Down-to-Earth Spirituality

Unlike the Torah narrative that begins “In the Beginning,” a blog begins at the end. This "Torah Tweets" blog displays its narrative in reverse chronological order with the most recent post appearing first. The blog http://bibleblogyourlife.blogspot.com was created to reverse the order of the blog posts in this blog to begin in the beginning.

See the blogs for the books Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media http://throughabiblelens.blogspot.co.il/ and Photograph God: Creating a Spiritual Blog of Your Life http://photographgod.com/. Both books invite you to explore creative ways to photograph all that happens in your everyday life while crafting a vibrant dialogue between your life story and the biblical narrative.

Postdigital Narrative on Spiritual Dimensons of Everyday Life ///// "For the Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp." (Deuteronomy 23:15) ///// "Judaism does not direct its gaze upward but downward ... does not aspire to a heavenly transcendence, nor does it seek to soar upon the wings of some abstract, mysterious spirituality. It fixes its gaze upon concrete, empirical reality permeating every nook and cranny of life. The marketplace, the factory, the street, the house, the mall, the banquet hall, all constitute the backdrop of religious life." (R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik) ///// "It is not enough for the Jew to rest content with his own spiritual ascent, the elevation of his soul in closeness to G-d, he must strive to draw spirituality down into the world and into every part of it - the world of his work and his social life - until not only do they not distract him from his pursuit of G-d, but they become a full part of it." (R. Menachem M. Schneerson) ///// "If there is a religious agency in our lives, it has to appear in the manner of our times. Not from on high, but a revelation that hides itself in our culture, it will be ground-level, on the street, it'll be coming down the avenue in the traffic, hard to tell apart from anything else." (E. L. Doctorow) ///// "The first message that Moses chose to teach the Jewish people as they were about to enter the Land of Israel was to fuse heaven to earth, to enable the mundane to rise up and touch the Divine, the spiritual to vitalize the physical, not only as individuals but as an entire nation." (R. Abraham Y. Kook)




Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Vayehi (Lived) ויחי


Home after 27 Centuries

Israel said to Joseph, "I never pilal-ti (thought/hoped/imagined/dreamed) that I would ever see your face again, and God has even let me see your children." (Genesis 48:11)

To this day, Jewish fathers bless their chidren with Jacob's blessing: "May God make you like Ephraim and Menashe." (Genesis: 48:20)

 
 
 

Tzvi Kahuate, Bnei Menashe Coordinator for Shavei Israel (www.shavei.org), was our guide on our visit to his community in Kiryat Arba.

We decided to focus this Vayehi blog post on our awesome reunion with the beautiful children of the Children of (Bnei) Menashe.
We photographed Tzvi with his daughter in purple (segol) and his wife Nurit with their youngest daughter as their Superman son watched.
Mel explained that the Jewish People are am segulah that can be translated as "purple people."
We are a People chosen to teach the world that by mixing sky blue with red (adom) of earth (adamah) we bring heaven down to earth.
We photographed Laviyah with her four-day old son and her son Menahem.  Her husband was away serving in the Israel Defense Forces.
We visited Beit Miriam, the Shavei Israel Community Center, where we saw Bnei Menashe children coming for help with their homework.
Others worked with computers and on crafts projects while two girls outside were climbing a tree.
At the entrance to Beit Miriam, the prophetic vision that we were seeing with our own eyes was posted on the wall:
And I will return the captivity of Judah and the captivity of Israel, and I shall assemble them as in the beginning. (Jeremiah 33:7)

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