Vayeshev
I am excited to bring you this week’s parasha (portion)! What an exciting time in history to be alive. You will recall many teachings where I showed you that the division of the Word is Divinely inspired and each one lines up with something very special that is going on in the heavenly realm. These windows or connections to Heaven are quite remarkable!
This week I found something so neat I’m going to focus solely on this one idea and one verse so you can think upon it yourself and see how important the study of Torah is to us today. It is as relevant as ever!
Undoubtedly, you have heard in the news that Jerusalem has been at the center focus of the world. We are at or near the end of a Jubilee year. It has been fifty years since Israel regained control of their eternal capital, Jerusalem. In previous teachings, you learned that at the end of a Jubilee the debts are cancelled and the land returns to the original owners. There can be no doubt that it is NO accident that the United States recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel just yesterday. Timing is everything and again, this can not be an accident or coincidence.
Knowing how the parasha line up with special opportunities or connections in the Heavenly realm, I decided to look and see specifically if there was anything in this week’s portion that made sense of the headlines. Indeed, there was in the very first verse!
Genesis 37:1 “Now Jacob dwelt in the land where his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan.” (NKJV)
Depending on the version of the Word that you use, it will likely say something like Jacob dwelt in the Land, or settled in the Land or something similar. Your first instinct might be to say, so what? It is significant to note that others before Jacob sojourned in the Land. In other words, they were nomadic in that they pitched their tent in an area for a time then pulled up stakes and moved elsewhere in the land. This is important that Jacob is the first to settle or establish himself in a permanent way in the Land.
Abraham, Esau, Ishmael and others were nomads and not settlers.
The age old dispute between Arabs and Israelis over who has a legitimate right to the Land is pretty clear here. Others may have pitched their tents temporarily in locations within the land, nobody until Jacob actually settled there.
Now on the Jubilee year, the United States affirms the obvious and declares Jerusalem as the capital and we will move our embassy there from Tel Aviv. Other nations are beginning to follow our lead while others raise objections. There have even been a flurry of rocket attacks on Israel today from the South.
One final current news link to this time is to tell you that I saw just yesterday a post from the Temple Institute online. They were displaying archaeological finds. They specifically showed 1300 year old Islamic coins that showed the Menorah on both sides. They even found evidence suggesting that the Dome of the Rock was an Islamic attempt to have a Muslim version of the Holy Temple!
In case you miss the significance of this, I’ll make it plain. These very coins affirm what Islam tries to deny today, the fact that the Jewish people have a history and a legitimate right to the Temple Mount. The coins affirm that the Temple did indeed exist long before any Muslim attempts to steal it away!
Baruch Ha Shem! (Praise the Name!) G-d is working the beginnings of a miracle before our eyes today in the Land of Israel! His promises are eternal and are alive today! Shalom!Vayeshev