Here we are, again, at the end of a Torah cycle.

Time to march the Torah around the neighborhood, with singing and shofar blowing. Then, after returning to the synagogue, we read the last lines of Deuteronomy and while the congregation sings and dances we roll back the Torah to the beginning and read the first lines of Genesis.

(Rolling the Torah back gives you forearms that look like Popeye’s!)

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

“Simchat Torah” means the Joy of Torah: the joyful part being the fact that we get to read it, all over again. The Torah is split into 54 separate readings, each reading is called a “parashah” and the weekly parashah is read at the Saturday morning Shabbat service. This is what we have done every Shabbat for millennia, even from before the time Yeshua walked the earth. These parashot (plural) are designed for an annual cycle, although in some synagogues they use a three-year cycle instead of the one-year cycle.

After the parashah is read, we read the Haftorah portion, which is from the other parts of the Tanakh and is relatable to the Torah portion. This is how it works: we read the Torah, which is the direct word of God telling us how we should live, worship, and treat each other, and then we read the Haftorah to see the practical application (or failure, thereof) of the Torah portion we just read which occurred during our history.

For example, Parashah Naso (Numbers 4:21 to the end of Chapter 7) includes the laws regarding the vow of the Nazirite. The Haftorah portion is from the Book of Judges 8:2-25, which is the story of the birth of Shimshon (Samson), who was to be a Nazirite from birth.

In some cases, there is a double parashot reading which is done to make sure the final reading comes out on the 8th day of Sukkot.

Yes, I know Sukkot is only 7 days, but the story goes that God so loved to be with his children that he extended it an extra day, which is called Shemini Atzeret (this is also Simchat Torah.)

It is very sad that so many Christians pretty much ignore the Torah. Not only is this sad because they can never really understand who Yeshua (Jesus) is if they don’t know his people’s history (he is, after all, Jewish) and they also can’t really fathom the depth of the lessons in Shaul’s (Paul) letters if they don’t know where he is “coming from”, meaning the mindset and beliefs of the Jewish people, which is given in the writings of the Torah.

They miss learning the wisdom found in the Book of Proverbs, and let’s not forget experiencing the beauty of the poetry in the Psalms; even though many churches do take from the Psalms, now and then. However, the full impact cannot be felt without knowing the history that motivated those songs.

And the worst part of all when Christians ignore reading the Torah is that they do not know what God said we should do, and no matter what their Priest, Minister, Pastor or whatever tells them Paul said, or John said, or even James said- it is what God said that counts!

Yeshua never taught anything different than what is in the Torah. Why people said he talked as no man has talked before is because he taught the spiritual understanding of God’s commandments. The Pharisees only taught the literal meaning, what we call the P’shat, but Yeshua went deeper than that and taught the Remes, the underlying spiritual meaning.

Here’s proof, which we get directly from Matthew 5 when we read the Sermon on the Mount: the Pharisees taught “Do not kill” but Yeshua said not to even so much as hate in our hearts; the Pharisees said “Do not commit adultery” but Yeshua said that wasn’t enough- you must not even lust with your eyes. Yeshua taught what God wanted us to know, which is not just the letter of the law but the very spirit of it.

If you aren’t that familiar with the Torah, please take it out and read it. Make it part of your daily reading. I keep my Bible in the bathroom because I know that every day I will have (at least) enough time alone and undisturbed to read a chapter or two. You will be surprised how quickly you get through the entire Bible that way. I start at Genesis and go all the way through to Revelation, then start all over again.

Of course, since I am reading much more than the Torah, alone, it takes me more than a year to go through the entire Bible, but doing it this way I have read the whole Bible many times over the past 25 or so years, and each time I get to start it over I am excited to do so.

Reading only the New Covenant is like building a house starting with the second floor. You may end up with something, but it will never be complete.

Thank you for being here and please share these messages with everyone you know. The more people who hear these lessons, the more people who will know what God really says. The whole purpose of this ministry is to grow and teach people what they need to know so they can make an informed decision about where they want to spend eternity.

Also please subscribe here and only my YouTube channel as well (use the link above), and remember that I always welcome your comments; you can make them here or on my Facebook discussion group called Just God’s Word.

PS: I have finished the draft of my latest book, which is debunking the different lies that have been traditionally handed down, in both Christianity and Judaism, about Messiah Yeshua. I hope to have it self-published and available for purchase within the next month or so and will announce it on my website when it is ready.

That’s it for now, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Here we are at Sukkot, again, which this year happens exactly on the first day of Fall.

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Sukkot is, traditionally, believed to be the time when Messiah Yeshua was born, and this is verified by the timeline in the Gospel of Luke, with regards to when Zachariah (Yochanon the Immerser’s father) served in the temple, saw the angel, Miryam visited Elizabeth, etc.

The Torah commands us to live in Sukkot, which are tabernacles, or tents, with an open-top. The Sukkot are decorated with fruits and branches, which would be consistent with what materials would have been available to the Jews living in the desert. The commandment is also to live in the Sukkah (singular form) for 7 days, as a memorial to how the Israelites lived for 40 years.

In modern days, we build a Sukkah but for most people, it is in the backyard (if they have the space) and maybe the kids sleep in it, but for the most part, they will have dinner in it but sleep in the house.

When I was attending a Messianic synagogue back in Northeast Philadelphia, I built a Sukkah using PVC pipes so that it could be used, then reused, over and over again. It lasted for many years. We performed the shaking of the Lulav with the 4 Species in it, and it was fun to erect, decorate and then tear it all down when the week of Sukkot was over.

The message I have for us today is this tabernacle represents how God cared for his people, and whether or not you build a physical Sukkah, the tabernacle I believe God desires to share with us, more than anything else, is the tabernacle of our hearts.

When we read about God and his relationship with his people, we are told that he knows the mind. We read in the Gospels that Yeshua (through the power of the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit) knew men’s minds. But we do not read about God seeking our mind: what we do read is that God seeks our heart.

When I like to check traditional Jewish thoughts, I go to one of two sources, neither of which has ever let me down: one is the book called “The Jewish Book of Why” (there are two volumes) and the other is the Chabad website. In this case, to share with you the Judaic belief about the relationship between the mind and the heart, I am paraphrasing what I saw on the Chabad website.

According to Chabad, there are two hearts and one mind. There is an outer and an inner heart; the outer heart reacts to the world, what we would call the “flesh” and the inner heart is purer and what we would call our spiritual side. The mind is the pathway to the inner heart, being able to overcome the fleshly desires of the outer heart and direct us to what is good and holy.

When I read this I thought immediately of Freudian analysis, the Id, Ego, and Super-ego.

Monsters from the Id! Monsters from the Id! Morbius didn’t think about the monsters from the Id!
(If you don’t recognize this reference, watch “Forbidden Planet”)

Freudian psychoanalysis identifies the Id as the primitive and instinctual part of the mind that contains sexual and aggressive drives and hidden memories, the super-ego operates as a moral conscience, and the ego is the realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego. I am sure you can now see the clear relationship of the Id (outer heart), the Super-ego (the inner heart), and the Ego (the mind). I wouldn’t be surprised if Freud, being Jewish, knew about the two hearts and the mind and used that as the basis for his system.

In any event, God seeks the heart, which is clearly the inner heart, and through prayer, we can have a sort of Sukkot every day of the year.

And unlike this week, the weather has no influence on our ability to tabernacle with God through prayer.

So enjoy this most festive Holy Day, which is really a Holy Week, and look forward to Shemini Atzeret, also called Simchat Torah (the Joy of Torah) which starts next Monday night The traditional thought is that even though the Torah says Sukkot is 7 days, God so enjoyed being with us in the tabernacles that he extended it for an extra day. On Simchat Torah, we turn the Torah back to the very beginning to start the annual reading cycle all over again, which is the joyful part.

(If I may, I will take this time to plug my book, "Parashot Drashim" which is a commentary/Bible study of each of the 54 Torah readings (called Parashah).  I believe you will find it very useful to see Yeshua in the Torah, as well as better understanding the Jewish mindset. It is available in paperback and Kindle; there are links to it on my website and it is available directly on Amazon.)

Sukkot is a time of celebration that, unlike most Holy Days, allows us to get closer to God not just spiritually, but physically, and I will finish today’s message with this one thought: God is never any further away than the length of our arms, yet no matter how close we get to him we can always get closer.

Thank you for being here and please subscribe, share these messages with everyone you know, and I always welcome your comments.

That’s it for now, so l’hitraot and Chag Sameach!

First off, I want to say to everyone the traditional Jewish greeting we pass to each other on Yom Kippur, which is:
May you have an easy fast.

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So often over the years, I have heard Christians tell me that because we are saved by faith in Messiah Yeshua (Jesus), we do not have to fast on Yom Kippur, or even obey any of the Moedim (Holy Days) that God gave to the Jews, all of which are specified in Leviticus 23.

My response is to ask if they understand what Yom Kippur is about. They say it is the Day of Atonement when we ask forgiveness of all our sins. For those who really know Judaism, they add that we do this by afflicting ourselves (the traditional method is fasting) and pray that God will move from his Throne of Judgment to his Throne of Forgiveness, and inscribe us in his Book of Life.

So, I ask you: if Yom Kippur is how God said to ask him to forgive you of your sins, who doesn’t have sin?

If you are sinless, then you don’t need to ask forgiveness, right? But, then again, refusing to afflict yourself on Yom Kippur, in whichever way you feel afflicted, is rejecting a commandment from God, which is a sin. Yeshua never said to reject any of God’s Holy Days, and even Shaul (Paul) never said to reject any of God’s Holy Days. So, by saying we have forgiveness through Yeshua so we don’t have to fast or observe Yom Kippur is, by definition, a sin.

And that means you need to ask forgiveness on Yom Kippur.

Here are my two reasons for Christians to observe Yom Kippur:

1. It is a commandment from God; and
2. No one is without sin, so why not ask for forgiveness?

Christianity has been professing that Yeshua did away with the law, but if he did, then that means there is no law. If there is no law, then we have no need for a Messiah, right? I mean, the law is what defines sin, so if there is no law there is no sin, and if there is no sin, there is no need for forgiveness, so we don’t need to practice any religion.

The conundrum Christianity has created is that believing Yeshua, who obeyed every law in the Torah, is the Messiah God sent to bring us into communion with him makes you a Christian, and Christians don’t have to obey God’s laws in the Torah, which means they obey man-made laws that reject God, which is the opposite of what Yeshua came to do!

God gave us laws, credos, doctrines, Holy Days, etc., but if Yeshua set us free from the Torah, then shouldn’t we also be free from the man-made traditions, holidays, and commandments that are in Christianity? Doesn’t it make sense that if we can reject what God said we must do, then whatever men say is even less important? Isn’t God more powerful than humans? So, if what God said doesn’t count, then certainly a human-originated commandment or law has no power or value, at all.

I am Jewish: I was born Jewish from Jewish parents of Jewish parents, and I even have the Levitical DNA marker in my genes. When I accepted Yeshua as the Messiah God promised, I was reborn- not as a Christian but as a renewed Jew. My faith was stronger than it had ever been, my life became more in alignment with the Jewish lifestyle that Yeshua lived, and I have been blessed beyond belief since doing this.

Yeshua celebrated every single Holy Day that God commanded us to obey, and even though he was given the authority to forgive sins on earth, he still fasted on Yom Kippur.

Hold it a minute! There is not one mention in the New Covenant Gospels about Yeshua observing any Jewish Holy Day or holiday (the former being God-ordained, the latter being man-made) other than Hanukkah and Passover. So how do I know he celebrated Yom Kippur? Because he was resurrected, which proved his sacrifice was accepted by God. And if his sacrifice was accepted, that means he died sinless, a spiritual condition which could only have existed if he observed every commandment God gave in the Torah.

The only difference between the sacrificial system for the forgiveness of sin God created in the Torah and the current means of forgiveness of sin through Yeshua is that Yeshua replaced the need to bring an animal to the temple in Jerusalem, the only place where God said we could make a sacrifice. Other than that, we still need to confess our sins (a part of the Yom Kippur service called the Ashamnoo prayer), repent of them and ask for forgiveness from God, which we do during the Yom Kippur service when reciting the Al Het (All sins) prayer.

Yom Kippur is not just something that we can throw behind us because we can receive forgiveness through Yeshua anytime we ask for it. The Sabbath, Passover, Shavuot, Yom Teruah (now called Rosh HaShanah), Yom Kippur, and Sukkot are Holy Days that God commanded us to observe as part of the way we worship him. Throwing them behind our back is a direct rejection of God. Period.

Unless you can find someplace where Yeshua said once we accept him as the Messiah it was OK to reject everything that his father said, then you had better reconsider rejecting the observance of God’s Holy Days. And I am not talking about what Shaul said, or more accurately, what people over the millennia have misinterpreted what Shaul said because God is more important than people. Yes, even more important than that nice Jewish tentmaker from Tarsus.

Too many Christians I have met don’t realize that they are not obeying God but instead a bunch of ex-Pagans who made up a religion of their own, with their own rules and holidays to replace the ones God gave, justifying this new, man-made religion by misinterpreting what Shaul said in his letters to ex-pagans learning how to be Jewish.

Think about it: God gave instructions on how to worship him and treat each other, as well as many other regulations regarding civil and criminal law, business ethics, and appropriate interpersonal relationships in order to teach us how to live righteous and holy lives. He did this in the Torah, so nu? Does that sound like something you should ignore?

Look…if you still aren’t sure if Yom Kippur is something you should celebrate as God commanded, I will leave you with one last question: do you really think that the Messiah, sent to bring us back into communion with God, would do so by telling us to reject everything God said?

Thank you for being here and please subscribe, share these messages with everyone you know, and check out my books, as well. Please remember that I always welcome your comments, so don’t be shy about letting me know what you think, even if you disagree. Hey, I’m not always right and I do respectfully listen to what people tell me they believe. All I ask is that you be respectful of me, as well.

That’s it for today, and remember that it is easier on you if you do NOT eat a big meal tomorrow night before sunset.

L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!