02 Oct 2023

Bones of Israel, Judaic Topics, PDF
I am pleased that my paper on the duration problem of Daniel 12, which was published on the Sage Advance pre-print server on March 1, 2023, has now been published in the peer-reviewed E-Journal of Religious and Theological Studies. No precise solution to the problem presented by Daniel 12:11-12 has been previously proposed. The paper can be accessed on the publisher's website, belo...
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01 Oct 2023

Judaic Topics
Sukkot 5784 Temple Emanu El of Westfield, NJ   We opened our service this morning singing The Byrd’s interpretation of the words of Kohelet – “Turn, Turn, Turn.” There are several reasons given for selecting Kohelet as the special reading on Sukkot. One of them is from a 14th century Spanish commentator called Avudraham. He suggested that the generally downbeat message of Solom...
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04 Sep 2023

Judaic Topics
The Audience is the Issue The portion of the Torah called Ki Tavo (Deuteronomy 26:1–29:8) is dominated by Moses’s restatement of the blessings and curses found in a different form in Leviticus 26. There, God described the blessings that would accrue to those whose behavior met the required standards and the curses, or rebukes, that would result from a failure to meet those standards. Th...
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26 Apr 2023

Ethics Project, Judaic Topics
This week in our regular cycle of Torah study we reach the part of the book of Leviticus known as the Holiness Code. In Lev 19:1-2 God tells Moses to say to the Israelite people, “You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” To the question, “How am I to be holy?” we are often pointed toward the meaning of the Hebrew root of the word that is translated as “holy,” that is, קדש, k...
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06 Feb 2023

Bones of Israel, Judaic Topics, PDF
The Rabbinic Solution to Linking Shavuot and Sinai Solving a Calendar Problem Rabbinic Solution to Linking Shavuot and Sinai.02.06.23 Introduction: The day on which the Israelites are commanded to observe the festival of Shavuot is one of only ten days marked in the Hebrew text of the bible with the unusual phrase בעצם היום הזה, b’etsem ha’yom ha’zeh. That phrase and the ten days t...
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24 Jan 2023

Judaic Topics
Parashat Va’era 2023: The Names of God   The Hebrew name of the book of Exodus, Sefer Shemot, or the book of Names, gets its title from the names of the sons of Jacob who came to Egypt at the invitation of Joseph. But another issue of names comes up in the first part of Exodus that seems more important. We have already been introduced to Jacob’s family and reciting their names a...
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13 Jan 2021

Bones of Israel, Judaic Topics
(This is an excerpt from the manuscript of The Hidden Bones Apocalypse. Copyright: Charles R Lightner 2021)   The Hidden Bones Apocalypse Conclusion                 Shortly after 164 BCE—when the period of the anti-Judaic edicts of Antiochus IV had ended—a project was begun to replace the scrolls of “the Law and the Prophets and the other books”[1] that had been destroyed during...
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19 Apr 2020

Judaic Topics
The long period during which we have studied the specifications for, the erection of and the consecration of the mishkan - the desert sanctuary - comes to an end in Parashat Shemini. At the end of Parashat Tzav, the previous parashah, we learned that Aaron and his sons were to remain in, or at the entrance to, the tent of meeting, for seven days after their ritual anointing. It is on the...
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