Celebrating Shavuot - Receiving the Torah

Celebrating Shavuot "Also on the day of the first fruits, when you present a new grain offering to the Lord in your Feast of Weeks, you shall have a holy convocation; you shall do no laborious work." Numbers 28:26 The Jewish holiday of Shavuot was celebrated yesterday. According to Jewish tradition Shavuot is the day the Children of Israel received the Torah at Mt. Sinai. According to the Talmud God gave the Ten Commandments to the Jews on the sixth night of the Hebrew month of Sivan. Shavuot always falls 50 days after the second night of Passover. Read More... Yes, I would like to take part in reviving the Israeli desert and enjoy its fruits!!

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God’s Wakeup Call (Rosh Hashana preparation)

God’s Wakeup Call

Posted on August 9, 2013 by Rabbi Moshe Rothchild in Blog, Weekly Message

On the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul (this past Wednesday),  Jews around the world began blowing the shofar (ram’s horn) in anticipation of Rosh Hashanah which will be celebrated in one month. What is the source of this custom?

Jewish tradition tells us that when Moses climbed Mt. Sinai for a second time after the sin of the Golden Calf, he was accompanied by the sounding of the shofar. Moses ascended to beg for forgiveness for the Jewish people and to receive the second set of tablets. All of this happened on the first day of Elul hence we mark the beginning of God’s forgiveness of the Jewish people by blowing the shofar. We will do so every day until Rosh Hashana.

For the Jewish people this forty day period beginning today and extending to Yom Kippur is a time that has been designated for forgiveness. We do our best to repair our relationship with God and with people. We cannot ask God to forgive us for offenses committed against other people—we must reconcile directly with them.

How did the shofar come to be such a powerful symbol?

Abraham is instructed by God to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. In perhaps the most dramatic moment in human history God tells Abraham to stop just as he is about to plunge the knife in to the neck of Isaac. God teaches us that we are to live for Him and not give up our lives to honor Him. Abraham looks up and caught in the thicket is a ram. Abraham takes the ram and offers him to God as a replacement for Isaac. Abraham has passed the test and demonstrated the depth of his commitment and loyalty to God and at the same time is taught a powerful lesson about life.

The ram’s horn recalls this incredible act of Abraham reminding us of his faith in order to inspire us to higher levels of faith and commitment. We sound the shofar and we are brought back to the great moment where Abraham, the great knight of faith, instructs us.

Another imagery that we find in Jewish literature is the shofar as a kind of spiritual alarm clock. When a person is physically asleep and needs to be up to go to school or work, they set an alarm clock. When a person is spiritually asleep he listens to the sound of the shofar. It is a wakeup call that reminds us not to sleep away our lives in a spiritual slumber. We must arouse ourselves and awaken our souls to God.

Others suggest that the sounds that emanate from the shofar represent the deepest cry of the human being. Crying transcends words. Words can only reach so far but a cry from the soul can open all doors of heaven. Sometimes we simply do not have the words to express ourselves so we cry to God to express the inner emotions and thoughts of our hearts in a way that can never be achieved through the spoken word. This is what the shofar is. Its sounds reach down in to the soul of man and reach up to the highest places in heaven.

The shofar reminds us of Abraham, it is a wakeup call and it is a cry from the depths of our soul.

Finally, the shofar is mentioned everyday three times a day in Jewish prayer. “Sound the great shofar for our freedom…and gather us in from the four corners of the world.” The shofar is the instrument that will announce the redemption.  It will begin an era where the whole world will recognize God and live in peace. Let us pray that we are blessed to hear the sounding of the great shofar!

Editor's note: I added the following photos (just because I love photos!)  Steve Martin

Israel's Messianic Jews celebrate Shavuot

Israel's Messianic Jews celebrate Shavuot

Thursday, May 16, 2013 |  Israel Today Staff  

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Israeli Messianic believers in Yeshua from across the country gathered in the Jerusalem-area village of Yad Hashmonah on Wednesday to mark the biblical festival of Shavuot.

Shavuot is one of Israel's most revered biblical holidays, as it commemorates, among other things, the giving of God's Word at Mt. Sinai. The holiday has entered the Christian calendar as Pentecost, the day of the outpouring of God's spirit on the local body of Yeshua's followers in Jerusalem. So, for Israeli believers, Shavuot is doubly important.

As with every year, hundreds of Messianic Jews and Christians living in Israel made their way to Yad Hashmonah for the festive event. Among those addressing the gathering was a Ugandan pastor who two years ago had acid poured over his head by an angry Muslim gang. He is currently living in Israel to undergo treatment in Tel Aviv.

The African visitor said he was raised a Muslim who hated the Jewish state, but after finding the Bible realized that every passage made clear that the God of Israel is the one and only true God.

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The Shavuot Holiday, Celebrating the Giving of the Torah

Jews around the world commemorated the holiday
of Shavuot this week, the day on which tradition
says the Torah was given to the people of Israel
at Mt. Sinai.

Torah scrolls in the ark of the Istanbouli Synagogue in the Old City

of Jerusalem (circa 1930), "one of the oldest synagogues

in Jerusalem." The synagogues in the Old City were all

destroyed after the Jewish Quarter was captured in 1948.

(Library of Congress) 

The Torah -- also known as the Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses --
has been the foundation of the Jewish faith for 3,000 years, the basis
for the monotheistic Christian and Islamic religions, and an inspiration
for spiritual, moral and ethical values.


A Yemenite Jewish scribe and his
father, Shlomo Washadi (c 1935)



Samaritan high priest with
his sons and Pentateuch
scroll (c 1911)

The Torah scrolls are handwritten with quills by God-fearing scribes
on the parchment made of the skins of kosher animals. One skipped
or illegible letter of the 304,805 letters of the Torah makes the scroll
invalid for reading in the synagogue service. A Torah damaged
beyond repair is buried.

Doctors Herbert and David Torrance of the Scottish Mission hospital i
n Tiberias and the photographers of the American Colony
Photographic Department took several portraits of Jews and their
Torah scrolls. They were also clearly fascinated by the scrolls and
practice of the Samaritans, an ancient offshoot of Judaism who are 

not considered Jewish today.


Jewish rabbi or Samaritan priest with scroll

The Dundee Medical School archives in Scotland contains many
anatomical pictures taken by the Torrances, but also fascinating
pictures of the Galilee Jewish community. We published one photo
captioned "Rabbi and Torah scroll." After we identified the picture
as a Samaritan, the archives corrected their caption to "a Samaritan
leader with his sect’s scroll."



A desecrated synagogue in Hebron
with Torahs strewn on the floor (1929)


The Library of Congress archives also include pictures of the
Hebron Jewish community after they were decimated in a
pogrom by Arab attackers. Among the photos are pictures
of a destroyed synagogue and its Torah scrolls.

Enlargement of the scrolls on the floor

Book of Ruth Comes Alive in Antique Photos Taken 100 Years Ago

In Honor of the Jewish Holiday Shavuot, We Re-post -- The Book of Ruth Comes Alive in Antique Photos Taken 100 Years Ago Posted: 13 May 2013 11:55 PM PDT "Ruth the Moabitess" The Jewish holiday ofShavuot-Pentecost will be celebrated this week.  The holiday has several traditional names: Shavuot, the festival of weeks, marking seven weeks after Passover; Chag HaKatzir, the festival of reaping grains; andChag HaBikkurim, the festival of first fruits.  Shavuot, according to Jewish tradition, is the day the Children of Israel accepted the Torah at Mt. Sinai.  It is also believed to be the day of King David's birth and death. Ruth said, "Do not entreat me to  leave you, to return from following  you, for wherever you go, I will go... Your people shall be my people, your  God my God" The reading of the Book of Ruth is one of the traditions of the holiday.  Ruth, a Moabite and widow of a Jewish man (and a princess according to commentators), gave up her life in Moab to join her Jewish mother-in-law, Naomi, in the Land of Israel.  She insisted on adopting Naomi's God, Torah and religion. And Naomi and Ruth both went on  until they arrived at Bethlehem A central element of the story of Ruth is her going to the fields where barley and wheat were being harvested so that she could collect charitable handouts.  She gleans in the fields of Boaz, a judge and a relative of Ruth's dead husband (as such he has a levirate obligation to marry the widow).  The union results in a child, Obed, the grandfather of King David.  Ruth came to a field that belonged  to Boaz who was of the family of  Naomi's deceased husband  Boaz said to his servant, who stood over the reapers, "To whom does this maiden belong?" The members of the American Colony were religious Christians who established their community in the Holy Land.  They were steeped in the Bible and photographed countryside scenes that referred to biblical incidents and prohibitions. Boaz said to Ruth, "Do not go to glean in another field...here you shall stay with my maidens" Boaz said to her at mealtime, "Come here and partake of the bread..." He ordered his servants "Pretend to  forget some of the bundles for her."  We present a few of thedozens of "Ruth" photographs found in the Library of Congress' American Colony collection. Ruth carried it to the city and Naomi saw what she had gleaned Ruth came to the threshing floor and Boaz said, "Ready the shawl you are wearing and hold it," and she held it, and he measured out six measures of barley.... A major effort was made by the photographers to re-enact the story of Ruth.  "Ruth," we believe, was a young member of the American Colony community; the remaining "cast" were villagers from the Bethlehem area who were actually harvesting, threshing and winnowing their crops.  We have matched the pictures with corresponding verses from the Book of Ruth. See more of the pictures here. Unfortunately, we don't know when the "Ruth and Boaz series" was photographed, but we estimate approximately 100 years ago. Click on the caption to view the original.  Full article: Picture A Day: Book of Ruth