REMEMBERING TO LAUGH

In Jewish tradition, acknowledging God's will is central, with phrases like Im Yirtzeh Hashem (If God wills it) or B'ezrat Hashem (With God's help) often used to express reliance on Divine providence for future plans. This reflects the belief that while humans have free will regarding moral choices, ultimate outcomes rest in Heaven.

Remembering To Laugh

Isaac’s very name means “he will laugh.” In Hebrew, Yitzḥak is rooted in the laughter that greeted the impossible promise: Abraham laughs, Sarah laughs, and then laughs again when the child is born. Isaac is the embodied punchline of grace, the surprise child in whom God stakes His reputation and the future of the covenant.

Isaac’s life turns on two wounds: the day his father tied him to an altar, and the day his son lied to his blind face.

On Moriah, Abraham binds Isaac and raises the knife “for God.” Isaac is innocent, willing, the promised son stretched out on the wood. Abraham’s faith is on trial, but Isaac’s body carries it. He obeys by not resisting. In that place he discovers that life and destiny are not self‑secured; they rest entirely in God’s hands.

God claims him and then gives him back. A ram appears in the thicket. The substitute dies, the son lives, and the promise is laid down and raised up again. The God who demanded everything does not take the boy’s blood. He accepts the son’s willingness and supplies His own offering instead. Isaac learns that even his next breath is sheer provision, not personal possession.

Years later, in a dim tent, the pattern returns from the other side. Isaac is no longer bound, but he is blind. Again he is vulnerable. Again someone he loves uses him “for the sake of the promise.” Jacob covers himself in goat skins, borrows Esau’s scent, and lets his father’s hands and blessing fall on the wrong son by sight and the right son by heaven.

In both scenes Isaac is acted upon. He is tied or tricked, unable to verify reality, trembling under other people’s obedience and schemes. He hardly speaks about either event. Yet through both wounds the covenant moves forward. The knife is stopped, the deception stands, and in the middle—bound on the mountain, blinded in the tent—stands Isaac, the promised life through which God quietly carries the story on.

After Moriah, Isaac lives a strangely quiet life. Abraham’s story dominates before; Jacob’s dominates after. Isaac stays in the land. He reopens his father’s wells instead of carving out empires. He negotiates for water rather than conquering by the sword. He bends easily, avoids direct confrontation, and even lets the blessing pass through him instead of clawing it back when it seems to have gone to the wrong son.

Isaac has learned how little control he has. The near‑death on Moriah, “when the knife touched his neck,” branded him with the knowledge that God can demand everything and still preserve the promise. 

Isaac walks softly. His faith is not loud like Abraham’s “Here I am,” and not combative like Jacob wrestling till daybreak. It is the long, quiet obedience of a man who has already surrendered everything and gone on breathing.

That pattern does not stop with Isaac. On Moriah, a promised son is bound and a ram dies instead. Some Jewish traditions and texts, such as the Book of Jubilees, suggest that the Binding of Isaac (Akedah) took place during Passover, Nisan 14–15, tying Isaac’s near‑sacrifice to the night when death passes over Israel. Centuries later, another willing Son hangs on Passover wood and, this time, the knife is not called back.

At the hinge of that pattern stands Isaac—the overlooked patriarch of the promise. The child of laughter who lay on the wood and found out that his life was never his own. Remember to laugh.

If God wills it. אי״ה

PESACH: THE HIDDEN MERCY BEHIND THE PASSOVER

An Orthodox rabbi I am very close to called me today to wish me a sweet Passover.  We started to talk; I can not have a quick call with Rabbi. During the conversation he asked me a question that I was surprised he did. He asked me if I knew the meaning of "Pesach." Of course. I answered him. Then he said there is another meaning--an older meaning.

The Hidden Meaning of Passover Is More Than Just "Passing Over:

 While we commonly translate the Hebrew word Pesach (פסח) as "Passover," ancient texts and scholars reveal a much deeper, more heart-centered meaning: Mercy.

Early Aramaic translations, such as the 1st-century Targum Onkelos, don't describe a physical "skipping" of houses. Instead, they translate pesach as ve’eychos—meaning "I will have compassion" or "pity." This is echoed in the Mechilta, one of our earliest rabbinic commentaries, which explicitly states: "There is no translation of pesach other than mercy."

This sense of active protection is clarified in Isaiah 31:5, where the same Hebrew root (p-s-ch) describes God defending Jerusalem like "birds hovering." Ancient Greek and Aramaic versions often use terms for "shielding" or "covering" rather than just moving past. These sources suggest that God didn't just skip a house to get to the next; He hovered over or stood guard at the entrance to prevent the "destroyer" from entering. Medieval scholars like Saadya Gaon even referred to the Passover offering as the zevach chamlah—the "sacrifice of grace."

Conclusion:

Ultimately, shifting our focus from a physical "passing over" to an act of divine mercy transforms the Exodus story from a historical detour into a profound statement of God’s character. By viewing Pesach through the lens of these ancient traditions, we see a God who does not simply bypass a home, but actively shields it with compassion. It reminds us that the blood on the doorposts wasn't just a sign for a traveler to move on—it was a catalyst for divine protection. At the heart of this foundational festival is the timeless belief that mercy is the ultimate power that breaks the chains of oppression.

JONAH GET'S GETHSEMANE

Jonah 4:3 NKJV —"Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live!” 

I grew up with the book of Jonah not as a children’s story, but as a mirror. As a Jew named Jonah, I could never quite escape it. Jonah was not just a prophet in a distant past; he was a question pressed against my own heart: What do you do when God’s mercy runs toward people you’d rather judge? 

For years I circled the obvious lessons—running from God, the great fish, reluctant obedience, the shocking repentance of Nineveh. I thought I knew the book because I knew its plot. But I didn’t really understand Jonah until I laid it alongside another garden, another prophet, and another sentence: “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch.” (Mark 14:34)

In Jonah 4, my namesake sits east of the city under a sukkah he built for himself, watching and hoping for fire. His soul is “exceedingly displeased and angry” because his enemies repented and God spared them. In Gethsemane, Jesus also goes outside the city and is “exceedingly sorrowful, even to death”—but his anguish runs in the opposite direction. Jonah grieves that judgment did not fall on his enemies; Jesus grieves that judgment must fall on him for his enemies.

That contrast finally unlocked Jonah for me.

Jonah’s story shows a prophet whose heart is out of tune with God’s mission. God sends him to Nineveh so that, through a word of warning, a pagan, violent city might repent and live. Jonah goes, but his obedience is thin. When mercy actually arrives, it exposes him. Under his little sukkah of shade, Jonah’s soul is boiling: “Is it right for you to be angry?” God asks, and Jonah essentially answers, “Yes. Angry enough to die.”

Then God says “Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left?” The God of Israel lays bare his own heart: these enemies are morally blind. They “do not know.” And he pities them.

Personally speaking, for over forty years I carried considerable anger toward a man who had conned my father out of millions, helped shatter my parents’ nearly fifty–year marriage, and brought deep anguish on our family. It was only when my father died at ninety‑three that I finally realized I needed to forgive him.

Back to Gethsemane. There, the greater Jonah is also outside the city, also under the shadow of trees, also facing a moment of judgment and mercy for the nations. But unlike my namesake, Jesus’ troubled soul is not angry at the thought of enemies being spared. He is sorrowful at the cost of sparing them. Where Jonah says, “It is better for me to die than to live” because his enemies were not destroyed, Jesus says, in effect, “I will drink this cup so that my enemies may live.”

This is why Jesus can preach what Jonah could not live: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” When I put that command from Matthew 5 next to God’s question in Jonah 4, the link became sharp and inescapable: Jesus is inviting us into the very compassion God voiced over Nineveh—over people “who do not know their right hand from their left.” To pray for our enemies is to see them the way God described Nineveh and the way Jesus saw those who nailed him to the cross: spiritually blind, morally disoriented, desperately in need of the mercy they don’t even understand.

As a Jew named Jonah, that realization cut close. All my life I had read my book as if I were standing beside God, tsk‑tsking the prophet’s bad attitude. It was comfortable to treat Jonah as the problem and myself as the reader who had learned better. But when I looked at Jonah through Gethsemane, I had to admit something harder: I am Jonah. I know what it is to feel that certain people, certain groups, certain enemies are too far gone, too dangerous, too undeserving of compassion. I know what it is to be more eager for vindication than for their repentance.

And right at that point, the voice from Mark 14 broke in: “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch.” Jesus invites his disciples—and me—not only to observe his agony, but to stay awake to what it means. In the garden he is doing, from the inside, what Jonah never did: bending his will fully into the Father’s purpose of mercy. Jonah ran from the mission to enemies; Jesus walks into it. Jonah was furious when enemies repented and were spared; Jesus is crushed in soul so that enemies can repent and be spared. Jonah sat under a temporary sukkah waiting for wrath; Jesus, under the olive trees, becomes the shelter where wrath passes over.

Once I saw that, the book that bore my name stopped being just a rebuke and became a roadmap. To understand Jonah, I had to stand in Gethsemane and “stay here and watch” the true Prophet at work. To understand myself, I had to admit that my instinct is often closer to Jonah’s anger than to Jesus’ anguish. And to understand God, I had to receive that his heart has been the same in both stories: slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, eager to show mercy to those who repent.

So when I read Jonah now, I don’t stop at the fish or the plant or even the city. I follow the line all the way to a Jewish teacher, alone in a garden, whose soul is overwhelmed with sorrow because he has chosen to bear the judgment my enemies—and I—deserved. Only there, at that intersection of Jonah and Jesus, do the lessons of my book finally come into focus.

Conclusion

God knew Jonah when He chose him for this mission, and Jonah knew God well enough to say, “I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God.” Jonah’s failure does not cancel the mission; it exposes the mercy at its center. When Jesus takes Jonah’s story on His lips and calls it a “sign,” He declares that this reluctant prophet and his repentant enemies still stand in judgment over every generation that refuses to turn. As a Jew named Jonah, I cannot hold this book at arm’s length; my very name reminds me that Jonah is still a sign—first to Israel, then to the gentiles, to the church, and to Jews, like me. 

Judgment day still lies ahead, and final reckoning belongs to the Lord alone. The book of Jonah, which is read on Yom Kippur, reminds us that “we are all called to come to the atonement in repentance" so we may be found written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Chag Pesach Sameach. Happy Passover. Happy Good Friday. 

THUMBS UP

I noticed my thumb today. Weird thing to notice. But it really is an amazing creation. 

Medically and biomechanically, the human thumb is an outlier: it is uniquely built for powerful and precise grip, and losing it compromises an enormous share of hand function.

Researchers in hand surgery and rehabilitation often estimate that the thumb accounts for roughly a third to nearly half of functional hand capacity, which is why thumb loss is described as “quite literally losing one’s grip.”

Given all that, it is striking—but not surprising—that Scripture uses the thumb as a key anatomical “handle” for talking about consecrated action and, in judgment texts, the removal of a person’s practical power to act. The human thumb lands right at the intersection of biology and biblical theology.

The human thumb is mentioned in the Bible, primarily in the Old Testament, often to signify consecration, service, or punishment. It is mentioned in contexts involving priestly ordination rituals (Leviticus 8:23-24) and the punishment of capturing enemies by cutting off their thumbs and big toes (Judges 1:6-7).

Consecration and the thumb are deliberately linked in Scripture: the thumb marks a life set apart for holy work, and its loss marks the stripping away of power to act at all.

The thumb is singled out as the “master digit” that makes the hand truly useful, symbolizing work, craftsmanship, and service under God’s authority. Marking the thumb with blood says that every act, every tool grasped, every blessing given or judgment rendered by that hand is now priestly, not private property.

Theologically, the thumb keeps pointing you back to a single question: whose work are these hands really doing?

In that frame, blood on the thumb says that every act of ministry, judgment, blessing, or daily labor performed by that hand belongs to God.

I think every casual "thumbs up" can be a tiny liturgy, a quiet reminder to look up and ask if the work of our hands is consecrated?”

Makes me want to consider "high five." LOL. 

WRESTLING WITH GOD IN THE TALMUD

Wrestling With God: Why Hating the Talmud Is Hating Israel

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I have not invested my life in studying Talmud the way some Jews have. I’m not pretending to be a yeshiva scholar. But I’ve read enough, listened enough, and wrestled enough to know this much: the Talmud is not the monstrous text that Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and the chorus of modern Jew‑haters make it out to be. Their hatred says far more about them—and about the spiritual battle of our age—than it does about the Talmud.

In fact, their hatred ought to make Christians stop and ask a simple question: if these are the people leading the charge against the Talmud, what exactly is it they’re so afraid of?

So what is the Talmud? What makes it so special? And why is “wrestling with God” worthy of the blessing Jacob received at the Jabbok?

What the Talmud Really Is

The Talmud is not a neat little catechism or a simple rulebook. It is a sprawling, multi‑volume record of centuries of Jewish argument about how to hear, obey, and live the Torah in real life.

It is:

·         Torah in conversation: not just verses, but discussions about what those verses actually require when the Temple is gone, when empires shift, when new situations emerge.

·         A preserved argument: the Talmud famously preserves not only the “winning” opinions but the “losing” ones—because the way the argument unfolds is part of the tradition.

·         A community thinking out loud before God: rabbis, students, questions, objections, stories, and legal cases all intertwined into a living discussion that never really ends.

In other words, the Talmud is not just a compilation of answers; it is the canonization of the process by which Israel wrestles with God’s word.

That alone already sets it apart from most religious literature. Most religious communities preserve conclusions; the Talmud daringly preserves the debates.

The Talmud Is Not the Hebrew Bible

Let me be clear about something that often gets muddled, especially in Christian circles: the Talmud is not the Hebrew Bible.

The source is the written Scriptures—Torah, Prophets, Writings—the text Christians call the Old Testament. That is the covenant document itself, the inspired record of God’s acts, promises, commands, and dealings with Israel. The Bible is the well from which everything else draws.

The Talmud is a resource, not the source. It is the record of how generations of Jews have tried to hear, obey, and apply that biblical source in excruciating detail across changing times and places. It is commentary, argument, legal reasoning, and spiritual wrestling growing out of the text of Scripture.

You could say it this way:

·         The Bible is the foundational revelation.

·         The Talmud is the family conversation about what that revelation demands.

That distinction matters in both directions.

On the one hand, Christians who fear that respecting the Talmud means “replacing” Scripture have it backwards. Jews are not worshiping the Talmud instead of the Bible; they are using the Talmud to understand how to live the Bible.

On the other hand, those who attack the Talmud as if it were the Jewish “holy book,” as if Jews invented it out of thin air in defiance of Scripture, are erasing the very thing they claim to defend: the Hebrew Bible itself. Because without some living interpretive tradition, Scripture becomes a museum piece—quoted, but not inhabited.

So no, the Talmud is not the Hebrew Bible. It is what it is: a massive, flawed, human, and yet often profound attempt by Israel to stay in conversation with the God of that Bible. Not the source—but a key resource. Not the covenant itself—but one of the main ways the covenant people have continued to wrestle with the God who spoke.

Israel: The People Who Wrestle With God

In Genesis 32, Jacob grapples all night with a mysterious “man”—an angelic messenger, a manifestation of God, however you understand it. He is wounded. He clings. He refuses to let go without a blessing. He emerges limping and renamed: Yisrael—“one who wrestles with God and with men and prevails.”

That name is not a throwaway detail. It is the identity of the people.

To be Israel is to:

·         Take God seriously enough to argue with Him.

·         Press His promises back to Him instead of shrugging when things don’t make sense.

·         Ask hard questions of His word and of His messengers.

·         Refuse to let go, even when wounded and even when you don’t fully understand.

The Talmud is the main textual arena where that wrestling happens. It is Israel grappling with God’s revelation in slow motion, in print.

So to hate the Talmud is not just to dislike a book. It is to despise the wrestling itself. And if “Israel” means “God‑wrestler,” then despising that wrestling is, whether people admit it or not, despising Israel and the Jews.

Why the Talmud Is So Easy to Misuse

Because the Talmud includes debates, counter‑arguments, and even views that are ultimately rejected, it is a playground for dishonest people who want ammunition.

If you want to misrepresent it, it is easy:

·         You can rip a minority opinion out of context and pretend it is the definitive Jewish position.

·         You can quote an argument as if the text endorses it, when in fact the whole point of the sugya is to refute it.

·         You can lift obscure legal hypotheticals and present them as if they were a simple moral manifesto.

·         You can ignore the centuries of commentary that clarify how a passage has actually been understood and applied in real Jewish life.

That is exactly what enemies of the Jews have done for centuries. Medieval churchmen did it. 19th‑century racists did it. Today, internet “researchers” and media personalities are doing the same thing with better graphics and worse accountability.

They go hunting, not for understanding, but for “gotcha” lines that can be turned into memes and soundbites. They are not wrestling with God; they are scavenging for bullets.

A Historical Bonfire, A Modern Clip

To see what I mean, let me place two scenes side by side.

First scene: Europe, the Middle Ages. In one famous episode, carts piled high with handwritten Talmud manuscripts are dragged into a public square under church authority. The charge is that the Talmud is full of blasphemies, lies about Jesus, and corrupt teachings. A set of “disputations” has already been staged—rigged debates where Jews are forced to defend cherry‑picked passages before hostile judges. The verdict was decided long before the first argument was made.

Crowds watch as the books are thrown into the flames. An entire world of learning—centuries of commentary, law, prayer, and struggle—is treated as spiritual garbage. The Church tells itself it is defending Christ from “Jewish errors.” In reality, it is silencing the main voice of Israel’s wrestling with God.

Second scene: our own day. No bonfires, just a studio and a camera. A pundit leans forward, looks into the lens, and tells millions of viewers that the Talmud is a sinister book that commands unspeakable things. The “evidence” is a handful of lines ripped from thousands of pages, usually translated by hostile hands decades or centuries ago. No context. No awareness of whether the passage is endorsed, debated, or rejected. No interest in how actual observant Jews read and live it.

Then the clip is cut down to sixty seconds and blasted across social media. The comments fill up with “Now I know what they really believe” and “This explains everything.”

In both scenes, the same thing is happening: those in power decide that the God‑wrestling of Israel is intolerable. The old bonfire is now an algorithmic one. But the goal is the same—to shame, isolate, and delegitimize the Jewish people by attacking the heart of their interpretive life.

Why Their Hatred Should Make Christians Think

Here’s the irony: the people most loudly attacking the Talmud today are not exactly paragons of careful exegesis or humble submission to Scripture. They are pundits and propagandists.

If the Talmud were truly nothing but a manual for wickedness, you would not need selective misquotations and conspiracy theories to prove it. The text itself would convict it plainly.

Instead, what you see is:

·         Cherry‑picked lines with no context.

·         Reliance on long‑discredited antisemitic “scholarship” that serious historians have already exposed.

·         A refusal to listen to Jews who actually live under and study this text every day, in all its difficulty and nuance.

·         A total disinterest in the parts of the Talmud that emphasize justice, mercy, humility, and the fear of God.

So I want Christians to ask a simple question: why do the same voices who lie about Israel, who minimize or excuse violence against Jews, suddenly pose as crusaders for “biblical truth” when the topic is the Talmud?

Their hatred tells you something. It tells you that the actual target is not a page of Aramaic print. The target is the ongoing, stubborn existence of the Jewish people and their refusal to surrender God’s covenant or their own God‑given way of engaging His word.

When someone rages against the “evil of the Talmud,” what they are really raging against is a living, arguing, stubbornly faithful Israel.

The Blessing in the Wrestling

Jacob’s night at the Jabbok ended with both a limp and a blessing. The wrestling wounded him—but it also named him and marked him as blessed.

Likewise, the Jewish wrestling with God—in Scripture, in history, and in the Talmud—is not clean, safe, or comfortable. It is full of struggle, tension, unsolved questions, and sometimes sharp arguments with heaven itself.

But that wrestling carries a blessing:

·         It keeps the covenant alive in real life instead of leaving it on the page.

·         It models a faith that can challenge, question, and lament without walking away.

·         It refuses both cheap rebellion and fake submission. It clings even when it limps.

Christians should recognize that pattern. The psalmists cry out. Job argues. Jeremiah complains. Habakkuk interrogates God’s justice. Paul agonizes over the law, sin, and Israel. The difference is that in Judaism, this wrestling has been given a structured home: the study hall and the Talmud.

The Jewish people did not stop wrestling with God when the Temple fell. They moved the battle into the text and into the heart.

A Call to Christians

You do not have to agree with the Talmud. You do not have to adopt rabbinic halakha. You are free to see places where the New Testament and rabbinic conclusions diverge sharply. That is part of honest theological disagreement.

But you are not free—if you claim the Jewish Messiah—to join the mob that mocks, slanders, and weaponizes the Talmud as a way of attacking the people who bear His flesh.

To love the God of Israel while despising the people of Israel is a contradiction.

To kiss the crucified Jew on Sunday and share anti‑Talmud propaganda on Monday is a contradiction.

If nothing else, let this sink in: the Talmud is the record of a people who refused to stop wrestling with God after the Temple fell, after exile, after persecution, after centuries of contempt from the very Church that claimed to worship Israel’s Messiah.

You can disagree with their conclusions. You can critique their readings. But if you mock that wrestling itself, you are not defending the faith. You are despising the blessing God Himself gave to a man limping away from a river, renamed Israel.

The Talmud is, in many ways, the greatest Jewish minds arguing over a truth that is right in front of them, yet veiled—truth they are not yet willing, or even able, to see. From a “born again” standpoint, that truth is the crucified and risen Messiah of Israel, the One who said He is “the way, the truth, and the life.” Christians with spiritual discernment should be able to both honor the relentless Jewish search and also grieve that it circles so close to the very face of Truth while still turning away.

SAYING THE QUIET PART OUTLOUD

The mezuzah exists because of the Shema: its core Torah text is Deuteronomy 6:4–9, beginning with “Shema Yisrael,” followed by “And you shall write them on the doorposts (mezuzot) of your house and on your gates.” The object on the doorpost is therefore a physical embodiment of the Shema’s command—literally the Shema wrapped and affixed to the doorway. The shin on the case, pointing to Shaddai and “Guardian of the doors of Israel,” just makes visible what the scroll inside is already doing: turning the words of “Hear, O Israel” into a standing sign on the threshold.

Little Details with Major Meaning

A traditional mezuzah on a Jewish home will typically have the letter shin on the outside cover.

Judaism has many objects with religious symbolism. In addition, the Jewish service is filled with liturgical oddities. From body movements to vocal levels, there are many nuances in how a highly educated and trained Jew worships. I make no claim to be one. 

Those “oddities” are actually structured, symbolic cues that embody theology: Jews pray with the whole body, not just with words.

Why all the body movement?

- Swaying back and forth (shuckling) is a traditional way to focus one’s attention and involve the whole self in prayer, often linked to the verse “All my bones shall say: Who is like You, O Lord.”

- Standing for the Amidah (literally “Standing”) expresses that one is “standing before God,” so this core prayer is almost always recited on one’s feet.

- Taking three steps back and then three steps forward before the Amidah dramatizes “approaching” the Divine and later “returning” to ordinary life.

- Bowing at set points (e.g., beginning and end of Avot and Modim) enacts humility; rabbinic sources even speak of bowing until the spine’s vertebrae loosen.

- Light breast‑beating during confessional prayers (especially on Yom Kippur) externalizes contrition and regret.

Gestures tied to specific moments

- During Kedushah (“Holy, Holy, Holy”), many rise on their toes three times with each “kadosh,” echoing the angels in Isaiah and “lifting” toward heaven.

- When the Torah is lifted or returned to the ark, people often point with a finger or the fringe of the tallit, acknowledging the Torah as the authoritative source of law and teaching.

- At the Priestly Blessing, kohanim spread their hands in the familiar “Spock” shape; Leonard Nimoy actually adapted this from what he saw in synagogue as a child.

Why the changing vocal levels?

- The Amidah is first said silently or in a murmur, emphasizing personal, inward standing before God.

- The same Amidah (or parts of it) is then repeated aloud by the leader, turning private prayer into communal proclamation and allowing those less literate to fulfill their obligation.

- Sections like Kedushah, Shema, and certain responses are chanted louder, with the congregation answering specific lines, to dramatize Israel’s role as a corporate witness (e.g., joining the angels, declaring God’s unity).

- Conversely, synagogues maintain rules of decorum—limiting chatter and shouting—so that the service remains ordered and focused, even amid strong congregational singing.

Underlying pattern

All these “nuances” form a choreography: standing, stepping, bowing, swaying, whispering, and then proclaiming together are meant to tune the worshiper to different inner states—awe, repentance, intimacy, and communal joy—across the service.

Focusing on the Center

This leads me to the shema and the liturgical oddity of how the second verse is recited.

The Shema stands at the liturgical and theological center of Jewish life as the community’s core declaration that the God of Israel alone is God and that Israel owes this one God undivided loyalty in every area of life.

The Second Line

The first verse, Deuteronomy 6:4, is straight Torah: “Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad.” "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is ONE"

The next line, "Baruch shem k'vod malchuto l'olam va'ed." "Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever

 “Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever,” is not part of that biblical passage; it is a later liturgical addition attached to the Shema. The rest of the shema is also straight out of Torah. So the second line is an exception.

The other “oddity” is that the second line, Baruch shem kevod malchuto le’olam va’ed, is inserted after the biblical verse of Shema and is almost always whispered rather than proclaimed aloud.

If you've ever stood in synagogue during the Shema, you've probably felt the shift. One moment the room declares, "Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is One." The next, voices drop almost to a murmur: "Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever." I've prayed those words for years, but only recently did I begin to notice how strange this is. The most famous verse in Judaism is shouted; the line that follows it—overflowing with talk of name, glory, kingdom, and eternity—is deliberately whispered. Once I started tracing that detail through Torah, Temple, angels, mezuzah, Passover, and even John 20, the softest words in the Shema began to sound like the loudest.

Why it is whispered

Since Moshe did not write this line into the Shema text, the sages ruled it should be recited quietly, marking it as distinct from the direct biblical quotation. That line has even been referred to as "an outsider."

Midrashim link it to Jacob: when his sons declared “Shema Yisrael” at his deathbed, he responded with this line in a subdued voice, which we echo by whispering it.

Another strand says Moshe overheard the angels saying these words; we “borrow” an angelic formula, but whisper so as not to appear to be stealing a heavenly secret.

Yom Kippur as the exception

Traditionally, the first verse is said out loud, with intense emphasis, often with eyes covered, as a public testimony to God’s unity. Immediately afterward, the community drops to a near-whisper for Baruch Shem, signaling that we have stepped from pure Scripture into rabbinic-poetic response and from bold proclamation into more intimate, almost “inside” language.

The exception is on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, the day we read the book of Jonah, that second line is recited out loud. The reason, it is said, is based on the image that, for one day, Israel is like angels and may say their praise without restraint.

The shift from a year of whispering to one day of full voice turns this line into a liturgical barometer of holiness and eschatological hope.

Conclusion

The collusion to this blog is yet to be fully written.  I have gathered many of my thoughts and I've worked out call a number of them. In fact, I believe they are the better part of what I have to say. So, there will be a second part to this blog post in which I will exploring that "quiet second line," angelic praise, and the glory spoken of in the shema.

REBUTTLE TO NEW ANTI-JEWISĤ THEOLOGY

Reclaiming God’s Faithfulness: A Biblical and Historical Rebuttal to the New Anti-Jewish Theology.

Based on research & content by Jon Harris. 

A troubling wave of anti-Jewish theology is spreading across Catholic and Evangelical online spaces. It dismisses God’s covenant promises to ethnic Israel as obsolete, portrays Jewish people as uniquely cursed or manipulative, and brands any affirmation of a future role for Israel as “Zionist heresy” or dispensational novelty. Some even question Jesus’s Jewish identity or claim the modern state of Israel has no theological significance. This is not fringe; it is gaining traction among conservatives weary of politics and eager to reject anything labeled “liberal.” Yet it corrupts Scripture, undermines Christ’s humanity, and severs believers from two millennia of church teaching. A clear biblical and historical response is urgently needed.

The foundation is Genesis 12:1-3. God promises Abraham a land, a nation, and blessing to all families of the earth. He repeats and ratifies this covenant nine times in Genesis, making it unconditional by passing between the animal pieces alone (Genesis 15). The promise narrows through Isaac and Jacob (renamed Israel), whose twelve sons form the nation. Leviticus 26:40-45 explicitly foretells exile for disobedience, followed by repentance and restoration: “I will remember My covenant with Jacob… and I will remember the land.” Neither Joshua’s conquest nor Solomon’s kingdom fulfills it completely; both are partial. The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel expand this into a future ingathering and Davidic kingdom. These texts are not symbolic abstractions. They are concrete promises tied to Abraham’s physical descendants.

The New Testament never revokes them. In Romans 9–11, Paul grieves that his “kinsmen according to the flesh” have largely rejected the Messiah, yet he insists God has not rejected them. A “partial hardening” has come upon Israel “until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in,” after which “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25-26). The “gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (11:29). Gentiles are grafted into the olive tree whose root is Israel; they do not replace it. The “mystery” Paul reveals in Ephesians 3 is that believing Gentiles join the Jewish people of God by faith without becoming proselytes. This fulfills, rather than cancels, the Abrahamic promise that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Jesus Himself is the singular “seed” of Abraham through whom that blessing flows (Galatians 3:16). The church is spiritual Israel composed of Jews and Gentiles, but ethnic Israel retains a distinct future.

Church history overwhelmingly confirms this reading. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, Jerome, and Augustine all taught a future mass conversion of Jews and, in several cases, a literal restoration to the land. Irenaeus and Victorinus expected a third temple in Jerusalem during end-times events. After the Reformation, Martin Bucer, Theodore Beza, and the Geneva Bible emphasized Romans 11. Puritan leaders, Oliver Cromwell’s Whitehall Conference (1655), and Dutch theologians such as Jacobus Koelman taught that ethnic Israel would return to its land and rebuild Jerusalem. Jonathan Edwards, John Gill, Charles Spurgeon, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones all affirmed a political and spiritual restoration of the Jewish people to Canaan. These were not 19th-century innovations or “Judeo-Christian” inventions; they were the plain sense of Scripture held by the church’s greatest minds.

The oft-cited “blessing and cursing” clause of Genesis 12:3 is likewise enduring. It is applied nationally to Israel in Numbers 24 and Obadiah. While the New Testament shows the church endures persecution, the grammatical sense remains: God favors those who favor His people and opposes those who maliciously harm them. Protestant giants like John Calvin and Matthew Henry applied it broadly to ethnic Israel. This does not require uncritical political support for any government. It does require rejecting the slander that Jews are permanently God’s enemies post-70 AD. Such rhetoric echoes the very supersessionism Paul refuted.

Critics claim this view is novel or politically motivated. The opposite is true. The idea that the ingathering occurred entirely before 70 AD lacks any clear pre-20th-century Christian witness. The notion that the church fully absorbs every Abrahamic promise so that ethnic Israel is irrelevant would make Paul’s Romans 9–11 argument incoherent. Affirming God’s faithfulness to Israel does not deny Christ’s exclusivity, promote dual-covenant theology, or demand open borders. It simply trusts that the same God who kept every promise to Abraham will keep His word to the descendants of Jacob. That confidence, Paul says, is the very reason Gentiles can trust the gospel.

The rise of this new anti-Jewish theology is not discernment; it is unbelief dressed as courage. It questions God’s character, severs us from our Jewish roots, and weakens the gospel’s power for “the Jew first” (Romans 1:16). The remedy is simple: read Romans 9–11 again, study the early fathers and the Reformers, and remember that the God who elected Israel has never broken a covenant. When we bless Abraham’s seed by evangelism, prayer, and truth-telling, we stand in the stream of biblical and historic orthodoxy. The promises remain. God is not finished with Israel—and that is very good news for the church.

This has immediate application today. The “protection clause” of Genesis 12:3 and Numbers 24:9 is not a blank check for Israeli policy, but it does call Gentile believers to reject malicious stereotypes that paint Jews as uniquely evil or perpetual enemies. Paul’s logic in Romans 11 is pastoral: if God keeps His word to ethnic Israel, He will keep His word to you. To deny Israel’s future is to undermine the very assurance that sustains Gentile faith. Evangelism remains “to the Jew first” (Romans 1:16). History shows that when the church prayed for Jewish conversion and opposed pogroms—as Puritans did in 1655 and Bickersteth urged in 1841—God opened doors. Today’s online contempt, whether from Catholic traditionalists or Evangelical reactionaries, is the same spirit of replacement theology that the apostles refuted. Stand firm: the olive tree still has living roots. Blessing Abraham’s descendants through gospel witness and honest history is not political naivety; it is obedience to the God who never lies.

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