#David's righteous branch

[officialyourdailyinspiration]

David's Righteous Branch

“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of My pasture!” declares the LORD.

Therefore this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says about the shepherds who tend My people: “You have scattered My flock and driven them away, and have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for the evil of your deeds, declares the LORD.

Then I Myself will gather the remnant of My flock from all the lands to which I have banished them, and I will return them to their pasture, where they will be fruitful and multiply. I will raise up shepherds over them who will tend them, and they will no longer be afraid or dismayed, nor will any go missing, declares the LORD.

Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and He will reign wisely as King and will administer justice and righteousness in the land. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is His name by which He will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness.

So behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when they will no longer say, ‘As surely as the LORD lives, who brought the Israelites up out of the land of Egypt.’ Instead they will say, ‘As surely as the LORD lives, who brought and led the descendants of the house of Israel up out of the land of the north and all the other lands to which He had banished them.’ Then they will dwell once more in their own land.”

As for the prophets: My heart is broken within me, and all my bones tremble. I have become like a drunkard, like a man overcome by wine, because of the LORD, because of His holy words. For the land is full of adulterers— because of the curse, the land mourns and the pastures of the wilderness have dried up— their course is evil and their power is misused.

“For both prophet and priest are ungodly; even in My house I have found their wickedness,” declares the LORD.

“Therefore their path will become slick; they will be driven away into the darkness and fall into it. For I will bring disaster upon them in the year of their punishment,” declares the LORD.

“Among the prophets of Samaria I saw an offensive thing: They prophesied by Baal and led My people Israel astray. And among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing: They commit adultery and walk in lies. They strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns his back on wickedness. They are all like Sodom to Me; the people of Jerusalem are like Gomorrah.”

Therefore this is what the LORD of Hosts says concerning the prophets:

“I will feed them wormwood and give them poisoned water to drink, for from the prophets of Jerusalem ungodliness has spread throughout the land.”

This is what the LORD of Hosts says:

“Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They are filling you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD. They keep saying to those who despise Me, ‘The LORD says that you will have peace,’ and to everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart, ‘No harm will come to you.’

But which of them has stood in the council of the LORD to see and hear His word? Who has given heed to His word and obeyed it? Behold, the storm of the LORD has gone out with fury, a whirlwind swirling down upon the heads of the wicked. The anger of the LORD will not turn back until He has fully accomplished the purposes of His heart. In the days to come you will understand this clearly.

I did not send these prophets, yet they have run with their message; I did not speak to them, yet they have prophesied. But if they had stood in My council, they would have proclaimed My words to My people and turned them back from their evil ways and deeds.”

“Am I only a God nearby,” declares the LORD, “and not a God far away?”

“Can a man hide in secret places where I cannot see him?” declares the LORD.

“Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?” declares the LORD.

“I have heard the sayings of the prophets who prophesy lies in My name: ‘I had a dream! I had a dream!’ How long will this continue in the hearts of these prophets who prophesy falsehood, these prophets of the delusion of their own minds? They suppose the dreams that they tell one another will make My people forget My name, just as their fathers forgot My name through the worship of Baal.

Let the prophet who has a dream retell it, but let him who has My word speak it truthfully. For what is straw compared to grain?” declares the LORD. “Is not My word like fire,” declares the LORD, “and like a hammer that smashes a rock?”

“Therefore behold,” declares the LORD, “I am against the prophets who steal from one another words they attribute to Me.”

“Yes,” declares the LORD, “I am against the prophets who wag their own tongues and proclaim, ‘The LORD declares it.’ ”

“Indeed,” declares the LORD, “I am against those who prophesy false dreams and retell them to lead My people astray with their reckless lies. It was not I who sent them or commanded them, and they are of no benefit at all to these people,” declares the LORD.

“Now when this people or a prophet or priest asks you, ‘What is the burden of the LORD?’ you are to say to them, ‘What burden? I will forsake you, declares the LORD.’

As for the prophet or priest or anyone who claims, ‘This is the burden of the LORD,’ I will punish that man and his household.

This is what each man is to say to his friend and to his brother: ‘What has the LORD answered?’ or ‘What has the LORD spoken?’ But refer no more to the burden of the LORD, for each man’s word becomes the burden, so that you pervert the words of the living God, the LORD of Hosts, our God.

Thus you are to say to the prophet: ‘What has the LORD answered you?’ and ‘What has the LORD spoken?’

But if you claim, ‘This is the burden of the LORD,’ then this is what the LORD says: Because you have said, ‘This is the burden of the LORD,’ and I specifically told you not to make this claim, therefore I will surely forget you and will cast you out of My presence, both you and the city that I gave to you and your fathers. And I will bring upon you everlasting shame and perpetual humiliation that will never be forgotten.” — Jeremiah 23 | The Reader’s Bible (BRB) The Reader’s Bible © 2020 by Bible Hub and Berean.Bible. All rights Reserved. Cross References: Genesis 4:16; Genesis 18:20; Genesis 49:1; Exodus 32:34; Leviticus 5:1; Deuteronomy 13:1-2; Deuteronomy 18:20; 1 Kings 18:18; Job 13:4; Psalm 69:20; Isaiah 11:11; Isaiah 13:1; Isaiah 30:10; Isaiah 43:5-6; Isaiah 43:18-19; Jeremiah 6:13; Jeremiah 7:14-15; Jeremiah 9:12; Jeremiah 14:14; Jeremiah 20:11; Jeremiah 25:32; Jeremiah 33:3; Jeremiah 36:31; Matthew 1:21; Matthew 2:2; Matthew 7:15; Matthew 11:24; John 6:39; John 10:8; John 12:35; Acts 17:20; 1 Corinthians 2:16; 1 Corinthians 3:12-13; 1 Corinthians 4:5; 2 Corinthians 10:4-5; Galatians 1:7-8; Hebrews 4:13; 1 Timothy 4:1-2; Revelation 8:11; Revelation 11:8

[fizzyorange-v2]

any thoughts on pd ep 33, comprehensible or not?

‼️ MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD FOR EPISODES 30-33 OF JRWI PRIME DEFENDERS ‼️

also sorry anon this got way out of hand

Oh man where would i even START. I think what’s really getting me is the heartbreak. What’s still haunting me is that very last line William says, “I really wanted to have a brother.” Like fuck. FUCK!! Fuck Charlie Slimecicle for always giving his characters the most excruciating of sibling relationships and fuck Bizly for playing David so goddamn well.

William got himself into this mess by following his brain, by thinking that the logical thing to do to save the most people and make sure everyone got out of this alive was to just let David take his samples and make sure no one else got hurt in the process. But it’s so clear in episode 33 that despite his better judgement, despite knowing LOGICALLY he shouldn’t trust David, shouldn’t believe him… he does. Because he wants to believe his brother might not be so bad, that he might finally have a brother at all, that there was one thing that came out of deadwood that wasn’t sick.

I keep going back to that scene in David’s private room, where he gives William what is ostensibly his first drink, plays the role of big brother so well, asks him questions to which William spills everything because how could he not? After years of feeling like and believing the older brother he always considered better than him hated him, disliked him, thought him (rightfully in his mind) a freak, how could he refuse this olive branch?

So William tells him everything, and David tells him to come home safe. David tells him he’ll protect him if he needs, that he can come to him for help. When William goes to awkwardly leave, David pulls him in for a hug.

And the worst part of all? I don’t think David is necessarily lying. Or faking. Not fully, at least. I think David is finally interested in William now, in his own twisted way. I think he’s stopped seeing him as some weirdo little brother who disappeared to go be some self righteous hero, and instead started seeing him as… an equal-ish. Someone more on his level. Someone who does see the world for what it is, and is willing to do what it takes to make those hard calls. He was using William, absolutely. Manipulating him for his own ends, without a doubt. But I think he meant it when he told William to make sure he made it back safe. I think he was also welcoming to the idea of them getting closer, maybe becoming brothers for real.

That’s why I think David was so confused when William came bursting into his penthouse with Vyncent. I don’t think he understood one bit why William was so upset. Other than the news that one of the vigilantes had died, nothing else in his mind had changed. It appears he didn’t even know she did, his people just knew to cover his tracks without needing to be told. He wasn’t keeping it a secret from William, his true lie was in telling William the serum was harmless in the first place. And I think he’s going to stay confused, and I think he’s going to feel betrayed and I know any chances of them ever really being brothers died with Cantrip.

And it breaks my heart for William because he wanted to believe so hard. He was going to split those samples, y’know? He told Vyncent “the board made him do it”. He told David about Ashe. About his fears around Mal. About how he’s afraid being able to drink and feel and live again might all go away. He wanted to have an older brother he could trust so bad. And now one of their only friends is dead, and William killed her, and no amount of logic or rationalisations or leaps of faiths in the world is going to fix that.

William’s haunting speech to David at the end… fuck man. All that rage, all that guilt, all that self hatred William has projected back and forced down the throat, nose, ears of the brother that doesn’t but should. Turning the tool he learnt and used under David’s command back on him.

My thoughts? I think William was doomed the moment he tried to win an argument in that operation room with the older brother he always considered smarter better and more successful than him in every way. There’s nothing more impressionable in the world than a younger brother.

But I also think William might finally stop digging himself deeper, at least for now. How heavily Cantrip’s death weighs on him, Dakota’s reactions, Mal making another appearance, what David and his parents are going to be like after all this… it is all still up in the air.

Fuck man. Ultimately, I still can’t get over that very last line. “I really wanted to have a brother.” Because that’s what it was all about, really. Not being pro hero or anti hero, not a villainous descent nor a sudden morality change… just William hoping his older brother could finally love him.

But David just proved his theory right: that everything that comes from Deadwood is sick and twisted and wrong. Nothing good has ever come from that place. Certainly not David… and certainly not himself, either.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Women of the Warsaw Ghetto

Keynote delivered in honor of Yom Hashoah, on the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Event sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Dutchess County, New York.

The version of my talk below includes some pieces I had to edit out the live version for timing purposes. Majority of talk under a cut for reasons of: length, content relating to the mercy killing of children and the elderly, general genocide. I will also be posting a version of this talk to my instagram: @historicity_wasalreadytaken.

What I am about to read is an abridged version of Rachel Auerbach’s poem, “Yizkor, 1943,” translated from the original Yiddish, originally printed in David Roskies’ The Literature of Destruction: Jewish Responses to Catastrophe.

I saw a flood once in the mountains. Wooden huts, torn from their foundations were carried above the raging waters. One could still see lighted lamps in them; and men, women and children in their cradles were tied to the ceiling beams. Other huts were empty inside, but one could see a tangle of arms waving from the roof … At a distance, one could see mouths gaping, but one could not hear the cries because the roar of the waters drowned out everything.

And that's how the Jewish masses flowed to their destruction at the time of the deportations. 

Sinking as helplessly into the deluge of destruction. And if, for even one of the days of my life, I should forget how I saw you then, my people, desperate and confused, delivered over to extinction, may all knowl­edge of me be forgotten and my name be cursed like that of those traitors who are unworthy to share your pain.

Who can render the stages of the dying of a people? Only the shudder of pity for oneself and for others. And again illusion: waiting for the chance miracle. The insane smile of hope in the eyes of the incurable patient. Ghastly reflections of color on the yellowed face of one who is condemned to death.

Condemned to death. Who could—who wished to understand such a thing? And who could have expected such a decree against … such low branches, such simple Jews. The lowly plants of the world. The sorts of people who would have lived out their lives without ever picking a quarrel with the righteous—or even the unrighteous—of this world. How could such people have been prepared to die in a gas chamber? The sorts of people who were terrified of a dentist's chair; who turned pale at the pulling of a tooth.

Even the sweetest ones: the two- and three-year-olds who seemed like newly hatched chicks tottering about on their weak legs. And even the slightly larger ones who could already talk. Who endlessly asked about the meanings of words ... Five-year-olds. And six- year-olds. And those who were older still—their eyes wide with curiosity about the whole world … Girls who still nursed their dolls off in corners. Who wore ribbons in their hair; girls, like sparrows, leaping about in courtyards and on garden paths … to whose cheeks the very first wind of summer seems to have given its first glowing caress. Girls of eleven, twelve, thirteen with the faces of angels.

And pious Jews in black gaberdines, looking like priests in their medieval garb: Jews who were rabbis, teachers who wanted to transform our earthly life into a long study of Torah and prayer to God. They were the first to feel the scorn of the butcher. Their constant talk of martyrdom turned out not to be mere empty words.

And still other Jews. Broad shouldered, deep voiced, with powerful hands and hearts. Artisans, workers. Wagon drivers, porters. Jews who, with a blow of their fists, could floor any hooligan who dared enter into their neighborhoods...You were swept away in the flood, together with those who were weak.

Grandfathers and grandmothers with an abundance of grandchildren. With hands like withered leaves … Who already trembled at the latter end of their days. They were not destined simply to decline wearily into their graves like rest-seeking souls; like the sun sinking wearily into the ocean's waves. No. It was decreed that before they died they would get to see the destruction of all that they had begotten; of all that they had built.

“I have so many names to recall, how can I leave any of them out, since nearly all of them went off to Belzec and Treblinka or were killed on the spot? … Absurd! I will utter no more names. They are all mine, all related. All who were killed. Who are no more. Those whom I knew and loved press on my memory, which I compare now to a cemetery. The only cemetery in which there are still indications that they once lived in this world ... I may neither groan nor weep. I may not draw attention to myself in the street. And I need to groan; I need to weep. Not four times a year. I feel the need to say Yizkor four times a day.

Remember, Oh Lord, the souls of those who passed from this world horribly, dying strange deaths before their time. And now, suddenly I seem to see myself as a child standing on a bench behind my mother who, along with my grandmother and my aunts, is praying before the east wall of the woman's section of the synagogue … And just then the Torah reader, Hersh's Meyer-Itsik, strikes the podium three times and cries out with a mighty voice … ‘We recite Yizkor.’

Auerbach composed this piece in November 1943, after the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, after its Uprising, and after its destruction at the hands of the Nazis.

Born in 1903, Rachel Auerbach studied psychology at the University of Lwow. A talented and prolific writer, Rachel began her literary career in 1925, moving to Warsaw, home of the largest Jewish community in Europe, in 1933. She thrived there, among the city’s numerous theaters, publishing houses, cafes, art galleries, libraries, and museums; and socialized with the city’s Jewish intellectual elite.

When Poland fell to the Nazis in September 1939, Jewish historian Emmanuel Ringelblum recruited Rachel into the Aleynhilf, the Jewish “Self-Help” Organization of the Warsaw Ghetto. Ringelblum put Rachel in charge of a soup kitchen, a position which allowed her to observe a wide swathe of the ghetto’s inhabitants. In 1941, Ringelblum recruited Rachel into the Oyneg Shabbes, or “Pleasure of the Sabbath,” his underground group dedicated to documenting life in the Warsaw Ghetto as it happened, without analysis or commentary. He asked Rachel to write for the archive regular reports on her experiences in the soup kitchen.

In both these reports and her post-war writings, Auerbach described the ordinary people she worked with each day at that soup kitchen on Leszno Street. There was the efficient bookkeeper, Halina Gelblum, whose competence soothed the nerves of the rest of the staff. There was the sixteen-year-old Henie, who was always smiling and flirting with the boys who worked in the kitchen. There was Gutchke the cook; talented, yet often at odds with Auerbach’s fastidious approach to hygiene. She would sing to herself in Yiddish as she bustled about the kitchen, talk to the pots and pans, and test the soup with her fingers.

There was Dama, a once-wealthy woman who, as Auerbach wrote, had “been wearing for many weeks a black georgette cocktail dress, dragged down at the bottom in uneven tails, the seams plastered with nits; on her head a cloth jockey cap, yellow with brown strips, perhaps from some skiing costume; and over her shoulders, weighing her down, inseparable collections of large bags and small handbags stuffed with what few posses­sions she has left.”

Ringleblum so valued Rachel’s reports that he soon gave her additional assignments. One of these, was to conduct interviews with those who had escaped from the Treblinka death camp and returned to the ghetto. These escapees were brought to the attention of the Oyneg Shabbes through the work of two young female underground couriers: Chavka Folman, and Frumka Plotnicka—who once smuggled grenades, hidden in a basket of potatoes, into the Warsaw Ghetto. Those interviews became critical to alerting the outside world of the extermination of Polish Jewry.

After the War, Rachel—with fellow Oyneg Shabbes survivors Hirsch and Bluma Wasser—was critical to the recovery of the archive, which the Oyneg Shabbes buried beneath the ghetto in summer 1942, when the Nazis liquidated the Warsaw Ghetto, rounding up 90% of its inhabitants, over 300,000 individuals, and sending them by cattle-cars to their deaths at Treblinka. In April 1946, at a meeting held to commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on its third anniversary, Auerbach—the only female speaker present—stood up, and said:

“We cannot rest until we dig up the archive. Even if there are five stories of ruins, we have to find the archive … I will not rest, and I will not let you rest. We must rescue the Ringelblum Archive!”

Eventually, through her persistence, and assistance from the Jewish Labor Committee in New York, the search began that summer, 1946. Thanks to Rachel Auerbach, the majority of the archive was recovered from beneath the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto, and would become one of the most vital sources on daily life therein.

The Aleynhilf was not the only organization of its kind operating in the Warsaw Ghetto. Most homes in Warsaw were built in clusters of four, with a shared courtyard between them. During the initial occupation of the city, and the first months of the Ghetto’s existence, “house committees” began to emerge in these courtyards. The house committees provided to the clusters’ residents child-care, communal kitchens, and illegal educational and cultural activities. By April 1940, there were 778 house committees operating in the Warsaw Ghetto; by early 1942 there were 1,108, with 7,500 members between them.

One such member was a young woman named Hannah Fryshdorf, who would go on to fight in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and escape the burning ghetto through the sewers under the leadership of Zivia Lubetkin, the highest-ranking woman in the Jewish Fighting Organization. In an abridged section of a talk she delivered after the war, “Memories of the Warsaw Ghetto,” Hannah briefly discussed the illegal educational activities conducted by the house committees; activities in which she took part. This source was provided to me by Hannah’s niece, Ettie Goldwasser; according to Goldwasser, this is the only public statement Hannah ever made about her experiences in the Holocaust.

She wrote:

What has not been spoken of is the important role the hoyf (courtyard) played in the life of the ghetto … Because the police curfew began at 6 p.m., effectively prohibiting anyone from leaving the apartment after that hour, life within the confines of the four hoyf walls took on unprecedented significance.

Let Genshe 33 serve as an example … Before the war some eighty families lived in this building. Though acquainted with one another, they did not socialize much. But during the ghetto years, over one thousand people—those who had been driven out of nearby neighborhoods and those who had originally lived in Warsaw outside the ghetto walls—were crammed into the building.

When curfew fell at 6 p.m. and the gates closed, people, including children, began gathering in the hoyf to walk around until late into the night. In the courtyard they exchanged news about daily life, discussed the miracle of surviving yet another day, and gave voice to rumors true and false, recounting them over and over. Gradually, the inhabitants of the hoyf became more and more intimately connected, and the hoyf itself actually became a shtetl.

Quite naturally there arose a wish for an organized cooperative way of life, and…it fell to a group of the older activists to organize and create a hoyf committee. The organizers felt that it was their responsibility to look after the spiritual and bodily well-being of those who lived within the hoyf's quarters.

The first job was to raise money for feeding the hungry, since there were people close to starvation. It was difficult, yet funds were found and a soup kitchen was started. Every day several women volunteered to work there, cooking and serving supper … One good meal a day saved dozens of families from starvation.

Some 40 teenagers would meet every evening in a small room and spend several hours together, talking, discussing, reading books … For a few hours each night they were able to forget their cares and their hunger; for a few hours they were young again. And these same youngsters took it upon themselves to be concerned with those even younger, helping them to live a little, making them laugh, sing, and play.

So a ‘children’s corner’ was created, a kind of ghetto school. During the day it accommodated the smaller children, and at night the 18-year-olds. And it was terribly hard work to deal with shivering and starving children in a cold unheated room for six or seven hours a day. How much ingenuity and effort were summoned by untrained teachers to keep the children interested, to keep them from running out into the streets to grab or steal something to eat. And what strength it took for the teachers, cold and hungry themselves, to stand for hours at a time, teaching kids between six and thirteen, in one room without educational materials, without toys.

But they accomplished their aims … Both teacher and student knew what awaited them should they be caught attending this clandestine school, but fear held no one back; no child gave up his or her place.

… Back then we put in so much of our heart and hard work; and this was a time when hundreds of people were dying of starvation and illness, when not a single household was without a member stricken by typhus … a time when the Germans snatched people off the street for work details and dragged young men from their beds at night … At this moment when energies were being depleted, it became important to find comfort, to give each other hope.

These house committees quickly became the center of public life in the Warsaw Ghetto. And more often than not, these committees were managed and staffed by female volunteers. And for most of these women, this was the first time in their lives that they were able to step into leadership roles. Many of them thrived, finding within themselves strength which they had never before had reason to access.

However, this change in women’s traditional behavior went beyond the confines of the courtyard. One such process is illustrated in the recollections of Feigele Peltel, better known to the world as Vladka Meed, a courier and arms-smuggler for the Jewish resistance, and later, a Holocaust educator.

During the siege of Warsaw in September 1939, the Jews and the Poles experienced a brief moment of unity as they rushed to their city’s defense. Yet, the food, water, gas, and electric shortages which accompanied the German siege put a quick end to this showing of camaraderie. As the Germans marched into the city, they fanned the flames of Polish anti-Semitism. For example, as they set up soup and bread lines for Polish civilians, they encouraged the Poles to drive Jews out of the lines with such statements as: “the Jews deprive the Poles of their spoonful of soup!”

On September 28, 1939, a cheerful Jewish man named Shlomo Peltel was standing in one of these lines. He’d encountered German soldiers during their occupation of the city in World War I, and had found them to be friendly and courteous. But, as he stood on that bread line, the Poles around him began to mutter that he was a Jew. As their mutterings grew louder, a German soldier grabbed Shlomo, pulled him roughly out of the line, and beat him. According to Feigele, his oldest daughter, this experience was traumatic for Shlomo, and, afterwards, he retreated into the family home “a broken man,” no longer able to support, provide for, or protect the family as he had in the days before the occupation.

Before the war, Shlomo had owned a modest haberdashery. When the store was struck by a German bomb in the early days of the invasion, the Peltels were able to salvage some of the merchandise; merchandise, which could be sold for cash on the black market. Those sorts of transactions, however, were only conducted in the parts of the city declared off-limits to Jews. The shattered Shlomo certainly couldn’t undertake such a mission, but Feigele, a Bundist activist with features more Aryan than Jewish, certainly could. And so, Feigele loaded up their wares, sold them on the black market, stood in the breadlines, and just like that, took on the role of family provider.

Shlomo was not alone. Finding themselves unable to act as breadwinners and protectors, Jewish men struggled, and often, failed to adapt, leaving their wives and daughters to support the family.

Further, men were the typical targets of Nazi forced labor round-ups. German gangs would seize Jewish men at random, and force them to engage in all manner of labor—from road construction to forest clearance—typically designed to exhaust even the most physically fit of men. These forced laborers were subject to random and brutal violence, and many died from a combination of exhaustion, hunger, heart failure, and exposure. As husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers returned from work assignments sick, beaten, and traumatized, and retreated into the home, their wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters emerged from its confines. As Emmanuel Ringelblum wrote in his diary:

Women’s perseverance—the main providers. Men don’t go out. When [a man is seized for forced labor], the wife does not let go. She runs after [the kidnappers], she screams and cries ‘please, Mister’—she is not afraid of the soldiers. She stands on the long line—some are seized to work … The beautiful hats have disappeared. In wartime [women] put on scarves. When there is need to go to [the Gestapo] the daughter or wife goes; in the worst scenario they stand and wait in the hallway … The women are every­where since the [men] have been taken to all sorts of work … When a husband escapes … his wife has to be the sole provider. [Women] who never thought of working [out of their homes] are now perform­ing the most difficult physical work.

While women expressed satisfaction, and indeed, newfound empowerment, with their new roles and responsibilities, the enforced starvation, terror, and poverty of daily life in the Warsaw Ghetto took their toll. Women abandoned their children on the front steps of orphanages and self-help institutions, in the hopes that there, their children might have a chance at survival. Some women worked as smugglers and prostitutes to provide for their families, often with the tacit approval of their husbands and parents. Once-wealthy women took work as house-cleaners, while female nurses and doctors worked relentlessly at the impossible task of containing the typhus, dysentery, and tuberculosis outbreaks which plagued the ghetto.

Some of these doctors and nurses described their own attempts to shield their patients from pain and suffering, even as the Nazis were forcing Jews onto the cattle cars which would bear them to their deaths. In her memoir, I Remember, Nothing More, Dr. Adina Blady-Szwajger recalled:  

… Sister Mira came for me—I can’t remember her last name but I still see her face in front of me as if she were here now. And she asked me to go downstairs with her for a moment. When we left the ward, she said—and I can still hear this — ‘Doctor, please give my mother an injection. I can’t do it. I beg you, please. I don’t want them to shoot her in bed, and she can’t walk.’ So I asked her what was in the syringe and she told me it was morphine.

 … We went to the first floor where the families of staff were ... And so, that grey-haired lady smiled at me and stretched out her arm. The sister put on the clamp. And I injected the morphine into her vein. And then I saw a few more people who didn’t have the strength to move. I asked Mira what we should do and she said: ‘Help them, surely.’ So we helped them, too. And by the window there was this woman, swollen from starvation, and suffering from circulatory insufficiency, and she kept on looking at us, pleading with her eyes. She was the last one we gave an injection to.

… When I left the room, I held out my hand and got two large containers of morphine. We didn’t say a word to each other, just squeezed each other’s hands, I think.

I took the morphine upstairs. Dr. Margolis was there and I told her what I wanted to do. So we took a spoon and went to the infants’ room. And just as, during those two years of real work in the hospital, I had bent down over the little beds, so now I poured this last medicine into those tiny mouths. Only Dr. Margolis was with me. And downstairs, there was screaming, because the…Germans were already there, taking the sick from the wards to the cattle trucks.

After that we went in to the older children and told them that this medicine was going to make their pain disappear. They believed us, and drank the required amount from the glass. And then I told them to undress, get into bed and sleep. So they lay down and after a few minutes—I don’t know how many—but the next time I went into that room, they were asleep. And then, I don’t know what happened.

These ordinary women rose to meet circumstances unimaginable to them even two years earlier. Their resistance was not of the military variety that comes to mind when we discuss the concept of resistance, but each act; each dose administered; each child taught; each person allowed to live one more day, was an act of resistance.

There were women in the Warsaw Ghetto who did engage in resistance as we typically think of it: as fighters, arms smugglers, spies, and commanders. And, despite what 80 years of novels, comic books, films, and theater would have us think, women were present and vital at every stage of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. I have already mentioned several of these women: couriers and arms smugglers Chavka Folman, Frumka Plotnicka, Hannah Fryshdorf, Zivia Lubetkin, and Vladka Meed.

The female couriers acquired guns, explosives, and ammunitions, smuggled them past the German guards, and into the Ghetto. They slept with chemical explosives and instructions for the manufacture of homemade bombs under their pillows, and smuggled dynamite into the ghetto through labyrinthine passageways of the factories which abutted the Ghetto.

In her memoir They Are Still with Me, Chavka Folman wrote of one such mission:

For a short while I lived in the same room with Tema Schneiderman … Under the bed was … a suitcase containing pistols and grenades … Tema and I brought the grenades to the ghetto ... Each of the girls hid a grenade in her most intimate place, her undergarments. From a suburb of the city we took a streetcar in the direction of the ghetto. I recall our odd behavior during the ride. Tema stood at my side and asked: ‘What would happen if a gentleman invited us to sit beside him?’ We broke into laughter; hiding our fear in this way…

Jewish Fighting Organization commander Yitzak “Antek” Zuckerman wrote that he would never forget the celebration which took place in honor of courier Frumka Plotnitcka when she smuggled the Jewish Fighting Organization’s first weapons acquisition—those basketed grenades—into the Warsaw Ghetto.

Stories such as these proliferate through the diaries, memoirs, autobiographies, and testimonies of surviving members of the Jewish Fighting Organization. Male and female resistance leaders alike made it very clear in their post-war writings and testimonies that no uprising could have happened without the women, many of whom were discovered, tortured, and murdered over the course of their missions. Indeed, a courier named Hasia began her underground work in a group of 23 women. Only five survived.

When the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began on April 19, 1943, women served as sharpshooters, reconnaissance officers, fighters, and commanders.

Today, the 27th of Nisan, is the day of Yom HaShoah, as set by the Israeli Parliament in 1953 to align with the events of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Today, as we approach the 80th anniversary of that Uprising, we remember these women of the Warsaw Ghetto; their courage, their loss, and their resistance.

Thank you.

[scotianostra]

Eunice Guthrie Murray was born on 21st January 1878 in Cardross.

Eunice Murray was the daughter of a well-known Glasgow lawyer, Dr David Murray and Frances Porter Murray, Murray was one of the founders of the Glasgow Ladies Higher Education Society in 1876, both her parents were both supporters of the women's movement, her mother, Frances was born in New York, and raised in Scotland, was a suffragette. Frances’s parents both of whom were active abolitionists, emigrated to Glasgow in 1844.

Murray attended the progressive St Leonard School in St Andrews, where she became involved in philanthropic activities. She was active in the local branch of the League of Pity, volunteered regularly at a local settlement, and was an advocate for temperance. On 9th November 1896 she recorded reading about the formation of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, commenting

‘I should like to join such a society for the question of the emancipation of my sex is a stirring one and leads to vital matters’.

Given her background it is hardly surprising that along with her mother and her sister, Sylvia Murray, she joined the Women’s Freedom League. The WFL had a strong presence in Scotland, and from 1909 onwards Murray was the secretary for ‘scattered members’—all those who did not live in Edinburgh, Glasgow, or Dundee. Eunice was one of the three Scottish members on the WFL’s national executive committee and in 1913 was described as president for Scotland of the WFL.

The Women’s Freedom League was a non-violent militant group most famous for first chaining themselves to railings and leading the 1911 Census boycott. Inspired after attended the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance in Budapest in 1913, Eunice Murray was arrested for obstruction when she tried to address a meeting near 10 Downing Street on women’s suffrage.

Unlike the Pankhursts’ Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), the WFL continued to campaign for the women’s suffrage throughout the First World War. Murray was an active feminist who had published numerous leaflets on women and their position in society such as The Illogical Woman. Like many feminists, Murray argued for the vote based on the unique roles of men and women. She observed, ‘We have always held, and hold now, that it is because men and women are so different, and not because they are so alike, that we require the vote.

In 1918, women in Britain finally won their right to vote and stand in general elections, if they were over 30 and met minimum property qualifications, and Eunice was quick to take advantage of this major breakthrough and stood as a candidate in Glasgow, Bridgeton in the 1918 election, the only Scottish woman in the first election open to women in 1918, she was unsuccessful, coming third. The results being Coalition Liberal Alexander MacCallum Scott 10,887, Labour James Maxton 7,860 and Independent Eunice Murray 991.

The election was held in the midst of the Spanish Flu epidemic with 327 deaths in the Glasgow that week, compared to 386 the previous week. Schools and docks were closed when half a million Glaswegians took to the polls, of which just over one-third were newly enfranchised women. In response to a claim that all women candidates were pacifists she wrote to the Spectator on 23rd November 1918, ‘I believe that the war we have just fought and won was a righteous one, and that it was the duty of newly enfranchised women to support the country’.

The election saw the defeat of the Asquith Liberals and the landslide of the Coalition Liberals. Murray was not deterred by her defeat and went to on to have an active political life. Elected as councillor in 1923 to Dunbartonshire Council, Murray was also the founder and President of the Scottish Women’s Rural Institute in the area.

Eunice Murray died on 26th March 1960 having led an active and inspirational life and today we remember her as the first women to break the barrier in Scotland to stand as an MP.

[the-drokainian]

‭Jeremiah 23:1-6 ESV‬

[1] “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” declares the Lord. [2] Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people: “You have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds, declares the Lord. [3] Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. [4] I will set shepherds over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing, declares the Lord. [5] “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. [6] In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’

[jr8tqh]

“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the LORD, “When I will raise up for David a righteous Branch; And He will reign as king and act wisely And do justice and righteousness in the land.” #verseoftheday #bible #scriptureoftheday #jesus #jesuslovesyou #jesuschrist #jesusisalive #jesusitrustinyou #jesuschristlovesyou #jesuschristoursavior #jesuschristismysavior #christian #christians #christianlouboutins #scripture #verse #christianity #christ #bibleverse #biblescripture (オープン・ドア・チャペル) https://www.instagram.com/p/CltFyFUPOP6/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[coolksaposts]

The Lord our Righteousness Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute judgement and justice in the land. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord is our righteousness.—Jeremiah 23:5-6.

David's Righteous Branch …4I will raise up shepherds over them who will tend them, and they will no longer be afraid or dismayed, nor will any go missing, declares the LORD. 5Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and He will reign wisely as King and will administer justice and righteousness in the land. 6In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is His name by which He will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness.…

Jer 23:4-6

Luke 1:32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, Luke 1:33 and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever. His kingdom will never end!" 1 Corinthians 1:30 It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God: our righteousness, holiness, and redemption.

[ioannemos]

trick or treat :)

treat! a passage from today's Bible reading, jeremiah 23:5-6

5 “The days are coming,” declares the LORD,     “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely     and do what is just and right in the land. 6 In his days Judah will be saved     and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called:     The LORD Our Righteous Savior.

also a king-size candy bar of your choosing

[jarviskingston37]

🏀⛹🏿⛹🏿‍♂️

[dfroza]

“I am God’s emissary to you, and I honor this call by focusing on what God is doing with and through you.”

growing A pure Tree:

“If the root of the tree is sacred, the branches will be also.”

Today’s reading of the Scriptures from the New Testament is the 11th chapter of the letter of Romans:

Now I ask you, has God rejected His people? Absolutely not! I’m living proof that God is faithful. I am an Israelite, Abraham’s my father, and Benjamin’s my tribe. God has not, and will not, abandon His covenant people; He always knew they would belong to Him. Don’t you remember the story of what happens when Elijah pleads with God to deal with Israel? The Scripture tells us his protest: “Lord, they have murdered Your prophets, they have demolished Your altars, and I alone am left faithful to You; now they are seeking to kill me.” How does God answer his pleas for help? He says, “I have held back 7,000 men who are faithful to Me; none have bowed a knee to worship Baal.” The same thing is happening now. God has preserved a remnant, elected by grace. Grace is central in God’s action here, and it has nothing to do with deeds prescribed by the law. If it did, grace would not be grace.

Now what does all this mean? Israel has chased an end it has never reached. Yet those chosen by God through grace have reached it while all others were made hard as stones. The Scriptures continue to say it best:

God has confounded them so they are not able to think,

given them eyes that do not see, and ears that do not hear,

Down to this very day.

David says it this way:

Let their table be turned into a snare and a trap,

an obstacle to peace and payback for their hostility.

Let their bright eyes become cloudy, darkened so they cannot see,

and bend their proud backs through it all.

So I ask: did God’s people stumble and fall off the deep end? Absolutely not! They are not lost forever; but through their misconduct, the door has been opened for salvation to extend even to the outsiders. This has been part of God’s plan all along, and so is the jealousy that comes when they realize the outsiders have been welcomed into God’s new covenant. So if their misconduct leads ultimately to God’s riches coming to the world and if their failure turns into the blessing of salvation to all people, then how much greater will be the riches and blessing when they are included fully?

But I have this to say to all of you who are not ethnic Jews: I am God’s emissary to you, and I honor this call by focusing on what God is doing with and through you. I do this so that somehow my own blood brothers and sisters will be made jealous; and that, I trust, will bring some to salvation. If the fact that they are currently set aside resolves the hostility between God and the rest of the world, what will their acceptance bring if not life from the dead? If the first and best of the dough you offer is sacred, the entire loaf will be as well. If the root of the tree is sacred, the branches will be also.

Imagine some branches are cut off of the cultivated olive tree and other branches of a wild olive (which represents all of you outsiders) are grafted in their place. You are nourished by the root of the cultivated olive tree. It doesn’t give you license to become proud and self-righteous about the fact that you’ve been grafted in. If you do boast, remember that the branches do not sustain the root—it is the system of roots that nourishes and supports you.

I can almost hear some of you saying, “Branches had to be pruned to make room for me.” Yes, they were. They were removed because they did not believe; and you will stay attached, be strong, and be productive only through faith. So don’t think too highly of yourselves; instead, stand in awe of God’s mercy. Besides we know that God did not spare the natural branches, so there is no reason to think He will spare you. Witness the simultaneous balance of the kindness and severity of our God. Severity is directed at the fallen branches withering without faith. Yet kindness is directed at you. So live in the kindness of God or else prepare to be cut off yourselves. If those branches that have been cut from the tree do not stay in unbelief, then God will carefully graft them back onto the tree because He has the power to do that. So if it is possible for you to be taken from a wild olive tree and become part of a cultivated olive tree, imagine how much easier it would be to reconnect branches that originally grew on that olive tree.

My brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be in the dark about this mystery—I am going to let you in on the plan so that you will not think too highly of yourselves. A part of Israel has been hardened to the good news until the full number of those outside the Jewish family have entered in. This is the way that all of Israel will be saved. As it was written, so it also stands:

The Deliverer will come from Zion;

He will drive away wickedness from Jacob.

And this is My covenant promise to them,

on the day when I take away their sins.

It may seem strange. When it comes to the work of the gospel, the fact that they oppose it is actually for your benefit. But when you factor in God’s election, they are truly loved because they descended from faithful forefathers. You see, when God gives a grace gift and issues a call to a people, He does not change His mind and take it back. There was a time when you outsiders were disobedient to God and at odds with His purpose, but now you have experienced mercy as a result of their disobedience. In the same way, their disobedience now will make a way for them to receive mercy as a result of the mercy shown to you. For God has assigned all of us together—Jews and non-Jews, insiders and outsiders—to disobedience so He can show His mercy to all.

We cannot wrap our minds around God’s wisdom and knowledge! Its depths can never be measured! We cannot understand His judgments or explain the mysterious ways that He works! For,

Who can fathom the mind of the Lord?

Or who can claim to be His advisor?

Or,

Who can give to God in advance

so that God must pay him back?

For all that exists originates in Him, comes through Him, and is moving toward Him; so give Him the glory forever. Amen.

The Letter of Romans, Chapter 11 (The Voice)

A set of notes from The Voice translation:

In every generation, God makes sure a few survive the onslaught of judgment. The prophets call these the “remnant.” Paul sees himself living in a critical moment as fewer and fewer Jews pledge obedience to Jesus. But the Anointed’s emissary finds comfort in realizing how God’s faithfulness is playing out in his day. If you ever think that you alone are faithful to God, that somehow God has forgotten His covenant promises, think again. He always has a remnant.

The cultivated olive tree provides Paul with a beautiful image of how believing Jews and non-Jews were organically connected in the plan of God. Life flows from the earth to the branches—some natural, some grafted in—through the rootstock. Paul wants to make sure the grafted branches know they have not arrived on their own; their spiritual life and vitality flow from the root, Israel. God is the Farmer who has tenderly grafted them into the sturdy stock on the basis of faith. So pride and arrogance are completely out of place for those grafted branches. They will bear fruit only as they remain connected by faith to the stock.

Paul says that God’s mysterious plan for the ages is being revealed as the number of outsiders swells in the churches and as a part of Israel is hardened, at least for a time. But let’s not forget that hardening is not God’s unilateral action. Whatever hardening takes place happens first on our side before God reluctantly agrees. That part of Israel now hardened has already rejected God’s Anointed. Yet when the full complement of non-Jewish outsiders enters God’s kingdom, “all Israel will be saved.” But clearly “all Israel” can’t mean every last Jew, because Paul has already shown that not every son or daughter of Abraham is an heir to the promise.

Today’s paired reading from the First Testament is the 22nd chapter of the book of Exodus:

Eternal One: If someone steals an ox or a sheep and either kills or sells it for profit, then he must pay five oxen for the one ox he stole or four sheep for the one sheep he stole. But if the stolen animal—the ox or donkey or sheep—is still alive and in his possession when he is caught, then the thief must pay the owner double. A thief must make restitution for what he has taken. If he has no means of doing so, he must be sold to pay for his theft.

If a person attacks a thief in the act of breaking into his house and the thief is killed during the attack, then the homeowner is innocent of blood guilt. It is different if the sun has already risen; so any homeowner who kills a thief during the day must be considered guilty of bloodshed.

Eternal One: If someone allows his animals to graze a field or vineyard until it is bare and then lets his animals wander over onto a neighbor’s field, then he must compensate his neighbor from the very best of his field and vineyard.

If someone starts a fire and the fire spreads and sets the thorn bushes ablaze, and eventually that fire burns up stacks of harvested grain and everything growing in the fields, then the person who started the fire is responsible and must pay reparations for what was lost.

If someone gives his neighbor money or items to keep for him and it is stolen from his neighbor’s house, then if the thief is captured, he must pay double for what he stole. If the thief is not found, then the person who owned the house that was burglarized must go stand before God’s presence so that He can decide whether he is the one who stole the property.

Whenever there is a breach of trust—regarding an ox, a donkey, a lamb, a piece of clothing, or any lost item—and the contested item is discovered in the possession of a neighbor and claimed by two different parties, then both sides must appear before God. If God finds the neighbor guilty, he must pay double for what he stole.

If someone leaves a donkey, an ox, a sheep, or any other kind of livestock in his friend’s keeping, and the animal dies or is injured or disappears while no one is watching, then the two are to make an oath in the presence of the Eternal. The neighbor must swear he had nothing to do with the loss of the animal, and the owner of the animal must accept his statement and not demand any compensation for the loss.

But if the animal was stolen while in his neighbor’s care, then the neighbor must compensate the owner. If it was torn to pieces by another animal, then the neighbor may use the remains as evidence, and not have to pay any compensation for the torn animal.

If someone borrows an animal from a neighbor and it is harmed or dies while not in the possession of the owner, then the borrower must compensate the owner in full. But if the owner was there when the animal dies or is harmed, then no compensation is required. If the animal has been rented and not borrowed, then the rental fee paid shall cover the loss of the animal.

If a man entices a virgin who is not promised to another man to have sex with him, then he must pay her father the bride-price and marry her. If the young woman’s father refuses the marriage offer because he disapproves of the man, then the man still must pay the amount of money that is customary for the bride-price for virgins.

You are not to allow a sorceress to live.

Anyone who has sex with an animal must be put to death.

Anyone who dares to sacrifice to any god other than the Eternal must be declared under the ban and destroyed.

Do not wrong or oppress any outsiders living among you, for there was a time when you lived as outsiders in the land of Egypt.

You must not take advantage of any widow or orphan. If you do oppress them and they cry out to Me, I will certainly hear them, and My wrath will be kindled. I will make sure you are slaughtered by your enemy’s sword, and your own wives and children will become widows and orphans.

If you loan money to any of the poor among My people, do not treat them as borrowers and act as their creditors by charging interest. If your neighbor gives his coat to you as collateral, then be sure to give it back before night falls—even if he has not repaid you in full. You see that coat covers his body and may be his only protection against the cold. What do you think he would sleep in? When he calls out for Me, I will hear his cry. I am kind and compassionate as you should be when a fellow Israelite is in need.

Do not curse the one True God or any rulers of your people.

You must not hold back or delay your offering from the bounty of your harvest or the juice of your vineyard. Dedicate every one of your firstborn sons to Me. But dedicate your livestock—your ox and sheep—to Me in sacrifice. The firstborn of your livestock may stay with its mother for the first seven days. When the eighth day arrives, give the firstborn to Me. You must be holy before Me. Do not eat any animal that has been torn to pieces by wild beasts in the field. Toss its remains to the dogs.

The Book of Exodus, Chapter 22 (The Voice)

A note from The Voice translation:

The difference between these two situations is the difference between daylight and dark. If a homeowner is protecting his property at night and injures a thief, it is to be treated as a case of self-defense. But if the crime takes place during the light of day, it is not necessary to incapacitate or capture the thief; it is necessary only to recognize the thief and bear truthful witness against him in court. The right to personal property does not eclipse the right to life.

A link to my personal reading of the Scriptures for monday, may 13 of 2024 with a paired chapter from each Testament (the First & the New) of the Bible along with Today’s Proverbs and Psalms

A post by John Parsons about the wonders of the heavens:

Shalom chaverim. I took this pic of the Northern Lights last Shabbat after saying kiddush and praying with my kids... I didn't have time to get out my tripod and a do a time-release, but this snapshot gives you some idea of the glory we saw that night (Psalm 19:1-4).

And Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there. Thank you, Lord, for the great blessing of our mothers!

5.12.24 • Facebook

from yesterday’s email by Israel365

Today’s message (Days of Praise) from the Institute for Creation Research

[officialyourdailyinspiration]

The Triumphal Entry

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent out two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt beside her. Untie them and bring them to Me. If anyone questions you, tell him that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”

This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:

“Say to the Daughter of Zion, ‘See, your King comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’ ”

So the disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and laid their cloaks on them, and Jesus sat on them.

A massive crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.

The crowds that went ahead of Him and those that followed were shouting:

“Hosanna to the Son of David!”

“Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Hosanna in the highest!”

When Jesus had entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?”

The crowds replied, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Then Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those selling doves. And He declared to them, “It is written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer.’ But you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”

The blind and the lame came to Him at the temple, and He healed them. But the chief priests and scribes were indignant when they saw the wonders He performed and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”

“Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked.

“Yes,” Jesus answered. “Have you never read:

‘From the mouths of children and infants

You have ordained praise’?”

Then He left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where He spent the night.

In the morning, as Jesus was returning to the city, He was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, He went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. “May you never bear fruit again!” He said. And immediately the tree withered.

When the disciples saw this, they marveled and asked, “How did the fig tree wither so quickly?”

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”

When Jesus returned to the temple courts and began to teach, the chief priests and elders of the people came up to Him. “By what authority are You doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave You this authority?”

“I will also ask you one question,” Jesus replied, “and if you answer Me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. What was the source of John’s baptism? Was it from heaven or from men?”

They deliberated among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will ask, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From men,’ we are afraid of the people, for they all regard John as a prophet.” So they answered, “We do not know.”

And Jesus replied, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

But what do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first one and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’

‘I will not,’ he replied. But later he changed his mind and went.

Then the man went to the second son and told him the same thing.

‘I will, sir,’ he said. But he did not go.

Which of the two did the will of his father?”

“The first,” they answered.

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in a righteous way and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.

Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a tower. Then he rented it out to some tenants and went away on a journey.

When the harvest time drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his share of the fruit. But the tenants seized his servants. They beat one, killed another, and stoned a third.

Again, he sent other servants, more than the first group. But the tenants did the same to them.

Finally, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.

But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they seized him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard returns, what will he do to those tenants?”

“He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and will rent out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him his share of the fruit at harvest time.”

Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:

‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?

Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.”

When the chief priests and Pharisees heard His parables, they knew that Jesus was speaking about them. Although they wanted to arrest Him, they were afraid of the crowds, because the people regarded Him as a prophet. — Matthew 21 | The Reader’s Bible (BRB) The Reader’s Bible © 2020 by Bible Hub and Berean Bible. All rights Reserved. Cross References: Genesis 4:24; Exodus 30:12; Genesis 49:11; Leviticus 1:14; Ruth 1:19; 2 Samuel 14:7; 2 Kings 9:13; Psalm 8:2; Psalm 118:22; Psalm 118:26; Proverbs 26:5; Song of Solomon 8:11; Isaiah 5:1-2; Isaiah 5:3; Isaiah 8:14; Isaiah 28:13; Isaiah 28:16; Isaiah 56:7; Isaiah 62:11; Jeremiah 7:11; Jeremiah 8:13; Jeremiah 26:8; Jeremiah 37:15; Matthew 4:28; Matthew 7:7; Matthew 8:10-11; Matthew 9:27; Matthew 11:9; Matthew 11:25; Matthew 13:3; Matthew 16:7; Matthew 17:20; Matthew 20:24; Matthew 20:34; Matthew 22:4; Matthew 26:6; Matthew 26:55; Mark 11:1; Mark 11:7-8; Mark 11:12; Mark 11:20; Mark 11:23; Mark 11:27; Mark 12:1-2; Luke 20:5; Luke 20:16; John 7:30; 1 John 3:22

[scotianostra]

Eunice Guthrie Murray was born on 21st January 1878 in Cardross.

Eunice Murray was the daughter of a well-known Glasgow lawyer, Dr David Murray and Frances Porter Murray, Murray was one of the founders of the Glasgow Ladies Higher Education Society in 1876,  both her parents were both supporters of the women’s movement, her mother, Frances was born in New York, and raised in Scotland, was a suffragette. Frances’s parents  both of whom were active abolitionists, emigrated to Glasgow in 1844.

Murray attended the progressive St Leonard School in St Andrews, where she became involved in philanthropic activities. She was active in the local branch of the League of Pity, volunteered regularly at a local settlement, and was an advocate for temperance. On 9th November 1896 she recorded reading about the formation of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, commenting

‘I should like to join such a society for the question of the emancipation of my sex is a stirring one and leads to vital matters’.

Given her background it is hardly surprising that along with her mother and her sister, Sylvia Murray, she joined the Women’s Freedom League. The WFL had a strong presence in Scotland, and from 1909 onwards Murray was the secretary for ‘scattered members’—all those who did not live in Edinburgh, Glasgow, or Dundee. Eunice was one of the three Scottish members on the WFL’s national executive committee and in 1913 was described as president for Scotland of the WFL.

The Women’s Freedom League was a non-violent militant group most famous for first chaining themselves to railings and leading the 1911 Census boycott. Inspired after attended the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance in Budapest in 1913, Eunice Murray was arrested for obstruction when she tried to address a meeting near 10 Downing Street on women’s suffrage.

Unlike the Pankhursts’ Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), the WFL continued to campaign for the women’s suffrage throughout the First World War. Murray was an active feminist who had published numerous leaflets on women and their position in society  such as The Illogical Woman. Like many feminists, Murray argued for the vote based on the unique roles of men and women. She observed, ‘We have always held, and hold now, that it is because men and women are so different, and not because they are so alike, that we require the vote.

In 1918, women in Britain finally won their right to vote and stand in general elections, if they were over 30 and met minimum property qualifications, and Eunice was quick to take advantage of this major breakthrough and stood as a candidate in Glasgow, Bridgeton in the 1918 election,  the only Scottish woman in the first election open to women in 1918,  she was unsuccessful, coming third. The results being Coalition Liberal Alexander MacCallum Scott 10,887, Labour James Maxton 7,860 and Independent Eunice Murray 991.

The election was held in the midst of the Spanish Flu epidemic with 327 deaths in the Glasgow that week, compared to 386 the previous week. Schools and docks were closed when half a million Glaswegians took to the polls, of which just over one-third were newly enfranchised women.  In response to a claim that all women candidates were pacifists she wrote to the Spectator on 23rd November 1918, ‘I believe that the war we have just fought and won was a righteous one, and that it was the duty of newly enfranchised women to support the country’.

The election saw the defeat of the Asquith Liberals and the landslide of the Coalition Liberals. Murray was not deterred by her defeat and went to on to have an active political life. Elected as councillor in 1923 to Dunbartonshire Council, Murray was also the founder and President of the Scottish Women’s Rural Institute in the area. 

Eunice Murray died on 26th March 1960 having led an active and inspirational life and today we remember her as the first women to break the barrier in Scotland to stand as an MP.

[the-drokainian]

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Sunday Morning Sermon, February 25, 2024

Yahweh Tsidkenu: The Lord our Righteousness

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IntroductionThe most fundamental question:How can a man be right with God?

‭Job 9:2 ESV‬

[2] “Truly I know that it is so: But how can a man be in the right before God?

Job asked the right question!Job understood the problem.But what is the solution?

‭Job 9:33 ESV‬

[33] There is no arbiter between us, who might lay his hand on us both.

Yahweh TsidkenuThe Lord our RighteousnessYahweh- "LORD"; "I AM"Tsedeq- Rightness or righteousness

‭Jeremiah 23:1-6 ESV‬

[1] “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” declares the Lord. [2] Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people: “You have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds, declares the Lord. [3] Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. [4] I will set shepherds over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing, declares the Lord. [5] “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. [6] In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’

This is a low point for Judah.- Overtaken by Babylon (597 BC)- Exiled to Babylon (586 BC)- God's judgment on their sinJeremiah's prophecy:1. Indictment on wicked "shepherds" (vv.1-2)The kings, prophets, and priests who failed to lead God's people to love and worship him. They have literally "scattered" the sheep.2. A promise to regather (vv.3-4)God promises to raise up "good shepherds" to regather the people and restore them in God's blessing and promise.3. A righteous branch (vv.5-6)This is God's "good shepherd" who will regather and rule over the people. He himself will be their righteousness.

God's Faithful ShepherdA familiar picture.- Lead, guide, protect, guard, feedA common picture for leaders... or what they were supposed to beIsrael's and Judah's shepherds had failed them and led them to destruction, but God promises another shepherd who will lead his people to salvation. This shepherd would be none other than God himself.

‭John 10:11 ESV‬

[11] I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

There was no confusion. This was a divine claim Jesus made.

‭John 10:2-5 ESV‬

[2] But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. [3] To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. [4] When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. [5] A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”

[11] I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. [12] He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. [13] He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. [14] I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me,

[16] And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

[27] My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. [28] I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. [29] My Father, who has given them to me,is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. [30] I and the Father are one.

‭John 6:39 ESV‬

[39] And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

‭Luke 19:10 ESV‬

[10] For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

The other shepherds had failed, but this one Shepherd will not fail!

Have you heard his voice?Are you following him?If you have, see the promise he makes to you: No one is able to snatch you out of [his] hand.

God's Gift of RighteousnessWhat was God's expectation?- Holiness, obedience, perfectionWhat did they lack?- Righteousness!What do we lack?- Righteousness!What promise does God make?- To be their righteousness!- To be our righteousness!

Zedekiah- Tsidiqyahu"The LORD is Righteous"Contrast that statement with the promise...Yahweh Tsidkenu"The LORD is our Righteousness"One is true and good, but only highlights the problem with no solution.God's name reveals him to be the solution. What he demands of his people, he promises to be for his people.

God's Promise to SaveA transaction must take place!This judgment is our problem too!

‭Romans 1:18 ESV‬

[18] For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

God is just. He cannot simply wish the sin away. It must be dealt with!

‭Isaiah 53:4-6 ESV‬

[4] Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. [5] But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. [6] All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

[11] Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

What becomes of our unrighteousness?- It is laid on him!What becomes of his righeousness?- It is given to us!

‭2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV‬

[21] For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

- Where Israel failed- Where Judah failed- Where their leaders failed- Where we fail...Jesus is victorious!The Gospel- He offers that victory to you!

Image

Joshua the High Priest given new clean priestly garments (Zech. 3)

Have you put on the righteousness of Christ?Come to him.Receive from him.By faith in him

[orthodoxydaily]

Icon, Saints&Reading: Friday, December 22, 2023

december 9_december 22

THE CONCEPTION BY SAINT ANNA, OF "WHENCE IS CONCEIVED THE HOLY MOTHER OF GOD"

The Gospels and other books of the New Testament do not mention anything about Saint Anna, the mother of the Theotokos. According to Tradition, the priest Matthan (Matthew 1:15), a resident of Bethlehem, had three daughters: Mary(1), Sobe (Sobḗ), and Anna. Mary was married in Bethlehem, where she gave birth to Elizabeth, the mother of Saint John the Baptist.

The Holy Righteous Anna was the youngest daughter of the priest Matthan, who was from the tribe of Levi, of the family of Aaron. Her husband, the Holy Righteous Joachim was from the tribe of Judah, from the house and family of King David. According to the ancient promise, the Messiah was to come from the lineage of King David (Luke 2:4).

The couple lived in Nazareth of Galilee. Every year, they gave two-thirds of their income to the Temple in Jerusalem, and to the poor. By God's Providence, the holy couple had no children until their old age. They were greatly saddened by this, since the Jews considered childlessness a great misfortune and a punishment from God. They prayed fervently for the Lord to give them children.

On a certain feast, when the Israelites were bringing gifts to God in the Temple at Jerusalem, the High Priest, believing that the childless Joachim did not have God's blessing, refused to accept gifts from him. Saint Joachim was grief stricken. He consulted the genealogy of the twelve tribes of Israel and ascertained that all righteous men had offspring, including Abraham, when he was a hundred years old. Without returning home, Saint Joachim went into the wilderness and spent forty days there in strict fasting and prayer, entreating God's mercy for himself, and washing away his disgrace with bitter tears.

Saint Anna thought that she was to blame for their sorrow. One day saw a nest with barely fledged chicks in the branches of a laurel tree, she wept and prayed for the gift of a child, promising to bring the infant to God as an offering. As soon as Saint Anna spoke these words, an Angel of the Lord told her that her prayer had been answered, and revealed that she would have a daughter named Mary, through whom all the peoples of the world would be blessed. Rejoicing, Saint Anna hastened to the Temple in Jerusalem, in order to give thanks to God. She repeated her vow to dedicate the child to Him. An Angel came to Saint Joachim in the wilderness with the same news and commanded him to go to Jerusalem. There, the Righteous Anna conceived and gave birth to the Most Holy Theotokos.

The Orthodox Church does not accept the teaching that the Mother of God was exempted from the consequences of ancestral sin (death, corruption, sin, etc.) at the moment of her conception by virtue of the future merits of her Son. Only Christ was born perfectly holy and sinless, as Saint Ambrose of Milan teaches in Chapter Two of his Commentary on the Gospel of Saint Luke. The Holy Virgin was like everyone else in her mortality, and in being subject to temptation, although she committed no personal sins. She was not a deified creature removed from the rest of humanity. If this were the case, She would not have been truly human, and the nature that Christ took from her would not have been truly human either. If Christ does not truly share our human nature, then the possibility of our salvation is in doubt.

Saint Anna has been honored since ancient times. We infer this from various Fathers of the Church, and also from ancient hymns in honor of the mother of the Theotokos. In the year 550, Emperor Justinian dedicated a temple in Constantinople to Saint Anna.

Part of the Saint's left hand is located in Stavronikita Monastery on Mount Athos. Part of the Saint's incorrupt left foot is located in Saint Anna's Skete on Mount Athos. Part of the Saint's incorrupt right foot is located in the Monastery of Koutloumousiou on Mount Athos.

Fragments of the Saint's Holy Relics are to be found in Saint Anna's Monastery at Lygaria in Lamia, and also in the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian at Sourotis.

Some of the Saint's incorrupt flesh is in the Roman Catholic International Crusaders Collection of Holy Relics. The Saint's wrist is to be found in the Roman Catholic church of Saint Paul "Outside the Walls" in Rome.

Many icons of the Conception by Saint Anna show the Most Holy Theotokos trampling the serpent underfoot. Saints Joachim and Anna are usually depicted with hands folded in prayer; their eyes are also directed upward and they contemplate the Mother of God, who stands in the air with outstretched hands; under her feet is an orb encircled by a serpent (symbolizing the devil), which strives to conquer the universe by its power.”

There are also icons in which Saint Anna holds the Most Holy Virgin on her left arm as an infant. On Saint Anna’s face is a look of reverence. A large ancient icon, painted on canvas, is located in the village of Minkovetsa in the Dubensk district of Volhynia Diocese. From ancient times this Feast was especially venerated by pregnant women in Russia.

1 This Mary is the mother of Saint Anna, and the grandmother of the Theotokos. She is commemorated on the Sunday of the Forefathers.

Source: Orthodox Church in America_OCA

THE ICON OF THE MOTHER OF GOD, NAMED "UNEXPECTED JOY"

The “Unexpected Joy” Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos is painted in this way: in a room is an icon of the Mother of God, and beneath it, a youth is kneeling in prayer. The tradition of healing some youth from a bodily affliction through this holy icon is recorded in the book of Saint Demetrius of Rostov, The Fleece of Prayer [See Judges 6: 36-40]. The sinful youth, devoted to the Theotokos, prayed one day before the icon of the All-Pure Virgin before committing a sin. Suddenly, he saw that wounds appeared on the Lord’s hands, feet, and side, and blood flowed from them. In horror he exclaimed, “O Lady, who has done this?” The Mother of God replied, “You and other sinners, because of your sins, crucify My Son anew.” Only then did he realize how great was the depth of his sinfulness. For a long time, he prayed with tears to the All-Pure Mother of God and the Savior for mercy. Finally, he received the unexpected joy of the forgiveness of his sins. The most famous miracle-working copy of this icon is kept at the Church of Prophet Elias "Obydennago" in Moscow.  This icon was initially kept in the Kremlin church of Sts. Constantine and Helen, at least from the times of Empress Anna Ioannovna (niece of Peter the Great). The church was razed by the communists in 1928, but the icon was spirited away and saved to the Resurrection church in Sokolnikah, Moscow.  In 1944, Patriarch Sergei transferred the icon to the church of the Prophet Elias, and Patriarchs Alexei I, Pimen, and Alexei II all would come to quietly and humbly pray in the evenings before this wonderworking icon.  May we all gather and pray, "Rejoice, Who bestows upon sinners Unexpected Joy"! 

GALATIANS 4:22-31

22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. 23 But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, 24 which things are symbolic. For these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar- 25 or this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children- 26 but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all. 27 For it is written: "Rejoice, O barren, You who do not bear! Break forth and shout, You who are not in labor! For the desolate has many more children Than she who has a husband." 28 Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. 29 But, as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now. 30 Nevertheless what does the Scripture say? "Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman." 31 So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman but of the free.

LUKE 21:37-22:8

37And in the daytime He was teaching in the temple, but at night He went out and stayed on the mountain called Olivet. 38 Then early in the morning all the people came to Him in the temple to hear Him.

1 Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called Passover. 2 And the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might kill Him, for they feared the people. 3 Then Satan entered Judas, surnamed Iscariot, who was numbered among the twelve. 4 So he went his way and conferred with the chief priests and captains, how he might betray Him to them. 5 And they were glad, and agreed to give him money. 6 So he promised and sought opportunity to betray Him to them in the absence of the multitude. 7 Then came the Day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover must be killed. 8 And He sent Peter and John, saying, "Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat."

[jaguar726]

This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord, Our Righteous Savior

Daily Verse Reading – Jeremiah 23:5-8 5 “The days are coming,” declares the Lord,“when I will raise up for David[a] a righteous Branch,a King who will reign wiselyand do what is just and right in the land.6 In his days Judah will be savedand Israel will live in safety.This is the name by which he will be called:The Lord Our Righteous Savior. 7 “So then, the days are coming,” declares the Lord,…