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Pray For The Peace Of Jerusalem~Shavuot 5770~
The First Fruits

Oh LORD, Our One and Only God!
How Excellent is Your Most Holy Name!
How Wonderful, How Holy, How Righteous and How Just and True You Are!
For You Alone Are Worthy Of Praise and Worship,
And You Alone Transcend Time and Space,
For You Alone Are The Creator of All That Is!

Most Gracious Heavenly Father,
With Our Whole Soul, Mind, Heart, and Strength,
With Everything that has Your Precious Breath of Life,
We Love You!
We Thank You For You Righteous and Holy Torah,
Your Perfect Precepts and Judgments,
Which You Gave to Moses on that First Shavuot.
In Our Hearts We Know That No Human Being Could Ever Live Up To Your Holy Standard of Purity and Holiness.
We Know You Have Given us Your Law To Teach us How Holy You Are,
And How Sinful We Are.
We Thank You For Your Precious Jewish People,
Whom You Have Chosen To Be Custodians of Your Word.
Perhaps because Your people hold Your Secrets in their hands,
And Because Your Word EXPOSES the wretched state of our own souls,
Could THAT be why the wicked world hates Your Beloved so?

Abba, Father, We Pray for Your Beloved People,
Who despite Persecutions and Pogroms,
Exile and Slavery,
Holocaust and Now Denial of Their History,
have probably contributed more to Western Civilization than any other People Group!

We ask for forgiveness for ourselves,
Dear Father, and we Pray for Our Nation.
We ask You to reverse the trends of evil and selfishness that have taken hold in our own Land.
We beg that You will restore Faith in You,
The One True God,
and that Our own Nation will Once Again be Known as one who keeps Her Promises to Her Friends and Allies,
and NOT as A Truce-Breaker.

Abba Father, How we long for that Day,
When You will remove From Your Holy Place
ANYTHING that does not Honor You,
and You ALONE.

LORD, We Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem, For Israel,
and For The Jewish People.
We Thank You Profoundly For That Tiny Nation
that sits at the Very Crossroads of History,
At the Nexus of Three Continents,
A Holy Witness to The Ultimate Truth of Your WORD!
For it is Not By Might,
Not By Power,
But By Your Spirit that the enemy will be overcome.

We Plead For Israeli Control Over All the Holy Sites in Israel,
So that People of All Faiths may visit them.
We Pray For Bibi Netayahu, and the Leaders of Israel
May They Receive Wisdom from You to do the Right Thing.
We Pray For The Swift and Sure Coming of Messiah,
Blessed Be He,
To Establish His Kingdom,
and Make All Things Right.



Blessings To All Who Visit This Thread



Hallelujah and Amen

[ConorMacNessa]

PRAYERS GOING UP FOR THE PEACE OF JERUSALEM

Jerusalem the Eastern gate - Golden gate in the wall

Lamh Foistenach Abu!

[left that other site]

Come and pray for the Peace of Jerusalem!
I really liked this Commentary about The Torah by a Brooklyn Rabbi:(from a Chabad Website), an Interesting Commentary on The Giving of the Torah. Enjoy.

May 20, 2009 by RabbiAri

by Yossi Jacobson

The Desert

This week’s Torah portion, named “Bamidbar,” which means “in the desert,” is always read on the Sabbath preceding the holiday of Shavuos, when we celebrate the giving of the Torah at Sinai, more than 3,300 years ago, in the year 1313 BCE (1).

One reason for this is because the Torah was given “bamidbar,” in a desert. But that only carries the question over: Of all places, why indeed was Torah given in a desert? Our sages describe Sinai as the marriage between G-d and His people (2). Whoever heard of getting married in a barren desert? The Torah should have been given in the Hilton or the Waldorf-Astoria, not in a barren desert?

And why was it really necessary for the Jewish people to wander 40 years in this desert before entering the Promised Land? Was 210 years in Egypt, including more than 80 years of hard labor, not enough? Why liberate them from Egypt only to put them through another 40 years in the wilderness (3)?

There are three primary explanations for the unique relationship between Torah and the desert.

Absolute Sublimity

1) Had the Torah been given in a civilized city or community, people might have defined it as a product of a particular culture, milieu and environment. Sophisticated academics would explain to us the particular “genre” of Torah, as if it were an outdated, modern or post-modern piece of literature, an epic or lyric, a work of history, law, tragedy or philosophy. They would enlighten us as to whether Torah belonged to the time of the Athenians, the Hellenistic age, the Greco-Roman period, the Byzantine age or another period of civilization. Torah would be labeled, classified and qualified. It would be “put into perspective.”

But Torah cannot be put into a particular cultural or artistic perspective. Torah is not culture, literature, art, history, law or fiction. Torah embodies the eternal truths about existence, life and destiny that speak in every language, in every culture, in every age, to every soul. The Torah cannot be reduced to a particular time frame or reference point. It benefits all the arts but never competes with them. Professor Abraham Joshua Heschel put it thus (4):

“Why does the Bible surpass everything created by man? Why is there no work worthy of comparison with it? Why is there no substitute for the Bible, no parallel to the history it has engendered? Why must all who seek the living G-d turn to its pages?

“Set the Bible beside any of the truly great books produced by the genius of man and see how they are diminished in stature. The Bible shows no concern with literary form, with verbal beauty, yet its absolute sublimity rings through all its pages. Its lines are so monumental and at the same time so simple that whomever tries to compete with them produces either a commentary or a caricature. It is a work we do not know how to assess. Other books you can estimate, you can measure, compare; the Bible you can only extol. Its insights surpass our standards. There is nothing greater. In three thousand years it has not aged a day. It is a book that cannot die. Oblivion shuns its pages.”

“Absolute sublimity.” Such a work must be taught and transmitted in a desert. A desert is not associated with any particular culture or form of living. A desert is barren, raw, plain. A desert is not sophisticated; it is real(5).

Ownerless

2) Had the Torah been given in a particular city or community, its inhabitants would have claimed copyrights on it. Had the Torah been given in Boro Park, Crown Heights, Williamsburg or Monsey, these communities would claim “ownership” on Torah. “We know how to interpret Torah, how to assess it, how to appreciate it. It belongs to us.” The same would hold true if the Torah was given in Lakewood or the Upper West Side.

The desert, on the other hand, is ownerless. Nobody wants the desert (besides the Arabs, once the Jews settle it). It belongs to nobody. Torah, too, is ownerless. It belongs to every Jewish soul on earth. Nobody holds any “rights” to the Torah. It is the living, vibrant conversation of G-d with every living creature (6).

Life in the Fast Lane

3) Had the Torah been given in a civilized and splendid terrain, we might have believed that its objective was to guide the beautiful life and the the splendid heart.

But that is not Torah.

Torah does not tell us that life is easy and that faith is bliss. On the contrary, we were placed in a personal and global wilderness, and life is a battle. And it is precisely this battle that G-d intended us to face, day in and day out. Do not be disturbed or demoralized, the Torah teaches, by your challenges, your demons, your inconsistencies and your weaknesses. Do not be shaken when you do not live up to your highest aspirations, and often do not actualize or maintain your inspiration. Do not be discouraged, because the Torah was given precisely to jelp us pave a road in the barren desert of the human psyche, to create a highway in the jungle of history.

Had the Torah been given in a beautiful city, then all we would have is a guide on how to live in beauty, in ecstasy. But Torah came to teach us how to confront our wildnerness and to transform a desert into paradise.

That is how the spiritual masters explained the reason for the Torah being given on a mountain. Why a mountain, and not flat land?

A mountain is essentially elevated earth. That is the profound message of Torah: With earth, gravel, dirt and mud, you must battle. That is intrinsic to the human condition and the reality of our world. Yet you must remember that your mission is to elevate the earth, to introduce holiness and G-dliness into a mundane and soiled world (7).

G-d did not desire holy people doing holy things; he wanted unholy people doing holy things (8). He desired that earthly human beings become mountains of moral dignity and divine grace.

I thought this was a Great perspective!

To My Christian Friends:

Christians celebrate this same Festival of First Fruits.
We call it "Pentecost", meaning "50 days after Passover".
It is the Day We Celebrate The Day that the Holy Spirit filled the Apostles With His Power.
The Apostles were, essentially, the "First Fruits" of the Harvest.
This year, unusually, the dates coincide.

[jackv]

Fascinating!! Thanks, ltos!!

God bless the Holy Land!! Thank you for the rich heritage!!

We Love Israel!!!

[etabeta]

How beautiful to start the day praying for The Peace of Jerusalem and the World. Blessings, blessings to all.

[LaineyDee]

Amen and Amen!

[Lera]

Amen

[NanaDory8]

Joining with you all in prayer.

[Mobties]

Amen

[Irish Rose]

Amen.