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Hi everyone!
Last night Shabbat began again. We really look forward to this time when we can pull in, rest and enjoy each other.
I'm still mending from that awful virus and multiple headaches I had this past week. Now Mrs. Grace has it and is miserable and Rachel might be getting it too, poor baby.
We moved our Friday Bible study to Saturday afternoon so our Friday evening looked like this:
The girls and I got the house clean and ready for Shabbat and the Bible study today. Nathan didn't work at the tree job because we were behind on all the mowing. He got us caught up. (We only mow four yards but it takes us two days!)
I am so glad I planned an easy meal because I got hit with some awful stomach cramps right before the evening and wasn't much good for anything!
Since we rescheduled our Bible study for Saturday, we had our own little Shabbat service before the meal complete with wine and the two candles. They are actually named "Zachor" for Remember and "Shamor" for Keep. (More on this later... It's really cool!!!)
We stumbled through the blessings but eveyone seemed to get better. Even Isaac said a little.
Then we ate. I was still crampy but I did eat some. Here was the menu:
gluten free bread (not the greatest but worth a shot)
chicken shawarma (I even had a little!)
vegetables (onions, bell peppers)
steamed broccoli
raw carrots
Salad
fresh strawberries
Each week we study the "Parasha." This week it is Beha'alotekha and is found in Numbers 8:1-12:16. It's title in English is, "When you kindle." So Rebecca thinks she now has scriptural proof that we need to buy her a Kindle from Amazon.com!
Parasha means "portion" or "section" and is the portion of the Torah, Genesis through Deuteronomy, that all Israel studied, and continues to study during the week. Ezra the scribe is the one who made the schedule of readings during the Babylonian captivity in order to unify the people and re-teach them the Law. There are 54 Parashot, one for each week of a Hebrew leap year (an extra month) so that the entire Torah is read during the course of a year. In a non-leap year, shorter portions are doubled up.
The Haftarah is taken from Zechariah 2:10-4:7.
One theroy of how the haftarah came into practice is when the Israelites were under the cruel authority of Antiochus Epiphanes, reading the Torah was outlawed under penalty of death. Since the books of the Prophets were still available, someone (I don't know who. Clint probably knows...) found correlating themes and teachings and made a reading schedule. That is why the Parasha is sequential and the haftarah is not. Haftarah does not mean half-Torah, it means "concluding portion."
In reading the sermons and parables of Jesus, it is possible to know what time of year it was because he was probably teaching on that week's Parasha that everyone was studying! That is incredibly cool!!!
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Michelle, here is a bit more of what we're learning about Sabbath, or Shabbat, or Shabbos for your VBS. (Sabbath is English, Shabbat is Hebrew, and Shabbos is Yiddish.)
I don't know what ages you will be teaching so here goes. Just take what you need...
Sabbath means rest, intermission, or release. It begins at sundown on Friday and ends sundown Saturday in accordance with Genesis 1:5
"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."
Shabbat is spelled as shin-bet-tav but from right to left. I wish I could type the hebrew characters for you because it is really neat to learn that little word.
The Paleo (pictograph) Hebrew meanings of the letters are:
Shin~
it looks like two teeth
means sharp, press, eat, two
makes the "sh" sound
Bet~
the image of a tent
means house, family, In
makes the "b" or "v" sound
Tav~
image of crossed sticks (it actually looks like a cross)
means Mark, sign, momument, Covenant
makes the 't' sound
so the sound is Sh-B-T but we say Shabbat. The Paleo meaning of the letters is actually "Two House Covenant" which makes sense because of God making and keeping the Covenant with the two houses of Israel, the Northern tribes and the Southern tribes.
Here's an extremely helpful website that we use...
There is actually more than one type of Sabbath: the weekly, seventh day Sabbath, the yearly or High Sabbath, and the Sabbath Year, called a Sabbatical Year or a Shmita (Shmee-ta).
A Shmita is the seventh year of the agricultural cycle when the land was allowed to rest. (Exodus23:10-11, and Leviticus 25:1-7)
There are seven High Sabbaths and they occur each year during the Hebrew festivals: the first and last day of Unleavened Bread (Hag HaMatzah), Feast of Weeks (Shavuot or Pentecost), Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah), Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), and the first and last day of Tabernacles (Sukkot). Passover (Pesach) and First Fruits (Yom Bikkurim) are NOT High Sabbaths.
A High Sabbath can be any day of the week but the weekly Sabbath is every friday evening toSaturday evening, regardless of when the High Sabbath falls. (Clear as mud?)
Yes, you can actually have two Sabbaths back to back as we did for this past Shavuot. The weekly Shabbat was Friday evening, May 29th to Saturday evening, May 30th. Then Shavuot, a High Sabbath, began Saturday evening, May 30 and ended Sunday evening, May 31. So from Friday evening to Sunday evening, it was Sabbath!
You can have a Sabbath, then skip a day and then have a Sabbath ,or they can both be the same 24 hour period; friday evening to saturday evening That happened this year during the first day of Unleavend Bread...
Neverless, the weekly Sabbath is always every Friday evening to Saturday evening, just like clockwork and has been an unbroken chain for centuries because the Jews have kept the Sabbath all this time.
**I will give you NT scripture references for both weekly and High Shabbats later. This email is getting long!**
Shalom Aleichem!
Peace be unto you..
~WOW
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