Why understanding Jewish Sources changes how you read the Bible | Lunch & Learn | Shalom Macon

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:02]Welcome to Lunch and Learn Jewish Sources.  This is going to be exciting. Rabbi did a great plug for this earlier. That's how important it is. That's why, there you go. Sold.  Sold. That's right. Good salesperson.

[00:00:20]And so for those of you online that may  not know us and for those of you watching at a later time when we post this YouTube,  just a quick reference is that Sabrina and I are not Jewish. We are just Jew-ish. And so  we have been in this movement for the last, I don't know, 25 years or so. And we have enjoyed  the journey and studied quite a bit over the years. And we are loving being able to share a  little bit about what we have learned. And so we are going to be talking about Jewish  sources and the whole, I love the analogy Sabrina made of thinking of an ocean and going  out in the ocean and just seeing all kinds of stuff. This is what it's like once you start  digging into Jewish sources, Jewish texts.

[00:01:13]And so I also like this handouts you can  grab right here. And so I like the analogy Daniel Lancaster used at one point. He said  when you get married to somebody or even when you are about to get married to someone, it's  really, really important to know the family.

[00:01:33]And so we have been married, so to  speak. We have brought in those of us, especially from the nations like us, not Jewish.

[00:01:41]And we think all there is is this Bible.

[00:01:46]But guess what? The whole world of Jewish writings  that are connected to that and we have 3,000 years or so of explanations and connections and all that  kind of stuff. This is what you need right there.

[00:02:03]And how all of this works together, how we live  it out, how it applies to different people in different ways and just all kinds of stuff  that's involved. And I like what Rabbi said earlier. He said we are influenced, if we  think we are just influenced by the Bible, we are deceiving ourselves. We  are influenced by other texts, whether it's John MacArthur or the Seventh-day  Adventist materials or whatever denomination we came from or whatever. We have been influenced  and that has affected our understanding, our thinking, our reasoning, our logic and  so forth. This is a good way to help shift that a little bit and become more Jewish-minded  and come at things from a more Jewish approach.

[00:02:56]This class should really be like 13 classes,  but I broke it into 13 sections. We are going to hit them quickly and hard and we are going  to go in a fast clip. But I will tell you this, especially if people online, but people  in person here, they need to know as well, you can download it. I'm going to post  my full notes that has a ton more stuff on it onto the Shalom at Home event  so you can download it later. Okay?

[00:03:26]And the feed because we will put  it both places because the feed and then the comment section under the event itself, maybe you can find it. It's not the best setup.

[00:03:39]So we will figure out a good place to  post it. So it will give a lot more... If you all see somebody  waiting, let me know. Okay.

[00:03:47]It will give you a lot more  information. But right now, we are just going to give  you a sampling. So buckle in.

[00:03:53]This is where your notes start.  Collectively, the Hebrew Scriptures is where we need to start. And you said you  wanted to talk about the Scriptures, right?

[00:04:00]Sure.

[00:04:01]Okay.

[00:04:02]So collectively, the Hebrew  Scriptures, aka the Old Testament, are called Tanakh or Tanach. It is  comprised of three sections. One, the Torah, which is the five books of Moses,  Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

[00:04:19]The second section is the N,  the Nevi'im, the prophets.

[00:04:24]The third section of the Tanakh is the Ketuvim.

[00:04:29]Okay? But when a kaf is at the end, it becomes, "Ah," so that's why we say Tanakh.  But it's actually a kaf for Ketuvim writings.

[00:04:38]The prophets and the writings together,  okay, so if we took off the Torah, take off the first five books, take those off, what  we're left with is the Nevi'im and the Ketuvim, which is nach. So if you ever see  that term or hear that term nach, it means that part of the Bible, okay? You  can do a nach yomi study, which is a daily, like a chapter a day, starting in Judges, going  all the way to the end of the Old Testament.

[00:05:06]There's a lot of them you can find  on podcasts and YouTube feeds.

[00:05:09]I highly recommend, okay, because we got lots  of Torah study, but we need a nach study too.

[00:05:15]We need to understand the rest of the  Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures.

[00:05:19]Because of this arrangement, the books are  not in the same order as the Christian Bible.

[00:05:26]Whereas the Hebrew Scriptures in the  Christian Bible end with Malachi, the Tanakh ends with Second Chronicles, okay?  So I have a handout, if you hold that up, if you all want to come by and look at it later.

[00:05:40]You can pass around.

[00:05:41]You can, well, anyway.

[00:05:43]I'll get into that.

[00:05:45]So this is a breakdown of what  the Hebrew Scriptures originally, or in a Jewish publicized Bible would look like,  okay? It's a different order. If you have Stearns, the complete Jewish Bible, he's got it in the  Jewish order and so forth. There were some books, the First and Second Samuel, First and Second  Kings, First and Second Chronicles, those were one book. But then they got separated into one  and two, one and two, one and two later, okay?

[00:06:17]And then just an extra, for  us as Messianic believers, our New Testament, and we want to kind of start  shifting away from that term too, because new, old comes with a lot of baggage. So there  is a different way to refer to the apostolic Scriptures, and that is an acronym, just like  Tanakh is an acronym, stands for the Torah, the Nevim and Ketuvim. We have BiMaH, which stands for  the Besorot, the Gospels, the Ma'asei Shlichim, the Acts of the Apostles, the Igerot, the Letters,  and then the Hitgalut, which is Revelation.

[00:07:01]It's not in the right order to spell that though.

[00:07:03]I know.

[00:07:03]Anyway.

[00:07:04]Yeah, it is.

[00:07:06]Because there's a yud, there's a yud and then a hay. That's okay. All right.  And number two in your notes.

[00:07:15]A chumash, and I'll grab these two examples.

[00:07:19]A chumash is a printed edition of just  the Torah, the first five books, okay?

[00:07:25]Normally divided into weekly  portions, which are of the parasha, he in plural would be parashot, and  often accompanied by translations and traditional commentaries. It normally  contains the full text of Targum Onkelos, which is going to be in this version.  It's going to be this tiny... So this is the stone edition, and we have these... This tiny Hebrew text right here.

[00:07:48]On the shelf in the corner.

[00:07:48]That's actually not Hebrew. That's Aramaic.

[00:07:51]Aramaic.

[00:07:51]This is the Hebrew text of the Torah.  This is the Aramaic translation of that.

[00:07:58]Which is actually number three.  And we'll skip back to number two, but let's look at number three. A Targum,  that's your blank, Targum, T-A-R-G-U-M.

[00:08:09]A Targum is an ancient Aramaic translation  and interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures.

[00:08:15]So in this chumash, this edition, we have Targum Onkelos, Darrin just showed  you. And it's beside the Hebrew text, and a large portion of Rashi's commentary is also  here in a special font called the Rashi script.

[00:08:30]That's below right here in this area.

[00:08:32]So it sort of looks like Hebrew, but it's  not. It's funky. It's funky looking. That's the Rashi script, okay? We'll pass it around.  It is designed for study and synagogue use, making the Torah accessible for regular reading  and learning. So we have a good number of these in the foyer on the shelf for you to get a  chumash and use to study from, read from.

[00:08:54]If you ever join us for the Torah service at 9  a.m., grab you one of those as you come in and grab your siddur and grab your chumash when  you come in, the way you can follow along.

[00:09:03]Okay, so I'm going to go over  number one. Your blanks are ketuvim, K-E-T-U-V-I-M. It's plural for writings.

[00:09:14]Okay? And then your next blank is nach,  N-A-C-H. And it stands for the Nevi'im, the prophets, and the ketuvim, the writings.

[00:09:24]And your last blank for number  one is Second Chronicles.

[00:09:30]So the Jewish order of the books of the Old  Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures ends in Second Chronicles, not Malachi. Number two,  your blank is chumash, C-H-U-M-A-S-H, chumash.

[00:09:47]And then number three is Targum, T-A-R-G-U-M.

[00:09:52]And that's... And then four, you did four.

[00:09:54]I went ahead and said four.

[00:09:55]Yeah.

[00:09:56]Oh, the most widely accepted Targum on the  Torah is Targum, Onkelos, O-N-K-E-L-O-S.

[00:10:04]Unless you're listening to  Ashkenaz, then they say "Oonklos".

[00:10:09]Okay, O-N-K-E-L-O-S, Onkelos. We're  going to have a lot of new words.

[00:10:14]Yeah, a lot of weird stuff. So I tried to make  it easy where you didn't have to write down the weird words. I gave you the weird words, you  write down easy words. But some of them are... There's a few.

[00:10:22]Okay, so the Targum, real quick, is  the reason why we have the Targum.

[00:10:28]How many of you guys have ever read from the  Living Bible, the Amplified Bible, the Message, that kind of stuff? Right? Okay. So that is  the goal of those type of translations is to break the text down to make it really easy for  you to connect with it and to understand it.

[00:10:49]Even though there's problems with it. The Targums, that's their goal as well. Because  in the first and second centuries, the Jewish people, they knew Aramaic  a lot better than they knew Hebrew.

[00:11:02]Even though it's a very similar language, it  can be very confusing. It's sort of like... Maybe think about, if you know the  Romantic language is Italian and Spanish.

[00:11:14]Those people can communicate  if they speak those languages, but it's really broken. You know what I mean?

[00:11:21]So think about it that way. So the Targum,  Onkelos is the most accepted and it's generally included in a Chumash, okay, in one of these  books that we're passing around with the Torah.

[00:11:34]And it's supposed to be studied alongside  the Torah every day. And actually I have a five volume set of Onkelos of the Targum  that has the Targum, the Aramaic text, it's got the Hebrew text, and then it's  got the English translation of the Aramaic.

[00:11:54]So that helps a lot too.

[00:11:56]You know, mute somebody.

[00:12:00]But there's other Targums such as Targum Jonathan,  Targum Yerushalmi, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, Targum Neofiti, Targum Ketuvim, which is  the Targum on the writings, not the Torah.

[00:12:14]And I can give you the handout,  the thing that I'm going to give with the full information will tell you a  little bit more about each one of these.

[00:12:24]So that is the Scriptures, that is the Targums, which is the Aramaic, and  now we're going to move on to something that's less familiar probably to most people. It's called  the Mishnah. And maybe you heard the Mishnah but may not know what it is, right? So the Mishnah  is the foundational compilation of early rabbinic law. And the first major written redaction of the  Jewish oral tradition completed in the early third century CE compiled by Yehudah HaNasi. So your  blank for five is Mishnah. M-I-S-H-N-A-H, Mishnah.

[00:13:08]It organizes and preserves the oral  Torah showing how the commandments of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures, are  understood and lived out in daily life.

[00:13:21]And so basically, do you have that page with the, wherever it is, here it is. Okay,  so think about this real quick.

[00:13:32]I thought I had one with some questions.

[00:13:38]So basically, what does it mean, think about  it this way, in a time, in a biblical period, that's all we know right now, of the time when  the temple was standing, the full Torah was in effect, we had a theocracy where the full  penalty of the Torah was in effect too, living inside the land of Israel with the Jewish  people, what did it mean to break Shabbat?

[00:14:00]How do we know that? Because the  Torah hardly says anything about it. But the punishment is the death penalty.

[00:14:06]So how do we, is that just arbitrary? We say,  "Oh, I wasn't breaking the Shabbat," or, "Oh, he wasn't breaking the Shabbat," and just argue  about it? No. So the legal code and legal system, and the mission is the first step in how  to interpret that of what is involved and what it is, how it defines of how the Torah  is either broken or fulfilled or lived out.

[00:14:30]So an example would be, in our country, we have  the Constitution. That's our set of laws that our nation is run by. But we have more than  just that, right? We have to interpret the Constitution. How do we apply the Constitution to  this and this and this? So that's what the Torah, it is our Bible, and it is God's holy living Word,  and it nourishes us spiritually. But it is the Constitution of this nation that God has chosen.  And so they have to, it is their set of laws that they're governed by. And so there's a legal, it's  legal code. And so we have to interpret this.

[00:15:11]And the Federal laws, and the other words.

[00:15:12]Yeah, the Federal laws.

[00:15:14]Exactly.

[00:15:14]And so we have to interpret these, how the  citizens of this nation live these out.

[00:15:19]But it's different in the sense that  the Torah includes, like you said, federal, civil, moral, and  ethical, all in one place.

[00:15:34]And so it defines, Mishnah and other  places define what the 39 prohibitions for Shabbat are categories, actually. There's more  details. And so, you know, that kind of stuff.

[00:15:48]And so we have, the Mishnah is broken  down into six divisions, okay? These are called Sederim, and the six are Zeraim,  which deals with agriculture. Moed, which is dealing with festivals. Nashim,  women, things like marriage, divorce, family, and so forth. Nezakim, which deals  with damages, it means damages.

[00:16:16]Kodashim dealing with holy things, temple service, offering, and so forth.  Tahorot, which is purities.

[00:16:22]And together, these six orders have  a total of 63 tractates or books within them that show how the Torah is  applied in every situation of life. Okay?

[00:16:36]A couple of examples.

[00:16:37]Yeah, we can have a couple examples.  Here's a one tractate of the Mishnah, not even a whole order, one tractate. Zevachim, which is part of the Kodashim,  I believe. Let's see.

[00:16:51]So after 63, the word is tractates?

[00:16:55]Let me see here.

[00:16:56]Yes, tractates. Yes.

[00:17:02](Inaudible) I am on... Number six. I'm sorry, six. Number six.

[00:17:10]Orders and tractates.

[00:17:12]Sedarim, after the word Sedarim,  we have orders as your blank.

[00:17:16]And then the last, there is masechtot, which are the  tractates, tractates as your blank.

[00:17:32]Okay, so there's a lot more, like I  said, we could say about this, but we're going to have to move on to the Talmud.

[00:17:39]Okay, the Talmud, everybody's heard. We're  on number seven actually now. The Talmud is a vast collection of rabbinic  discussions that unpack, analyze, and debate the Mishnah. That's  your blank there. M-I-S-H-N-A-H.

[00:17:59]The Talmud is made up of two main components.  Number one, the Mishnah, which is what we said the foundation of these early rabbinic writings  in the legal code. And number two, the Gemara, which is later rabbinic discussion and analysis of the Mishnah. I have a... What's  the date range of the Talmud? Okay, so the Mishnah was compiled roughly 200 CE. And  the Talmud, which we're going to discover here, let me tell this part real quick before I tell  you that, because there are actually two Talmuds.

[00:18:34]There is the Bavli, which is the  Babylonian Talmud. And then there is the Yerushalmi Talmud, which  is the Jerusalem Talmud. Now the Jerusalem Talmud is pretty close to  the Mishnah. I think it's around 300.

[00:18:48]Is that right?

[00:18:51]Yeah, 300 CE.

[00:18:53]But the Babylonian Talmud, it didn't  get finished until about 600 CE. And the reason why is because they weren't  pressured like the Jerusalem community was, because they were being pressured by  the Christians and all that kind of stuff. And they couldn't basically  continue doing what they were doing.

[00:19:14]And so the Babylonian community had more time to  really focus and put this thing together like they wanted it. Now, there's differences between the  Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud too, in the sense that the Babylonian Talmud  has... It's more inclusive for one, but the Jerusalem Talmud focuses on  things that are applicable in Israel.

[00:19:40]Whereas Babylonian Talmud, it doesn't apply to  them. So they're not really focused on that.

[00:19:46]So specifically like agriculture and temple  and things like that, you're going to have more of that kind of stuff in the Jerusalem  Talmud than you are the Babylonian Talmud.

[00:19:57]And they don't cover the same tractates  of the Mishnah. A lot of it overlaps, but you're going to have discrepancies. Yes?

[00:20:05]Just a quick question. How are you...  Some people got the information that they gave me that three years of  not eating from a tree is only for the land of Israel? Is that where  they got it from? That's Torah.

[00:20:21]That's really just Torah.

[00:20:24]How did I know? Because I was  applying it here in Georgia. No, you're waiting. You're not for the land of Israel.

[00:20:30]Right. Because it says when you enter the land.

[00:20:32]Okay. So it's... Yeah. It's really just a Torah commandment. Okay.

[00:20:38]Dan, can I say something real quick? Yeah. About the Constitution and viewing  it from that perspective.

[00:20:45]People can't hear.

[00:20:46]Oh, you can't hear. Sorry.

[00:20:49]Just about the Constitution and viewing it  from that perspective, looking at the Mishnah or the Talmud, we could also apply this as  looking at it as like Supreme Court cases, right? But not only is this giving you  the ruling of the Supreme Court case, it's giving you the majority and dissenting  opinions of the Supreme Court case. So when you just go in and start reading, you may  be reading a dissenting opinion of a Supreme Court case and how, you know, like if you have  no idea what you're doing. And that's usually where the issues lie with a lot of things.  Or the confusion. Or the confusion. Yeah.

[00:21:25]Very good.

[00:21:26]So, just a quick question. Do you all leverage  hope as time in terms of, you know, understanding, you know, those categories of misfote  that can be observed today? You know, I can't really speak to that. But I know  his, we're going to be talking about his Mishnah Baruah here in a little  bit. Okay? Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

[00:21:48]So, let's see here.

[00:21:53]We are on number eight. And the blank for your, that one is Jerusalem, if you  haven't filled that in already.

[00:22:03]So the synagogue has?

[00:22:06]The Babylonian. On loan from Mr. Lance.

[00:22:07]On loan from Mr. Lance later. Here's a copy of that.  And do we pass around the layout of that? No. Where is that? Here. Okay. Right  here. Let me just show you this real quick.

[00:22:16]I'm sorry.

[00:22:20]An image of the first page of the, no it's not.  Anyway, a typical page. I thought it was the first one. But it was a typical page of the Talmud. On  this side is an English version of the layout, but not the text. It actually has English text  explaining about these different sections. Okay?

[00:22:41]Which is really cool. And so you can check that  out. I'm going to pass that around. But basically, something which is really cool actually that  this layout is now standard format for the Talmud. That's how they're printed. But this  layout was developed by a Christian printer when Pope, one of the Popes, Pope Leon or  something, I can't remember what his name, Leo, he actually gave permission  for the Jews to print the Talmud.

[00:23:09]Leo the 10th.

[00:23:10]Leo the 10th. There we go.

[00:23:11]1520.

[00:23:14]Because the Talmud had been banned and they  burned the Talmud and all that kind of stuff.

[00:23:18]So he gave permission for them to reprint it. And  this is the format that this Christian printer, remember manual little letters and everything  that he was coming up with to create all this stuff. This is the format he did  to help keep everything together.

[00:23:37]Is that what I was looking at? Is that what?

[00:23:39]No, it's just how they come to, and  you'll see on different pages they'll actually come together. So you have the  middle text which begins with the Mishnah, and then it has the Gemara which follows it,  the commentary on the Mishnah. And then on the outside edges we have Rashi's commentary  that's closest to the fold of the paper, the spine. Then you have Tosafot  which is his sort of commentators.

[00:24:02]And then you have everybody else that sort  of fits in wherever they can find a place.

[00:24:08](Inaudible) Oh, no. No, because it's not always that way. A lot of times it's equal. It looks like  brackets or something, you know.

[00:24:20]I think you have some comments  of people saying do you like... She thought the layout was the L meaning  Pope Leo, and so that doesn't apply to that.

[00:24:32]And then, thank you.

[00:24:35]So this is the Babylonian Talmud. Yes.

[00:24:38]And go ahead.

[00:24:41]Part of it is in here, over there.

[00:24:45]And then the rest of it is in the  foyer because it's a lot of volumes.

[00:24:50]And it looks really nice on the shelf out there.

[00:24:52]So the English version of the art scroll  Schottenstein, I think. Schottenstein.

[00:25:02]I never can remember what the word  is, the family name, is 73 volumes.

[00:25:09]So if somebody says, "Well, I've  read the Talmud," and you're like... So if you do...it's called Daf Yomi,  a page a day, how long does it take?

[00:25:22]Yeah, seven and a half year cycle.

[00:25:25]Just one page a day.

[00:25:26]Yeah, and you really study that page  and not just read through it quickly, you know what I mean? Because you  have to absorb the information. So here's another version that Rabbi  Stein salts of blessed memory.

[00:25:37]The yellow version was his original that he  came out with. And I have several issues, I mean, the volumes of that. But he never  finished it. This is before he passed away. Well, he actually even had to quit before he was still  alive. And he combined with Korn Publishers and they came out with his translation and commentary  in this, the illustrated Talmud. And this is his.

[00:26:04]And it's really cool because he actually puts the  Aramaic into like modern Hebrew and he does...he has unique English translation. And then it's  illustrated, has all kinds of pictures to help show you what they're talking about and all  that kind of stuff. You want to check that out.

[00:26:22]Okay, so we're moving on to the next  category. We're running out of time.

[00:26:25]The number two of eight, I'm sorry.

[00:26:27]Yes, it's Jerusalem. Oh, Jerusalem? Yes.

[00:26:30]Number nine, this is the next category.

[00:26:35]Next category is Halachah. So Halachah  literature is the body of Jewish legal writings that translate the teachings  of the Tanakh and rabbinic tradition into practical guidance for daily life. Two  popular works of Halachah are, number one, the Mishneh Torah. This is different from the  Mishneh, the M-I-S-H-N-E-H, the Mishneh Torah, E-H, not A-H, Mishneh Torah, legal code  written by Maimonides or the Rambam in the 12th century. It was groundbreaking in its  organization and scope. As a matter of fact, it sort of had a fiasco when it was first  introduced and they called him a heretic and said, basically, "You think you're  a big shot trying to outdo …" whatever.

[00:27:28]At first it got a lot of pushback. Then  people started reading it and they're like, "I think he's got a point."

[00:27:37]It's become like a foundational text.  It's like one of the most widely read texts in Judaism and studied daily by most people.

[00:27:48]The second one is called the Shulchan  Aruch, which literally means the set table. We have a condensed version  called the Kitzer Shulchan Aruch.

[00:28:01]You can look at that. It is the most  widely accepted code of Jewish law, compiled in the 16th century by Rabbi Yosef Karo.

[00:28:14]Another halakhic literature  includes "Tur," which is a 14th century comprehensive  code by Yaakov ben Asher.

[00:28:24]We have Shulchan Aruch HaRav, which  is the Shulchan Aruch recompiled, redone, reorganized, with commentary and  stuff like that by the Chabad founder, Shneur Zalman of Liadi, who's also called the  Alter Rebbe, his version of that. We have what one of the gentlemen on the line mentioned  earlier, the Shulchan Aruch sort of kind of the Chofetz Chaim, which is the Mishnah Barura. It's  the work of Halachaba Rabbi Israel, Meir Kagan, also known as the Chofetz Chaim. It's a commentary  on Orach Chaim, the first section of the Shulchan Aruch, which deals with the laws of prayer,  synagogue, Shabbat, and Holy Days, summarizing the opinions of the post-medieval rabbinic authority.  So now, I've given you like six or eight, but there is—you can really get in  the weeds when you start going down Halakhic avenues because for centuries  that's what everybody was focused on.

[00:29:34]And so there's tons of different  works that are involved in that.

[00:29:40]Number 10, and I didn't give you a blank for that, I'm sorry, but Midrash is a genre  of Jewish literature that interprets and elaborates upon biblical texts. There are  two categories of Midrash, Halakhic or legal, and that should have been your blank, legal,  Midrash, and Agadic or homiletic Midrash.

[00:30:02]Sorry, got a few examples. Go ahead.

[00:30:06]So here's a couple examples. One, Midrash Shabbat is one of the most  famous and widely known and studied.

[00:30:16]And I have this and it's down here. There's 10  volumes of that, and it goes through the Torah, basically, and like the first two, maybe three  volumes is on Genesis. I mean, it's huge.

[00:30:30]And it's just got a ton of stuff. It's got all  kinds of stories that you've maybe heard people talk about that aren't actually in the Bible,  but you think, "Well, how did this happen?"

[00:30:40]You read the text and it's like, "Well, I  wonder how that took place or whatever."

[00:30:45]It's most likely found in something like this,  Midrash, and it talks a lot about that stuff.

[00:30:50]And there's Midrash on the whole Tanakh.

[00:30:53]Right. Right. So if you want to look at this,  it's Midrash here. This is the Mekhilta, the Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, which is  the Midrash on—I forget what it covers.

[00:31:07]Let me see. It's on the Book of Exodus only. Okay.

[00:31:18]Then you have the Sifra, which is the Midrash on  the Book of Leviticus and from the school of Rabbi Akiva. You have Sifrei Bamidbar, of course, on  the Book of Numbers from the school of Rabbi Ishmael. You have Sifrei Zuta, which is the third  century Midrash on the Book of Numbers. It wasn't published until 1917 based on quotations from  other works of Midrash that had fragments of this one work that they pieced back together. Then  you have Sifrei Devarim, a Midrash on Deuteronomy, primarily from the school of Rabbi Akiva. So you  have—this is just a small sampling too. You have tons of stuff like this. You have the Midrash  Hagadol that I don't even have listed in here, I don't think, which is another complete  set of Midrash. Okay, those are Halakhic Midrash. I should have waited on. That's okay.  And then Aggadic—Midrash Shaba is Aggadic. And what do I mean by Halakhic and Aggadic? So in your  notes, it says legal and homiletic. Basically, legal means these are the stories behind  how we got here in our interpretations of this. So the Aggadic is, this is  how we can understand this better or relate to this better or inspire us for  this. Think about it that way, maybe.

[00:32:36]The Aggadic includes things like Midrash Shaba, like I said, Ain Yaakov, which is this.  There's seven volume set that's right there.

[00:32:45]This is one of the volumes that  I was blessed with by somebody.

[00:32:50]Midrash Tankuma, which I have,  it's like seven or eight volumes.

[00:32:56]It's another commentary, basically a commentary  on the Torah. Pirke the Rebbe Eliezer, which has some really cool messianic  insights into it. Seder Olam Zuda, this is a ninth century chronicle detailing the events  from Adam through the Talmudic period. Seder Olam Rabah, second century, similar type thing up  to Alexander the Great. Yalkut Shimoni, medieval compilation of Midrashim arranged according to  the verses of the Hebrew Bible, Midrash Agada, and then Pesikta Rabbati. Then  anybody heard of the Book of Jasher?

[00:33:35]So the Book of Jasher that is printed  now is probably not the original Jasher, but it was probably somewhat similar.

[00:33:43]In Hebrew it's called Sefer HaYashar,  which means the Book of the Upright.

[00:33:50]But it's similar. It goes through,  it's basically like you're reading Genesis and it just fills in a lot of  gaps and details and stuff like that.

[00:33:59]So I'm trying to really push my time here so we  can have a few minutes for question and answer.

[00:34:05]Number 11, we're moving to apocryphal books  come primarily from the second temple period between the close of the Tanakh and the rise  of rabbinic Judaism. Some were preserved in certain Jewish and Christian traditions.  And so the word pseudopigraphal means works that are attributed to ancient  biblical figures but composed later.

[00:34:39]So a classic example would be the Book of Enoch.

[00:34:46]You have first Enoch and second Enoch.  But 95% chance Enoch didn't write that, but yet it's attributed to him.

[00:34:56]You have other books like that as well.  So you have a lot of pseudopigraphal Christian writings as well, the Clement  and different things. There's-- Tobias.

[00:35:11]Tobias, yeah.

[00:35:13]And you have different ones.  Some of them are maybe legit, but some of them are not. But it doesn't  necessarily mean that they're bad or they're incorrect. But we need to realize what they are  in the proper context. Does that make sense?

[00:35:30]And so your first blank on 11 is attributed  to ancient biblical figures but composed later. Many of these texts are also  considered apocalyptic literature, meaning-- it doesn't mean  they're going to explode. Like, so much may think. It means they use visions.

[00:35:48]That's your blank. Symbolism, angels, heavenly journeys, and revelations  about the end of the age to explore themes such as judgment, redemption,  suffering, and the kingdom of God.

[00:36:03]This is like revelation.

[00:36:05]This is the big thing.

[00:36:07]It's the Apocalypse of John.  That's another name for it.

[00:36:10]You have lots of different things in  apocalyptic literature such as this.

[00:36:19]Okay. Now we're moving quickly to Jewish Liturgy,  which you guys hopefully are familiar with a little bit. It is composed of prayers, poems,  and ritual texts recited in daily worship or at specific occasions. The most commonly used are,  number one, the siddur, which is right here.

[00:36:39]So we use this-- if you've only seen the  ones that we use in our 9 o'clock service, it's a little small thing. It's not that thick  and everything. This is like a full siddur.

[00:36:52]So that gives you an idea of what that is.  This covers prayers for almost anything.

[00:36:57]It's not going to be for your full holidays  and stuff like that. But most everything in life here is what you will have.  This is the Korin Shalem siddur.

[00:37:10]And we have those in the foyer as well.

[00:37:12]Right. So you can use those  at any point out there.

[00:37:18]And so number one is the siddur of the  Jewish Prayer Book. Number two is the haggadah. You guys are probably familiar  with that one, right? It's used for what?

[00:37:27]Passover seder. That's your blank. It's the  text used as the basis of the Passover seder.

[00:37:33]Here's one that you may have used but not known  the name of it. Number three is a machzor.

[00:37:40]Machzor. Okay. A machzor or a machzor. It's a  prayer book designed for a specific holiday, such as Passover, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur,  or Sukkot. So if you come for Sukkot, you come for Rosh Hashanah, you come for Yom Kippur-- did I say  Yom Kippur? Anyway, you'll have a separate book, a separate prayer book that we will use just  for that day. And the one for Yom Kippur, just that one 25-hour period  is almost as thick as this.

[00:38:13]And it's only used one day a year.

[00:38:17]Because what else do you have to do? Right?

[00:38:22]Okay. Number 13, we're moving  to a different category.

[00:38:25]Musar. Musar, excuse me. I've been  listening to many Ashkenazis. Musar.

[00:38:32]Okay.

[00:38:34]Musar is a category of Jewish literature  that provides virtue-based instruction for moral and spiritual character  development. Character is your blank.

[00:38:44]Now there's ancient Musar, which Sabrina is  going to show you some of these. This is the foundation of Musar. But then there's modern  Musar. Just read the book, Everyday Holiness.

[00:38:58]It's an excellent book. I highly, highly recommend  it. If you don't get anything about what I'm talking about today, except for that one thing,  read that book. Okay? But here we have books like Path of the Just. Actually, we have two versions  of that. Grab that black one as well. This is, the English is Path of the Just. The Hebrew  is Mesillat Yesharim, or Mesillat Yesharim.

[00:39:22]Yeah. There you go. No, you can't.

[00:39:24]And it is, it is a foundational text that is  really good. The men's group here at Shalom Macon, our Torah on Tap, we spent two years on it, okay,  working through this book. And it's excellent.

[00:39:43]And then we have the duties of the  heart, or Chovot HaLevavot, okay?

[00:39:53]The duties of the heart.

[00:39:56]And let me tell you a little  bit about those real quick.

[00:40:00]The Musar movement, first of all,  was bolstered by the founding, the founder of Musar, sorry,  in the 19th century Lithuania, which encouraged organized study of  Musar and produced its own literature.

[00:40:18]I've already forgotten his name, Salanter.

[00:40:21]Israel Salanter.

[00:40:21]Israel Salanter is like the person  who really got Musar going, okay?

[00:40:28]And a few of the works in number 14, Chovot  HaLevavot, duties of the heart, that's the English. The heart is your blank, written by  Bahya ibn Paquda, and Ibn is like a Spanish, Hebrew, or maybe Ladino, I'm not sure, version  of Ben, or son, son of, okay? It's an 11th century treatise that details 10 principles  of spiritual life, focusing on obligations performed with the heart, such as the unity  of God, devotion to God, and repentance.

[00:41:03]The book is divided into 10 gates or  treatises, and it includes the popular work, Shaar HaBitachon, which is the gate of  trust, which many of us have been studying individually. It's a standalone book,  as it can be getting to God as well.

[00:41:24]Then you have Tomer D'Devorah is another example,  the palm tree of Devorah, because she judged under the palm tree, and this was actually introduced  to me last year by Derek. I'd never heard of it before, and Derek introduced it to me, gave me  a copy, and been enjoying it. It was a little struggle to get into it, but once I got past  knowing what I was doing, it was enjoyable.

[00:41:45]And then it was by the 16th century, Kabbalistic  and ethical, it was a 16th century Kabbalistic and ethical treatise by Rabbi Moshe Cordovero,  with a folk-- Cordovero. Thank you, Cordovero. With a focus on the concept of  imitating, that you're blank, imitating God.

[00:42:11]Then you have like, Cheshbon HaNefesh, which  is the accounting of the soul. Then you have-- which is weird, you can read  about that-- Mesillat Yesharim, which we already talked  about, Path of the Upright.

[00:42:25]Number 15, moving to a different genre, Hasidut,  or you'll hear it called Hasidut, quite a bit, from the Ashkenaz. It's a movement  and body of Jewish teaching founded by the Baal Shem Tov in the 18th  century Europe that emphasizes joy, devotion. Joy is your blank. Spiritual  awareness and personal connection with God through the lens of Torah, rabbinic tradition,  and Kabbalah. Let me just stop for just a second.

[00:42:54]The Baal Shem Tov did something amazing.

[00:43:01]What he did was similar to what Yeshua did in  his day and age, because what Yeshua did was, "Hey, you guys all know all the right  things to do. Now it's time to do them."

[00:43:15]And live it. Don't just talk about it. Don't  just tell other people to do it. Let's do it.

[00:43:22]And the Baal Shem Tov did something similar. He  said, "You guys spend all your time studying, and you're always involved in legal disputes and  arguments and how to do this, how to do this, and what's the legal way of this and it  was exclusive to the mentally elite."

[00:43:39]The scholars.

[00:43:40]That's the way it was. And the Baal Shem  Tov comes along, and he says he starts grabbing these just simple people, sort of  like Yeshua grabbing the fishermen, right?

[00:43:52]He says, "We're going to hold on to His  Shem. We're going to love Him. We're going to dance. We're going to sing. We're  going to have joy. We're going to study.

[00:44:01]We're not going to be ignorant, but  our focus is going to be living this out." So that's what he brought to the equation.

[00:44:12]There's a comment over here.

[00:44:13]Comment or question, Suzanne?

[00:44:19]I just wanted to say real quick your comment about Ben Franklin. He said it shows  up in the movie that recently came out.

[00:44:20]Oh really? Yeah, he's a really good guy. He's  a really good guy. He's a really good guy.

[00:44:21]Oh really?

[00:44:27]Yeah, he talks about trying to carry  out the attributes and characteristics.

[00:44:27]What movie?

[00:44:31]The Great Awakening.

[00:44:31]So say it out loud for the people online. The  Great Awakening movie. He'll have to say it.

[00:44:37]Okay.

[00:44:44]The Evangelist, help me.

[00:44:47]The Wrenching Movement?

[00:44:47]The Evangelist from England, the famous one.

[00:44:48]Oh.

[00:44:50]No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, Evangelist  Christian. He's a Christian. Okay, she's so... Wait for your girl? What?

[00:44:55]Was it Wakefield? Wakefield? Wakefield?

[00:44:58]No.

[00:44:58]It's a movie. No?

[00:45:02]Or is it the one that... The Great  Awakening? The Great Awakening.

[00:45:04]Great Awakening.

[00:45:06]Great Awakening is the movie.

[00:45:10]Yeah, I've seen it and I'm not seeing  it, but I'm seeing the things for it, so I know that the time period  is done, but I can't believe it.

[00:45:13]Yeah, I can't think of either. But anyway, what  she's saying is basically this whole principle of Cheshbon HaNefesh, the book Accounting of  the Soul that's based on, it's modeled after, not based on, modeled after Benjamin  Franklin's program of systematic refinement of 13 distinct character traits  is portrayed in this movie to show that he, you know, that's sort of the path that  he was taking. So that's interesting.

[00:45:40]Okay.

[00:45:40]So, the foundational text of Hasidic,  of the Hasidic sect known as Chabad, it's one of the ones we're more  familiar with, is known as the Tanya, T-A-N-Y-I, which means... A. I'm  excused, T-A-N-Y-A, thank you.

[00:46:02]Like the name, Tanya.

[00:46:02]Right.

[00:46:03]And that word Tanya means it was  Tanya, and that's how the book begins.

[00:46:08]It is written by Rabbi Shneur Zalman  of Liadi, also called the altar Rebbe, which means old Rebbe, the old rabbi. It explores  the nature of the soul, the inner spiritual struggle of a believer, and the path towards  serving God with awareness, joy, and devotion.

[00:46:25]It's amazing. I love that text. I've  been studying it off and on for years, but you have to have a framework.

[00:46:31]And this... And we don't have a copy of the Tanya to show you.

[00:46:35]I should have brought mine, but anyway. Sorry.

[00:46:38]But it's about that thick, and it's got 52  different... I think it is 52 different, basically, individual sections. Okay,  this brings me to our next section, the one everybody's probably been  hanging on the edge of their seat to get to. And this is Kabbalah.  We're ending the class. Goodbye. No.

[00:47:01]Okay.

[00:47:03]So... Signing off. What's that? Yeah,  signing off. Okay. So, first of all, let me just... I'll read this note and give  you the blanks and stuff. Then we're going to talk about it for just a moment. Kabbalah,  meaning receiving or receive, is the mystical and interpretive stream within Judaism that  explores the hidden, that's your blank, and spiritual dimensions of God, creation, the  soul, and the universe. While Kabbalah may carry with it the stigma of witchcraft or magic labeled  as such by uninformed individuals, it simply is a theological and philosophical approach to  understanding deeper spiritual realities within the framework of Jewish faith and Scripture.  Drawing from the Tanakh, what do we say the Tanakh was? Hebrew Scriptures and rabbinic tradition,  Kabbalah uses symbolism, metaphysical concepts to explore topics such as God's attributes, structure  of creation, the relationship between the eternal God and the finite world, basically finite and the  infinite howl in the world that those merge and come together. Two popular mystical texts that you  may have heard of are the Sefer Yetzirah, it's the book of... Formation.

[00:48:23]Formation.

[00:48:25]The earliest extant Jewish  mystical work describing how God used the Hebrew "aleph-bet"  and us alphabet, yeah, either one, and numbers, that's your second  blank, to create the world.

[00:48:41]And the second one is the Zohar, a canonical  text of Kabbalah that emerged in the 13th century Spain, traditionally attributed to  Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai from the 2nd century, but it's most likely a pseudopigraphal work  as well, doesn't necessarily discount it.

[00:48:59]Dihard Kabbalist, they will say it was Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, but most  scholars will say it is by... what's his name?

[00:49:13]P... no.

[00:49:14]Leon.

[00:49:15]Oh, Leon.

[00:49:17]Leon.

[00:49:17]Leon. What? De Leon.

[00:49:19]De Leon.

[00:49:21]I forget his name. Moshe De  Leon, that's his name from Spain.

[00:49:26]And anyway, and so, but it's... first of all, it's a very complicated work.  Would you throw your third grader into a calculus class? Never. No, okay. Or a college  level psychiatry class, or psychology class, I should say. Okay? Now, does that mean the  psychology class is just garbage or evil or whatever? No, it just means that they don't have  the framework to understand it. So Kabbalah was written in a way that you have to have... it said  you weren't even supposed to even start learning Kabbalah until first of all, you had mastered  Torah, second of all, you had mastered Mishnah, third, you had mastered Talmud, and then  you're at least 40 years old and married.

[00:50:21]Okay? So that's sort of the prerequisite. Now  things have changed. The tables are turning, and Derek has a lot to say on that,  which I'll let you say another time, we'll run out of time. But basically,  the sages say time is of the essence, and we have to help this generation understand  that we're reaching the culmination of days, and they need to know what to do.  Okay? And how to live. And this is... there's an urgency to it. Sort  of like Yeshua's words, right?

[00:50:52]There's an urgency that he needed to  tell, and we need to proclaim. And this Kabbalistic understanding of basically how can  we really, really, really connect with Hashem, you know? And not just go through the motions.  And that's what this is all about. And so a lot of bad press, but it's because of people that  jump into Kabbalah that don't have a foundation.

[00:51:17]Okay? And then they get everything messed up.

[00:51:20]All right?

[00:51:23]Number 18, winding down here.

[00:51:27]Last... Oh, do you want to point this back out real quick?

[00:51:29]So here's... I'm sorry. Here is one text  of a Hasidic text called "Transforming the Inner Self." And it is part... It may be actually  part of the Tanya, but it's standalone. It says "A Hasidic Discourse by Shnerz Amun of Leodie."  And so you can check that out at some point.

[00:51:51]And we don't have any Kabbalistic texts. So  you separate Baha'i here as one? Yeah. Well, it's actually categorized  as philosophy, I believe.

[00:52:02]But we'll say it's a bridge. It'll probably  fall in between these. So the Baha'i are... I thought we had a Kabbalah. Oh, go ahead.

[00:52:15]Kabbalistic. I didn't do that  because of... Oh, okay. Anyway. Okay.

[00:52:18]"The philosophy is the branch of Jewish  thought that explores theological, ethical, and existential questions and wrestles with topics  such as the nature of God, free will, suffering, morality, revelation, the purpose of life." So  you can see there's some overlap there, right?

[00:52:33]But coming at it from a little different angle.  And the relationship between faith and reason.

[00:52:40]That's your blank faith. "Two popular examples  of Jewish philosophical works are the Guide for the Perplex by Maimonides" and I almost  brought my copy of that, but I didn't.

[00:52:51]"A 12th century philosophical masterwork written as a letter to a student demonstrating the  compatibility of Judaism and philosophy."

[00:53:02]How those can coexist. So  philosophy is your blank there.

[00:53:07]And the last... Yeah, so the Baha'i are  probably going to be more on the mystical side of the Kabbalistic side so you can take  a look at this. And then the Kuzari is the 12th century philosophical and apologetic  dialogue between a rabbi and a pagan king, that's your blank, pagan king, about  the truth and superiority of Judaism.

[00:53:35]So people like Maimonides and  others, they had to compete with like the Pope coming to me down on why Judaism  is so evil and so bad and all that kind of stuff and even the secular government and just  imposing all this stuff. And they said, "Let's create some logical, reasonable  philosophical arguments that we can compete basically and show validity here." So  that's how these texts sort of came into being.

[00:54:04]Okay, that wraps up all of our stuff.  We're going to take some questions now.