Va'etchanan: The Lord is our God, the Lord is One

We must conceive our connection and relationship with God as part of Him. This is the main lesson of this portion when we read the most fundamental statement and principle of Judaism, “Hear [understand], O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4), which also defines our individual and collective identity as Jews.

These are the first words we hear when we are born, and the last words we say and hear when we die. From this identifying statement we understand who we are and our purpose in life.

As long as we are aware of God in every dimension of consciousness, we will be able to live our true Essence and identity that come from Him because we are part of Him. The following verses command us the ways to love the Source of our identity because God's Love determines this identity.

We are commanded to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our might (6:5), which also means with all levels and aspects of consciousness because every dimension of us is also part of the Love of God from which we belong. This is how we understand and assimilate that Love is our common bond with God. These verses are decisive to make us aware of our Essence and identity based on our connection and relationship with God.

They also are closely related to the first two Commandments of the Decalogue also mentioned in this portion prior to the fundamental statement indicated earlier.

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall not have other gods before Me. You shall not make unto you a graven image, even any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth below, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down unto them, nor serve them (...)” (5:6-8)

In these Commandments God also defines His connection with us, Who He is for us, and what He wants from us based on our relationship with Him clearly defined by the His Unity and Oneness. Hence to love Him is to reiterate our common bond with Him. If we do not assimilate this principle, we will never understand the meaning of our Jewish identity as defined above (see our commentaries on Parshat Va'etchanan: “The Oneness of Israel and God's Love” of July 15, 2010 and “Our Bond with God's Love” of July 8, 2011).

Our true freedom depends on God's ways and attributes as the material manifestation of God's Love. Only in this freedom we can know God and fulfill our relationship with Him, opposite to living under the dominion of materialistic fantasies and illusions in which we are captive as our forefathers were in the house of bondage in Egypt.

Forced labor was the order of the day back then to build pyramids for Pharaoh, and forced labor is the order of the day now to sustain fantasies and illusions derived from the exploitation of ego's desires by Consumer Society (the Pharaoh of our times).

Fantasies and illusions that don't see, don't hear, don't smell, and don't taste. Neither they think or move by their own, for they are the idols from the present and from the past. In our Oneness with the Creator we are fully aware that everything comes from Him and is sustained by Him, and nothing else. Thus we realize that He is the One and only reality from which we exist, and there is no other reality.

The Written and Oral Torah, both as one, instructs us how to know God besides telling us that we belong to Him. First we must know who we are as part of His Love, and then we must know how we relate to His ways and His will for us. The second Commandment of the Decalogue warns us about living under the dominion and control of illusions created by ego's desires out of either a false or imposed belief of lack.

There's no lack in our permanent bond with God because He is sufficient for all that He has created.

We live divided and separated when we don't live in the unity of God's ways and attributes in all aspects of consciousness. We are commanded to love God because through Love we are united to His Love, and in this Unity there are no fantasies or illusions of any kind. In this awareness, Love is the only reality and the only purpose of life and in this world. God's Love is His Glory that covers the Earth. We just need to get to this awareness in order to truly know Him.

First we have to let Love's ways and attributes to conduct and guide our discernment and thoughts, beliefs and ideas, feelings and emotions, passions and instincts, speech and actions. This is the beginning to awaken our consciousness to God's Presence in all that He has created. Through Love we reveal His concealed Presence in the world, because God's Love is the means to discover Him in His Creation.

Our Prophets tell us that God dwells in Zion, in the Temple of Jerusalem, and this is the same truth when we declare that the Lord is our God and the Lord is One. God lives in us as long as we realize that He indeed does.

In this sense it is up to us to realize and experience that the Torah shall come from Zion and the word of God from Jerusalem, when we finally choose to enthrone Him in the highest awareness of our connection to Him, which is Zion-Jerusalem. First we must free our consciousness from the chains of materialistic desires and fantasies and return to the freedom that Love is.

Love is the ways and means of our true freedom, and in this freedom we will be able to recognize and embrace God's Love as the Source of our Love and our freedom. This is the meaning and implication of the first and second Commandments, in which our connection and relationship with God is stated.

Let's reflect more deeply in the statement we hear when we are born, and recite at least twice daily. Let's reflect thoroughly in our Essence and true identity. Let's reflect intensely about why God commands us to love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our might.

Devarim: Facing the Material World

“The Lord our God spoke to us in Horeb [Sinai], [and] said: 'You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Turn and journey forth (...)'.” (Deuteronomy 1:6-7).

These two sentences comprise one essential aspect of the relationship between Israel and the Creator. We indeed are always connected to Him as our forefathers were in the desert of Sinai during forty years after their Exodus from Egypt. Actually, they initiated this connection with Him that we still have as long as we want to be aware of it. We are long enough with Him in our Torah study, in which we realize the identity He shaped for us, and in our full awareness of it we must go out into the world and take on our journey by the hand of this identity.

The key of this awareness is to constantly live God's will for us in every aspect of consciousness. As we have mentioned many times, His will is His Commandments which we perform with His attributes of compassion, grace and loving kindness, for these qualities are our common bond with His Love.

In this awareness we realize that Love's ways and attributes are the material manifestation of God's Love that must constantly direct our discernment, thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts, speech and action. This is a practical process in which Love is the Light that dissipates the darkness of indifference, fear, apprehension, doubt, uncertainty, lack, helplessness, despair and the potentially negative aspects in human consciousness.

As long as we confront the fantasies and illusions of a materialistic approach to life with Love's attributes, we secure our connection with God's Love. This confrontation is symbolized by the children of Israel and their wars against the corrupted nations settled in the Promised Land.

We must be in full awareness of our unity with God's Love to be able to subjugate the lower aspects of consciousness and redirect them toward positive and constructive ends.

If we doubt God's Love for us, as well as Love's attributes as the means for our individual and collective Redemption, we will live under the dominion of egotism, separation, indifference, cruelty, lust, envy, indolence and all that keeps us apart from the embracing unity that Love is and amplifies. This is one of the meanings of the following verse.

“The Lord your God who goes before you, He shall fight for you, according to all that He did for you in Egypt before your eyes (...).” (1:30)

Sometimes we are extremely overwhelmed and subdued by negative fantasies and illusions, and seem incapable to overcome them. It feels like an addiction to a potent drug from which we are completely dominated. At this critical point we must trust Love as our way out, as our redeemer and deliverer, because Love fights and wins our wars against the negative choices we make and their consequences.

“Do not fear them, for it is the Lord, your God, who is fighting for you.”(3:22)

Let's refer back to the two sentences pointed out above, because in our connection with the Creator we become aware of the power we experience when we walk in His ways. We need to know His ways in order to fully assimilate the power of loving kindness, compassion and grace as some of the main attributes of Love as the material manifestation of God's Love.

Life is our journey and we must live it embracing the goodness of Love's ways and attributes. We are born to be loved, nurtured, cared for and protected in order to be able to love, nurture, care and protect others as well. That's the reason we are in this material world. Love is its own cause and effect. As long as we realize this Truth we are ready to live life regardless negative, violent and hostile illusions that many people experience in this world.

However, most of us prefer to live in the goodness of life trying to overlook wickedness, and avoiding negativity and evil by separating ourselves from their influence and predicament. This seems the best way to keep our “cool” and protect ourselves from danger and potential harm. But this is not what the Creator wants from us. That's the meaning of the the two lines mentioned above. It was meant to be that way back then in the desert and also now.

The idea is not only to enjoy God's Love and His goodness for us in Love's ways and attributes, but to manifest them where we don't find them. In other words, the purpose of Love – as well as Light – it to dissipate darkness and create a space and time where their attributes can be fully manifest.

In the desert God's Love provided for all that our forefathers needed and in that place and time nothing made them different among each other, because they all lived under God's care and protection. Likewise, when we all live in Love's ways and attributes nothing makes us different from each other because we all share the same approach and the same attitude towards each other. Nothing makes us better or superior to each other because we share the same identity.

The challenge begins when we go out into a world filled with materialistic fantasies and illusions that separate us from Love as our common Essence and approach to each other. At this point we are compelled to confront such illusions with the strength and power of the awareness of who we truly are.

Love's righteousness, justice, compassion, fairness, kindness and goodness are our references among its attributes to confront their opposite traits. If there is no justice and fairness, we make them prevail; if there is wickedness, we make righteousness and goodness prevail, and so on.

Love makes us better because Love is better than anything different from its ways and attributes. These shape the way we live, in the same way that God's Love shapes and sustains His Creation. In the freedom that Love gives us, because Love is our freedom, we love our Creator and His will for us.

Only in total freedom we can truly love God and His ways. This is why we must free ourselves from materialistic fantasies and illusions that keep us captive in the lower aspects of consciousness, and Love is the key to our freedom in order to live in its freedom.

This task or mission begins with us individually, and we do it by learning God's ways and attributes as stated in His Torah, and how He relates to His Creation. Once we acquire this knowledge, we integrate it into all levels and dimensions of consciousness in order to manifest it in what we discern, believe, think, feel, speak and do. This is how we redeem ourselves and those around us: by making Love's ways our ways. When we do this individually and collectively Redemption comes.

We have mentioned many times that some of our Sages say that the Final Redemption comes when we start to love each other without preconditions or hidden agendas, what they refer to as “uncalled for Love”. We do this as the way to clear the darkness of all that opposes Love's ways.

For some this sounds like an impossible task. They can't imagine that evil can be completely eradicated by Love's attributes. In other words, they don't believe that Love is more powerful than evil, and rather choose to be indifferent and separate from whatever they consider negative.

This endeavor does not mean that we have to force everybody to abandon their wicked ways and instantly embrace Love's ways. Love does not force itself on anything or anybody.

Love does not need promoters or advocates because it presents itself as a choice, not as a weapon. In the same way that evil seems to be something we choose, Love is also a choice. The idea is to consider evil not as a choice but as a reference to be ruled out, and make Love the one and only choice to live happily ever after.

In order to live happily ever after we must subjugate ego's drives and desires into Love's ways to secure goodness, peace and harmony in the decisions we make every moment.

This is the task of Love and as we engage on it, God's Love is also on our side helping us fight the wars against the potential negative aspects of consciousness represented by the nations that occupied the Promised Land.

This Land is also the time and space where and when Love conducts and guides all dimensions of life for us to live happily ever after. Let's accept and execute the Creator's Commandment to engage ourselves in the journey to confront the fantasies and illusions of the material world in the awareness of His ways.

Let's transform our consciousness through Love's ways, means, qualities and attributes in order to settle permanently in the Promised Land we also call Redemption.

Matot-Massei: Enforcing our Connection with God's Love

We mentioned in previous commentaries that the war against the potential negative trends in our consciousness must be led by the utmost awareness of our connection with the Creator and His Love, symbolized by the High Priest and in this particular battle in Matot led by Pinchas. We have to emphasize again that when we choose to separate from our connection with God's Love, we live the consequences of that choice.

Ego's fantasies and illusions, as objects of our own invention, all come from misconceptions and feelings of lack that make us doubt our connection with the Creator through His ways and attributes.

The moment ego makes believe that we are separated and not united with God's Love and Love's ways and attributes, we are at the mercy of fantasies and illusions as idols fabricated by us.

“(...) the product of human hands. They have a mouth but they can't speak; they have eyes but they can't see; they have ears but they can't hear (…). Those who make them will become like them, all who trust in them.” (Psalms 135:15-18)

Let's be aware that we are who create idols and an illusory world based on what we think or believe we lack, that which in fact keeps us alive: God's Love. Must of us are totally unaware that God sustains us as well as His entire Creation!

We must remember that our “fall” from Paradise was the result of a false sense of lack, based on the illusion that we also can become a god, which is ego's negative projection in the material world to make us feel that we are the god of our life.

As long as we live in such illusion we feel separated, divided and ultimately isolated from the unity that Love is as our Essence and true identity. Love is what unites us and keeps us united with our fellow humans, our surroundings and individual circumstances. Love is our common denominator, our common bond with the Creator because we were created by His Love that also sustains us. 

The highest awareness of our connection with God's Love is what fights our wars and battles against that which separates us from Him. This is why Moses, our highest knowledge of the Creator and His Love, sends Pinchas to the battlefield where we are entitled to defeat what divides the unity of our consciousness and creates conflict within us.

Our mystic Sages teach that the Hebrew semantic root of Midian (the nation that joined Moab to destroy Israel) means strife and conflict (see our commentaries Parshat Matot-Massei: “Love Defeats Strife” of July 3, 2010 and “Love as the Foundation of Life” of July 17, 2011).

“And Moses sent them, one thousand for each Tribe to the army; them and Pinchas the son of Eleazar the priest to the army, and the sacred vessels and the trumpets for sounding in his hand.” (Numbers 31:6)

The vessels are essential parts of the Sanctuary because through them we honor and renew our permanent connection with God. These vessels are meant to contain the unblemished offerings, our purest thoughts, emotions, feelings, speech and actions that we elevate to the Creator, to honor Him with the purity of Love, the same fragrance that He infused in us.

In this we rejoice and proclaim our praises to Him in total freedom from anything different from His ways and attributes. This is the sublime happiness we live as the resounding vibration of the trumpets of our joy.

The vessels and the trumpets belong to the Sanctuary and are handled and played by the priests and Levites who officiate permanently in the time and space that become one in our unity the Creator, the Sanctuary that He built for us.

The Prophet reminds us of our duties regarding clearing our consciousness from the potential negative aspects derived from materialistic fantasies and illusions, represented by the nations and their rulers.

“Behold, I have appointed you [Israel] over the nations and over the kingdoms, to uproot and to crush, and to destroy and to demolish, to build and to plant.” (Jeremiah 1:10)

The war against negativity and wickedness has the sole purpose to build and plant on the positive traits and qualities of Love's ways and attributes.

We fight evil with goodness, we defeat negativity with positive actions, we dissipate darkness with Light, we overcome and prevail over ego's fantasies and illusions by embracing Love's ways and attributes. The core of our Jewish daily prayers originally contained eighteen blessings, and because of the constant harassment of Israel by foreign peoples our Sages instituted an additional blessing for the Creator, asking Him to help us defeat all our enemies.

The text is written based on the battles and wars God helped our forefathers fight.

“Let there be no hope for defamers [informers], and may all the heretics and all the wicked instantly perish; may all the enemies of Your people be speedily extirpated; and may You swiftly uproot, break, crush, and subdue the reign of wickedness speedily in our days. Blessed are You, Lord, who crushes enemies and subdues the wicked.” (From the Jewish daily prayers)

Let's reiterate again that our enemies also live within our consciousness, and the wars that we fight to protect our people and our Land also take place inside of us. This is the primordial meaning of our forefathers' wars to settle in the Promised Land. They first have to fight, defeat, subjugate and destroy the nations and peoples who occupied our Land in order for us to settle permanently in it. It was true then and it is true now.

We are not going to be worthy of this Land if we don't remove first those who don't belong in it. The Promised Land is both the Land of Israel given to us by God in His Torah, and the awareness in our consciousness of the blessings that He bestowed on us as the people chosen to enthrone His ways and attributes in all aspects of life.

Our Land is the place where we live in the total freedom of our consciousness when we embrace God's Love as our Essence and identity. In this awareness there is no room to share with enemies either they be real within our country and outside, or within our consciousness.

Pinchas represents our approach to God's Love and our connection with Him, and also our approach to the material world and our altitude and attitude towards everything that threatens God's ways and attributes.

Pinchas: The Priesthood as the Highest Level of Consciousness

Consciousness is a multidimensional space that encompasses all aspects, traits and qualities that shape human identity. These dimensions range from discernment, thought, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts to talents, skills, creativity, and the ways we approach our fellow humans and our circumstances. All these and their expressions dwell in one single entity we call awareness, in order to experience positive and negative outcomes according to the choices we make through our free well.

We can compare this multidimensional space with Noah's ark, where he and his family shared the same dwelling with pairs of animal species. It's an appropriate and insightful metaphor for all dimensions of consciousness sharing so many aspects that are aimed to coexist harmonically within ourselves.

As we just mentioned, these dimensions imply different levels and approaches according to the circumstances. Our discernment doesn't share its space with emotions or instincts, and our passions don't deal with thoughts or feelings the moment passions express their intensity. This does not means that they are completely separated from each each other, because they indeed belong to the wholeness that consciousness is.

What we must learn is to make them all manifest their own qualities in the most possible harmonious fashion. In this regard, they require a leader, a guide, a conductor that unite them for such purpose. This conductor is the High Priest, the highest level or dimension of human consciousness, because he represents the utmost awareness of the connection with our Maker, the Creator of all.

We are destined to unite our consciousness under the Creator's will, and we do that through free will. The Torah instructs us to make positive, productive and constructive choices, and also to correct and redirect the negative outcomes of our wrong decisions. This process is known by philosophers as empiricism, learning by experience, something that the Torah defined many centuries earlier.

In order to make the right decisions, discernment is the means to lead us to the goodness we desire, and the Redemption we yearn for. The space in which discernment acts are the ways and attributes with which the Creator relates to His Creation, and they are Love's ways and attributes as material reflections of God's Love.

In this sense, the High Priest is our discernment when it acts in Love's ways. This is the space in which the High Priest directs the remaining dimensions of consciousness.

“Be of the disciples of Aaron, a lover of peace, a pursuer of peace, one who loves the creatures and draws them close to the Torah.” (Pirkei Avot 1:12)

“Which is the right path for man to choose for himself? Whatever is harmonious for the one who does it, and harmonious for mankind.” (2:1)

This means that what we do must be positive not only for us individually but for others as well.

We have to understand the meaning of the High Priest in the context of affection and peace as the primordial traits of Love's ways and attributes, and this is how we assimilate why God gave Pinchas His Covenant of Peace.

“Pinchas the son of Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest has turned My anger away from the children of Israel by his zealously avenging Me among them, so that I did not destroy the children of Israel because of My zeal. Therefore behold, I give unto him My Covenant of Peace.” (Numbers 25:11-12)

It may seem difficult to associate peace with a violent act such as killing two people at the same time with a spear (25:7-8)

This we must understand regarding our relationship with the Creator. This is the meaning of what we repeatedly say in “God's Love”: “Love does not cohabit with anything different from its ways and attributes”, and is indeed a radical and fundamental approach.

We reiterate again that duality exists in our consciousness for the sole purpose of experiencing free will in order to choose from positive and negative, and “negative” exists as a reference, not as a choice. Pinchas has this very clear in his consciousness up to the point of committing an act of apparent ruthlessness.

Shouldn't we be ruthless against evil? Can we really afford the luxury of sparing the cause of all our ills, pains, suffering, frustration, depression, sadness, greed, cruelty, indifference, indolence, violence, exploitation, oppression, despotism and totalitarianism? No, we can't; no, we must not; no, we should not.

We can't allow ego's negative fantasies and illusions to lead, guide and conduct all dimensions of consciousness, and turn our life and surroundings into a place we regret to live in because it's been turned into a junkyard.

Once we embrace God's will as our way, and Love as our Essence and true identity, then we have to guard who we are, what we have, and what we do with the shield of Love's ways and attributes. This is how we understand Love as our own protection, our task and our reward, because Love is its own reward.

This is how we understand the “zeal” of God and His “wrath”, because it is our zeal and wrath that defend us from the perils, dangers and damages of destructive attitudes, careless behavior and negative actions. The lesson of evil, wickedness and negativity is for us to reject them ruthlessly and without any consideration.

Some proclaim that “the evil in the world is already enough” as if evil by itself is not enough. They make it sound that having “some” is fine, and it shows that they have no idea what Redemption is all about.

Redemption in Judaism is the eradication of all evil from the face of the Earth which means from human consciousness, and this is the prelude to live in peace and harmony as it is written.

“You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil; with You the wicked cannot dwell.” (Psalms 5:4)

“The face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the Earth.” (34:16)

We achieve this awareness in God's ways and attributes, in the knowledge of Him, in which absolutely nothing is negative.

“They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the Earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:9)

We reinstate all the positive ways and means of Love's attributes by clearing our consciousness from that which we do not need in order to live in the Covenant of Peace the Creator gives us, when we choose His ways and attributes over ego's fantasies and illusions. With determination and eagerness we reject and erase negativity from consciousness. With determination and eagerness we embrace Love as the guide and conductor of all dimensions of life.

Balak: The Blessings of Love

In the dual perception of the material world we are compelled to make choices every moment, and the constant challenge is to choose between a positive approach and a negative one.

In this sense all levels and dimensions of consciousness seem to be empty vessels to be filled with the choices we make or we are induced to make. The bottom line is that we either choose the blessings of love's ways and attributes, or ego's fantasies and illusions.

We have said many times that the Creator made us with free will in order to exist as free beings, hence it is up to us to act in and with freedom for the purpose of freedom. The thing is that this predicament implies ground rules and guidelines to safeguard freedom for everyone. Otherwise, the result is exactly what we have been living ever since time immemorial up until now: the negative traits of consciousness imposing their predicament in most aspects of life, under the dictatorship of ego's separatist agenda, away from love's ways and attributes.

The ground rules and guidelines needed to secure peace and harmony, prosperity and abundance, solidarity and happiness, growth and advancement, purity and refinement, and all the good things that love offers, are given to us by the Creator in His Torah.

God's testimonies, statutes, commandments, ways, means, and attributes are the blessings that endow us to also be the blessing for us and for others. Israel is especially blessed as the recipient and bearer of the Torah as the instruction to become the messenger and deliverer of the blessing the Creator has given to all.

We mentioned recently that the blessings are empty if we don't bestow them in what we are and do. It's not enough to say, “wow, I am blessed... what a nice feeling!”, because the real blessing is when we become the blessing by being and doing what it means for us. It is like being a king without kingdom or subjects.

The children of Israel are blessed because they offer their blessing to humankind by sharing their Torah with everyone who desires to also become the blessing of living in love's ways and attributes. This is the legacy, inheritance and Commandment for Israel, to be the light for the nations as decreed by our God, who is our blessing and everyone's blessing.

We said before (see our commentaries on Parshat Balak: “The Power of Divine Love” of June 20, 2010 and “Elevating our Consciousness to God's Love” of July 3, 2011) that we choose the blessings because we want to live in the goodness of love, and this choice requires determination and commitment to reject the material illusions that ego pursues in its quest to separate from the unity that love is.

As long as we live and enjoy our freedom to choose, we are blessed abundantly when we pursue love's ways and attributes, as the prophet reminds us in the haftarah for this portion of the Torah.

“Your hand shall be raised above your oppressors, and all your enemies shall be destroyed.” (Micah 5:8)

We just need to implement our resolution with temperance, knowing that love does not cohabit with anything different from its ways and attributes. Love generates good deeds that prevail over negative choices that oppress us, and the latter are our enemies.

As long as we stand in the strength and power of the awareness of love as our essence and true identity, nothing negative can be against. It can't be otherwise, because our love is the material manifestation of God's love. This is the same love that created and sustains all His creation. We don't have a reason or argument to question God's love as the source from which we live and breathe.

Our trust in God is the same trust we have in love since the moment we are born, because we know that we simply can't live without it. Likewise, we can't live without God's love. This is the reason why we have to love each other, because God loves us.

This trust strengthens us to realize that God's love is also our redeemer and deliverer from the negative aspects of consciousness that ultimately force us choose back to love's attributes.

“And it shall come to pass on that day, says the Lord, that I will cut your horses out of your midst, and I will destroy your chariots.” (5:9)

The latter represent lust and greed.

“And I will destroy the cities of your land, and I will break down all your fortresses.” (5:10)

These symbolize the wrong beliefs in our consciousness, and the negative habits and addictions from which we can't liberate ourselves.

Only love has the power to redeem us from ego's manipulative ways, always foreseeing and expecting to satisfy materialistic fantasies and illusions.

“And I will destroy sorcery from your hand, and you will have no soothsayers.” (5:11)

Such fantasies and illusions eventually become the idols of our worship and total devotion. After all, they are the works of our own invention, the works of our hands.

“And I will destroy your graven images and your monuments from your midst, and you shall no longer prostrate yourself to your handiwork.” (5:12)

In our total awareness of love we are able to overcome the negative aspects of consciousness.

“And I will uproot your [idol] shrines from your midst, and I will destroy your enemies.” (5:13)

God's love, in His infinite grace and compassion, will assist us to overcome the remaining negative traits that seem impossible for us to defeat or subjugate. These are the ones that make us yearn to live again permanently in the total freedom of love.

“And in anger and fury I will execute vengeance upon the nations who have paid no heed.” (5:14)

This is how we finally assimilate that God our Creator is indeed our blessing, and in this awareness we also choose to live in the blessings of His love as our essence and true identity, the precious inheritance of Israel, from us the Hebrew people to the world.