In this episode of Hebrew Voices #228 - Shemini Atzeret: The Grand Finale?, Nehemia and Lynell discuss the dual significance of Atzeret as well as its deeper Biblical meaning.

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Nehemia: He says, “I reviewed all the matters of the appointed times in the Bible, and I did not find Shavuot called Atzeret.” Right? So, this is a big discovery for him, because imagine… think about this for a second; imagine if I told you that in the entire Tanakh, Passover is never called Passover, it’s called Chag Hamatzot, the Feast of Unleavened Bread. If I told that to any Jew, they’d be shocked. “Of course, it’s called Passover, that’s the name of the holiday!” No, it’s not. That’s a later development.

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Nehemia: All right. Chag sameach, everybody. I am going to talk today about Shemini Atzeret. Shemini Atzeret is… I think that’s probably a hard Hebrew word for some people to say. That is the name of the festival that I’m observing today, and many of us are. Shemini Atzeret is the eighth day of Sukkot, and it’s a bit strange because it’s actually not part of Sukkot. Sukkot’s seven days, and then there’s an eighth day on which there’s an atzeret. Well, what is atzeret? Atzeret is usually translated in English as a solemn assembly. It’s a day of very serious solemnity.

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: But is that what it says in the Hebrew? And that’s interesting, because it implies the other holidays, the other biblical appointed times, would be just assemblies, and Shemini Atzeret is the solemn assembly. So, let’s see what it actually says in the Tanakh. So… oh, I’m going to have Lynell read.

Lynell: So, are you saying it’s a solemn assembly, Nehemia?

Nehemia: No, I’m saying that’s how it’s usually translated.

Lynell: Right. That’s what I thought you were saying.

Nehemia: But I looked up one translation, and it had “a joyous assembly”. Well, which one is it? We’re going to look in the Hebrew, and we’re going to find out. And this is actually a really interesting study for me, because I love how words evolve over time and their meanings change. We have what’s called a semantic shift, right? Where, like… I actually heard this the other day, that if you go back to English from like 500 years ago, they would say there’s like, you know, “five beef out in the field,” because beef could refer to the animal and the food. But today, it only refers to the food. You wouldn’t say, “I have a herd of beef in the field.” Right? I don’t think you would, or in the pasture.

So, atzeret is an example of that. We’re going to see what it meant in Tanakh times; we’re going to see what it meant later, to try to get an understanding of… okay, what does this word actually mean? All right, so, babe, can you, and you actually have the verses. I’m going to ask you to read Leviticus 23:36, and I’m going to make some comments about the Hebrew there.

Lynell: “Seven days you shall bring offerings by fire to Yehovah. On the eighth day, you shall observe a sacred occasion.”

Nehemia: Which translation is that?

Lynell: That’s the JPS Tanakh.

Nehemia: Okay. Oh, that’s Mikra Kodesh, that’s the holy convocation in the King James. That’s a separate study. All right, go on.

Lynell: “…and bring an offering by fire to Yehovah. It is a solemn gathering.”

Nehemia: Okay. And the word in Hebrew that they translate… Right? There’s two words in English: solemn, gathering. In Hebrew it’s atzeret. Ayin-Tzadi-Reish-Tav. Okay. So, it is an atzeret. You shall do no manner of labor.

Lynell: It doesn’t say “solemn”?

Nehemia: No, it says atzeret, whatever atzeret means. Maybe it does mean solemn, right? We have to find out.

Lynell: We’ll find out.

Nehemia: So, there’s a very similar statement which we don’t have to read, but, guys, go do your own study afterwards. Numbers 29:35, my favorite one, Nehemiah 8:18, and then 2 Chronicles 7:8-10. Now, there’s a list of sacrifices in Numbers 28 and 29, so you’ll find all the biblical feasts there, all the biblical holidays in Numbers 28 and 29, along with a lot of sacrifices. Nehemiah 8 is when they came back and they read the Torah, and they said, “Oh, there’s this thing called Sukkot. We didn’t know that. We better celebrate that.” And they end up celebrating Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret, and so it’s mentioned there.

And then, in 2 Chronicles 7:8-10 you have Solomon dedicating the Temple during Sukkot. And there it’s interesting; Sukkot is called the Ha’chag, the feast. It’s like, THE feast. Right? So, I think we talked about that; Sukkot is THE holiday in the ancient Israelite mind. It’s the most, maybe, celebratorious; is that a word? It’s the one you celebrate the most on, and partly because you’re done harvesting all your crops. Right? And you’ve taken all your crops in, and you’ve processed them and everything, and now you can really celebrate the joy of your bounty, or the bounty of your labor, maybe.

Anyway, so that’s in 2 Chronicles. So, he dedicates the Temple and he celebrates Sukkot, and then it talks about the eighth day.

Lynell: And I forgot to say; at the end of the verse it says, “You shall not work at your occupations.”

Nehemia: Right. All right, so, that’s atzeret of Sukkot, whatever atzeret means. We haven’t defined it yet. So, the atzeret of Sukkot is the eighth day, but there’s also an atzeret of Passover, and most people don’t know that. Most Jews don’t know there’s an atzeret of Passover, because that’s not something we’re really told. The atzeret of Passover is mentioned in Deuteronomy 16:8. Can you read that, my love?

Lynell: “After eating unleavened bread six days, you shall hold a solemn gathering for Yehovah your God. On the seventh day, you shall do no work.”

Nehemia: Okay. So…

Lynell: So, this is after Passover, right?

Nehemia: This is the atzeret of Passover, which is the seventh day of Passover. So, in Exodus, it says that the seventh day of Passover is the day you’re not allowed to work on. It’s a holy day, but it doesn’t call it atzeret. It only calls it atzeret here in Deuteronomy 16. So, we have this, you know, “solemn assembly”, or whatever it means. Right?

So, I want to look now at the Targum. The Targum is an ancient Aramaic translation, or really translations; there’s more than one Targum. We have both Targum Onkelos, which was… It’s a good question when these are from. And let’s call them 2nd century CE, roughly, give or take. And then Targum Jonathan. So, Jonathan is on the prophets, and Onkelos is on the Torah. And Onkelos has been attributed… according to the legend, it was a someone who converted to Judaism, and he said, “You know, I don’t really know Hebrew as my native language. I’d like to have this in Aramaic.” So, he eventually had to translate it himself into Aramaic. That’s the legend, I’m not sure that’s true. It seems it’s probably not true. But anyway, it’s attributed to Onkelos.

So, they both translated atzeret as gathering. And it’s interesting; they used the Aramaic word kanash. And kanash is a cognate, meaning, it’s the same word in a different language as the Hebrew word knesset. Like in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, we have the National Assembly, which is equivalent to the US House of Representatives, and it is called Knesset. And it comes from an ancient name of an assembly that existed in the early Second Temple period. When they returned from Babylon, the province of Judah in the Persian Empire was run by what’s called Anshei Knesset Hagdola, the men of the Great Assembly. And that’s where the modern Israeli Knesset got its name. It’s also where we get the name for a synagogue in Hebrew, which is called beit knesset, “house of assembly.” Right? And even in Greek, synagogue means assembly, right? Like, when it talks about the waters gathered in Genesis, in Greek it uses a word based on the word synagogue, right? Like, the Greek form of that, right?

All right, so, we have both Targum Onkelos and Targum Jonathan, sometime around the 1st or 2nd century CE they’re translating atzeret as “assembly.” Which is a hundred percent correct; that’s what it means, I’ll just give you the end.

Lynell: There you go.

Nehemia: Atzeret means assembly; that’s literally what it means. It has nothing to do with solemn. They just made that up because… They made that up because… let’s be honest here, I’m almost certain that the King James translators made that up. I have to investigate it more, but probably they made it up. Or they liked it, even if somebody else made it up, because they wanted you to go to church every Sunday, right? And they understood Shabbat was now replaced with Sunday in their church, and so, they couldn’t just say, “Well, it’s the eighth day of assembly.” “Well, then why do I have to get together the other seven days?” Right? “And come to church?” Right? For whatever my feasts are, right? So, they had a special thing, which is a solemn assembly. I think that’s probably where it came from. They probably got it from, you know, some translation, like, I don’t know, maybe in the Vulgate. But I’m not sure.

All right, anyway, so, we have one ancient translation of atzeret which is assembly, which is correct. But there’s another ancient translation which is really interesting, and that’s in the Septuagint. The Septuagint is the ancient Greek translation, originally, of the Torah. Later, Septuagint was applied to the entire Tanakh. But originally it’s the legend about 70 or 72 rabbis coming together and translating for King Ptolemy in Egypt. It’s a famous story. That only referred to the Five Books of Moses. Later, it was the rest of the Tanakh.

But in any event, in Leviticus 23:36 atzeret is translated in the Septuagint, the Greek translation, as exodion. And if you listen to that word, exodion, you’ll notice the word exodus. And what is exodion? Exodion is the Greek word that means “the finale of a play”, usually a Greek tragedy. Right? So, like, you know, when we go on the 4th of July in America and we see the fireworks, and at the end of the fireworks they just send up all these massive fireworks and we call that the grand finale, right? Or music, you have a grand finale. So, exodion is the grand finale of a Greek play.

So, why would atzeret be called exodion? Ah! So, first of all, it’s the end of the holiday, or the holidays. We’ll get to that. Which isn’t wrong, but they’re also noticing that the word atzeret in Hebrew comes from a three-letter root, Ayin-Tzadi-Reish, which means stop. And so, they’re like, “Okay, this is the stop, the end, the cessation of the feast.” And therefore, it’s just like the end of a Greek tragedy. It’s the grand finale of the festival, right? That’s how the Greeks were trying to explain it, right?

And they didn’t have a word in Greek for what they thought atzeret meant, and so the Greek translators said, “All right, well, we have this word that applies to Greek plays.” And exodion, as far as I know, only applies to the end of a feast in Judaism. And it’s really interesting; the definitive dictionary of ancient Greek is called Little Scott Jones, LSJ. And their definition, definition number 3 of exodion, is, “Among the Jews, a feast to commemorate the Exodus,” which is one hundred percent wrong. In other words, that the people who made the definitive Modern Greek English dictionary misunderstood the word exodion in ancient Jewish Greek sources. It doesn’t appear in non-Jewish Greek sources, as far as I know. It appears in ancient Jewish Greek sources, the Septuagint, and we’ll see another one in a minute. And it means “the end of a festal season.” Right? That’s what it means, right? Just like the end of a Greek play or Greek tragedy. And so, they misunderstood it, and they thought it had something to do with the Exodus. Which it absolutely does not, even in Greek, right? They’re wrong. As far as I know, they’re wrong. If somebody can prove differently, please show me.

So, Philo, was a Jew who lived in the 1st century CE in Alexandria, in Egypt. And so, he was a Jew who really didn’t know Hebrew; not well. And he’s talking about Sukkot, and he says in the book called Laws, section two, 211, he says, “And after the festival,” of Sukkot, that is, “has lasted seven days,” he adds an eighth as a seal, calling it “a crowning feast.” Now, crowning feast isn’t my translation; that’s the translation I have in my Bible software and ancient text software. And that’s wrong, because the Greek word there is exodion, right? So, there’s this finale, right? So that’s really the better translation, calling it a kind of exodion. And he says, “a kind of”, right? He knows this is a term that comes from Greek plays and doesn’t organically belong to the Shemini Atzeret. He says, “Not only as it would seem to this festival,” that it’s the exodion, the finale, “but also to all the feasts of the year which we have enumerated, for it is the last feast of the year.” Right? “And it is a very stable and holy sort of conclusion befitting men who have now received all the produce from the land.” What does he mean there? All the produce of the land? Well, Sukkot is called Chag Ha’asif, the Feast of Ingathering.

So, Philo is explaining that Shemini Atzeret isn’t just the end of Sukkot, and it isn’t just the end of the 22 days of feasts in the seventh month, starting with Yom Teruah, it’s the grand finale of all the feasts of the entire year, starting with the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Passover, in the first month. And then the third month you have Shavuot, and then you have Yom Teruah, and then you have Yom Kippur, and then you have seven days of Sukkot. And now we have the grand finale, where we throw up all of our fireworks, and all of our penguins, and all of our hedgehogs come and they visit us, and this is the grand finale of it all. That’s how Philo explains it in the 1st century.

And where he’s getting that is the word atzeret, meaning secession, right? It’s the end of something. Right? Because it means to stop. And so, it’s the exodion, the ending feast of the entire year, according to Philo in the 1st century. Now, I mentioned before at the beginning how there’s this thing called semantic shift, where a word means one thing and then it takes on a different meaning over time. And I find that fascinating. I want to see what words mean in different periods.

So, for example, today we’ll talk about the Feast of Passover. In the Tanakh, Passover is only a sacrifice; you eat a passover, you do a Passover. Meaning, you cut its throat, and you spill out the blood and burn the fat, and you eat it; but you don’t celebrate Passover. But in Second Temple times, and today, the holiday is called Passover. And if you told somebody in Israel today, “The holiday is called Chag Hamatzot,” it’s kind of like referring to Christmas as Yuletide, right? It’s… “Yeah, I knew that. It’s kind of this archaic thing.” Right? Pesach is the name of the holiday. So, that’s semantic shift, right? Nobody is disputing what it meant in the Torah, but over time it takes on a different meaning. And in the New Testament Pesach is also the feast, talks about the feast. It has both meanings in the New Testament; it has the sacrifice and the Feast of Passover.

Okay. So, atzeret, right, because we’re in Shemini Atzeret here, and so we have atzeret of Sukkot and we have atzeret of Passover in later times. In Second Temple times, atzeret has a different meaning; it takes on a new meaning, and that is Shavuot. It’s very surprising. Shavuot’s the Feast of Weeks, right? It’s also called Chag Hakatzir, the Feast of Harvest, and it’s called Chag Ktzir Chitim, the Feast of the Harvest of Wheat. So, it’s never in the Tanakh called Atzeret. But in Second Temple times, that’s the primary name for Feast of Weeks, Shavuot, is Atzeret.

And so, for example, when the Torah says in Numbers 28:26, it says, “on your Shavuot”, which is “on your weeks”, that is, your Feast of Weeks, the Targum… remember, we said Targum Onkelos is sometime in the, maybe the 2nd century CE, maybe a little earlier, he translates, “your Shavuot” as “your atzarta.” Which is in Aramaic, the Aramaic version of atzeret. Right? Which is really interesting. So, that’s his name for it in the time of Onkelos, whenever that is, exactly.

In the Mishnah, the standard name for Shavuot is Atzeret, right? They know the word Shavuot, but they don’t use it very often. They more normally use the word atzeret, which is strange. We have Shemini Atzeret for Sukkot and Shvi’i Atzeret, seventh of assembly, for Passover. We never have atzeret referring to Shavuot. But Atzeret is a standard name in the Mishna, because over time the word took on a different meaning. And I bring a passage here which is really interesting. They talk about when Atzeret falls on Friday, and if it falls on Shabbat. They’re saying basically that if it falls on Shabbat you shouldn’t bring your personal sacrifices on Shabbat, you should wait till the next day. And they say, “Wait, but there’s people who say Shavuot’s always on Sunday, and we don’t want to kind of, like, give them a win, a W, as the young people say, so we don’t bring our personal sacrifices on that Sunday, so we don’t, you know, acknowledge that their Sunday observance of Atzeret, that is Shavuot.” So that’s really interesting. Okay.

So, Josephus, in Antiquities, 3.252 or 3.106, he says, “When a week of weeks has passed.” And Josephus was a Jewish historian in the 1st century. He was… actually, he claims, earlier he had been a Jewish general fighting the Romans. And he was captured by the Romans, and so, then he ends up as a prisoner in Rome, writing a book about the history of the Jews called, Antiquities of the Jews. And he says, “When a week of…” So, remember, he’s explaining this to non-Jews. “When a week of weeks has passed over after this sacrifice,” and he’s talking about the Omer sacrifice, “which weeks contain 40 and nine days, on the 50th day, which is called by the Hebrews,” and he says in Greek, asartha, right? So, asartha is the Greek transcription of the Aramaic atzarta, which is the Aramaic form of atzeret, right? Remember, this is Shemini Atzeret, eighth of assembly. But he’s talking about Shavuot is atzarta, is atzeret, which signifies Pentecost. Right? And I put here, or the translator put here, “Pentecost”, which… I didn’t translate this, but Pentecost with a capital P. But that’s not really right. When he says it signifies Pentecost, he means it signifies in Greek “50th.” Right? Pentékosté is the Greek word for 50th. So, it signifies 50th; they bring to God a loaf, et cetera.

So, Atzarta is just the name, in Second Temple times, of Shavuot. It’s very strange. And this is beautiful. Peskita DeRav Kahana, which is in the 5th or 6th century, says you… and this is really interesting. It says, “You find that just like the atzeret of Passover…” Remember, what’s the atzeret Passover in the Torah? Atzeret of Passover in the Torah is the seventh day of Passover. But they say, “Just like the atzeret of Passover is 50 days apart from Passover, so too here, Shemini Atzeret should have been 50 days apart from Sukkot.” In other words, why is Shavuot called Atzeret? Because the way they thought about Shavuot in the Second Temple period was, Shavuot was the grand finale of Passover. And then, these rabbis and Peskita DeRav Kahana in the 5th, 6th century, they’re asking this question, “Okay. If Shavuot is the grand finale of Passover 50 days later, shouldn’t Shemini Atzeret be, not on the eighth day of Sukkot, but on the 50th day? It’s the grand finale; you wait 50 days and then you come back.”

And what they explain there is, “Well, in Israel you don’t have rain in the summer, and so you can travel.” And remember, the roads were made of mud, despite the Roman… you know, maybe some roads were paved, but most roads were still mud, frankly, until Jews started returning to Israel in the 1880s. So, if it rains in Israel, you can’t travel on the roads.

So, Shavuot, 50 days after Passover, there’s no rain, you can come. But 50 days after Sukkot, there’s going to be rain, and you’re not going to come back. And they say it’s like a king who has a son who lives far away and a son who lives nearby. The son who lives nearby… this is what they say in Peskita DeRav Kahana, the king may say to the son who lives nearby, “Come visit me in 50 days,” because he can come whenever he wants. To the son who lives far away, if he comes to visit, he holds him an extra day. Right? That’s how they’re explaining Shemini Atzeret. That’s really fascinating, right? This is the grand finale of Sukkot, is the way they’re thinking of it. But it explains how Shavuot came to mean, came to be called Atzeret, because atzeret is the grand finale, in a sense. And so, atzeret was originally in the Torah applied to Passover, but then later, they’re like, “Wait a minute. We have an even greater grand finale, which is Shavuot.” And that was called Atzeret. So, and it comes again from the word atzar, which means “to stop”.

Now, in the Tanakh… and remember, this is Hebrew changing over time, in the Tanakh atzeret simply means assembly. It may have some connotation of grand finale. Oh, here’s another one, by the way, Lekach Tov, which was written around the year 1108, so it’s pretty late. He says, “I reviewed all the matters of the appointed times in the Bible, and I did not find Shavuot called atzeret.” Right? So, this is a big discovery for him, because imagine, like, think about this for a second. Imagine if I told you that in the entire Tanakh, Passover is never called Passover, it’s called Chag Hamatzot, Feast of Unleavened Bread. If I told that to any Jew, they’d be shocked! Of course it’s called Passover, that’s the name of the holiday! No, it’s not. That’s a later development.

So, this rabbi in the 12th century, he’s probably living in Greece or somewhere in Byzantium. He says, “I reviewed all the matters of the appointed times in the Bible.” Right? He didn’t have a Concordance. He didn’t have Strong’s Concordance or some software. He had to read the whole Bible looking for the word atzeret, meaning Shavuot. And he was sure he was going to find it. And he didn’t. And he said, “I did not find Shavuot called atzeret. But our rabbis of blessed memory…” And when he says, “rabbis of blessed memory”, that’s a technical term that refers specifically to the rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud. He said, “The rabbis of blessed memory everywhere called the feast of Shavuot ‘Atzeret’. That is also the language of the Targum,” what we just brought in Onkelos before, right?

So, that’s like, no duh, right? But that was discovery for him in the year 1108, right? What I said to you is, you know, just, “Oh, this is obvious, right?” Somebody had to spend probably months researching that in the 12th century, maybe longer than months, maybe years before he came to the conclusion, “Wait, atzeret isn’t Biblical Hebrew referring to Shavuot. In Biblical Hebrew, Shavuot means something…” Or excuse me, “…in Biblical Hebrew, atzeret means something else. Let’s see what it means.” So, Isaiah 1:13. Here I’m going to ask Lynell to read that.

Lynell: “No more. Bringing oblations is futile. Incense is offensive to me. New moon and Sabbath proclaiming of solemi…” Solemininies?

Nehemia: Solemnities.

Lynell: Solemnities.

Nehemia: Yeah. Go ahead, sorry. No, no, go ahead.

Lynell: “Assemblies with iniquity I cannot abide.”

Nehemia: So, assemblies they translate as atzeret there. Interesting!

Lynell: It means gatherings, though, right?

Nehemia: Yeah. It means assembly. Assembling. Right? Any kind of gathering, assembling. Now, here, we’ve got to read a little bit of a longer story. 2 Kings 10:18-25. So, I’ll set the background while you flip to 2 Kings, chapter 10. So, the background here is, Yehu was a general in the army of the king of Israel. And he was visited by a prophet who proclaimed him king, and then he went and assassinated the king of Israel. And while he was at it, he also killed the king of Judah, who was visiting, and he became king. Now Yehu is king, and one of the things Yehu is commanded to do is wipe out the worship of Baal. So, he says, “How do I find out who all the worshipers of Baal are, versus the worshipers of Yehovah?”

Now, what’s interesting here is that, through most of the history of ancient Israel they worshiped Yehovah together with Baal, or Yehovah as Baal. But we had a queen of Israel who was named Jezebel, Izevel, and Izevel was a Sidonian princess. And when she came and married Ahab, she brought the worship of Baal exclusively, right? So, she’s saying, “You can’t worship Yehovah.” And she killed the prophets of Yehovah.

Now, think about this; she’s killing the false prophets. Up until then, the false prophet says, “Yes, Yehovah is our Lord. He is Baal. It’s the same God.” And that’s the false prophets. And Jezebel comes along and says, “No, Baal is the only true God. You must worship him, not this Yehovah of Israel.” And so, she kills the prophets of Baal. Elijah has this thing on Mount Carmel, but there are still people who worship Baal. Baal exclusively, and so now we enter into 2 Kings 10:18.

Lynell: “Jehu assembled all the people and said to them: Ahab served Baal little. Jehu shall serve him much. Therefore, summon to me all the prophets of Baal, all his worshipers, and all his priests, and let no one fail to come, for I am going to hold a great sacrifice for Baal. Whoever fails to come shall forfeit his life. Jehu was acting with guile in order to exterminate the worshipers of Baal. Jehu gave the orders to convoke a solemn assembly for Baal, and one was proclaimed.”

Nehemia: So, it’s an Atzeret; he’s proclaiming an atzeret. And the significance of the atzeret is you gather, you come together. And if you want to get all the worshipers of Baal in one place, you can’t have a mikra kodesh, a holy convocation, because not everybody may gather. But if you have an atzeret, everybody comes together. So, he proclaims an Atzeret… and this isn’t a grand finale, right? So, a grand finale is a beautiful, cute idea, but that’s not the Tanakh meaning. The Tanakh meaning… I know, after all that. Atzeret is, in the Tanakh, a gathering. And it’s a gathering where you come together. And now, all the worshipers of Baal are told, “Well, you’re going to die if you don’t come.”

All right, let’s read. So, he’s sanctified an atzeret, or an atzara, is the form here, for Baal. It says, “Vayikra’u”, “and they gathered”, which is interesting. That’s a different thing. Okay. Now, verse 21.

Lynell: “Jehu sent word throughout Israel, and all the…”

Nehemia: Actually, vayikra’u there is “they responded to the call”, is what it means. That’s what it is, right? Sorry. Verse 21.

Lynell: “And all the worshipers of Baal came. Not a single one remained behind. They came into the temple of Baal, and the temple of Baal was filled from end to end. He said to the man in charge of the wardrobe, bring out the vestments for all the worshipers of Baal. And he brought vestments out for them. Then Jehu…”

Nehemia: So, that’s interesting; when they came to the temple of Baal, they had some special clothing they put on. And only a true worshiper of Baal will put on that clothing. We don’t know what the clothing was, right? Maybe it was an apron or something. I have no idea. But it was some kind of special vestments they would put on, and only a true worshiper of Baal will put that on. And this is interesting; he’s like, “Wait a minute. Maybe some worshipers of Yehovah came who don’t worship Baal, and they’re just going to stand there with their arms folded.”

There’s this famous photo of, during the Nazi times, where there’s this massive gathering, and there’s, I don’t know, thousands of people doing the Heil Hitler salute. And there’s this one man standing in the crowd like this. So, Yehu wants to make sure we don’t kill this guy. So, okay, now, they didn’t just gather and show up at some place and think, “Well, you know, Baal’s not a real God anyway, but I don’t want to be killed.” Because if you don’t come, you think you’re going to die. You’re told that.

So, all right, so, now they’re putting on the garments to show that they are… So, it’s now the second thing. First, they gather. Now they put on the garments to prove they’re worshipers of Baal. Now verse 23.

Lynell: “Then Jehu and Jehonadab, son of Rahab, came into the temple of Baal, and they said to the worshipers of Baal: Search and make sure there are no worshipers of Yehovah among you, but only worshipers of Baal.”

Nehemia: So, now it’s the third thing, right? “Let’s make sure there’s nobody here who we know isn’t who, you know, who posted on social media: Don’t worship Baal. He’s a false god! Let’s make sure those guys didn’t sneak in because he knows because we don’t want to kill… Yehu knows that we don’t want to kill those people.” All right, go on.

Lynell: “So, they went…”

Nehemia: And by the way, Yehonadab ben Rahav, who it kind of just mentions in passing, he’s a famous… he comes from a famous clan, a famous family of ancient Judah who’s mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah. These were people who were converts and so didn’t have any ancestral land. And so, they didn’t drink wine because they don’t have grape vines. And they don’t have to buy wine, and they lived in tents. So, that’s who Yehonadab ben Rahav is. All right, let’s go on.

Lynell: “So, they went in to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings. But Jehu had stationed 80 of his men outside and had said: Whoever permits the escape of a single one of the men I commit to your charge shall forfeit life for life. When Jehu had finished presenting the burnt offering, he said to the guards and to the officers: Come in and strike them down; let no man get away. The guards and the officers struck them down with a sword and left them lying where they were. Then they proceeded to the interior of the temple of Baal. They brought…”

Nehemia: So, anyway, so, here… the story goes on, guys, go study it. It’s a very important story; it’s a fascinating story. So, here Yehu is trying to eliminate this, at least the exclusive worship of Baal. There were still people who continue to worship Baal, and he’s actually… in 2 Kings, he’s called to task for not fully getting rid of the high places and everything. But at least the people who worship Baal and not Yehovah, those he’s getting rid of. He’s stamping that out. And what does he do? How does he do that? He calls an atzeret. Which simply means assembly, right? There’s nothing… no grand finale here. It’s a one-day thing, right?

And you think, “Well, Shavuot’s a one-day thing.” No, but Shavuot was thought of as the grand finale of Passover. That’s why they called it atzeret, right? So, this is a one-day thing. It’s a one-day assembly, just like today, Shemini Atzeret, right? And of course, you know, a thing of Baal is different. But linguistically, we’re saying the word atzeret is just an assembly. That’s the significance of this. The atzeret of Yehovah is completely different than the atzeret of Baal, but it’s a one-day assembly.

Now, Joel, 1:14, I think we can understand a little bit better now that we understand it just means “assembly”. And I love the idea of the grand finale. You know, when I was a kid, I loved those fireworks. They always hurt my ears, though. But that is not the Tanakh meaning of it. That’s a later development.

Lynell: “Solemnize a fast, proclaim an assembly. Gather the elders…”

Nehemia: It’s proclaim… So, this isn’t any fixed biblical feast they’re talking about. What he’s talking about is, “Bad stuff’s about to happen. Sanctify a fast. Proclaim an assembly.” All right? You got to get all the people together in prayer. That’s what this means. And that’s an atzeret. It’s an assembly where you all get together. In this case, the fast. It says, “Gather the elders, all the inhabitants of the earth, to the house of Yehovah, your God, and cry out to Yehovah!” So, here, an Atzeret; the purpose is to gather in prayer and fasting. And it’s not any fixed biblical day, right? This is what we would call a voluntary fast day, right? It’s time to, you know, call a day of prayer and a day of fasting, and that’s called an atzeret, right? So, it just means assembly. And it’s also not something specific to Shemini Atzeret or the atzeret of Passover, it’s a word that literally means assembly, and therefore the eighth day is the day that you assemble. And yes, it is a grand finale in a sense of all the feasts of the year and of the 22 days of holidays… not all feasting, in the seventh month, but literally, what it means is “assembly.” And we have one for Passover as well.

Then Joel 2:15-16 has a similar thing, if you want to look at that.

Lynell: It says, “Blow a horn in Zion, solemnize a fast, proclaim an assembly.”

Nehemia: Right, and so, it’s the same language here. They’re gathering… And then it says… what does it say? Next words…

Lynell: “Gather the people.”

Nehemia: “Gather the people.” That’s what you do in an assembly. Sanctify the congregation. What does that mean, “sanctify the congregation”? Right? That’s a good question, what it means. But basically, it means you need them all to come together for the purpose of prayer and fasting, in this case. And then it says, “Gather the elders, gather the babes and the sucklings.” Right? So, everybody! The chatan who is in his room, and the kala who is in her chupa, get everybody! Even the people who have their own business going on right now, they’re getting married… no, no, no, stop what you’re doing, and everybody get together because we have to pray to Yehovah. And that gathering is an atzeret.

And the last one we’ll look at is… Jeremiah 9:1 is my favorite, right? This for me is the grand finale, the crescendo of this teaching, because this really shows me the meaning of atzeret. So, I’ll read it… or you can read it, and then I’ll comment. Go ahead.

Lynell: “Oh, to be in the desert at an encampment for wayfarers. Oh, to leave my people to go away from them, for they are all adulterers, a band of rogues.” Whaaat?

Nehemia: And “band of rogues” in Hebrew is atzeret bogdim. It’s in atzeret of, actually, cheaters is the word. Of traitors, cheaters. And the context here is, he said, “they’re all adulterers”, meaning they’re adulterers worshiping idols. In the Tanakh, idolatry is metaphorically described as adultery, right? We have this covenant relationship of a wife, with God as the husband, metaphorically. And even in, like, the passage we referred to as the Shema, one of the three passages, it talks about your eyes prostituting after other gods, right? So, the metaphor there is that you’re cheating on God by going and worshiping. You’re cheating on Yehovah by going and worshiping other gods.

So, here he’s saying, “All of these people that I’m among, they are all adulterers. They are a band of cheaters, an assembly of cheaters.” They are an atzeret of cheaters. So, atzeret simply means assembly, right? You can’t say it’s a grand finale of cheaters; that doesn’t even make any sense. And you can’t say it’s a solemn assembly of cheaters! That really doesn’t make any sense, right? Atzeret is simply assembly.

And today is Shemini Atzeret, and we are all gathered together on Shemini Atzeret, Lynell and Nehemia and Gwennie Penguin, and Sedgwick. And who else might be with us?

Lynell: We have… you guys asked for this. We bought Penguin shark, and Penguin Shark always… Penguin Shark only says a couple of things. Penguin Shark says…

Nehemia: Three things.

Lynell: You go ahead. You say what…

Nehemia: So, first of all, he says, “Penguin Shark”. Like, he knows how to say his name. And then he says, “Me me me me me me me me me me.”

Lynell: He says that a lot; he’s very narcissistic. But he also knows one more.

Nehemia: He got a necklace when he was in the shuk in Jerusalem.

Lynell: He did.

Nehemia: And it says on it, “Shema Israel.” And he learned to say another word.

Lynell: He says, “Shma!”

Nehemia: Shma!

Nehemia: Like, out of nowhere, suddenly, “Shma!” That’s Penguin Shark.

Lynell: [Laughter] This is Penny Penguin. She is our first penguin, and she is my penguin. Nehemia got Penny for me when we were first married.

Nehemia: What happened? Why did I get her for you?

Lynell: I had fallen. We were hiking, we were doing some stuff, whatever, and I had fallen, and I had torn my rotator cuff. And I didn’t know that, so I was just waiting for it to heal. And I went to a doctor one day, soon after we were married. It wasn’t long, it was during right after, you know, Covid was going on, and the doctor said, “We have to get you in next week for surgery.” So, I went in for surgery, and they did whatever to my rotator cuff, and Nehemia got me…

Nehemia: And so, she’s sitting in this chair. She can’t lay down. She’s got her arm in a sling and she can’t move, and I’ve got to brush her hair. And I would say, “Come here, Barbie.” And so, I got her Penny Penguin to cheer her up, and about a year later, she got a sister named Gwenny.

Lynell: So, they travel with us. They’re just fun; fun things that we do to travel with. So, anyway, it’s just a blessing.

Nehemia: Now, Gwenny Penguin isn’t just a pet. She actually has a special status, and it’s official and legal.

Lynell: Nehemia did this to entertain people as we travel. You know, we travel a lot.

Nehemia: Yeah, this is very serious. She has a card: Registered Emotional Support Animal.

Lynell: She is!

Nehemia: And this is the same one they get for, like, dogs that are registered emotional support animals. And it’s got a birthday…

Lynell: He entertains people with that when we travel. He makes so many people laugh as we go through TSA, as we… normally, when we go and we check our luggage in, he says to the lady, “Ma’am, I have an emotional support animal that we have to take with us.” And they’re like, “Well, I’m sorry. You can’t do that.” Nehemia’s like, “Well, would you just…”

Nehemia: And we’ll get a supervisor.

Lynell: Just take a… would you take a look? And he hands her the card, and they end up taking the card and passing it around the whole… they remember him. Like, in the airports we normally use, they want to see the penguins…

Nehemia: I was passing through Charlotte, and the woman at the check in said, “Aren’t you the guy with the penguin?” Like, six months after I made this joke! And I was in a hurry, so I didn’t make the joke again. But “Aren’t you the guy with the penguin?”

Lynell: So, Nehemia, do you want to pray before we start taking Q&A?

Nehemia: Yeah, we are assembled today…

Lynell: So why? Tell me why.

Nehemia: The bottom line is, yes, this is a grand finale. It’s a beautiful idea, but that’s not from the Tanakh. What the Tanakh idea is: this is a day that God commanded us to assemble. And why did He command us to assemble on this day and not, you know, 40 days from now? Probably because it was going to rain in Israel, and it’s impractical to gather, you know, 50 days from Sukkot. But really, the pattern is pretty clear; the seventh day of Passover, which is the end of Passover, and the eighth day of Sukkot, which is actually after Sukkot, because Sukkot is seven days, we’re commanded seven days to sit in the sukkah. Yesterday, I told Lynell, “It’s time to take down the sukkah.” Actually, I told Heath, “It’s time to take down the sukkah.” And Lynell says, “But can’t we eat tonight in the sukkah?” I said, “We can, but the commandment is to dwell in the sukkah seven days.”

Lynell: I meant before sunset.

Nehemia: What’s that?

Lynell: I was going to eat before sunset.

Nehemia: Okay. Anyway, so, we took down our sukkah yesterday. And although sometimes, you know… there’s this guy who was my neighbor in Jerusalem who put up his sukkah outside, in the public area, and then he didn’t take it down. And then he left it, and people were like, “Oh!” A month later, the sukkah’s still there, and two months later, the sukkah’s still there. And what they realize is that he’s taken over that part of the public area. And he did it by putting up a sukkah. So, I don’t want to be the guy who leaves with the sukkah all year, although some people do that.

Lynell: But we do want to pray for everyone before we leave, and I do want to say that I really appreciate you guys coming to the gathering. I love the fact that we are doing things that are commanded and that we can do them a lot easier, that, you know, we don’t have to get in our car and we don’t have to get on an airplane. That we can gather together and worship Yehovah together at the appointed times that He’s given to us. And to me, that’s such a beautiful, beautiful thing. So, I’m so happy that we did this.

Nehemia: Amen. All right, guys, I don’t want to just pray for you, I want to pray with you. So, everybody bow your heads, raise your wings in prayer.

Yehovah, Avinu shebashamayim, Father in heaven, I ask You to hear our prayers. We come to You with contrite hearts. We know we’ve sinned. We’ve fallen short every day. There is no man who does not sin, it says. Solomon, in his prayer to You, when he dedicated the Temple, he said, “There is no man who does not sin.” Yehovah, none of us are Solomon. We’re doing our best… and it says, “If you guard iniquity, oh Yah, who could stand?” None of us could stand and be before You if you did not forgive. Father, forgive us. Father, bless us on this day. Father, in ancient Israel, on Shemini Atzeret, the people were celebrating on this assembly, the end of the feast of Sukkot, where they gathered in their produce and whatever they had. That was the blessing for the year. Father, let our blessings be stored up, and bless us during this time as we’re dealing with a lot of difficulties, and economically around the world, and with war around the world. Father, bless us and bless all those who come to You and turn to You, and turn to the place where You put Your name forever in Jerusalem to address You, Father, who is in heaven, and bless us with the bounty of ingathering. Amen.

Lynell: Amen. We do have questions, and I would like to answer questions about today. “Good morning. Based on the original Hebrew language, is Shemini Atzeret a separate feast from the feast of Sukkot?”

Nehemia: I feel like we answered that. Ooh, can we put up a… Oh, let’s put up a quiz. Can you put up a quiz?

Lynell: I will have to create one…

Nehemia: And ask that question in the quiz. I’ll read the next question while you make a quiz. Let’s see what everybody says. “What does the eighth day represent to Nehemia? And is there a way you keep this day in addition to gathering together?” Yeah, there’s no work on this day. It happens to be Shabbat, but if it was during the weekdays as well, there’d be no work. And no, you do not sit in the sukkah.

Kabedyahu ben Yehohanan, “So, it is only this week…” He’s asking about simchat beit hasho’eva, which, I have a teaching on that somewhere. And which was this thing they did in Second Temple times where they would draw water out of a certain spring, and they had a major celebration. And I’m quite sure that came from one of the high places, because there is no such thing as a water libation in the Tanakh, or in the Torah.

“This might be a weird question…” Okay, I’ll skip it then. “What to use as a program or website to read in English, a translation side-by-side by Hebrew?” So, I wouldn’t be the best person to answer that, because I’m reading it usually just in the Hebrew. But there is software; there’s free things online where you can see the Hebrew, usually broken out. I think they’ll have word-by-word with the English. That doesn’t mean the English is right. It’s really interesting; you’ll sometimes see the Hebrew on one side of a page in a printing, and… I’ll see the English on the other side, and there’ll be a note that the English isn’t a translation of what it says in Hebrew, it’s a translation of what it says in the Greek Septuagint. So, why put the Hebrew there? All right. Did you get that, babe?

Lynell: Give me just a minute. I have to create it…

Nehemia: Oh, wow. Someone says, “Since you brought up Baal, do you think the concept of Torah She’be’alpeh has a hidden related little nudge-nudge-wink-wink?” In other words, so, the Oral Law is called Torah She’be’alpeh, and that has absolutely nothing to do with Baal, right? The be’al is “by”. Be’al peh means “by heart”, it has nothing to do with it. It’s not related; that’s just a coincidence. That’s only a coincidence that really, even… I don’t know. I’ve never thought of that in all of my 50-plus years. Even looking for critiques of Rabbinical Judaism, that never even occurred to me, because in Hebrew it… no. Be’al is two different words. Meaning there’s what’s called an attached preposition.

Ooh! We have a quiz. This is fun. Can the penguin take the quiz?

Lynell: [Quack]

Nehemia: But Sedgwick doesn’t say, “Me, me, me, me, me,” so you would think he’s not as selfish and self-centered and narcissistic as Penguin Shark, but here’s what he’ll do… Oh, I can’t see it, because this… hold on one second. So, Gwennie will be, like, cuddling here, and Sedgwick will just come and push her out of the way. It’s just what he does.

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: He won’t even say anything, he’ll just do it. He’s like, “Yeah, it’s me.”

Lynell: So, we’re going to go ahead and… when you guys finish, let us know.

Nehemia: Yeah. Someone says, “Have you ever heard of atzeret meaning ‘a proclamation’ instead of ‘a convocation?’ Or is convocation a different word?” I think convocation in English… someone can look this up and make sure I’m right, means a gathering. I’ve never heard of atzeret meaning a proclamation. You could argue, based on Syriac, that atzeret has something to do with sacrifice, but I think that’s a secondary meaning. Like, atzeret meaning Shavuot or grand finale.

“I’ve heard the word translated convocation is actually proclamation.” No, no, no. So, the word for… okay, I see what you’re asking. So, the word “convocation” doesn’t apply to atzeret. Convocation is the English translation in the King James of mikra kodesh, and mikra means proclamation. But that’s… we’ll do a separate study on that someday.

“So, when you call someone a yahu… are they referring to the one you are talking…” I don’t even know what that means.

Lynell: Nehemia, is Shemini Atzeret a separate occasion from the Feast of Sukkot?

Nehemia: Yes and no.

Lynell: See there! I knew he was going to go there!

Nehemia: No, but definitely yes. It’s yes, right?

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: Meaning, it’s yes, because it says to dwell in the sukkah for seven days. It’s a separate occasion, therefore, meaning it’s… there’s no commandment to be in a sukkah on Sukkot, and what we said yesterday to ourselves is… and like I said, you could leave up your sukkah all year if you want, but what makes it special for me and for my family is that we’re doing it on these seven days. So, Shemini Atzeret is not part of Sukkot. At the same time, it’s called the eighth of assembly. Count eighth of what? It’s the eighth day counted from the first day of Sukkot. So, it’s a bit of a paradox. So… were we done with… Do you want to share those results?

Lynell: I did already, and I closed the portal…

Nehemia: Okay, beautiful.

Lynell: But everybody won. I mean, it was yes and no.

Nehemia: Everybody got it right?

Lynell: Of course!

Nehemia: Wait, was there anybody who said… Okay, let’s see, let’s… got a bunch of questions over here. Okay… Some… Okay… All right. Some of these I’m just going to skip.

Lynell: “…do you understand the verse to be a metaphor?”

Nehemia: Okay, I’m going to answer this question. Somebody says, “Why is the name Yeshua not mentioned after a prayer? I was taught by a Messianic Jew to say his name.” I’m not a Messianic Jew. So, maybe that is something a Messianic Jew or a Christian would do. I’m neither a Messianic Jew nor a Christian. Possibly You don’t know who I am. You can look up in hundreds of hours where I’ve explained ad nauseam, written whole books about it, but…

Someone says, “Are there any prophecies that seem connected to this day?” I’ll leave that for some future discussion.

So, someone asked, “When is Simchat Torah?” So, Simchat Torah, which literally means “the celebration of the Torah”, is not a biblical holiday. And it’s interesting; when is this holiday? It’s a Rabbinical holiday, so we’ve got to back up.

So, in ancient times, even in Rabbinical Judaism, they would begin every Hebrew month with the sighting of the new moon in the Land of Israel. And what happened is, people would come to Jerusalem, and they’d testify that they saw the new moon. And if they had witnesses that were reliable and they trusted, they would announce that the new moon had been sighted, and now it’s the beginning of the month. And what they would do is, they would light signal fires. And we’ll sometimes call these bonfires, but they’re actually signal fires. It was a giant pole with a bunch of… basically it was a giant torch, and they would move it up and down, and people would see, “Oh, it’s not just a field that caught fire, this is a deliberate signal.”

So, there were signal fires that went all the way to what today is Syria, where there were Jews living. And the people who lived beyond where the signal fires would reach, they didn’t know which day the new moon was sighted. Okay, they would send out messengers. Well, the messengers couldn’t reach everywhere in time. So, if you live beyond where the messengers could reach, you would celebrate each holy day, with the exception of Yom Kippur, for two days. That’s what was done in ancient… many ancient Jews did that. And Rabbinical Jews said, “Well, just because our calendar now is calculated and we no longer have to wait for the sighting of the new moon, because we’ve just made up a day, we’re still going to do two days in the Diaspora.” And so, in the Diaspora there was this tradition, and specifically, it’s the Babylonian tradition. There were two traditions of how to read the Torah; one was three-and-a-half years, and one was one year. And the one-year tradition was from Babylonia. And in Babylonia, when they finished reading the Torah one portion every week, they celebrated the completion of the reading cycle at the end of Sukkot. And they didn’t do it on the eighth day of Sukkot, on Shemini Atzeret, because they celebrated Shemini Atzeret for two days. And they waited till the second day of Shemini Atzeret, which is a bit strange, because shemini means eighth.

So, there was a second day of the eighth of assembly, which means the ninth day. And they said, “Well, this is awkward. We have a holiday called Eighth of Assembly, and we’re celebrating it both on the eighth and the ninth.” So, what they did is, they said, “You know what? Let’s celebrate the end of our reading cycle on the second day of the Eighth of Assembly so that we have some purpose for this day,” and they called that Simchat Torah, the celebration of the Torah.

So, it’s a completely artificial holiday that came from Jews in Babylon who were looking for some purpose for the second day of Shemini Atzeret, because of its name, Eighth of Assembly, and they ended up celebrating the Simchat Torah. Now, Jews return to the Land of Israel with this Babylonian tradition, and… “now” meaning like in the 10th century or something like that, or probably 9th century, and they say, “Okay, well, we can’t do it on the ninth day because we don’t celebrate two days of Shemini Atzeret.” So, they combine it with Shemini Atzeret.

So, to this day, Orthodox Jews in Israel will celebrate Simchat Torah on the eighth day of Sukkot, and in the Diaspora, Orthodox Jews will celebrate it on the ninth day. And that’s why, when we were attacked on October 7th, in Israel some people wanted to call it the Simchat Torah War, because it happened on… And think about it… and here’s really the interesting thing: it’s now become such a dominant part of the holiday in Israel, the celebration of the completion of the reading cycle, if you tell someone it’s Shemini Atzeret, it’s kind of like, “Oh, that’s like Christmas is Yuletide.” It’s like some… they don’t even remember that, it’s like some almost a side point from history. In America, they’ll know it… or in the Diaspora, Jews will know it, because Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah are two different days. I hope that made sense. I know it’s a bit complicated.

Lynell: So, I want to answer a question.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Lynell: Someone asked. Oh, Darlene, “What do you and Lynell do on this day?” Yeah, well, we gather together with people. And that’s why I was so excited to be able to do a bigger gathering; we can all gather here together, and it’s a Shabbat, so we keep it like a Shabbat. Helen asks…

Nehemia: When you say it’s a Shabbat, meaning, today we’re commanded not to work.

Lynell: Right. So, we don’t work on this day, and… I mean…

Nehemia: So, the word Shabbat isn’t applied to Shemini Atzeret. It actually calls it a shabbaton, but that’s a separate study. But it’s not Shabbat, technically.

Lynell: That’s right. “Can we cook on this day since it’s celebratory? What are the commands on this special day?” That is a…

Nehemia: Yeah, that’s a whole…

Lynell: That’s a whole study.

Nehemia: In Rabbinical Judaism, if Shemini Atzeret is not on Shabbat, then the rabbis would say you’re allowed to cook. Because the cooking prohibition, they say, is only specific to Shabbat and not the other days in which work is forbidden. But that’s a separate study. Let’s do that…

Lynell: And James London… I’m glad you asked this, James, because James is like… he said, “But aren’t you working on… Aren’t you working, doing the study?”

Nehemia: So, in a sense, yes, but I feel like I’ve been called to teach Torah. And if you can’t teach Torah on Shabbat, then you’re doing something wrong. And we definitely have biblical precedents for that. People in the Temple, the priests in the Temple, one of their busiest days of work was Shabbat, where they had extra sacrifices, number one. And then you see that they gathered together to hear the Torah on Yom Teruah; it’s in Nehemiah chapter 8. It says there were people… it says, “And the Levites were explaining to the people,” it says maskilim; they were causing them to understand. Now, how were they causing them to understand? The Levites were giving some kind of explanation, because the Hebrew language had evolved over time. Meaning, the Torah was written around 1450 BCE, give or take, and Nehemiah chapter 8 is taking place in the time of Ezra, which is around 450 BCE, so it’s a thousand years later. The language changed over time, and the people are like, “Okay, I don’t know what this means.” And the Levites were saying, “Okay, well, in the Torah, when it uses this term, that’s what we call today X, Y, Z,” right? So, they were giving them some kind of explanation, and they were doing that on a holy day. And it’s interesting, because then it says, “The people were crying,” and they say, “No, today is a holy day.” So, in that sense…

Lynell: Don’t cry.

Nehemia: If you’re teaching… right, don’t cry. And go eat fat foods and drink sweet drinks.

Lynell: Celebrate!

Nehemia: That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to eat sweet fat foods. I don’t know if I’ll have too many sweet drinks for me, but most people can. And so, the point is that, yes, it’s work to teach the Torah, but that’s the work that you’re supposed to do on Shabbat and holy days. And we see that’s what they were doing in the Temple, and even outside the Temple, on the holy day. But no, that’s a completely… Look, I’ve been criticized… by Karaite Jews, I’ve been criticized. I don’t know that I’ve been criticized by Orthodox Jews, because they just think I’m a heretic anyway. But by Karaite Jews, I’ve been criticized for doing a speaking event on Shabbat. And they say, you know, “You’re violating Shabbat.” Wait. I’m speaking in a synagogue. Literally. I was speaking in a synagogue, in that particular incident, the one that I’m thinking of; what are you doing on Shabbat? Who are you teaching on Shabbat? And if you’re not, why not? If you can teach, why aren’t you teaching?

Lynell: I mean, I’m not working. Like, I’m not going to be doing any of the… I do a lot of the financial aspects of the ministry, try to help that. I don’t do any of that type of work. But when it comes to teaching, when it comes to ministering, or it comes to, you know, gathering together… to create the webinar is work, but I believe that’s what Yehovah has called me to do. So…

The study on not cooking on Shabbat; I want Nehemia to do that study. I really do, because that was one of the first things that… one of the first things that was really important to me to learn about when I started keeping Torah, and I would love for us to do a study on that.

Nehemia: Tell them the story about how you thought Jews fasted on Shabbat.

Lynell: [Laughter] So, when Nehemia and I first started dating, I knew nothing. Guys, I didn’t… I knew nothing, literally nothing. And so, anytime we were going on a date, it was usually on a Shabbat night, a Saturday night. And so, Nehemia would always say, “Okay, I’ll meet you right after sunset,” or “I’ll pick you up after sunset.” You know, “We’ll do this after sunset.” And I thought, “Okay, well, he doesn’t eat until after sunset on Shabbat.”

Nehemia: Because then we’d go to a restaurant.

Lynell: Yeah, but that’s because…

Nehemia: So, she thought I fasted every Shabbat. Now, I could do with a fast once a week, don’t get me wrong, but it wouldn’t be on Shabbat.

Lynell: Yeah, I knew so nothing. And Bridget, I would love to do that. David, I really would love to do a study about cooking, because when you know nothing about… Gwenny knew a lot more than I did. But when you know nothing about the Torah, and, you know, about how to keep the commandments that you’ve been taught your whole life, that they were done away with, there’s a lot of study. I’ve learned a lot in the last five years.

Nehemia: I follow this young lady on TikTok…

Lynell: Tithing; that’s important, Jessica.

Nehemia: And she posted something really interesting about how she has a friend who was just criticized by their Christian pastor for keeping the feast, and he said, “You’re putting yourself under the law. That was done away with. We’re New Testament believers.” And I thought that was such a fascinating story, that someone who is a New Testament believer is being criticized for keeping these Old Testament feasts.

And that’s particularly funny, because in Colossians 2:16 it says, “Judge nobody in matters concerning the observances.” I forget what the exact term is, “new moons and feasts” or something like that. And here, the Christian pastor was criticizing this person for exactly what Colossians 2:16 says. How interesting. Maybe that was off the topic.

Lynell: Okay, this is a really good question. “Dr. Gordon, you made a good point that sometimes the English is not the correct translation.” Most of the time. Can I just say? Most of the time.

Nehemia: I wouldn’t say it’s most of the time. Most of the time it’s okay.

Lynell: It’s okay. It’s okay. I didn’t say it wasn’t okay. I said “correct”. “How can we trust any translations then?” That’s a good question.

Nehemia: So, you shouldn’t trust any translations. Translation is an art, not a science. There’s an ancient… well I don’t know if it’s ancient. There’s an old Italian saying that the translator is a traitor, which is a play on words, because translator and traitor sound similar. And they sound even more similar in Italian. And what it means is that there is no way to perfectly translate something from one language to another. Every translation is an interpretation. And so, when you’re reading five different translations, you’re really reading five different interpretations. Now, when I read it in Hebrew, I’m also interpreting it. It’s an implicit interpretation, in a sense, or if you’re more self-aware, it’s not so implicit.

And the famous story, or the famous example, given in the 20th century by this woman, Nehama Leibowitz; she was a Bible commentator in Israel, and she said, “Every reading of a text is an interpretation.” She said, you know, “When we read thou shalt not murder,” it says in Hebrew “lo tirtzach.” So, you could read it, “Thou shalt not murder?” And, at least in the Jewish Israeli intonation, that means, “You’re not going to murder? Of course you’re going to murder! What? Please go murder!” Right? So, in other words, you could read it as a rhetorical question, right? So, imagine if you see someone, I don’t know, coming out of the bathroom, and you say, “You’re not going to wash your hands?” That means go wash your hands!

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: So, you could read in Hebrew lo tirztach. You’re not going to murder, right? Meaning, go murder. Now, nobody in their right mind would read it that way. You’d be an idiot to read it that way. But by not reading it that way, you’re actually applying a principle. And the principle is; when I read the text, it’s got to make sense. Doesn’t make sense that God’s telling me to murder, because first of all, that would be an unethical god. But also, there’s other places where it says, if you murder, you’re executed. So why would He be telling me to murder? But the point is, when I read lo tirtzach, “you shall not murder”, I don’t read it as, “You shall not murder?” And why don’t I do that? Because it doesn’t make sense to read it that way. So, that’s an important principle; the Bible needs to make sense. It’s the word of God, and we’re told… you know, he says in Isaiah, “Come, let us reason.” So, reason is a principle that you are allowed and must use when you read the Tanakh, and I think when you read any ancient text.

Now, there are ancient texts that aren’t reasonable, right? If I’m reading the Zohar, the main book of Kabbalah, there will be things that the author meant in an irrational way. I don’t think those are… that that’s the case in the Tanakh. So, the point is, everything’s an interpretation. Every reading of a text is an interpretation. I’d rather interpret the text myself rather than rely on somebody else. And so, what I would recommend for those who can’t read it in Hebrew is to look at multiple English translations. And when they differ, ask the question, “What’s going on here? Why are they differing?”

Lynell: Mm-hmm.

Nehemia: And try to find an answer.

Lynell: Mm-hmm. And that’s why I always had all the concordances out in front of me. Todd Korder said something that I think is really important. He said, “Some translations say no servile labor. I take that as to cease from my paying job. It doesn’t prevent me from serving in the preservation of life. So, it might be different for doctors, firefighters, police officers. Theirs is intrinsic to the preservation of life.” What are your thoughts on that?

Nehemia: So, I’ll give you the short answer. So, first of all, there’s a principle in the Torah that says, “God gives us these commandments, and we will live by them.” And if someone’s going to die, with maybe a few exceptions, then you’ve got to go save their life. There’s another commandment, “You shall not stand by the blood of your fellow.” It’s in Leviticus 19. It’s alongside, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself,” and “Don’t hate your fellow in your heart.” And what it means is, if you see someone who is dying, you’re required to go save them. And we see that the army of Israel went out against the Philistines in 1 Samuel, it says for 40 days, every day. So, that means on Shabbat they went out to war. They were standing in their battle array with their full armor, right? So, they were working in the heat, right? In the summer heat. How do I know it was summer? Because in winter, it rains, and people don’t go out to war in ancient Israel, because the roads are muddy. Same reason you don’t come 50 days after Sukkot to Jerusalem, in ancient Israel, that is.

So, the point is that they didn’t stop for Shabbat and say, “Okay, Philistines, we hope you don’t attack us, but we’re not going to go fight because it’s Shabbat.” In fact, you’re required to defend people and save lives on Shabbat, and if you’re a doctor… now, you shouldn’t be scheduling routine visits on Shabbat. But if you’re a doctor working in an ER, somebody’s got to work in the ER on Shabbat or people will die. That doesn’t mean you need to do, like I said, routine stuff, but you should save lives on Shabbat, absolutely.

Lynell: And Dan…

Nehemia: And for a policeman as well. I think we’ve seen what can happen if you defund the police and you have no police on Shabbat. That wouldn’t be good.

Lynell: And Dan Eynon said, the word work is one of those imperfectly translated words. And he’s saying that we need a good study and discussion. Yes, I love that discussion. I agree. “Is there anything in the Torah about the day to build or to take down the sukkah, Nehemia?”

Nehemia: In a sense, it says to do it on the first day, to build it. It doesn’t say about taking it down, but then that might also mean by the first day. Someone had a comment here, which I think is worth addressing. They said, “You all need to stop putting down us Rabbinic Jews.”

Lynell: Oh…

Nehemia: And I try not to put down Rabbinical… I definitely hope I don’t put down Rabbinic Jews. I will definitely express… you know, I have different views on certain things in the Bible, and look, in a sense, Rabbinical Judaism, because it is the dominant form of Judaism out there in the world today, has to be the starting point. For me, at least. If I’m talking about coming… and also being raised as a Rabbinical Jew, my starting point is, “Okay, here’s what I was raised with, and I want to peel away the layers of the onion.” Right? And some of those layers go back 2,000 years, right? I’m talking about Targum Onkelos, where he says he’s using the second… And Josephus, right, who was also a Pharisee, by the way, a Rabbinical Jew. And I’m saying, “Okay, let’s peel away those layers of the onion, and here’s how it evolved over time, and can we learn anything from that?” And often we can.

So, for me that’s a frame of reference. But number one, because I came from that, and my ancestors, maybe for 2,000 years were part of that, and I hope that doesn’t come across as polemical, but rather as: this is a Jewish context. I’m trying to understand the Tanakh within its historical and Jewish context, and to also distinguish between different layers of that context. I love it that this rabbi in 1108 says, “I looked through the Tanakh and I couldn’t find Shavuot called Atzeret, but our rabbis call it that everywhere,” right? He’s doing exactly what I’m trying to do. What does it mean now? And what did it originally mean? And what did it mean in different periods?

Lynell: “Is it also that outside of Israel we have to feast eight days and in Israel, seven?”

Nehemia: You lost me on that one.

Lynell: Yeah.

Nehemia: No, the point is that Orthodox Jews… I don’t think Reform Jews do this. I don’t actually know about Conservative Jews. Orthodox Jews outside of Israel keep nine days. And in Israel, Orthodox Jews keep eight days. Reform Jews, I believe, keep eight days everywhere because they don’t accept the idea of the negation of the Diaspora. Meaning, there’s this idea in Orthodox Judaism, and I would say in the Tanakh, that it’s not ideal to be outside of the Land of Israel. That’s called negation of the Diaspora. And Reform Jews say, “No, you know, I’m a German,” because it started in Germany, “I’m an American, and I’m not a fish out of water, I’m just in a different sea. I’m in a different lake. And I’m not going to do something different than what’s done in Israel, because I’m not in a lesser status place, I’m just in a different place.” And so, they do eight days outside of Israel as well.

Lynell: Eric, I would love for your words to be… send it to everyone, because you’re talking about what conservatives follow. Would you do that to everyone, so that people can see your answers?

Nehemia: Oh, he says Conservatives follow nine days. So, I actually didn’t know that. So, that’s interesting.

Lynell: Yeah. “Some of my associates associate the word atzeret with tarrying, extending or waiting.” Did you address that?

Nehemia: Tarrying?

Lynell: Tarry. T-A-R-R-Y. Tarrying. Extending or waiting. I have… did we see that in our study?

Nehemia: No.

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: So, that actually we did in a sense. That was, there was a rabbi who brought the parable of you keep the son an extra day.

Lynell: Okay, all right.

Nehemia: The son who lives far away, you tell him, “Stay an extra day with me.” That’s, I guess, where it comes from. But it also comes from atzar, which is “to stop”. And in that sense, you could say it’s the stop… you know, “stop leaving and stay here an extra day”. Meaning that maybe that’s where they get it from. But it just means assembly in the Tanakh. Why does it mean assembly is an interesting question. How do you get from the word “stop” to “assembly” isn’t obvious, and it’s a complicated question. And here’s where it really gets complicated, and maybe this is too complicated for this kind of setting, with over 250 people, but in Hebrew we have 22 letters. But actually, in Ancient Hebrew, there were more than 22 linguistic letters. And what I mean is, there were 22 graphic symbols, but obviously there’s more than 22 letters, because we have Shin and Sin which are two different letters. So, that’s already 23. And it turns out that there’s more than one Ayin in ancient Hebrew, and there’s more than one Tzadi in ancient Hebrew. And we see that when we compare Hebrew to other Semitic languages. And I won’t go into more than that, because that’s very complicated.

But what that means is, although the word “stop” and the word “assemble” have the same three-letter root, they might actually be different roots in ancient Hebrew. And we don’t have enough information to prove it one way or another, but we have to assume that that could be the case here. And maybe that’s why “assemble” and “stop” have nothing to do with each other.

Lynell: “The difference between the Last Great Day and shining atzeret…”

Nehemia: It’s auto correct. Shemini Atzeret.

Lynell: Shemini Atzeret.

Nehemia: I presume that that’s autocorrect. I don’t know. So, “Last Great Day” is not a term that I’m familiar with from historical sources. I know there’s some, you know, people who refer to it as the Last Great Day, where I think it has eschatological connotations. Okay. Yeah. I mean, Shemini Atzeret probably is a little bit hard for some people to say. It’s got that “tzuh”. I never have a problem with a “tzuh”. I understand that people have, but I understand, you know… I have a friend who, instead of tzitzit, says the zitzit. So, I guess in some English pronunciations that’s difficult to pronounce.

Someone asked a really good question: “Will this feast always land on a Sabbath for the eighth day?” So, no, it’s a… on average… I don’t know that this is actually true but presumably, on average it will be once every seven years. Meaning, I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t on average be once every seven years, but statistics are kind of a funny thing. It could be any day of the week.

Lynell: Riva asked, “Is the water libation a historical part of the eighth day of celebration?”

Nehemia: It’s an historical part; it’s just not a biblical part.

Lynell: Well, there you go.

Nehemia: Meaning, of Sukkot in general. Someone asked a really interesting question that’s for you, Lynell, and it’s so much fun, so let’s go do it. It says, “If you grew up on the King James, do you see the Mandela Effect changes?” Dun, dun, dun!

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: I know that in the original Bible, that was stolen from us by the devil…

Lynell: Why don’t you explain the Mandela Effect…

Nehemia: There were penguins…

Lynell: Explain the Mandela Effect in just a few words…

Nehemia: And hedgehogs… So, the Mandela Effect is this idea that there are certain things we all… Well, first of all, it’s a real thing, in the sense that there are things that we all remember that are not the case. So, everybody remembers, from my generation, that Darth Vader said to Luke, “Luke, I am your father.” And you go back to look at the movie, what was it, Star Wars, or Empire Strikes Back? I don’t remember which movie. Whichever movie it was. And he doesn’t say that. He says “Luke,” and then he says a whole long spiel, and then he says, “I am your father.” Right? So, he never says the words in that sequence, “Luke, I am your father.” So, why do we remember it wrong? So, that’s what the Mandela Effect theory is, right? That first thing, that we remember things that are not the case, that’s a fact you can’t really dispute. And it’s in all kinds of ways that happens. So, what is the reason for it? Well, there’s one theory. Do you want to explain it?

Lynell: I’m going to let you explain the theory. I’m going to tell you what I think about growing up on the King James Version versus the way that we study now. The biggest thing that I have found is that a lot of the verses that I memorized from the New Testament are actually verses that are in the Old Testament, and they may be translated a little differently in the New Testament than they were in the Old Testament, and sometimes they mean completely different things. So, to me, that’s been the biggest light bulb about really studying… because I didn’t study the Old Testament, guys. I didn’t… I knew the New Testament front to back, but I didn’t study Old Testament. And then, when I began to look at it, I was like, “Oh, that’s from the New Testament… no, no, no, it’s the other way around. That’s from the Old Testament.” Well, what did it mean in the Old Testament? What did it actually mean? And does it mean the same thing today? And so, yes, sure, there is definitely the Mandela Effect, and…

Nehemia: Well, I’m not sure that’s what it is. But anyway, so, one theory says that CERN in Switzerland opened up a… it’s hard to say this without laughing, I’m sorry. If it’s someone in this group here who believes that I don’t mean any disrespect, but I don’t personally ascribe to this, but… So, the theory is that CERN, with their Large Hadron Collider, opened up a portal to another universe because they’re in league with some demonic force. And if you don’t believe it, look, they have at the front… they have a statue of Shiva, which is demonic… the front of CERN in Switzerland… and I hope I’m getting this right. And so, some of us have shifted from one universe to another, and in our universe, Darth Vader really did say, “Luke, I am your father.” And we remember that, even though in this universe he didn’t. So, that’s one possibility. Or we just don’t remember it right. Which is more likely? You decide.

Lynell: [Laughter] “The New Testament quotations from the Old Testament are often better matched to the… as opposed to the Masoretic Text.” I don’t… maybe?

Nehemia: So, people have written whole dissertations on that. In other words, sometimes the New Testament quotation matches the Septuagint against the Masoretic Text. Sometimes it matches the Masoretic Text against the Septuagint, and sometimes it matches neither. So, there’s a hypothesis that, when the New Testament was written, they had a third version that they were quoting from that we don’t have anymore. Is that possible? Sure. Or maybe they were paraphrasing, right? There’s all kinds of explanations.

Lynell: The Smith family asks something. We answered this, actually, at the last…

Nehemia: Somebody said, “Nelson, I am your father.”

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: Oh, maybe it’s somebody named Nelson. Maybe it’s not our Nelson.

Lynell: That’s hilarious.

Nehemia: Because it looks like their name is Nelson.

Lynell: “Since it’s the traditional end of the yearly Torah cycle, the Torah begins with Bereshit, and it ends with kol Yisrael. Is this significant?”

Nehemia: That’s an interesting observation. It actually ends with le’einei kol Yisrael, “before the eyes of all of Israel.” Which is… it’s significant in the sense that the Torah begins in the beginning, where there aren’t even humans, and then God chooses… Well, first He actually gives all mankind a test, and they fail. So, then He chooses Noah and his descendants. And then within Noah and his descendants, He chooses Abraham. And then, among the descendants of Abraham, He chooses Isaac. And then among the descendants of Isaac, He chooses Jacob. And He does that to give this message for all mankind, right?

In other words… so, He first started out with all mankind, and it didn’t work out that way. So, He said, “Okay, I’m going to choose this one particular family to then be My representatives and be an example.” And they could be a bad example. But the world’s going to see that God interacts with the universe, and he’s not just a passive God who sits back and does nothing. And if He can’t get all mankind to obey Him, He’ll show the universe, “Here’s people who obey Me. Or here’s people who disobey Me if they so choose. And here’s how I interact with the universe.” So, in that sense, absolutely, it has a significance. Meaning, it’s part of the theme. Or you could call it “the Torah Plan of Salvation”, in a sense, right? To borrow a term from somewhere else.

Lynell: “Is mental health work in a jail setting against the Shabbat or holy days?”

Nehemia: I guess it depends if you’re… I don’t know enough about mental health work. In other words, are you doing something that’s emergency work? Or are you doing something that can wait until Sunday? Right? And there’s definitely, you know, if somebody is having a, you know, schizophrenic break or whatever, and they’re, you know, stabbing themself in the eye and they need some kind of treatment, well, definitely give them treatment. If they’re, you know, they need to have a chat because they don’t like being in jail, then probably that can wait until Sunday. I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.

Lynell: This was interesting. “If for some reason we missed Sukkot, would it be okay to do what the Maccabees did?”

Nehemia: Which is that they celebrated in Kislev on the 25th, which was also that… Well, they did it as soon as they could, which was on the anniversary of when the Temple had been taken over by the pagans. The Torah doesn’t have that institution. In other words, in the Torah, you would just do it next year, I think. For Passover, for the sacrifice, it has. Not for the Feast of Unleavened Bread. But no, it doesn’t have that. There’s no Sukkot Sheni, a second Sukkot, in the Torah, or in the Tanakh.

Lynell: “I’ve always wanted to know why people say the Jewish people in biblical terms, when it’s not just the Jewish people, but the 12 tribes of the House of Israel.” Why do people say, “the Jewish people”?

Nehemia: So, it’s interesting. We don’t. Meaning, in traditional Jewish sources, you don’t usually find the term ha’am ha’yehudi, the Jewish people. That’s not a thing. That’s something that comes about in the 19th century, really, when they’re translating from European languages. In traditional Jewish sources, you actually have three categories of people, like in the synagogue, who come to read from the Torah. You have Levi… the first one who reads is Kohen, who’s descendent from Aaron. And the second one is Levi, who’s a Levite, and the third one isn’t Jew; the third one is Israel. Right? So, and if you look in traditional Jewish sources, they’ll talk about Am Yisrael, literally “the people of Israel.” And that will be translated into English as “the Jewish people”, which is, you’re right, inaccurate. I agree with you. But what this person is probably talking about is the ten lost tribe theory, which I think is beyond the scope of today’s discussion.

Lynell: “Why does the Torah cycle reading begin…” Let’s take this as our last question, I guess. “Why does the Torah…”

Nehemia: What was the question?

Lynell: “Why does the Torah reading cycle begin and end after Sukkot, rather than right after Passover?”

Nehemia: As the man sang: “Tradition! Tradition!” But the real answer is that, in the Torah, in Deuteronomy, it talks about gathering every seven years on Sukkot and reading the entire Torah during that seven-day period. And so, they say, “Well, we’re not going to read the whole Torah on a seven-day period, but we’ll read it throughout the course of the year, and we’ll end it on Sukkot.” Right? That’s really where the tradition comes.

Lynell: So, Brett had…

Nehemia: Presumably. Maybe there’s some other source of it.

Lynell: During your teaching, Brett had a question, and he’s very, very… this is really important to him. And he wants to know how he can find out about whether he is part of the Lost Tribes, or whether he’s actually…

Nehemia: Is that what he’s asking, the Lost Tribes…

Lynell: Ancestrally. Brett, what are you asking? Ask the question. He asked a whole bunch of questions. What is the question you want to know about becoming… He doesn’t want to know about becoming a part of, or joining yourself to Israel, which is a really great teaching, and I think that that might be helpful for you to know that teaching. “I’m asking if I’m partial…”

Nehemia: So, that’s a teaching that’s currently on Nehemia’s Wall. I think it’s called something like Conversion…

Lynell: Yeah. Somebody already gave him that, actually. The question…

Nehemia: Oh, great. All right.

Lynell: Yeah. I’m asking if I’m…

Nehemia: That’s my answer.

Lynell: “If I’m descended from one of the tribes.” Like, he’s looking at DNA. He doesn’t have paperwork, but he wants to know.

Nehemia: Oh.

Lynell: Guys, do you have any idea about how to find your ancestor?

Nehemia: The real answer is, we don’t currently have a way of doing that, and anybody who tells you that we do either knows more than I do or they are wrong. Probably the latter, but I, you know… So, basically at this point, you know, DNA, it’s really interesting how it works. People say, “You know, I’m 3% Native American,” and what do they really mean by that? That means there are people who self-reported that they’re Native American, and then your DNA is now being compared to that person, or that group of people. So, is that correct? I don’t know. Maybe they were wrong, and they’re not really Native American, you know, or maybe they’re partially something else.

So, somebody asked, is Ashkenazi any tribe in particular? So, the answer to that is no. They have done DNA tests and found that most Jews all over the world have some DNA in common. Ashkenazim do have a very specific set of DNA markers, and that’s because there’s something called the bottleneck. The bottleneck is believed to have happened in the 4th century, where most Jews in Europe died from the Black Plague or from massacres that happened all over northern Europe. And there’s about 10 million Jews today who are descended from those survivors, and it’s not clear how many survivors there were. It might have been 10,000. It might have been 350, depending on who you believe. And that bottleneck means that everybody’s kind of like cousins. Not to mention, my great-grandparents were first cousins, and that was extremely common.

Lynell: Mm-hmm.

Nehemia: And still is common for many Jews today, both Ashkenazim and Sephardim, to marry first cousins. But if you compare Ashkenazic DNA to Sephardic DNA, for example, they have a lot in common. And in fact, one of the common names for Sephardic Jews is: Ashkenazi! Because there were Jews from Europe who moved to the Sephardic countries.

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VERSES MENTIONED
Leviticus 23:36
Numbers 29:35; Nehemiah 8:18; 2 Chronicles 7:8-10
Deuteronomy 16:8
Genesis 1:10
Philo, On The Special Laws 2.211
Numbers 28:26
Mishnah Chagigah 2:4; Babylonian Talmud 17a:2-4, 18a:10; Jerusalem Talmud Chagigah 2:4:1
Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 3.252 (3.10.6)
Peskita DeRav Kahana 28
Isaiah 1:13
2 Kings 9-10
Jeremiah 35
Joel 1:14
Joel 2:15-16
Jeremiah 9:1
Numbers 15:39
Nehemia 8
Colossians 2:16
Isaiah 1:18
Leviticus 18:5
Leviticus 19:16
1 Samuel 17
Deuteronomy 31:9-13

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