Shabbat Commentary for 14th week, 2008,
Shabbat Reading Shemini – on the Eight (day)”: Leviticus 9:1–11:47; II Samuel 6:1-7:17
By Michael Schneider, israel today, Jerusalem

Commentary:
This week’s parasha discusses two main issues: The first, the dedication of the Mishkan (tabernacle), which included sacrifices and the cleansing of the priests. In the midst of the “festivities” we read of the sudden death of Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu after offering a “strange fire” before the LORD.

The second part of the parasha speaks about the animals the Israelites were forbidden to eat (11:1–28). One of these animals is the pig, strictly forbidden according to the Word of God. Isaiah also writes of such foods in his chapters of end-time prophecy. read more…

By David & Josie Silver, Out of Zion Ministries, Mt. Carmel, Israel

As the Jewish world once again prepares to remember the exploits of a beautiful young Jewess, Hadassah or Esther as she is more commonly known, the same spirit that was at work through the wicked Haman, is still at work in 2008. As the Jewish people celebrate this Purim, the spirit that controlled Haman, is controlling most of the world’s leaders, and using them to bring about the weakening and then destruction of the 60 year old Jewish state. read more…

Reading: The complete Book Esther
By Michael Schneider, israel today, Jerusalem

Commentary:
The Feast of Purim will this year be celebrated on February 20 and 21. During Purim, Jews read the Book of Esther.

Let us also come before “the King” as Queen Esther did, with courage to ask for the redemption of the Jewish people. These days we have another Haman who wants to annihilate the Jewish people, and he even comes from the same nation – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, formerly Persia.

Today let us pray that the ‘pur,’ the lots, will fall and rather than a planned day of destruction we will see the long awaited day of redemption of Israel as a nation! So let us continue to intercede, like Esther and Mordechai, in prayer and fasting for the welfare and safety of the Jewish people. Purim is the most joyous holiday, a day of victory!

Israelis commemorate God’s deliverance at Purim

The festival of Purim is a commemoration of Jewish deliverance from the Persian Empire, which sought their annihilation.

Purim is celebrated on the 14th of Adar as commanded in scripture. Jews will attend synagogues around the country on Tuesday evening and read the book of Esther. read more…

by Eric C. Martienssen - Translation by Pastor Rolf Piller

The collective national consciousness of the Germans seemed to have successfully thrust aside after 60 years, that the spiritual authorship to the Holocaust did originate from the German former Martin Luther, here comes the next ’spiritual arsonist’… and again it is a German! It seems to be, as had a repentance about this greatest crime against humanity in the history of the world never happened in the inner man of the Germans – the least in the German clerics. How akin the diction of the spiritual Shoa by Martin Luther and Pope Benedict XVI.? The later had in his Good Friday Intercession for 2007 out of archtypical envy about God’s Israel-choice, proclaimed to his sheep through all roman-catholic priests worldwide about the „blindfolded Jews“ in the „darkness“. In comparison: also Martin Luther had hoped all his life, that Jews would after the completed Reformation „amend“ and convert to the – in his opinion – „true faith“. As he saw his hope disappointed, Luther followed it up with his momentous call to Christianity, that was put into reality fourhundred years later in the Holocaust: „Firstly, that their synagogues or schools be set on fire and, what may not burn, be heaped over with earth, so that no human being could see a stone or cinder for ever. And such should be done to honour our Lord and Christianity, so that God may see that we are Christians. // Erstlich, das man jre Synagoga oder Schule mit feur anstecke und, was nicht verbrennen will, mit erden überheufe und beschütte, das kein Mensch ein stein oder schlacke davon sehe ewiglich. Und solches sol man thun, unserm Herrn und der Christenheit zu ehren damit Gott sehe, das wir Christen seien.“

Was it remorse about the possible consequences of his spiritual arson 2007, that let the Good Friday Intercession prayer 2008 of the ‘German Pope’ looks more subtly, although as well devastating, where it reads in arrogant, again directed against God’s Holy people, in Jewish Mission-German simply, „… that God, our Lord, may light into their hearts, that they may know Jesus Christ, as the saviour of all mankind“?

Question, is it a coincedence, that God’s Holy Passah feast and the heathen Easter feast (since its invention by emporer Constantine) has in 1700 years never been more separated than this year 2008 (5768)? Could it be, that the inner brokenness increases in every person, and especially in the so called ‘Holy Father’, the further we distance ourselves from His Holyness?

God says to us in the Bible, that HE alone is holy, what HE sanctifies (first in the Bible, the Shabbat, see Genesis 2:3) and what or whom HE will sanctify. Christians, likewise the Moslems, keep nowadays nothing of it holy, what God calls holy in the Bible, least of all His Holy Feasts (hebr. Moedim = appointed time for the meeting with God). The more vehement we try, naturally unsuccesfull, to destroy everything, what God sanctified – so that we may forget our own guilt. And so it comes to psychical catastrophes, like in the case of Luther (through a lack of repentance about Luther’s delusion, mentally, especially in the German people archetypical, over 400 years further handed down) six million gassed and otherwise killed Jews. Let us pray, that the consequence of the intercession prayer request by Pope Benedict XVI. will be a nationwide repentance – conversion to Holyness.

Hearty prayers for repentance, perhaps even to Constantin’s Easter feast, are welcome ‘look up under comment’. By the way: God’s Passah feast is on April 20th and 21st.

Shabbat Readings for 11th week, 2008,
Shabbat Pekudei (Amount of):
Exodus 38:21-40:38; Numbers 28:9-15; Haftorah: Kings II 12:1-17