Adat Yeshua Weekly Commentaries
Post List
Trusting God in the difficult times
In Numbers 11:1-15, we find Israel a year into their journey and already getting fed up with God’s provision for them. Humanly speaking the desert was an inhospitable place in comparison to Egypt with its fruitful and plentiful food supplies and water. But it was here that we had to learn to trust and not worry. We were being set free mentally, physically and spiritually and had to realise that…
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The Hallmarks of Blessing
The portion this week begins with the command ‘nas et-rosh bnai gershon’: ‘lift up the heads of the sons of Gershon’. This lifting up is of course translated as taking a census, a counting or reckoning of the numbers of men ready to be used in the transportation of the Mishkan and the holy articles. As in all the things of God, everything is exact and designed. Israel was called…
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Wilderness
The portion begins with ‘in the wilderness or desert’. One year after receiving the Torah at Sinai we begin to move on into the next 39 years of wandering through a barren land. We had come out of Egypt (a metaphor for the world’s system) and headed to decision day, our meeting with G-d at Sinai, where we chose to follow (or as the early responses to G-d revealed- rebel…
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Matters of the heart
Our portion opens with the teachings surrounding the Yovel year and Shmittah: how the Land needs to rest from our labours and we learn that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word spoken by God. It is trust and faith that bring life; the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. In the Haftarah, this message continues: Israel was about to be exiled and the…
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Parashat Emor
Parashat Emor states the broad design for God’s people: “Be ye holy as I am holy”. Indeed we learn a profound lesson – repeated for us twice here in Leviticus 21:8 and 22:32-33 – that it is God Himself who makes us holy. He is intimately involved in the process and status of our sanctity; as with so many areas of our faith, we discover that everything comes from Him,…
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Parashat Achrei Mot-Kedoshim
Reactive Land This double portion focuses completely on redressing the balance after the death of Nadav and Avihu and their sin of presumption, a presumption that God would accept anything they did and the inherent dangers of the people being taught the wrong thing due to their actions if not words. The long section on holiness naturally flows from this event, a corrective reminder of the path of righteousness, a…
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Leprosy, a bit of a sore issue?
This whole section seems so yucky and earthy to our modern sensitivities that we almost think it has to be consigned to the ‘olden days’. How do we even begin to connect with a section which talks about discharges and emissions, how these make you unclean? What about the uncleanness itself as a concept? Is this merely ritual, sin orientated or spiritual too? What can we learn from all this…
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Righteous Fire
Righteous Fire Let me ask you a searching question. Apart from the Lord, what is the defining feature you automatically think of when you think of Judaism? Is Torah the most important thing, theme and concept we are meant to hold and cherish? I think actually if we consider the space devoted to the Mishkan and the constant and ongoing offerings there, the structure and numbers of priests and their…
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Parashat Tzav: Great at being Ungrateful
The Temple was not a ‘nice’ place to be. It was a bloody and smelly place, not the place for the squeamish, blood was everywhere. There were burning corpses of animals already lifted up and offered as sacrifices to G-d, their blood draining away into the gullies and drains around the altar. Blood, and the sacrifices generally, were core to the daily work in the Mishkan and later Temple. Sacrifices…
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Parashat Vayikra
The bloody path of returning to G-d Jewish children of five years old begin their Torah study with this book, otherwise known as the Torat Cohanim, the Torah for the Priests. How ghastly to start with something as horrific and bloodthirsty as animal sacrifices! Surely we should begin with the Creation, or the building of the Mishkan, something visual and hands on. But no, it begins with sacrifices. And don’t…
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Parashat Vayakhel-Pekudei
Why His way is not our way There are three themes that link together in this portion: The commandments about Shabbat, the freewill offerings given by the people and the building of the Mishkan. Why start this set of three with Shabbat? Interestingly Adam and Chava’s life after they were created began with Shabbat. Man’s thinking would be to start with the first working day of the week, but no,…
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Idolatry
It had all started so well, a dramatic departure from Egypt, the parting of the Reed Sea, the miracles of deliverance and redemption still vibrating in the communal memory, G-d had acted to set us free! Moshe had gone up to receive the teachings we were now to live by, and then… tragedy strikes. Just how did we get from the amazing spiritual highs of the Exodus and Sinai to…
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His Design Alone
There are a number of key themes running through the building and equipping of the Mishkan (tabernacle), the altar with its incense and impact on the senses designed to remind us of the need for constant prayer, and the eternal light filling the area with light indicative of G-d’s presence eternally with us. We also now read of commandments to make garments for Aaron, for the priesthood. The Mishkan in…
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God’s Blueprint
Nothing in the universe is left up to chance. We do not live in an unpredictable, unplanned cosmos wrought by the hidden uncontrolled hand of statistical randomness. The universe, all creation, runs according to the rules set down by the only God, of Avraham Yitzchak and Ya’akov. It is not a cold unfathomable place, hostile to humanity, far from it. It is a warm and above all righteous place perfectly…
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Parashat Mishpatim (Judgements)
Commanded Holiness Last week Moshe stood on the mountain of the Lord receiving the Torah; the fire, the smoke, the physical manifestations of the Lord’s presence! This week we’ve moved from that awesome encounter with God where He gave us the first of His commandments, to the total apparent mundane instructions of how to live and behave in certain situations! Just as we were feeling so close to God, we…
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Parashat Yitro
The Commanded Life We’re back to Yitro again; this is the portion I love each year, a chance to talk about Torah itself rather than the content. This is one of the most important if not the most important portions of the Torah. The impact of this portion in particular has gone far beyond the borders of Israel. God reveals His teachings to Israel, His people, and we in turn…
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Parashat Beshalach
Tu b’shevat, the 15th of Shevat, is a day designated as the New Year for trees. Our Land has always been a fruitful and blessed, fertile Land, while at the same time having the potential to be incredibly dry and arid, a living picture to the narrow balance we have in Israel between being blessed of the Lord, relying on His faithfulness to provide (as we see today in the…
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Parashat Bo
We’re free! It is often said that the darkest hour of the night is the one before dawn. I’m not sure that’s true, but if it is then one of those lowest points and subsequent dawns took place some 2500 years ago as we returned from exile to Israel again and began to rebuild the Temple under Ezra and Nehemiah. The first returnees were dismayed at what they found and…
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Parashat Va’era
Knowing when not to say no For 400 years our people toiled and worked in Egypt, just as G-d had promised they would, not a day longer or less, exactly what was promised and foreseen. When the time was up, G-d, who had been working behind the scenes for all this time, began to bring about Israel’s deliverance: Moshe was born, a man destined by G-d to walk with Him…
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Parashat Shemot
Life and Death in Egypt ‘And these are the names…’, thus begins this new book in the scroll, the same phrase used at the end of Bereshit to detail the people leaving their homeland to sojourn in Egypt. The parallels are meant to be stark, then we were small, now we are large in number, then we were free, now we are enslaved. Much had happened in the ensuing 400…
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