Author: Steven R. Bruck

In Judaism, the Heart is The Mind

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In a world where we try to be better at everything, where you can go to almost any media and find someone who will tell you how to be a better person, how to communicate better with others, how to be in better shape, how to…well, how to be better at just about anything.

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Of all the things we are trying to do to better ourselves, having both a healthy mind and a healthy heart is among the most desired conditions.

In Judaism, we believe that the heart and mind are actually one and the same thing.

The Hebrew word for heart is “leb” (לב), but although it is a separate organ from the mind, it is not separate spiritually.

In the prayer called the V’ahavta (You are to love) found in Deuteronomy 6:4-9, we are told:

And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. 

Some versions of the Bible say with all thy heart and all thy mind, and in Judaic thought, these are one and the same. We are being told to love God with both our emotions and intellect.

In today’s world, you hear people advising others to make decisions with their mind and not their heart, because the gentile world sees the heart as emotion, and the mind as intellect.

In Jewish thought, the heart is the center of the intellect, directing us to make decisions based on our feelings as well as our sensibility.

In the Book of Proverbs, we read often of the mind and the heart as being the same thing. For instance:

The heart of the wise instructs his mouth and adds persuasiveness to his lips.” (Prov. 16:23)

That indicates that our heart is able to make wise decisions which enable us to better communicate our feelings and thoughts to others.

At the prelude to Proverbs, in Proverbs 2:10-11, the writer states that when Adonai gives wisdom, the wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be enjoyable to you.

The Chasidic Jews believe (at least, those of Chabad) that there is one mind, but two hearts. The outer heart is one that chases the worldly things, and the inner heart is the fire of the soul. The mind is the key to the inner heart, which is the more spiritually guided aspect of our personality.

If this sounds Freudian to you, it certainly does to me, too. The inner heart would be the Ego, the outer heart would be the Id, and the mind would be the Superego.

You know, Freud was Jewish- maybe what we now call modern psychoanalysis is really just what Jews have known about for centuries?

I believe we need to be led by our hearts and guided by our minds. The heart and mind need to work together, the heart allowing us to have an emotional connection to others, feeling compassion and empathy, with the mind reining us in from foolishly allowing others to take advantage of our kindness, or rushing into things that appeal to our desire for worldly things.

Mind and heart, heart and mind, both are necessary to gain spiritual understanding and wisdom. And if you ask me, I will agree with that Jewish tent maker from Tarsus when, in his first letter to the Kehillah in Corinth, he told them that he might have many gifts, but without love, he is nothing.

Thank you for being here and please share these messages, subscribe to my website and YouTube channel, buy my books, and join my Facebook group called “Just God’s Word” (please make sure to read and agree to the rules).

And remember: I always welcome your comments.

That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Does God Change His Mind?

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Of course he does- he changed it for Moses more than once, right?
When the people sinned with the Golden Calf and God said he would destroy them, didn’t he tell Moses that he wouldn’t do that, after all, since Moses pleaded with him for the sake of the people? (Exodus 32:10-14; Deuteronomy 9:13-14)

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Even before that, when God sent angels to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, didn’t Abraham negotiate a deal with God, making him change his mind and promise not to destroy it if there were as few as 10 righteous men there?

(Of course, God kind of cheated on that one, since he already knew there were no righteous men there, to begin with. But I think he did it so that Abraham could feel helpful.)

And what about Nineveh? God decided he would destroy them, but he sent Jonah as a last-ditch effort to save them. Lucky for Nineveh, they listened, although in the long run it only delayed the inevitable.

So it certainly seems that God will change his mind. But that brings up a problem: if God will change his mind about things, does that mean he might change his mind about salvation?

Yeah, yeah, I know…we are told that salvation cannot be taken away by anyone (John 6:37-40, for one), but God isn’t just anyone- he is God.

Job tells us that the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. In other words, that which God gives, he also can take away- it is up to him. After all, who can hold God accountable? Who can tell God “You can’t do that!”?

We are told that God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow (Ecclesiastes 3:14; Malachi 3:6), but then we are also told about how he gives and takes away, how he changes his mind, so if he is the same, then how can he change his mind?

And, as I said earlier, if he can change his mind, then how can we trust in the promise of salvation? Or, for that matter, any of the promises he’s made?

I’ll tell you what I believe is the answer- God doesn’t change his mind, and his promises are so trustworthy, that whatever God says will be, has already been.

But, but, but…what about Abraham? What about Moses? What about the other times (you can find more examples in the Bible if you look for them) God said he wouldn’t do what he said he wanted to do.

Aha! As Shakespeare would say- “There’s the rub!”

The operative word in what I just said is that God said he wanted to do- not that he would do.

When God told Moses to go down from the mountain because the people had sinned (with the Golden Calf), he didn’t tell Moses he decided to destroy them. He asked Moses to leave him alone so that he could destroy them: in other words, he was asking Moses to allow him to destroy them and make a nation from Moses, but he didn’t tell Moses that he will destroy them.

A subtle difference but a significant one.

The same with Abraham. God’s angels said they were sent to destroy the cities, and all Abraham accomplished was to negotiate a cease fire, so to speak, based on something that (as I already pointed out) God knew wasn’t the case.

We need to remember something that I learned long ago when I was in Sales:

People don’t mean what they say, they mean what they do.

God, on the other hand, means what he says and does what he says he will do. He is 1,000% trustworthy and reliable to do what he says, which includes the promise of salvation. We may be confused by the wording in the Bible, which makes it appear that he will change his mind once he decided what to do.

But that is our misunderstanding, and not a case of God changing his mind.

The JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, recognized as one of the best interpretations of the Tanakh, tells us that God asks Moses to “let me be” so that his anger may blaze against the people and that he may destroy them. Later in that passage, it says God “renounced the punishment he had planned to bring upon the people.”

Planned to bring is not decided to do.

After all, plans are flexible, and when we decide to go another way because the original plan won’t do what we need, is that changing our mind?

Well, OK, yes- we can say we changed our mind, or we can say we changed the plan, never having really made up our mind, absolutely.

So, the final decision, which is a decision which I will not change my mind about, is that there is a difference between planning to do something and deciding to do it, and the only thing that determines the final decision is what is done.

God had decided to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and he did; God planned to destroy the people and make a nation from Moses, but that plan changed and the people were not destroyed.

God also planned to destroy them after they refused to enter the land (Numbers 14), but Moses explained why that would be a bad idea and God changed his plan. Instead of destroying all the people, he only destroyed the generation that came out of Egypt. He didn’t change his mind, he simply changed the plan.

So, you can see that where I may have introduced a reason to doubt God’s word, in the end it is our understanding (both linguistically and culturally) of what he said that might lead us to think he has changed his mind.

What God has said and what he has done over the millennia proves, beyond a doubt, that we can depend on him, always.

God may change his plans for you, based on what you do, but you can absolutely trust that every promise God has made, or ever will make, is a guaranteed done deal.

Thank you for being here and please share these messages with everyone you know. Subscribe to my website and YouTube channel, buy my books, and join my Facebook group called “Just God’s Word’ (please read and agree to the rules).

And remember- I always welcome your comments.

That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Parashah Shelach L’cha 2022 (Send for you) Numbers 13 – 15

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The Israelites are now at the border of the Promised Land, and they suggest to Moses to send spies in to reconnoiter the land before attacking it.

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This seems like a good idea to Moses, so he chooses one prince from each tribe (12 men in total) to search out the land and report back.

After 40 days in the land, the spies come back and report that it is a wonderful land, bringing back samples of the fruit and other natural resources. But they also report that the towns are fortified, and they saw the sons of Anak (giants) in the land.

Joshua and Caleb were excited to enter, and faithfully declared that they should attack because God will give this wonderful land to them. However, the other 10 princes said that they would be destroyed and had no chance of winning against such a strong and fortified people.

This distressed everyone so much they wanted to stone Moses, but God appeared and told Moses that he will destroy these people and make a new, better nation out of Moses.

Moses begs God not to do that, saying (as before) that if God destroyed the people, his name (meaning his reputation) would be weakened, as the other nations would say God destroyed the people because he wasn’t able to do as he said he would.

So God relents, and tells Moses that these people will not enter the land, and to turn towards the desert. Their punishment will be that whereas they cried their children would be taken as slaves, it will be their children who inherit the land, and not the parents.

Moses is told that for every day they were in the land, they will wander in the desert one year until all of the generation that despised God’s word by revolting against him and not entering the land will be dead.

Upon hearing of their punishment, the people immediately repent and say they will now do as God said, but it is too late. Moses warns them not to attack because God is not with them and they have no chance, but they follow one terrible mistake with another and ignore Moses’ warning.

Of course, they are defeated horribly, pushed all the way back to Hormah (which means “utter destruction”).

This parashah ends with God repeating the Levitical rules for sacrifices, the showbread, and the wearing of tzitzis. The final entry is a story of a man collecting sticks on the Shabbat, and for that sin God commands he be stoned to death.

I want to change up a little today, and instead of talking about the parashah, I want to talk about the Haftorah reading, which is in the Book of Joshua, Chapter 2.

This may be a good time to digress a bit, and review about the reading of the Torah.

A predetermined portion of the Torah, called a parashah, is read each Shabbat; there are 54 readings for the one-year cycle, with some readings doubled to keep pace with leap years. All Jews, everywhere, come to the final sentences of the Torah at the same time, which is the 8th day of Sukkot. We call that day Shemini Atzeret (8th day of assembly) and Simchat Torah (Joy of Torah). On this holiday, the Torah is paraded around the neighborhood, accompanied by singing and shofar blasts, and once back in the synagogue, as the congregation dances and sings, the Torah scroll is rolled back to Genesis.

The Haftorah is a section of the other books of the Tanakh (Old Covenant), usually from one of the books of the Prophets, which are read in addition to the parashah. The haftorah is chosen because the events there relate to the events in the Torah reading of that day.

OK, that being said, let’s get back to todays’ message.

The haftorah for today occurs some 38 years after the events in the Torah. Joshua is now the leader of the Israelites, and they are outside the land, having just defeated Og and Sichon.

Unlike the mistake Moses made when he sent 12 men into the land, Joshua sends only two men to spy out the land, knowing that he can trust these two to bring back a true report.

Remember: these men are not former slaves, for that entire generation (except for Joshua and Caleb) have died. These two are men raised in hardship, living and growing up in the desert, and aren’t conditioned with the mindset of a slave.

The men reconnoiter Jericho and while there, they come to the house of Rahab, a prostitute, who hides them from the King of Jericho making the spies promise to protect her family when the Israelites come to attack the people in the land.

The men do so, and report back to Joshua that the people in the land are scared stiff, and already emotionally defeated.

How does this reading relate to the Torah portion? Well, it seems pretty obvious: Joshua learned that the more people you send to do a job, the more reports you will have to deal with.

It is like that old adage: too many chefs spoil the soup.

We need to learn from this that when we trust people, the more people we trust to accomplish something, the less likely it will get done correctly. This doesn’t mean to take on everything alone- that is another type of mistake.

My father, God rest his soul, used to tell me when I was a young boy and asked to help him with a project, that he wanted to do it alone so that if it went wrong, the only person to blame was himself. That made sense to me at that time, but as I grew older and placed in positions of leadership, I realized how wrong that attitude was.

People in leadership positions have an obligation to teach all they know to the ones who they are in charge of, to make that person a greater asset to the company, or congregation, or just to help them become a better person.

For those of us in a position of spiritual leadership, that means when choosing shammashim (Hebrew for “leaders”) within the congregation, you must follow the biblical requirements for a leader.

In the New Covenant, you can find these in Timothy 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9; Hebrews 13: 7 and 17-19. However, you must also remember that these are all from the Torah portions in Exodus 18:21 and Deuteronomy 1:13.

We must be careful to not choose by friendship or by influence, and especially not by financial support. Too many congregations are led by those who are the greatest tithers, and that is not assigning by ability, but by bank account.

Moses sent too many people, and Joshua sent just the right number of people.

Moses sent those who were in positions of honor, while Joshua sent those who he trusted to give a proper report.

What’s the bottom line? We must choose those who demonstrate the qualities specified in the Torah when we assign people important positions within our congregations, following the example that Joshua set for us.

Thank you for being here and please share these messages with everyone you know. Subscribe to my website and YouTube channel, buy my books, and join my Facebook group called “Just God’s Word” (please make sure you read and agree to the rules).

And remember: I always welcome your comments.

That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!

Taking a Break and Reposting an Oldie and a Goodie

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The link below will take you to a message I posted in April, 2021 and relates to a personal experience.

After reading this, if you are thinking to yourself that it can’t be true because you have never encountered this sort of bigotry, then thank God that you have not been stained with exposure to such evil.

But, believe-you-me! It exists, and world-wide!

A Story of Undying Hatred

That’s it for today so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Just How Many Pilgrim Festivals Are There, Really?

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If you were to ask most any American, “What is a pilgrim festival?” I’ll bet their answer will be “Why, that would be Thanksgiving, the fourth Thursday of November.”

But that isn’t really a pilgrim festival, is it?

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For us religious types, a pilgrim festival is one where we are required to congregate at our respective house of worship, be that a synagogue, a church, or a mosque.

You know, I have been reading the Bible for over 25 years, nearly every, single day, and have gone through it at least 2 dozen times, and what is wonderful about this book is that even when you have read it as often as I have, not to mention all the studies I have been involved with requiring me to research throughout the Bible, you can still read something you have read over and over, and see a new truth in it.

So, nu? What am I leading to? It’s this: I have always known that there are three pilgrim festivals in Judaism: Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot.

If you do an Internet search for “Jewish pilgrimage festivals” on Google, you will get any number of “hits”, from Britannica’s site to the one called My Jewish Learning to Wikipedia, and so on, and they will all tell you that the Jewish pilgrim festivals are Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot.

Now here’s the thing that hit me just the other day as my daily reading had me in Leviticus, Chapter 23…there are actually 6 pilgrim festivals in Judaism!

That’s right! Not 3 or 4 or even 5, but there are 6 times that God says we are to have a holy convocation, which translates to being physically at the Temple.

That means from the time after we entered the land, which was when the first Shavuot began, people were required to go to the Tent of Meeting (first at Gilgal, then Shiloh, then Jerusalem) until we had Solomon’s Temple. But, after 73 AD, when Roman soldiers destroyed the temple, we had nowhere to go to fulfill the commandments regarding pilgrim festivals.

Here’s an interesting side note: although Pesach (Passover) was celebrated before we entered the Land, Shavuot and Sukkot were not to be celebrated, and Habikurim (First Fruits) also had to wait until we were established in Canaan. God stated, specifically, that these were to be celebrated AFTER we entered the Land (see Leviticus 23:9).

So, this was quite a revelation to me- all these years I was teaching that there are three pilgrim festivals because that is what I was taught, but I was wrong.

Let’s go to the Book of Leviticus (CJB) and see what God says is to be a holy convocation:

Pesach is a pilgrim festival for two reasons: one, because all sacrifices had to be made at the place where God put his name (Deuteronomy 16:6), and secondly because we are to have a holy convocation on the first day of Hag HaMatzot.

It certainly looks to me that God wants us to congregate together on the first day of Hag HaMatzot (Festival of Unleavened Bread), then again on Shavuot, then again on Rosh Hashanah (originally called Yom Teruah, Day of Trumpets), then again on Yom Kippur, and finally on the first day and the eighth day of Sukkot, which is called Yom Atzeret, also known as Simchat Torah.

Now, some may say that some of these holy convocations were included with the required presence at the temple, so they don’t really count as a separate pilgrimage. Maybe there’s some truth to that, but God specifies 6 holy convocations, and for me, that means there are 6 separate and unique times we are to be at the temple.

So, this certainly begs the question: How could I have read and studied the Torah for so many years, and never seen, which has always been right in front of my face, that there are really 6 pilgrim festivals, not just three?

My answer is that I have been doing what so many people do, which is reading the Bible but only seeing what I have been told is there.

Most people, if you ask me, are at the height of spiritual ignorance because they don’t read the Bible at all. The next level down is those who hear others tell them what is in the Bible, but don’t bother to verify what they are told.

The level I was on all this time when reading Leviticus 23 and never noticing the true number of holy convocations was the level where I am reading the Bible but only seeing what I already know it says.

This is probably why so many people who do read the Bible miss so much of what is in there- we have blinders, blinders that were placed on our eyes by religion, which told us what the Bible says, So, even though we are looking right at it, we only see what we have been told is there.

This is why it is so important to pray to God and ask for Holy Spirit guidance each and every time we read the Bible, so that we can be freed of the blinders religion has placed on our eyes.

The scary thing is that now I have to wonder: How many other things in God’s word have I read and not understood properly?

The comforting thing, though, is that now that I know this has happened, I will be doubly careful and much more aware of what I am reading.

The bottom line for all of us is to recognize the potential that no matter how many times we have gone through the Bible, we may still be reading something but not seeing it.

Let me finish with telling you what I will be doing, and suggest you do the same: from this moment on, I am reading with both eyes open, and accept the fact that as well as I know the Bible, I may not know it all correctly.

Thank you for being here and please share these messages with everyone you know. Subscribe to my website and YouTube channel, buy my books, and join my Facebook group called “Just God’s Word” (please read and agree to the rules).

And remember that I always welcome your comments.

That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Parashah B’ha’alotecha 2022 (When you set up) Numbers 8 – 12

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Moses has set up the tabernacle and consecrated it. Now he consecrates all the Levi’im as separated for God, in place of all the firstborn that God destroyed in Egypt.

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We are told how the camp would remain where they were when the cloud remained over the Tabernacle, and how they travelled when the cloud moved. No matter how long the cloud stayed, or how long it kept moving, the people did as the cloud led them.

The people complained, as always, about no meat and how they had it better in Egypt, so Moses asks God to just kill him if he has to continue to deal with all these complaints. God tells Moses to pick out 70 trustworthy men and they will share the load with Moses, as God will place some of the spirit he gave to Moses on them.

The order of march is given to us, so we know how the people moved, who was first and who was last, and the final chapter deals with when Miriam and Aaron complained against Moses for marrying a Cushite woman. The punishment God meted out was to cause Tzara’at (leprosy) to appear on Miriam. Moses immediately prayed for her to be cured, and God did that, but also shut her outside the camp for a week.

There are some interesting things in here, at least, interesting to me.

One is the giving of the spirit to the 70 elders in the camp. Even though two of them did not appear with the others at the Tabernacle, as Moses had told them, they also received the spirit. That makes me wonder if they refused to come, or just forgot, or had something else come up. In any case, God did what Moses asked him to do, even though it seems that these two refused to be part of it.

But that’s not the only thing I wondered about- we are told in Exodus 18 that Moses’ father-in-law suggests delegating authority to others to take the load off of Moses in dealing with disputes, and even goes as far as to tell Moses that God commands it. Every time I read that passage, I wondered, “How did Jethro know God commanded it?”

And now, here in this parashah, we see that God does command Moses to pick 70 men to help him in dealing with the people, so is this the same event?

In this parashah we also read that Moses asks his brother-in-law to stay with the people as they travel. To me, it makes sense that when Jethro brought his wife and children out to Moses that maybe other members of the family came with them. If so, then the brother-in-law could have been there when Jethro made his suggestion to Moses.

I don’t know, absolutely, if these two Torah stories are the same event, but it seems so to me. After all, it is no secret that the books of the Torah are not in strict chronological order, and some events are repeated in different books.

Another part of this particular parashah that I love is the last chapter, Chapter 12, where Miriam and Aaron speak out against Moses. Not because of what happened, but because this parashah is the passage I read at my Bar Mitzvah, which I had on the same day I celebrated my 13th birthday, and guess what today is?

That’s right. Of course, it was quite a while ago that I was 13, but this is the very passage I read on this same day of the year, all those many years ago.

And I constantly use this particular Torah story when talking about praying. Especially when people pray on and on, or ask God to heal someone specifying exactly, in inordinate detail, what God should do in order to heal them.

I believe we should ask God for help by following Moses’ example. Here we have Moses seeing his big sister white as death, yet in his shock and anguish at her fate, all he says is:

“Oh God, I beg you, please, heal her!” (CJB)

That’s all he said, and I believe it is because he trusted God to know what to do.

That’s called faith!

We should demonstrate that level of trust and faith, ourselves, when asking God to help someone. Wordiness is not faithfulness, and going an-and-on-and-on is not going to make God any more inclined to do something.

And I have to consider (disagree if you will) that God, as patient as he is, when someone is telling him how to heal and what to do and where to do it, he has to be thinking something along the lines of:

“Really? You think I don’t know what to do? “

So today’s message is this: trust in God to know what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and even if it should be done.

When it comes to asking God for anything, I go by the old KISS rule:

Keep It Simple, Schlemiel!

Thank you for being here and please share these messages with everyone you know. Subscribe to my website and YouTube channel, and while on the website please buy my books.

If you like what you get in these messages, you will like my books. I guarantee it.

Also, join my Facebook group called “Just God’s Word (read and agree to the rules, please) and remember this: I always welcome your comments.

That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!