What is Holy?

       Nadene Goldfoot                                                              

 
 G-d's world is great and holy.  Among the holy lands in the world is the Holy Land of Israel.
                                                                           

In the land of Israel the holiest city is Jerusalem

                                                                           

 In Jerusalem the holiest place was the Temple*, and in the Temple the holiest spot was the holy of holies.
                                                                             

     There are 70 peoples in the world.  Among these holy peoples is the people of Israel.  The holiest of the people of Israel is the tribe of Levi.  In the tribe of Levi the holiest are the priests.  Among the priests, the holiest was the high priest.
                                                                           

Friday Night Shabbat Dinner

         There are 354 days in the Jewish calendar year.  Among these the holidays are holy.  Higher than these is the holiness of the Sabbath (Friday night to Saturday night).
                                                                             

Blowing the Shofar on Yom Kippur

 Among Sabbaths the holiest is the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) , the Sabbath of Sabbaths.
                                                                               

     There are 70 languages in the world.  Among the holy languages is the holy language of Hebrew.
                                                                             

                                        Holier than all else in this language is the holy Torah,
                                                                           

Carrying the Torah in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur

                                                                             

And in the Torah the holiest part is the Ten Commandments.  In the Ten Commandments the holiest of all words is the Name of G-d.                                
                                                                               

     And once during the year, at a certain hour, these 4 supreme sanctities of the world were joined with one another.  That was on the Day of Atonement, when the high priest would enter the holy of holies and there utter the Name of G-d.
                                                       
                 
                                                                           

And because this hour was beyond measure holy and awesome, it was the time of utmost peril not only for the high priest but for the whole of Israel.  For if, in this hour, there had, G-d forbid, entered the mind of the high priest a false or sinful thought, the entire world would have been destroyed.
                                                                           

     Every spot where a man raises his eyes to heaven is a holy of holies.  Every man, having been created by G-d in His own image and likeness, is a high priest.  Every day of man's life is a Day of Atonement, and every word that a man speaks with sincerity is the Name of the Lord.

Moses and Aaron, brothers, were from the tribe of Levi.  Moses had his older brother Aaron be the first high priest.  All males with the Cohen gene are descendants of Aaron, and they serve in the congregation as Cohens with certain responsibilities such as being called first to read from the Torah.  It was Moses who brought us the 10 Commandments from Mt. Sinai.

Resource:  Folk tale adapted from a version in THE DYBBUK by Saul An-Ski found in the first page of THE JEWISH CATALOG BY Richard Siegel, Michael Strassfeld, and Sharon Strassfeld.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OShPNTaCSsU

The Holiest in the World

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  

Earth is unique in that as far as we know, it's the only planet in the universe that is conducive for life as we know it, so it is very holy.  Remember, it's the 3rd from the sun, in just the right spot for life.    We have plants and animals and us humans.  On earth is the crossroads of civilization and a tiny part of it has been fought over since the beginning of time with the Jews saying that for them it is holy, and that is Israel.  In Israel is the holiest city for 3 religions; Jews, Christians and Muslims, Jerusalem.    In Jerusalem was the holiest site for Jews, which was the Temple.  In the Temple was the holiest spot which was called the holy of holies.
                                                                           

There are 70 groups of people in the world and among these holy people ( for a holy planet the inhabitants are also holy)  are the people of Israel.  The holiest of these people of Israel was the tribe of Levi.  In the tribe of Levi, the holiest were the priests.  Among the priests the holiest was the high priest.  He prayed in the holy of holies on special holidays.  Abraham went into Canaan from Ur with his family which numbered 70.
                                                                         

On the Jewish calendar, there are 354 days in the year.  Among these the holidays are holy.  The Sabbath is higher in holiness than the holidays.  Among the Sabbaths the holiest is the Day of Atonement, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, or Yom Kippur.

There are 70 languages in the world.  Among these holy languages is the holy language of Hebrew.  Holier than all else in this language is the holy Torah (5 books of Moses).  In the Torah the holiest part is the 10 Commandments.  In the 10 Commandments the holiest of all words is the Name of G-d.

Once a year at a certain hour, these 4 supreme sanctities of the world were joined with one another.  That was on the Day of Atonement, when the high priest would enter the holy of holies and there utter the Name of G-d.  Because this hour was beyond measure holy and awesome;   it was the time of utmost peril not only for the high priest but for the whole of Israel.  All Jews fast on Yom Kippur asking for forgiveness from G-d.
For if, at this hour, there had, G-d forbid, entered the mind of the high priest a false or sinful thought, the entire world would have been destroyed., and on October 6, 1973 Israel was attacked on Yom Kippur by our neighbors, a coalition of Arab forces,  but won that war.

Every spot where a man raises his eyes to heaven is a holy of holies.  Every man, having been created by G-d in His own image and likeness, is a high priest.  Every day of a man's life is a Day of Atonement and every word that a man speaks with sincerity is the Name of the Lord.

Remember who you are and where you are; on a very special place in the universe.  We need to take care of this special place as well as our own bodies before we lose both.
                                                                           

A little Gematria will show how special our life is.  This is where our Hebrew alphabet stands for not only letters to read with but numbers as well.
Aleph=1
Bet=2
Gimel=3
Dalet=4
Hay=5
Vuv=6
Zion=7  (also the name of Jerusalem, and that there was 7 days in a week with the 7th being Shabbat
Khet=8
Tet=9
Yud=10
Kaph=20
Lamed=30
Mem=40
Nun =50
Samekh=60
Ayin=70
Pay=80
Tzadi=90
Kaf=100
Raish=200
Shin=300
Tav=400

When reading and writing, the word is read from right to left.
The name for G-d  in the creation story is Eloheem:  , (mem , yud, hay, lamed, aleph) The numerical value is the same as the Hebrew word Hatabah:  Nature., which is spelled with (ayin, bet, tet, hay).  They both add up to 86.

Resource:  The Jewish Catalog, , folk tale adapted from a version in The Dybbuk by Saul An-Ski
http://www.biblesearchers.com/temples/jeremiah10.shtml  High priest clothing
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3621090,00.html  Yom Kippur War 

Proving King Solomon of Israel Existed

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                        

The world must be coming to an end because so many young intelligent people of today think that whatever is in the "Old Testament", which we Jews call the Tanach and is a slightly different order and sometimes translation, is just a bunch of myths.  They refuse to understand that it is a conglomeration of our history of all kinds; genealogy, geography, history of battles, families, politics and rulers, sociological as well as other kinds of information, poetry, literature,  and of course, beliefs.  It is not to be compared to the New Testament.  If in today's world, each would be in a separate category in the publishing business.  Even the first 5 books, called the Five books of Moses, hold various types of knowledge, all very sacred to us and has always been so revered.  The rules regulating the writing of this was so explicit that if one error occurred, the whole roll had to be thrown away.  One had to be an expert and successful scribe to get anything written to be kept for all time.

The first thing I have discovered is that the well known King Solomon is thought of in several circles as a myth.  This is a basic fact of history to us Jews which is very pertinent in our Judaism.  Is it in today's college classes that young people are taught to be so snide in their understandings of some point of history because it comes from a "Bible"?  Especially the "Old Bible?"  No wonder we're getting static from Obama, Kerry and others about the rights of Israel, which is based on our religious history and our origins?  What?  Do people think we just appeared and are making all our history up?

Thank goodness that Israel is spending time in archaeological digs proving our history to these uppity dissers. {To diss is  to show disrespect to, often by insult or criticism}:  That's what happened to me in the discussion about King Solomon being a factual person today.   
                                                                         

Most people have heard of his wisdom in the story of the 2 mothers who claimed a baby, and he said to cut the baby in half and give half to each woman.  The real mother of course could not allow this to happen so said to give the baby to the other woman instead, and he saw she was the true mother that way.  Don't we all wish that our rulers were as wise?  Well, he was, but then again he was also known for building too much and not paying the laborers enough which resulted in the split after he died of the southern part of Israel which left the union to form themselves into Judah.  Our writings differ from Egyptian writings in that we're known to write down the errors of our ways as well as our proud moments.  Egypt just scraped off the distasteful parts of their history and wrote over it, more of like billboard writing advertising how good and wonderful they were.  Our history tells about David and his loves and how he deceived Bathsheba's husband in order to marry her, and all that sort of soap opera history that makes it so wonderful to read.  We are human!!  King Solomon is revered and loved by Jews.  

Information was brought to light on January 27th of this year that helps to prove King Solomon's existence.  Found in July in Israel is the earliest alphabetical writing ever found in Jerusalem, and is called the  Ophel inscription.  Gershon Galil, a professor of ancient history and biblical studies at the University of Haifa said that it proves the real basis behind the parables and stories found in the Bible.                        

" We are dealing here with real kings, and the kingdom of David and Solomon was a real fact," Galil said to the newscasters on a phone call from Israel.  
Galil feels the existence of the text is as important as its meaning, and he offered the only reasonable translation.  Galil felt it was most important that this discovery tells us that someone knew how to write this.  

What did this say on a piece of pottery?  The first half of the text indicates it was written in the 20th or 30th year of King Solomon's reign.  This was evidently a label for a jug telling what was in it, and it had held wine.  Three letters of the inscription were incomplete, but Galil was able to translate it anyway and identified the letters and read it in Hebrew, being "Yah-yin chah-lak"  This means "Inferior wine."  I love it!!  Maybe it's their way of saying; cheap wine.  

Galil said that it was written in an early form of southern Hebrew, the only language of the time to use 2 yuds (aleph-bet-gimel-daled -hay-vuv, yud)   to spell the word, wine (Yahyin).  This wine of course must have been given to laborers who were busy building the city of Jerusalem.  Our history is that Solomon wasn't paying them, or at least not well, so we see they were given the cheap wine.  

This shows that Solomon's administration were collecting taxes, preparing storage jars and doing all these things as early as the 2nd half of the 10th century BCE.  My Jewish encyclopedia places Solomon's birth as 961 BCE which would be in the middle of the 10th century, and his death being 920 BCE.  My research uncovered writing happening in Canaan as early as the 18th century BCE.  

Information about King Solomon is abundant, and found in our Tanach under Kings I and  and Chronicles I and II.  There we read about Solomon building the first Temple that was then destroyed later. He also enlarged Jerusalem with a lot of building projects.  In fact, he had too many, and many rebelled and when he died, broke away from the body of Israel to form the southern state of Judah out of Israel.  We read and see that he was the one to build the temple and not his father, David, who was a warrior.  Solomon was a king of peace, thus was the one designated to build the temple where the Israelites worshiped.  Where it stood is where the Dome of the Rock is standing on top of it today.  

There are so many political reasons why there are groups teaching that the Jewish history is all a bunch of hogwash, that I can't count that far, and I've taught math to many people.  This act works to justify their stand in life.  There are those that say that they may recognize Solomon's existence but then can't bring themselves to see that Solomon and not his descendant, Hezekiah (720-692 BCE)  built the temple.  In fact, it was Assyria in 721 BCE that attacked Israel and carried away 10 of the 12 tribes, which we call the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel.  Today, we are finding them again through the help of DNA testing, and find they were keeping enough of the culture and practice to think of themselves as one of the tribal members.  To them, they weren't lost.  They knew just where they were.  Many have returned to live in Israel. 

Writing was an old skill by now.  Galil said that somebody then had the ability to write a little later, the book of Samuel and Judges.  

Like Galil said, "The evidence that we have today -- and each year we have so much more,  that David and Solomon were real and important kings and not just tales of the Bible.  

To Jewish people today, Kings David and Solomon are as real as are George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  We know that Moses wrote and was educated in writing as a prince of Egypt, and he lived c1391-1271 BCE.  Historical facts are gleaned from Egypt in hieroglyphics and they are accepted as parts of history.  Why is there a vendetta against Hebraic writings?  

 So if our history of that event is to be believed by historians, perhaps someday they will join us with all the evidence collected to understand that these historic figures of Kings David and Solomon did indeed exist.  You don't have to be a religious zealot to understand this.  

Re: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/01/27/message-decoded-again-3000-year-old-text-may-prove-biblical-tale-king-solomon/
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

The Return of Jews to the Homeland: In the Beginning

Nadene Goldfoot
Though many of the most elite Jews had been killed or taken captive at the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE, many men and women also remained and continued to live in Eretz Israel, and were known as the Yishuv.  They built the first quarter outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.  As a little girl, we used to put our pennies in the Karin'ah meen Box, also known as Tzedakah or the Pushke box  at Sunday school for the poor Jews living in "Palestine".  A blue and white pushke box was for the Jewish National Fund, which shows that thousands of little Jewish children also helped to pay for land bought through this fund.

 A new movement had started in the 19th century of a revival of Jews returning to the promised land.   In the 1860's, 2 periodicals published in Jerusalem called for the return to the Land.  Mark Twain visited Palestine on a trip he set out on from Brooklyn, February 1, 1867 and wrote in his book, THE INNOCENTS ABROAD, just how desolate the land was. In 1870 the first Jewish agricultural college was established in Mikveh, Israel (today outside of Tel Aviv).  In 1878 Jews from Jerusalem, one of which was Yehoshua Stampfer, Rabbi Stampfer's father of Portland, Oregon,  founded the first new village in the Land--Petah Tikva (1973 had a population of 85,000) ten miles east of Tel Aviv. By 2009 the population had grown to 209,600.  Other villages were founded near Jerusalem and in the Galilee, but Safed had always been there with legends back as far as Noah himself.   

By 1881 on, Jewish immigrants from the Hibbat Zion (Love of Zion) movement arrived from Eastern Europe.  Some of the immigrants joined existing villages and others founded new ones.  Hadera and Rishon started off as villages and are now towns.  This first group of immigrants were called the First Aliyah.  Aliyah means ascent, so moving to Israel means going up, spiritually.  The conditions these pioneers lived under were just as bad if not worse than American pioneers,  as the land was in serious neglect and now contained swamps which held mosquitoes that carried malaria.  The Ottoman Empire was hostile and oppressive towards everyone.  New villages were lucky to survive.

In 1897 Theodor Herzl was in Basle, Switzerland and organized the First Zionist congress and founded the World Zionist Organization.  Zion is a synonym for Jerusalem and the entire land.  This came about to start with in France with the Dryfus Affair, where a Jewish serviceman was accused of being a traitor because he was Jewish but was innocent.  The many pogroms in Eastern Europe was enough to drive out the Jewish population.  Self-determination was a movement taken by other nations such as the Greeks, Italians and Poles.  Jews also realized they should follow this path.  Their goal was to allow a return of Jews to their ancient land and revive the national Jewish life in social, cultural, economic and political ways. Jews had been praying 3 times a day since 70 CE that next year they would be in Jerusalem.  It was time to return.

A 2nd Aliyah was underway from 1904-1914 which strengthened villages and founded new ones.  The Yishuv began to organize politically into socialist groups.  They were all highly idealists and were planning a Utopia for all.  In 1909 the first kibbutz, Degania Aleph was created on the southern shore of Lake Kinneret.  I was there visiting a friend.  Also in the same year Tel Aviv was founded on the sand dunes outside of Jaffa.  Hebrew was becoming the language of the Yishuv and they were creating Hebrew literature.  Life was immensely harsh and many pioneers left, but by 1914 there were 85,000 Jews in Eretz Yisrael.

By 1918 the land was occupied by Britain who governed it for 30 years.  This came about with the ending of World War I in 1917, and on November 2nd the British issued the Balfour Declaration which showed sympathy with the Jewish Zionist aspirations, promising support for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.  Their allies like the USA were parties to the negotiations and approved of this.  So did some of the principal leaders of the Arab national movement.

  King Hussein of the Hejaz, wrote that they saw these Jews coming in and knew that the country was for them, the original sons, and to them it was a sacred and beloved homeland.  (Al Qibla, Mecca. No. 183, 23 March 1918:  George Antonius, Arab Awakening. p. 269)  However, at the same time, leaders of the Arab national movement were negotiating with Britain for the recognition of Arab national rights in the former territories of the Ottoman Empire throughout the Middle East.

January 3, 1919 was an agreement between King Hussein's son, Emir Feisal, chief Arab delegate at the Paris Peace conference and Dr. Chaim Weizmann of the Zionists.  The Balfour Declaration was endorsed and Palestine recognized as a separate Jewish entity, with which the then imminent Arab State would maintain diplomatic relations, on condition that Britain and France met Arab demands in other territories.  At this time before 1948, both Jews and Arabs were called Palestinians.

Britain was given the mandate on July 24, 1922 which incorporated the wording of the Balfour Declaration regarding establishing in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people.  It recognized the historical connection between Jews and the land and called on Britain to be the facilitators of the Establishment of their national home.  This mandate extended over both sides of the Jordan River.  Britain, however,  turned around and divided the land up in two parts, establishing an Arab emirate in Trans-Jordan and deprived the Jews of rights to the land east of the river.  Not only that but they made the new rule of Jews being forbidden from then on to buy land or live there.  At certain times they allowed Jewish immigration and other times they restricted immigration and even prevented buying land.  They were not following through with the charge they
were expected to uphold but were making up their own rules and favoring who they wished.

 Britain had never been that friendly towards Jews. Here we have a reporter and a chemist trying to  save lives by making some good points with the staid Brits. They wound up with very little of the original promised piece of land which turned out to be the bad sections as well.  They didn't say no, though.  A piece was better than nothing.    The Arabs, who had been offered the biggest and best part, said emphatically and have been since then, NO.

Resource: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qnXQ9_cMjLs
Facts About Israel, Division of Information, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petah_Tikva
http://www.safed.co.il/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzedakah