Posts by Julia Blum

As I’ve been preparing my post on Shavuot, the situation in Israel has been becoming graver and graver by the hour. Therefore, instead of a regular Shavuot article, I was led to publish here today an excerpt from my book about Isaac and Ishmael, “Abraham had two sons”.   “There is a famous saying: “Pray […]

The Dreams We are still at the very beginning of Genesis 37, that fateful chapter where Joseph’s story begins. I promised to show you how God’s plan unfolds – and the very first thing you would notice if you read these verses in Hebrew, is how many times the word “hate” occurs here. Joseph’s older […]

What Did Joseph Wear? Last time, we stopped on verse 3 of Genesis 37: Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, and he made him very special clothes. In Hebrew, this coat, or tunic, is calledכְּתֹנֶת פַּסִּים  (ketonet passim). The traditional idea rendered by most translations is that this was some sort of multi-colored outer […]

Readers who have been following this blog for a while would know that I love series. Today, we will begin a new series, commenting on the last part of the book of Genesis – Joseph’s saga. To be honest, I myself am very surprised that I have never written anything on this story on these […]

No, I am not confused, I know that Purim time for this year is over, yet I would still like to use this amazing line from the book of Esther for the title of today’s post. Today we are celebrating our Independence Day, and the history of the State of Israel is as full of […]

Originally, I was going to continue to discuss today “the tough questions of Passover”: why “his own received him not” and what the place of Israel is in this script written by God. Especially on days such as the one on which I am now writing – Yom HaShoah,  Holocaust Remembrance Day – the last sentence […]

There was a question in one of the comments on my last post. The lady quoted her pastor who had written: “There is a fickleness to the crowd which proclaims ‘Hosanna!’ one day and is screaming ‘Crucify him!’ a week later,” and then she asked me: “Do you agree with this view? Is it the […]

My dear readers, I am facing a real challenge this week. The reading for the last week consisted of two Torah Portions, therefore I was supposed to comment on two Parashot, and not one.   I did not have enough space for the second one, though, and therefore, the last Portion of Exodus is yet to […]

Shabbat The first thing that Moses did at the beginning of this Portion after he had assembled all the congregation of the Israelites, was to remind the people to keep Sabbath. “Moses assembled all the congregation of the Israelites and said to them: These are the things that the Lord has commanded you to do: Six days shall […]

Today, we are going to speak about one of the richest portions in the Torah – Ki Tissa. There is an amazing story in this portion about how God “changed His mind” – or did He? You can read my book “As though hiding His face” for this story. However, there are many other amazing […]