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What is the main difference between praying and seeking God? It’s certainly not as obvious as finding the ones who wear luxury watches. Those who say, “I prayed and God answered me,” usually have only sought the L-RD in prayer once, and relied on their first impression of his will; yet this is dangerous, for to truly hear the voice of God, we must be sure that we have set our own desires aside first.

What does the Bible tell us about seeking the L-RD earnestly? We know that it means praying more than once about something; it requires confirming his will and making sure it is He who has spoken, and not just our own fleshly desires. But are there benefits to going to all that extra work, even in moments when time seems in short supply? Certainly there is!

Isaiah 31:1 Woe to those going down to Egypt expecting help–relying on horses; trusting in chariots because they have many, and in the strength of their cavalrymen–but not looking to the Holy One of Isra’el, not consulting Adonai.

What a warning! David had many military assets to rely on in a battle against the P’lishtim, but David, like the prophet Isaiah, remembered the lesson of the Exodus from Egypt. In every way, Pharaoh’s army was better-equipped for battle than were the children of Israel, and yet God led the defenseless Israelites through the Red Sea on dry land, but the Egyptians, who did not honor the Holy One of Israel, he destroyed.

Praying earnestly and seeking the L-RD can also help you to understand some of the injustices of the world, or see events that you do not understand in a new way that leads to better understanding. As it is written:

Proverbs 28:5 Evil people don’t understand justice, but those who seek Adonai understand everything.

If you think seeking God earnestly in prayer is not critical, take his warning from the prophet Amos:

Amos 5:4 For here is what Adonai says to the house of Israel: “If you seek me you will survive;”

Indeed, if David had gone off into battle against the P’lishtim without first seeking the will of Adonai, or had he heeded his advisors and stayed in Y’hudah, out of a motivation of fear, than not only would the city of Ke’ilah and its inhabitants have perished, but who knows? Perhaps Adonai would have allowed David and his men to be overtaken by his enemies. Therefore, we must acknowledge that the truth of the Torah is that seeking the L-RD is more than just saying a quick prayer like we do at the beginning of class, nor is it optional. It is time-consuming and is it vital; tragedy can even befall us if we fail to seek Adonai, and even this brief passage from David’s life underlines the importance of this point.

One of the greatest love stories in the Bible is that of Solomon and Sheba. Even with all his harem of thousands, Solomon longed for Sheba primarily because she would not honor him as others under his kingdom did.

But the travel involved for them to meet was no small matter; in those Iron Age days, the trip from Sheba’s kingdom to Solomon’s Israel was a seven-year journey, usually. So there were no cheap flights back and forth in the matter of a brief period of time.

Using trade routes and other advantages, Sheba made it to Solomon’s kingdom in only three years. No exactly a FedEx Delivery, huh?

It is important to note that “repentance” of this sort was not provided for, apart from a special circumstance declared by Adonai himself, for the forgiveness of sins. Rabbi Nosson Scherman writes, “Wisdom decreed that the sinner should be pursued by his evil, and prophecy declared that the wake of sin brings death. Torah declared that atonement could be achieved only by guilt-offerings … but one fact remains undeniably plain – only G-d sanctioned repentance. Without His mercy, the sinner’s fate was bleak indeed. With His mercy, one moment of sincere repentance could wipe out a lifetime of sin.”

This fact was well-known, however, to the prophet Yonah. In fact, the Sages advise us that Yonah’s three days in the belly of a big fish was not the first time Yonah’s life had been batted around to serve a greater purpose of Adonai, like kitchen faucets in the kitchen of Chef Gordon Ramsey.

In I Kings 17, we read about how the prophet Elijah visited a widow and her son and how the son died after eating a meal provided by the prophet. Elijah then takes the boy up to the attic, prays for G-d’s mercy, and the life of the boy is restored. Although the text of I Kings does not name this son of a widow by name, rabbinic tradition holds that his was, in fact, Yonah, who would become a disciple of Elijah and, later, his successor, Elisha.

While we cannot be completely sure this tradition is true, since the boy is not named in the biblical text itself, it certainly lends more background to how Yonah reacts to the merciful actions on Adonai.

Yonah’s reaction to Ninveh being saved from destruction is one of the most mysterious passages in the Tanakh. One would think that Adonai forgiving an entire city headed for destruction from its doom would be cause for an overwhelming celebration that even the prophet would join in on. But this was not the reaction of Yonah.

Jonah 4:1-3 But this was displeasing to Yonah, and he became angry. He prayed to Adonai, “Now, Adonai, didn’t I say this would happen, when I was still in my own country? That’s why I tried to get away to Tarshish ahead of time! I knew you were a G-d who is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in grace, and that you relent from inflicting punishment. Therefore, Adonai, please, just take my life away from me; it’s better for me to be dead than alive!”

Can you imagine being angry at G-d? Can you imagine being so angry at G-d that you would beg him to take your life, and declare that you were better off dead than alive? That is extreme anger. It is an anger so intense, it causes even G-d to caution Yonah with the words, “Is it right for you to be so angry?”

Yonah never responds to G-d’s question, because the answer is obvious.

When we left off last week, the prophet Yonah had just been spewed out of the belly of the big fish that had swallowed him three days earlier. What was it like to be inside the belly of this big fish? The Sages have some unique ideas about that.

At the creation of the world, G-d made a fish intended to harbor Jonah. He was so large that the prophet was as comfortable inside him as in a spacious synagogue. The eyes of the fish served Jonah as windows, and, besides, there was a diamond, which shone as brilliantly as the sun at midday, so that Jonah could see all things in the sea down to its very bottom. (Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, vol. 4, pg. 249.)

Sounds wonderful and comfortable, doesn’t it? Heck, you can almost imagine it came equipped with a full kitchen and bathroom faucets! Unfortunately, this is one tradition that is rooted in an active imagination, rather than fact or history. While we can trust that Yonah was inside the belly of the big fish for three days, we know that it could not have been a pleasant time. No fish exists whose eyes are like windows and who keeps a diamond in his gullet to light things up for anything it might swallow.

What is far more likely is that Yonah was alone in a dark, smelly, uncomfortable place. While this may seem an unkind way for Adonai, G-d, to treat Yonah, keep in mind that this is precisely what Yonah was seeking; we are told in the very first chapter than Yonah wanted to get as far away from G-d and his calling as possible, and G-d responded by giving him a taste of what that experience is like. In the belly of the big fish, among other things, Yonah probably encountered pain from exposure to the fish’s digestive juices, danger from any teeth, complete dark and a feeling of being completely alone, completely cut off from Adonai.

Yonah’s own words in chapter 2 confirm this when he cries out to G-d, saying, “from the belly of Sh’ol I cried.” Sh’ol is a Hebrew word that is often used to describe what we call Hell – eternal separation from the presence of Adonai, Our G-d. If Yonah is calling his time in the belly of the big fish Hell, we can be pretty confident that his time there was not spent on a magical mystery tour with a diamond lighting the place up.

Why someone would want to sit around, when the people being talked about aren’t there, and allege that a messianic family does not believe in the messiah is beyond me. If it is a simple question of whether it’s true or not, the best way to find out the truth is to approach that family and ask them directly. Right?

Well, hold on to your platform beds, because that’s not always how it goes. This weekend, my wife was present at a table where just such a conversation was going on. She was going to speak up right away, but another person at the table, who knew the family in question, spoke up first and told this gossiper that she was wrong and the allegations weren’t true.

Bad enough, right?

But what makes it worse is that the person brushed off the truth of the matter, saying, “Oh, I’m just repeating what I’ve been told by someone who should know.”

This person was told by both my wife and this third party that this was definitely a case of lashan hurah, and that she was hurting her witness by persisting. That’s about the time I arrived and left with my wife, so she’s not sure if the discussion ended there or not.

But really, how many times does a congregation need to be told to avoid gossip (bearing false witness) and engaging in lashan hurah (evil speech)? It’s a message that’s been shared several times on Shabbat morning and is even part of our bylaws.

It’s loose talk like this that led to many deaths when the children of Israel were in the wilderness. Evil speech and gossip kills any sense of safety and community. It must be avoided.

I can understand how some people, blinded either by ignorance or antisemitism, might see some validity to the completely discredited 1976 book by Arthur Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe, but the last place I would expect to find such people is in a messianic Jewish congregation. Unfortuantely, I was there when the topic came up and was appalled when it was taken seriously and given credibility by a couple of people there. I was even more surprised when they ignored me after I warned them the book was, at best, fringe material with no credibility.

For those not in the know, The Thirtennth Tribe alleges that Ashkenazi Jews are all descended from an eastern European group know as the Khazars, none of whom are genetic Jews. It then further alleges that the modern state of Israel is primarily made up of such “fake Jews” and, therefore, Israel is not a legitimate Jewish state.

Of course, there is absolutely no truth to Koestler’s book, which has been discredited not only by other historians, but by recent genetic research into Ashkenazi bloodlines. I could go on to cite a boatload of details as to why and how Koestler’s theory is wrong in every possible respect, but that would dignify the hateful theory more than it deserves.

Sadly, Koestler himself was born a Hungarian Jew from the Ashkenazi lineage, and he should have known better. It may be notable, however, that he was 71 at the time he wrote the book and may not have been of the same intellectual capacity as he was in his prime, as one of London’s most outspoken anti-Communists.

Unfortuantely, although the book has been discredited for decades, it is still used in Muslim countries and among anti-Israeli hate groups as a polemic against the state of Israel. Much like another complete work of antsemitic propegandistic literature, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, The Thirteenth Tribe’s influence will likely never disappear completely as long as anti-Semitism exists in teh world.

Still, it was disheartening to see two messianic believers discussing the book so uncritically and ramming home their ideas about it, completely unable to detect the antisemitic nature of the book, even after it was pointed out to them.

There is a lot more to David’s life prior to taking the throne of Israel than most Christian churches teach their kids about. Usually they hear about David and Goliath; sometimes they may even hear about David and Bathsheba or about how his son Solomon was allowed to build the temple instead of David.

There’s a lot more to David’s life than is traditionally thought, however, and while serious Bible students know this, it’s a revelation to the average believer who only attends Christian church or Jewish/messianic shul services out of tradition rather than a passionate drive to know more about Adonai.

That’s the thing that’s rewarding about being in a teaching position with my messianic shul; I learn more than I ever have just studying for my own enrichment. It is a trip that requires no Rimowa luggage, per se, but it’s definitely a journey worth taking.

Every once in a while, I like to reward hard work, and in my bar/bat mitzvah class, that means taking a week off studies every few months, and allowing the kids to have some fun. It’s not anything that costs much or requires budgeting software, but it is a good investment.

As the kids get to know each other better as classmates through these times, they are more likely to work hard and study hard in the weeks where we are doing lessons. We’ve recently added a lot more variety to our curriculum, to challenge the kids and better-prepare them for their bar/bat mitzvah.

One thing we’ve done is to start to teach them the prayers and blessings that are part of the adult service. By learning these, they will be better prepared to take part in the service and understand why each element of the service is included.

Another new element is a more rigorous biblical Hebrew language program than they had received in younger grades; we are teaching them letters and vowel markings, and over the course of the year, would like to have them to a point where they can at least sound out Hebrew words on sight.

Of course, we’re still in the middle of a big character study on David as well, so they’re taking on a lot of material; believe me, these quarterly breaks are well-earned.

Here’s me pulling back the curtains of a ministry a bit again, but in the months I’ve been working at my messianic shul, one of the things that struck me is how churches get the strangest calls, sometimes.

I mean, yes, most of our calls are of the rather normal and mundane variety, but as a house of worship, we attract our share of … colorful callers. I’ve fielded phone calls from self-proclaimed prophets who didn’t even have the courtesy to say “Hi” before going into their rant, as well as some rather interesting and unique requests from complete strangers.

Now, a lot of these callers are well-meaning folks and when we get calls from people like that, oddity doesn’t really matter. However, I have had a couple calls from folks who seem to think that we’re more of a public library than a house of worship.

It’s not a big deal and often, even the odd calls add some fun and variety to my day. And it certainly helps expose me to a wide variety of expectations people bring to the table when they interact with a house of worship. Good training ground for me, as I forge ahead in my advanced studies. I learn from fielding these calls, more than I would have expected to.

If memory serves, it used to take a fraction of my day at work to pull together the slide shows for our Erev Shabbat and Shabbat services. However, since deciding last week (due to difficulty getting an old version of Corel Presentations 10 to install under Windows Vista with Service Pack 1) to move the show over to PowerPoint, it’s been taking a bit longer.

That’s not because PowerPoint is a harder program to use, by the way; it has to do with file conversion. Fortunately, I was able to get all our service and song files saved in Corel Presentations as PowerPoint 95 documents, saved to a flash drive, and loaded up into Microsoft PowerPoint 2003.

Trouble is, pretty much everything needed to be tidied up and redone to get the shows and songs looking good in PowerPoint. Nearly all the text boxes came over too big and with fonts set too large.

It’s been a bit of a labor to tweak everything, but I get the two services completed just in time last week, and this week I’ve been able to work on going through the songs and trying to get them redesigned so that we can get back to the whole process being quick and easy.

It’s been worth all the labor, however; our slide shows are now more future-proof than before, and personally I prefer PowerPoint.

You don’t have to be a PC expert to be a messianic rabbi, but it helps. I learned this when my rabbi recently ordered and built from the ground up a brand new PC for me to use at my workspace last week. The one I was using was running out of hard drive space … fast.

The new one has 1.4 TB of hard disc; it should last a year or two! One of the components he installed is that hot nVidia 8600 GT video card I want for my own Acer Aspire at home.

What a HUGE card it is; it even has its own cooling fan built into the card.

Anyway, graphic card aside, the only hiccup we ran into is that Vista with service pack 1 didn’t get along with our old Corel Presentations software anymore, so we had to switch all our service overheads over to Microsoft Power Point.

Other than being more up-to-date, it’s not a big issue, except for the time frame I had to work in to get everything converted over. It was a tight squeeze, but I made it and the worst thing that happened is that I forgot to update one overhead slide from what it said a week ago to what it needed to say this past week.

All in all, it would be hard to imagine a PC switch going much more smoothly.

At 41, I sometimes wonder if I’m already having memory troubles. I mean, I know what time it is generally, even though I can’t read it to you off a Parmigiani watch; or I can make great connections of disperate facts fairly often still … but sometimes it takes a bit longer than I wish it did.

Take for example this past Shabbat. Someone asked me if I had mentioned their daughter, who’s not part of my class, in class. I said no because, well, why would I? I have my hands full with the kids in my class.

Well, I was told, some kids heard me say it. I was pretty sure I didn’t. And so the situation was a bit tense when my wife and I headed home.

A couple hours later is when the light bulb over my head turned on. Of course I hadn’t mentioned that person’s daughter in class; but I finally remembered that we had another girl in class who had the same name.

Turned out to be a misunderstanding of who I meant by the kids who heard it. If I’d been a bit quicker on the ball, I could have realized what was going on sooner and cleared the air right away.

I’m pretty sure I could have done that better 10 years ago.