Podcasts about schechem

In this Bible Story, Jacob’s daughter Dinah is taken advantage of and her brothers, Simeon and Levi, respond. They kill every man in the city, and pillaged all they had. Then Jacob flees back to Bethel and settles there with his family. This story is inspired by Genesis 34-35. Go to BibleinaYear.com and learn the Bible in a Year.Today's Bible verse is Genesis 34:11 from the King James Version.Episode 24: As Israel and his family were living in the land of Hamor, a prince of that land named Schechem raped Dinah, Israel’s daughter. However, instead of sending her away in secret, Schechem asks for his father to strike a deal so that he might have her as a wife. An agreement was made to give him Dinah for the price of Hamor, Schechem, and all the men in their city being circumcised. But Dinah’s brothers, Simeon and Levi, would not hear of it. Filled with rage, they attacked while the city's men were recovering, killing them all.Hear the Bible come to life as Pastor Jack Graham leads you through the official BibleinaYear.com podcast. This Biblical Audio Experience will help you master wisdom from the world’s greatest book. In each episode, you will learn to apply Biblical principles to everyday life. Now understanding the Bible is easier than ever before; enjoy a cinematic audio experience full of inspirational storytelling, orchestral music, and profound commentary from world-renowned Pastor Jack Graham.Also, you can download the Pray.com app for more Christian content, including, Daily Prayers, Inspirational Testimonies, and Bedtime Bible Stories.Visit JackGraham.org for more resources on how to tap into God's power for successful Christian living.Pray.com is the digital destination of faith. With over 5,000 daily prayers, meditations, bedtime stories, and cinematic stories inspired by the Bible, the Pray.com app has everything you need to keep your focus on the Lord. Make Prayer a priority and download the #1 App for Prayer and Sleep today in the Apple app store or Google Play store.Executive Producers: Steve Gatena & Max BardProducer: Ben GammonHosted by: Pastor Jack GrahamMusic by: Andrew Morgan SmithBible Story narration by: Todd HaberkornSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jacob becomes Israel, leaves Schechem

Jacob becomes Israel, leaves Schechem

What is a didactic psalm? Today, Emma Dotter teaches through Psalm 60, where David is lamenting the costliness of Israel's victory and teaching hearers to trust the Lord when they encounter similar difficulties. David understood that God is the ultimate deliverer of the people. Our victory comes through Christ, and we will reign with Him, the ultimate Victor, in the end. Take some time to remind yourself of the truth of victory in Christ. Listen in for a study trick on how to remember key events about Israel's sin and God's promises in Shechem.  Additional Scripture Referenced:  Genesis 12 – Schechem is where God promised land to Abraham's family Joshua 24:6 – Schechem is where Joshua encourages people to obey and follow God Genesis 34 – story of Dinah 1 Corinthians 15 – “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory in Christ” 2 Samuel 8; 1 Kings 11; 1 Chronicles 18 – Israel's victory over the Edomites  Grab a NEW Join The Journey Journal for 2024: https://a.co/d/7rt0H3g   Got kids? Check out the NEW Join The Journey Jr. Journal for 2024: https://a.co/d/eYBgvUM   You can also check out the Join The Journey Jr. Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/join-the-journey-junior/id1660089898

Following His encounter with Nicodemus, Jesus chooses to pass through Samaria on His way to Galilee. At a well outside the town of Sychar, a most unusual scene unfolds. Join us as we dive into one of the most beautiful accounts in the Gospels and discover the offer of Living Water.

In this Bible Story, Jacob's daughter Dinah is taken advantage of and her brothers, Simeon and Levi, respond. They kill every man in the city, and pillaged all they had. Then Jacob flees back to Bethel and settles there with his family. This story is inspired by Genesis 34-35. Go to BibleinaYear.com and learn the Bible in a Year.Today's Bible verse is Genesis 34:11 from the King James Version.Episode 24: As Israel and his family were living in the land of Hamor, a prince of that land named Schechem raped Dinah, Israel's daughter. However, instead of sending her away in secret, Schechem asks for his father to strike a deal so that he might have her as a wife. An agreement was made to give him Dinah for the price of Hamor, Schechem, and all the men in their city being circumcised. But Dinah's brothers, Simeon and Levi, would not hear of it. Filled with rage, they attacked while the city's men were recovering, killing them all.Hear the Bible come to life as Pastor Jack Graham leads you through the official BibleinaYear.com podcast. This Biblical Audio Experience will help you master wisdom from the world's greatest book. In each episode, you will learn to apply Biblical principles to everyday life. Now understanding the Bible is easier than ever before; enjoy a cinematic audio experience full of inspirational storytelling, orchestral music, and profound commentary from world-renowned Pastor Jack Graham.Also, you can download the Pray.com app for more Christian content, including, Daily Prayers, Inspirational Testimonies, and Bedtime Bible Stories.Visit JackGraham.org for more resources on how to tap into God's power for successful Christian living.This episode is sponsored by Medi-Share, an innovative health care solution for Christians to save money without sacrificing quality.Pray.com is the digital destination of faith. With over 5,000 daily prayers, meditations, bedtime stories, and cinematic stories inspired by the Bible, the Pray.com app has everything you need to keep your focus on the Lord. Make Prayer a priority and download the #1 App for Prayer and Sleep today in the Apple app store or Google Play store.Executive Producers: Steve Gatena & Max BardProducer: Ben GammonHosted by: Pastor Jack GrahamMusic by: Andrew Morgan SmithBible Story narration by: Todd HaberkornSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this Bible Story, Jacob's daughter Dinah is taken advantage of and her brothers, Simeon and Levi, respond. They kill every man in the city, and pillaged all they had. Then Jacob flees back to Bethel and settles there with his family. This story is inspired by Genesis 34-35. Go to BibleinaYear.com and learn the Bible in a Year.Today's Bible verse is Genesis 34:11 from the King James Version.Episode 24: As Israel and his family were living in the land of Hamor, a prince of that land named Schechem raped Dinah, Israel's daughter. However, instead of sending her away in secret, Schechem asks for his father to strike a deal so that he might have her as a wife. An agreement was made to give him Dinah for the price of Hamor, Schechem, and all the men in their city being circumcised. But Dinah's brothers, Simeon and Levi, would not hear of it. Filled with rage, they attacked while the city's men were recovering, killing them all.Hear the Bible come to life as Pastor Jack Graham leads you through the official BibleinaYear.com podcast. This Biblical Audio Experience will help you master wisdom from the world's greatest book. In each episode, you will learn to apply Biblical principles to everyday life. Now understanding the Bible is easier than ever before; enjoy a cinematic audio experience full of inspirational storytelling, orchestral music, and profound commentary from world-renowned Pastor Jack Graham.Also, you can download the Pray.com app for more Christian content, including, Daily Prayers, Inspirational Testimonies, and Bedtime Bible Stories.Visit JackGraham.org for more resources on how to tap into God's power for successful Christian living.This episode is sponsored by Medi-Share, an innovative health care solution for Christians to save money without sacrificing quality.Pray.com is the digital destination of faith. With over 5,000 daily prayers, meditations, bedtime stories, and cinematic stories inspired by the Bible, the Pray.com app has everything you need to keep your focus on the Lord. Make Prayer a priority and download the #1 App for Prayer and Sleep today in the Apple app store or Google Play store.Executive Producers: Steve Gatena & Max BardProducer: Ben GammonHosted by: Pastor Jack GrahamMusic by: Andrew Morgan SmithBible Story narration by: Todd HaberkornSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the 3rd Session to the Genesis Bible Study Led by Beth Coppedge 

Jacob and his family settle at Succoth; Dinar is abused by Schechem; Jacob's sons kill the men of Shechem. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stephen-i/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stephen-i/support

In looking ahead to 2023, before we move forward, we are going to take some time to look back. The same God who is calling you in 2023 is the same God who was faithful in 2022. God is always faithful from start to finish. In looking to Joshua 24, we see that this is Joshua's farewell letter to the children of Israel. He reminds In the beginning, he gathers them to Schecham, their holy ground. Joshua is taking them back to remind them of all that God has done so He can give them the instruction of what their assignment is as He departs. Before we move into 2023, take time to remember where God has brought us from, to remember what God has brought us through. Go to your Schechem and thank Him. Listen to this sermon about remembering God's faithfulness in the first part of our Start to Finish series.Check out our video version of this episode:https://youtu.be/T8m4Y6wPZSUSubscribe to our YouTube channel here: youtube.com/chestnutmountainchurchLearn more about us at chestnutmountain.orgFollow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @chestnutmtn_Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast, leave a review, and let us know what you think.

Dinah goes to visit the women of the land and is violated when Hamor's son, Schechem takes what is not his, though his love for her sounds genuine. Treachery, deceit, and revenge follow, climaxing when the sons of Jacob kill all the men of Schechem and take captive all the women, children, and property.

In this Bible Story, Jacob's daughter Dinah is taken advantage of and her brothers, Simeon and Levi, respond. They kill every man in the city, and pillaged all they had. Then Jacob flees back to Bethel and settles there with his family. This story is inspired by Genesis 34-35. Go to BibleinaYear.com and learn the Bible in a Year.Today's Bible verse is Genesis 34:11 from the King James Version.Episode 24: As Israel and his family were living in the land of Hamor, a prince of that land named Schechem raped Dinah, Israel's daughter. However, instead of sending her away in secret, Schechem asks for his father to strike a deal so that he might have her as a wife. An agreement was made to give him Dinah for the price of Hamor, Schechem, and all the men in their city being circumcised. But Dinah's brothers, Simeon and Levi, would not hear of it. Filled with rage, they attacked while the city's men were recovering, killing them all.Hear the Bible come to life as Pastor Jack Graham leads you through the official BibleinaYear.com podcast. This Biblical Audio Experience will help you master wisdom from the world's greatest book. In each episode, you will learn to apply Biblical principles to everyday life. Now understanding the Bible is easier than ever before; enjoy a cinematic audio experience full of inspirational storytelling, orchestral music, and profound commentary from world-renowned Pastor Jack Graham.Also, you can download the Pray.com app for more Christian content, including, Daily Prayers, Inspirational Testimonies, and Bedtime Bible Stories.Visit JackGraham.org for more resources on how to tap into God's power for successful Christian living.This episode is sponsored by Medi-Share, an innovative health care solution for Christians to save money without sacrificing quality.Pray.com is the digital destination of faith. With over 5,000 daily prayers, meditations, bedtime stories, and cinematic stories inspired by the Bible, the Pray.com app has everything you need to keep your focus on the Lord. Make Prayer a priority and download the #1 App for Prayer and Sleep today in the Apple app store or Google Play store.Executive Producers: Steve Gatena & Max BardProducer: Ben GammonHosted by: Pastor Jack GrahamMusic by: Andrew Morgan SmithBible Story narration by: Todd HaberkornSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we look at a re-affirmation of the Abrahamic covenant and the addition of an outward sign to set apart those who follow God and his covenant, circumcision. We see God change Abram's name to Abraham as well as Sarai changed to Sarah. We also see God confirm that the covenant will come through Sarah and not Hagar (though God does promise to bless Ishmael and his descendants). Dave does take a tangent to explain the story of Gen 34 in which Abraham's great-grandsons, Simeon & Levi, use circumcision as a means of military advantage over the Schechemites for what Schechem does to their sister Dinah (it is a tangent but it does relate to today's topic). We conclude with a discussion on the question of if we today should circumcise our sons or not. Donate: Help keep bible studies like this going by donating to Iron Sheep Ministries today: https://ironsheep.org/donate Find out more about Iron Sheep Ministries: https://ironsheep.org/ Contact Dave & the ISM team: info@ironsheep.org

Husband and Wife cover pages 83-100 of Asimov's Guide to the Bible, in this episode of the Sacrilegious Book Club. Topics include Moab and Ammon, Gerar, Beersheba, Paran, Moriah, Aram and Chesed, Machpelah, Mesopotamia, Syria, Midian, Edom, Bethel, Reuben and His Brothers, Seir, Israel, and Schechem. We hope you'll get a copy of the book and read along with us. Next time we will discuss pages 100-117.

Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.   Episode Transcript: Last time we explored a certain element of the introduction of currency to the planet by Yaakov. It sounds almost like a side point, but actually it's something significant globally speaking and in context of the story we were involved in. I want to remind us of some of the aspects of what we had been seeing and I want to take it somewhat with us to a different place today. And I'm hoping we'll also get to learn a little Chassidut together. We had explored together Yaakov and Yisrael and Yaakov and Leah. Something which I realize is important for us to recognize about Yaakov in that transition of the battle--which is an internal battle and external battle in which Yaakov becomes transformed into Yisrael--has a great deal to do with the discovery of his personal realization, by which I mean Yaakov is like the external body. Yaakov is the heel. Literally, his name means "the one who is hanging onto the heel," trying to get around the heel, Yisrael, though it says in the Tikkunei Zohar is li rosh, "I have a head, I have a mind." And in that sense is the exact opposite from Yaakov in terms of the relation of one to oneself. For in Yaakov, the primary relation is to the body, whereas the primary relation is to the soul (or to put it in less spiritual language, the identity, the particularlity the specificity of who he is). It may be a funny way to put it, but see we all share heels. In Chazal, the heel is always the expression of embodiment. In fact, there is a story in Baba Batra about one of the Chachamim who went into the Maharat Hamachpelah--this is parenthetical to show you that the heel is that way--and he saw the heels of AdamHarishon and they were glowing like the orb of the sun. So the Maharal explains on that passage, well, what the impressive point was, it was his heels. Because that's ultimate embodiment. And that's what Chazal teaches us when they say, in parshat Ekev, that there are mitzvot that a person crushes under his heels. It means you're just in body as primary, and that means that you're ignoring what these mitzvot in their miniscule details might be coming to teach you, because you're insensitive of that, unless you have a very refined sense of who you are.   The more refined a sense of who you are, the greater the detail you will pay attention to when it comes to mitzvot, and when it comes to anything in them. The more refined the identity, the greater the sensitivity to detail. I mean you know that when it comes to music or art, a person who has very refined taste will be very attentive to detail. A person who has a refined awareness of others, so they will be very exquisitely sensitive to the details in the messages that they send, and if a person is finely attuned to their own identity, they become very exquisitely aware around details. And I say this in the context of what we had been learning last time and that is that Yaakov in going back for the pachim ketanim, specifically, remember that the Chazal taught us, that he went back for the small jars, after he had sent his children and his wives across the river. Vayivater Yaakov lvado.Yaakov goes back and he's completely alone-- that we saw last time, and in that complete aloneness that the Chumash is describing for us is going to become his very clear and refined sense of identity which is so crucial before his meeting with his twin brother for the final clarification. But the way Chazal describe it very interestingly is in his attentivenes s to the fine detail of the mamon, of the possessions that he has. No, I'm not leaving those behind, those are important. Come on, they're pachim ketanim.  No, I'm going to go back and get them. Do you know you're risking your life to go back and get them? Well, what life am I risking exactly? My embodied life? Really, what are we talking about? So of couse, if we're talking halachically, risking your life is dochech, getting your pachim ketanim, etc. But the Chumash is talking meta-halachically, not chas v'shalom anti-nemian, but what I mean is the Chumash is describing something which is a root reality which is that the Tzaddik gives up his external body for the clarity of realization of his internal identity. See, our external reality is a shared given, we all share them, and everyone has a different one from everyone else. But if I ask you how you identify yourself, so if you go deep enough, then you won't identify yourself as the person who's got a beauty mark above her lip whereas she doesn't. That's how we distinguish ourselves from one another. I have a beauty mark and she doesn't have a beauty mark. Or I have red hair and she has brown hair. That's not how we-- when we go anywhere lower than the most overt and superficial ways of identifying ourselves. That's not how we identify ourselves. We'll talk about the qualities that we have, and if we go deeper we'll talk about the values that we have. If we go deeper we'll talk about the vision that we have…we'll talk about deeper and deeper aspects of ourselves of that which we identify ourselves as being.   This is fairly obvious stuff. It's good to be reminded of it from time to time. This is what is being taught when he goes back, because it's relevant. How is it relevant? It's relevant because he's got now a very fine-tuned sense of who he is, what he needs to take with him in the world in order to do what it is that he needs to do. And what really belongs to him in the world. And this is why we saw last time, that Chazal teach us that the Tzaddik gives even greater priority to his possessions than to his own reality. Because his body is the common, and his possessions are a reflection, if they're precise, and by the Tzaddik they're very precise, they are a reflection and an expression of his inner self and of his inner identity. So have you had this experience? As you get clearer, you start to clear away the junk.   It is a really interesting thing, that when you get clear on who you are, what you're about, what you're going for. I'm curious to know how many of you have had the experience that you're coming in out of the fog and you say, right, this is what it's about, this is what I'm for, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, you start clearing off the desk, start throwing out junk…And your relation to your possessions becomes even more fine-tuned. Because there are things that you are taking along and there are things that, just the junk of the past, or is never really relevant to the truth of who you are. You kind of bought it while you were in the fog. So that our relation to these external aspects are a direct reflection of how much clarity internally that we have of who we are and of what we're doing. This is Yaakov. He has a very exquisite sense of exactly what it is that needs to be with him and what doesn't. And so in his going back there he goes back lvado, alone and becomes very alone, excruciatingly alone.  Because the more clear and exact and pinpointed a person becomes about their uniqueness, so the more excruciatingly alone they are.    Because there's absolutely no one like me and that's the truth. And we can talk about things we share, but when it comes to the pinpointed sense of li rosh, I have a head, I have something which is my contact point with that which I am going towards. I have a selfhood. So then we really because lavdo. Vayivater lvado.   I say this is important for me to point this out because this transition is the transition which changes him from being the one who is so to speak, after the heel, to the one who has a mind, a head, and becomes Yisrael. This is crucial because the whole world was created for Yisrael,. Bereshit barah Elokim. Bereshit Rashi says, what is Bereshit? Yisrael Bereshit tvuato. Yisrael is His first. Bni bchori Yisrael. My first-born son is Yisrael. What is Yisrael? If I talk cosmically, Yisrael is the element of create, of conscious identity of what this planet is, what this cosmos is, and Yisrael is attached to that, that's Yisrael. And those who join that consciousness and awareness of what this purpose of what this create is about, they join Yisrael. But Yisrael is that, so as Yaakov becomes aware of who he is, he becomes Yisrael, and then he be, so to speak, the first-born, the one that all of the other children will follow, meaning that he is showing the way. (12:13) You hear, this is so important. This is why he is the only one who can say bishvili nivrah haolam. really The more exact a person becomes in their realization of the precision of their selfhood, so the more truly they can say bishvili nivrah haolam, because the world was made for Yisrael. So the more I am Yisrael, so the more the world is created for me.   because then I become the consciousness head of the entire cosmos, to the point which we saw last week, in this almost blasphemous midrash, which has Yaakov almost becoming G-d-like. But that's what happens when he becomes so clear in who is is, so that's when G-d says, okay, now you have become a G-d in the tachtonim. That's not, chas v'shalom, not to say that there are two G-ds, that's exactly the opposite. It's you have become so at one with Me and My will for my desire for this planet, that indeed you will be the consciousness of G-d in the planet, that is with joyous creativity, and I use that phrase advisedly, that's binah, with joyous creativity, you will now bring into realization and manifestation the beauty and the glory of what it is to be the true humanity, the true human being, which is Yisrael. That's when he has ended the struggle and he gets the name.   And then we saw this wild thing and that is that he from there--before we get back to the story of Leah and Rachel, which is so crucial--he from there goes and makes currency. Vayichan pnei hair. And it makes a great deal of sense.  Because when you have currency, you have an abstraction from the circumstance of bartering. And wow! You know what happens, You get to the point where you write a letter on g-mail so you get, you know I had a ceratin question in Torah, and when the guy answers you, you get six advertisements for sites that are dealing with different things in Torah. You write to someone and then cling! you have the whole world at your fingertips of this thing which you mentioned which is important to you. Because there is currency, because you have matbeah, now you have a situation in which you have the enitre world that is relating, really to this particular thing that is motzei chen b'ainecha, that you find particularly attractive and interesting to you. That's what he did when he made vayichan et pnei hair, when he made the chen of the city of Schechem, he made it possible that the entire planet would become available to, to the evil people to,  but to the Tzaddik who knows exactly what he needs in order to further the expression of G-d's will which he has become perfectly and exquisitely identified with. My gosh! Look what that did! That made the possibility of chen to be realized. If you remember the different between chen and yofi, because … the chen is really the place of the Tzaddik who has that kind of clarity and integirity to know exactly what it is that he's meant to rleate to. When an evil person gets access to e-mail and currency, it's the worst, because for them, it's not that the world was created for me to be channelled, but rather, the world is my possessions. Look at all these possessions, getting more and more bloated and egotistical with those possessions. But for Yaakov, when he has the clarity of becoming Yisrael, it's mamash a different story, And that's what allows him to say to Esav, yesh li kol, I have everything I need. It's all right here. And that's what makes is possible for him to want to make currency, to be mtaken the matbeah. So this is mamash what Shlomo HaMelech teaches, and this is what's problematic about chen, when he says, sheker hachen v'hevel hayofi. What does it mean chen is a lie and yofi beauty is a breath, a vanity, something that is passing by? It's the deepest thing. What is chen? I can't even translate chen into English. It's the craziest thing like in English, a beauty mark, in Hebrew is a nekudat chen, because really a beauty mark is not really a beauty mark, it's a blemish. But a beauty mark is beautiful in the eyes of the person who's seeing it. Ah, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Cut the garbage! Beauty has an absolute standard! We talked about this on Chanukah. beauty has an absolute standard, symmetrical, fit, clear complexion, we all know about this, but that destroys the possibility for right  relationships between people, because the standard has become also the standard for what people are meant to think is meant to be chen.  But the truth is that the blemish becomes nekudat chen for someone because someone likes the way it looks. Chen has to do with your personal experience to it. Which is real when you have exactly of who you are and what it is you are doing.  Then your wife will have chen, the place you live will have chen, the things you have have chen, and you only keep them if they have chen, because you are integrous [have integrity--DG] enough to know when they are meant for you or when they're not.  And in steps beauty into the picture. Now beauty is a very good thing. But beauty has little to do with relationship. Beauty has to do with truth and what is absolute. And what is a standard that is to be met or not met. Chen is always in the Chumash. Motzei chen b'eynav, lo motzei chen b'eynav, finds chen in his eyes, doesn't find chen in his eyes. It's all relational. Thats why Shlomo Hamelech says, sheker hachen, because sheker is a lie. Why is chen a lie? Because it's not measurable by any set standared. I cannot tell you if this table is motzei chen in your eyes, you have to tell me if it's motzei chen in your eyes. I can tell you if it is yafeh. Because there are ceratin standards for what yofi is. But I cannot tell you if it is motzei chen. It is a very real and crucial point. Because people are always is comparing their mates and their possessions and everything is in comparison, that's why kinah is a result of yofi, which is the world of yefet and yavan, which is just the straight-line kind of television models or cars that fit some--  It has nothing to do with chen, it only has to do with yofi, so everyone is competing and dropping because it's no longer yafeh, because yofi is hevel. Yofi is always passing. Nothing stays yafeh forever. Matter disintigrates. It's hevel, It's like a breath. So chen has no absolute, it's sheker. It's falsehood in a sense, which is the opposite of emet. Yofi is hevel in that it never stays, it's gonna pass. Beautiful today, maybe ten years from now, or however, well he's beautiful in my eyes, So you're talking about chen. That's chen. Very important difference. Money gives you access,--when it's right-used money-- to chen. What is motzei chen b'eynecha? Now again, if you're an appetite-filled, unclear, grabbing, need-to-be aggrandized and bloated person, so that's dangerous. You don't want that guy having too much money. And he's going to do everything he can to get it. Because he needs more and more and more to satisfy an endless and unsatisfiable [insatiable] desire to feel significant and important. Because the less clarity he has, the less integrity he has, the more he needs to give himself a sense of selfhood and worth. But the more clarity he has, and sensitivity to the exquisite detail of what's shayach and not shayach, of what belongs and what doesn't belong, whatever you give me that's fine, and if you give me money to access more, so then I will build something with it that's appropriate, and has never taken from someone else because I'm lvado, I'm completely alone.   This is why Yisrael is able to only, in a sense, relate to Leah, as we showed last time, that when Yisrael becomes Yisrael --what I just showed you now was right after he becomes Yisrael, named by this other person (or through his internal struggle, or through Esav, or splitting from his identical twin, or his twin brother), so now he has created this currency, …so then when he becomesYisrael as we saw last time, Leah emerges as his only zivug, and Rachel dies.  But this is the Leah who was, if you remember, the first one to bring hodaya into the planet. As I explained to you in Chanukah, which is the holiday of chen, Leah was the first one to be modeh. Her first three children were about he loves me, he loves me not, etc. She was playing with daffodils. Reuven--G-d sees that I'm suffering; Shimon-- G-d sees that I'm hated; Levi-- wait a minute, is he going to walk with me? He will walk with me. Yehudah, now I'm modeh to G-d. What happened? And Chazal taught us she was the first one to do this. Who is this person? This is the first time in the Chumash that someone has done that. No one has ever done that before. This is the most important thing we do in our spiritual relatinoship with G-d. We do it every morning when we wake up, Modeh Ani. What's going on? She's the first one to do that, the Gemara says (on daf zion in Brachos.) And Rashi says, why? Because now I have more than the givens.  Now I've become unique. The cheshbon was three children to each mother. Four mothers, three children to each mother. Ding. Four. That's me. That's not a mechanism or a function to bring the right number of children into the world. That's something special I've just been given and gifted with. That's my meod. That, we said, is mamon, so to speak--that's my extra. When she got to Yehudah and malchut, kingship, [then her] independence became possible; she no longer looks at her husband as he loves me, loves me not, she now knows exactly, it's a symbolic. I know she's got only one other kid there.   But there's a principle that Chazal want to teach us. That's something just came into the world. That is someone's consciousness that I have something more than someone else.(Or not so much more than someone else-- that would be the Esavian or beautying way to look at it. Not more than someone else. She doesn't say that.)  She says, yoter m'chelki. More than my portion. Right? I had a certain portion, and my cheleck was supposed to be three. Now I'm in my meod, my more, that's becausehol meodecha, mamoncha, that's my identity. (28:08) There's something about me that's becoming realized as unique and special, that's Leah. Leah brings that consciousness into the world and that is olam habah consciousness. We didn't take this last time. And it's the simplest thing in the world to see this. What are you going to take with you when you leave your body? It will only be your meod. It will only be that which is your unique flame, your unique light, identity, your reality you'll leave that behind. It's your light that you take there to olam habah. Leah is the one who knows olam habah, that's where she lives. So she's the one who brings to the planet this realization of joyous creativity of expression, manifestation and particular identity that is meant to be mine…because olam hazeh is our reality are bumping together, we don't have exactly what's mine, what's yours, what's the common and what's the unique, it's very confusing down here, everyone is trying to buy out everyone else and get their stuff and it's all like contest. And olam habah: forget it, man, there's no kina, no tacharut, there's nothing, there's only what you realized of your unique selfhood in this world. That's what you take there. That's Leah.   And the deepest thing, Chazal teach, is that the consciousness of Leah. They teach it in a mashal about how crucial the clarity about where that comes from is. Because this could be the most egotistical, self-aggrandizing, bloating experience, when it becomes it's all about me. I see Rav Daniel is teaching all about me, I can't wait to get out there. It's all about me becoming myself! That's filth, that's preciously the opposite of what Leah knows. Because Leah is hapam odeh et Hashem. And I'll just tell to you straight up in a mashal, as much as a mashal can be straight up. Chazal say that Rabbi Brechia ben Rebbe Levi taught the following mashal. I'll tell you a story about a cohen. The cohanim get tithes. They go around to the granery, to the threshing floor, and there they're given the tithes. So this cohen goes to someone who's got a kur, a bushel of wheat to give this cohen. He brings out his servants to shlep it out to this cohen, it's a tremendous amount of stuff [wheat] that he's giving him, and the cohen doesn't say anythign to him. So the guy has got these servants shlepping this bushel of wheat down the street, and someone comes out of the next threshing floor and gives him a handful of grains. So he turns to that person and says, thank you. So the guy who gave him the bushel is watching this happen. He says, What just happened? What about me? Why weren't you machzik tovah to me? So he answers him, because you gave me mine. But he gave me his. On this it says, hapaam modeh et hashem. That's the midrash from Bereshit rabah. Astounding. Because what came here is that-- from the gemara all we had was I've gotten more than my portion. She was only self-reflecting. But from the midrash we have an entirely new opening and that is, when G-d gives you your givens. The things that are coming to you, not that we are not to be makir tov, chas v'shalom, we are makir tov that we have five fingers on each hand, we can see, we have bodies, we have minds, thank G-d for all that. But in English, you can't make the proper dinstinction.  Because hodaya is about, thank you G-d, you gave me mine, by creating a human being, basically you have a certain level of entitlement to these things. That's by definition what it looks like to be a human being. Ah, but when You gave me of Yours, that's when You gave me more of my expected portion,  that's when You gave me the possibility for creative and unique and specific expression. That's You, G-d, You mamash gave me of Yours, You made me godlike,.   That's what the parable's about, not just the nimshal of having more than her chelek, she had the realization of this is G-d coming through me now, it's not about me, it's about me being for Him, of Him, this is such an amazing midrash. It's teaching this entire perspective which becomes the other aspect of hod. Because hod is the glorious light-filled expression of a person's particular identity we're seeing when things become manifest. But hod also means to be modeh, it also means to acquiesce, accept, admit. That's funny, the same word means both glorious, light expression, and to acquiesce, accept and admit, because if it has only the one side of glorious expression, then it is without connection to the very One whose very being is that, glorious and unique expression. (36:00) So Yisrael, who has this depth of clarity and Leah who has this depth of clarity, they are the ones who come together.  They are the meeting of the inner reality of each of them in a way in which their uniqueness merges. That's really, in a sense, ultimate zivug, when both members of it are so clear, and then the ultimate of it is when their point of identity is at one with one another. The thing that makes them light up, the thing that makes them uniquely expressed, is at one with one another, it's at full complete identity with each other, that's already the highest madrega of the possibility for zivug and it is, as we explained, e'eseh lo ezer knegdo--the lo is gematria Leah. So it's important to me to add these elements to us. And there's one other thing to add. We'll explore these together shortly. I just want to point one other thing out. And that is a most beautiful thing that happens later. The end of that little piece with Leah it says (37:52) vtam …mledet it says she stops giving birth. But then, couple of pesukim later, she starts giving birth again, So she's kind of finished this chapter of personal realization, she was hated, she 's worried, she's in pain, he will join me, I'm with G-d. Then something new happens… Remember, please, that Yehudah is the origin of malchut. The king will come from him. His name, Yehudah, is yud and heh and vav and heh, it's G-d's name with a daled. The daled is being the fourth child. The daled is a remez to the most important person who is to come from Yehudah, and that is David. And the awareness of real hodaya, man, you just open up Tehillim, and you've got it. That's what he becomes expression of, in clear, divine expression coming through him, Tehillim is like, that's it. If you ask anyone what book in Tanach, yeah, Tehillim, that's Yehuda, but Yehuda, in this hod-like fashion, and in this malchut which now becomes the personality of all of the other elements now becoming integrated and realized as one integrous [intergal--DG] personhood or being or selfhood, when that's done, then Leah has another child. That's very interesting to me because what happens is we're back in parshta Vayetze, and we're told in chapter thirty that Rachel gives over her shifcha and then Leah gives over her shifcha and then in verse fourteen, Reuven, her first born son goes for a walk and v …chitim.., he finds dudaim in the field and he brings them to Leah, his mom. Rachel says to Leah, give me them, so she says, you've taken my man, you're going to take my dudaim, too? So Rachel says, you can sleep with him tonight. So Yaakov sleeps with her, she goes out and takes him in and this whole thing here, and she says to ki sachor scharticha in verse sixteen, I have hired you out tonight with the duduaim of my son.  Vayishkav ima balayla hu. Then G-d hears Leah she has a fifth child. Who is this fifth child? Well, she names him Yissachar, but if you look in the Hebrew in verse eighteen, so the name Yisasschar is wrongly spelled. It's got two sins, Yisasschar, but you only say Yisasschar, why do you have two? What is that? Why does she call him that? So, she explains, in verse eighteen because I gave my shifcha to my husband. Huh? What are you talking about? You're calling him Yisasschar because you hired him, right? Because you sachor scharticha. That's what she said, come on, own up. But instead, what she said is, the reason I had this child is because I gave him to be with my shifcha. What are you talking about? I believe she is telling us about the world of sachar, about reward. You see, in the overt world of course, sachar scharticha, my hiring you is why I got this child. But in the secret world, the reason why I got this child is because I gave you up. That's what she says. More deeply, I gave me up I gave myself up. I turned over, that Yaakov should be with my shifcha. That's not a nice thing for a woman, she has given herself up. There's a self-abnegation there. It's gonna come through her, not me. Hmm. That becomes the world of sachar, and I'll tell you in the simplest way. That clarity which takes a person to his chelek in olam habah, will only be rewarded with sachar there, if the reward wasn't taken here. If while I was doing it, it was about me getting the pleasure of whatever, the pleasure of ego, or living a meaningful life, or whatever subtle pleasures.  That's a really subtle one, that's a hard one to give up. But there are more or less subtle measures of how much you are doing it because of your outer reality, and how much are you doing it because of your inner truth that you're allowing to be realized through you. So she says, I did this one, not for me. Because I gave up myself, now I have sachar. And that's literally what Yisachar is, yesh sachar…So hear this: She got the Yisachar, by virtue of dudaim. Dudaim are Davidyaim, it's David. The midrash points it out, I have to find it again. Davidaim, in other words, that dodaim, which is loving, is the dudaim, is the dod, which is David. (I guess it got polluted in English, the dude. But in Hebrew, it's dudaim. I don't know if that's true, I just made that up.) So David is this is the world of the sachar that only malchut can know when the expression is one in which is G-d flowing through rather than it being about me. (47:00)   You see here, this is exactly what she says, this sachar here, you know how you get sachar? And Chazal actually say the yesh is actually the amount of sachar that a person gets, it's a funny kind of Chazal, they say, l'hanchila…yesh …mamale, that I will give an inheritance to those who love Me. What's the inheritance of yesh? That I will give you an inheritance of reality. Where? Chazal say in olam habah, that's where you get the yesh, Here that's not where you get the yesh. Here she says, yesh sachar--by virtue of my not having taken for myself here. So what I'm doing with you today is I'm seeking to fill out a picture for you of why the zivug of Yisrael and Leah are so united, it's so intimate. But the deeper picture of what I wanted us to have really, is how that when it happens for a person when that integrity is realized and when that clarity is had-- of that particular light that is meant to be spoken through me-- so that is the deepest and greatest intimacy with G-d. So much that G-d says to Yaakov, you're a G-d, and the opposite of that is the nachash, who also tells them the same thing.  That's why the Rabbis say, if you don't bow down at Modim , then when you die, your spine turns into a snake. Huh? Bleh! Why? Because bowing down at Modim is an indication that I understand that the deeper level of Modim is acquiescence to, is acceptance in front of You, G-d, not giving up my creative expression and uniqueness, but rather that it's flowing through me as an expression of Your deepest will, and my greatest identity with You in joyous creativity which is binah, that's probably the best translation I can think of of aym habanim smaycha. Joyous creativity, that's binah. If you don't bow down, you stand up, then you belong to the other side. But it's not that he [the snake] was saying something completely wrong, he was just doing it out of separation rather than connection. That's all. If you eat from this tree then you will be like G-d. Why? Because you will be able to relate to what's motsei chen b'eynecha and what's not.  I'm going to put that aside for now, but the point is, this is a very deep intimacy with G-d and it becomes when the relationship is one of chen between us. And it's the deep rachamim which is the rachamimn which Yaakov expresses. Chazal say he is the mavriach hatichon, he is the center pull and the center life that flows through all. To bring us back to what we touched upon last time, that he is the center life and the center line of it all, mavriach hatichon the bar that goes through everything and unites it all,  that's the unity consciousness that unites it all. Here we're looking at it from the realization of selfhood and personhood that allows for that. It's not going to be some amorphous cloudy, thing, just like the Chazal says, a person that says hallel every day is a blasphemer, Macharef umgadef. (51:55)  He's like, you're making fun of G-d when you say hallel every day. People in their overdrive-religiosity, can't take what I was saying before that like, of course, you're supposed to give thanks that you have two hands, two arms, ten fingers well, what do you mean? Of course, you give thanks.  No, let's make distinctions, because if we don't have distinctions, then you will not have intimacy as we've learned. We only have intimacy because we have clarity of distinctions. So there is a distinction between hakarat hatov, which is I've been given what everyone has, thank you, and hodaya, which is my special thing, this is where you gave me Yourself, G-d, right? That's deep. That only happens there when there is that realization. Am I repeating myself? I am not sure if I am just saying the same thing over again. Just checking in. (Circles of righteousness) Holy circles. So I'd like to share with you a piece of Chassidus in which the Baal HaTanya expresses Yaakov and Yisrael and aspects of them. I just want to begin something here. There is a verse in the Parshat Bilaam: (54:41) That verse talks about Yisrael and Yaakov because they both remain. So here: …it remains extant even though Yaakov has had his name changed to Yisrael. Nevertheless, Yaakov and Yisrael remain names that he is called by…and the truth is they are two different aspects in which we relate to G-d. It's the aspect of being a servant and an aspect of being a son, a child. (Quoting the Hebrew verse)…As the verse says, hear me, Yaakov my servant…. See, Yaakov 's experience of life and the so-to-speak externality of our living is the aspect of servant. We've been commanded to perform certain actions, and we are all, in a sense, sort of in common with that. There's things that need fixing, things that need tuning and we're all responsible to make sure for the maintenance of the planet, for the maintenance of society, etc. A servant in his relation to his master, is always being given things to do because there is always what to do. A child, though, will also be given things to do by his father, by his mother, but they are giving him these things to do, but not because they are things to do, but because they want the child to grow. Think about it. The real deep intent of a parent with a child. Look, maybe they need some farmhands around the house, or to get things cleaned up, etc. okay, so you might be functioning with your relationship with your children as servants. There are servants on various levels. There are servants on the level of, there is something that needs to get done, or there might be servants on the level of I need to feel good about myself, so I need you to look good. That's also a child servant, like you're my little jewel, Henry. What do mean, you're my little jewel? Yeah, I like wearing you on my collar. You better look good. That's where parent-child relationship is one of servant. That's where it goes wrong. But it can be right also, if things just have to get done, but you really don't want a servant for that, so to speak. But then, there's when you tell your child because you want your child to grow and you know if she doesn't clean the dishes, then what kind of person is she going to turn out to be?. And a deep loving parent with their child will always have that as their primary intention and desire, I want you to become the most you can become. I want you to become fully realized.  So I'm telling you what I'm telling you because on the chitzoniut, it needs to get done, on the outside aspects. But on the pnimiut, it's because I love you and care about you and want you to become the most you can be. That's the real kavanah of parent-to-child [relationship]. So there is also the bechinut, of so-to-speak of G-d with us, which is Yaakov, which is listen, there is work to be done. The world needs people to take care of it. Get moving. But the pniumiut of Yaakov is through the relationship of G-d to us as ben, as child. Do you know why there is so much work to be done? Because I want you to go out and be the most realized and unique realization of what your particular being is that you could possibly be. That's when I flow into a realization through you, that's why Yisrael's name has G-d's name in it. Because that's also really when a paren'ts flows through the child. Their love. Because really, that's what's coming to expression. We can all own up to that--it's all about us flowing through the child. Of course we want the child to be the most he can be because that's our growing. And when the child directs that and knows exactly where to take that, wow. So then even though, so to speak, on the external vision of it it doesn't look exactly what it is we were looking for. But in the internal we say, wow, nitzchu li banai, my children have defeated me. That's good, I like that. Because, b'pnimiut, they're really bringing out something so deep that you or I wouldn't be able to realize in effect were it not been for them and their particular and specific place.  That's Yisrael. Ani bchori, my first born child. (Questions. I'm an older generation and a lot of what you said to me reaffirms a lot about getting oler. You reach a stage where you better understand yourself, and that brings you closer to G-d because it's accepting who you are and the beautiful parts of yourself. My husband just retired, we were talking about well, what are you going to do with your time now? He says, "I'm going to throw away a bunch of stuff." He doesn't owe himself to his job anymore. He's looking forward to it. As you said, you can't do that unless you know what you need. That's interesting too, that a job can make you need a lot of things you don't really need. My question is when Leah had the fifth child, was this after Yaakov had his battle? ) Before. (So she reached the spot before Yaakov did that she was comfortable with herself and she was OK) That would be one way to describe it.  …I like it when you ask, it's not like I know all the answers.

Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God. Synopsis: Yaakov's internal struggle, going back for the pachim ketanim and the idea of bchol meodecha   Episode Transcript: Last time we met, we were revealing aspects of Yaakov, who became for us the image of someone whose experience of life is as one organism in which G-d is flowing with life through it all, and his love of G-d is one in which is described in Chassidut as an attachment to G-d which knows atah mechayed kulam: that You are the One Who gives all life. And that experience of G-d as One who is giving all life is the experience in which, in a sense, all belongs to G-d, but not in the same way in which we saw with Yizchak, in which all is indeed G-d, there is no other than Him. The revelation in which He's absolute and unique, in which there's no other existence at all that was the revelation of Yizchak.                 With Yaakov, it was the revelation of what's called echad, in which the multiple parts and aspects of a diverse creation are all unified together in one organism, in one unity in which all is participant really in one body, and we saw that was reflected in the way in which Yaakov is known by Chazal to be the one whose beauty is like the beauty of Adam HaRishon. And that beauty which is the beauty of Adam HaRashon, is really the depths of what beauty is, because beauty as it's experienced through Yaakov is very deeply related to truth, because the nature of the truth-aspect of beauty is very important. And we saw that there is actually a struggle between an attitude towards truth, on Chanukah when we met, which is that "aesthetic" is some absolute orientation, meaning that it is touching the fiber of the way things are, you know, and so if something is beautiful, it's aligned with that, and if it's not aligned with that, it's not beautiful. With an experience of life as having ultimate representation or not having ultimate representation.                 We'll leave the issues around beauty aside. Yaakov is the one who is able to -touch all of reality by virtue of it being interconnected as one being. And the beauty of Yaakov, the Rabbis say, is the beauty of Adam HaRishon before the fall into the chet, in which Yaakov is actually a personification of Adam HaRishon, and the Rabbis say it also when Yaakov asks for Rachel and he says, give me my wife and I will be with her. So there Rashi says, that's no way for people to talk, who talks like that? Even the scoundrals in the shul don't talk like that? You're talking about getting married, or are you just talking about sleeping with her? So the way the mefarshim explain that is because Yaakov was on such a high madrega of being not divested of body, but experiencing body in a way that Adam HaRishon experienced body, in which the organisimic interconnectedness of all was so apparent, that for him to sleep with her, that's the lashon of zivug, of boah, of I will come into her. Because why? Because we're all one body, so I am really going to be merging with her, it's not really in the sense of a sexual impulse, it means I'm really going to come into her.  And he was totally innocent in the way he was saying that. When a scoundral in the shuk says it, it's a scoundral in the shuk saying that. But when it's Yaakov saying it, it's a reflecting of this experience of us all essentially being one.                 So we explored aspects of that and I want to continue into one other element which happens in the story of Yaakov which is crucial for us to understand the nature of his relationship with G-d. If you remember, we also had some primary exploration of the way in which Yaakov relates to money and creative output. And what we're referring to later becomes revealed the beginning of the story of Chanukah and with our battle with Yavan. And so we can take something out of this that we are meant to take out of Chanukah, aspects of this which we discussed on Chanukah and which I want to continue to bring out about.                 I think we explained that there are three ways of loving G-d. There's vahavta et Hashem elokecha bchol lvavcha, bchol nafshecha and bechol medoecha. And we explained that the way of loving G-d bchol lvavcha is the way of loving G-d of Avraham, with all of his heart, including his yetzer harah. The way of Yitzchak is bchol nafshecha: he gives up his life, there's nothing other than G-d, and the way of Yaakov was bchol meodecha, afilu hu notel et mamoncha. Your love of G-d will be revealed in your willingness to sacrifice even your mamon. Now what would that be? That in sacrificing your mamon would be such a high and profound experience of something that so deeply belongs to you that to give it up is a demonstration of your love of G-d. If your experience of life is one in which you are organismically connected to those things which are your extension, your meod, which is your creative output. And those things which belong to you, so you're experiencing your connectedness to them, not as something which is a tangent, or other, outside of you, separate from you, reality. You are in that. It's like someone has a truly dear creative expression of something which they have made,  their life is in that. And that's deeply and profoundly connected to them such that they experience that as being one with them. This is why the Rabbis interpret meod, as having to do with money is also the letters A-d-(a)m, because Adam Harishon experiences all as being what belongs to him and therefore is a very part of his life.                 This is the deep meaning of what the Rabbis teach us in the mishnah in Sanhedrin, when they ask, Why was man created alone? And the answer: well, so everyone would be able to say, bishvili nivrah haolam. What is that about? Because the first man was created alone, that means that everyone can say bishvili nivrah haolam? I mean, I wan't created alone, there were lots of other people in the room with me. There were lots of other people being born there with me, so why does man's being created alone indicate bishvili nivrah haolam? And more, Yaakov is the only one who we're told he is left alone, lvado. And that's a crucial depiction, because G-d says, lo tov heyot adam lvado, in the beg of Bereshit. It's not good that man be alone.    And yet, when Yaakov is about to meet Esav, so something happens, a crucial event in Yaakov's history. Yaakov, after he prays to G-d and sends the gifts and prepares to go to war regarding Esav, so then Yaakov gets up in the night in chapter thirty-two, verse twenty-two, he gets up in the middle of the night, takes his two wives, his two shvachot, his eleven children, and takes them across the Jabok. And he takes them and moves them over the riverbed, and he takes all that belongs to him. Vyivater Yaakov lvado- but he remained alone. Vyavek ish imo ad alot hashachar. And there was a man that fought with him until the dawn came. …And he saw that he could not defeat him…so he touched him in the hollow of his thigh, and the thigh bone became dismembered in the middle of this wrestling. And in the middle of this mysterious scene, Yaakov is described as the one who is left lvado. So we really have Adam Harishon not only before the chet, but even before he has woman separated out from him. He's completely alone. Assuming he's alone, and again, he's the only one who is lvado since back in lo tov lyhot ha Adam lvado, something that allows him to be lvado. Now, what's worse is exactly what the problem that G-d says is the problem of the lvado, happens to Yaakov. And what I'm referrring to is as Rashi explains, Why is it that… so people might do something very bad, they might say that just like there's one G-d up there, so there's one G-d down here. People get confused. So he must have an ezer knegdo--eheseh lo ezer knegdo,--and then everyone will see that he's like all the other creatures of the planet. That's what Rashi speaks in the second chapter of Bereshit, where that verse is.                 (14:47) But let's look at chapter thirty of Bereshit, when Yaakov comes home to the city of Shchem, which is in Canaan, he's come back from padan Aram. …. He does something chendik to the city, he encamps there or does something chendik, we'll see how these things are related. …He buys a field there where has put down his tent. He pays the price. …He makes a mizbeach there….And he called him G-d, the G-d of Israel. Whoa, what's going on here? Who called who? Who's talking to whom? So Rashi on that verse says, not that the mizbeach, the altar, is calling him Elokei Yisrael, but rather that G-d is with him, so he called the mizbeach according to the miracle He has done. G-d has been my G-d--He has saved me.                 But then Rashi says, You know what? The Rabbis have a different take on this verse. They say, that G-d called Yaakov an el. That G-d called Yaakov "G-d." Whoa! So on this the Rambam says, Why would G-d call Yaakov G-d? What kind of G-d is He/he? So on this the Rambam says, there's actually a medresh on this that I can't reveal to you because it's a deep secret, but it says that what this is actually teaching is that G-d in Mesechet Megillah, calls Yaakov kel, and in Bereshit Rabbah, it teaches that Yaakov said to G-d, You are G-d in the Heavens and I am a G-d on the earth. Oh no! He says, Yeah, this is a remez to what it teaches, that the image of Yaakov is engraved on the kisay hakavod--on the throne of glory--meaning apparently, that Yaakov indeed is some kind of perfect represenation of the divine in the world. You in the elyonim, and me in the tachtonim, and oh my gosh, this is exactly what Rashi said would happen if someone was left alone! When it says, lvado, so it actually happened and it was none other than Yaakov that did it? What's going on here? What does this mean that Yaakov experienced himself as the divine?                 Now understand that Yaakov became alone when he went back to save his money, possessions, his pachim ketanim. On Chanukah we talked about that when he went back for the pachim ketanim, he risked his life, because, as Rashi says that Tzaddikim don't steal, they only have what is truly theirs. And in only having what is truly theirs, it is so dear to them, even more than their bodies are. Because their bodies, well on a certain level to them, compared to what they have come to realize in their lives, money being an abstraction or representation of that, their bodies are like dead matter to them in comparision to what they have creatively realized of their lives.  And it's become a life force of theirs which has become embodied by their creative output, and they have their life force in those things which has been made by them. This sounds awfully godly.                 If you experience G-d as the One Who is the life force that maintains all that is, and it's all one organism in which G-d's life force is running through it, so, my life force is also moving through those things which I am a participant, a creater of. This is a very deep consciousness, which is one that leads to Yaakov being, in a sense, being alone. What does it mean to be alone? It means that it's all one organism, so there's nothing outside of me. What, there's something outside of me? I mean, we're all living in one divinely enlivened reality as one body which is called in Kabbalah as Adam Kadmon who becomes realized in flesh as Adam Harishon, who the Rabbis say indeed included the entire universe. And what the Rabbis teach us, we accept, so Adam Harishon had that same glorious beauty that Adam Harishon had. [You said that, that not my editing-DG]                 He's going back for these pachim ketanim. He's left alone. He's now realizing life as being one organism. And that is a consciousness that leads him to relate to what has become his, belongs to him, as being at one with him. So get this fascinating and deeply troubling phenomennon. So there he is, alone. Vyavek ish imo… He's alone, but someone's fighting with him. But how is it that he's alone, but someone's fighting with him? So the midrashim indicate that what's happening for Yaakov is actually an internal struggle that's goingon. He's fighting with himself., He's fighting with two aspects of himself. In fact, the Rabbis say, Vyavek…(24:10) that this avak, went all the way up to the image of Yaakov which is on the kiseh hakavod, so that now, this avak that is covering the kiseh hakaovd, is the same dust that is being kicked up by the struggle that he's having with this person.  So that it's all in one cloud, basically, of dust. It's a struggle that's happening while Yaakov is alone. Yes, and yet there are midrashim that say, oh, come on. I'll tell you who he was fighting with. He was fighting with Esav--Esav's spiritual manifestation. He was fighting with Esav's angel. So was he alone? Was he with Esav?                  What happens to Yaakov? The verses tell us that what happens next is that he asks what the angel's name is. The angel says: we don't have names. But you've got a name. --Yeah, I've got a name, my name's Yaakov. --No, not any more.   I mean, I don't have the authority to change you name, but as a result of what's happened here, you're going to have a new name now. Your new name is Yisrael. --Why? --Because you have lorded over G-d. (24:54) Ki…elokim, vatuchah, maybe that sounds too radical, so you lorded over an angel of G-d. Well, later we may find that it may not be so entirely radical since Yaakov is being called "G-d" by G-d. So there's something in that name which may be more than we're used to relating to.                 But now, the strangest thing happens. Do you remember when the Rabbis say that Leah became ugly, or her eyes became soft, because she was crying so much about having to become the wife of Esav, She didn't want to become married to Esav, so she became married to Yaakov in answer to her prayers, Baruch Hashem. But in pniumiut, she's supposed to be the wife of Esav. Now take a look at this bizarre episode in Vayesehev, the next parshah. Chapter thirty-five, verse nine. So G-d appears to Yaakov. He's now returned from Padan Aram, and He blesses him. So this is how is going to be the realization of how Yaakov gets his new name. So G-d says to him, Shimcha Yaakov? Lo yikareh od shimcha Yaakov, ki im yisrael. Your name is not going to be called Yaakov anymore, it's going to be called Yisrael….and you'll have lots of children, this land is your land… and there Yaakov builds there that mazevah, as he said he would, and they're on their way to Efrata. Rachel starts giving birth, she has difficulty giving birth, and in the trial of giving birth, her myaledet says, don't worry, it's a boy, and as she dies she says Ben Oni--this is the son of my suffering-- but his father called him Benyamin.                 Rachel died there, on the way to Bet Lechem. This is all in one parsha--interesting. But that I mean graphically, the way the Chumash is divided. We have a paragraph here. The paragraph begins with Yaakov coming to this place Bet El, getting renamed and then Rachel dying. I realized a most astounding thing.for the first time at Chanukah. Yaakov loves Rachel. But Yisrael has no connection to Rachel at all.  Yisrael is married to Leah. And so as soon as Yaakov becomes Yisrael, Rachel's dead. No more Rachel, only Leah. He fights this, In fact, we have in the next verse: he tries to maintain his connection to Rachel by moving his bed in to the tent of the concubine who was Rachel's concubine. But Reuven says, We'll have none of this. Reuven sees right through it and he forces the issue, according to Chazal.                 But the point is: that woman who is the woman of the secret life, that woman who is the woman of olam habah, that woman who is the bechinah of eheseh lo knegdo. Meaning, there's ezer, there's knegdo, and there's lo, lamed vav. This it the third madrega, and it's one that Yisrael has of utter and complete belonging. Of living again as one organism. It's the secret life that underlies the overt level of separateness, because in the external reality indeed Yaakov is Yaakov, and he's worked hard, and he's loving Rachel, who's the alma digalyah, the revealed world as we saw in the Zohar, and he's needing to overtake Esav, and grabs his heel, and he's behind him, I'm going to go slow, and eventually I'm going to get there, and all the things we saw about Yaakov and process and externality and a reality in which things are gradually unfolding.                 But it's Yisrael who truly lives the secret life which underlies all of reality and makes it echad. So by him it's not ezer, and it's not knegdo, which have to do with Avraham and Yitzchak, as we learned. Here it's the pasuk, eheseh lo, because lo is gematria Leah. She's completely belonging to him in the same way he experiences his possessions. Not in a demeaning sense-- we hear "possessions" and we immediately think domination and domineering. It's not about that. It's real belonging. It totally belongs to him. They have actually become one. He has become lvado. He has achieved more than the androgynous condition again. (What?-DG) That is something which Yisrael only has with Leah. This realization of echad. By the way, it is Yisrael who we speak to when we say, Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad. And here is a very deep thing: the very first person who said that was Yaakov.                 Actually there are two places where that is spoken. One place, when Yaakov meets Yosef for the first time in twenty-two years. It says, Yosef cries on his neck, and it doesn't say that Yaakov is crying, so Rashi says, What the heck was he doing? Why wasn't Yaakov crying? So Rashi answered, he was saying, Shema Yisrael. Wait, who's talking to who? Shema Yisrael, listen up, Yisrael: Hashem Elokeynu, Hashem Echad. Who's talking?                 Verse twenty-eight in chapter forty-six, Yehuda is sent ahead of him, to Yosef, to show the way they get to Goshen. Yosef bridles up his merkavah, gets on it to go to Yisrael aviv, he appears before him, falls on his neck and starts to cry. And Yisrael says to him, I'm going to die now that I've seen your face, now that I know you're alive. What? I'm going to die now? Maybe that's why he was saying Kriyat Shema, because he knows he's going to die now. Well, that actually makes sense. Because the other place where Shema Yisrael appear, is in Vyechi. It says that Yaakov wanted to gather together his children and tell them what it's going to be at the end of time. So….Come together, and I'm going to tell you about what's going to be at the end of time. And then, nothing happens. He doesn't seem to have anything to say. He starts blessing them. Reuven, you're this… what happened? What a let down! It was about to happen--that's what we all want to know about, right? Nothing. (38:49) Well Rashi starts explaining. You know what happened, right? He wanted to. But then it disappeared. He thought he was going to have the revelation and it didn't come. However it is. So, he started wondering, hey, what's the deal with my kids? Did they also believe in one G-d? Maybe one of them has gone bad and that why G-d is blocking the revelation right now. He can't see the end of time. So he starts looking at them. Maybe there's a shemetz psul, something wrong with them.                 So you know what they say to him? They say, Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeynu Hashem Echad. Listen, Yisrael, Dad, Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad, only one G-d. So that's interesting. He's the first one to say it according to Rashi, and here we have them saying it to him. And you know what he said? Oh, Baruch Hashem, Baruch Shem Kvod Malchuto lolam vaed. That was his response. That's why we say that too. Because we're like the children of Yaakov when we say that. Shema Yisrael, Hey Yisrael. You're still here hanging on, one G-d. And then we also say his repsonse: Baruch Shem kvod Malchuto L'olam vaed.                 Now listen to this. Baruch shem kvod malchuto l'olam vaed, is the letters if you take the first letters of these words, b'Shechem Lo. Baruch Shem Kvod, that's the b'Shechem, and L'olamVaed, that's the lo. We can't go into the whole story of Shechem right now, but suffice it to say that there is a remez here to what the Navi say, what the prophet teaches, that in the end everyone is going to be worshipping G-d b'Shechem echad. In the end, everyone is going to be worshipping G-d b'shechem lo. It's all His. Schechem is like a katef, but Shechem is also a portion, and it's all going to be revealed as His portion. It's all G-d's reality. So that his repsonse then to them saying Shema…echad, is him saying Baruch shem… His malchut is revealed, his name is revealed (in?) all. Forever. So there really was a revelation of the end but it's the end that is here in the present. Because what is the end which is…(This line needs to be recovered) The realization that it's all G-d's manifestation in which His life flows through it all and it's all one body really. But we're used to saying that in space but it's also true with objects. So it's all one body. And so his children say to him, you know what, Yisrael, the ketz you want to be revealing? It's right here. It's all one reality, whether you're looking over time, whether you're looking over space. It's all G-d's so-to-speak body, his manifestation, His name. So he really did reveal the ketz.                 The Zohar says, don't think that he wasn't able to reveal the ketz. But how was he revealing the ketz? Rashi says, when he saw that when all of their disparate realities, oh man, did it all go wrong? Where is the echad? So they said, remember all those twelve stones that became one under your head? Because you're experience was of G-d's life force flowing through it all, here we are. We're the living reality of that. That's called knesset Yisrael, Here we are. Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad.  Ah, Baruch Shem kvod malchuto l'olam vaed. The Shechem, lamed vav, the Leah, the alma d'casa become revealed there as olam habah, literally, olam habah, as the Zohar teaches, Leah is olam habah. That's what he meant when he met Yosef.  This makes it a little more personally oriented. Because when he met Yosef, imagine that scene. Must be shattering-- twenty two years his son is gone, his son is dead. He thought the whole thing he was in the world for was shattered. No twelve children. The twelve tribes are gone. There's only eleven of them. Is this rife between his sons irreparable? What's going to be the end of me?                 Comes Yosef. What happens when he sees Yosef. My G-d, it's all one. All that crazy stuff when he was gone and away, and they fought, and they tried to kill him, and in the end they sent him away, and he became the viceroy, and now he's going to keep us all alive? Wow, And that, by the way, become Yosef's consciousness, because Yosef and his brothers in this week's parshas, his brothers come to him and can't talk to him and Yosef says, Listen, don't be afraid, you know why? Because G-d has sent me before you to keep you alive. What's that consciousness? That is utter and complete forgiveness. Because it's all been one life working itself out. What, am I going to get angry at my toenail now? It's just like walking me to where I need it to go   You people are all fine. You're all just part of the same body unfolding itself.                 Yosef inherits that vision, that's really why he's called the ben zkunim. He's the son of Yaakov in his old age. Come on, Yaakov in his old age? He still has a lot of years ahead of him when he gives birth to Yosef. So Rashi says no, because he's the one who has the wisdom of Yaakov. It becomes revealed in him in that realization of the oneness which allows him to give full forgiveness to his brothers, saying, it's just one life working itself out, it's really not about you and not about me as separate entities.                  So Yaakov achieved that awareness when he met Yosef. That's why he said, Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad.  He's teaching himself to be fully realized as Yisrael and now he's become so at one with the life of G-d that flows through, all that he can say is: Yes, You G-d are the G-d in the upper worlds, I am the G-d in the lower worlds. That doesn't mean he rules over the lower worlds, come on. That means that he's so at one with G-d's life in the lower worlds, that hey, is there something between me and You, G-d? It's Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem echad. It's one. I'm not losing the seeing of my children as twelve separate children and I will give them each a bracha. (47:33)                 But as it says at the end of the brachos that he gives them, they're all one, he doesn't see them as separate, even though they have different realities. That's lo. That's eheseh lo. It's not a loss of otherness. And it's not a melding into completely unified reality in which the different functions in place of each is not being realized. But rather, the different functions and places are being realized, but they're all being experienced as being part of one organism. You know your heart is different from your elbow, is different from your eye, is different from your ear, but they're all one body. That's not the unity consciousness in which it's all one, nor is it the obliterating of there is nothing but Him. But rather, it's I'm alone. But not a lonely alone. I'm the most together alone I can be. So it becomes the realization of not the lo tov liyhot adam lvado but yivater ish lvado and the yivater is a remez to the meod. Vayivater. it's like he's left over. There's more in the reference to the meod which is his relationship with possessions . And so this produces kadosh Yaakov, who lives in full kiddushin with all, in full relationship with all. It's so intimate.                  The Mesilat Yesharim describes in one of the most beautiful passages in the book in which he describes what the kadosh is like, (Kadosh is a reference to Yaakov in the Navi) and he says there you should know that there's an experience of life of the kadosh in which everything that he uses of this world, he sees as being in connection and in communion with G-d's sanctity, and therefore all the stones joined together by Yaakov because he is always attached to the realization of G-d's greatness and life in the world, so everything that he touches in this world is an experience of the godly life which is in it. And so there is nothing that he touches, he goes on and explains.                 Mesilat Nesharim, chapter twenty-six, he tells us, (51:19), the meaning of sancity, he's so in communion with his G-d he never separates from Him. Everything he touches turns to gold, so to speak, everything he touches is divinity for him, they all are raising up their reality to G-d. He's touching it in it. (He's touching their divinity as he touches these things in their physical manifestation--DG) He doesn't come down when he touches them, he raises them up because he's in attachment with G-d and his contact with them. Everywhere he walks, everything he eats, everything he touches is experienced like that. Now, I believe that's Yisrael. That's the Yisrael of him. And that what it means that Leah's the secret life. That she is the revelation of how all that is is an organism within which G-d's life is flowing and my life is flowing… This is why, when Yaakov becomes Yisrael, Rachel disappears and only Leah remains. And at this point, we have, in a sense, a reconnecting with the life of the child in the womb of the mother in which the child is at one with the mother as it says " ubar yerech imo." Chazal say, fascinatingly the child is like the thigh of the mother when the mother is holding child is in embryo. The thigh! Gee, wasn't that what malach touched on Yaakov? It has to do with the thigh.  Why it has to do with the thigh is because the thigh is what in the Zohar is called "gufah" It looks like it's outside the body. Like your body ends here, like at the end of the torso, and you've got these legs dangling there. They look like they're something outside your body. No, no, they're part of your body. The malach is trying to push them apart. That's the fight. Am I a separate entity or am I one organism with him? Am I like the thigh of mother in the womb of her? Or am I some separate reality, like this other side of me is trying to convince me? But what he achieves in the battle there within himself and with Esav which is that other side of himself, and that's why, after he defeats the angel of Esav, which is the consciousness of separateness  which is what Yaakov was holding onto the heel of.  When he defeats him, so he gets Leah as his wife, who's the exact knegdo, the exact opposite of what Esav teaches, and now he can really be married to her, as he could not have been before.                 (Questions: The thigh is the strength of man?) The thigh, Chazal say, symbolizes money.  Mamon is l'raglam, is strength, gevurah. (Question: The thigh, the horse, people to take pride in?) The Rabbis teach that when this other side of him hit the thigh, so Yaakov lost control of the money of the world. Money becomes a very crucial issue from that point in time. Very timely. I'm happy to explore this for just a few minutes. In his going back for the pachim ketanim so he's actually not relating to money as power, he's relating to mamon as that which has been my creative expression. It's not power money, it's what belongs to me. So there's a midrash that says that at that point, he lost power money (It says he lost "power money"?) (Laughing) Well, no, they really didn't say it like that. The ruling over the world through mamon. Yosef regains that. I have to look it up, B"H.                 See, money is a whole subject involved, and use of mind. There's a lot going on there. Money is really in a sense, the first abstraction. Money is a unifier.  We're used to experiencing money as being a divider. And that's what happens when people get greedy and start hording money for its own sake. But the deep truth is that money is the unifying force for the planet. It's quite amazing. The Rabbis actually teach that money began with Yaakov at Shechem. When it says Vayichan et pnei hair, after his battle with Esav's angel, and his battle with himself, he encamped in front of the city. Rashi says he made it chendik. He did three things for them. He made for them shuks, he made for them places to wash, and he made for them coinage. Meaning that no more barting. They were actually thrilled that these Bnei Yisrael had showed up, because the midrash says they had a lot of manufacturing but they didn't have anyone to sell it to.                 So enter the Beni Yisrael, and we got this new big market now. What's the new big market? Yaakov and his children (inaud.) (1:01:03) Rashi says, we're going to make a lot of money here. But he says, it's not going to work without coinage. Let's abstract objects into their, so to speak, life-force. And that's what mamon is, it's abstracted into its life force  and so now that I have this ten-shekel coin, which I earned by talking to you for an hour or however, so now, I can take that life force and I can buy myself a package of mentos or a clementina. Really? And that's what happened? Yeah. It became abstracted into value, and it enters into the world of mind. And now that it enters into the world of mind, I can reapply it into some other object. It's the great unifier.  And it gets more abstracted until nowadays… initially it was a coin with some metallic value with the impriture of some Caeser or someone on it, and then that impriture became more valuable than the value of the coin, then not so long ago they said, the heck with the value of it, let's just put on the impriture. And that's when silver dollars go out. But it's the equivalent of some gold that we got at Fort Knox and if you really want it, you can go to the bank and we'll give you a piece of the gold that's in Fort Knox for that coin, or what do you need the coin for, it might as well just be a piece of paper! With a picture of someone on it. Until evenutally you can't even get it out of Fort Knox. Now they're talking, you don't need paper and you don't need coins. You just need pixels on a screen and all becomes one big marketplace. And it's truly marvelous because life force has become completely extracted  or, it's completely horrific when it becomes power. To lord over one another rather than connecting point to interact through.  That's why the real tikkun of money is in the chen, where it says, vayichen et pnei hair. It's in chen. What do you really care about? Don't tell me what you want, that's lording over. What has chen for you? So it could be that you need to work, and then abstract that work into a coin, and then chen, instead of I'll give you a banana if you give me an orange, or hoe my garden. We're going to abstract it now. It could be anything and the expansiveness and connectedness of all that is becomes manifest in money. You can buy anything anywhere. And now it's become impossible. The markets of the world have become tearing because of this. It can be anywhere. There people in China working for nothing producing computers so that these guys in DesMoines are out of work, what's going on there? What does that have to do with me? Well, there's only one life force interconnecting everything, now, isn't it? I don't really look at it that way-- they're taking away my money.                 You can see how this shift is so ready by abstracting, Yaakov introduced that with money. So Esav, you know how you're going to live money? The leg, which represents money  that's Chazal say both in the Zohar and when korach gets killed and everything that's by his legs. So Rashi says, What is everything that's by his legs? That's all his money, he was very wealthy. That's by his legs. Because what stands a person on his legs? Possessions. It's his money. But the pniumius is the legs themselves because it's what's outside you that causes you to walk around from place to place. So Esav or this malach is coming and saying, it's not you, it's separate from you, and you can pick it up and whomp people over the heads with it. Separate from you. That becomes the gid hanasheh. That's going to take a long time Yaakov says, until we come to that realization. But that day is going to come, that there is one G-d.   Vyom ha hu… He and his name will be one. Yihye, Yud-key-yud-key, leaving that aside. And then I'm going to be coming up to Har Seir and you hairy people who think it's all outside. (1:07:15)                 Yeah, it's very relevant now. Everything's teetering because of this crazy and disgusting greed that is the venom of money ultimately abstracted to the point of people not having homes, because they gave them up for money, I guess, I don't know, there are these double, triple, quadruple mortgages, houses people couldn't possibly ever pay for. The whole thing collapsed-it was just greed. It wasn't like the system needed to collapse.  Crazy. And look at the way the tentacles reach everywhere. You wouldn't have that if it were just a bartering world. Scratch my back, and I'll give you a piece of my corn. It limits how many interactions you can have around that.  But now the whole planet becomes like a big brain. With infinite interconnects that are producing the picture of the planet and the interrealitying nekuda is money and mind. I wonder if it had been Yisrael who had been the m'taken mamon. Maybe that wouldn't have the risk of such devolving into what it became. (Yosef came a little close to that…making a system around wealth and distribution..welfare in Egypt)  You're absolutely right and a lot of the playing with the money that Yosef does with his brothers is around that. Do you think it's about the money? Here's your money. Take your money back. Gee. Should we put the money back.. Eh, your money got to me, don't worry. Because money in the hands of people like you is going to become a contortion of the way money in the hands of a man of yesod is. It's probably not going to be connecting for you, it probably will be the point of divisiveness. Here, take your money back. It wasn't about that for me.  Yeah, there's a great deal of teachings about money that Yosef is doing to the Egyptians too. Finally they run out of money.   He's got all the money. (Laughing) Whatever.                 Jews and money, it's no small thing, it's no mystery. It's like ultimate tikkun or ultimate descent. Can blow it or make it.  The goyim have always know that. The money is with the Jews,  Rothschild. Madoff. He's small time; big time damage. (Inaud) Threw it out? Whatever it will be, just didn't own property, (inaud) couldn't so they just became money people. And it becomes the image of the abstraction because money is the abstraction. It becomes this abstract ghost people that holds the money. It's not simple. Because there's really great tikkun that's embodied there. All these things of great tikkun have the potential for the greatest disgrace.                   (Questions: Esav and his angel. It's another consciousness. Esav is another aspect of Yaakov. Two aspects of one person) When he gets a new name, he's evolved into a new person) (My question is Esav-oriented. What does it mean that Leah was supposed to be Esav's wife. You haven't talked much about who he is.)                 He certainly complicated the picture. In the Kabbalah, Esav is the ultimate separateness, the ultimate separativity, I don't know if there would be a word like that. Origin of the zayin malchim kadmachim, the seven primordial kings, of which said, I will rule. He's ultimate hierarchical consciousness in which one stands above the other and there is no one unifier. He is like a bunch of hairs in their separate follicles. (And Leah…) What would it had been had Leah been married to Esav? What tikkun might have occurred? (Or worse, he could have taken the strength of the secret world and destroyed it and abised her and this awful thing).                 It's not until allof the umot haolam share in this realization of Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hshem Echad, that tikkun will be achieved. This is what Rashi says, Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, the G-d who is known only to us to be the force behind all, now, and not by the umot halom, Hashem Echad, in the echad they will all be calling him Shechem Echad, they will all be worshipping Him in one chelek, and calling him by one name. That's how Rashi reads phsat in the verse. So ultimate there is some kind of marrying here, of them to that otherwise, there cannot be full realization of Hashem's name in the world, without the umot halom coming to realize it too. (It's no big deal that Yaakov's children might get it, but what about Esav?) Shechem is a very significant place. (How do we apply all these Torahs to our political and financial reality today?)                 I don't know that I'm a fully realized human being. I'm far from it, I know that I'm not. There is something about a knowing belonging. It has many hashlachot, certainly greed is not among … kirvah is not one of these… of one who has this consciousness, I wish I did live it, I have glimpses of it.                 How does it come down to the political realities? Should we be whomping our way in there and regaining control in there? Is that what it's about? I don't see it that way. I don't think it's a matter of using force in any sense. It is a matter of shifting consciousness. It really is. Once the British person in charge of Palestine (Chamberlain?) called Rav Kook in and said he heard that the Jews planned to take down the mosque and put up their Temple, is that the plan? So Rav Kook said when G-d will be revealed and the Messiah is here, the Moslems will take it down themselves. (Back to the money issue. The thing that's going to get us over ourselves and help us to get to the place of connectness of finances and money is that sense of oneness of Hashem Ehcad?) I think so, that's what tzedakah is about, that's what finding someone a job is, that's what sharing wealth is about, a consciousness of abundance… … (Kabbalah Center: Money. Is the intention G-d or is the intention youself? Are you using G-d for yourself?) These are life works. Is having G-d's name present always, as the one who is mchayeh u…hakol, who is enlivening and bringing into reality all, having the name being something that we can hold and being focused and contemplation on that. That is something that makes the shivyon of all reality alive in a way in which it is all equally his and He is the chariot (Shiviti Hashem lnegdi tamid) Which has the sense of both the placing before and holding equal in His name. But it's l'negdi. That's the Jewishness of it. It's the manifestation of things in their separate isn't G-d. He is enlivening them all equally. But they are alive. They are real. As opposed to Yitzchak consciousness which is also true consciousness, there is only Him. Shviti Hashem involves the negdi, the knegdo of otherness.  And that involves meditating on His name, realizing it in body and in life in what you meet. And it doesn't mean being a pauper either. It's not a sin to desire success and full realization of things we've been given in His service.                 When the focus becomes the mechanism of getting those things. Like Chaya was saying, if I use the mechanism, then it's going to come my way. When the focus is on the mechanism and not on the context--the context being that it is all in His service--that's when things go off, because you're just focusing on the means, and it just becauses mechanical. And that's just about me. That's the leumat ze. Lvado. That's the lo tov liyhot adam lvado, when it's all about me, when it's a consciousness instead of bishvili, that the world is in a relationship with me for me, rather it become haolam sheli, the world is mine. That's an Esav consciousness. That's why Esav hates mother. Chazal say the reason why Rivka never gave birth again is because he tore up her uterus on his way out.  He hates mother.  Because she is the place of embeddedness and consciousness of it's one organism.   Olam Habah is all devoted to him and all His life force flowing through it and you too. So he's the antithesis of that and therefore the antithesis of Leah and we haven't worked out how they are supposed to live together. He's the antithesis of that consciousness of olam habah. That's the depth of what Yaakov basically says to him, you just want olam hazeh,  because you want to own it all. You don't want bishvili, you want to live yesh li haolam, that I own the world, not that the world is for me. See, when the world is for me, in right consciousness, that creates the responsibility of wow, this belongs to me, literally, it's one pathway. We're in a shvil toghether. I'm guiding it and it's evolving by my doing. (Esav is focusing on the microcosm and Yaakov is following on the macrocosm) It's not just about a bigger picture, it's a different picture.

If you were to be told that the gate from an event in Jacob's life, and also a tower from the Book of Judges had been discovered, that would be a significant archaeological find. And that is exactly what had been found in Shechem among many other things. Thank you for listening! God bless you! Please subscribe, share and pray. See you tomorrow!

Today's guest is Kat Armstrong. Kat is a powerful voice in our generation as an innovative ministry leader and a sought after communicator. Kat is the co-founder of the polished network, a nonprofit that gathers working women to navigate career and explore faith in authentic community. She holds a master's degree from Dallas Theological Seminary and is the author of “No More Holding Back” and “The In Between Place.” She serves on the board of Pillar Seminary and is pursuing her doctorate at Northern Seminary starting in 2022. She and her husband Aaron have been married for 18 years and live in Dallas, TX with their son Caleb and attend Dallas Bible Church where Aaron serves as the lead pastor. In today's episode, Kat and I chat through her new book “The In Between Place.” We specifically talk about how now is the time to speak up and use your voice to impact and influence culture and why you should approach your career as assignment living rather than trying to find your one true calling. Lastly, we look deeply into the story of the woman at the well found in John 4 and how her story speaks to us today in the “in between place” in our lives. If you find yourself feeling stuck when it comes to your career, assignment or place in life, be sure to listen in.  Kat will encourage you as you come to see that Jesus is ready to meet you in the stuckness of life.   Books by Kat Armstrong:   No More Holding Back The In-Between Place Connect with Kat at: Website: https://www.katarmstrong.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katarmstrong1/ Polished Network: https://www.polishedonline.org Polished Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/polished.online Podcast: Apple Podcasts Link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-polished-podcast/id1154202161?mt=2 Google Podcasts Link: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9wb2xpc2hlZHBvZGNhc3QubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M  

Why was the city of Schechem destoyed?

Revival In Schechem-Dr. Roger Green

Psalms Series Pastor Jerry and Christina Carter Bible Centered Fellowship Odessa, TX

In this episode, we continue our discussion of Gideon/Jerubaal's military successes and the proposal which offered Gideon the chance to become the first King of the Jews. We then discuss Gideon's son Abimelech who unjustly tried to take the role offered to his father, and ended up massacring the people of Schechem. Afterwards, we discuss the judge Tola son of Puah focusing on different ideas derived from his name and his associated with the Tribe of Issachar. Finally, we discuss Jair the Gileadite and the Hellenistic Jewish tradition that brands him an idolater.

The Well Ministry w/ Rev.Pat - God's Plan of Salvation - Rachel and Issac's Death In Genesis 35, Jacob is fearful of the retaliation for what his sons did in Schechem. You have to listen to hear the full story. Thank you for listening, please share with someone. Purpose to reach the churched and unchurched. To expose all hearers to the unadulterated word of God with boldness and truth. To Glorify God in all that we do. To reach those who may not know Jesus in the pardon of their sins. All public contact information: The Well Ministry on Facebook revpathewellministry@gmail.com revpathwellministry@twitter.com revpathwellministry@instagram.com Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Storm Talk 365 Radio, any of the affiliates or concerned parties represented by the network. **We Do Not Own The Rights To Any Music. Or The Contents of This Podcast. Used For Entertainment Purposes Only** www.stormtalk365radio.com https://www.facebook.com/stormtalk365msb/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/stormtalk365radio/ https://www.facebook.com/stormtalk365msb/ Tags: rev.pat thewellministry biblestudy salvation religion spirituality religion Christianity wordofgod jesus saviour stormtalk365

Abraham - Faith, Fear, and Worship Genesis 12:1-3 God makes a covenant with Abram - God will change his name to Abraham later God promises him a nation, a great name, blessing and to bless all the nations through him. The stipulation: Abram must leave his country, kindred and his father's house and go to the land. Genesis‬ ‭12‬:‭4-9‬ 4a. It was no small thing to leave your family in those days. Abram would have left everything familiar: home, family, friends. But he trusted that God had something greater for him, so he left. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. (‭Hebrews‬ ‭11‬:‭8‬) God regularly calls his people to follow him out of comfort, out of security into a life of faith. He calls us to follow him even though we don't know where he'll lead. God calls you to trust him and follow his leading. Don't let the security and comfort make you miss God's plan for you. 4b. Abram took Lot with him - maybe not perfectly obedient, but seems to be out of generosity. Lot was Abram's nephew. Lot's father, Abram's brother, Haran died. 5. ch 11 mentions that Sarai is barren, so they have no children. 6. They passed through Schechem, to the oak of Moreh. Schechem is a city in Canaan near two mountains, Mt Gerizim and Mt Ebal. It is also near the oak of Moreh - literally, "oracle, soothsayer, or teacher." 7. God had promised this land to Abram, 8. God appears, "To your offspring I will give this land." Two problems 1) the Canaanites already lived there and 2) Abram and Sarai had no children. What was Abram's response? Anger towards God? Give up and go home? He built an altar to God there. Did Abram receive God's promise? Abram believed God's promise and worshipped him as though the promise was as good as fulfilled. He just set foot in Canaan and worships God at his word. We do not know the Lord's timing. We do not know his plan. Sometimes all we know is that the Lord is good and faithful to his promises. When Abram dies in ch 23, all he will own of the promised land is a cave for family burials. But he receives the promises of God by faith. Hebrews‬ ‭11‬:‭13-16‬ These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. They were strangers and exiles on earth. The patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) were nomadic because they did not receive the promised land. Their descendants wouldn't receive the land for several more generations. But the passage says more than that. They lived by faith in God. They aspired to more than land and property. They looked to a home beyond this existence, a better existence. They desired a home with the their God. God is not ashamed to be their God 8. he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord In the midst of the Canaanites, pagan idol worshippers, he "called", "proclaimed" or Martin Luther translated it, "preached" the name of YHWH. Genesis‬ ‭12‬:‭10-20‬ - In fear for his own life, Abram lies about Sarai, leads to her being taken into Pharaoh's harem. But God protected her, came to her rescue. Abram demonstrated faith by trusting God and leaving everything. Is God leading you to greater obedience, service? Don't stay in comfort zone Even though the land wasn't his, Abram believed God's promise and worshipped. Waiting for God? What to do in times of waiting? Worship God in faith.

Sunday morning sermon by Pastor Shannon Stanley on January 15, 2017. For more information on The Pentecostals of Bossier City, visit www.pobc.cc.

The Israelites in the valley of Schechem.

In this episode of Verse Per Verse, Amichai explore Genesis, Chapter 48, Verse 22, and the portion of Vayechi. The verse that Amichai has delved into focuses on the bracha, blessing that Jacob gives to his son Joseph on his deathbed. The translations in question are thw word for Schechem, which can be translated as mountain, or shoulder or portion or more specifically could reference the city of Shchem. Also, what are thw translations of the weapons bow and swords? Listen to find out.