Shaliach Mitzvah Gelt

July 3, 2015September 19, 2019Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother. ” – Deuteronomy 15:7

Before we left for Israel, some of us had been learning about the customs of the people who live there. One of the Jewish traditions that we found particularly rich is called shaliach mitzvah gelt, meaning “funds for a traveler to do good.” It is the tradition of giving money to a person who is taking a long trip, for them to give away to the poor at the destination. This practice changes the nature of the trip for the traveler – instead of thinking only about personal entertainment, a person is reminded to consider the needs of the people around them, and how they can be a help to them.

Having this in mind when we arrived, even with our own money, made us more mindful of the old ladies with the wizened faces with their hands out, sitting on the ground near the steps that went to the Western Wall. How could we pray at the Wall for God to help us, when we had just walked past others and refused to help them?

Our leaders also explained how the Israeli economy has been very bad in the past few years with the drop in tourism, and many merchants have just barely been hanging on. It made us think twice about whether it was really necessary to haggle down to the last shekel on a purchase. For us, a few shekels difference was just a source of pride at how cheaply we could get a souvenir. For them, the money would feed the family for another day.

It made us realize that sometimes what we call frugality is actually stinginess. Frugality is when we deny ourselves something in order to save money. But when we deny others what is due them, by underpaying workers or giving miserly tips, or even haggling excessively for bargains from needy storeowners, then we are selfishly saving at others’ expense. We need to look beyond our pocketbooks to consider others’ needs as well.

In a way, we should consider all of our money shaliach mitzvah gelt – funds to do good. As we travel through life, all of what we have is a gift from God, to live and to bring blessing to others.

The Land Up and Down

July 3, 2015September 19, 2019Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob;
That He may teach us concerning His ways, and that we may walk in His paths.” Isaiah 2:3

For visitors from the flat American midwest, Israel is challenging because of its many hills. To get practically anywhere is to hike up or down. As we studied the Hebrew of the Scripture in the land, we saw that as often as the text said that a person “went” (halakh) somewhere (literally meaning “walked”), it says they “went up” (alah, meaning “ascended”) somewhere, or “went down” (yarad, meaning “decended”) somewhere. The language reflects the topography!

Some places in the Bible are almost always associated with going up or going down, partly because of geography, and partly because of their spiritual associations. A person always “goes up” to Jerusalem, because it is on one of the highest mountains in the area. The Temple is at the highest point, to remind worshippers that they are coming near to God.

Every time our bus climbed up the hill into the city, we were reminded of “going up” to Jerusalem. If we would have walked as Jesus did, it would have been even more obvious. Our burning legs would tell us that we must make an effort to enter the presence of God.

Often simply going into the land of Israel is “going up” in the Scriptures, and even today, when a Jewish person moves from another country to Israel, he or she is said to make “aliyah” which means to “go up” or “ascend.” On the other hand, a person almost always “went down” to Egypt. In our thinking, since Egypt is to the south, we would call it “down,” but they didn’t associate the south with “down.” Rather, it is downward because of being outside of the Promised Land, and somewhat also because it was the land where the Hebrews were oppressed.

It is interesting that over the history of Israel, there have been few flat places – it seems that the nation was either ascending or descending spiritually, to worship the true God, or to fall into idolatry or sin. Our spiritual lives are like that too – we tend to be either ascending or descending rather than just on the level. Each day we need to ask ourselves which way our next step will go.

Keepers of the Word

July 3, 2015August 7, 2023Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

Now go, write it on a tablet before them, and inscribe it on a scroll,
That it may serve in the time to come, as a witness forever. – Isaiah 30:8

Judaism from ancient times until today contains many practices that display great reverence for the written text of the Bible. The centerpiece of every synagogue is the “Torah Ark” – the cabinet that contains handwritten Torah scrolls covered in embroidered cloths, with a silver “crown” decorating each scroll. A silver pointer called a “yad” is used to keep place during the reading to avoid touching the text on the scroll with one’s hands.

The name of God is especially sacred, and never uttered allowed. Any paper that it is written on must not be destroyed, but must respectfully buried in a receptacle called a genizah (gen-nee-ZAH). As a result, all Jewish Torah scrolls and other scriptures are carefully buried and not simply thrown away with other waste, even if they are very warn out and need to be replaced.

All this extreme care may strike us as excessive. We may wonder how pen marks and paper can be so holy. But interestingly, it is this very practice that preserved the most important copies of the Bible ever found.

In the 1940s, many copies of the text of the Hebrew Bible (our Old Testament) were found near the Essene settlement at Qumran, near the Dead Sea. The scrolls had been carefully buried in caves used as “genizahs” around the time of Christ, and were over 1000 years older than the oldest known text of the Bible. Archaeologists were amazed at the fact that the biblical text had been preserved nearly flawlessly over 1000 years.

Though the ancient people did these things simply to revere God’s word, they were actually insuring that people could know its truth and reliability over two millennia later. Their dedication to the Lord even in the way they treated the manuscripts of the Bible had a wonderful outcome that they never could have foreseen. We should also know that what we do to bring honor to God, even if we don’t know why, can be used by God at a time and place later that we never would have dreamed.

Drink Before You’re Thirsty

July 3, 2015July 17, 2023Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.
“O God, you are my God; I shall seek You earnestly;
my soul thirsts for you, my flesh yearns for you,
in a dry and weary land where there is no water. ” – Psalm 63:1

Many athletes have heard the advice, “Drink before you’re thirsty!” We were told this often on our trip to Israel in July, where we experienced many days around 100° F, and did much walking and hiking. A few who didn’t comply experienced the effects of dehydration – nausea, headache, dizziness, and even a lack of desire to drink, even though their bodies needed fluids badly. A couple people even needed fluids by IV at a local clinic. David’s words about his thirst were very palpable to us when we stood in the bleak Judean wilderness where he wrote this Psalm.

David was speaking about being thirsty for a sense of the presence of the Lord in his life. We’ve all had this feeling – about having a need for intimacy with God. In our times of prayer, study or worship, we take a “drink” of living water when we sense God’s closeness and his hand leading our lives. When we are in times of stress, or emotional turmoil, we can become spiritually “dehydrated,” and our thirst for God gets much greater.

Interestingly, drinking before you’re thirsty is very wise advice, spiritually too. When we are in a stressful situation that demands our time, often the first thing to go is the time to pray. Even when we do pray, our stressed-out minds have a hard time relaxing and listening for God to speak to us. As a result, we get thirstier and thirstier. We think that God should come closer because we need him, but he seems to feel farther away. Just like water sometimes is even repulsive to a dehydrated person, we can even start avoiding prayer – feeling that God must be so disgusted by our weak commitment that we don’t deserve to pray. We can truly become spiritually ill from lack of “living water.”

True wisdom is to keep drinking a little at a time, before the heat and stress come. We need to keep seeking out the Lord while times are good, before we are desperate. But, no matter how far we have gone from him, we can be assured if we bring him our empty cup, he will fill it with himself.

The Necessity of Shade

July 3, 2015September 19, 2019Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

“The LORD is your keeper; The LORD is your shade on your right hand. The sun will not smite you by day, nor the moon by night.” Psalm 121:5-6 NASB

Many times in the Psalms, God is referred to as “shade” (tzel in Hebrew), and the Bible speaks of us under the “shadow of his wings” (Psalm 63:7). This image didn’t speak to me powerfully until I experienced the heat and sun of the land of Israel myself, especially in the mountains near Jerusalem.

Many days reached nearly 100° F, and near the Dead Sea, it was over 120° F. Clouds are extremely rare in the summer, so nothing protects a person from the power of the sun’s rays. When we stood in the sunshine we could quickly feel our skin burning, but under a tree, the breeze made us quite comfortable. We also sensed the sun’s heat as the temperature rose each day from below 60° F at dawn to almost 100° F by afternoon.

It is interesting to see how in Psalm 121, it speaks of the sun “smiting” us, the same word also translated as “to hit, attack, or strike down.” In ancient times, it was thought that just as the sun was the source of heat that “attacks” us by day, the moon is the source of cold that “attacks” us by night. So when God led his people in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, God was sheltering them from the ever-present enemies of cold and heat in the desert .

We can also see why the image of “shade” is often used to mean protection. For instance, in Numbers 14:9, Joshua reassures the people that the Canaanites will not be able to win against them because their protection (shade, tzel, literally) has been removed from them. Without shade, it is impossible to survive in that land, and if their shade has been removed, they are defenseless.

Now that we have a better understanding of the great need for the cool of shade, we can better appreciate the following psalm, among many others:

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Psalm 91:1-2

Adamah – from Earth, And Yet More

July 2, 2015January 19, 2022Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

“The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” – Genesis 2:7

When we read Genesis in English, we don’t see several wonderfully profound ideas contained in the words it chooses to describe the relationship of man to the rest of creation and to God. The word for ground is adamah, and of course the first human is called “Adam.” It perfectly fits the scene of God forming Adam from the adamah, and the fact that Adam’s skin is red (adom, in Hebrew), like the ground. Adam is given the task of working the adamah, and when Adam dies, he will return to the adamah.

Even though we are fundamentally made from the earth, the Scripture says that we are unique in our connectedness to God himself, when he created us in his image and breathed the ruach (breath) of life into us. We are not mini-gods, we are created things just like everything around us. But, we are different from the rest of creation because of the unique kind of life we were given by God himself.

There is a wise rabbinic saying about this. It is said,

A person should always carry two slips of paper, one in each pocket. On one should be written, ‘I am but dust and ashes,’ and the other, ‘All of creation was made for my sake.’ (Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4:5)

That is, we should all humbly realize our own frailness and short life on this earth, and our “feet of clay” – our tendency to sin. But yet we should also continually be reminded we are all created in the image of God, each one very precious in his sight.

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Further reading:

See Listening to the Language of the Bible, by Lois Tverberg and Bruce Okkema, En-Gedi Resource Center, 2004. This is a collection of devotional essays that mediate on the meaning of biblical words and phrases in their original setting.

For a friendly, bite-sized Bible study of five flavorful Hebrew words, see 5 Hebrew Words that Every Christian Should Know, by Lois Tverberg, OurRabbiJesus.com, 2014 (ebook).

Ish & Ishah – Together Fully Human

July 2, 2015January 17, 2020Lois Tverberg 1 Comment

by Lois Tverberg

(Adam) said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman (ishah), Because she was taken out of Man (ish).” For this reason a man (ish) shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife (ishah); and they shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2:23-24)

The creation story has many profound things to say about God’s intention for our lives. We can be enriched just by looking closely at the Hebrew words that are used to describe the first human Adam, and then the creation of man and woman.

It may surprise English readers that the word adam is a neutral term meaning “human,” not specifically a man. In the original Hebrew text, all references to Adam are neutral until God takes some of Adam’s flesh and makes a woman: ishah, in Hebrew. Only at that point is Adam called ish, a man. The Hebrew word ishah hints at her origins from within the ish, something that we can mimic in English, with the words “man” and “woman.” But interestingly, Adam is never called an ish until the ishah has been separated from him. It is as if the text is implying that male and female cannot define themselves fully as human without the other.

We may not realize that this logic is part of the next verse that says that for this reason, when a man and woman marry, they become “one.” They are returning to God’s first design before the ish and ishah were separated. The complementarity between man and woman is inherent in the way they were taken apart from each other, as the first ishah provides what the ish lacks. In God’s design, it is the the two together who ultimately reflect the image of God.

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Further reading:

For a friendly, bite-sized Bible study of five flavorful Hebrew words, see 5 Hebrew Words that Every Christian Should Know, by Lois Tverberg, OurRabbiJesus.com, 2014 (ebook).

Shalvah – Peace Within Your Walls

July 2, 2015January 19, 2022Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. – Psalm 122:6-7 KJV

Often in the past several thousand years, Israel has been in the center of international controversy. It’s as if the powerful spiritual battles that have happened in that land are ongoing, and still trigger events in world politics today. With this in mind, it is good to be reminded that God tells us to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” in Psalm 122:6, above.

Older translations often complete that verse by saying that God would prosper those who do so. The idea that God would make us wealthy for caring for his people is actually a mistranslation of the word shalvah, which doesn’t mean prosperity, but actually ease, security and freedom from worry. The NIV now translates this verse in the following way:

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: “May those who love you be secure. May there be peace within your walls and security within your citadels.”

In Hebrew, we can also hear how the verse is composed to gently roll off the tongue as well:

Shalu shalom Yerushalaim, yishla’u ohavaikh.

The overall effect in reading the verse is to hear both poetic parallelism and alliteration, as the soft sound of the “sh” is used in the words shalu (ask, pray), shalom (peace), Yerushalaim (Jerusalem), and yishla’u (security, tranquility). We also hear the closeness of ideas of shalom (peace, well-being) and shalvah (tranquility, security, ease). We see that those who care about God’s children in that troubled land will find tranquility themselves.

Why? God has chosen Israel for a purpose that will not be fulfilled until the end of the age. The people there show the ongoing struggle within all of humanity, spiritually. They are no better and no worse there than the rest of the world, and when we pray for God’s shalom to be established there, we are praying for ourselves as well.

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Further reading:

For a friendly, bite-sized Bible study of five flavorful Hebrew words, see 5 Hebrew Words that Every Christian Should Know, by Lois Tverberg, OurRabbiJesus.com, 2014 (ebook).

Geshem – Drinking rain from Heaven

July 2, 2015July 24, 2023Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

The land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end. (Deuteronomy 11:11-12)

During our five weeks in Israel in late June and July, not once did it rain. In fact, almost 6 months go by each year without any rain, between May and October. In all of the Middle East, water is precious, like oil is nowadays. In ancient times, countries that had water in abundance became superpowers, and the countries with little barely survived. Egypt received almost no rain at all, but had abundant water from the flooding of the Nile. That was why when regional famine came, people went there to purchase food, like Abraham and later Joseph’s family. The water available from the Nile each year was 30,000 times more plentiful than the yearly rainful to Israel – an enormous difference indeed! It is therefore interesting that God saw the water of Israel as superior to that of Egypt. In Deuteronomy 11:10 – 12 it says,

The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.

The difference between Egypt and Canaan was that in Egypt the crops were irrigated by the labor of hand-watering, while in Canaan the land was entirely watered by rain, geshem in Hebrew. In the ancient Middle East, that had profound spiritual implications, because rain was understood to be a gift straight from God, whereas water drawn by hand was a seen to be human self-reliance without regard to God. Egypt and Canaan, therefore, were a contrast of security of human effort compared to dependence on God.

This was a spiritual lesson for the Israelites when they left the land of Egypt for the promised land of Canaan — that when God chose a land for his people, he didn’t choose a place where they could have security because of their own efforts, he chose a land where they would be far more dependent on him and would need his presence watching over them to send them the living water of rain, geshem.

Many of us have seen God do the same thing in our own lives, when we step out to follow him and he takes us from security in our own efforts and brings us to a point of dependence on him, which doesn’t always include prosperity as the world sees it. God often desires dependence for his people rather than abundance, contrary to what “prosperity gospel” teachers may tell us. While we may not have the material wealth as if we lived in “Egypt,” we know that God’s eyes are on us from the beginning of the year to the end.

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Further reading:

For a friendly, bite-sized Bible study of five flavorful Hebrew words, see 5 Hebrew Words that Every Christian Should Know, by Lois Tverberg, OurRabbiJesus.com, 2014 (ebook).

Tzarah – When Times Are Tight

July 2, 2015January 24, 2020Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them; in His love and in His mercy He redeemed them, and He lifted them and carried them all the days of old. (Isaiah 63:9)

When we’re feeling a lot of stress because of problems in life, we speak of ourselves as feeling crushed, low, burdened, or weighed down with our troubles. In English, our idioms picture ourselves as if we are carrying a heavy object that is pressing down on us.

Interestingly, in Hebrew, a different picture is used for the same idea. The word for distress is tzar or tzarah, and it also means “narrow” or “tight.” The picture is that of being hemmed in, squeezed, or trapped with no options. Often King David speaks about being pressed, tzarah, by his enemies. When God gives relief, rahav, the word literally means widening. For instance, in this translation of Psalm 4 it says:

When I call out, answer me, O God who vindicates me! Though I am hemmed in (tzarah), you will lead me into a wide, open place. [lit., you will widen, rahav me] Have mercy on me and respond to my prayer! (Ps. 4:1-2, NET)

There is an interesting verse that uses this image. In Isaiah 63:9, it says that when God’s people were distressed and afflicted (tzar), he himself was afflicted (tzar). God wasn’t just sitting back, relaxing comfortably in heaven while his people were in distress. When his people were squeezed in a tight spot, God was feeling squeezed too! God feels our distress and our worries, he doesn’t just shake a scolding finger at our lack of faith we have. He is always intimately near, caring for us in our troubles more than we can ever realize.

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Further reading:

For a friendly, bite-sized Bible study of five flavorful Hebrew words, see 5 Hebrew Words that Every Christian Should Know, by Lois Tverberg, OurRabbiJesus.com, 2014 (ebook).

Photo: Archesnps