigns the high-priestly or atoning function to a first-century Galilean man is assigning a role Leviticus reserves for the kohanim operating at the altar.
• Different offerings have different blood applications (thrown, placed on horns, sprinkled toward the parochet). Mixing Pesach (shelamim), daily tamid lambs, and Yom Kippur goats into a single composite “Lamb of God” erases the distinctions that Leviticus spends chapters establishing.

Rico can quote Leviticus accurately on the classification of the Pesach lamb and still violate the book’s actual operating rules the moment he maps that lamb (or any other korban) onto a man whose death is said to remove sin for the world. That mapping is the violation.

On the second part of your question: the Torah does not give us a lamb as a picture of a coming man. Exodus 12 and Leviticus 23 give Israel a meal of protection and covenant identity, eaten in haste, with blood on the doorposts so the Destroyer would pass over.

It is not a visual aid for later theology. When later writers turn the lamb into an image of a dying Messiah, they are doing the thing the Ten Sayings and Leviticus 19:4 / 26:1 prohibit—making a likeness and attaching redemptive meaning to it. The commandment is “no images except the ones that help us understand Messiah.” It is no likeness of anything.

On Rico Cortes, Leviticus, and the Lamb of God

Hazan Gavriel ben David

Esnoga Beit HaShoavah  ·  August 29, 2026

Rico Cortes presents himself as a Torah teacher and holds the title of Kohen. That title is not a decoration. It is a lineage, a charge, a burden. The kohanim were set apart to guard the altar, to handle the blood, to teach the people the difference between what is holy and what is profane. When a Kohen teaches the nations to violate the Torah, the violation is not his alone. It is his by inheritance.

In his lecture “The Passover Lamb Was Never a Sin Offering — So What Did John 1:29 Mean?,” Cortes does exactly that. He makes the most guarded category in the Levitical system — the sin-bearing offering — and he hands it to a man. He creates the image the Second Saying forbids, and he makes it the centerpiece of devotion. He does this not as a pagan, but as a man who claims to stand inside the covenant.

The violations are not subtle. They are structural.

In Egypt, the lamb was not a dinner animal. It was a god. The ram was the face of Khnum, the potter who formed men from Nile clay, and of Amun, king of the gods. That is why Moses refuses Pharaoh’s offer to sacrifice in the land. Exodus 8:22 in the Hebrew — English 8:26 — is blunt: ki toevat Mitzrayim nizbach l’Hashem Eloheinu… hen nizbach et toevat Mitzrayim l’eineihem v’lo yiskelunu. “We would be slaughtering the toevah of Egypt to Hashem our God. If we slaughter the toevah of Egypt before their eyes, will they not stone us?”

Rashi on Genesis 46:34 says the same thing about shepherds: every shepherd is toevat Mitzrayim “because the flock is a deity to them.” The construct is toevat Mitzrayim — Egypt’s toevah — not “Israel is an abomination.” A grammar teacher would mark the English. You do not call a people’s god an “abomination” in their own mouth and then expect them to stone you for killing it. You stone a man for killing what you hold sacred.

Shadal and A. S. Yahuda both note that Hebrew toevah sits next to Egyptian wab / uab — “pure, set apart, holy.” What Egypt called holy, Israel called toevah, and the Torah uses Egypt’s own category against Egypt: the ram they set apart is the animal Israel must slaughter. Pesach in Egypt is not a picture of a later Messiah. It is Israel killing Egypt’s false god in public, under a sentence of stoning, and walking out alive. That is why the lamb is taken on the tenth and held four days. The whole street can see what is about to die.

Leviticus 17 is unambiguous. The blood that makes atonement must be brought to the altar, to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. Blood outside that place is bloodguilt. A death that occurs on a Roman cross, outside the Temple, outside the priesthood, outside the prescribed animal — that death cannot fulfill the verse. It stands outside the system entirely. Cortes knows this. He teaches it. And then he steps over it.

Leviticus 18 and 20 are equally clear. Human sacrifice is an abomination. The Torah never authorizes a man to function as the korban. The animals in Leviticus 1 through 7 and in chapter 16 are animals. Substituting a human for them inverts the entire category. It is not a fulfillment. It is a desecration.

And then there is the image. Exodus 20, Leviticus 19, Leviticus 26 — the same prohibition, repeated, reinforced, never softened.

No likeness of anything in the heavens, on the earth, or in the waters. You shall have no molten gods. No carved images. No standing stones. A lamb presented as the picture of Messiah, a man coming like a lamb to die for the sins of the world — this is a likeness made to be looked at, meditated upon, adored. It is the thing the commandment forbids, dressed in the language of redemption.

The Christian will reach for Abraham and Isaac. That reach fails.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, showed that the Akedah is the Torah’s loudest no to human sacrifice. In a world where children were property, and the gods demanded them as payment, God stops the knife. He does not require what the nations require. He abhors it. The story is a polemic against patria potestas — the idea that a father owns his child and may dispose of him however he pleases.

Rabbi David Fohrman, in his lecture on Re’eh, draws the same line from Deuteronomy 12:31 — do not do this to Hashem your God; every abomination He hates they do for their gods, even burning their sons and daughters in fire. He is pointing back to the Akedah and saying: “That is what the nations do, and I will not have it.”

The Akedah is not a precedent for a man dying as a sin-offering. It is the Torah’s declaration that no man, no son, no human life, may be placed on the altar. The story ends with a ram caught in the thicket. The ram is the substitute. The son walks away. That is the point.

Cortes, as a Kohen, should know this. The kohanim were the ones who stood between the people and the altar. They were the ones who taught the difference between the clean and the unclean, the holy and the common. When a Kohen takes the altar’s most sacred function and assigns it to a man, when he takes the Second Saying’s most guarded prohibition and turns it into an object of devotion, he is not teaching Torah. He is teaching its inversion.

The prophet Ezekiel saw this coming. In chapter 44, God says to the kohanim who turned from Him: you have not kept charge of My holy things, you have set up your idols in My sanctuary. The charge is not new. It is ancient. And it falls on every Kohen who trades the altar for an image, the blood for a man, the covenant for a cross.

Cortes is not the first to do this. He will not be the last. But he does it with the title of Kohen on his lips, and that makes the violation heavier, not lighter. The kohanim were given the Torah to guard it. When they teach others to break it, the guard has become the thief.

— Hazan Gavriel ben David

Esnoga Beit HaShoavah, Amarillo, Texas

Nation, Not Religion: What Pastors in This City Taught Me About Friendship with the Jew

Hazan Gavriel ben David  ·  Elul 5786 / August 2026

I have been the chazzan for the Jewish community in Amarillo for twenty-five years. What I am trying to show is simple. Over those years, every pastor I have dealt with in this city has carried the same agenda. Their book tells them: to the Jew first.

Their book tells them they will not see the one they wait for until we say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. So the Jew is not a neighbor. The Jew is an unfinished verse. Friendship lasts as long as the verse is still open.

The polite form of that agenda is a sentence I heard again this week. Pastor Glenn Stoker of Bible Believers Baptist Church on Rockwell Road called offering support to the Jewish community after hard years. Then he told me he supported the nation, not the religion.

From the pew, that sounds like kindness: flags, not a conversion class. From the Jew, it is the same agenda. Israel is not a church in one folder and a state in another. Israel is a people under a covenant — land, law, Name, and seed. If you bless the map and bury the Torah, you have not blessed Jacob. You have kept the stage for the last act.

The Call and the Texts

I listen to Pastor Stoker’s radio program some Sundays on the way to work. He is a fire-and-brimstone preacher. He holds that the King James Version is the Bible, and that anything else is not translated correctly. I asked how the King James could be the perfect translation when no Hebrew scholars sat at that table, and none sat at Nicaea either.

He said I was ignorant. Had I not read the book about the compilers? I asked whether he had ever spoken with an Orthodox Jew. Assuredly yes, he said, several. Then I asked why Christians claim that our Bible contains Jesus everywhere. In that moment, the call left the Jewish community and landed on the nation. He believed the Jews would be in the tribulation and would suffer because we would not believe in Jesus.

What followed was texting. The wording below is from the phone, not from memory.

I wrote first with courtesy.

Thank you very much. I have not been able to speak to any pastor in my 25 years as a Jew. Thank you again. Gavriel Ben David

I sent the site.

beithashoavah.org Here are my credentials as a Hazan.

His answer to the work was not a verse.

Pastor Stoker text:

I don’t care what your credentials are or from where; if you can’t tell the difference between a non-practicing Jew and a Jew who converted to Christianity on his own, ie Mordachi Ham, etc I’ll stroke your oversized ego though and check it out.

I asked him the question I have asked for years, the question a teacher named Yehuda Yisrael puts to missionaries in the same words.

Deuteronomy 4, the whole chapter. That is our covenant with Hashem, just like Jeremiah 31. What part of the New Covenant did Jesus initiate?

Then I sent Jeremiah 31:35–36 in both English and Hebrew. The Lord of hosts is His name. If those ordinances depart from before Me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me forever. That is the answer found in the same chapter that Christians use for a new covenant. The sun still stands. Israel is still a nation before Him.

I answered his question about authority. He asked it more than once.

We have 613 commandments, and my boss is Hashem. What other authority do I need as a Jew other than Moses and the GOD who took us…

The Tree of Life. The Ten Sayings, Exodus 20. That is where every human being should get his authority. From the God of Israel.

I do not understand your question because I have stated this at least 4 times. The Torah is from Hashem…

He did not then open Jeremiah 31. He answered the writer.

Pastor Stoker text:

Write all you want. You still have no absolute authority

Where is your absolute authority?

Answer the question: what is your final authority?

Ok, prove the Torah is 100% accurate without any mistakes, then show some facts that no man could have known when it was written

Hazan Gavriel text:

I asked where the Tree of Life is. He answered with a label.

Pastor Stoker text:

Yep, read about the “Tree of Life,” kind of getting into the kabala

Hazan Gavriel text:

I laid out the six days of creation and the seventh as the history of man— Psalm 90, a day as a thousand years.

Day one: light from darkness, Adam given the knowledge of good and evil and the power to choose.

Day two: waters from waters — the Flood, the ark on Ararat, dry land again.

Day three: seed after its kind — Avraham in 1948 of the Jewish calendar, then Yitzchak, Yaakov, Israel.

Day four: lights for signs and seasons — the prophets.

Day five: swarming things and birds — Israel scattered.

Day six: beast and man, and the choice of the sixth millennium.

Day seven: Shabbat. The thousand-year rest is coming. Baruch Hashem.

He answered the map in three words.

Pastor Stoker text:

typology not doctrine

Gavriel text:

I answered the label from the peshat. Genesis 8 is a world begun again. The wind of Hashem moved over the waters the way the Spirit moved in the beginning. Waters separated. Dry land. The ark rested. He never wrote back after that second creation and Noah as a beginning. Silence is also an answer.

How I Came to Sit at Those Tables

I was raised in church — Baptist and Catholic rooms, Black father, Spanish-speaking mother whose people came up through Jalisco, Guanajuato, Durango, Chihuahua, and New Mexico.

911 – On the eleventh of September, 2001, when I was about thirty-five, my mother told me what the house had been hiding: secret candles, Ladino in the kitchen, spring cleaning that was more than spring cleaning. She said we were from Spain, like every family member said.

Her grandfather was a Cohen, but we did not know until I did both of my uncles’ DNA. My two tios both tested positive for the COHEN MODAL haplogroup through the Jewish DNA testing site, FamilyTree DNA. My family is related to the owner of FamilyTree DNA.

I went to Israel in 2002. I met Rabbi Chaim Richman of the Temple Institute. Rabbi Richman asked me if I was coming to return since my mother was Jewish. I was still a Jewish Christian then. I studied for years in Messianic and Hebrew Roots circles — Brad Scott, Bill Cloud, and others. We founded a ministry. Mayim Hayim Ministries mayim-hayim.org

That website is still there, but the content is not Christian.

I wore tzitzit and talked about Yeshua and the Torah in the same breath. In 2012, I completed a Conservative conversion in El Paso under Rabbi Stephen Leon. I now serve as chazzan of a very small Sephardic minyan in Amarillo, Esnoga Beit HaShoavah, and I teach Torah within the walls of a prison.

Twenty-five years of standing for this community is long enough to know which invitations were friendship and which were recruitment. I am not writing as a man who never loved the church. I am writing as a man who sat in its Bible studies, Seders, and Chick-fil-A booths, and then stayed Jewish when the friendship ran out.

The First Four Shepherds

The first was Pastor Bo at Trinity Fellowship Church. I was in a men’s Bible study on a book called Following in the Master’s Footsteps. The questions I asked did not line up with the history he was giving — not Jewishly. He called me and asked me to leave. People come to his Bible study, he said, to listen to him and not to me.

The second was Pastor Bill Glimm of Grace Community Church. I had invited him to a Passover Seder, and then to another gathering. In the conversation, I mentioned Jehovah’s Witnesses and Latter-day Saints.

He said those people are not his brothers. If I said they were, he would call the police or have security walk me out of the building. I asked him plainly: Are you saying Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are not your brothers? I told you, he said. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a cult. Mormons believe the devil is Jesus’ brother. Leave now, he said, and he called security. I left.

Grace Church My First Visit

I remember the first time I visited Grace Church; the sermon was on Matthew 23, which is not a good chapter for the only Jew in the house. I was called a Judizer by Bill. He once told me that I do not need legalistic rituals; I keep Passover every day.

Later, one of Bill’s largest donors found out he was an Iranian Jew and started coming to our Center. He never stopped being a Christian Jew from Iran. I will always love him; he gave over $200,000 to Mayim Hayim Ministries, which Mayim Hayim gave away until our best friends stole everything we did not give away.

The third was Pastor Polis of Hillside Church, one of the largest congregations in Amarillo. We met at Chick-fil-A. The owner introduced us and told him I was a Jewish man in this town who did not believe in Jesus. We sat down over coffee. I asked why he kept Shabbat on Sunday.

Because Jesus was resurrected on Sunday, he said. I said the Greek of the resurrection accounts does not give the Church the sentence it thinks it has. Mia ton sabbaton — the first of the Sabbaths — sits in the counting of the Omer, not in a transfer of the seventh day. Pastor Polis is college-educated in Greek.

I said he knew what the phrase means. He said he would have to go home and study it. The next time I saw him, he was with his son. You are not to say anything in front of my son, he told me. I am the one who teaches my son doctrine. The third time I saw him at Chick-fil-A, he was with his wife. He walked past me as if I were furniture.

That is why, when Pastor Stoker called, I was skeptical and also glad. I know the radio voice. I also know what happens when a Jew asks the text to remain the text.

Other Rooms in This Town

Pastor Maurice Burks, who one day accused me of hitting him in the Sam’s Club. I asked him a question about Christianity, and he said he was not going there. I said to Maurice, ” You, as a pastor, should be able to defend your faith in and out of season and he called me a liar and said the Christian Bible does not say that. Then he called me the “devil”.

2 Timothy 4:2 New International Version: The Proof That Is Why I Ask

² Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.

1 Peter 3:15: Advises believers to always be ready to give an answer or defense for the hope they have, doing so with gentleness and respect.

I did get upset because he, as a pastor, just called me a liar and took off. I pulled up the verse on my phone in seconds and followed him to show him the verse; that is when he said I assaulted him in Sam’s Club. He started yelling as loud as he could and said, ” Stop, Archie, this man is assaulting me, and I knew his many years in theft management had kicked in. Sam’s has cameras, so I was not worried, but I was shocked that all of it, in front of our wives, was more embarrassing.

Pastor Herman was an ex-railroad engineer turned pastor.

Pastor Graves was the Black pastor I sat with in good faith. The heads of the Black Israelite Congregation who looked at my Yemenite rabbi and at me and told us we were not Jews. Blood, they said. Geography, they said. We did not fit the story they needed.

A gentleman I remember as Pastor Graves looked at the weapon I carry — a Jew in Texas, a chaplain, a man who has buried family in a violent year — and said I looked as if I thought I was bad because I carried a gun. He said he was going home to get his and we could have a shoot-out. We left.

Pastor Dr. Carr wanted to fight me over Luke chapter 4. In the synagogue at Nazareth, the reading is made to say that the anointed one is sent to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.

Open the Hebrew of Isaiah 61. The recovering of sight to the blind is not there. It is in Isaiah 42, and it is in the Greek of the Septuagint that Luke is following. A pastor who will not let Isaiah speak in Isaiah’s language will not let Israel speak in Israel’s language either.

Pastor Lee Simpson told me I had answered many of the questions he carried. Then he said he could not teach that to his people. They were not ready. The text is allowed to move a man in private. The congregation must not be disturbed.

Pastor Brown of Victory Church went on the radio and said he could eat bread on Passover. He did not need some little man with a beanie and strings hanging down to tell him that Easter Sunday would not have ham and rolls. Tzitzit and a kippah became a punch line so that ham could stay on the table.

The Church of Christ congregations I have met in this town have been the hardest. They denounce Israel. There is no such thing as Israel, they say. We are the Church. Replacement is not a theory to them. It is the air they breathe.

Pastor Larry, who pastors a church in Fritch, let me know that the Christian Bible and the New Covenant were, in effect, not the Old Testament.

Even a man from a Reform temple told me he did not lose anything in Israel. That, he said, is why they are called Temples: there is no need for another one. I pray they turn to Hashem and to His Torah as Jews.

The Sentence I Cannot Forget

My niece’s husband, Bishop Ludwig Onoko, said it without ornament. We are just waiting, he told me, for the Third Temple to be built so you Jews can accept the antichrist and go through the tribulation and see Jesus returning with wounds in his hands, so you Jews can fall on your faces and say we were wrong and bow down and worship Jesus. Then you will see.

That is not support of Israel. That is a scheduled humiliation. The Temple, in that sentence, is not the house of prayer for all nations. It is a trap laid for the Jews so that the nations can be proven right. Stoker said the polite part: nation, not religion. The bishop said the last act. Same script.

The Questions That Were Not Answered

Which clause of Jeremiah 31 did Jesus initiate, and where does that chapter name the blood of a crucified messiah as the start of the new covenant?

The reply is stages, patterns, and the Greek book proving itself.

Bible Believers Baptist Church Glen Stoker

Here is the scorecard of the Stoker thread as the phone recorded it.

I asked how the King James could be perfect with no Jewish scholar at 1611 or at Nicaea. On the phone, I wrote that about forty-seven scholars translated it, and there was not one Jewish scholar among them, nor at Nicaea. He had already called me ignorant and told me to read the book about the compilers. A bibliography is not a name.

I asked why Pharaoh would stone Israel in Exodus 8:26, and I sent the King James and the Hebrew, the ram-god of Egypt in our tradition, and the fact that the Passover sacrifice is a peace offering, not a sin offering. He did not answer 8:26.

I asked what part of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31 Jesus initiated, and I sent 31:35–36. He did not name a clause.

I asked how the Christian replaces me if only Jews and the sons of Abraham still claim that father, and if Jeremiah says the seed does not cease while the sun stands. He did not open the verse.

I asked where the Tree of Life is. He said kabbalah.

I laid out the six days and Genesis 8. He said typology, not doctrine. Then he stopped writing.

He asked where my final authority is. I answered: 613, Hashem, Moses, Deuteronomy 4, Exodus 19, Exodus 20, the God of Israel. He asked again. Then he raised a new exam: prove the Torah one hundred percent, with facts no man could have known when it was written.

One question he answered outright on the call: had he spoken with an Orthodox Jew? One textual note he offered later: “Isaiah is not the end of our Bible; Chronicles is. That is true of the Tanakh’s order”.

It does not answer Jeremiah 31. The rest were redirected, labeled, or turned into a remark about my ego.

What Nation-Not-Religion Means for a Jew

I do not write that every Christian on earth is this way. I write what I can swear to. Pastor Bo, Pastor Bill Glimm, Pastor Polis, Pastor Brown, Pastor Carr, Pastor Simpson, the Church of Christ rooms, the bishop, and Pastor Stoker. The faces change. The terms of friendship do not.

The flag is allowed. The beanie and the strings are a problem. The Jew who keeps Shabbat is religion. The Jew who is only a prophecy token is nation. The moment you read Jeremiah 31 as still naming Israel and Judah, the support cools. That is what happened on the phone: first the offer, then not the religion, then authority, then typology, then silence.

Their book tells them to go to the Jew first. Their book tells them the story is unfinished until we say the verse they require. As long as there is a chance to convert us, they are friendly. When there is not, we are a nation they can pray over and a religion they can wait to watch fail.

Typology and Doctrine

A pattern that helps a man see is not the same as a commandment. I do not bind anyone to a six-thousand-year clock. The sages themselves argued about the length of the days. What I will not surrender is this: the Torah’s week is not a children’s story.

Creation, Flood, Avraham, prophets, exile, the beast and the image, and then rest — that is the shape of the world I was given. The rainbow after the Flood and the Shabbat after the six days are both signs that judgment is not the last word. Covenant is.

The difference between us is not whether a day can be a thousand years. The difference is whether Israel remains Israel when the thousand years are spoken of. If the seventh day belongs to the Church instead of to Zion, then the first six days were only a preface to our disappearance.

I cannot read Bereshit that way. I cannot read Isaiah 2, Micah 4, Zechariah 14, or Ezekiel 40–48 that way. The mountain is still the mountain. The House is still ahead of us.

What I Carry Now

I carry a weapon because I live in this country and because this year has already taken family. I carry tzitzit because the Torah told me to. I carry a small congregation and a prison classroom because the hidden ones are still coming home — crypto-Jews, the wounded, the men who found a Chumash after they lost everything else. I do not need a pastor to certify that we are Jews. I needed my mother’s kitchen, a beit din, a priestly memory in the blood, and the Book.

To the pastors who were kind: thank you. To the pastors who wanted a shoot-out, a fist over Luke 4, a radio joke about a beanie, or a front-row seat at Jewish tribulation: I am still here. The Third Temple, when it stands, will not be built so that we can accept an antichrist. It will be built because Hashem spoke of a house for His Name. If you love that House, love the people without a conversion clause.

As long as there is seedtime and harvest, the covenant with Noah stands. As long as there is a seventh day, the covenant of Sinai stands. As long as the sun and the moon stand, the seed of Israel does not cease from being a nation before Him. I am waiting for the rest. I am not waiting to be proven wrong on my face.

B’H’

Hazan Gavriel ben David

Esnoga Beit HaShoavah, Amarillo

Parashat Ki Teitzei: The 74 Commandments, Family Fractures, and the Tree of Life for the Nations

Parashat Ki Teitzei 5786 | Deuteronomy 21:10–25:19 | 9 Elul 5786 / August 22, 2026

• Ki Teitzei contains more mitzvot than any other parsha (74).
• These laws are the practical, civil branching of the Ten Sayings.
• They arise from real family problems recorded in Genesis.
• The ultimate goal is restoration: the Tree of Life healing humanity’s divided family.
• Brief note on Jeanson’s peer-reviewed Y-chromosome and mitochondrial work pointing to three ancestral fathers and three ancestral mothers.

I. The Tree of Life and Its Healing Leaves: The Torah

Ki Teitzei (Deuteronomy 21:10–25:19) is the densest parsha for mitzvot (classically 74), and many of them function as legal tikkun or retrospective commentary on earlier narratives rather than free-standing rules.

II. The Trunk: The Ten Sayings as the Source

Brief overview of the Ten as the root system. Each of the following sections takes one Saying (or a related cluster) and shows how specific mitzvot of Ki Teitzei grow from it and repair a Genesis family wound.

III. Branch 1 – Shabbat / Sabbatical Rest (1st–4th Sayings cluster)

• Mitzvot of rest, release, and non-exploitation (workers’ wages, forgotten sheaf, sabbatical-related kindness, etc.).
• Genesis root: Cain and Abel — conflict over land, offering, and the first bloodshed that broke rest and brotherhood.
• Application: Rest is the foundation of a civil society that does not devour its own family.
• Noah Commanded to Keep Shabbat: The “OT” Rainbow as a sign of Shabbat and Creation.

IV. Branch 2 – Honoring Parents & Family Continuity (5th Saying)

• Laws of firstborn inheritance, two wives (beloved and hated), rebellious son, levirate marriage (yibbum), and protecting the next generation.
• Genesis roots: – Isaac & Rebecca / Ishmael & Isaac – Esau & Jacob – Rachel & Leah and the transfer of the birthright to Joseph – Judah & Tamar
• Key insight: Preference and favoritism fracture the family; the law restores fairness and continuity.

V. Branch 3 – Do Not Murder / Protect Life (6th Saying)

• Laws against kidnapping, false testimony that endangers life, the rebellious son procedure, burial of the executed, roof parapet (preventing accidental death), and the fighting men/pregnant woman case (Exodus 21 echoed and extended).
• Genesis roots: Cain & Abel; the near-destruction of Joseph; Yaakov–Lavan conflict that led to Rachel’s death in childbirth (yatz’a cycle); the threat to Binyamin.
• Theme: Family conflict produces collateral damage to the next generation. The law holds both fighters responsible and protects the vulnerable.

VI. Branch 4 – Do Not Commit Adultery / Sexual Integrity (7th Saying)

• Laws of the captive woman, defamation of a wife, adultery, rape, seduction, prohibited marriages, and purity in the camp.
• Genesis roots: The sexual and relational fractures around Judah & Tamar, the captive-woman pattern, and the consequences of disordered desire in the patriarchal families.
• Civil society requires protected boundaries so the family line is not further broken.

VII. Branch 5 – Do Not Steal / Property & Honest Dealing (8th Saying)

• Returning lost objects (including the ox), honest weights and measures, not muzzling the ox, timely payment of wages, collateral rules, and interest prohibitions.
• Genesis roots: Joseph as the “ox”; the brothers’ sale of Joseph; Laban’s repeated theft of wages and flock; the cycle of taking what belongs to another.
• Repair: Returning what was lost restores trust within the extended family.

VIII. Branch 6 – Do Not Bear False Witness (9th Saying)

• Laws against false accusations of a bride, honest testimony, and related judicial integrity.
• Genesis roots: The brothers’ deception of Jacob with Joseph’s coat; false reports that destroyed trust.
• Truth-telling is required to stop the cycle of family destruction.

IX. Branch 7 – Do Not Covet / Guarding Desire (10th Saying)

• Laws limiting desire for the captive woman, mixed species, and the broader restraint of appetite appear throughout the parsha.
• Genesis roots: The original coveting that led to the sale of Joseph and earlier sibling rivalries.
• Desire must be trained so it does not consume the family.

X. Branch 8 – The Nations & Amalek (Extension of the above into the wider family)

• Laws concerning Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, Egyptians, and the final command to remember and blot out Amalek.
• Genesis roots: The 70 nations; the lines of Esau (35) and Ishmael (35); the ongoing hostility that began in the family.
• Zechariah 13:8 (two-thirds) as a prophetic echo of the firstborn/double-portion theme.
• The Jewish people stand as witnesses who must both remember the wounds and offer the cure.

XI. The Tree of Life as Healing for the Nations

• Summary: Every civil law in Ki Teitzei is a branch that grows from the Ten Sayings and is rooted in a Genesis family fracture.
• DNA evidence (Jeanson, Traced) confirms we are one family descending from a small number of ancestral parents. The fractures are therefore family fractures.
• The Tree of Life (Torah, the restored way of living) is the medicine.
• Israel’s unique role: to guard and give that Tree to the nations so the divided family can be healed.
• Closing invitation: Living these mitzvot is not only personal piety; it is the practical work of repairing the human family and offering the nations the leaves of the Tree for healing (cf. Ezekiel 47 / Revelation imagery of the leaves).

XII. Conclusion

• Ki Teitzei is the Torah’s detailed blueprint for turning the Ten Sayings into a functioning, compassionate civil society.
• That society is the repaired family of Adam.
• The descendants of Jacob carry the responsibility to model and share the Tree of Life so that the nations — our larger family — may live.

This week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitzei (“When you go out”), contains more mitzvot than any other parsha—seventy-four commandments. These are not a random collection of rules. Instead, they form the practical, civil branching of the Ten Sayings (the Aseret HaDibrot).

Each law addresses a wound that first appeared in the family stories of Genesis. Together they reveal how Hashem governs the world through measure for measure (middah k’neged middah). They also show how He honors human free will and offers the Tree of Life as a source of healing for the entire human family.

Middah k’neged Middah

• Two wives and the firstborn (Deut. 21:15–17). The language of the “beloved” and “hated/senuah” wife, plus “first of his strength,” deliberately echoes Jacob, Leah, and Rachel (Gen. 29–30, 49:3). Jacob favored Rachel and effectively shifted the double portion toward Joseph (son of the beloved) over Reuben (son of the less-loved Leah). The law insists the actual firstborn’s rights cannot be overridden by preference. Commentators such as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks treat this as the Torah correcting the family dynamics that produced so much strife in Genesis.
• Returning the lost ox/animal (Deut. 22:1–3), with the parallel in Exodus 23:4 about your enemy’s ox. Joseph is repeatedly associated with the ox (shor): Jacob’s blessing calls him the firstling of his ox (Deut. 33:17), and the imagery of a wandering/lost animal resonates with Joseph “wandering in the field” seeking his brothers (Gen. 37:15). The command to return even an enemy’s animal, and not to ignore it, can be read against the brothers’ treatment of Joseph and the eventual reconciliation with Jacob. The Exodus formulation already frames the duty toward “your enemy,” so the Deuteronomy restatement intensifies the ethical demand.

Other clear narrative roots include:

• Amalek (Deut. 25:17–19) — direct recall of the attack in Exodus 17.
• Remember what happened to Miriam (Deut. 24:8–9) — explicit pointer to Numbers 12 and the laws of tzara’at.
• Ammonites and Moabites barred from the congregation (Deut. 23:4–7) — grounded in the story of Lot’s daughters (Gen. 19), Balaam, and the refusal to offer bread and water during the wilderness journey.
• Levirate marriage / yibbum and chalitzah (Deut. 25:5–10) — the legal institution already enacted in the Judah–Tamar narrative (Gen. 38) and later in the Book of Ruth.
• Multiple social-justice laws (treatment of the stranger, orphan, widow; timely wages; pledges; forgotten sheaves, etc.) that repeatedly invoke the Egypt experience as the formative “story” that generates the commandment.
• The rebellious son (Deut. 21:18–21) and the beautiful captive (21:10–14) are linked in midrashic tradition to the chain of consequences that begins with taking a captive and ends in a dysfunctional household (and, in some readings, to figures such as Absalom).

Additional possible links appear with the mother-bird law (compassion/parental imagery that some teachers, including Rabbi David Fohrman, connect back to patriarchal family dynamics), the prohibition on kidnapping/selling into slavery (echoes of Joseph), and the ox that must not be muzzled while working (again resonating with Joseph-as-ox imagery).

The Trunk: The Ten Sayings Branch into Civil Society

The Ten Sayings are the root system. The dense civil laws of Ki Teitzei—laws of inheritance, lost property, workers’ wages, safety, sexual integrity, judicial fairness, treatment of the stranger, and the final command concerning Amalek—grow from those roots. In addition, they show how the great principles of Shabbat rest, honor of parents, the sanctity of life, fidelity, honesty, and restraint of desire operate in daily life and in a functioning society.

These laws did not appear in a vacuum. They answer real fractures already recorded in Genesis.

Measure for Measure: The Way Hashem Runs the World

Hashem’s justice is reciprocal. What a person sows returns in kind, often through the next generation. This principle runs through every major family conflict in Genesis and is answered by the mitzvot of Ki Teitzei.

• Cain’s violence against his brother returns as exile and restless wandering.
• Yaakov’s angry curse in the fight with Lavan (“Whoever has your gods shall not live”) returns years later when Rachel dies in childbirth.
• The brothers’ sale of Joseph returns when they stand trembling before the unrecognized viceroy, fearing for their own lives and for Binyamin.

The civil laws of this parsha take that same reciprocal logic and turn it toward repair. For example, returning a lost ox, protecting a pregnant woman caught in a fight, ensuring fair inheritance, and refusing to exploit the weak all reverse the earlier pattern of taking, favoring, and endangering the vulnerable.

Free Will: The Dignity and the Danger

Measure for measure is never mechanical fatalism. Every fracture begins with a free choice, and every opportunity for repair remains open through free will.

God’s words to Cain in Genesis 4:7 capture this perfectly. The Hebrew does not use the ordinary word for a hinged door (delet). It uses petach—an opening, an entrance. “Sin is crouching at the petach.” Some traditional readers hear in that word the opening of the grave or the mouth of destruction. Yet the verse continues: its desire is for you, but you can rule over it. Cain is given his whole life to improve.

Cain’s later cry, “My iniquity is too heavy for me to bear” (Genesis 4:13), has long been read by many as the beginning of recognition and the possibility of teshuvah. Hashem’s protective mark shows that the opening was not slammed shut. Free will remains. The same God who spoke to Cain still leaves the petach of return open before every member of the human family.

Family Stories That Shape the Laws

The laws of the two wives and the firstborn’s double portion answer the favoritism and rivalry between Rachel and Leah. They also address the earlier tensions between Isaac and Ishmael, and Jacob and Esau.

The command to return a lost ox (and all lost property) answers the theft and betrayal surrounding Joseph, who is himself called an ox in Jacob’s blessing.

The case of two men fighting and striking a pregnant woman so that “her children come out” (veyatz’u yeladeha) echoes the Yaakov–Lavan confrontation. The same root yatz’a (“to go out”) appears when Yehudah later describes Joseph’s disappearance to the Egyptian viceroy: “One went out from me.” Consequently, the cycle of conflict that forces children out of the family and threatens the parent’s life is precisely what the law seeks to interrupt.

Even the final command to remember Amalek reaches back to the wider family of the seventy nations that branched from Noah’s sons. It also refers to the ongoing hostility that began in sibling rivalry.

One Family Confirmed by DNA

Modern genetic research, including Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson’s work in Traced, points to a remarkable convergence with the biblical account. Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA studies indicate that the great diversity of humanity traces back to a very small number of ancestral fathers and mothers—consistent with the three sons of Noah and their wives after the Flood. Therefore, we are not separate species or unrelated tribes. We are one extended family that has been fractured by repeated choices against the Tree of Life.

The Tree of Life as Healing for the Nations

Because we are one family, the fractures are family fractures. The 74 mitzvot of Ki Teitzei are Torah’s detailed blueprint for repairing them. Furthermore, they turn the Ten Sayings into a civil society that protects life, restores what was taken, honors proper order, and restrains destructive desire.

Israel’s unique role is not superiority but responsibility. As keepers of the Tree of Life, the Jewish people are commanded to live by these laws and to offer its fruit and leaves as healing to the nations (see Ezekiel 47 and the imagery of the leaves as healing for the nations). The same reciprocal principle that once multiplied fracture can now multiply repair. This happens when free will chooses the Tree’s path.

Living the Lesson in Elul

We stand in the month of Elul, the season of return. The petach remains open. Every civil commandment in this week’s portion is an invitation to choose the measure that heals rather than the measure that continues the wound.

May we, the descendants of Jacob, take up our responsibility with joy. May we live the mitzvot that repair the old family stories. And may the leaves of the Tree of Life bring healing to the entire human family—one free choice at a time.

Shabbat Shalom.

— Hazan Gavriel ben David Esnoga Beit HaShoavah

Rabbi Matityahu Glazerson continues to uncover the hidden precision of the Torah through equidistant letter sequences (ELS) and gematria. In this latest teaching, he presents a remarkable finding: using a letter skip equal to the gematria of the word Yisrael (ישראל = 541), the Torah itself encodes the identity of the Messiah as ben Yishai (son of Jesse) and ben David (son of David), tightly bound to the word teshuvah — repentance.

This is not random. The Torah is the blueprint of creation. Its letters form living codes that still speak with mathematical exactness in our generation.

The Precision of the Skip: Gematria of Israel = 541

The numerical value of the five letters of Yisrael is:

• י = 10
• ש = 300
• ר = 200
• א = 1
• ל = 30

Total = 541

Rabbi Glazerson searches the continuous stream of Hebrew letters in the Torah at a skip of 541 letters. Within this structured dilug (skip), the phrases and words for Mashiach ben Yishai and ben David appear in meaningful proximity to teshuvah.

This alignment is highly significant. According to the statistical standards used by researchers such as Professor Eliyahu Rips, such tight clustering of related terms at a meaningful skip is far beyond chance.

Why Repentance Appears with the Messiah

The Rambam (Maimonides) is clear in Hilchot Teshuvah: the coming of the Messiah and the final redemption are conditional upon the Jewish people returning to Hashem through genuine repentance. Without teshuvah, there is no complete geulah.

Rabbi Glazerson’s table shows this exact relationship encoded in the Torah itself. The codes do not merely name the Messiah; they place him next to the very condition required for his arrival. The Torah teaches, through its hidden layer, the same truth that the open text and the sages have always taught: return to Hashem, and the Redeemer will come.

The Larger Blueprint

These findings fit the consistent pattern Rabbi Glazerson has shown for years:

• The Torah encodes the stages of redemption.
• The physical preparation often comes through a “son of Joseph” figure who opens the way.
• The final spiritual redemption arrives with Mashiach ben David, the son of Jesse.
• The indispensable key is teshuvah.

When the gematria of the name of the people of Israel itself becomes the key that reveals both the Messiah and repentance, the message is unmistakable. The destiny of Israel and the coming of the son of Jesse are inseparable from the nation’s return to the Torah.

A Call for Our Generation

We stand in a time of great upheaval. The nations continue to gather pressure against Jerusalem. Yet the Torah’s codes keep surfacing the same ancient promise with fresh clarity. The blueprint has not changed. The path remains the same: teshuvah, return to the commandments, strengthening of Torah observance, and trust in the God of Israel.

Rabbi Glazerson’s latest table is another luminous confirmation that the Torah is unlike any other book. Its surface narrative, its literary structure, its numerical relationships, and its hidden letter sequences all testify with one voice. The Messiah, son of Jesse, is bound to the repentance of the people whose very name equals 541.

May we hear the call of the codes and of the open text. May we do teshuvah from the depths of the heart. And may we merit to see the complete redemption speedily in our days.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

• Chapter Nine: Codes That Don’t Lie – Glazerson’s Torah Oracle
• 606 + 7= Ruth, The Code
• The Torah’s Living Timeline: Verses That Speak Our Generation’s Story – From 1948 to October 7 and Beyond
• Bible Codes Israel and Ishmael: Professor Glazerson, DNA Evidence, and the 70 Nations
• Milestone 17: Hosea’s Plea that the Lord Would Grant Life to Repentant Israel on the Third Day
  
  

The Torah is the blueprint of creation. It is not merely a book of history, law, or inspiration. It is the precise, layered architectural plan by which Hashem formed the universe, encoded human destiny, and mapped the redemption of His Land and His people.

No other text in human history displays this combination of mathematical structure, linguistic precision, predictive power across millennia, and hidden codes that continue to surface in real time.

Hebrew is not a conventional language. Its roots function like chemical elements; the binyanim (verbal conjugations) act like bonds and reactions that transform meaning with absolute consistency. Chiastic structures bind entire books and narratives into interlocking symmetries.

Gematria reveals numerical identities that are not decorative but structural. Equidistant letter sequences (ELS)—the Torah codes studied by Rabbi Matityahu Glazerson and others—embed additional layers of information that surface only when the continuous letter stream of the Torah is examined at regular intervals.

These are not after-the-fact curiosities. They form part of the same system that already contains the open-text prophecies of the return to the Land, the gathering of the nations against Jerusalem, and the final confrontation that leads to the revelation of Hashem’s glory.

The Prophetic Framework of the End of Days

The Tanakh is unambiguous. The Jewish people must first return to the Land in significant numbers and regain sovereignty over Jerusalem. Only then do the nations rise against her. Zechariah 12:3 declares that Jerusalem will become a burdensome stone for all the peoples; all who lift it will be severely injured. In addition, all the nations of the earth will gather against it.

Ezekiel 38–39 describes the coalition headed by Persia (Iran) and its allies that comes against a people dwelling securely in the Land. The purpose of this confrontation is not Israel’s destruction but the opposite. Specifically, it is so that the nations will know that Hashem is God when He intervenes dramatically on behalf of His people.

After the war come the recognition, the purification, and the permanent dwelling of the Divine Presence. Ezekiel 40–48 details the future Temple and the restored order. The sequence is fixed: return → confrontation → redemption. This is the blueprint.

Trump, Cyrus, and the Directed Hatred

Isaiah 45 calls the Persian king Cyrus “His anointed” (משיחו)—a non-Jew raised up specifically to open the way for the Jewish return and the rebuilding of the Temple. The open text already establishes the pattern. For example, Hashem uses unexpected instruments, even pagan rulers, to advance Israel’s redemption.

Rabbi Matityahu Glazerson’s Torah-code tables repeatedly place the name of Donald Trump adjacent to the Hebrew for Cyrus (Koresh), to “president of the United States,” to “lover of Israel,” and in proximity to language of redemption and the anointed. One early table appears in Leviticus. It is near the discussion of the anointed kohen.

Other tables link Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital (announced in the month of Iyar, associated with Joseph) to the larger theme of the “son of Joseph” who prepares the physical ground for the final redemption. These codes do not invent a new theology. Instead, they illuminate the same pattern already written in Isaiah.

Intense Hatred

The intensity of hatred directed at Trump is therefore not random political animosity. It is of a different order than ordinary partisan dislike. In living memory, no other figure has been targeted with such sustained, almost liturgical vitriol. Ronald Reagan was also shot and survived, yet the quality and universality of the hatred directed at Trump stand apart.

When a gentile leader is raised up to serve the interests of Israel’s restoration—moving the embassy, recognizing the Golan, facilitating the Abraham Accords, confronting the Iranian nuclear threat—the forces that stand against the redemption of Zion inevitably focus their rage upon him. The hatred itself becomes evidence that the ancient pattern is active. As a result, the nations are gathering, and the instrument that helps Israel becomes the lightning rod.

This is the hand of Hashem. The same God who hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that His power would be displayed, and who raised Cyrus so that the decree of return could go forth, is directing the opposition of our day. Consequently, the final confrontation will be unmistakable.

Why the Christian Bible Has No Place in This Conversation

The end-time conversation belongs exclusively to the Tanakh. Rabbi Tovia Singer has repeatedly demonstrated that the Hebrew prophets already supply the complete sequence: the return of the Jewish people, the war of Gog and Magog centered on Persia, the burdensome stone of Jerusalem, the destruction of the aggressor nations, the recognition of Hashem by the world, and the permanent restoration. Therefore, there is no gap that requires a later “New Testament” to fill.

The Christian scriptures introduce concepts foreign to the prophetic texts—the replacement of Israel, a suffering messiah whose work is already finished in a different age, and a timeline that consistently misaligns with the plain readings of Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Isaiah. When the prophets speak of the nations coming against Jerusalem, they do so in the context of a restored Jewish people already living in the Land under Jewish sovereignty. That is the reality of our generation. Attempts to read later Christian frameworks back into these chapters obscure rather than illuminate the blueprint. As a result, the Torah and the Prophets stand complete.

A Book Like No Other

The precision is multi-layered and self-reinforcing. The open narrative of history and law, the literary architecture, the numerical relationships, the prophetic forecasts that have already begun to materialize, and the hidden letter sequences that continue to surface relevant names and events—all of these operate together. No other ancient text or modern composition exhibits this combination of features. For example, DNA itself functions as a coded language of life. The Torah presents itself as the prior, higher code from which the patterns of creation and history are derived.

We are living inside the blueprint. The return has occurred. The nations are aligning against Jerusalem. An unexpected instrument has been raised and is being opposed with unusual ferocity. The codes continue to surface the ancient pattern in modern names. The required response is not speculation but recognition. Therefore, return to the Torah itself, strengthen the people of Israel, and prepare for the revelation the prophets described.

The Torah is not a book among books. It is the architectural plan of creation and the operating manual of redemption. Everything else is commentary.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

• Trump as Modern Cyrus: Rabbis Proclaim a Divine Mandate for a New Era of Governance and Redemption
• For your sake, Hashem was angry with me. — Devarim 1:37 (and 3:26)
• The Jewish Prophets Words
• Where’s Your Cyrus? – Trump as God’s Tool, Not the King
• Trump Is Rebuilding An American Heritage Returning To God, Family, Country.

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

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

The evidence is clear.

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The Torah Blueprint Analysis

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

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

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

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

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

The Torah Blueprint Addresses the Claim

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

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

The Plain Reading of Numbers 10:33–35

The text is straightforward:

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

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

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

Applying a Jay Smith-Style Examination

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

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

The Ten Sayings and the Path of Redemption

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

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

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

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

Israel as Servant and the Resting Place

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

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

Verdict

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

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

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

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

Hazan Gavriel ben David

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

In Parshat Shoftim, the Torah commands:

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

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

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

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

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

Rabbi Glazerson’s Discovery in Genesis 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iran as a Key in the Code

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

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

From Shoftim to the Heavenly Court

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

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

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

Hazan Gavriel ben David

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

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

The Whole Torah Contained in the First Word

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adam, the Blueprint, and the Tree of Life

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

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

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

The Reconciliation on the Neck

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

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

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

The War That Still Comes

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

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

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

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

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

Hazan Gavriel ben David

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

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

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

Yom Teruah Is Not a Rabbinic Invention

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

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

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

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

Declaring the End from the Beginning

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

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

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

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

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

The Alef-Bet Confirms Transmission

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

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

The Time of the Ten Tribes and the Noahides

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

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

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

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

Combining the Urgency

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

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

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

Selected Sources

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

Hazan Gavriel ben David

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

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

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

The Alef-Bet: How Jewish Children Know Hashem

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

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

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

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

This Shabbat: Shoftim and Isaiah 51

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

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

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

The Lifelong Obligation of Jews and Their Descendants

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

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

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

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

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

Seven Pillars: Seven Days of Creation

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

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

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

The Letters to the Ten Lost Tribes

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

A Cry For Help To The Ten Tribes

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

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

The Call of This Hour

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

The Hidden Ones From Sinai – Nitzavim

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

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Footnotes

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

Selected Books and Sources

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

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

Hazan Gavriel ben David

• Bereishit as History
• What It Means To Be Free.
• Behold, Your King is Coming to You
• Milestone 13: The Third Day as the Day of Life and Death for Benjamin
• The Jewish Prophets Words

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

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

What Other Book Makes It So Plain: Jerusalem

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

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

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

Why?

The Place Adam Already Knew

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

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

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

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

Lebanon — The Temple That Whitens

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

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

The Shoulder of Judah and Benjamin

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

1. The Center

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

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

One center. One Tree. One Place.

2. Adam and the Original Ground

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

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

3. Availability and Access

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

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

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

4. Source of Life and Living Waters

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

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

5. Cherubim and Guarding the Way

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

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

6. Torah as the Continuing Tree of Life

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

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

7. One vs. Many

Eden had one Tree of Life in the center.

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

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

What the Sources Say

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

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

The Navel of the World

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

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

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

Connection to Adam and the Patriarchs

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

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

Waters of the Deep

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

Parallel to the Tree of Life

The parallels are striking:

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

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

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

8. Future Restoration

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

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

1. The Absolute Center

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

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

2. Source of the Waters of Life

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

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

3. Origin Point of Ordered Existence

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

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

4. Adam and the Beginning

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

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

5. The Temple as Restored Access

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

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

A Developing Reality

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

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

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

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

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

Partnership with Hashem

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

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

Why the Silence?

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

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

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

Hazan Gavriel ben David

• The Raising Lion
• Chief Rabbi Goldstein says it plainly: “Our whole point of being Jewish is to tell a story.”
• Support My Rabbis
• Shabbat: Dennis Preger and Charlie Kirk
• Jewish Learning Topics Page

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

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

That Blueprint begins in the Garden.

The Tree of Life Was Always Available

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

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

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

How Do You Get Jesus From The Tree of Life

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

One Family, Written in DNA

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

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

Where the Distinction Begins: Genesis 25

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

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

The Visible Distinction in Our Day

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

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

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

Choose the Tree of Life

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

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

Hazan Gavriel ben David

Shabbat Shalom.

• Chapter 1: To Work and to Safeguard the Garden (The Tree of Life – A Blog Series)
• The Tree of Life: Why Christianity Should Come Home: The Real Sin of Sodom and the Path Back to the Tree of Life
• Jewish Learning Topics Page
• Parashat Balak: Yeshua The Angel of the LORD
• The Middle Pathway: The Ten Sayings and the Healing of a Family

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

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

You Are Children of Hashem

In the heart of the portion we read:

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

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

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

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

The Tragic Spectacle and the False Diagnosis

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

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

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

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

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

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

We Are a Family, Not a Religion

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

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

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

The Larger Distinction in Our Day

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

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

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

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

What We Are Called to See

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

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

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

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

Hazan Gavriel ben David

Shabbat Shalom.

• That Which You have not seen.
• Parashat Balak: Yeshua The Angel of the LORD
• Parashat Chukat 5786: The 38 Years of Silence and Singing Your Own Song
• Jewish Learning Topics Page
• Parashat Va’yigash Genesis 44 – 47

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

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

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

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

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

The Unique National Revelation No Other Faith Can Claim

Deuteronomy 4 issues a challenge that remains unanswered:

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

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

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

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

The Land That Responds Only to the Jewish People

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

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

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

DNA Evidence and the Table of Nations

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

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

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

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

(Drawing on Rabbi Efraim Palvanov)

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

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

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

The Torah Identifies Locations

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

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

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

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

The Torah Blueprint

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

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

The Dead Sea Scrolls and Textual Stability

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

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

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

Applying Their Own Criteria: Both Faiths Fail

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

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

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

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

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

The Fasts That Become Joy

Zechariah 8:19 declares:

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

Hazan Gavriel ben David Esnoga Beit HaShoavah

David Solomon’s lecture on the second 500-year block of Jewish history (the Talmudic Period, roughly 0–500 CE) frames this era as the decisive transformation of Jewish life after the destruction of the Second Temple. With independent statehood effectively ended by the failed Great Revolt (66–73 CE) and the catastrophe of Bar Kokhba (132–135 CE), the center of gravity shifted from the Land of Israel to Babylonia.

There, under Persian (Parthian then Sasanian) rule, the Jewish people built an extraordinary infrastructure of Torah study that produced the Babylonian Talmud—the most influential Jewish document after the Written Torah itself. Solomon emphasizes the depth of this dedication: a living, continuous, high-stakes commitment to the Oral Torah that turned exile into the workshop of eternity.

The Two Academies and the Dedication to Torah

After the Tannaitic period culminated in Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi’s redaction of the Mishnah (c. 200 CE), the Amoraic period began with the migration of scholarship eastward. Abba Arikha (known simply as Rav) returned from studying under Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi and established the academy at Sura. His colleague Samuel developed Nehardea. When Nehardea was destroyed, the center moved to Pumbedita under Rav Yehudah bar Yeḥezkel. These two great schools—Sura in the south and Pumbedita in the north—became the twin hearts of Babylonian Jewish life for centuries.

The academies operated with extraordinary intensity. The Mishnah became the central curriculum. Thousands of students gathered for the yarḥei kallah (the months of assembly), intense periods of collective study and debate. The method was dialectical: the Gemara grew as an analytic, questioning, multi-voiced exploration of the Mishnah, incorporating baraitot and the Tosefta.

This was not passive transmission. It was creative, rigorous, and communal—students and masters arguing across generations until the material was sealed under Rav Ashi and Ravina around the year 500. The result was the Babylonian Talmud, a document of almost inexhaustible depth that became the constitution of Jewish life in exile.

The dedication was total. Torah study was the national project of survival and identity. In a foreign land, under a Zoroastrian empire, the Jews built institutions that outlasted empires. The academies produced not only legal decisions but a complete worldview: law, narrative, theology, ethics, and a living connection to the God of Israel.

The Heads of the Academies: Qualifications and Selection

The head of each academy (Rosh Yeshiva) was not a political appointment in the ordinary sense. Selection rested on demonstrated mastery. The ideal candidate possessed:

• Comprehensive command of the Mishnah and the accumulating oral traditions.
• Exceptional dialectical skill—the ability to analyze, challenge, resolve contradictions, and generate new insights under the pressure of public debate.
• Piety and moral authority that commanded respect from colleagues and students.
• Administrative capacity to manage the large assemblies, the calendar of study, and the relationship with the broader community and the Exilarch.

Succession was often organic: the outstanding student or designated colleague rose through recognition by his peers. At times the Exilarch played a confirming role, and later, in the Geonic period, the relationship became more formalized. Tension was inherent. The scholarly heads derived authority from knowledge and the force of argument; the political head derived it from lineage and royal recognition. The two systems of legitimacy—Torah and Davidic blood—had to coexist.

The Prince of the Exile: The Exilarch and the Hope of Redemption

Parallel to the academies stood the office of the Resh Galuta—the Exilarch, or Prince of the Exile. This figure claimed direct descent from King Jehoiachin and thus from the House of David. Recognized by the Persian authorities as the official head of the Jewish ethnic community, the Exilarch collected taxes, administered justice, maintained a court, and represented the Jews before the throne. He lived with quasi-royal dignity.

The Exilarch embodied a permanent messianic readiness. The Davidic line was kept intact and visible in exile precisely so that, when the time of redemption arrived, a legitimate prince would be prepared. This was not merely ceremonial. The continued existence of a recognized Davidic house in Babylonia was itself a quiet declaration of faith: the covenant had not been revoked, the kingdom was only suspended, and the future king would come from this stock.

Yet tension with the scholarly leadership was real and recurring. The Nasi (Prince/Patriarch) in the Land of Israel claimed similar Davidic legitimacy and spiritual primacy. Stories in the Talmud record friction—sometimes sharp—between the Exilarchate and the heads of the academies, and between the Babylonian and Palestinian centers. Authority based on blood and authority based on Torah learning did not always sit easily together. The Talmud itself preserves both the respect due to the Davidic house and the insistence that ultimate authority rests with the sages who know the law.

Greek Language, Greek Thought, and the Conquest of Philosophy

Greek culture had already penetrated Jewish life during the Second Temple period. In the Talmudic era, the engagement continued on two levels.

Linguistically, Greek words entered the Hebrew and Aramaic of the sages in significant numbers. Terms such as Sanhedrin (from synedrion), prozbul, afikoman, names of coins, legal and administrative vocabulary, and philosophical or scientific terms appear throughout the Talmud and Midrash. The language of the conquerors became part of the everyday tools of Torah discourse.

Philosophically, the encounter was more profound. Neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, and other Hellenistic systems circulated in the intellectual atmosphere of the late Roman and Persian worlds. The sages did not simply reject them. They engaged, adapted, and subordinated. Concepts of emanation, chains of being, and the relationship between the material and the spiritual were refracted through the lens of Torah. Manichaean dualism and pure Gnostic rejection of the material world were opposed. The Jewish response was neither wholesale assimilation nor pure isolation.

Talmudic Period: Ephraim

Here the idea associated with “Ephraim” becomes illuminating. Just as the biblical blessing speaks of Yafet (the classical representative of the Mediterranean, Greek world) dwelling in the tents of Shem, the Jewish project was to bring Greek language and elements of Greek thought into the service of Torah. The language was conquered by being put to work in the study hall.

Philosophical categories were conquered by being measured against revelation and, where useful, integrated into a larger Torah framework. The result was not a Hellenized Judaism but a Judaism that had absorbed and transformed the tools of the surrounding culture without surrendering its own center of gravity.

This is the deeper victory Solomon’s lecture highlights. In Babylonia the Jews did not merely survive. They built institutions of such intellectual and spiritual power that the Oral Torah was preserved, expanded, and made portable for all future centuries of exile.

The two academies, the carefully maintained Davidic princely house waiting for redemption, the rigorous qualifications of scholarly leadership, the creative tension between political and spiritual authority, and the selective conquest of Greek language and thought—all of these formed a single, coherent response to catastrophe. The Talmud that emerged is the lasting monument to that dedication.

The Crisis the Christian Bible Does Not Mention

The Crisis of Caligula’s Statue in the Temple (39–41 CE)

Historical Context and Philo of Alexandria

Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BCE – c. 50 CE) was the leading Jewish intellectual of the Hellenistic Diaspora. A member of a wealthy and prominent Alexandrian Jewish family, he wrote in Greek and sought to interpret the Torah through the categories of Platonic and Stoic philosophy while remaining firmly committed to Jewish monotheism and practice. His works include extensive biblical commentaries, philosophical treatises, and two important historical writings: Against Flaccus and The Embassy to Gaius (Legatio ad Gaium).

The events involving Caligula unfolded against the background of rising tensions between Jews and Greeks in Alexandria and, more broadly, the emperor’s demand for divine honors.

The Sequence of Events

Caligula (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus) became emperor in March 37 CE. Early in his reign, he showed relative favor toward the Jews, partly through his friendship with Herod Agrippa I. That favor did not last.

In 38 CE, severe anti-Jewish riots broke out in Alexandria under the prefect Aulus Avilius Flaccus. Synagogues were desecrated, Jews were attacked, and their civic rights were undermined. Both the Jewish and Greek communities of Alexandria eventually sent embassies to Rome. Philo led the Jewish delegation (probably departing in late 39 or early 40 CE).

While the Alexandrian embassy was in Italy, a separate incident in Judea escalated the crisis. In the coastal town of Jamnia (Yavneh), non-Jews erected an altar in honor of the emperor. Local Jews destroyed it. The matter was reported to Caligula as an act of deliberate disloyalty.

Caligula responded with an extreme order: a colossal statue of himself, portrayed as Jupiter (Zeus), was to be placed inside the Temple in Jerusalem. He instructed Publius Petronius, the newly appointed legate of Syria, to carry out the decree and to use military force if necessary—specifically, to advance with two legions if the Jews resisted.

This was an unprecedented demand. Previous Roman rulers had generally respected the Jewish ban on images in the Temple. Caligula’s order struck at the heart of Jewish religious identity.

Jewish Resistance and Petronius’ Dilemma

News of the decree caused widespread alarm. Large numbers of Jews—Philo and Josephus both describe tens of thousands—gathered first at Ptolemais (Acre) and later in Galilee to petition Petronius. They declared that they would rather die than allow the desecration of the Temple. Many stopped working their fields, risking famine, as a form of non-violent protest.

Petronius recognized the depth of Jewish resolve and the near-certainty of a full-scale revolt if he proceeded. He delayed construction of the statue (ordered to be made in Sidon), wrote to Caligula explaining the practical and political dangers, and sought a way to avoid catastrophe. His hesitation was a calculated risk; disobedience to a direct imperial order could cost him his life.

Agrippa’s Intervention and the Resolution

Herod Agrippa I, who was in Rome and on friendly terms with Caligula, intervened. According to the sources, he persuaded the emperor to suspend or revoke the order, at least temporarily.

Caligula later regretted the concession. He ordered Petronius to proceed with the installation and, when he learned of the legate’s delays, sent instructions for Petronius to end his life. Before that order arrived, news reached the East that Caligula had been assassinated in Rome on 24 January 41 CE by officers of the Praetorian Guard. The crisis ended with his death. The statue was never erected.

Primary Sources

The two main contemporary accounts are:

• Philo’s Legatio ad Gaium — a detailed, first-hand narrative from the leader of the Alexandrian Jewish embassy.
• Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.261–309 and Jewish War 2.184–203.

These independent sources agree on the essential outline of the events.

Why the Christian Bible (New Testament) Does Not Mention the Incident

The New Testament is silent on the Caligula crisis. Several factors explain this absence:

1. Chronology: The traditional dating of Jesus’ crucifixion is c. 30–33 CE. Caligula’s decree belongs to 39–41 CE—after Jesus’ death and during the earliest years of the Jerusalem church and the beginning of the wider mission. The Gospels focus on Jesus’ life and ministry; Acts concentrates on the expansion of the church from Jerusalem through the work of Peter and Paul.
2. Narrative and Theological Focus: The New Testament writers selected material that served their proclamation of Jesus as Messiah and the spread of the gospel. A political-religious crisis that was ultimately averted did not fit that agenda as directly as events that shaped the early Christian communities or fulfilled specific prophetic expectations.
3. Brief and Resolved Crisis: Unlike the Jewish War of 66–70 CE (which left the Temple destroyed and is reflected in the eschatological discourses, especially Mark 13), the Caligula episode ended without the actual desecration of the Temple. It produced intense fear but no lasting institutional rupture of the kind that later dominated Jewish and Christian memory.
4. Geographic Scope: Much of the drama involved Alexandria, the Syrian legate, and imperial politics in Rome. The New Testament’s surviving documents are more tightly focused on Judea, Galilee, and the Pauline mission field.

Modern Scholars

Some modern scholars have suggested that the memory of the crisis may have influenced the language of the “abomination of desolation” in Mark 13 and parallels, but the event itself is never named or described. The silence is therefore best understood as a matter of selection and emphasis rather than ignorance of a major imperial confrontation with Jewish religious practice.

In short, the Caligula statue crisis was one of the most serious threats to the Temple in the first century before 70 CE. It is richly documented in Jewish sources (Philo and Josephus) but lies outside the narrative priorities of the New Testament authors.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

• Time Travel in the Torah: How Science Is Catching Up to Ancient Wisdom
• Confession of an Ex-Messianic
• Two Sides of the Same Coin, Part Five: A Criminal Translation
• Parashat Chukat 5786: The 38 Years of Silence and Singing Your Own Song
• The Fourth Commandment in Toldot: “Stay With Laban a Few Days” – The First Shabbat in Exile

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