Queen Esther: Story of Redemption

Notes on Purim message Sunday, March 20, 2011:

Theme I - Redemption Comes through Repentance

Theme II - We Must Defeat the Spirit of Amalek - The Spirit of Doubt!

Mordechai was a Benjamite and a descendant/grandson of Shimei, the man who was of the same clan as Saul's family and who threw rocks at King David and cursed him (2 Samuel 16:5-13). The king's officials asked if they should cut this man down, and King David said "no, let him live"; for he foresaw that this man would have a descendant who would rescue Israel through Esther. Mordechai is this descendant and redeems his ancestor with his actions. Mordechai is also part of the Sanhedrin - the entire Sanhedrin were taken in to exile. Mordechai's name means "tried by fire".

Amalek was a descendant of Esau through one of Esau's concubines. He had very low self-esteem, and even worse, sought to make others have low self-esteem, doubt and cut others down with gossip. It is this spirit of doubt and low self-esteem Jacob himself fought before he faces Esau.

Haman was a descendant of Agag, the King of the Amalekites. The book of Esther calls Haman an Agagite. Haman exists because King Saul to his own great detriment as well as Israel's, spared the life of the Amalekite King, Agag. (1 Samuel 15) For this reason Saul loses the right to the kingship because God told the Israelites to not spare a single Amalekite so they would be blotted out completely from the face of the earth for the terrible action they took when the Israelites emerged from Egypt. What should have been a huge high point spiritually for the Israelites was taken away because the Amalekites attacked them from behind and stirred up the spirit of doubt. (Exodus 17:8-16). For this action against Israel, God says to Moses in Exodus 17:14 - "Write this in a book as a memorial, and recite it to Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven."

In 1 Samuel 15: 2-3, God tells King Saul through Samuel to go to war against Amalek and to not spare a single Amalekite. Not only does King Saul capture and spare Agag, the Amalek king, he lies to Samuel saying that he did destroy them all, and he does not immediately repent for his actions. 1 Samuel 15:11, God says "I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned his back from following me, and has not carried out my commands." Because Saul did not completely destroy the Amalekites, Haman is born and strives as his ancestors did, to destroy the Jews. Could it be that Haman's Amalekite spirit of doubt and low self-esteem is stirred when Mordechai will not bow to him? So he "became full of wrath" and since he had been told Mordechai's nationality, Haman sought to destroy all Mordechai's people.

But this plot of Haman's will allow Mordechai and Esther to redeem Saul's actions!

Esther was a Benjamite, from the house of Saul, the daughter of Mordechai's uncle. Esther means "hidden", just as God is hidden in the book of Esther. Her real name is Hadassah, which is Aramaic and means "Myrtle". Although God's Name is not explicitly written anywhere in the book, His Name "Yud Hay Vav Hay" can be found in the Hebrew text in both Esther 5:4 and Esther 7:7.

Esther's first action is to call the Jewish people to teshuvah -repentance- through fasting and prayer. Ultimately is not Mordechai and Esther who redeemed Israel, it was the fact that Israel humbled herself before God and repented that moved God to rescue them. As Benjamites, it is through their actions that Esther and Mordechai redeem the actions of their Benjamite ancestors, Saul and Shimei!

Once again, God is all about redemption through repentance!!

King Darius II is Esther's son/descendant through King Ahasuerus. He clearly had to be influenced by Queen Esther as it is he who orders the building of the Second Temple 70 years after the First Temple is destroyed. He also allows the Jewish people to return from their exile to their land of Israel.

Sadly, the descendants of Amalek and the spirit of Amalek still exist today -though God will one day completely blot them out! The spirit of Amalek, of doubt and low self-esteem can be found everywhere. Anywhere there is gossip and cutting down of others self-esteem and causing doubt, you will find the spirit of Amalek.

We must fight against the Spirit of Amalek from amongst us!

The physical descendants of Amalek are living in Gaza today - just look at the news to see the war actions Gaza is taking against Israel - such as firing rockets!

When the ten sons of Haman are hanged, their names were written in the book of Esther in Hebrew and have a small "tov", "shin", and "zayin" that foreshadow another "Haman plot" against the Jews - the holocaust. Rabbis have concluded that the ten men who were hung at the Nuremburg trials on Oct 16, 1946 were the fulfillment of this prophecy found in the book of Esther. Interesting that even in a modern time as 1946, they were also hung just like Haman and his sons.

Your Taxes are Paying for Terrorist Education

Why is Israel calling for the West to stop funding the Palestinian educational system and media until there is satisfactory supervision of what is taught?

Palestinian education and media teach from the Islamic religious books, the Quran and Sharia law. Arab muslims in Palestine are infiltrated from childhood in their schools, mosques and local media to kill non-muslim infidels - especially Christians and Jews! There is no adequate censor on what is being taught - some schools are completely unsupervised!

Ibn Taymiyyah, considered the spiritual father of the Islamic revolution, preached that "Jihad should be waged against those who do not follow the teaching of Islam". Jihad is an important religious duty to combat against non-muslim believers. Muslims are taught "self-sacrifice" for Islam - suicide!

The Muslim Brotherhood teaches a strict interpretation of the Quran, which emphasizes glorified suicidal violence!

See this quote:

"Where does this extreme, brutal cruelty come from?

You don't have to look far. They are taught by the Quran. For those who still doubt whether Islam, it's Quran and Sharia law are really teaching the murder of Jews and other infidels (Christians, among others) here is a quote from it:

"The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."

The murderers were taught since their early childhood to do just that."

And yet, the US is funding Palestinian education and media!! And it's no wonder Israel is calling for a halt to funding until there is better supervision of what is taught.

Look at it another way....your US tax dollars are going to educate Palestinian Arab Muslims on how to kill us!

To be perfectly clear about it - your hard-earned money in part went to educate the suicidal terrorists who took over US planes and bombed the US Twin Towers!

And more recently, murdered an innocent Jewish family in Gaza for absolutely no reason!

America, we should be outraged to the point of action - in prayer and deed!!!!

Article on "Should I Convert to Judaism?"

For those Gentiles wondering if they should convert to Judaism, the following article is very insightful and should help in that decision. Shalom!

Should I Convert to Judaism? Is Judaism For Everybody? By Rabbi Tzvi Freeman

Question: I came across your site and wow--I really want to become Jewish. My mother was a fairly devout Italian Catholic and my father an Anglican skeptic who never went to church. I was always so confused. But now your site has really turned me on to Judaism, a real coming home for me. What's my next step? Response: Your next step is to become a better person. Develop greater faith in your soul, in your destiny, and in your Maker. Do more good, reach out to more people. Learn more wisdom, apply whatever you learn, and make life worth living. But you don't need to become Jewish to do any of that. Plenty of wonderful people doing beautiful things in the world are not Jewish, and G‑d is nonetheless pleased with them. You see, there's Judaism and there's Jewishness, and the two are not one and the same. Judaism is wisdom for every person on the planet and beyond. We call it the Torah, meaning "the teaching," and it's a divine message to all human beings containing the principles that much of humanity has already accepted as absolute truths. The idea that human life is beyond value is a teaching originating from Torah, as is the related concept that all human beings are created equal. So too, the right of every individual to literacy and education was brought to the world through Torah. And world peace as a value and goal was preached exclusively by the Torah and its prophets thousands of years before it became popular in the rest of the world. And of course, the idea that there is a single, incorporeal Being who creates and sustains all of reality, and is concerned over all that occurs with each individual, thereby giving each person, creature, event and object meaning, purpose and destiny--this is a core teaching upon which everything else rests, and the central teaching of the Torah. This teaching was not only preserved, but unfolded, explained, illuminated and applied in so many different ways by Jewish sages since it was given, over 3300 years ago. They've applied it to serious matters of medical ethics, business ethics, politics, personal enlightenment--every facet of human life. Today it is all readily available for all humanity to partake of and learn from, as a beacon of light and an inspiration to all. That's Judaism. Then there is Jewishness. To be Jewish means to belong to an ancient tribe, either by birth or by adoption. It's a strange and unique tribe, because it is the only one to have survived into modernity while retaining most of the characteristics of a Bronze Age tribe. Anthropologist Jared Diamond describes in his book, "Guns, Germs and Steel," how a New Guinea tribesman, when visiting a nearby village of the same tribe, will immediately start the conversation with an investigation of, "So, who are you related to? Do you know so-and-so?" to establish tribal relations. Well, that's exactly what Jewish people do today when they meet one another all over the world. Because, whether living in Manhattan or Joburg, Tel Aviv or Vladivostok, we are still all one tribe. And for good reason: To preserve the teachings of an ageless Torah for the world, the Jewish People themselves need to be ageless, remaining outside of time, as it were, even while traveling within it. Tribes have rituals. So do Jews. Males of the tribe wear particular items of clothing, such as tzitzit and kippot. Women keep a certain mode of modest dress and married women cover their hair. Men also wrap leather boxes containing parchment scrolls on the heads and arms every morning, while robed in woolen sheets with more of those tzitzit tassels. In our services, we chant ancient Hebrew and read from an ancient scroll. We have holidays that commemorate our tribal memories and establish our identity as a whole. Certain foods are taboo and other food is supervised and declared fit-for-the-tribe. Nope, you can't get much more ancient-tribal than any of that. The point is, none of that ritual stuff was ever meant as a universal teaching, except perhaps in a more generalized way. Modest dress--yes, a good idea for all. Why should the human being be reduced to a body icon? A chat with your Maker every morning? How can a human being do without it? And injecting some spirituality into your food consumption--what a great way to transcend the mundane. But as to the particular rituals in their Jewish form, as meaningful as they are to us, there's simply no meaning in someone outside the tribe taking them on. (If you don't believe me, take a look in the source-text, where G‑d tells Moses, "Speak to the Children of Israel and tell them to...") Now, what I'm saying is not very PC nowadays. We live in a world of hypermobility. Not just because we own our own cars and reserve our own tickets online to go anywhere, anytime--but because we imagine our very identities to be just as mobile as our powerbook. Pick me up and take me anywhere. Today I'm a capitalist entrepreneur, tomorrow an Inuit activist, and the next day a Californian bohemian. And we can mix and match--today, you can be Italian, Nigerian, Chinese and Bostonian all in the same meal. So who is this Freeman character to tell me which tribe I belong to and which not? To be frank, because this Freeman character considers the hyper-identity scheme to be a scam, a mass delusion and a social illness. You can switch your clothes, your eating habits, your friends, your social demeanor, your perspective on life and maybe you can even switch to a Mac. But G-d decides who you are, and the best you can do is discover it. Two friends of mine joined the Peace Corps back in the sixties and were posted in Southeast Asia. Together, they visited a little-known guru in the jungle to whom they announced, "We want to become Buddhists." "Well, what are you now?" he asked them. "Nothing," they replied. "Where did you come from? What were your parents?" "They were Jews." "So why are you coming to me?" he asked. "Go and be Jews." Now it's my turn to return the favor and tell the Southeast Asians, the Italians, the Nigerians, the Inuits and all the rest of humanity this little piece: I believe that what G-d wants from each person is that s/he examine the heritage of his ancestors, discover the truths hidden there and live in accordance with them, knowing that this is what his Creator wants from her/him. The truths are there because all of human society was originally founded upon the laws given to Adam and to Noah, along with those laws that all the children of Noah accepted upon themselves. These truths are found by examining one's heritage through the light of Torah. The Jewish Tribe are the bearers of that light. But you don't need to become Jewish to partake of it. Light shines for all who have eyes. Help spread the light.

A Simple Letter from a Holocaust Survivor

A Simple Letter from a Holocaust Survivor

by Shorashim Shop on Saturday, March 12, 2011 at 11:48pm

Along with the terrible news of the earth quake in Japan, and Kadaffi slaughtering his own people, last night we had our own slaughter. Two Palestinians terrorists penetrated a Jewish settlement and slaughtered a family of five: a 36 years old man, his wife, two young children and a nine month old baby.

A twelve year old daughter who came back home found her family murdered. What is specially heinous about the killings was the nine month old baby was found with her throat cut. The parents and the babies old brother and sister had multiple stabbing wounds.

I lived four years under the Nazis and I saw their brutalities; they even sent mothers and babies to the gas chambers, but I have never seen even an SS man who would take a baby and cut her throat. Where does this extreme, brutal cruelty come from?

You don't have to look far. They are taught by the Quran. For those who still doubt whether Islam, its Quran and Sharia law are really teaching the murder of Jews and other infidels (Christians, among others) here is a quote from it:

"The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."

The murderers were taught since their early childhood to do just that.

Solly

P.S. It seems there is a debate going on in the States concerning whether Islam is teaching extremism. Anyone who bothers to read this passage won't have any doubts. As if 9/11 didn't teach the Americans to what extent the extremist of Islam will go to kill Americans.

Discovery of Dead Sea Scrolls - Coincidence?

The most ancient manuscript discovery of modern time - the Dead Sea scrolls found in the caves of Qumran by a bedouin youth and first identified by archeologist Eleazar Sukenik of Hebrew University the same day, nay, even the same hour, that the United Nations voted to allow Israel to become a nation!

DIVINE SYMBOLISM?

The story of the Dead Sea Scrolls is far more fascinating than one might think at first! The scrolls were written by Essene scribes who were meticulous about writing down the exact letters of Scripture. The WORDS of Scripture were written on animal skin - the majority being lamb skin parchments. Then fearing the scrolls destruction later, the Essenes wrapped them in linen cloths, placed them in clay jars and hid them in caves in the Qumran. There they remained safe until the appointed time for their discovery to occur!

The WORD was written on lamb skin, wrapped in linen cloths and placed in a tomb-like clay jar!!

How incredibly symbolic! The WORD, Yeshua, became flesh and dwelt among us, the Lamb of God who was slain, then was wrapped in linen cloths, placed in a tomb, and resurrected at the appointed time!!

DIVINE TIMING?

Hundreds of years later, the first of these scrolls were discovered by bedouin during the winter-spring of 1947, who were pasturing their goats near the caves. They hung the scrolls on tent poles within their camp not knowing their worth or significance, and then it was suggested that they sell the scrolls to make money from them. The bedouins sold them in Bethlehem for a cheap price to two Arab antiquities dealers who did not know their significance either. One dealer sold 4 scrolls to Syrian Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem who did not know what they were, but bought them for about $250. The other dealer contacted Hebrew University professor and archeologist Eleazar Sukenik who went to Bethlehem November 29th, 1947 and immediately recognized the significance of the scrolls the very same hour and day that the United Nations voted to allow Israel to become a nation. Could this be mere coincidence?

COULD GOD HAVE BEEN SENDING A MESSAGE TO THE ENTIRE WORLD?

What are the odds that the most ancient scrolls, 1000 years older than any other copies, would be found the day the UN allows Israel to become a nation?? Almost as if God was saying, "Take heed all nations, these are My people and this is their land and here are the manuscripts to prove it!" There is no other greater proof that shows how much of a right Israel has to that land than Scripture - it is the foundation of Judaism!

Almost as if, in a sense, the day the nation was founded, the founding papers were established as well!