 There are various approaches that missionaries take when trying to make their case to Jewish audiences. Historically, these have assumed two major directions. Number one, they assert that the Tanach, the Hebrew Scriptures, verify the claims of Christianity. Various passages from the Bible are marshaled in an attempt to prove the correctness of their beliefs. And number two is the testimonial approach where people claim that they've experienced dramatic supernatural miracles and that faith in Jesus brought them peace and joy in life. Now over the past 2000 years, these approaches have never really been seen as compelling or persuasive by those people who have taken the time to weigh them carefully. Let me briefly outline how we respond to each of these approaches. First of all, alleged biblical proofs when examined carefully are clearly based upon what we call circular reasoning, where the starting point is the belief rather than an honest assessment of what the text actually says. And in light of this, in light of this circular approach to these scriptures, even many Christian scholars, many Christian Bible scholars admit that the missionary proof texts are based upon mistranslations of the Bible and more frequently taking passages out of context. Reading missionary proof texts in context and carefully reveal absolutely that they prove nothing about the true nature of Christianity. And when it comes to miracles, we understand that miracles are not exclusive to Christians and that the adherents, the members of every religion in the world, experience incredible supernatural miracles and they make the claim that their lives have been improved through their faith. So the bottom line is that miracles don't really and cannot really prove anything. In Deuteronomy chapter 13, for example, we learn that even false prophets can have the ability to do miracles and that God tests us through the miracles that false prophets are able to perform. And indeed, this is one of the reasons why the Bible never tells us that miracles will be able to prove that someone is the Messiah. It's simply not part of the biblical criteria. Now, because these traditional techniques have proven ineffective and inadequate, some missionaries have sought other tactics. Terry O'Reilly and Mike Tennant in their book The Age of Persuasion explain that companies lacking serious budgets that place traditional advertising out of their reach might resort to what is referred to as guerrilla marketing. These are low budget publicity stunts that often brazenly push the envelope of propriety in order to cause a stir. When missionary sees on and push conspiracy theories, we are basically seeing the theological equivalent of guerrilla marketing. One of the loopiest claims out there is the idea that the tetragrammaton, God's holy four letter name, is meant to convey a Christian message. This special name of God is spelled in Hebrew, Yud, Hey, Vov, Hey, those four Hebrew letters. And the argument is that these letters of the Hebrew alphabet are actually derived from the Phoenician pictogram alphabet. And that these pictograms represent certain things or ideas. And the missionaries claim that when you look at these four Hebrew letters and you understand their meaning based upon their Phoenician precedent, they convey a Christian message. So let's look at the claim being made by missionaries. They assert that these four letters, Yud, Hey, Vov, Hey, have the following meaning. They claim that the word that the letter Yud represents the idea of a hand. They claim that the letter Hey represents or signifies the word behold. The letter Vov, they claim represents a nail. And again, the letter Hey represents this word behold. And they say that if you read the alleged meanings of these letters from left to right, the message says behold the nail, behold the hand. And of course they assert that this is a clear illusion to Jesus. I would say that illusion is a better word. Let's try to deconstruct this fantasy step by step. We're going to show that this entire theory is just simply wrong for many reasons. But let's begin by accepting their premise, by accepting their argument just for the sake of the argument. Let's just take their assertion and face value. There are still thousands of miles that they have to go before they're able to prove that this phrase has anything to do with Jesus. For example, the Romans we know crucified over 100,000 Jews. So why assume that this is referring to Jesus? Why assume that the phrase behold the hand, behold the nail, somehow is speaking about Jesus? If he was the only person ever crucified, maybe they would have maybe some kind of a case. Secondly, we know that crucifixion was in both hands and therefore it required at least two nails. And so really what the message should have said would have been behold the nails, behold the hands. The idea of just focusing on one hand and one nail sort of throws you off from the entire idea of crucifixion altogether. We also know that crucifixion nails were driven through the wrists, not through the hands. If you were to put a nail through someone's hand and hang that person up, the nail would rip right through the hand. So in order to help support the person being crucified on the cross, they would have to drive the nails through the person's wrists, where they would actually be able to support the body. And number four, why even assume that this phrase has anything to do with crucifixion? All it mentions is a hand and a nail. Perhaps it could be speaking about someone who is taking in their hand a nail and they're about to affix a mizuza to their doorpost. Or maybe it's speaking about someone who's going to build a parapet around their roof. Or maybe someone about to construct a sukkah, a booth for the festival of Sukkot. The idea that just these two words, nail and hand, have to mean crucifixion is absurd. You know, there's a famous saying that when you hear horses, when you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras. When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras. So when we hear about someone taking a nail in their hand, we don't think crucifixion. We think the person is going to build something. And so the entire idea here is based upon an incredible leap of faith. Now, the structure of their entire argument is built upon a number of assumptions. Number one, they assume that Hebrew is a pictographic alphabet that developed from the Phoenician pictographic alphabet. However, Hebrew was and Hebrew still is a phonetic language that's built on phonetics and it's not built upon pictograms. There's absolutely no proof that Hebrew derives from Phoenician. They may be cognate languages. They may be related. They're both from the Middle East. But the idea that Hebrew necessarily developed from Phoenician is not provable. Number two, this missionary argument assumes that they know the precise meaning of each Phoenician pictogram. And by extension, the meaning of each Hebrew letter. However, most of the meanings assumed for the Phoenician pictograms are just that. They're just assumptions. Number two, linguistic scholars have suggested multiple possibilities for what each pictogram might actually mean. And therefore, the entire missionary argument has to prove that they have the correct meaning of the Phoenician pictogram and that the Hebrew letter has the exact same meaning. Number three, we could say that their interpretation of the letter Yud is defensible because in Hebrew Yud is related to the word Yad which does mean hand. Their claim, however, that nail is equivalent to the letter Vav, that the letter Hebrew Vav means nail is questionable. Because in truth, the actual Hebrew meaning of Vav is hook, not really nail. But then their claim that the letter Hay in Hebrew means behold is totally false. Unless, of course, you're using the English word Hay as in hey you. And there, of course, Hay could mean behold. But Phoenician pictograms normally described things, objects, not something amorphous like the exclamation behold. And so scholars actually state, scholars of the Phoenician language, that the Phoenician pictograph for the equivalent of what would be the Hebrew letter Hay actually refers to either a window or the idea of jubilation. But nothing about behold. We know that Hebrew, of course, goes from right to left and not from left to right. And this entire missionary argument asked us to read these letters from left to right. And, of course, Judaism has our own interpretation of what our letters mean. There's an entire literature that discusses the meaning of the Hebrew letters. And these meanings have absolutely nothing to do with the meanings that are ascribed to the pagan Phoenician pictogram alphabet. Now, this type of tortured and convoluted teaching that at best is a speculative claim is not the way that God communicates vital doctrines to us. It reminds me of a story about the Gaona Vilna, that he once was approached by a missionary that was waiting for months to meet him because this missionary thought he'd be able to finally convince the greatest sage of the generation the truths of Christianity. And this missionary came to the Gaona Vilna and he said, rabbi, I'm gonna prove to you the truth of Christianity from your Bible and not just from anywhere in your Bible, from the very first word in your Bible. The first word in the Hebrew Bible is bereshit. And this missionary said, rabbi, look at the first three letters, bet resh alif. They stand for ben, sun, ruach, spirit, av, father. And the rabbi smiled at this missionary and said, but you have to look at the last three letters of the word, shin, yud, taf, which stands for torat, yeishu, sheker, that the teachings of Jesus are falsehood. So when we play games like the missionary plays here with the meanings of Hebrew letters that are based upon wild speculations, we don't really get accurate and information that is useful and that's reliable and that's helpful. All we're getting really is a missionary fantasy. The famous author Saul Bellow, writing long before our current internet ecosystem became littered with conspiracy theories, opined a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. One of the most obtuse claims circulating about by numerous Christian missionaries is that if you pay careful attention to the biblical genealogical record from Adam to Noah in the fifth chapter of Genesis, you'll discover, they claim, that the Torah is presenting us with a coded message revealing the Christian gospel. So how did they show this? So let's just first try to understand how their presentation works. The 10 names are Adam, Shays, Enosh, Canaan, Mahalalel, Yered, Hanok, Mesushelach, Lemech, and Noah. Now, they claim that these names have the following meanings. Adam, they say, means man. Shays, they say, means appointed. Enosh, they say, means mortal. Canaan, they claim, means sorrow. Mahalalel, they claim, means the blessed God. Yered, they insist, means shall come down. Canok, they say, means teaching. Mesushelach, they say, means his death shall bring. Lemech, they say, means the despairing. And Noah, they say, means comfort. And they read these 10 names as a story, as a narrative that actually, if we put in some connecting words, says the following. Man is appointed to mortal sorrow, but the blessed God shall come down, teaching that his death shall bring the despairing comfort, which for them summarizes the entire message of Christianity. Now, let's try to understand this. Christianity is based upon a redefining of the actual biblical concept of the Messiah. In the Hebrew scriptures, a clear and consistent picture is developed through numerous passages revealing that the Messiah will be an anointed king, an anointed ruling king from the family of David who will rule Israel when the Bible's utopian promises will be fulfilled. And some of these promises include, number one, that Israel will return to God and obey his Torah. Number two, that Israel will be restored, all 12 tribes, and they will be reunited and returned to their promised land. Number three, that our holy temple in Jerusalem will be rebuilt and the sacrificial service is restored. Number four, that there'll be peace for the Jewish people living in the land of Israel. Number five, that the knowledge of God will spread from Israel to the entire world. And finally, that the spread of this universal knowledge of God will result in universal peace, world peace. This is the biblical concept of the Messiah. Of course, Jesus did not accomplish any of this. And so in order to salvage their faith in him, Christians were forced to invent a completely different messianic vision and claim that Jesus fulfilled it. So the 10 names in the beginning of Genesis are supposed to outline this vision. That mankind is essentially doomed, but God came down to this world to teach us that through his death, a lost world can be comforted. And this alludes to the Christian idea that the purpose of the Messiah was to die on the cross as a sacrifice, to atone for the sins of those who would believe in him, and to reconcile those people to God. Now, there are dozens of clear biblical passages that confirm the Jewish concept of the Messiah, but there isn't even one clearly expressed verse in the entire Hebrew scriptures that capture the Christian concept of the Messiah. And this is what compels missionaries to seize upon these outlandish and baseless fantasies. In the biblical genealogy, there are actually only two of the 10 names that the missionaries translate accurately. Number seven, Hanoch, which does mean to educate or to teach. And number 10, Noach, which does mean comfort or rest. But the other eight names, they do not translate accurately and that's part of their problem. Let's go through the list. Number one, Adam. They claim that Adam means man. The truth is that the first man was called Adam, Adam, but man is not the translation of the word Adam. The Bible actually tells you the etymology of this word, Adam. In Genesis chapter two, verse seven, we're told that Adam was created, came from the Adamah, from the earth. And therefore, a better translation of Adam is not man, but earthling, meaning that Adam is a being that comes from the earth. So really, the better translation of Adam would be earthling. And the actual word in Hebrew for man is ish. And we see this in Genesis chapter four, verse one, where Eve says, I have acquired an ish, I have acquired a man with Hashem. This is after she lost her son, Abel. She now expresses her thanksgiving to God for giving her another son. And the word in that verse for a man that's a male child that Eve gives birth to is ish, not Adam. So the first problem is that Adam does not really mean man. Number two, they claim that the name Sheis, or you might pronounce it shaped, means appointed. But that's not an accurate translation. We see from Genesis chapter four, verse 25, that the meaning of his name means provided or gave. Eve names him Sheis because she says, God provided me, shut another child in place of Abel. The third name in this list is Enosh. Now Enosh, the Christian missionaries insist, means mortal. However, that's not the case. That's not the definition of Enosh. Enosh is related to the word ish. They're very closely related. And Enosh is simply another word in Hebrew for man or for human, man or human. That's the translation of Enosh. Now, they say that it means mortal. Because it's true, all human beings are mortal, but all human beings are born to a mother. All human beings have a head. But you don't define Enosh as someone with a head. The fact that they have a head or the fact that they're born to a mother are attributes of Enosh. But not a definition of Enosh. The word itself doesn't mean mortal. The fourth name is Canaan. And the Christians insist that this word means sorrow. Now, it's true that a form of the word Canaan, which is Conan, can mean lament. We have keynote on Tisha Ba'ab, which are lamentations. But it's obviously not someone's name. You don't name a child sorrow. Canaan is actually related to the name Can, Kayin, which means acquired. Again, if you look at chapter four, verse one, to Eve says, I've acquired a man with Hashem. So that's the meaning of the name Canaan, acquired, not sorrow. The fifth name in the list is Mahallel, which Christians insist means the blessed God. But that's not correct in terms of Hebrew grammar. In Hebrew, the phrase actually means praise God. It's a phrase that describes the human action, that we are to praise God. It's not a phrase that's describing God. The Christian understands this as the blessed God. It's a way of describing who God is. But the Hebrew is not talking about God. It's talking about our action, that we are to praise God. The next name in the list, number six is Yered, which they claim means shall come down, shall come down. Also a peculiar name to give a child. But the truth is that the word here Yered is related to the word used in Genesis 1, verse 26, where after creating the first human beings, God says that they will rule over, via Yeredu, via Yeredu, over the fowl and over the fish, et cetera. So the word Yered means to have dominion or to rule over. Doesn't mean that he shall come down. The seventh name, as I mentioned, they got correct. Chanukh doesn't mean to educate or to teach. The eighth name on the list is Mesushelach, or you might pronounce it Metushelach. And the missionaries insist that this means his death shall bring. Now this one is a real clunker because if they divide the name Metushelach into two words, Metu and Shelach, they strike out on both accounts. The word Metu does not mean his death. It's a plural meaning their deaths. And Shelach means to send. It doesn't mean to bring. So again, they claim that Metushelach means his death shall bring. This name has nothing to do with that meaning. Now what does the name actually mean? It is not simple to understand. There is an ancient rabbinic tradition, a Majrashic tradition, which says that the name is divided, but differently. It's not divided as Metu Shelach, but Metve Shelach. Met does mean he dies, his death, and Ve Shelach means and a sword. So it means his death and his sword. Now what does that mean? So first of all, it's easy to back this translation up because we see seven times in the Bible that the word Shelach means a sword. I'm just gonna share the sources with you. You can check it out. Second Chronicles, chapter 32, verse five. Second Chronicles, chapter 23, verse 10. The prophet Joel, chapter two, verse eight. The book of Nechemia, chapter four, verse 11, and chapter four, verse 17. The book of Job, Eov, chapter 36, verse 12, and chapter 33, verse 18. Seven places where the word Shelach means a sword. So the sages tell us that that's the meaning of this name. He will die and he'll have his sword. And they explain that Metu Shelach had a sword that was special and he had God's name engraved on the sword and he would use this sword to protect people. Now the eighth name is Metu Shelach. Some people pronounce it Metu Shelach and they claim it means his death shall bring. Now this is a real clunker. It has no relationship with reality. Now one way they may get to this translation of his death shall bring is by dividing the name Metu Shelach into two words, Metu and Shelach. And that's exactly what they do. They claim that Metu means his death and Shelach means shall bring. The problem is that this is wrong on both accounts. Metu is plural. It means their death. They died, not he died. And Shelach means send, not to bring. So their claim that Metu Shelach means his death shall bring is just totally off. Now what does the name actually mean? It's not so simple. According to ancient tradition, the name really is divided, but differently than the missionaries divided. It's divided as mate ve Shelach, mate ve Shelach. And the word mate means he dies. And the Shelach, the vav is means and, and Shelach means sword. There is seven times where you'll find this word Shelach in the Bible meaning sword. For example, in Second Chronicles, chapter 32, verse five. In Second Chronicles, chapter 23, verse 10. In the prophet Joel, chapter two, verse eight. In the book of Nechemia, chapter four, verse 11. And chapter four, verse 17. And in the book of Eos, the book of Job, chapter 36, verse 12. And chapter 33, verse 18. There's a solid foundation to translate this word Shelach as sword. And the tradition, the Midrash, is that he had a special sword that he had etched on it the name of God. And that with this special sword, he used to protect people against various dangers. And so when he died, he was buried with his sword. So that's what the meaning of his name is, that he was not given this name at birth. This is a name that he was later called mate ve Shelach, he died with his sword. The ninth name in the list is Lemech, which the missionaries translate as the despairing. And that's again, totally wrong. The word in Hebrew, mach, you could say that's part of the word Lemech. Mach means poor or humble. But the problem is that it doesn't mean despairing and the Lamed, the first letter in the world where it gets lost, there's no place, there's no meaning for the letter Lamed. So biblically, this is simply just a name. And there's no clear etymological significance to the name Lemech. There's no clear meaning in biblical Hebrew to what it means. In modern Hebrew, the word Lemech is a good for nothing. But it's doubtful if that's what the meaning is in biblical Hebrew. And then finally, the 10th name on the list I mentioned, the Christians got correct. Noach does mean rest or comfort. So we see that this very garbled and highly distorted message encoded in the Bible is based upon a significant amount of liberty taken and the mistranslation of names. And it's impossible to take such a code seriously, especially when it's alleged message is not corroborated by any clear teaching in the Bible and it's actually directly contradicted. Numerous times by the plain clear testimony of scripture. So this again is a missionary conspiracy theory that is basically built upon fantasy and illusion. And it is really not worth the paper that it's written on. I wanna begin this presentation with two quotations. One is from the famous author Bernard Baruch who said, every person has a right to their own opinion, but not to their own facts. And then a popular and famous Yiddish proverb, which is a half truth is a whole lie. And we'll see how that applies to the talk that will be now starting. We're all familiar with the game of broken telephone. A message is whispered from person to person until a large number of people have received the message. And then the last person shares the message that they receive with the entire group. And it's actually quite funny to hear how dramatically the message has been altered and distorted. So tonight we're going to discuss the very commonly heard claim that the rabbis have censored the 53rd chapter of Isaiah from the Haftora readings in the synagogue. And just to show a little bit about the broken telephone before we analyze this claim, I wanted to point out that I've actually seen some missionaries blow this up and actually claim that Jews have removed this chapter from their Bibles altogether. So we've actually whited it out from our Bibles. Now let's start from the beginning in order to unpack the deception that is attempted by this missionary claim. The crux of their argument implies that rabbinic leaders who are afraid, fearing, that the 53rd chapter from the book of Isaiah will convince Jews to embrace Jesus and abandon Judaism. So in order to shield the populace from this dangerous chapter, from the impact of reading this dangerous chapter, it was removed from the public reading of the prophetic books in the synagogue. Now, missionaries point out to help this argument along that in the public readings of the synagogue, Isaiah chapter 52 is read and chapter 54 is read. And they insist that chapter 53 was purposely removed to prevent worshipers from being exposed to this allegedly dangerous passage that promotes Christianity. Now it's important to understand the history of the public readings from scripture in the synagogue. The foundation of Judaism is the Torah itself. Strictly speaking, the five books of Moses because it is here where all the laws and all of the institutions of Judaism are sourced. None of the other books of the Bible contain any new laws. The prophets who came after Moses like Samuel, Isaiah and Jeremiah primarily came to rebuke Israel when they were not following the laws of the Torah and to encourage them to do so, to encourage them to repent and to return to God and to get with the program. That was the purpose of the prophetic writings. They did not come to reveal any new teachings. And the prophets also came to comfort Israel during times of crisis and to remind Israel that one day they would be redeemed. Now originally, the only public reading in the synagogue was from the five books of Moses. Some communities would complete the reading of the five books of Moses over the course of a three year cycle. Over the course of three years they would complete the reading of all five books of Moses and other communities completed the reading of the five books of Moses every year, a one year cycle. And this is the practice of completing it in one year that became universally accepted eventually. Now in the second century BCE, Israel was occupied by the Seleucid Greeks. And in an effort to suppress Judaism they issued numerous decrees prohibiting the practice of various Torah laws and institutions. And one of their decrees was the banning of any public reading from the five books of Moses. Now since the Jews were not able to read from these five books from the Torah itself, what the sages did was to select portions from the writings of the prophets that had some thematic connection to either the Torah portion that would have been read that Sabbath because that's when the Torah was read publicly on the Shabbat. So whatever Torah portion would have been read on that Shabbat, they would find a portion from the prophets that corresponded to that or that corresponded to the holiday that was coming up at that time of the year. So sometimes the regular Torah reading would have been preempted by the special holiday reading that they had, at least in terms of the Haftorah. Or it might have corresponded to not a particular holiday but to a particular theme during that time of the year. And we'll see that a little bit later tonight. This reading from the prophets is called the Haftorah. Now we know that when the Maccabees, the Hashmanoim, overcame the Seleuthid Greeks who were the ones that instituted these decrees, and this is the Hanukkah story, this is the Hanukkah victory. So they obviously began once again reading publicly from the Torah. However, they didn't drop the custom of reading from the prophets. They maintained the custom of reading the prophets along with the Torah portion itself. Now, from the Christian Bible, we can actually see that this was a very ancient practice that predated Christianity. We find in the book of Acts chapter 13 that it describes how in the synagogues they would read from the Torah and from the prophets, which is basically the Torah portion and the reading from the Haftorah. So as such, it is obvious that the choice of Haftorah readings, the choice of what we're gonna read and not read was not a response to Christianity because it predated Christianity. Now, the missionary hype about this forbidden chapter, they have many videos on the forbidden chapter, gives the impression that Jews read all of the prophetic writings. We read every chapter from the prophets during the year in our synagogue. But we slyly, meaning that the rabbis in some sneaky fashion plucked out this chapter from Isaiah. Truth be told, there are 379 chapters from the writings of the prophets. And we only read about 14% of them. There are only 52 weeks in the year. And the choice is not affected by concerns about Christianity. For example, we read Isaiah chapter nine in our Haftorah readings, which contains the most popular biblical text used by Christians to prove their belief that the Trinity is part of Judaism. So we don't shy away from passages in the Bible because it may, to Christians, sound significant. And as I mentioned, the practice of reading the Haftorah predates Christianity. Truth be told, Jews are not intimidated by Isaiah 53 or by any other passage in the Bible. The Book of Isaiah is taught in Hebrew schools. It's taught to our children in its entirety. We don't skip any chapters. We don't hide anything from the children. And there have been hundreds of Jewish commentaries written to the entire Book of Isaiah, including chapter 53. We don't shy away from that chapter. We're not afraid of that chapter. Jews for Judaism has produced a number of videos teaching this chapter. And we don't shy away from it. We're not afraid of it. We teach it. In fact, when this chapter is understood well, this chapter itself debunks Christianity. It disproves Christianity. I often tell the story years ago when I was at the airport here in Toronto, at Pearson International Airport, I was waiting for a continental airplane flight to Newark, New Jersey. And I was in a large lounge with about 200 people waiting for different flights. And I'm sitting in one corner of this lounge and all the way across the lounge and the other opposite side is a woman who's staring at me. And she hasn't taken her eyes off of me. And I got the feeling that she wasn't interested in my body. And she finally comes over to me after a number of minutes of staring at me. And she comes over and she says to me, excuse me, are you a rabbi? And I said to her, yes, she got so excited. And she said, can I ask you a question? And I said, sure, go ahead. So she says to me, is Isaiah in your Bible? Is the prophet Isaiah in your Bible? I said, sure, it's one of our prophets. So she says to me, can I ask you another question? I said, sure. So she pulls out her Bible and she opens up to this chapter of Isaiah, chapter 53. And she asked me, can you explain to me what this is about? So I mean, it's a big chapter. I said to her, do you have 45 minutes? And she said, sure. So we sat down together and we went through this chapter. We couldn't go through it in great detail, but I gave her a basic presentation. And I don't know what happened to this woman, but I'll tell you one thing I'm sure of. She is never going to approach a rabbi with a black hat and a beard and an airport ever again because she realized that she was hoping that she'd be able to convince me of what she believed, but she walked away very, very shaken. This was a chapter that was fundamental to her belief. And she came to realize that, you know what, maybe I never really studied it carefully before. So again, we are not intimidated by the 53rd chapter of Isaiah. Now Isaiah 53 didn't make it into the lineup of readings simply because it doesn't correspond to any of the Torah portions or any of the holiday themes. It's as simple as that. Nothing against that chapter. But again, most of the chapters in the prophets are not read. So the reason Isaiah 53 is not read is because it doesn't correspond to the Torah reading that would have been read or to the holiday that takes place on a particular Shabbat. Now there is one further factor that determines the Haftora reading. So it's not just the Torah portion. It's not just a particular holiday. As I mentioned, it could be a theme during a time of the year. So we know that the ninth day in the month of Av, the month of Av is the fifth month in the Hebrew calendar, the ninth day in the month of Av is our national day of mourning. It commemorates the day when both the first and the second holy temples in Jerusalem were destroyed as well as a number of other terrible calamities. So during the three weeks before the ninth of Av, during the three Shabbats, the three Sabbath mornings in the synagogue, our sages selected for the Haftora readings, chapters from Jeremiah and Isaiah where Israel was sternly warned by the prophets of impending punishments. These are three weeks that precede our national day of mourning and we read passages from the prophets where the Jewish people are warned sternly by the prophets that their moral decline was gonna lead to destruction. But then after the ninth of Av, we have the sages instituted what is called shiva din echemta, seven special weeks of Haftora readings of comfort and consolation to Israel for these tragedies that happened. And these are all from the prophet Isaiah, the seven Haftoras of consolation are all from the prophet Isaiah and they include Isaiah chapter 40 verses one to 26, Isaiah chapter 49 verse 14 to chapter 51 verse three, Isaiah chapter 54 verse 11 to chapter 55 verse five, Isaiah chapter 51 verse 12 to 52 verse 12, Isaiah 54 verses one through 10, Isaiah 60 verses one to 22 and Isaiah chapter 61 verse 10 to chapter 63 verse nine. And there's nothing insidious about the fact that Isaiah 53 is not mentioned because this chapter does not speak about comfort to Israel. Isaiah chapter 53, it's even got a nickname, the suffering servant. So this chapter speaks about the suffering of Israel. Israel is described as God's servant. And so a chapter that speaks about the suffering of Israel is not what you wanna read during one of the seven weeks of consolation and comfort. And the truth again is that we don't read most of the book of Isaiah as well as we don't read most of the book of Jeremiah or most of the book of Ezekiel. So this missionary conspiracy theory is actually an extremely insidious theory. It's an insidious one that plays on longstanding anti-Semitic tropes. Jews are seen as scheming and plotting and devious, et cetera. And when the foundation of falsehood upon which this missionary claim is laid bare, when we can see as we did tonight that there's no foundation to this claim that the rabbis hid this chapter and they banned it from the Bible, we see that when someone points their finger at others, they have three fingers pointing right back at themselves. Conspiracy thinking is usually so absurd and the connection to reality so tenuous that we can't help but smile or laugh. But these fantasies cross a line and become despicable when they smear those who are no longer alive and cannot defend themselves. One such claim went viral a few years ago after the death of Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri in 2006 at the age of 108. Now it's hard to grasp the greatness of Rabbi Kaduri. He was the leading cabalist in Israel and one of the greatest rabbinic leaders of several generations. Not only was Rabbi Kaduri a Torah scholar of immense renown, he was beloved as a true saddic, a righteous person who helped thousands of people and where countless miracles have been attributed to him. But then an article came out in a missionary publication in Israel claiming that a year before he passed away, Rabbi Kaduri wrote a secret note that he instructed his family and his students not to read until after his death. And the article goes on to claim that this mysterious note was written to reveal the name of the Messiah and that the name revealed was Jesus. Now this story quickly circulated in missionary circles where it was then widely publicized throughout various internet channels. An entire cottage industry sprang up around this alleged note with books and websites and organizations and numerous videos. And missionaries have desperately clung to this conspiracy tale like a drowning person to a life preserver. I've had several missionaries repeatedly send me accounts of this story in the hopes that would help me see the light. Now, Rabbi Kaduri was very close to his family and extremely close to his disciples. And all of them, his closest disciples and his family members have all come out publicly and have insisted that Rabbi Kaduri never told them about any such note that he was leaving them and he never left them any note to be opened after his death. The whole story is simply not based upon any shred of truth. His son, Rabbi Kaduri's son, Rabbi David Kaduri, pointed out that in the year prior to his death, when this letter was allegedly written, his father was not physically capable of writing a letter. And that what missionaries are circulating is a forgery. Now, if Rabbi Kaduri had written a special secret note that he left for his family and his students that would mysteriously be opened after his passing, they would have guarded this letter very carefully. So how did it end up in the hands of Christian missionaries? Rabbi Kaduri's family pointed out that in the days before his death, he was in a hospital that was down the street from a church. And this agitated and irritated Rabbi Kaduri tremendously. He was very aggravated that he was basically in the line of sight of this church. And they report that one day, although he was very frail, he was 108 years old, he stood up with his walking stick, he would always carry a walking stick, and he shook it at the church and cursed the church as a place of falsehood. It doesn't sound like Rabbi Kaduri was a secret Christian. Now, even though missionaries have been making the brazen claim that Rabbi Kaduri had himself come to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. There are books, the Rabbi who found the Messiah, and that he reveals this in his note. This is the claim that's circulating, that Rabbi Kaduri, the greatest capitalist of modern times, was a believer in Jesus, and he revealed this in his note that he left for his students and his family. There is not a mention of any person's name in the note that is being circulated by missionaries. Meaning that the missionaries are not showing us that there's a note which says, news flash, the Messiah's name is Jesus. No such revelation is made. The note that the missionaries are spreading has a mysterious phrase in Hebrew that reads in translation the following. This is the basic thrust of the note that they're claiming of Kaduri left. The nation will be raised up and it will be established that his word and his Torah stands. And above this phrase, there is an abbreviation which says the following. So this is the introduction to this phrase. It says regarding the words of Torah of the Messiah, regarding the words of Torah of the Messiah. And what does the message say? That the nation will be raised up. That's true. That's what we believe is gonna happen when the Messiah comes, that the people of Israel are gonna be raised up and it will be established that his word and his Torah stands. This can be referring either to the Torah taught by the Messiah or the Torah of God. I mean that the message that is revealed here is not controversial. It has nothing to do with Christianity. Now, some missionaries, actually all of them, have basically misread this introduction to the note as saying the following. They read it as saying, in the matter of the initials of the Messiah, in the matter of the initial, but it doesn't say that. It clearly says the words of Torah. It is an abbreviation that says, Dallad Tuff, Divrat Torah. And they take the Dallad and they read it as a race and they read it as, instead of Divrat Torah, Rashe Tevot, initials. And so they misread this line in their own note to say that in the matter of the initials of the Messiah and then this phrase, the nation will be raised up and it will be established that his word and his Torah stands. So what is the case that the missionaries are making? So they insist that what Rav Kuduri was doing was leaving behind an anagram, a coded anagram revealing the name of the Messiah. And if you take the first Hebrew letter in this phrase, it spells out the Hebrew name Yehoshua. Yehoshua. We say in English, Joshua. The person that followed Moses. Now it's important to understand that Jesus in Hebrew is never referred to as Yehoshua. Never. Even missionaries today, Messianic Jews, Hebrew Christians, they don't call him Yehoshua. They call Jesus Yehoshua, Yehoshua. Not Yehoshua. So why are they insisting that this anagram that just spells out the name Yehoshua, this is supposed to prove something about Jesus? And if the story really was true, and Rabbi Kuduri was really writing a veiled code to reveal the name of the Messiah. And the name he revealed is Yehoshua. So who is that referring to? Yehoshua is an extremely common name. So what will be the point of writing such a useless clue to tell the whole world, psst, BPS, the name of the Messiah is Yehoshua? If Rabbi Kuduri really wanted to make it clear that he was referring to Jesus, first of all, he would not have spelled out Yehoshua. He would have written Yehoshua without the A, without the A sound. And even Yehoshua itself would not be a 100% clear slam dunk because we see, first of all, 2,000 years ago, the name Yehoshua was actually quite common. In the Talmud, there were over 20 people with that name. In the Bible, there were people with the name Yehoshua. So the way he could have clearly indicated that he's talking about Jesus would have been to say Yehoshua Hanotzri, Jesus of Nazareth. And then everyone would get the message. But again, Rabbi Kuduri did not write this. And had he written it, he did a terrible job. Now according to the missionary fantasy, what was Rabbi Kuduri's intent in writing this note? Again, according, let's try and understand what they're claiming here. What was his intent? What was his purpose in writing such a note? If Rabbi Kuduri really believed that Jesus was the Messiah and that it was important for his fellow Jews to believe in this, why didn't he just simply tell this to his family and his students while he was alive? Meaning that he was not someone afraid of the truth. And if he really came to the belief that Jesus was the Messiah and that you need to believe in him, otherwise you're gonna burn in hell forever. So why not, I mean maybe don't make a YouTube video, but he had family and close disciples and students tell them, listen, I'm an old man and I am very wise, but I've discovered something that you have to know. Why wouldn't he just tell this to his students and his family? Why write a mysterious note that is a coded anagram that is not even clearly speaking about the Messiah's identity. There's nothing there that says, I'm gonna tell you the name of the Messiah. And it doesn't even clearly identify Jesus. Again, from the missionary's perspective, that's what they're claiming his entire intent was to teach us about Jesus. If he really wanted to do this, he did a very, very poor job. This kind of smearing of the name and reputation of a Torah giant is inexcusable, but this kind of desperate conspiracy plot without a shred of evidence is basically an admission that these missionaries are bankrupt. If they had any real credible evidence to substantiate their beliefs, if they had clear passages in the Bible that were indisputably advancing the case of Christianity, they would stick with those. But the fact that they have to seize on these absurd, obtuse, ridiculous conspiracy theories and they have to scurry around concocting these wild claims and these cheap scams basically reveals to the entire world how bankrupt and how empty they really are. It always strikes me as curious that Christians seem to have split personalities when it comes to the Talmud. On the one hand, they revile it as just being the traditions of men and not the word of God. They use the term rabbinic Judaism as a slur and they have absolutely zero respect for the sages of the Talmud. Their attacks from the writings of the Christian Bible all the way down until this very day speak of Pharisees as the lowest people. So much so that many dictionaries define Pharisee as a religious hypocrite. The Talmud, however, is the product of the Pharisees. And Christians hold it in very, very low regard. Yet it's fascinating that whenever they believe they can get some plemical mileage out of the Talmud, missionaries are all over it. One of the most common points that is heard from missionaries is that the Talmud contains many passages that verify the truths of the church. One of their go-to passages from the Talmud is from Tractate Yomah 39b. Now this passage says the following, 40 years before the destruction of the temple, the scarlet colored ribbon did not turn white. Now, this is referring to the service that took place on Yom Kippur that there was a goat that was sent out into the wilderness. It was called the scape goat. And upon this goat were placed the sins of the entire nation. And we're told that 40 years before the destruction of the temple, it no longer turned white, it remained red. And based upon this passage, missionaries reason that Jesus who was crucified in their calculations 40 years before the temple was destroyed in the year 70 of the common era. They again assume that Jesus was crucified in the year 30. So they connect the death of Jesus with the temple's destruction and they maintain the following. They say that the sin that led to the temple being destroyed was Israel's rejection of Jesus. And number two, they say that the destruction of the temple proves that God no longer wants our temple service. He was rejecting animal sacrifices. And now we have to basically turn to Jesus as the sacrifice that atones for our sins. And they of course extract this idea from this passage of the Talmud. Because they say, you see, it was 40 years before the temple was destroyed just at the time Jesus was killed that the Jews were no longer being forgiven for their sins. This red thread didn't turn white. Of course, the major problem with the missionary understanding of this soundbite from the Talmud is that they ignore the larger context of the entire Talmudic passage. This is precisely how they misread the Hebrew Bible itself. The old saying goes, a text without context is pretext. So before examining the broader context of this Talmudic soundbite that missionaries like to share, let's just first make a few side observations. Number one, missionaries assume here for the sake of their argument that Jesus died in the year 30. But what's the evidence of that? Historians place his death anywhere from the year 28 to the year 34. And the whole point of their argument here depends upon getting synchronized the exact date of Jesus's death with the year of the temple's destruction 40 years before. And so here they basically are making a claim. They're making an assumption that doesn't have any real substance, meaning there's no proof they have. This is just an assertion. Number two, missionaries are again simply asserting that the miracle of the red thread turning white stopped because the Jews rejected Jesus. That's an assumption they're making. That's a claim they're making. But the truth is that most Jews never even heard of Jesus back then. And if you wanna give theories as to why this miracle stopped happening, why this red thread stopped turning white, you could maybe claim that this took place because of the sinful movement launched by Jesus. Meaning maybe if God is gonna be upset about something, maybe it's not about the Jews rejecting Jesus, maybe it was about the whole Jesus movement. I mean again, it's not what the Talmud says, but once you're throwing out supposition and theories and guesses, it's just as good a guess. The third thing I wanted to share is that it is absurd to suggest that according to this passage in the Talmud, the temple as an institution was kaput. It was over and it was being replaced by Christianity. That's simply impossible to derive from this passage in the Talmud because we have numerous clear passages in the Tanakh and the Hebrew scriptures that tell us that sacrifices and the temple service are eternal institutions and that there will be a third temple with the restoration of the temple services and the sacrifices. So how could any missionary claim, especially when they don't accept the Talmud as authoritative that based upon this passage in the Talmud, you see that the temple is now done away with. How absurd that is when the Torah itself, the Bible itself, the Tanakh, God's word itself tells us clearly that the temple will not be done away with. And actually the Talmud, the sages of the Talmud themselves consistently echoed this idea that the temple is going to be rebuilt, the third temple is gonna be rebuilt in the future. So this is an absurd conclusion to draw from this Talmudic story. And it's worth noting by the way that even in the Christian scriptures, we see that the followers of Jesus continued to go to the holy temple in Jerusalem after his crucifixion and they participated in the temple services and they brought sacrifices. They were part of the sacrificial services they participated in. They didn't believe that Jesus' death brought about the end of the temple and the temple services and the temple sacrifices. So this claim that the missionaries are making is just without substance. Now let's examine the content of the snippet, the sound bite that missionaries are fond of quoting. The Talmud here in tractate Yomah, Yomah by the way deals with the whole institution of Yom Kippur the day of atonement. So the Talmud here is telling us that around 300, if we study actually the passage that missionaries quote is from 39B, if you go back to the prior page 39A, you get the bigger context of the passage quoted by the missionaries and the Talmud there tells us that around 300 BCE, so about 300 years before Jesus, there was a very special high priest named Shimon Hatzadik, Simon the righteous one and he served in the temple for 40 years as its high priest and during his time because of his great righteousness and he was able to lift up the entire nation through his righteousness. The Talmud tells us that there were five ongoing miracles in Israel, mainly in the temple, five ongoing miracles that took place during the 40 years of Shimon Hatzadik. Number one, we know that there were two goats that were used for the day of atonement service and they had to determine which goat is gonna go as the scapegoat into the wilderness and which goat is gonna be, it's called Hashem to God and that would be actually sacrificed in the temple to atone for the impurities, the contamination that took place in the temple and they would draw a lottery. The priest would put his hands into a box and pull out two lottery tickets, right? One would say to Hashem to God and the other would say La Azazel out into the wilderness and so the Talmud tells us that for the 40 years that Shimon Hatzadik was the high priest, the lot that came out for Hashem, the sacrifice toward God, always came out in the right hand of the priest and that's considered to be a good omen. Number two, the Talmud tells us that the red ribbon that was tied to the head of the scapegoat turned white each year. It was again a supernatural miracle and it was an omen, it was a sign, look, your sins have been cleansed and that took place for 40 years. The third miracle was that the Western lamp, we know that in the holy temple there was a menorah, a seven-branched menorah and the most Western lamp of this seven-branched menorah would stay lit all day long until the priest would use it the next day to light the other lamps. That was pretty strange, it would normally last an entire day. Number four miracle was that the wood pile on the altar burnt all day long without having to be refueled with new logs and new wood except that we know the priest was required to at least add two logs on each day because there was a commandment but the truth is that it would have lasted all day long without any need to refuel the wood pile on the altar. And number five, we're told that there was a special blessing in the Omer offering, it was a special offering after Passover and in the two loaves that were offered up for the holiday of Shavuot, for the Feast of Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks and for the weekly showbread that was presented in the holy temple, we're told that these were blessed in a special way such that if a priest would be receiving a tiny piece of these foods, they would be totally satiated from just a tiny piece of these foods. That's an incredible miracle. So the Talmud reports that after the death of Shimon Hatzadik, now again, don't forget, this is 300 years prior to the common era and he was the high priest for 40 years but we're told that after his death, the spiritual atmosphere began to deteriorate and the people's moral level began to diminish. So during this period of time, which lasted hundreds of years, these miracles still occurred but only sporadically. They would sometimes happen, sometimes not happen. And then finally, the Talmud teaches us, and this is the passage that the missionaries pluck out as their sound bite, the Talmud reports that 40 years prior to the destruction of the temple, the spiritual decline accelerated to the point where these miracles ceased altogether. Now, important to understand, the Talmud never says that God rejected the temple as an institution and that the sacrificial system was being replaced and abandoned and that the sacrifices were ineffective and that the people were no longer being forgiven. These are all assumptions that the missionaries make but that the Talmud never says. The Talmud is simply saying that the blessing of these supernatural miracles, these supernatural manifestations that served as signs, as indications were no longer occurring. Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement as an institution was never broken and as the Torah promises us, it is a day when Hashem, when the Lord, and the Almighty forgives our sins. The Torah says, kibayom haze yechaper alechem, on this day you will be forgiven and it doesn't depend upon sacrifices. It doesn't depend upon anything, meaning that if we aren't able to bring sacrifices because there's no temple, the Torah is telling us the day itself has the power where God will forgive us and the Talmud here is not saying that that ever stopped. The Torah never said that it ever stopped. So what is the proof that these signs, these supernatural signs stopped because the Jews rejected Jesus? That's the claim being made by missionaries, you see? Because the Jews rejected Jesus, God took away these miracles. What is the proof that that's the reason these miracles stopped? The Talmud actually, if the missionaries really cared about the Talmud, the Talmud actually discusses the specific moral failings that became entrenched in the nation back then and that led to the destruction of the temple and that led to these miracles being removed. One major problem the Talmud discusses is something called sinat kinam. Internal bickering and Jews simply not treating each other with decency. That's why these things happened. That's why we lost these beautiful miracles. That's why the temple was ultimately destroyed. The Talmud tells us why. We don't need Christians to theorize and fantasize because of course it would have been sinful for Jews to embrace Christianity. It's a religion whose every theological tenet is contradicted by the Torah, by the Bible. The Talmud intractate Avodazzara, 8b tells us that 40 years before the destruction of the temple, murder was proliferating among the nation and that it became difficult to actually try people for murder because there was a flood of false witnesses that would come forward. So the Sanhedrin basically stopped judging capital cases 40 years before the temple was destroyed and what did they do the Talmud tells us? The Sanhedrin moved out of the temple precincts to a place called Khanuyos. They left and with the Sanhedrin gone from the temple precincts, the spiritual atmosphere of the temple diminished because again we know from the Talmud that the priesthood during the time of the second temple was very corrupt. It was an office that was purchased from the Romans and it was held basically by very corrupt individuals. So once the Sanhedrin, which were the leading Taurus ages, left the temple, the entire atmosphere of the temple diminished to a point where the temple itself was no longer worthy of having these routine miracles that they had in the days of Shimon Hatsadek. It's important to remember that these miracles did not suddenly end 40 years before the destruction of the temple. That's again the impression the missionaries want you to walk away with, that we had these great miracles, that the red thread always turned white and that it was just 40 years before the temple was destroyed at the time when Jesus is executed, that's when these miracles stop. That's not the case. It's important to remember that they were already on and off for hundreds of years before Jesus and it was due to their moral failures, moral failures that are totally unrelated to Christianity and to Jesus. In this program, we've examined five very popular conspiracy fantasies that are being used by contemporary missionaries. We've seen that when examined carefully, they're like eating cotton candy. That as soon as you bite into them, they evaporate and they disappear. We've seen how they operate like magic tricks. They have a certain appeal when you don't understand the deception that's being employed or the sleight of hand that's being used to manipulate us. But once you know how the trick is done, you have a totally different perspective. And finally, we saw how the missionary need to resort to such obtuse and far-fetched claims reveals how incredibly bankrupt they actually are. If the missionaries had arguments that were substantive and compelling, they wouldn't need to resort to cheap scams to convince people of their doctrines.