Lapid Judaism | The Basics of Jewish Life

all right Brook Hashem okay well good evening everyone we are going to go ahead and get started this evening just to let you know once again we do have some nosh some kuma some other pastries and things over here so feel free to help yourself get up and get something bring it back eat a little something it's not going to bother me one bit this is just there going to be a casual atmosphere we do we are recording this actually it's filming live because we have so many people across the country and even across the world that are part of our synagogue and also part of the repeat Jewish movement they want to see this and show it to their friends and other people have asked responded to our Facebook page and said they couldn't come tonight because maybe they live someplace else or whatever they're out of town but they want to watch it so here we are so welcome all of you who are watching as well I am rabbi Griffin I am the rabbi here at SAR Shalom Synagogue and so our synagogue is the flagship of lipid Judaism the PE Judaism a sect of Judaism that is an Orthodox Judaism that happens to believe that Yeshua is the Messiah aside from our belief in Yeshua is the Messiah our life and practice is as I said Orthodox Judaism so the purpose of tonight I thought it would be just a lot of fun and very informative to invite anyone and everyone to come and learn a little bit about Jews and Judaism because it's probably likely that most people don't know a whole lot or maybe they'd like to know more or perhaps they'd like to to have some clarity on how Jews practice their faith and so on and just the all-around just be educated other people perhaps are drawn to Judaism and want to learn more whatever your motivation is we are here to learn tonight and to the best of our ability answer your questions now we have a lot on display up here and in reality probably literally everything that we have here could be an hour long lecture we call Asher in an hour Judaism world an hour long lecture or add rush an hour long Josh so we're gonna try to I'm gonna try to keep my message on track here are my topics on track nope laughs who's a member of the show here try to do that as best as I can let me go ahead and introduce some dignitaries of our synagogue here here tonight first and foremost the one who really rules the house the revit seen my wife Shoshana I'm just a spokesperson in a figurehead she's really the one who does everything around here to mukesh m and then over there standing up is akin Rayford wave everybody's they can Rayford he's one of our elders the word sake and means elder in hebrew and then sitting down is right there is as a can yo safar others akin or the elder here in the back and the gray shirt is our gabbai ahmet he's a good by the synagogue sending over here behind the camera who just wave everybody there is back there he is the building and maintenance manager here at the synagogue and much much more and his wife tears and somewheres oh there's Benny Benny there little boy Benny back there in the back Booga sham he's the star of the show tonight actually we have a Hasan but he is not here tonight otherwise I would introduce him and that's not forgets cateura our administrative executive vp of operations and everything else around here she's everything been with us forever Baruch Hashem so anyway glad you're here and a part of our our get together this evening so we're gonna open up the floor here a little bit later for some questions so please jot those down if you'd like to have something come to your mind you want to ask about it we will certainly give you the opportunity to do so I'm just gonna talk about Jews and Judaism and Jewish practice and we'll just kind of go from there and elaborate on that so I'll begin first and foremost with the title Jew of the name Jew and you've probably heard Hebrew or Israelite a Jew a Hebrew an Israelite those are all synonymous terms the name Jew itself comes from the tribe of one of the twelve tribes a tribe of Judah and Hebrew it's yahoodi and initially maybe people were called maybe according to their tribe but for the last many thousands of years especially since we came back from the Babylonian captivity after the destruction of the first century that has not been the case Jews have been called Jews no matter what tribe you come from at least since that time period before the Common Era and there's actually a good reason why all Jews are called use regardless of the tribe you come from and that is because we are called according to the name of the king the King comes from Judah and therefore were all called according to the name Judah because that's the tribe of the king moreover the name Jew itself means to praise God or God praiser and so all Jews are ultimately people who at least strive to praise God and live for God so therefore no matter what tribe you come from your Jews if you're a Jew we're also Hebrews because we come originally from Abraham who is the Ivry the Hebrew in fact if someone was going to convert to Judaism once they convert they're called a son of Abraham therefore they are Hebrew we'll talk about that in just a moment and of course we're Israelites as well because we come from the tribes of Israel and of course Jacob wanted the third of the three patriarchs who was named Jacob and God changed his name to Israel he was known by Jacob and Israel throughout the scriptural writings so Jews Hebrews and Israelites are also internal anonymous by term they there are such things as Jews by birth and there are there are also Jews by choice one of the most common things that I run into as I'm out on the balance in the world is that people think that Judaism or Jews is a race of people there were all white that we all have blond or blond hair or dark hair or whatever or green eyes or blue eyes whatever the case may be and that is that is a big misconception Judaism is not a race it is a nation it's a religion it's a family but there are literally Jews from every tribe and tongue there are Jews from every continent and our synagogue is very much a reflection of that there are Jews that are black Jews that are brown Jews at our purple and green and red and different shades of those colors but literally there are Jews in Africa there are Jews in Morocco northern Africa there is Jews in China or Jews in India there's Jews everywhere so Judaism is not a race that's very important also anybody can join Judaism historically speaking Judaism used to be very just to lack of a better phrase very evangelical in fact there is ancient Jewish literature that teaches that Abraham and Sarah did they spent their entire life encouraging people to become Jewish to come into the Covenant they themselves were converts Abraham is considered the first Jew he is in fact the first Jew and he himself was a convert so Judaism began from people who were not Jews becoming Jews and therefore the faith was very open and not just open but very encouraging that changed during the Middle Ages because during the Middle Ages because of intense persecution Jews were not allowed to evangelize if people they're not allowed to proselytize and so as a result we we took a stance that became kind of ingrained and you'll see that today if you talk to certain Jewish sects a lot of Jews don't realize that we actually sought converts a lot of you talked to Jews today and different Orthodox sects they'll say oh we don't we don't evangelize we don't encourage and that that's true today but it was not true prior to the Middle Ages so Abraham and Sarah said about in fact it says they opened their their tent and I'll tell you a funny story about that they opened their tent they were known for hospitality and that one of their tactics was they wouldn't they would see pasture buyers going by and it's hot day outside they say listen would you like to have some food would you like to have some drink and they said well of course come on in they sit down at the tent I have a bunch of food and lots of wine and lots of water whatever and they talked to him about the SH and talk to him about God and at the end of the meal they would say I tell you what let's say they bear caught some ozone let's say that the blessing after the meal and let's bless the one true God and the people would say I don't want to do that I'm of a different faith I'm a pagan or whatever I'm an idolatry and I said okay no problem you don't want to bless God here's the bill for the meal they see the deal it's a big it's like 12 t-bone steaks or whatever 12 prime ribs look good that's a huge bill I can't pay that well then bless God with me it's kind of a funny thing but that's one of the ways in which they got people to recognize that God is God so I just said the name Hashem so in Judaism Hashem well in the Torah really God has a divine name we say the youth gave off Kay it's the it's the name that we don't write we don't say because a we don't know how and be it if even if we knew how we wouldn't say because it's so holy and also because he's my father I don't say his name like I'm a natural father and when I'm around him I call him dad right or Abba or my father if I call him by his first name to his face would be very disrespectful right sometimes when I'm introducing my father I feel odd saying his name even to somebody I'm introducing him to I just say it's my dad you know and then they can take it from there so anyway Jews don't say the divine name because it's so holy it was the divine name was only said in the temple and when it was said by the high priest he would whisper it all the people in the temple who heard it would fall down on their face and I would say Brooke simcha bold know culturally allama it blessed be the name of his glorious kingdom for all eternity that's how holy the name of God is he has many names that's what I'm talking about here is his divine personal name but he has many other names like el shaddai el o Yong ha kadosh bahu other names we call him Hashem colloquially speaking if I'm just talking like I'm talking to not I say Hashem the name of the word rather Hashem simply really literally means the name so as I'm talking to other Jews and I thought about a Shem they know I'm talking about God if I'm praying or reading scripture publicly I will say aldohn I Adonai is a little bit more sacred way of talking about God that's why we say it rather when we're praying or when we're reading scripture publicly we say I don't know because that literally means my lord so now I'm connecting to him on a very personal level he has become my lord so we talked about a Shem we also use gods and so on you'll notice in our literature tonight and the handouts that you received hopefully everybody got a handout you'll notice that we have a G - D when we write God a lot of people ask me about this they don't understand it it's just a custom it's very simply a custom whereby we show respect for God's name on any piece of literature that is likely to be thrown away or discarded we always write Gd and we never write the name of God in Hebrew so if we were going to put a publication out as a handout we would never write on the publication a you'd cave of K like you would see in the Torah if it's a book if it's an actual book that's gonna be public public I'm sorry published then you would see G OD on there and and if it has Hebrew writing in it you would have a youth cave of K in there okay just a little something again that's about giving respect to God and His name it's all it is and so if you if you read Jewish literature particularly if you read hand written Jewish literature you'll see that a lot that's what it means so Judaism is a monotheistic religion we believe in one God there's only one God there's not any other gods but but Hashem Hashem created everything and not only that but he sustains everything not to get too deep which we could get really deep really fast but one of the names of Hashem is Maha macomb which in Hebrew means the place and there it's very this is a very interesting name of God because God is everything and I don't want your brains to go blue string quite yet that's not really the point of tonight but God is everything and he's the total of existence if you're gonna picture space for a moment space let's just say that space is like a rectangular cardboard box and everything inside the box is space as we know it we just celebrated going to the moon two years right so we got the moon in there we've got all the other planets in there all the other stars all consign contain within the box and we think about we go from our little bitty planets and we get in our USS Enterprise and we go light-years away and we reach a star we go another many hundreds of light-years over here because mr. Spock is helping us we go to another place right but we're still inside the box outside the box is a shame and so Hashem in order to create that reality we call it worth at that space we call reality they just thought that nothing can exist outside of God because he is everything therefore he had to contract himself and make a space for the space again I'm not intending to get real deep here but the point being is that you and I live on this planet which is a part of space which is from the Jewish perspective in God now some of you may be Christians here tonight and you may be familiar with some of what's considered the New Testament letters or the writings but this is what it means when the Apostles because they were all Jewish and they all practice Judaism this is what it means when it says in him I live and move and have my very being this is what it means because when a Jew wakes up in the morning we thank God that he has that he has continued creation not just continued but renewed it every morning so every every ounce of our being is actually in God he is everywhere so we believe in one God there's not multiple gods even our synagogue that believes in the Messiah which is very unique we're very unique synagogue is particularly the way in which we live this whole thing is not really about us I don't want to make it about us tonight but just us this is you know we're we also believe in one God and so on right this is what Judaism believes as well Judaism believes in the Torah and we do too the Torah is the first specifically speaking is the first five books of the Bible another very common question I get as I'm out and about and run into some very beautiful people in the world they don't know much about Judaism and they stopped me and asked me various questions from time to time those who are brave souls at Walmart you know and they'll say can I just ask you a question and so one of the common questions I get is what Bible do you guys use and so just to break it down again I'm assuming there are Christians who are watching and those who were here tonight what Christians refer to as the Old Testament is the Bible is the Bible okay that's the scriptures that's that the we call the Tanakh in Hebrew we'll talk about that it's in just a moment the first five books of the Bible Genesis Exodus Leviticus numbers and Deuteronomy that's the tour oh that's the tour of God that's the law of God that's the law of Moses so just as an example this is something that you can again if you are a Christian and this is something you could dazzle your pastor with and they'll think you're a rock star when your pastor is talking and he's teaching a message from the book of Genesis and he says something well that was before the law was given you can raise your hand and say well actually Genesis is a part of the law Genesis is a book of the law and he'll go what where did you learn that and so that's true so Genesis is a book of the laws a book of the Torah so here are some synonyms for the tour because when people talk about the law of God they very often think about the law of Moses which is the same thing the law of Moses is a name of the Torah because Moses received the law from a Shem and he communicated it to the people and the only reason that happened is because when we were gathered around Mount Sinai in order to receive the Torah we heard God's speaking and his voice was so awesome we said Moses if we hear God speak anymore we're going to die you go and talk to him because we were so compassionate we sent him it reminds me of David when he was bringing the ark from Jerusalem and remember he had brought up on a cart and it shifted in his I reached out and touched it in his I died or David said oh my goodness this is it's too dangerous to have the the Ark so he gave it to a Levite he said here you keep it it was so compassionate so the law of Moses the Word of God the will of God the wisdom of God the Holy Scriptures the Holy Writ these are all synonymous terms so when you're talking to a Jewish person and they'll very common and we get so used to it in our lingo because you know when you're in a culture you're used to talking we say tora tora tora tora tora and people like what's the Torah and the Torah is very simply the Word of God it's God's holy word it's a very powerful it's there's very very deep the Torah but we'll talk about that in a moment the Tanakh which is as I said Christians refer to it as the Old Testament it's not very it's not a term we like so just as a word of diplomacy if you're communicating with a Jewish person to be very respectful not to refer to the Bible as the Old Testament let's refer to it as the Tanakh or the scriptures because the Old Testament there's a you should look up one time we're not going to get into it tonight it's not really the purpose is beyond the scope of this class but you should look up where the term Old Testament comes from and you understand why and why that term was given it's very very bad actually but I digress the Tanakh is an acronym the word Tanakh is an acronym it's an acronym for three words Torah Nevi'im and Ketuvim which is Torah prophets and writings that's the Tanakh the Christian world the Tanakh is Genesis to Malachi or if you're from Texas mala Chi but in the Jewish world it's arranged it will be differently in its Genesis to second chronicles and so this for us is the Bible now in our synagogue just so you know our synagogue also accepts the Gospels as Scripture as well but again this class is not about us if you want to learn about us we're happy to tell you but we'll do that we you can ask questions or whatever it's perfectly fine but that's to a Jewish person that scripture that's the Word of God and so this is what makes up the Tanakh the Torah to a Jewish person I just want to cover maybe a myth a myth is that Jews are waiting to be delivered from the law a big myth is that the law is Berta 'some the law is difficult the law is something that it's like oh man we we got to get up and do Torah this morning and we're just waiting for the Messiah to come one day and set us free from it you should know that that is a big myth to quote from the song we like it we love it we want some more of it that's the truth Jews love the Torah it's like our it's our letter love letter from God it's the will of the Holy Father it's what he wants us to do for our life and the answer the reality is the Torah is not by any means hard I have often challenged people find one commandment that you can't do now I want to qualify that and say that there are some Commandments we can't do because we don't sacrifice as Jews that's probably an important thing to say because people misunderstand that to you they said well as Jews what do you sacrifice and the answer is we don't actually what I normally say to throw people Lobster in my backyard I just want to think you see their reaction like I'm just kidding haven't done that in like at least a year no I'll be sitting but we're not allowed to without the temple we're not allowed to sacrifice right any sacrifice outside the temple which has to be in Jerusalem would be actually a big time violation of God's will so we're not allowed to do it so we don't sacrifice and so there's some things like that you can't do and as a man there are certain things that you can't do obviously the only women can do and vice versa but in terms of the mitzvah that you can do you can't find one that you can honestly say up that's just too hard for me that's know it's not true and so I want to give you a juice perspective on that because many people said that the law of God was too hard therefore God had a set us free from it that's the myth right let me explain to you why it's a myth and this is a theological idea from a Jewish mind suppose that you had a little boy and a little boy Benny a little bit older than being right and not capable of pushing the lawnmower much less starting it okay and you said to your little boy I'm telling you something before I get home tonight I want you to mow the lawn and the little boys look at you like you can barely understand what you're saying there's no way he can physically mow the lawn but your commandment to him is you should mow the lawn and so you come home the lawns not mowed and you figure out the reason it's not motifs because he physically couldn't do it so you punishing him you punish him severely for it now what would happen if the authorities found out about that you would be arrested hauled off to jail then thrown in jail for twenty years as you should because you're an unjust father or mother and your crazy person but yet we say that about God we say that God gave us a law we could not follow and then once we couldn't follow it he punishes sends us to get him for it that's not just so we had to understand that in fact he gave us a law that we could follow and we chose not to follow that's called sin and we're punished because we made a choice now it's true that everybody sins but it's also true that we all made a choice to sin we chose to do so and therefore the punishment that we receive is just incidentally biblically and this is even written in the New Testament letters it's the definition of sin is breaking God's law it's very important concept the definition of sin is breaking God's law but what's the Torah all about anyway why did God give us a tour one of the other myths that we have that again people asked me about they say how do how do Jews earn their salvation like how does that work for you guys this comes to me all the time and I say well basically we it's by God's grace if anybody has ever attended a Rosh Hashanah service we would probably say Rosh Hashanah or a Yom Kippur or Yom Kippur or however you pronounce it service and you you go through the whole service and you hear the prayers of the mock serene you wouldn't know which is a prayer book for the service you would know that we're relying upon God's grace 100% even in the daily prayer book there is a prayer in the very first part of the morning where we say God what is my wisdom what are my deeds what is anybody compared to you everything I have to offer you is nothing I'll tell you a story that illustrates God's grace from a Jewish perspective first of all let me to say that Judaism 100% believes in grace the reality is if there was no grace of God then none of us would be here because the minute that Adam sinned boom he would have been wiped out and we would even exist the grace of God has always been so the fact that matter is as Jews do not earn their salvation through keeping the Torah it's not about that at all I'll come back to that in a second let me tell you this story this is the grace of God this is how it works because Jews keep the Torah we do God's will and yet we depend on God's grace well how do those two things work together because a lot of times people and their Western minds can't fathom those two concepts either we or God gives us all the Grace and that's it or we're working for something so how do these two things work together from the juice per interview and here's the story so a little girl walks into a jewelry store in Israel that's a true story in fact she walks into a jewelry store in Israel and the man behind the counter says well how can I help you and she says I want to buy something nice from my sister because my parents died a few years ago and I have other little brothers and sisters and my older sister has been taking care of us ever since and she does such a good job and she doesn't really get to buy nice things for herself because she spends all the money on us and so I came in here to buy her something nice and he says well okay what should you like to buy her when she looks around the cases for a little bit and she she points to a very expensive necklace and says I would like to buy that she would love that and he says ok how much money do you have and she reaches into her pocket and she pulls out of her pocket some crumbly bills and a few coins that she had pulled out of her little piggy bank and she puts it up on the counter and drops it on the glass and a few coins and a few dollar bills float around and the man says all right so he reaches in he pulls out the necklace he takes it he wraps it up really nice in a gift box and gifted her and says result off may you have all the parnassia come upon you and maybe bless some a your sister receive it with with a Java and simcha with love and joy so next thing you know a few hours later this this older woman or older sister rather bursts into the jewelry shop and she says I'm so sorry I'm so sorry my sister came here and she bought this necklace there's no way that she had the money to buy it I'm not even sure what happened but we can't afford it and I don't know what what's going on but there's just no way and he says what are you talking about so everything's fine it's paid for and she said how can my sister have paid for this this necklace like a $3,000 necklace she doesn't even have three dollars much less $3,000 he says you know what she paid for it in full she had two dollars and 85 cents and a and heart and love for you and from my point of view that pays for the whole necklace so that's how Judaism relates to Torah keeping that when we keep Torah out of love of God and we realized when we come to a sham particularly Yom Kippur and we say a sham I have the whole year I've lived my life for you but really when it comes down to it I have two dollars and 85 cents and God said yes but you did it with a broken heart and a broken and contrite heart God will never turn away and so at the end of the day it's just our few coins and a few crumbling dollar bills we put on the counter and God gives us the necklace this is how Jews relate to Torah the purpose of Torah is very simply not just to follow God's will although that's the that's the original desire that's what we really want to do we want to follow God we wanted whatever God wants we we want husbands and wives do this all the time not always do husbands and wise enjoy the same thing maybe your your husband enjoys going to the car show I don't know and maybe you're not so into cars but he's into it so therefore because he likes it you enjoy going and vice versa maybe he enjoys taking you to the mall because you just enjoy it and you like walking around and looking at every single store and he doesn't so much enjoy he likes being with you and because you like it he likes it that's how we are with God we don't have to have a reason before God's commandments we follow them because they're God's commandments however Judaism is not opposed in any stretch former fashion from asking questions we can certainly ask questions and we're encouraged to ask questions the difference is is we're not allowed to disobey while we're asking the son can sweep the floor and say ah but why are we doing this well okay okay I got people coming over okay okay but he's not allowed to say I will asleep sweep the floor until you tell me why I need to sweep it he's like well uh huh how's that gonna work out for you but Torah keeping has actually even higher purposes than this from the Jewish point of view we are partners with God and because God's Divine Will is his holy Tori it's his Scripture and proverbs 28 tells us that everything that was made was made with God's Torah very much very much truly speaking the very DNA of creation is God's holy Torah but it all got messed up because of our sin so as a result we have a responsibility to come and fulfill God's Torah obey it observe it live it out in our life and as we're doing that we are partnering with God to bring what we call in Judaism tikkun olam repair of the world until our congregation members it's all the time because we don't think most people don't think about it you're just going about your Jewish life if you're doing everything we're gonna be perfectly getting to tonight touching on anyway not realizing that by you doing these little things you're actually bringing repair to the world to the universe every time a woman lights candles on Friday night a simple little act with a simple little blessing she is actually bringing down Torah into the atmosphere that is repairing what was broken and got it in so Torah is about taking that which is mundane and elevating it to a level of holiness one of the base levels of that is eating eating is something that the average human well every human does sometimes multiple times a day very often three times a day everybody eats and we like to eat in fact there's a saying in Judaism they try to kill us we won let's eat that's the month that's the motto of Judaism we eat kosher and as used as you can probably see we don't suffer oh I suffer we eat kosher we elevate our eating to a level of holiness we don't eat just anything we eat what God wants us to eat and so we refer to these kosher laws as kashrut the kashrut laws are intricate and detailed they're not nearly as complicated as they seem we could talk all night about kosher laws and again they seem real complicated when you're when you're giving a sure about them but in terms of living it out on a daily life it's very simple it's really very easy especially in our modern age we talk about this and we talk about that but the reality is all you need to do is when you go to the store and you're buying a canned good or something in a box or something like that it has a kosher seal on it that's all you need to worry about you know what the worry about anything else it's got a kosher seal that's good it doesn't have a coach seal you don't buy it this is very simple in fact I'd say another interesting story my wife and I were at the store many a few years ago and there was a lady I just happen to notice her she was picking up every single box and she was intently reading every single label of ingredients and I mean and I just happened to observe her doing this and so I don't I'm not normally this forthright but I just said man man ask you a question I just happened to notice that every time you're picking a boxer reading and label intensely and she says I just found out we just found out today that my daughter is deathly allergic to shellfish and I'm just making sure that everything I buy does not have shellfish in and I said you know what I'm gonna give you a miracle that's gonna speed up your shopping and she's like what and I said so I picked up a couple of things just randomly you'd be amazed you go home today how many things in your cupboard or your pantry are kosher certified you'd be blown away but anyway I picked up a few things off the shelf and I said see this it's got the U in a circle see this it's got the K in a circle see this over here some else she's like yeah I said that means it's kosher certified guaranteed not to have any shell finish in it whatsoever she's like that's amazing that's amazing I said all you got to do is just look for those labels that's all you got to do she's like totally she was gonna spend five hours at the grocery store and now she moved past it so we we we don't eat certain things again the baseline of kashrut sits this is in your handout but it's found in Leviticus chapter 11 and in Deuteronomy chapter 14 some of the things that most people know about Jews is we don't eat pork or any pork products or or pork derivatives like like lard for instance we don't eat catfish we don't shell fish we don't eat shark we don't eat buzzards or snakes or scorpions or worms or the kind of thing to a Jewish person and this was probably important to know Jewish people don't consider that stuff food so and I don't mean to be this is kind of tongue-in-cheek but it's education night right so when you approach a Jewish person you say I have good news there's been a change in religion this is you're gonna love this are you ready for it it's good news here it comes the good news is you can eat whatever you want you can have pork now you can have shrimps you can have whatever you want so a Jewish person says that's disgusting that's like somebody's showing up at your door and say they have good news there's a renew new good religious news what's the good religious news now you can have scorpion on a stick here you go chomp at it you're like that's gross you shut the door and call the police that's how juice thing now there's other things Jews also do not we do not mix meat and dairy that's usually the thing that when people are converting to Judaism culturally tends to be the most difficult thing because there's no more cheeseburgers or cheese tacos or beef enchiladas with cheese but it's really not as bad as you think and we live in a modern age where there are substitutes for all that kind of stuff so there's actually really good tasting cheese that's not cheese that you can put on stuff like that if you really want it it's only way I just want to point out we can get into all that at some other time but the point being is Jews don't we don't mix meat and dairy together and there's other things we can't eat beef we can't we can eat chicken we're not vegetarians we can eat lamb we can even eat a giraffe if you want to be honest about it giraffe is kosher however all those things have to be kosher slaughtered so we're not allowed to just go out to anywhere and buy beef we have to get kosher certified beef and there's a lot to the slaughtering process there's a reason why that's the case it happens to be the most humane way to slaughter an animal and it has to do with letting the blood flow out of the animal and so on and it also has to do very largely with animal kindness Jews are very much into animal kindness and so when we slaughter an animal we want to make sure that that animal is not afraid not scared not mistreated it's totally calm and we slaughter the animal and them in the fastest and most humane way absolutely possible Jews are very big into that the tourism of that gods into that so there's reasons for all of this but just safe to say it you might be dealing with a Jewish person and you might say oh I know you eat kosher so don't don't worry I brought you an all-beef hamburger thank you very much but still that would have to come from a kosher place and in order for us to eat it so just to give you a little heads up about that now just a little note in case anybody's out there and you're thinking oh my gosh I could never not eat pork I could never not eat a cheeseburger I don't know how in the world I could ever do that I was not always religious I did not start becoming religious until I was well into my 20s prior to that my entire family are the original Cajuns and I mean that sincerely we are our family makes up some of the original southern Louisiana French Cajuns speaking French and all that kind of stuff and so I grew up eating everything that you weren't supposed to eat there isn't anything I haven't had I don't think actually but I'm just telling you that it is possible to make a switch and I think Hashem allowed me to go through that so that I could stand in front of people today because we're very much into bringing people into the covenant those who want to and so on and just so I could stand them and say trust me you can do this you know Baruch Hashem all right so also about Torah Torah is very much about making distinctions choosing between what is allowed and what is not allowed very much about making distinctions what is holy what is permitted what is not permitted not everything is permitted we're not allowed to make our own way Torah also gives us a path as Jim tells us the path that we're supposed to follow at the same time Jews are not monks we are not in fact the sages the ancient sages taught against asceticism we're not allowed to be to be reclusive we dressed modestly and we eat kosher but we're not monks for instance in Judaism you're allowed to drink alcohol you can have wine you can have beer you can have a strong drink you're just not allowed to keep get drunk you're not permitted to get drunk Jews will enjoy some you know adult libations like that but you won't find Jews at the club unless it's a golf club but that type of thing so we're allowed we're allowed to be married and we're allowed to have intimacy with the opposite sex if we're married and so those types of things one of cultural points of Judaism is is something called shomer negiah wherein and this applies to our synagogue as well is that we we avoid contact with the opposite sex that is not our spouse or our relative physical contact I mean thank you honey like handshaking or hugging so you come to our synagogue you will not see for instance men and women randomly hugging each other and if you do see a man and woman hugging it's usually because they're related or they're husband and wife but even then husbands and wives don't they we're in public we're not just all hanging all over each other not going to stuff it all has to do with modesty and particularly in the synagogue which brings me to another point in the synagogue you'll notice and we have it here we actually have options here but anyway you know in Orthodox synagogues you have female seating and you have male seating our synagogue as in some other Orthodox in Argos we have a third option that's couples seating or what we call family seating and basically it's your choice if you want to sit with your husband you can sit in the family seating area if you want to sit with the man you in you're a man you can and women as well if you are a young girl let's say you're a single father and you have a daughter who's under the age of 12 she can sit with you in the men's section but once she becomes about Mitzvah 12 and up she should sit with the ladies if that's that's the case many people asked why what's the deal here and the answer is very simply modesty that you're not a man touching or next to a woman that's not your wife and therefore distracted and because when you come to the synagogue the focus is to be on a Shem and praying and Dominic Dominic is praying in Yiddish what is very common practice is you have Ana synagogues you have men on the bottom floor and women in the balcony and people have misunderstood that they said oh what is this you're putting women up there because you're chauvinistic know you want the women up there so the men aren't up there looking down at the women it's very practical very simple oops the gum sorry so we make distinctions we're not monks tikkun olam we talked about that the tour is about being a light to the nation's we're supposed to live this way and display how it is to live for God the tour a few more things about the tour itself there's the Torah takes up a lot of our lecture tonight because of its intricacy to Judaism Torah is where we get all of this Torah it is an impossibility again and in Jewish thoughts here just so you understand how juice think it is an impossibility for the Torah to ever ever ever be done away with first of all we don't want it to be done away with but it's not even up to us the Torah is eternal the Word of God makes this plain the Torah is eternal it pre-existed if it was outside that box I talked about earlier in fact God used the Torah to make the box and in fact God is the Torah the Torah and God are one in fact Judaism has a famous saying that it says there's a Hebrew word for I in the tour in the Torah typically I in Hebrew is on knee but what it talks about the the Decalogue the Ten Commandments it uses enoki and the ancient sages says enoki is an acronym for I wrote myself down on the Torah and gave it to you so it's an impossibility for the tour to ever go away moreover according to Deuteronomy 13 if anybody comes along and even they do great great miracles they raise the dead they heal the sick they walk on water and then they say you know what I did all that you see what I did that's amazing okay great follow me and ditch the Torah according to Deuteronomy 13 that's a false prophet that God has sent to test us because according to the Torah the mashiac will not only live the Torah he will encourage us to live it and teach us how to follow it properly so just letting you know again from Jewish thoughts it's an impossibility tutorial the law of Moses should never be done away with it's actually a very heretic athough from a Jewish point of view I'm just telling you so we covered all that all right Jewish law let's talk about that for a moment how we doing on time all right we're good now again I just want to pause and say if you want to get up and get a little nosh get something to drink please you're not going to interrupt me just just you want coffee or anything like that please just help yourself if you're online if you'd like to get up and get yourself something for the kitchen a cup of coffee just feel free you're not gonna drop me at all all right Lucas you're a good alright that one talked about Jewish law halakha there is the Torah as I said and there is the oral torah the written Torah is the word of God it holds a high high premium and then there's the oral torah which the rabbi's were empowered by the torah to make certain laws that would be authoritative but there's a distinction between what is written law and what is rabbinic law the example I use all the time is the United States Constitution versus congressional law the Constitution empowers the Senate and the House of Representatives to make the Congress in order to pass legislation but legislation is always supposed to be always subordinate to the Constitution and at any point in which it's not then it's brought up for judicial review and if it is indeed found to be unconstitutional it is stricken down that's how it is in Jewish law Jewish law has rabbinic law now rabbinic law and written law intertwined because what the sages of ancient times sought out to do is they said look God tells us to do certain things but the written word doesn't always tell us how to do it exactly and so the Torah empowered the sages to get together these weren't just random men but these were empowered judges who got together and said all right you know what God is a God of order and therefore all Jews are gonna be keeping the Sabbath this way and so in Judaism there are certain ways in which we keep the Sabbath every household is a little bit different every sect of Judaism is a little bit different on how they do the Shabbat from one way to another but there are certain things about Shabbat for instance used as an example that all Jews follow all across the world and no matter what should what Shabbat you go to there's always gonna be those things for instance there is always gonna be a Jewish woman lighting the candles there is always gonna be a babe raka over over a cup of kiddush there's always gonna be challah that said there's always going to be blessing the children there's always gonna be the ashes high o blessing for women because these are all a part of Jewish laws now that might be other things they do and they might sing songs and they may do this or that but those core things are always there because they're part of Jewish law the word haladki which is Jewish law very simply means the way in which we walk this is how we walk out our faith and the reality is some people are led to believe that they can be what's called in theological terms Sola scriptura which means they can be Word of God only however it's quite impossible if you tried to just follow the only the written law only and not have any type of outside source you wouldn't be able to do it you'd you would fall / verbally flat on your face within the first time you tried it because for instance it says gather on the Shabbat and have a holy assembly but it doesn't tell us what that means so what does it mean what do we do you get together and then what where do we get together how do we get together what does it mean to get together we don't know so we go back to the to the law the writ the the rabbinical law and this tells us so this is what halacha is all about and mainly again it's about a God of order some people learn the impression that the rabbi's got together and try to make up a bunch of laws just because they just have fun making laws but that's actually not true we have here for instance this is a book a tractate of Talmud this is the first volume of tractate who lean now the Talmud somebody asking one time actually minashi Gage and I are chaplains with the Sheriff's Office and so we're down at the jails and some of the men will say can you bring me a Talmud well they don't know they this I don't know where they heard about the Talmud or whatever and I would say well problem with that is that the Talmud the English and Hebrew version anyway is 73 volumes long and by volume I mean this that's that's a volume of Talmud 73 of these they're like what I thought the Talmud was like a book like a magical book like well it is it's 73 of them and then we have the Midrash ABBA this is more Jewish law this is more scriptural exegetes you might say stories parables ancients sermon notes if I could distill it down like that of the rabbis this is the Midrash raba and the Midrash Abba is 16 volumes long and so this is just two of the main sources and there are hundreds of other sources one thing if you ever become Jewish which we hope you do you will become an avid reader and you will have to one of the first things you do is buy yourself a kiddush cup and start building bookshelves but if you were open up the Talmud and read it what you find is that the rabbi's will start with a scripture and they'll start to discuss it and debate it how should we keep it what does it mean and parables will come in and stories will come in and anecdotes will come in it's all about how to follow God's will that's really what it boils down to the whole motivation of the rabbi's was how can we help people follow God's will and how can we provide practical instructions on how to make that happen that's what halacha is all about and so Jews for thousands of years Orthodox Jews anyway we try to not make stuff up we try to just do what Jews have been doing for thousands of years and what's neat about that is when my wife comes on Friday night to light the candles even if we're all by herself it's just she and I and our daughters at home that night she's lighting the candles and actually our daughter's light the candles as well she's doing that in tears is lighting her candles and Mosel is lighting her candles and Gloria's lattaker candles and cateura is lighting her candles and Alicia's lighting her candles and everybody everybody everybody's lighting their candles and all Jews the Jews in downtown Dallas are lighting candles and the Jews and Houston lighting candles and the Jews and California are lighting candles and Jews of New York are lighting candles and over and Australia they're lighting candles probably a lot to let them already and there are a lot even Japan everywhere all over the world we're all doing this in bringing tikkun into the world you're not making stuff up you're not doing things out of order and so you're connected automatically and even if you don't our sect doesn't agree with this sect this sect has issues with that sect we're all following God at the end of the day and the Messiah cosell all those differences out anyway in the end all right let me transition here I intended to index this tonight at nine o'clock that's my plan so we have an hour left to go we okay everybody okay all right you're okay online great all right all right so let's go ahead and get down to our tables here and let's talk about the Shabbat this is representative of a Shabbat table now we have a treat tonight I initially brought these Sabbath loaves but they've been out for a while and I told my wife let's just give him this she has a lot more mercy than I do and she says we cannot give him that so she actually made challah and so we are going to at some point this evening everybody have a little taste of the Rebbetzin challah she has two lows more there's some challah out already and you people online will take the camera over there let you taste it in a minute so this represents a a Sabbath table now the Sabbath the Sabbath is the seventh day of the week it always has been and always will be God is the one who told us what the Sabbath day was and another tenant of Judaism is that God never changes his mind God is always the same always and forever and what he said last week is true this week and it'll be true when you and I are long gone it'll still be true so the Shabbat is always the seventh day of the week which means and Judaism the Shabbat starts at sundown on Friday night and it ends at nightfall on Saturday night now those times change depending on the on the on the year right now sundown is like midnight but in the wintertime sundown can be as early as five o'clock in the evening there's technicalities about all that but basically it's it's sundown or sunset to sunset that's the Shabbat so on Friday night something very spiritual and very magical happens every Friday or excuse me every Sabbath is a holiday you know one of our ladies said one time we celebrate Thanksgiving okay it's a national holiday so it's fine where you have Thanksgiving but somebody was talking who's not Jewish was talking to one of our ladies of our synagogue and she was like oh I've got all these people coming over I've got the turkey I've got this I've got that it's gonna be this big meal I don't know what to do and then our lady looked and said I do this every Friday night every Friday night is like a Thanksgiving dinner but one Friday when Shabbat comes what the sages of old have said is when Shabbat comes a foretaste of the alum ha becomes a foretaste of the messianic age it's a very powerful time that we get to enter in and rest turn off the cellphone turn off the TV we don't check the email we don't do the laundry we don't do this or that and we rest and we spend time with our family we come to shul in Dobbin spend most of the day at shul and it's a fantastic time getting together with everybody and we enjoy what its gonna be like when we're with mashiac for thousands of years and all eternity and it happens every Friday night and something very spiritual happens and I can tell you and I'm not kidding that even our animals realize it they get peaceful they get calm except from the challah comes out also they want a peace but other than that they get peaceful and calm and so what happens on Shabbat how did you keep the Shabbat well 18 minutes before sundown the women of the house Kindle the Sabbath lights the lights can be the Sabbath fights can be candles they can be oil like you have here and they they Kindle the Shabbat lights and I'm not going to get into all the intricate details about about it all but I'm just gonna highlight no pun intended a few things the woman of the house comes to light the candles she says the blessing and at that moment it is as if she is standing in front of the coldest knuckle dish in the Holy of Holies and that's her moment I mean she can always talk to God we can always thought to God me wrong but that is her moment to be up against the veil of the Holy of Holies and whisper her heart into the Holy of Holies and Dobbin for her family her children her husband her synagogue whatever she needs she can whisper into the ear of a shim and right there there's like this channel open that she's so close and once the woman lights those Sabbath lights that's when the Shalom descends on the house and the atmosphere changes the table has been said already with the finest that you've got the finest table linens the finest the finest China silverware there's at least at the head of the table there is at least a one kiddush cup a kiddush the word kiddush means sanctification it's a cup that you buy and we have them here in the pick tree that you only use for kiddush for Shabbat and for the holidays and you fill it with wine if you don't drink one you can use kosher grape juice the wine should be kosher too by the way but anyway we fill it with wine and we have the the best meal of the week we try to reserve for that meal everybody comes to the table dressed up and again when it's just my wife and my daughters I I go to the bedroom I get cleaned up I come out with a coat and tie it's just the four of us the girls come down they've got their dresses on my wife's dressed up we're all on the table why because the king of kings the king who rules over Kings is coming to have dinner with us the Shabbat queen is coming the Shabbat Queen is representative of the the Holy Spirit as it were the Shekinah of God in other words all that to say God's presence is dining with us that night and so we have various blessings we have a the the blessings that we speak over our children where the the ABBA will lay his hand / ask his his children and speak a divine blessing over them the father or the the man rather speaks a blessing over his wife from proverbs 31 or and or not just his wife but if there's other women at the table that blessing is not limited to wives it's for the whole all the ladies who are there and we say a blessing over the over the the holla that the bread and we partake of the bread and then we have a festive meal we try to speak words of Torah and positive things talk about God talk about what he's done in our life there's no going out there's no movies on Friday night there's no going to the mall on Friday night there's no dates on Friday night unless you invite your date to the Sabbath table well your date better be at the Sabbath table or wise you're not dating it's not Jewish all right right so I just want to tell you something and we had a very good question I'm going to ask at or just speak on this in just a moment a lady asked us online what if you're a single lady and you don't have any family locally how do you keep the Shabbat what do you do and I just want her to share a couple of things just in just a moment we'll get the microphone for you if you say one of those Akins can get it for you in a second but I just want to share this insight with you forget about the religion of Judaism for a second forget about everything I just said about the Torah and Hashem and whatever I want you to think about how your city would change if every single family in your city turned off the television on Friday night turned off their phones shut down the computer and every single family and maybe they gather with other families you don't have to do it just by yourself in fact we always try to invite somebody over not always but you know we invite people over and we go there but imagine you are all everies every family in the city is sitting around the table on Friday night and the men are speaking blessings over the ladies and over the children and their blessing and they're having a meal together and talking about positive things and it's speaking words of encouragement into their lives imagine how your city would change imagine how your city would be transformed and so when you talk about the power Shabbat yes it's religious yes it's Jewish yes it's about the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob but it's also about transformation and we're transforming our lives one family household at a time now cateura is our administrative director here she's been with us for a number of years she is a single lady and so I wanted her to speak about Shabbat and what she does in these instances well first of all Shabbat air Shabbat is for everybody married single it doesn't matter and even for the single men - this is for you as well it's not just limited to us as women so the question was how do I perform air Shabbat was that correct rabbi and so basically I would do the same thing at home whether I was by myself or whether I had people with me as I would do you know if I were married so the only thing I don't do is I don't do the say the asia's hi oh that that would be for my husband to say over me well I don't have one yet so but praying that he will come but the other thing going back to the lighting the candles when we light the candles again if you're a single man and you don't have a lady of the house in there with you whether it's a mother sister whoever you still like the candles too so I think that's important as well so what we have these little books that we tend to follow the families in rows and it has the order for the Shabbat meal and so I follow this again the only thing I don't do is the Asia's high L in your Sid or there's also guides in there on lighting the candles we say that from the students adore there's also a prayer for finding a suitable mate so again whether you're male or female you might want to access that for that little blessing so yes we light the candles we do the kaduche we have our challah we say the blessing we do everything you would do but that's the only thing I'll admit is the Asia sale excellent thank you very much well I could have spent the entire two hours just on Shabbat itself and especially going over all the in Turkey's of it all the meanings behind it so we don't have time to go through all that I do have a video on YouTube though why do you talk about Shabbat and I also talk about half dollar which I'm going to talk about here in a second the Friday night service it's called the Arab Shabbat seder the words say there in Hebrew means order it's akin to the same word of the same word really as Sid or which is Sid or is the prayer book it means also order like the order of prayers the ancient sages by ancient sages people have often asked what do you mean ancient sages while I'm talking about as sages that go back to the first century and even before really when I'm really talking about is those who go back to the men of the great assembly the that was during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah the men of the great assembly by the way that you know people sometimes will say well aren't these just the laws of men I say you know they are men and they include Ezra Nehemiah Haggai Zechariah Mordecai Malachi zerubabbel that's some of the men the granite 70 so we're talking about men we're talking about men who have books in the Bible or stories about them in the pipe pole so we're not talking I'll just it's not just me and sake and Rayford and sake and jozef sitting down okay we're talking about guys how many books in the Bible although my name Mordechai is in the Bible alright so this the sages say we this the Sabbath is so sacred we want to distinguish it from all the other days we don't want it to become assimilated into the mangled mess of the mundane so the Friday night Seder is a way to book in on on the front end this sets the day apart the reason that we have kiddush and we stand up and we say the blessing of kiddush is to sanctify this time from all other time I should mention that Judaism has three things we seek to sanctify visa vie God's law that is we want to sanctify the person we want to sanctify the space and we want to sanctify the time so God's holy word accomplishes a full gamut of sanctification in this case we're saying to find time at the end of the Shabbat when the Sun has set we have another ceremony referred to as Havdalah which the word Abdallah itself means separation this is the bookend on the other end of the Shabbat it distinguishes it from the rest of the working week and so again there's a lot to be said there's also a video on our YouTube page our lipid Judaism YouTube page at my lupito about the Havdalah to learn more about that but one of the customs of our synagogues we when we have the the Abdallah candle lit right before we extinguish it we tell everybody in the room all right take your last breath of Shabbat and everybody says and then we extinguish the candle and we say Shavua Tov may you have a blessed week and spiritually we take a little bit of the Shabbat into our week and then what happens is that the first day of the week is it counts up to the next Shabbat in fact on the Jewish count I should point out probably a good idea to point this out that in Judaism there's only one day on the calendar that a weekly calendar that has a name and that is Shabbat every other day of the week is just numbered Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday all that that comes from other faiths and Judaism it's yum-yum-yum Shanee is one two three four five six Shabbat and that's to teach us that every other day is all about making an elevation ascending to God's presence on the seventh day of the week incidentally it says in the Book of Ezekiel then on the seventh day of the week we're under an open heaven so people will sometimes wonder how do I live under an open heaven keep the Sabbath that's what the Bible says all right so we have Havdalah I want to point out because I'm standing in front of this unique cup here there's another cup over here oh there was it got moved that's alright that's okay you got me that's all right this is a ceremonial hand-washing cup and we use this on Shabbat we use it every day and in the morning and I just wanted to touch a bit on it's because you'll see this a lot of Judaism over there and the corner we have a hand-washing station and so what happens is that in the mornings we fill this cup up with water sometimes you have a basin like this very often you do by the side of the bed you might have a built-in sink that you've created for it or what have you you fill it up with water you take it in one hand and you splash three times water on your right hand and then three times on your left hand you can go back and forth if you want to there's that's another way of doing it and we lift up our hands and we say a blessing in English the blessing is bless you Lord our God King universe who sanctifies us by His commandments and commands us to wash the hands can also be translated in Hebrew who commands us to lift up holy hands and we do that first thing in the morning because we do it in imitation of the priests because every day for a Jew is a day to worship and serve God and so we wash our hands like the priest would wash his hands before he went into the holy place to serve God which brings up something very important one thing that is often said about Jews and it is not true and so again as a point of Education here you people often say that that Saturday is the day of worship for Jews and then Sunday is the day of worship for Christians and then Fridays a day of worship for Muslims that is a myth Jews worship God every day Shabbat is not a worship day for Jews it's a day where we go to synagogue corporately but in reality Jews go to synagogue every day actually and in some Jewish communities where you have a real close proximity of the Jews around the synagogue and so on there's a lot of Jews they would have a daily prayer service in the morning in the evening and so we're at synagogue every day I know I am and so anyway the point being is that it's not a day of worship it's a special day set apart by God for rest and super anointing and it's a day where we put everything aside and just focus on a Shem whereas every other day of the week we're praying and working we're studying Torah and working we're you know being around our family and so on and in terms of working I mean we're always around our family on Shabbat too but in terms of working so this is also a festival as I mentioned earlier this is the first festival some people say there are seven feasts of the Lord there are actually eight and this and that's because everybody forgets the Sabbath the Sabbath is the first and when you put them in order beginning with the Sabbath everything else makes sense again that's a whole nother hour but this is the first festival from here we have other festivals that we call yomo Veeam or holidays or how do we start it over here that's Rosh Hashanah Pesach okay let's see over here this is our Pesach a guy who everybody pays every time this is a very important garment let me just mention this for a second this is called my kiddle and the Kittel is a garment that a man will buy and generally he will buy it and the first time he wears it is when he marries his wife it's like did he stands up under the Hupa with the kids alone from that point forward this becomes his garment that he wears at every major holiday like Pesach when he's when he's officiating the the Pesach paced Passover Seder he'll wear this is the head of the house and during the High Holy Days like during Yom Kippur for instance he'll wear this and when he dies he'll be buried in this this becomes his garment it looks it's intended to be all white it looked like a burial shroud because the purpose of this garment is that is to teach us a very important lesson and that is that this life is temporal and that we are always looking to the allahabad to the world to come but on Pesach Pesach is the many people are generally familiar with pace like Pesach is called Passover that's where we celebrate our exodus from Egypt God makes it very clear as we talked about earlier Jews do not believe in working for their salvation some people by the way some people say why do you keep the Torah and I say well because the Torah is the wedding contract of God I'm already married to God and because I'm married to him I follow his will in the same way that I'm married to my wife and so when she asked me to do something I'd do it or I bring her flowers on a Friday night it's not because I'm trying to get her to marry me we're already married but if I said honey I love you you mean so much to me but I'm never home I never bring you flowers I never help you we never do anything together do I really love her no but I really love her yeah no it's like it's like show me something this is the ketubah right here so we have Passover Passover is the second holiday on the calendar and we celebrate Passover with a big Pesach Seder on Passover one of the key features is that we only eat matzah where is it it's in here somewhere oh here it is we only eat matzah on Pesach we which is unleavened bread we eat this actually like it we eat this on Passover for seven days it's amazing how when you tell people you can't have 11 bread for seven days they're like wow and they they they freak out but anyway we enjoy it now I won't say something for our Christian friends out there when the mashiac had what was called the Last Supper that was a Passover Seder and he would have been eating a bread like this just like this it's been made the same way for thousands of years he probably ate Manischewitz bran - he definitely ain't Yehuda bran cuz he was in you who - which is back to the best friend in my opinion nothing - chef is bad but but anyway I digress so when you see the painting of the Last Supper that was made in the Middle Ages I forget who painted them I'll probably know I don't know da Vinci thank you da Vinci fish and bread he's got big hunk a big Hawaiian loaf bread up there that's that was low Tove that would have been a big major violation of God's law not allowed to have unleavened bread so if you're a Christian just again it's about education and you want to have communion communion is all comes from the Passover Seder we don't have communion here we're not Christians but I'm just saying if you have communion in your church that all comes from Pesach Seder you should have matzah not leavened bread that's actually in my opinion it's just my opinion but that's actually a low dose not good so we have matzah here we eat matzah we have a Passover Seder or the Passover Seder is amazing it's all kind of things to say about the Pesach Seder it's unbelievable we go from Passover when we start counting 50 days up until the festival of Shavuot shovel out the word shoveled means weeks sometimes it's called Pentecost because it's 50 days it's seven weeks or 50 days we count the ohm air all the way up to to shovel old shovel old celebrates the giving of God's holy Torah which is why my wife put a ketubah up here a good tuba is a marriage contract when a man marries a woman in Judaism Judaism was the first faith and of course it was the original faith but it was a first faith that afforded women rights a woman a man could marry a woman but he had to give her a contract and that way if he said you know what I don't like any more I'm gonna divorce you she's like oh that's the problem but I need my consumer money I mean I need my contract fulfilled and Judaism says you go you go to battle you see a good-looking girl in battle you take her captive she's very good-looking you want to cohabitate with her you got to make her a wife and if you make her a wife and you're like you know what I don't want her anymore you gotta give her ketubah stuff you got to make it all real all legitimate the Torah is a ketubah it's God's ketubah to us it's God's marriage contract to us it's what it's what he's gonna do for us and what we do for him it's it's how we work together it's not to marry us it's to tell us what's the contract of the marriage incidentally if the Covenant gets broken if a husband will say a husband and wife they're married and if something goes bad in the marriage and they get divorced let's just use the unfortunate example of there's infidelity so a man and woman are married infidelity happens they get divorced completely understandable but this time goes on they reconcile they get together there's big-time repentance there's big-time transformation and they come back to the rabbi and they say you know what we were married before they got divorced because infidelity but we've worked it out and now we'd like to get remarried the rabbi says fantastic since the old vowels didn't work out I've gotten new and improved vows no it's the same vows it's a renewal of vows so if we break the covenant and Hashem wants to bring us back the covenant he doesn't give us a new covenant he gives us a renewed covenant a renewal of those because understand the covenant wasn't the problem we were the problem why does that need a change that that's not why I sinned I sinned because I chose to break it that's the problem so why change this when I need to change this if I change this then there's no need to change that you see it's very simple so this is shovel oat we go from shovel old we spend the whole summer growing and we come to the fall and we have the festival of Rosh Hashanah Rosh Hashanah is the head of the year it's the birthday of creation the birthday of the world there were actually multiple New Year's days in Judaism this is the New Year's Day of creation representative represented primarily by the shofar I didn't say chauffeur that's Eber but this is the shofar the ram's horn the reason there is a ram's horn is that we're commanded in the Torah to blow the ram's horn at Rosh Hashanah the question becomes why did we blow the ram's horn at Rosh Hashanah the answer well I mean the answer is because we're asking God to remember the RAM that was caught in the thicket it was offered up in place of Isaac because ultimately that Ram is our atonement now not to get off into the depth but just to kind of take our snow cover cover our store Cal up for a little bit and go down underwater for a little bit that Ram that was caught in the thicket according to Rabbi Eliezer with ancient work pure kDa Rabbi Eliezer that ram was created two thousand years before creation and that it's in other words as a supernatural Ram is a divine it's it's not just any Oh Ram and so we blow the shofar in order to ask God that he should remember that Ram and don't look at our live don't look this is why I say Jews don't believe in working for their salvation don't look at me I've got a I got two dollars and 85 cents look at the RAM the whole story about The Binding of Isaac but on time to get to that who has never heard a shofar blast anybody never heard a shofar blast in here ever really everybody's heard of shofar I won't blow it in y'all all heard it all those people oh wait raise your hand you know five people said they didn't have I haven't ever heard of it okay yay all right here's a shofar blast for those of you who maybe have never heard it online this is a this is a Yemenite shofar this is from the kid kid dude which is like a giant antelope in in Africa love these others are from Rams [Music] [Music] [Music] that is the shofar blast thank you very much so Rosh Hashanah begins the what's called that the the High Holy Days we talked about the yom tov een some people refer to all the holidays as the High Holidays but that's technically incorrect the high holy days are Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur it's a ten day span the reason it's called the High Holidays is because it's not the it's the the days of the nor name young you mean in the days of uh and so during these entire time from Rosh Hashanah Rosh Hashanah begins or rush nob begins the judgment time now Rosh Hashanah is unique among the festivals because it's the only one that happens on the new moon and so in order for us to celebrate Rosh Hashanah in ancient times the Sanhedrin had to site the new moon and that you have to have a sin hedger new society you can't do it by yourself today we have a calendar so we know but anyway back then the Sanhedrin was decided as a result we never knew when Rosh Hashanah was actually going to happen so it was known as the holiday when no man knew the day or the hour Rosh Hashanah is also the holiday when Judaism understands the resurrection of the Dead is going to occur and the mashiac is going to begin to rain so we don't know when mashach is going to come we don't know when the resurrection is gonna happen we do know what's gonna happen on Rosh Hashanah at some point but again no man knows a day or the hour so that begins our judgments and we have ten days of all from Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is ten days it's the first of Tishrei this is the tenth of Tishrei by the way how do we know that this the birthday of the world because you take the word brace sheet in the Hebrew buried below him you take my sheet you rearranged it it says on the 1st of tea-tray become the yom kippur Yom Kippur is the great white throne this is a day in which God opens up his books it's not a Christian idea in case you're wondering that's a Jewish idea God opening his books is found in Jewish literature Sonam Kapoor we come to the synagogue is a complete fast there is no eating there's no drinking there's lots of other things that go along with the fast but on this day particularly we dress in all white we wear our min of the house where the kids will and we dress and always wear white keep oats during the High Holidays and we spend all day long praying and fasting and asking God again to remember the RAM now Jews it seems odd right because people don't understand it's like when you ask for forgiveness somebody asks another question online about teshuva what is teshuva this is a season of teshuva what's the difference winged teshuva and this is a question was asked the difference winged teshuva and the christian idea of asking for forgiveness and grace and the answer is not much although a whole lot and here's here's what it amounts to jewish people we do Tuva every day every day is a day for teshuva in our lives there are certain seasons throughout the year that are particularly n't for making jouvert that in other words we focus more intensely on it from the first of a law which we don't have time to talk about which begins the 40 days of teshuva all up and up until yom kippur that 40 day period is a period of really intense teshuva Hashem looking yourself in the proverbial mirror and what do you need to work on what did you do right this year what did you do wrong and what can you do better today what is the work that you've Amin that you've us where we get the word repentance and teshuva the root of it is shoof which means to turn the idea of teshuva is not just asking God to forgive us and believing that he has but turning a different way whatever I did wrong I'm going to now do right and the test of teshuva is when you're presented with that same circumstance in which you messed up you make a different choice that's when you know you've made real chuhwa so teshuva is all about God's grace to forgive us to cleanse us but Jews couple it with action that's maybe the distinction it's not just about asking for forgiveness but it's now actively doing something that is going to lead to a new world a new a new change of behavior a new way of life this is why Jews who are coming back to the faith and in some cases converts who are coming into the faith are very commonly referred to as Bal Jew VA's which means masters of repentance now you might be asking a very valid question Wow I bet you in Judaism that if you've grew up Jewish and you're a Tzadik or a righteous person you're some big rabbi with a beautiful beard nice glasses that God look at you and say look all your life you're a great Tzadik and in somebody who maybe just learned about the faith a short time ago is about jouvert they're coming into the faith they've chosen now to come back God may look at them ago I wish you were here at 30 minutes ago the answer is the sages say that a Tzadik could not stand in the place of about UVO because a Tzadik somebody who grew up Jewish our whole life they grew up cutting their teeth on the kiddush cup they grew up seeing their mama go to the candles every Friday night they grew up Jewish it's wonderful thank God but the person who is now 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 or even 60 and older who's never lit candles and has to leave their family so not we don't make you leave your family misunderstand but you have to leave that that world and your family are going what are you doing now you're doing what aren't fighting on it why can't you go out to the movies with me Mike hey listen you're not gonna go shopping with me on Shabbat I'm on Saturday what are you doing now I know I know I know about I'm doing something new in my life Sade you say that a Tzadik can't stand and that person's footsteps because there's they're so righteous all they knew was nothing about Judaism and now they've turned to the light and resisted all of that pool it's powerful and so we come back to Yom Kippur Yom Kippur we seek God to forgive us and we know that God has forgiven us but some people say well if you don't forgot us forgive you if your new covenant then why do you need to come back every year and I would say well I don't know about you but throughout the year I kind of make some mistakes I like the idea that Judaism has multiple do-overs it's not just once a year either every month in Russia desh we have an opportunity for a do-over and we say it in the synagogue and we're about to say it this coming Shabbat God you gave us a great month and now let me do better this next month every day is a do-over when you wake up in the morning the sages teach that when you wake up in the morning it's like a resurrection from the dead every single morning you have the opportunity to be resurrected and to live for God all new yesterday was yesterday you say I screwed up real big yesterday God says I know it so don't do that today today because what happens not to get off into this but when you lay down to go to sleep your soul went to show Mayan shamaya heaven and heaven God cleanses your soul reorders it put it back in your body now do it over again then do better today that's God's grace anyway there's a lot to be said about that I know but left foot you oh so we have these elements here there's Jews where I just reduce pause because it's here we wear seat seats which is the tassels you'll see Jewish people wearing tassels on their garments like this many people have asked me about tassels through the years called seat seat and these are kosher seat seats are actually attached to a four-cornered garment called a tallit Katan and the tallit Katan this one and the one I have is intended to be worn inside and if you just stand up for a second Azariah as I was wearing one that is intended to be worn outside his is made out of wool these are made out of cotton but just equally kosher they just go on out here come on dude do like a do like a runway runway there you go there you go so there is that's the there you go this is this a very common way of wearing them out and you can wear them in we we wear them out Ashkenazi Jews typically wear the seats eat out a lot of stuff our team wear them tucked in and we believe you should wear them out but anyway wearing seat seats is a part of Torah law all Jewish men have worn seat seats ever since the times okay sorry they've worn seat seats ever since the days of Moses in the wilderness this is a tallit Katan that means little tallit and so the messiah wore these all the Apostles would have worn them Paul would have worn them every Jewish man wore seat seats we know that mashiac wore them because the Gospels tell us but that's a whole nother topic but anyway this is a tallit Katan we have here the tallit gadot we have a tallit gadot here this is the giant lead I'm just going to pull mine out because it's mine and I don't want to use somebody else's because I don't know how they feel about that but this is the talika doll the giant delete it also has seat seat on it this is the purpose of this garment is really for the seat seat did you hit here the fleet good ol this is the traditional size a Jewish man will wear that elites Godot for morning prayer and for well for morning prayer and for certain holidays this particular tool eats this size is the one that you say the Baraka and you put it on over your head drape at the sides and it makes like a prayer closet for you to da van and the pray and this represents by the way the garment of God it's elites because the seat seat represent the Word of God this represents being clothed and light this is why we quote the psalm you clothed thought about God you clothed yourself in life like like a garment this is what it is a garment of light represents like a garment of royalty like a regal garment what's that yes this is a kosher to lead so my wife bought this for me actually in the car two of you shall I'm so several years ago we also have it is to sit step away from the holidays for just a moment we have to feeling hooked on to feel and I on believin I'm bound to you sorry Thank You sleek up this is the tefillin you might heard them referred to as phylacteries these are the boxes that Jewish men wear when they wrap on their arm and on their forehead and we wear them for morning prayer for shocker eat and inside these boxes are kosher essentially Torah scrolls or which we call parchment and they have various scriptures on them that have been codified all to Filan have the same scriptures on them and have had for thousands of years when they found the Dead Sea Scrolls they found sets at the Filan and mezuzahs had the exact same parchments in there with the exact same scriptures inside the Bible tells us to bind the Word of God on the forehead between our eyes actually in our arms and Jews take that literally we take it spiritually and we take it literally and so we bind the feelin we do not wrap the feeling on the holidays though to include Shabbat the reason is is because just really quickly Shabbat is a sign of the Covenant it's a feeling as a sign of the covenant and circumcision is a sign of the Covenant and the Bible tells us we should always have two witnesses so on all the regular days we have one sign and the other side and on the High Holy Day or on the holy days and on Shabbat we have those other signs and so we don't need this sign so we that's why so we don't wrap the feeling on those on those days but Jewish men were out to feel it every day of the week we have some sources here you can come up here later and look at them let's want to continue on I know we've got lots of holidays quickly Sukkot after the days of all five days later we have the holiday of Sukkot Tishrei is the month in which most holidays happen the most joyful holidays to be sure anyway Sukkot is where we live in booths for seven days and it's oftentimes referred to in Jerusalem as the feast hog because it's just the most joyous festival on the Jewish calendar and we live in a booths because we were celebrating to twelve god I'm an Vinny Baruch Hashem so anyway again I just feel like I'm just readers digest list I'm going over here and talk about two more holidays and then we'll wrap it up those are all Torah holidays these are all holidays there - Shem gave us in his holy Torah these two holidays are given to us in the writings of the Tanakh and so we have first and foremost the festival of Purim which the word poem means lots and this holiday celebrates the events of the book of Esther and in this and this holiday we have the story of Esther who's originally in Hadassah and she went to the palace and she was in disguise nobody knew she was a Jewess she changed her name to Esther nobody knew that and so she lived that way and as a result of that she was able to eventually reveal her identity and save the Jewish people from annihilation my family is very much a poram family I'm Mordechai my wife is Shoshana Mordecai lived in Shushan and his his adopted daughter was Hadassah and Hadassah sitting over there so we're like a very much important family so this holiday is centered around this is dressing up in costume because we dress up for two reasons because Esther concealed her identity number one and number two this is the only book in the Bible where God's name has never mentioned and so God was working he was concealed working behind the scenes which is why we a dress up in costume we also give gifts of charity and gifts to the poor gifts to each other on poor him so this is the gift-giving time of of Judaism incidentally this is a time where they the enemy tried to kill our physical bodies okay Chanukah these both happened in the winter this is late winter this is early winter Hanukkah is a post biblical holiday that happened when the Maccabees Dawid defeated the Greeks and secured our independence and recaptured the temple rededicated the temple and took down all the idols and cleaned it all up and rededicate it to god the word Hanukkah means dedication and this holiday whereas over here they were trying to kill us this was actually more significant because the Greeks weren't trying to kill us they were trying to assimilate us they said oh we don't mind you guys just be Greek and we said no and so this holiday is most commonly known by the fact that we light the menorah for eight nights now the menorah is seven branches but on what's oh the button here oh this one oh I see there it is hold on it's childproof there it is ah see so we light one night now we're actually we don't like this is a toy that we have a real menorah and two lights eight lights I should say there's nine with Hamish candle as always let see us have this one lid and one other than the others with in hospitals yes I was gonna say that actually so this the menorah biblically is seven branches some people like why do you have an a nine branch menorah always funny when non-jews tell me that I don't know it was seven I said no this is called the Hana kiya and the reason it's built like this so we can live it for eight nights it's just a tool of Chanukah it's called a Hana Kea but we know that the the real menorah was seven branches do it leave it on those are all the holidays that's a little bit about Judaism that said this is the this is 3000 years of Jewish history in two hours so Mazel Tov I think what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna open it up for some questions we now in our final few minutes here if you'd like to ask a question we will do our best to answer it if we don't have the answer which is unlikely we will find out and get back to you say can we have a we want our people on line to hear you okay how do you spell tallit ta ll I T okay thank you or table meditate I'm sorry take mama to you yes sir yes sir when you were going through the feast yes sir the only one I didn't hear you speak of was firstfruits oh thank you very much I meant to say that Passover is actually a one-day festival actually but it's a colloquially we say Passover to refer to the week of Passover but within Passover there are three festivals there's Passover the feast of firstfruits and then the whole week is the feast of unleavened bread the feast of firstfruits when they offered up the Omer a barley offering yes sir yes we happen to believe that mashiac represents the first fruits the o'meara offering that was offered up symbolically of course yes anybody else got a question yeah so do Gentiles need to convert to Judaism to be part of the renewal oh sure yes our position is first of all non-jews anybody is welcome to come to shore our position is is that when non-jews come into the covenant the original intent was that they would convert into Judaism that's our position it's our belief that non-jews do that and in fact in the Apostolic letters it refers to non-jews as sons of Abraham halakhah Klee if you give somebody that epitaph if there are sons of Abraham that means they're Jewish you cannot be a son of Abraham and not be Jewish under Jewish law moreover from our point of view the water baptism in its original context in the first century was all about conversion you didn't go to the mikveh unless you were going to be converted today water baptism has been taken out of its context and it's means something else but in the first century this is why it from our point of view again looking at the text when Peter said he was he didn't know if he should baptize Cornelius and his family in the water and that's because he knew the theme baptized these guys in a mikveh that makes them Jewish that's that is a right of conversion and so he wasn't sure if that was kosher or not which is what all that story about acts 10 was about so the answer question from our synagogue's point of view yes we do we don't force anybody to convert but we do encourage conversion and so on yes and we aren't all by the way or we are in the process of building a a kosher make an actual by kosher mix I mean the traditional Orthodox Jewish mikvah which will be used not just for conversions but also for family purity for immersion it's going to be indoors beautiful facility it's being constructed about a block or so from here there's being men's make foot annum and a female mikvah that's very gonna be nice that that should be we hope and pray that construction will be completed by the end of the of the fiscal year anyway by Hanukkah maybe so rabbi just a simple definition of the term Gentile Gentile okay so in our modern time the word Gentile has been interpreted to mean just somebody who's not Jewish a person of the nations from a from a Jewish perspective if you look at Jewish ancient Jewish literature from a first century perspective which is our perspective is we should want to know what the word meant in the first century and the and the reality is the word Gentile itself means an idolatry it is the antithesis to someone who's in covenant essentially it means this someone who is a Gentile is by definition outside of the Covenant that is for the Jewish point of view the meaning of of the work so we'll talk about the question being Gentiles in the Covenant do they need to convert and from the Jewish point of view it's kind of a it's like well if you're in the if you're in the covenant you're no longer a Gentile anyway so you're so to be in the covenant it would be like my wife once we marry is no longer a single woman so to say well do I ceased being a single woman as I get married it's like bull well of course because we're no longer you're no longer outside of that union any other questions now we have a question two questions here now from my perspective at this point in time from what I understand when I think about the blessing of Abraham and being brought into that covenant more than just the works and the acts that I do I think of my what I call my my Messiah my rabbi my brother his death on that cross allowed me to through my belief in him to enter into the New Covenant Abraham therefore I become a child of God does this mean I no longer a Christian ways or is your difference between being in the Covenant and not being a Christian anymore or can they both work together well this is okay it's a very good question what happens in our day and age is we're looking at things 2,000 years backwards and it gets very confusing because it's like there's always been all these doctrines and all these beliefs and baptism means something else and the cup of communion we don't know where that comes from and you're Jews and Gentiles and I'm in covenant and what is this what is that we like to simplify things we'd like to just go back to the first century and about 325 years before Christianity existed and start from that point what does it mean for a non-jewish person to show up it at caifa store at Peter's door and say you know what I wanna I wanna I wanna join this thing can I come in and the answer is yeah you can welcome to synagogue welcome to Shabbat welcome to the Covenant and if you start doing these things you're no longer a Gentile if you go through the waters of the mikveh when you come up out of the waters and make for the Jews we say this whether you believe whether it's SAR Shalom or it's some other synagogues somewhere else if you're a non-jewish person and you go through the waters of the mikveh they say this when you come up out of water you have been born again a son of Abraham the term born again new creation a new born babe none of that is Christian all of it is Jewish so from the Jewish point of view a non Jew who comes in and goes to the water the mikveh when they come up out the waters the mikveh they are born again a son of Abraham they're no longer and in Jewish mind you have to understand something that when a non Jew does this we're not talking about spiritual Jew there's no such thing as a spiritual Jew in Judaism in Judaism we talk about Judaism in another religion okay yeah maybe that's what you want to believe but it's not Jewish if you're a non-jewish and you come in and you become a Jew you're a Jew to quote the rabbis in every respect your lineage has been transferred from whatever it was now directly to Abraham and Sarah Abraham and Sarah not Abraham and Hagar but Abraham and Sarah now you're a part of the family the day that you come up out of the mix up my friends you are just as Jewish as Moses just as you may not feel it because you're like you feel a little awkward guess what that's all that's all Abraham film yes so I'm gonna play it here for a second Peter so how do you guys establish with Peter you know he had the the oh the sheet that came down with all the food and you know God said go and eat you know when I eat meat whatever and he was like well I can't because it's not kosher and guys like don't call anything unclean what I've called clean how do you explain that just excellent excellent I'm glad that you asked that question because that is the number one probably most asked question theologically about the New Testament so first of all the vision of the sheet that might surprise a lot of people is it has nothing at all to do with food nothing at all in fact caifa when he's Peter when he's retelling the story about all that happens he he himself says what that means in fact he says it wants to current to the Cornelius and his family and then he tells it again to the council he says I now know what God was trying to tell me that I should not call men unclean because several things about this story that I want to point out in the first century there was not and I there it was there was a line of Jewish thought that a non Jew had the contamination of a corpse they were like corpses walking you weren't even allowed to go to their house which is why the Ruka cold - the Holy Spirit told caifa these men are coming for you don't hesitate to go with him why did he throw in that because he would have hesitated to go with him for the same reason that the Centurion told the Messiah Lord I'm not a man that you should come to my house what did he mean by that he's not worthy he's a Gentile he knew he wasn't supposed to come to his house that presumes by the way that Yeshua was gonna come to his house because he said don't go to my house just see the speak the word and my servant will be healed so the issue is Hashem was needing to show caifa and specifically KF I keep saying KF I mean Peter that's his Hebrew name is caifa he needed to specifically teach him because he's the leader of the whole community he needs to know that non-jews can become Jews now oh this is so good the question becomes if Jews believe in converting non-jews what's the question why does God need to tell K for that it's okay for non-jews to come in I mean isn't that obvious and the answer is is that there was a there is a a Jewish thought still exists today when the Messiah comes the door closes for the Gentiles that up until the Messiah coming the Gentiles can come in but once the mashach comes doors closed well okay if it didn't know the mashach has come or he did know the machetes come but he didn't know he's thinking okay it means no Gentiles now it's only for Israel and besides that Yeshua said don't go to the Gentiles but there's two mushy ox there's the mossad ben yosef of the Messiah ben david to massage who come say messiah but two missions there's a whole nother story but so god was saying no in fact this is the big window for the non-jews to come in now as far as the food thing goes it has nothing to do with food at all so why did god use food because he was trying because peter was hungry he was on the roof and they were fixing the food for him downstairs so he had food on the mind and so God uses that as an illustration now here's something that you need to understand about this story caifa just 15 years earlier had been following the mashiac and was watching him being tortured and somebody said hey aren't you one of his guys he says nope I'm not somebody else said no you're one of his guys I can tell nope I'm not and then somebody else said you've got the accent of a Galilean you are one of them and he said I swear curses come down on me I don't even know the man and then he heard the crow now the crow was not a bird the crow is the gabbai of this Ave of the temple who was called the crow because his voice was so loud they did not allow chickens to include roosters inside the city limits of Jerusalem this is told and the writings of josephus is part of of city law the crow would open the temple and he would cry out three different times three different things priest - your sacrifices Levites to your platform israelites to your service and that's when caifa did knighting the first time the second time priest to your sacrifices Levites to your platform israelites to your service he did not in the third time and then it happened a second time and then it happened the third time so caifa was denying the sacrifice he was denying the worship and he was denying the service and he thought his life was lost physically and spiritually so after the resurrection the mashach shows up at Galilee and he says to caifa do you love me he said of course I love you Lauren asked him a second time I Love You Lord asked him a third time I'm troubled and you know I love you Lord he said then feed my sheep that was a reinstallation why because in Jewish law when you sin against somebody it's customary to come and say I forgive you Gregg's sins against me and so he does something and then I say to Gregg absolved absolved absolved three times I was now he's been absolved he thought he was going to get hit him he had he had denied them a shock his Heath his life was over now he's reinstated 15 years later he's been he's he's been with with Hashem for 3 excuse me he's been with a Michelle for 3 years he's been with the mashiac 40 days in his glorified body he's been ministering for 15 years listen if he missed the memo somehow about kosher he would have gotten it and that all that time period God and God never said anything about not eating kosher and so now here comes Peter with all that background all that history and God says Peter rise Killiney and he says nope number three Peter rise kill and eat God no Peter rise kill and eat Hashem uh-uh now a guy who's denied the mashiac three times knows this is a test and he's saying he would never say no to something he had even an inkling of thinking that it was okay to do and even after that it says that he sat there and was thinking what was all that about why because God would never ever tell somebody to violate the Covenant why because the definition of sin is breaking God's law God is never gonna tell you to sin so he says this has got to mean something else it's about the people not the food that's the answer all right we've got maybe one more question Oh or two we'll go for two we'll come back we'll come back to you wanted just maybe thank you probably one of the biggest questions and if breaking the law God would never ask anyone to break the law and yet he asked Abraham to sacrifice his own son well offering up your son as a sacrifice is not a violation of the law actually in fact Judaism says that every time a man offers up his son to be circumcised it's as if he's offered up all the sacrifices but it really was a test ultimately it was a test to see if he was going to do it Judaism it's interesting because Judaism teaches the first offering of a Jew ever was the offering of Isaac and then all the other offerings that the reason that we can offer offerings and then not offer offerings is because they all point to him anyway right true but the law the law has always existed so and remember of Genesis is a book of the law the law given at Sinai was actually a reintroduction of the law but that's yes Wanda you had a question final question of the evening here yes well and I've been coming here a few months price of Shem Robicheaux but I'm still uncertain about what to call God okay okay because here I when you were reading this earlier you were talking about it says Hashem is the g-d of Abraham and then under the note it says Hashem and means I believe the name the name okay refers to the king of the universe whose name we do not pronounce so do we know what his actual name is so sometime in shul the here at and I hear Hashem and I think I hear Elohim sometime I'm not sure Lord maybe - I don't know so I'd like to know what is the proper sometime I be talking to someone about God and I want to be correct so I just began to stumble over the world because I don't know which word is appropriate all right if you touch this talking to someone kalokhe you're just talking have a conversation I I would encourage you to use one or two Hashem or God you can say the Lord to you that's fine but Hashem or God the reality is we don't know how to pronounce the divine name and and no one knows I assure you there is in the yom kippur mocks or there's an hebrew only section that actually has the divine name with the vowel markers underneath it if you can read Hebrew you can read that but you wouldn't say it but even if I even I don't even say it I read it but I didn't say it and you're not supposed to but the point being is we don't know how to say it and therefore because we don't if we say it and we mess it up we've you've just done a terrible hello Hashem because you've just messed up the divine name and I can guarantee you based on what's in the mocks or the D named as its as its vocalized there on the page sounds nothing like you've ever heard on any website or anything you've heard in the book or at the s unny thank you that in the book revelation it says when Messiah comes he'll have a name upon him which no one knows and and that comports with what Jews teach which is that when Messiah comes he'll restore to us the divine name because he will build the third temple in which case it's proper to say the third the divine name because it's in the confines of God's holy temple oh okay how do you want to do that we have a drawing we have it we have a door prize so how do you want to come on up here let's hold on one second you're gonna read the number yeah everybody should have a ticket I guess is that what happened everybody take it alright you ready [Music] three zero eight nine eight nine Oh masaf oh she won well that's going to conclude us in the others there's more oh we've got two more wow I didn't know we were that generous we got another one okay three zero eight nine nine one all right Timothy one Robuchon and we have one more one more three zero eight nine nine six all right Luka sham all right so I just want to conclude tonight with this a prayer and a blessing and no one has to run off unless you need to that's perfectly fine we have some knowledge we have some bread where you can come up here and look at things if you want to ask questions you can ask me or the goodbye or the sake ins it's perfectly fine to do just that and roguish Jim if you would like to visits our synagogue I love to have you and to come and visit and take a peek at everything that'd be fantastic so ashen may you bless all these precious people and bless the people who are watching online I don't I Hashem may be a will that you would answer all of our questions and help us to see your divine truth in your divine light and father help us to cut through any type of theology that maybe we're off on or it's been off or whatever the case of video should we just wants you we want you we want your will we want your love in our life and once your grace your mercy most of all we just want to follow you with all of our hearts may it be your will assume that you bless and keep these precious people may it be your will of Shem that your divine countenance should rise upon them and be gracious to them and may you turn your face towards them [Music] kinda neat all right da-da-da-da-da-da gonna need a night I Lana Nina Nina Nina I mean [Music] [Applause] [Music] you know honey [Music] I [Music] even I [Music] and I need [Music] [Music] I need [Music] yes [Music]

Channel: Lapid Judaism

Views: 5,514

Rating: 4.9583335 out of 5

Keywords: Judaism, Lapid, Lapid Judaism, Torah, Yeshua, Jesus, Mashiach, Drash, Jews, Rabbi, Rabbi Mordecai, Rabbi Mordecai Griffin, Rabbi Griffin, Mordecai Griffin, Life, Jewish, Jewish Life, Shabbat, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashana, Purim, Hannukah, Sukkot, Pesach, Shavout, Elul

Id: CGihuA5TZUo

Length: 130min 56sec (7856 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 12 2019