Posts by Julia Blum

Melchizedek as a Transcendental Savior We continue our discussion of one of the oldest and most astonishing documents discovered at Qumran, the fragment called 11QMelchizedek. In our last article, we saw that the very selection of the biblical texts in 11QMelchizedek bore witness to a messianic reading of this text. Melchizedek of 11QMelch can certainly […]

The Mysterious Figure People often wonder who Melchizedek was. Some believe he was Noah’s son Shem reincarnated; others that he was an angel; early church fathers taught that he was the pre-incarnation of Jesus, and many Christians today still think so. Let us try to sort these things out. As always, I am not claiming to possess a […]

What most people don’t realize The story that we are dealing with – the story of the “stolen blessing” – as with every other narrative, can be looked at from the different perspectives. We can try to see it through Jacob’s eyes, Isaac’s eyes or Esau’s eyes – and maybe, at some point we will: […]

The Disturbing Story A dear friend of mine used to often say (quoting her Rabbi’s words): always look for the “Menorah pattern”. I recalled these words when I realized that I wouldn’t be able to squeeze the whole story of Genesis 27 into one post as I had hoped. That means we will have to […]

The Question In the last post, we spoke about the phrase:  שְׁנֵי גֹיִים בְּבִטְנֵךְ – Two nations are in your womb – from the prophecy that Lord gave to Rebecca when she was still pregnant. I mentioned that this phrase has been used repeatedly in our history to define the relationship of the people of Israel to […]

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. […]