Shelley Neese's Blog, page 9

The Story of Hanukkah

I co-teach a Sunday School class at my church. Actually, I go to an Anglican congregation so we call it the “Rector’s Forum.” I intended to give a 2,000 year broad sweep of Temple Mount history. Since it was Hanukkah, I thought I would introduce the history lesson with some fun facts on Hanukkah. After forty minutes, I was still talking about the Maccabees when it was time for parents to pick up their children from children’s church.

Hanukkah is not one of the biblical feasts or festivals that is prescribed in the Torah, like Sukkot, Shavuot, or Passover. It is a tradition started by the sages.

The story of Hanukkah actually comes from the First Book of Maccabees. That is not part of the Hebrew Cannon, just like it is not part of the Protestant cannon, but like much of the Apocrypha it provides interesting history. The book was written in the second century BCE so it is an account of events soon after they took place. The original Hebrew text has been lost to us; the surviving text from the Septuagint is in Greek.

Maccabees starts out by recounting how Judah suddenly found itself under Greek rule. Alexander the Great made a sweeping conquest over much of the world in the fourth century BCE. Along with his ever-expanding army and tax base, Greek culture and social practices metastasized across his vast empire.

The Greek language became the dominant tongue among the educated and the language of commerce. Greek theatres, gyms, and temples were built everywhere that Alexander planted new Greek cities. This process is what we now call Hellenization.

The Jews were not immune to the enticements of Hellenization. However, most of what the Greeks had to offer ran counter to everything that had been proscribed for the Jewish people in the Torah: circumcision, dietary laws, Sabbath, sexual purity, and most of all monotheism. While some Jews assimilated, others actively protected their beliefs and values.

After Alexander died, his kingdom split in two. The Ptolemies were essentially Greeks ruling from Egypt and the Seleucids were Greeks ruling from Damascus.

Around 170 BCE, Antiochus Epiphanes won the Greco-Syrian throne. As king, Judah was one of the provinces under his rule. Giving himself the title “Epiphanes” which in Greek means “god-manifest,” Antiochus was not content to let Greek culture subtly influence the people of Judah. He was a fanatical and cruel tyrant who saw Judaism as an existential threat to his sovereignty. Therefore, he aggressively assaulted the ancient religion.

On pain of death, Antiochus banned Torah study, Shabbat observance, dietary laws, and circumcision. Many Jews had already assimilated voluntarily, including even the acting high priest who bought his way into the position. But he intended to force the remaining unassimilated Jews to abandon their worship of Yahweh. The tyrant forced them to bow down to statues and to eat pork. He went so far as to defile the Temple by sacrificing a pig on the altar and installing an idol of Zeus in the Holy of Holies.

By this point, Jews began escaping to the hills and mountains. Martyrdom was widespread. There are stories of mothers and babies being thrown to their deaths after secret circumcisions. The most famous martyr was named Hannah. Hannah and her seven sons were brought before Antiochus’s soldiers and one by one they were told to bow before an idol. Each son refused and each son was executed in front of Hannah. According to the rabbinic legend, Hannah told her last son, “tell Abraham that he erected one altar and I have erected seven altars.”

However, there were also many Hellenized Jews who did walk away from the traditions of their fathers. They stopped circumcising and stopped observing Jewish law.

The Seleucid army tried to exploit the civil unrest growing in the Jewish nation. Greek soldiers came to the town of Modi’in, just about 20 miles northwest of Jerusalem, and demanded that a Jewish leader sacrifice a pig to a pagan idol. Matisyahu or Mattathias, an elderly Jewish priest and the religious leader of Modi’in, was the first one they approached. They tried to bribe him with gold and silver and power, but he refused to oblige. He was actually in a declared state of mourning, in sackcloth and ashes, for the state of the Jewish nation.

Right as Matisyahu declared to the king’s officials that the Jews of Modi’in would not change their way of worship, a Jewish man from the crowd volunteered to do the pagan sacrifice. Matisyahu was overcome with zealotry and he took his concealed sword and killed the betrayer and the king’s official and tore down the altar. According to Maccabees, Matisyahu shouted, “Follow me…every one of you who is zealous for the law and strives to maintain the covenant” (I Maccabees 2:27). A full battle ensued. The rebellion was born.

Matisyahu had five sons, all of which were leaders in the resistance. But his most charismatic son, Judah, assumed military command of a group of 1,000 rebels. They took to the wilderness and hills and organized a guerilla army. Judah’s nickname was Judah the Hammer, or Maccabeus, because of his bravery in hand-to-hand fighting. That is where we get the term Maccabees. Josephus referred to the family as the Hasmoneans. Jewish sources use the two titles interchangeably.

Antiochus summoned 40,000 soldiers to squash the rebellion. The Jewish rebels ambushed each new Syrian outpost. They got lucky when Antiochus had to divert a contingent of troops to fight the Parthians in the eastern portion of the empire. It took three years for the Maccabees to beat back their Greek oppressors. In 163 BCE, Antiochus died on a different battlefront. When news reached the Jewish army that Antiochus died, they marched on Jerusalem. Internal fighting over the Seleucid throne distracted and weakened the empire just enough that the Hasmoneans were able to take back Jerusalem.

They finally regained their Temple. The Temple had been abandoned. After several days of mourning for the ruinous condition of the Temple, they purged it of the Greek idols and according to Torah law, they had to cleanse it from all of the impurities that had come into the Temple over the previous three years. They tore down the altar and rebuilt a new one. They hung new curtains and repaired the courtyard. Once the Temple was cleansed, they had a rededication service.

According to rabbinical tradition (the book of Maccabees does not record this story) they only had one day’s worth of sacred oil to light the Temple menorah which according to Temple laws was supposed to stay lit eternally as a sign of God’s presence. It takes a week to process and purify new oil, but on faith they lit the Temple Menorah anyways as part of the rededication ceremony. Miraculously, one day’s worth of oil lasted for eight days until they could secure more oil.

However, we also know that the Jews came in mass to the Temple as soon as it was consecrated with the idea of celebrating Sukkot since they had not been able to perform the feast at the Temple for several years. That too is the reason why Hanukkah lasts eight days. It was a substitute for the week-long holiday of Sukkot which is a biblically mandated feast.

Ultimately, Hanukkah has important implications for modern day believers. When Jews celebrate Hanukkah, they are primarily celebrating a miracle. The miracle of the eight days of oil, but also the bigger miracle of the oppressed overcoming the oppressor and of the weak and few defeating the strong and the many. It is also a celebration of Jewish identity. The biggest threat that Jews were facing in the first century BCE was total assimilation. But they ultimately resisted and outlasted Hellenism.

In the second century BCE, Jews were the only monotheistic community. How would world history have been different if Antiochus had succeeded in wiping out the Jewish religion?

The post The Story of Hanukkah appeared first on Shelley Neese.

I have one idea for a gift…

The post I have one idea for a gift… appeared first on Shelley Neese.

Professor Sukenik and the first Dead Sea Scrolls

On November 24, 1947, with the British Mandate approaching expiration, the nascent Jewish nation was caught up in a bloody civil war with Palestinian nationalists. Jerusalem was divided by barbed wire, booby traps, and makeshift walls as British troops strained to quell the violence. Professor Eleazar Lipa Sukenik, from Hebrew University, received a call from an Armenian friend, acting as a middle man for Salahi. He promised to reveal an antiquity of interest to Sukenik.

They met at the gateway to Military Zone B, separated by a barbed-wire fence. The Armenian held up a sample fragment of leather. Though Sukenik heard tales of inscriptional materials floating around the black market, it was only once the Jewish scholar laid eyes on the ancient lettering that he comprehended the importance of the desert find. Even through barbed wire, Sukenik recognized the writing style as similar to first-century ossuaries (bone coffins) in Jerusalem.

Five days later, Sukenik acquired a proper pass and traveled to Salahi’s home in Bethlehem, ignoring travel warnings and the wishes of his wife and his son. Salahi permitted Sukenik to take the scrolls and study them before negotiating a price. On a bus full of Arabs, the Jewish scholar carried the Hebrew scrolls under his arm, wrapped like an ordinary parcel. Once Sukenik was in the privacy of his home, he unrolled a fragile scroll with trembling fingers. He logged the intensity of emotion in his diary: “I suddenly had the feeling that I was privileged by destiny to gaze upon a Hebrew scroll which had not been read for more than 2,000 years.” As he poured over the text, he heard the radio announce that the United Nations General Assembly voted in favor of the establishment of a Jewish state. Spontaneous celebrations broke out in the streets.

On behalf of the Hebrew University, Sukenik purchased Salahi’s three manuscripts: the War Scroll, the Thanksgiving Psalms, and a second copy of the Isaiah Scroll.

The post Professor Sukenik and the first Dead Sea Scrolls appeared first on Shelley Neese.

The First Dead Sea Scrolls

In 1946 or 1947—no one knows for certain—a Bedouin goatherd nicknamed Muhammad the Wolf led his flock around the cliffs lining the northwest edge of the Dead Sea. As the livestock grazed on sparse vegetation, Muhammad wandered around the boulders. According to one of several variants of the account, he hurled a stone into a cave to startle a stray goat and heard pottery shatter. Too frightened to lower himself into the cave alone, he returned several days later with at least two relatives from his Ta’amireh tribe. Though they fantasized about finding gold and silver, instead they stumbled upon a cache of oddly shaped clay vessels with bowl shaped lids. Inside one jar, they discovered three ancient leather scrolls, intact and wrapped in linen.

The Bedouin carted their scrolls back to their camp. The tribesmen stored the bundle in a goat skin bag and hung it from a tent pole. Unfamiliar with the aged script, they debated whether they should repurpose the old strips of leather. Fortuitously, Muhammad’s uncle thought to take the scrolls to Bethlehem on market day. Their first foray into the black-market antiquities trade aroused more suspicion than success. One trader sent them on to the next. In the end, they arranged for a Syrian Orthodox merchant, Khalil Eskander Shahin, known as Kando, to sell the scrolls for a commission. Kando owned a general store and cobbler shop near the Church of the Nativity. Archbishop Mar Samuel, head of the Syrian Orthodox Monastery of St. Mark, made the purchase soon after he saw the scrolls in Kando’s possession. As the former librarian at St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mt. Sinai, the Archbishop had experience with ancient scripts. Once Kando took out his commission, the Bedouin returned to the desert the equivalent of sixty dollars richer.

Hoping for an even greater return on his investment, Muhammad the Wolf’s relative returned to the cave and retrieved four additional scrolls. Again, one of the scrolls found its way to Kando. The other three scrolls were sold to an antiquities dealer in Bethlehem, Faidi Salahi. Salahi intended to put the scrolls in front of a Hebrew scholar capable of realizing their full worth.

The post The First Dead Sea Scrolls appeared first on Shelley Neese.

Opening the Copper Scroll

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how the Copper Scroll was found. However, in the beginning, the Copper Scroll didn’t set off the kind of alarm bells that you may expect. The black market was flooded with Dead Sea Scrolls, most of which were very fragmentary. It was a tremendous struggle to keep up with buying them, piecing them together, and publishing them. The process turned out to be decades long. That had a lot to do with the fact that Jordan established a very small team of editors, all international experts in Hebrew and Semitic studies. (Of course, Israel was the enemy and so no Jewish scholars were allowed on the team.)

John Allegro, a scroll editor from Britain, was the only team member to champion the Copper Scroll. The rest were too busy with the pressing issue of acquiring and studying the scrolls at their fingertips. It took Allegro three years to find out the contents of the scroll.

Allegro approached Manchester University, his alma mater. Henry Wright Baker, a professor of mechanical engineering, agreed to take on the task. He was no expert in ancient metals, but Baker had faith, skill, and guts. He constructed an elaborate, although crude-looking, device out of retired British army materials and other tools he borrowed from the school of dentistry. The machine had a circular high-speed saw, spindle, cradle, vacuum and attached fan. After Baker constructed the machine, he told Allegro to meet him back at the lab the next morning. But in fact, Baker made the first lengthwise cut that night. It worked! He later said that if he had shattered the 2,000-year-old relic, he wanted to be alone in his misery.

When Allegro came to the lab the next morning, he was staring at an ancient verbal treasure map. He fired off a letter to his colleagues in Jerusalem saying “these scrolls are red hot!”

Can you imagine the moment that Allegro realize he was looking at a 2,000 year old treasure map?

The post Opening the Copper Scroll appeared first on Shelley Neese.

Official Copper Scroll Project Book Trailer

When I saw this book trailer, I got excited and for a split second thought, “I want to read that book!”

The post Official Copper Scroll Project Book Trailer appeared first on Shelley Neese.

Christian Media Summit in Jerusalem

Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend the second annual Christian Media Summit in Jerusalem. Hosted by the Government Press Office, the four-day event brought together 130 pro-Israel Christian media figures from 30 countries. The goal of the summit was to strengthen cooperation between Israel and Christian communities. In some ways, it was also a victory lap considering all of the amazing things achieved over the last year: moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, pulling out of the Iranian nuclear deal, withdrawing support from UNRWA, and ending our membership in UNESCO.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the keynote speaker for the first evening session. While the Prime Minister is often put into a mode of defense at regular press gatherings, on this occasion he was relaxed and personal. When an Indonesian Christian woman thanked him for granting her a visa, he scribbled a note to himself and put it in his suit pocket. When an American man suggested that Netanyahu appoint a government emissary to the Christian world, he again scribbled a note to himself and put it in his pocket. Again, and again, Netanyahu reminded the audience that Israel has no better friends in the world than Christians. Ambassador David Friedman joined Netanyahu on the stage, thanking the participants for advancing the truth about Israel. Quoting from the gospel of John, Friedman proclaimed “the truth will set you free.”

The following evening, Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat joined the group at a special dinner in his honor. The next afternoon, President Reuven Rivlin hosted the group for a luncheon at his home. While we were all sitting and waiting for the President in the reception hall, we did what Christian groups often do and we sang. At first, we sang Israel’s national anthem and then we tried “Oseh Shalom Bimromav.” We quickly exhausted the group’s Hebrew abilities so the suggestion was made by a Jewish radio host from California that the group have a chance to sing a hymn. Arlene Bridges Samuels, a Christian blogger for Times of Israel but more importantly a singer, led the group in three stanzas of Amazing Grace. Nitzan Chen, the government press officer and lead organizer for the summit, said this had to be the first time that a Christian hymn was sung in the reception hall of the president of Israel.

Considering the theme of repentance, hope and redemption explicit in the Christian anthem, Amazing Grace, I got good ole fashion chill bumps as I prayed silently in my head thanking God for this opportunity and for bringing his children, both Jews and Christians, back together after two millennia of division.

In President Rivlin’s speech, he declared that the “words of Israel’s prophets were coming true before our eyes.” A room of Christians from all over the world gave a collective heartfelt “Amen!”

 

The post Christian Media Summit in Jerusalem appeared first on Shelley Neese.

Review of The Copper Scroll Project

Note from Shelley: Victor Sharpe is a prolific freelance writer and author of several books including the trilogy, Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state.  Because I have long been an admirer of Victor’s work, I sent him an advance author copy of The Copper Scroll Project and Mr. Sharpe wrote this review for Canada Free Press.

By Victor Sharpe, Canada Free Press—

“Within two full years will I bring back into this place all the vessels of Hashem‘s house, that NeBuchadnezar king of Bavel took away from this place, and carried them to Bavel;” Jeremiah 28:3 (The Israel Bible)

The author of the Copper Scroll Project, Shelley Neese, has created a riveting and true story of one man’s epic search for the lost treasures from the First Jewish Temple, which stood on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.

In this first book by Ms. Neese we meet Jim Barfield whose motivation, since he began his quest in 2006 to find the treasure, marks him as a deeply religious man who wants only to “return the Temple artifacts to the Jewish People.” As he says, “It’s time.”

Jim Barfield fervently believes the Biblical artifacts and treasures lie deep under the desert soil close to Qumran and the Dead Sea; a mere 18 miles from Jerusalem, Israel.

The copper scroll was first discovered in 1952 and although found near the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written on papyrus, the copper scrolls were inscribed in Hebrew letters from the Roman period and engraved upon thin copper plates. Archaeologists and historians remain conflicted as to the origin of the treasure listed in the 64 locations as shown in the copper scroll map.

Could the treasure, if found, be of greater significance to Israel and the world than even the Dead Sea Scrolls? That is the hope that fills the pages of this most remarkable and fascinating book.

As Jim Barfield himself asks: “Is there a scholar, a rabbi, an antiquities authority, or an interested reader with the influence strong enough to loosen the stranglehold that prevents the project from completing our excavation?”

And as Jim Barfield writes in his foreword to Shelley Neese’s compelling book, “I am confident that once a massive recovery operation takes place in the Judean desert it may well reveal to the world messages, instructions and valuable wisdom from the heart of Israel’s past leading to a much deeper understanding of the Bible and an unrevealed history.”

It is this looming question that makes the book’s story so tantalizing. Why, after Jim Barfield’s scan of the soil with a sophisticated scanning device, which revealed the likelihood of highly possible artifacts lying some eight feet deep was an Israeli archaeologist, who had begun to dig shallow test pits, told to shut down the dig after receiving a mysterious phone call?

Vendyl Jones, a Texas preacher turned Biblical archaeologist who may have been the inspiration for the Harrison Ford cinematic character, Indiana Jones, believed Qumran to be the hiding place for the Temple vessels. He spent 30 years searching while using the Copper Scroll as a guide. Jim Barfield, a retired firefighter and arson investigator from Oklahoma, met with Jones, now deceased, and was deeply inspired to continue the challenge of locating the lost Biblical artifacts.

Ms. Neese fills her book with the triumphs and disappointments as Barfield, who had tirelessly worked to crack the Copper Scroll’s code, and his three companions systematically map out the area where they become convinced the ancient Biblical treasures lie. For now, the mysterious artifacts are waiting under the ground where they have remained for millennia. Will growing public demand for a full excavation of the site finally become so insistent that a dig can take place and vindicate Jim Barfield?

A map of the Qumran caves and possible locations of Temple treasures.

The world and members of the Israeli Parliament along with the general public, are urging the appropriate authorities to unearth what Barfield has tirelessly worked so hard to claim may be the First Temple treasures from Israel’s ancient past.

This significant and noteworthy book is both a highly absorbing and entertaining account of many years of triumph and disappointment as Jim embarks on journey after journey to Israel where he edges ever closer to a discovery that may well electrify the world. It may also resolve once and for all the conflicting political and historical claims that bedevil the Jewish people’s ancestral and Biblical right to their homeland.

As Shelley Neese writes in her first chapter, titled Promise:

A contingent of religious Jews have said It is time for Israel to actualize its sovereignty over the Temple Mount. But one man in particular, a brave Israeli politician named Moshe Feiglin, after meeting Jim Barfield and learning of his painstaking research into the Copper Scroll, is now urging that a rescue mission be launched to reveal the sacred artifacts that may lie under the soil at Qumran.

Ms. Neese points to what Jim Barfield sees as the flaw in the predominant opinion that the treasures listed in the copper scrolls simply refer to gold and silver. One of the locations described in the copper scroll refers to priestly vestments – not treasure – and that makes the argument more valid that what lies beneath the ground is from the First Temple period and hidden from the Babylonians as described in Jeremiah 28;3.

In Shelley Neese’s beautifully written account of the many expeditions by Jim Barfield and his worthy companions to Israel and to the Qumran site, we share the excitement of the quest to discover and pinpoint the location of the artifacts as described in the copper scroll’s treasure map.

Reading this remarkable book, replete with copious footnotes and pictures of the list of characters, including Shelley herself, who worked with Jim Barfield on his visits to Qumran, is a tour de force of excitement and anticipation as readers share in the wonders of a distant past, which if and when revealed, has the potential to change the world.

The Copper Scroll Project is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the world of Biblical archaeology and the colliding interests of political disputes and land claims that roil the Islam-Israel conflict. It also exposes the passions that exist within embattled Israel for fear that archaeological progress may ignite yet more Muslim violence and aggression against the reconstituted Jewish state.

Above all, Shelley Neese has displayed great linguistic skills and a brilliant grasp of history as she details the driving passion of a singular man, Jim Barfield, a Noahide, who tirelessly works to reveal the hidden treasures from the First Jewish Temple on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.

The post Review of The Copper Scroll Project appeared first on Shelley Neese.

Finding the Copper Scroll

In the spring of 1952, Henri de Contenson, a young French scholar, mounted an expedition to scout desert terraces and cliffs in the Judean desert. They were looking for Dead Sea Scrolls, racing against the illicit Bedouin excavations by using their own team of hired Bedouin. The expedition was sponsored by the Jordanian Department of Antiquities who controlled the region at that time. The team came across a large natural cave. The cave’s entrance was narrow and rock-covered, barely perceptible to the scanning eye. For eleven days, they carefully cleared a mountain of debris. The cave contained forty scroll jars, shattered from the crushing weight of a ceiling that had collapsed in antiquity. All that was left from the once robust library were five intact jars housing disintegrated scrolls.

After ten days of excavation, the team was about to quit when they noticed that a large limestone rock was hiding what appeared to be a lesser side cave. Like a false wall for a castle’s secret chamber, the rock camouflaged the nook and barred it from intruders. Curious, workers carefully chipped through the chalky barricade. Resting alone on a low shelf were two stacked copper rolls. The scroll’s strategic position allowed it to narrowly escape the collapsed ceiling. Nature had created the perfect hiding place for the most intriguing manuscript in the Dead Sea Scroll collection: The Copper Scroll.

Rather than papyrus or leather, the Copper Scroll is inscribed on thin sheets of almost a hundred percent pure copper. Copper was particularly valuable in ancient times and much more strenuous to inscribe. Each letter had to be hammered out with chisels. The choice of copper indicated that the contents of the scroll were of such importance that the scribe wanted to be sure it could withstand the ravages of time. Originally measuring over seven feet long and a foot wide, the scroll is one of the largest ancient metal documents ever found.

But after 2,000 years, the copper coils were green and brittle. The scrolls crumbled at the slightest touch. No one knew how to open the rolls without destroying them. For three years the scrolls sat in a museum in Jordan unopened.

Stay tuned for the rest of the story…..

The post Finding the Copper Scroll appeared first on Shelley Neese.

The Holy Calendar

This week’s Torah portion covers Deuteronomy 31:1 to 31:30. It is titled Vayeilech which means “and he went.”

As the text opens, the people are about to enter into a period of warfare. To take possession of the land, they will first have to fight. Moses assures these timid soldiers that God will go out before them; He will not release them or forsake them. Although Moses is trying to be an encouragement, he is also a prophet and it is impossible for a prophet to be blindly naive.

Moses knows that once the people are in the land and they no longer have to rely on God for their daily sustenance, or to see them through battle, many will grow apathetic and fall away from the Lord. In the period of the judges, they will do “whatever is right in their own eyes.” As the second generation of freed slaves, they were not eyewitnesses to the plagues in Egypt or the thunderous visitation on Mount Sinai.

However, two major things have been put in place to aid each successive generation in their own faith memory: the Torah and the holy calendar. In this chapter of Deuteronomy, we learn that before Moses died, he finished writing down the words of the covenant. He commanded the Levites to place it at the side of the Ark of the Covenant so that it could be “an eternal witness.” If the Israelites ever lost sight of their identity, they have the Holy Book to remind them of their unique history and their divine laws.

God also instituted the holy calendar as a way of safeguarding national moments for the Israelites to regularly remember and reenact their story, and also as a method to atone for their sins, both by repentance and ritual sacrifice.

We are now officially entering in to those high holidays. Except for Passover and Shavuot, all of the major Jewish holidays are squished together in the fall. On September 10th, Jews celebrated Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Rosh Hashanah marks the anniversary of the creation of the world. The prayers and readings on Rosh Hashanah reflect a desire to cast off old burdensome sins and start fresh. The ram’s horn, or shofar, is blown one hundred times as a way of awakening hardened hearts and motivating unrepentant spirits. Around that theme of newness and sweetness, Jews dip apples in honey. Also, instead of the traditional oblong challah bread, they eat round challah as a symbol of eternity and the ever-changing seasons. I have also heard it said that the round challah resembles a crown, signifying the sovereignty of the Almighty God.

Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, begins tomorrow night, September 18. Leviticus 16 and 23 and Numbers 29 all mandate that the tenth day of the seventh month be set aside as a day of fasting, repentance, study, and prayer. It is the only required day of fasting in the whole of the Bible. Work of any kind is strictly prohibited. Yom Kippur is often referred to as the Sabbath of the Sabbaths. It is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

In Temple times, Yom Kippur was the only day in which the High Priest was permitted entry into the Holy of Holies to sprinkle the sacrificial blood on the Ark of the Covenant’s mercy seat. In the Temple’s absence, Jews are supposed to attend synagogue services for most of the day. During the afternoon portion of the service, the book of Jonah is read for its theme of repentance and forgiveness. According to the Jewish sages, if God could forgive the people of Nineveh, how much more so could he forgive the sons of Jacob.

May this new season help all of us to follow the call God has put on our lives. On Yom Kippur, we repent. With Rosh Hashanah, we begin anew. Christian or Jew, this is a faith practice that can strengthen us all.

The post The Holy Calendar appeared first on Shelley Neese.