[This is a Sinaite’s perspective. Translation: EV/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses. First posted November 16, 2012.–Admin1..] Picture yourself as a clueless gentile among the mixed multitude of slaves gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai. You’ve known these Hebrew slaves since you ended as a slave yourself in Egypt. You went through that whole experience […]

The Creator – 6a – Making humans in God's Image

June 9, 2015 s1n4i600o-adm1n-d3v Leave a Comment

[Reposting from its first publication October 11, 2012. This is the commentary from the post: Genesis/Bere’shith 1: “At the beginning of God’s creating the heavens and the earth” Sources are: Pentateuch and Haftarah, ‘EF’ is Everett Fox; ‘RA’ is Robert Alter. —Admin1] ————————— 26. God said: Let us make humankind, […]

Source: Exodus/Shemoth 24 – "the sight of the Glory of YHVH (was) like a consuming fire" -- We gentiles living in this 21st century are able to experience that climactic moment [God appearing on Sinai] by reading and studying this portion of the TORAH. Indeed, we see YHWH not quite as dramatically as the mixed multitude did, but perhaps even better through these accounts recorded in Exodus. There is a saying that hindsight is 20/20 vision, i.e., we begin to see and understand the question marks in our past only later in our lives, as we mature and hopefully become wiser and more introspective about the meaning or seeming meaninglessness of happenings in history, whether personal, national, or universal. Søren Kierkegaard adds a twist to this: “Only 20:20 vision is hindsight. Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” As we endeavor to understand each portion in the TORAH of YHWH, much of it will seem irrelevant to our current situation but if we see beyond the time-bound cultural and religious situations and begin to understand what truly has not change—human nature and the Great Revelator who designed the perfect blueprint for living in peace, happily and contentedly with family, community, country and the nations, the unquestionable conclusion is: TORAH is relevant to ALL humankind, not just to Israel, to this very day.