Posts by Julia Blum

THE LORD’S ANSWER We continue watching Rebecca on these pages. You have probably noticed that of all the four matriarchs (Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel), Rebecca’s personality is the most fully defined and described in Scripture – and I think this fact by itself bears witness to her outstanding character. We saw Rebecca as a […]

  My dear readers, you probably think that by now, the most exciting part of our story is over: our heroes have now met, and this initial meeting went very well—the girl even fell down from the camel when she saw her bridegroom for the first time—clearly she was very impressed by him, so what […]

First meeting   Last time, we spoke of this amazing young girl being able to make, so quickly and so boldly, the incredible life-changing decision of faith: to leave her home and her family for good, and to follow Abraham’s servant to Canaan. All of this happens in Genesis 24 – and at the very […]

My readers would already know that I love series—probably because I am used to writing books and I find it difficult to squeeze all my thoughts on a subject into one post. That’s why we’ve already had several series here: The Hidden Messiah; The Bible Stories you didn’t know; Passover Reflections. Today we are starting […]

Several times, I’ve been asked to post a Torah Portion (Parashat Shavua) commentary here. Today, I decided to share with you this commentary on one of my favorite Torah Portions— Parashat Shavua Chukkat (the reading for last Shabbat). The story of the Bronze Snake is one the most graphic and expressive stories in the Torah. […]

Two hopes My dear readers, I really appreciate your patience. To some of you, my last posts might have seemed a bit dry, but without this evidence, even dry evidence, we cannot fully comprehend the story of Israel and Jesus. In our last article, we saw that apocalypses turned out to be the main carrier […]

My readers are probably aware of the difference between the term משיח  (Mashiach /Messiah), which is used in the Hebrew Bible in reference to an actual ruling king or priest, and the concept of “Messianism”, which originally derives from that noun but refers to images, symbols or concepts of an eschatological savior.  It is a […]

  As some of my readers will no doubt remember, we discussed a messianic secret of the Gospels some time ago, termed the Hidden Messiah. Last week, we went back to this topic and realized, once again, that Jesus had been avoiding the title of Messiah throughout the Gospels. We saw Jesus carefully avoiding this […]

In the Hidden Messiah series, we spoke at length about one of the most perplexing quandaries of the New Testament: while Christian readers of the Gospels keep calling Jesus the Messiah of Israel, He Himself continuously discouraged the use of the title ‘Messiah’  throughout the length of his public ministry. So far, however, we have […]

The Day when the Heaven is Open   In our last post, we spoke about the Biblical Festival of Shavuot, Feast of Weeks (also called Chag HaKatzir, Feast of the Harvest). We spoke about the Biblical significance of Shavuot and also about the meaning of this Festival in Jewish tradition. It is against this background […]