How a Religious Jew Studies the Bible

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. So when religious Jews read the Hebrew Bible, what kind of Bible do they read? It's time for the Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on the Line of Fire.

And now here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. It is Thirdly Jewish Thursday, and over the course of the next 24 plus hours, Christians around the world will celebrate Good Friday and Jews from around the world will celebrate the beginning of the Passover as, of course, Muslims are in the midst of Ramadan. And it's also 4-14. Yes, April 4th, excuse me, April 14th, April the fourth month, the 14th day. But it is also National Not Ashamed of Jesus Day based on Esther 4-14.

I'll explain the shirt I'm wearing to those watching in a moment. Here's a number to call if you have any Jewish related question of any kind. 866-348-7884. If you differ with me on my views about Israel today being an ongoing fulfillment of biblical prophecy, if you differ with my views about Jesus, Yeshua being our Messiah, if you have questions about Hebrew language or Jewish literature, you've heard things you want to get straightened out, this is the day to call. This is the perfect time of the week.

866-348-7884. OK, so for those watching, you might be able to make out clearly what's on the shirt. It's a little dark, but it says Yeshua, big print Yeshua, Hebrew name for Jesus, and then small print Messiah and then large print Mashiach, which is the Hebrew way of saying Messiah. We get Messiah from the Greek, which comes from the Hebrew Mashiach, anointed one Messiah. So I want to read to you first from the book of Esther and here Mordecai has uncovered a plot that Haman wants to wipe out the Jewish people, an absolutely horrific plot.

And the first time that this has happened and not the last time it happened in history. So Mordecai's younger cousin, Esther, whom he basically raised as a parent, she is the queen and she can make an appeal to the king. But the king has to welcome her in.

It's the protocol there. And she says, hey, he hasn't called for me in 30 days. And if I just walk into his presence and he doesn't acknowledge me, I could die. So Mordecai says this, verse 12, when Mordecai was told what Esther had said, Mordecai had this message delivered to her. Do you not imagine that you, of all the Jews, will escape with your life by being in the king's palace? Verse 14, on the contrary, if you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another quarter while you and your father's house will perish.

And who knows, perhaps you have attained to a royal position or perhaps you have come into the kingdom for such a time as this, or in the New Jewish publication study version, for such just such a crisis. So as I was writing the Silencing of the Lambs, I felt stirred by the Lord to do this, tested it with others and feel it's a right and righteous thing to do that today, April 14th, every year, is National Not Ashamed of Jesus Day. It's a day when we go out of our way to make a public proclamation. We are not ashamed of the Lord. We are here. We are not ashamed. We love Jesus.

We love you. It's a day to wear something to work if you can or to bring a Bible with you or to go out of your way to share the gospel with someone or pray with them or to post something on social media. And I've just been looking on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and blessed to see how many of you have done something today, sending out a message. It's just encouraging. It's it's a reminder to shout out, we love him and we're not ashamed of our Lord. So I was looking for this old T-shirt I had.

Nancy bought me in 1984, bright red, orange color. I mean, it really stood out and it just said Jesus on it. The kind of thing, you wear it in public, people look, it's like, what? You're like shouting out the message.

Well, nowhere to be found. I thought I knew where it was, but turned out other shirts with similar colors and different messages. Anyway, so I got this one. I thought, let's do something a little different and maybe it can be an attention getter, maybe a conversation starter. When I'm out at the store later, maybe people look like, well, what's your shoe?

What's that? And just just a way to open the door, because obviously the workplace, we're all believers here, but it works out well for Thirdly Jewish Thursday to be wearing this quick story. And then before I talk about Passover, before I talk about some developments in Israel, before I take you Jewish related calls, before we get into the main topic, we're going to talk about is religious Jews studying the Bible. This is something we're going to open up and explain in a little while.

This is on Genesis, but what I'm holding in my hands here, and I'll talk to you about this here, and I'll talk to you about in a minute, but before we do that, a little story about not being ashamed of Jesus. So I was doing my doctoral dissertation work. I was working on the Hebrew root, Rafah, and how it was used throughout the Bible, normally translated to heal.

I said the most fundamental meaning, most commonly is translated to heal, rightly so, but its most fundamental meaning is to restore it, make whole, out of which different meanings flow. That's what my thesis was about. And I was looking at the root in Aramaic, and did you have an ancient Aramaic? Did it get displaced by another root? What about modern Aramaic dialects?

Is there any reference to that? And that was my weakest, one of the weakest points, modern Aramaic. The language has changed, shifted a lot. Well, it turned out that there was a professor, secular Jewish professor, at a local university only a few miles from where I was, and he was an expert in modern Aramaic. In fact, I had bought a few books on modern Aramaic that I used for my dissertation that I really didn't need afterwards. And after I was done, I said to him, hey, would you like these?

Could you use these? Sure. He was happy to. So I just went to talk to him as someone working on my doctoral dissertation at NYU. I was not there primarily to witness to him as a fellow Jew. That was not the mission at that moment. So I don't know how much I told him about my own background, but we were mainly interacting as academics.

He, as a professor already, me, as finishing my doctoral dissertation, just talking about academic linguistic issues and so on. Well, it's not long after that, that I happened to be wearing that bright orange-red t-shirt, Jesus. And I'm in this pizzeria that was near to our Bible school and near to his university. And it was a little place. I mean, you're just a few people in there, a few tables.

They did most of their business by delivery and takeout. And he comes in there and sees, looks down, sees the shirt. And I'm like, yeah, that's me shouting it from the rooftops.

And here, you know, it's relating to him academically, intellectually, and all these things. And maybe we'd have a rigorous academic intellectual discussion about the Bible and his views and messianic beliefs and things like that. Well, that got preempted by the Jesus. I mean, he just smiled.

He didn't say anything. But yeah, that's what happens sometimes. People know you for a while, but they don't know about your faith.

It just wasn't the right context to share it or something like that. And now we have a day like this and a lot of people will know about your faith that didn't. That's good. That's healthy. That's a blessed thing.

All right. So I was praying and reflecting last night. I was thinking, all right, where do we want to go on today's Thoroughly Jewish Thursday broadcast? And we've talked about Passover many times, of course. We've talked about how Easter became a separate holiday, separated from Passover. Whereas initially, the death and resurrection of Messiah were celebrated right within Passover. We've talked about the spiritual significance of Passover and the Lamb of God and redemption and the biblical calendar. And all that it points to.

And I'm happy to take questions on that as well if they do come up. But I wanted to go a little different direction today and to dig into the Scriptures with you and to give you some insight about how a Jewish person reads the Bible and reads religious literature. Christians use commentaries in one way and traditional Jews use them in a different way. Christians may look back at the beliefs of church fathers and things like that, but unless you're Catholic or Greek or Russian Orthodox, you're not appealing to them all the time in terms of spiritual authorities or in terms of insights and binding traditions.

You're looking at them in a little bit different way. For a traditional Jew, everything he or she does is part of a historic community. As one rabbi was once explaining by phone to some of my seminary students, that Jewish study is entering into a conversation through the generations, that the Talmud itself, which the Babylonian Talmud being the principal one, the Jerusalem Talmud being not used as much and not as full, but the Babylonian Talmud, when it's finally compiled, is in the early 7th century, so early 600s, that's the final editing, and it represents opinions being put forth over hundreds of years in different locations by different leaders, but they're put almost as if they're in the same room together, having a back and forth conversation. It would be like saying, John Wesley taught this, yes, but Martin Luther had a different take on this.

True, but Billy Graham said this, and it's almost as if they're interactive in that respect. So, when a traditional Jew is studying Scripture, and Jewish men are going to be studying more than Jewish women, so just for simplicity, I'll say he going forward, when a Jewish man is studying the Scripture, he's not going to just have a Bible, and all it is is the Hebrew Bible. It's not that they don't exist, they do exist, but that's not the principal way that a Jewish person will study. Now, the average Christian that's reading the Bible is just reading the Bible. Maybe they have a study Bible, right? And they're reminded, don't forget, the Bible is the Bible, and the notes are different, right? The study notes, even if they're really good, those are not inspired like the Bible, so you make that clear separation between the two. And many times, especially now in our digital age, you're just reading the Bible on your app, right, on your cell phone, and just clicking on it, reading it, and take it in. You just want to take in the Word, and digest the Word, and drink in everything that God is saying, and live by it, be changed by it. Now you want to study more deeply. Okay, now you get out your tools, now you dig into your lexicons, now you use your concordances to do word studies, now you go further, you look for your own tools, and you're going to get into historical background, archaeological background, geographical background, now you get into your commentaries, where you're going to put all these things together. And the commentaries can be multi-volume, it can be one volume for the whole Bible, it can be four volumes on one book of the Bible.

They vary in content, but you're going to do that digging, they're kind of different layers. For a traditional Jew, it's not like that. So we come back, I'm going to open this up to you, I think you'll find it really, really fascinating, and again, if you have a Jewish related question of any kind, give me a call, 866-348-7884.

We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-344-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome, welcome to Thoroughly Jewish Thursday, Michael Brown.

Delighted to be with you. During the break, I was just scrolling through on Facebook using the hashtag Jesus414 and just looking at all the posts, people wearing shirts and people posting testimonies and churches getting the word out, National Not Ashamed of Jesus Day. If you still don't know what's happening on this day, even after the fact, because God willing, this will be every year, go to notashamedofjesus.org. Notashamedofjesus.org.

And even later today, post something. Post something, a message, a picture with the hashtag Jesus414 as we share the word together. Okay, there is something called a rabbinic bible, rabbinic bible. The Hebrew is mikraot gedolot, which is literally big scriptures, big scriptures. So, I'm holding in my hand here a large volume, beautifully produced as many of the religious Jewish texts are, and every page has kind of a similar format, and I'm going to talk you through this in a moment, but the key point is that the scripture is just a small part of the page because the page is covered with commentary and commentary on commentary, and this is how you're reading it. This is how you're studying it. So, for those that are watching, we're going to put a picture up and keep that picture up for you, but I'm assuming that I'm speaking to people listening on radio, listening by podcasts.

In other words, I'm going to paint a picture for you, all right? So, as you're facing this, remember it reads from right to left, and it opens from right to left. As you're facing this, in the upper right, that's when you'll have the scripture, all right?

And that'll be in the biggest print of all. In this case, the picture that we put up is from Exodus the 12th chapter, or the 13th chapter. That's what we put up here, and you'll see, though, when you look at it, that on the right, upper right, that's the biblical text, and that's in the biggest print, hence Mikraot Gedolot, big scriptures. Now, to the left of that is the Aramaic Targum. This is a translation slash paraphrase that was read in the synagogue. As Hebrew was understood less and less, and Aramaic was more commonly understood, there would be, say, two verses read from the Hebrew, and then it would be translated.

This was initially done orally, and then these were put in writing. So the first thing you see next to that is going to be the Aramaic, and that's going to be the most ancient thing after the Bible. Now, for the five books of Moses, for the Torah, for the Pentateuch, there are extra Targums. There are extra translations, some in full, some somewhat fragmentary. So when you jump over to the top of the left page, then you'll see that.

You'll see another Targum. Now, you go beneath that and you first and foremost, so back to the right side, right? So you've got, picture this now, you've got the biblical text on the right, big print, a little bit smaller print next to that. On the left, the Targum, the Aramaic translation or paraphrase.

So it's assumed you're reading Hebrew, you're reading Aramaic. Then immediately beneath that, stepping down to the middle of the page, you're always going to have first and foremost the commentary of Rashi. Rashi lived from 1040 to 1105 in France and is the premier biblical commentator and Talmudic commentator. So whenever you read these as a traditional Jew, you're first asking, what does Rashi say about this? Rashi is an acronym for Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki.

So what is he saying about this? And the particular edition that we have put up on the screen for those watching immediately to the right of Rashi on that same page is something called Sif Teachachamim, literally the lips of the wise. This is a commentary on Rashi. Rashi is often very concise. Rashi often doesn't say something where you would expect him to say something. So you're wondering why didn't he say something or why did he make this comment, which seems self-evident?

There must be a reason for it. So this is one of many commentaries on Rashi's commentary. And then on the bottom of the page, you may have another commentator or you may have a reference like here's in rabbinic literature, here are the different times that these verses are discussed or things like that.

Then when you shift over to the left, you have the left page, a series of other commentaries. In this case, you have Ibn Ezra, Abraham Ibn Ezra, who lived a little bit after Rashi, traveled more widely to different locations, was a Hebrew grammarian as well as a commentator and poet and other things as well. Then you have next to him, Rambam, Rabbi Moses ben Nachman. So you have Rambam, that's somebody else, Maimonides. This is Nachmanides. So he lives a little bit after Ibn Ezra.

There is his commentary and his is longer. And then beneath that, you have another one called Sforno and then another one, Orachayim and then Kliakar. So each of these is a commentary on what you're reading in these verses. Sometimes they'll have a bunch of lines. Sometimes they'll only have one or two lines. But the key, and some of them are written, oh, like Orachayim, what is that, 17th century. So there's a range of writing. In other words, some of these commentaries may only be a few hundred years old, some may be 800 years old.

The Targums could be 1800 years old. But a traditional Jew is not just reading the Bible independently. A traditional Jew is praying as part of a community. And think of some of this mentality when Jesus teaches his disciples to pray. And he says, remember this in Matthew 6, go in your closet and shut the door. Pray privately, right? But what words do you say? Our Father in heaven, our, our, our.

Give us this day or the other day. You're praying as part of a believing community. And that's how a Jew is studying scripture.

So, intentionally, willfully, this is what is desired as a traditional Jew. You are reading the scripture with the help of the commentaries. And for you as a traditional Jew to differ with all the commentaries, that, that would be hubris.

That would be real pride. Who are you to say they're all wrong? They were much closer to the revelation than you were. They were a much greater spirit than you were.

Much greater spiritual giants than you are. They knew the text much better than you. Who are you to differ with them? It might be you say, yeah, well, one says this and one says this and one says that. And my view is with this one. Yeah, that's part of the dialogue. That's part of the discussion. To think, though, that they're all wrong. That everyone, whatever they say is wrong and you have the right insight. That's, that is kind of to despise the tradition the way it came before.

Okay, for those watching, we're going to take the page down now. But I explained that to you to explain the degree to which a traditional Jewish person instead of the Bible wants to rely on those who came before him. That a traditional Jewish person wants to read the Bible in the context of the Jewish community that has lived through the centuries. So think of it like this. Maybe you, you grow up on a farm, right? And there was a day of farming before all the machinery was there and before all the electricity was there. And that goes back, you know, several generations.

How did you farm in those days? And what do you know that we don't know? What have we lost with all of our machinery? Or you had more of a connection to the ground than we did. So you honor those from previous generations and they learn certain things that you wouldn't learn. That's a very ridiculously simple illustration. If you've ever played telephone, right? I whisper something in your ear and now you turn to the person next to you and whisper it in there and maybe you got 20, 30 people in the room. By the time it comes back around, it's changed dramatically.

Somebody misunderstood one thing and another. We've done it sometimes with international students where you share it with them in English and then they share it with the person next to them in German. And then the person next to them goes back from German to English. And by the time it does, like, whoa, it sounds very different.

So what do you do? You go back to the first person and what was it? Okay, the second person was pretty close and the further away you get, the more off it is. So in the rabbinic view, the closer you were to the original revelation, the further back in time you were, then the more accurately you've received it and understood it. And then in the Jewish mentality, since Moses and Mount Sinai, that every generation has been spiritually lower than the previous generation. So as one Talmudic statement puts it, if the previous generation were angels, then we're just men.

The previous generation was men that were just like donkeys. So even today, it's viewed like that. If you go back 500 years or 1,000 years or 1,500 years, that you're going higher and higher on a spiritual progression, generally speaking, and therefore you want to stand on the shoulders of those who've gone before you. Now, there's a lot of beauty in this, there's a lot of wisdom in this, there's a lot of power in this, there's a sense of security in this. There's a sense of security in this, the negatives can be, one, it takes you away from just reading the Bible directly and just saying God speak to me through your word because it's always being refracted through these other lenses.

That's one thing. Another issue is, what if the traditions are wrong? What if the traditions over the years have strayed or become more human and less divine? Now, these very traditions through which you're reading the scripture could be the things that are pulling you away from the scripture. So I can appreciate the tradition, but as a non-traditional Jew, I do not look at it as binding or authoritative. I look at this as different Jewish views on the scripture through the years. I'm going to study the word directly and say God, open my heart, open my mind, speak to me through your word.

Get on the air, 866-348-7884. We'll be right back. Oh, yeah. I remember singing that song many a time in Israel from the Psalms.

This is Michael Brown. It's Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. It is the first ever National Not Ashamed of Jesus Day. What a joy to be sitting here with my Yeshua Mashiach Jesus the Messiah t-shirt. What a joy to be getting online and seeing people posting testimony, posting scripture, shouting out to the world, we're not ashamed of the good news. If you've got a Jewish related question for me of any kind, 866-344-TRUTH. Got it?

All right, 866-348-7884. Just noticed on Twitter, the first mocking post on this, what a stupid day, hashtag Jesus 414, hashtag Sunday sermon, hashtag mythical, and then someone else posting, I'd be ashamed of showing love and adoration for a fictional being of mythology. I'd also be ashamed of anyone who felt that a fictional being somehow needed this of others to prove devotion. Mocking them seems to be a good choice. May the Lord open the hearts of the mockers to the truth of the good news. Yeah, it's getting a little opposition. That's a good sign. Okay, before I go to the phones, I've read a report of four people arrested, then six people arrested.

So it's one of those numbers. These are Jewish men living in Jewish settlement in Judea Samaria, which the world calls the West Bank. And they're living there and were planning on sacrificing a goat on the Temple Mount in conjunction with Passover. So there's already a lot of tension in the land right now. There have been random killings of Israelis by Arab Israelis. There seems to be real danger of a fresh uprising, and this one in an ugly way that we've seen because it's not so much an intifada called for, like by Hamas or a PLO in the past or something like that.

Although from what I've read and understand, the vast majority of Arab Israelis do not want another wave of violence, even if they have issues with the state of Israel in which they live. In any case, in any case, Hamas has already put out warnings, and they're the slightest thing of an alleged provocation on the Temple Mount that will be blown all out of proportion. And now with that, then there's this frenzied call because the Muslims are so devout and so religious and so committed. And this is such a sacred site to them that if there's talk about it's going to be defiled or something, then there could be all outrides. There could be a lot of violence out of that, especially in a time like Ramadan where emotions are much more intensely focused religiously. So these men were arrested.

It's illegal. Israel does not want it to happen, obviously. But you are going to have these radical Jewish elements that will want to do something provacatory as well. So it's a good time to pray for God's intervention and grace in the midst of this very religious season in Israel right now. All right, more to talk about, but first to the phones. Let's go to Darien, Connecticut. Gregory, welcome to the Line of Fire. Good afternoon, Dr. Brown. And yes, we pray for peace in Israel. I want to say again, I'm a Catholic from Connecticut, and I live in Connecticut here, and I think you're absolutely wonderful.

I wish you had three hours. I wanted to ask you a question about Moses, who just ironically, you know, the lawgiver. And I have to say, when I was in law school, it was such a grace to have studied Moses and the Old Testament so that it was a breeze going through law school.

I'm thinking just the perfect sense, you know, the Judea Christian laws. But Dr. Brown, so in consideration that in the transfiguration, Jesus sees Moses, I've always wondered when Moses, who I love and what an amazing person face to face, a friend of God, what a wonderful, amazing person to have in our history. When he was given the gift of seeing the Promised Land, is the Hebrew scripture, is the Hebrew language that you've studied, how it's described when he sees the Promised Land, would that at all be able to include him at some point, maybe in the future, seeing Jesus at that time as well, if you understand that question?

Yeah, I love the question. No, there'd be nothing in the Hebrew that would give you a hint of that. Reading it in Hebrew is just like reading it in English in terms of, you know, he goes up to Mount Nebo, he looks out, he sees the Promised Land, that's it. There'd be nothing in the Hebrew language that's hinting at something deeper or an unusual vocabulary that's used or some hint of something about the Promised Land, not at all.

So he gets to see it, he doesn't get to enter it. So it's interesting that Moses, who gives Israel the Ten Commandments, who establishes the Sinai Covenant, so as you said, the lawgiver, he does not get to bring them into the Promised Land, it's Joshua, which of course, Yehoshua is the longer form of Yeshua, that Joshua leads them into the Promised Land, so there's that spiritual application there. But no, nothing in the Hebrew whatsoever that would indicate that in any way, and no indication of a seeing of Jesus in the fullness of the sense until the transfiguration where they're communing together.

So what had happened previous to that in the spiritual realm, God knows, but in terms of what's written in Scripture, no, nothing that would support that. And generally speaking, Gregory, there are insights we can glean from the Hebrew and the Greek. There are things that are not as easily translated, but generally speaking, between a few different good translations, you'll get the nuance of the different potential meanings of the Hebrew or the Greek, because pretty much each word in one context has one meaning, and the same in English, the same in Hebrew, the same in Chinese, the same in Greek. Each word in each context has a specific meaning. And if you look at a few different translations and they say it exactly the same, with a slightly different nuance, that'll give you an idea of where the differences are. But nothing here, unfortunately, that would give you that further revelation. Hey, Gregory, thank you for the question.

I do appreciate it. 866-34-TRUTH. By the way, as questions have come in recently about the Masoretic text, and there's actually not one text that is the Masoretic text, it's really the Masoretic textual tradition with thousands of manuscripts passed on over a period of many centuries. But it's pretty unified, the differences, the discrepancies are very minor where they are there between the manuscripts, largely speaking. So to what extent did the Septuagint, the Greek translation, translate from ancient Masoretic textual tradition? To what extent did it translate from a different Hebrew tradition?

Is it true that the Masoretic textual tradition changed things to get away from certain messianic truths? So a caller called in last week and asked some of those questions based on two volumes he had read. I was not familiar with the author of those volumes while he was talking. I just went online to to look in general to see, OK, what can I find out about these books? And the little I saw indicated to me that the fellow writing them did not have strong academic credentials in this field of biblical textual criticism. In any case, I thought, you know what, even though I've got thousands of books I still haven't read, literally used, but haven't read through many thousands. So I thought, you know what, I'm going to buy the book and start to look at it. So the author has done more work, more research than I would have understood at first glance. And he's making some very strong claims. That, to me, is the weakest part of the book, that how strong the claims are and how this one's wrong and this one's wrong and this one's wrong.

That in general concerns me, and I've seen nothing thus far that I would consider persuasive. Nonetheless, I do plan in a future show to dig deeper into the history of the Hebrew Bible, to dig deeper with you on the air in a way that everybody can go on the journey with me. In other words, if you're well studied in this, hopefully you learn something. If you're brand new to it, it'll make sense.

We'll take you through it. So I hope to return to some of those questions because, you know, these things become more controversial, and then the question comes up, why is the New Testament primarily, quote, the Septuagint? The simple answer is they're writing in Greek to people that would have the Bible in Greek, and that was the Greek translation. But did they think it was more accurate here and there?

Did they differ with what the Hebrews said? So all these questions we'll get into in further depth, God willing, in the future. All right, let's go back to the phone. Audrey in Southlake, Texas, thanks for joining us on the line of fire. Hi, Dr. Brown, I have a confession to make to you. I really didn't appreciate the work that you were doing until I went to Israel for the month of March, and then came back the second week in April. And when I came back, my whole view and awareness, it's almost like I had a light bulb moment. Now I just can't get enough of reading your website and just listening to your voice.

And just listening to you. But I just wanted to let you know, I didn't know why I didn't have appreciation for the work that you've been doing, but now I do. And I really thank you for that because it really opened my eyes to light anyway. While I was in Israel and Jerusalem and some other locations in the Middle East, I was having conversations with some of the people that live there. And when I went to the Western Wall a few times, I noticed there was beggars sitting there asking for arms.

And so that brought the conversation at dinner with me with a couple of Israel people, Jews that live in Israel that are non-Christians. I said, what kind of welfare system do you all have here to take care of the poor and needy and the homeless? And they said, well, we pay high taxes to take care of our widows, orphans, and our homeless people. So those people you saw at the Western Wall, they're just sitting out there because they want to sit out there because we have a good welfare system in Israel. So there's no need for you all to send money to some of those organizations that you see on TV asking for money for displaced Jews because she said that we don't really need money for those causes.

And so I want to ask you, what do you know about the welfare system they have in Israel and Jerusalem? Right. First thing, thanks for the fresh appreciation for our work. But look, there are a lot of people out there with a lot of good messages. And sometimes when we really focus on the subject more, we can end up appreciating their work more. But I'm glad your trip to Israel did that. And if, of course, I asked drbrown.org, our main website, but the Jewish-focused website is realmessiah.com, which we recently revamped, realmessiah.com.

I'm going to answer you on the other side of the break. I just want to say this. There is poverty in Israel. There is poverty. Probably 25% of people in Israel, maybe even higher, live under the poverty line. There are kids who are impoverished. They're not starving, but they are impoverished. And organizations like Together for Israel that I work with regularly with my friend Scott Volt, they're constantly funneling money and they're needing Ethiopian Jews. So there are needs.

There are needs within Israel, and Christians are helping with those. We'll be right back. It's the line of fire with your host, dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is dr. Michael Brown. Welcome, welcome to Thoroughly Jewish Thursday, taking your Jewish-related calls today. So tomorrow, Christians around the world celebrating Good Friday, Jews around the world celebrating the first of two nights of Passover, Seders, and then the holy days of Easter and Passover.

Whoa, they happen to coincide. Well, remember in the beginning, there were not separate holidays. The death and resurrection of Yeshua took place during Passover, celebrated during the time of Passover. And that's what is the heart and core of this, as opposed to Judaism does this and Christianity does this. No, no, no, the Messiah dies and rises in conjunction with Passover and firstfruits. And that to me is the ideal way to celebrate this.

Yes, by all means, have Good Friday, have resurrection Sunday, but do it in the midst of in the same time as Passover, which happens to work out pretty well this year. So Audrey, Israel is a very socialized state for sure. And there are high taxes, and there are a lot of really good programs in Israel. In that sense, it would be closer to a Scandinavian type of mentality than what we have in America.

Closer, OK? Nonetheless, there still is poverty. There still are real needs. I visited some of the places with impoverished kids. You still have hardship within families.

You still have real life situations that put a drain on you financially. And then immigrants coming into the country, they may have been a certain status in their previous society, kind of left everything, came here, and it's hard for them to get jobs. It's hard for them to get settled in. They're living in substandard ways.

So that does exist. And even Holocaust survivors, of course, they're less and less as the years go on. But many of them need more care and their needs that they have. So you just want to give to a legitimate organization. If you have someone that's begging by the wall, that's their shtick. That's what they're doing.

That's kind of how they make their money, you know? And especially within the religious Jewish community, there is going to be more care for the poor within their midst. Now, they get a lot of governmental help because many of the men study all day and don't work regular jobs and are supported by the government as part of how the religious Jewish parties say, hey, we'll join your coalition if you help us with these various things. Within the ultra-orthodox community, there's more poverty as a whole, but that's because they're happy to live like that.

In other words, they just want to devote all their time to being in Torah study and Talmud study and then having more kids and things like that. But their system is also much more internally self-supporting. In other words, you're not just going to have someone destitute on the street because you've got a community that helps the poor within their own midst. So there's some truth to what your friends were saying, but it's exaggerated.

It is exaggerated. If you just get online and search for how many people live in poverty in Israel, many Arab Israelis are impoverished and things like that. So there are legitimate needs. You just want to give to the right organization. And Together for Israel, to me, is the number one organization to give to, one of a number of really good ones, because they're believers and they're letting people know, hey, we're doing this with the help of Christians around the world. And this is our way of showing you love. Whereas if you give to some other organizations like the International Fellowship of Jews and Christians that was founded by Yechael Eckstine, now his daughter, running it.

I may have said the name slightly wrongly, but you see them all over TV. Yeah, bless Israel. Yeah, and she brought that up, too. She said that Americans send like $1.5 million to their organization. And she said that they're collecting money most off administration.

It's not even going to help. Yeah, yeah, so, so, so, yeah, number one, they're collecting tens of millions of dollars, especially from Christians in America. They are legitimately helping people. They are legitimately helping older Jews or Jews, you know, say coming in from Ukraine now or things like that. They are legitimately doing that. But number one, yes, there are high administrative costs, which if you give to Together for Israel, everything you give to Together for Israel that's designated to go to the poor in Israel goes to the poor in Israel, all of it. That's the way they run their organization. They raise money to pay people to support the organization. But the money that comes in directly to go to Israel goes to Israel.

That's one thing. But the other thing is that from what I understand, the people receiving the funds are not told that these funds are coming from Christians around the world, which means you're giving the money at a Christian love, but the people receiving it don't know. Because that's what I've been told very explicitly. Now, I've asked a rabbi involved to correct me if I'm wrong. He hasn't gotten back to me on that, but that's what I've heard. I can guarantee you with Together for Israel.

So togetherforisrael.org and other organizations, especially led by Messianic Jews, they will tell you, OK, this money came from Christians around the world that love you and want to bless you. So let's do it, but let's do it the right way. Hey, thank you very much for checking in and asking the right questions. All right, let's go to Eric in Bolingbroke, Illinois.

Welcome to the Line of Fire. Thank you for having me. How are you doing? Doing very well. Thank you. Good.

Go ahead. Yeah, so, yeah, my question essentially is, and I'm sure you have, but just wanted to get your thoughts on studying the Midrash and how that has just, has that helped you a lot in terms of just understanding the Old Testament and the Bible as a whole? Yeah, so, of course, I've studied Midrash over the years. There are many, many, many, many volumes of Midrash. OK, it's not like one book or even like the Talmud. You have different Midrashic traditions over a period of many centuries. So the earliest ones would be called Midrash-e-Halakhah, the legal-based Midrashim, going back to the early centuries of this era. Others, you know, Pasitra Badi or Pasitra Durov Kahana would go back maybe to like the eighth, ninth centuries, Midrash Rabbah on the five books of Moses and then on the five scrolls.

You know, that's in between these dates. So you're talking about many, many different books written over many hundreds of years. And you're also talking about portions of the Talmud that would be called Haggadah, Midrashic, which are not legal interpretations, but more the storytelling interpretation. Has it helped me understand the Old Testament?

Certainly not, because it's Midrash. In other words, it's homily. It's story. It's interesting. It's, oh, what a beautiful illustration.

Oh, how interesting to hear it. But it's not based on factual tradition. And it's not even much of it is not even meant to be based on. In other words, everyone understands it's Midrash. It's storytelling. It's illustrating a point. It's telling you Enoch was this old when this happened.

No, no, he was this old or Adam was this old or Adam would look like this or so. It's beautiful. It's often fascinating and often puts a different spin on things. But it's absolutely not meant as authoritative commentary or accurate commentary. And even if some religious Jews will read parts of it as as accurate, that's not its purpose. And ultimately, when you're reading the Midrash, you could read 10 different interpretations of the same verse, and they're all just giving different thoughts, different comparisons.

So it's just have to read it rightly, use it rightly. When used rightly, it's beautiful and fascinating and interesting and unusual, but it's not going to open up the meaning of the text. It's different than reading, say, what what Rashi says in the 11th century about a particular biblical verse. And maybe he's got a good insight there that he'll cite the Midrash often, but you have to realize that for a Christian reading or Messianic Jew reading it, there's no authority in it, it's just interesting, fascinating tradition. So I'll weave that in sometimes by doing a Jewish teaching. The Midrash says this, again, the Midrash that's talking about it generically, right? Otherwise you're saying Midrash Tanchuma or Midrash Rabbah B'reishith or something like B'reishith Rabbah, you know, you're referring to a specific text, but it's interesting to illustrate it. In other words, wow, this is a very emotional story. Oh, this is beautiful the way this brings it out.

Or the Midrash relates this, but it's not in an authoritative opening up of the text. Say thank you for asking. By the way, about 18 minutes from now, we're going to be right back on YouTube. So join us there for our weekly exclusive YouTube Q&A chat, where I get to as many questions in 45 minutes to an hour as possible. So it goes much more rapid fire than radio because I'm just reading it and boom, boom, boom, boom, and responding. So that's a lot of fun that the Ask Dr. Brown YouTube channel will be going live about 17 minutes from now, so 4.15 Eastern Time will launch our YouTube chat. So by all means, get in there.

Hey, Kishon in Nashville, I don't have time to bring you on the air. Is the Siddur good to study from? The Siddur is the daily prayer book of the Jewish people, and then there's special prayers for Sabbath and holidays. So that's very good to learn, to read the prayers that is separate from the Seder, the Seder, which is the festive commemorative meal at the beginning of Passover, the opening nights of Passover, and you read from something called the Haggadah then, which is the traditional ceremony to read through about Passover. Again, this is based on Jewish tradition, but the Siddur is the prayer book. And sure, you're not going to learn the Bible from it, but to learn how Jewish people pray and the importance of prayers and what are prayed on a daily basis and on holidays. That's wonderful to learn that and many beautiful prayers within it. All right, friends, be blessed. This first ever national Not Ashamed of Jesus Day. Go to notashamedofjesus.org and then post your post using the hashtag Jesus414. Another program powered by the Truth Network.