First Covenant Foundation

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Here is the issue. Not to get dramatic, we have enemies. Besides the usual suspects - Nazis, “Aryans,” the “Palestinians” and their enablers, the Klan, etc. - we have extreme “secular humanists” and former Christians who call themselves “hasidic gentiles” who definitely dislike us.

Some of these jokers have been trying to sabotage us by getting our newsletter, Covenant Connection, labelled spam.

In other words, they are trying to keep you from seeing our monthly newsletter, Covenant Connection, by getting it sent to your spam file.

Please help. And will you tell others who want Covenant Connection to do it too?  If you find a Covenant Connection, a mailing titled ”[1st Covenant Foundation],” in your spam file, don’t just open and read it. That is, open and read it by all means, but, first, click on the button that says “Not spam.” (This means taking an extra step, since the mailing then leaves the spam file and goes back to the incoming mail file. But this is the only way to fix the problem.

If you think that you may have missed some Covenant Connections, which come out every month, you can access them all by going here: http://1stcovenant.com/pages/newsletter.htm .

Islam and the Seven Laws It isn’t just Christians and Jews who worry where Islam is heading. Many Muslims have doubts themselves.

Where do Noah’s Laws - the Seven Universal Laws that define what it is to be civilized - fit into Islam?

Islam has an official approach to free will - the doctrine that an individual can choose to respond one way or the other to the alternatives before him, without being fated, destined, or Divinely compelled to choose either - which tends to deny that free will exists. Islam is a religion that believes strongly in fate. But individual Muslims usually act as thought they have free will. They make choices like anyone else.

None of the Noahide prohibitions conflicts with mainstream Islamic teachings. If you told a Muslim that he or she must conform to the basic requisites of civilization, the response you would hear would be agreement.

What are the Seven Laws? In very simple terms they are:

1) Do not ea flesh or tissue that was torn from any living mammal (thoughtless cruelty against animals trumped by eating them is disgusting, lawless and sick).

2) Do not steal. (Larceny defiles the earth.)

3) Do not commit acts of gross sexual immorality (sex acts that everyone ought to know are wrong.)

4) Do not commit murder. (Murder defiles the earth.)

5) Do not tolerate the oppression of the weak by the strong but, rather, establish and maintain a just system of laws, police and courts.

6) Do not insult or blaspheme God, the Maker of All things.

7) Do not serve or worship any thing or deity through idolatrous means - that is, by carrying on savagely, as idolators do, when they serve their gods with cruelty, obscenity, or murder.

(This last prohibition means, speaking a little more specifically, do not whip or cut yourself or anyone else to “suffer as He suffered,” or perform private biological functions in public in His honor, or kill human beings as living sacrifices or martyrs meant to honor or glorify the Divine. All such stuff is sacrilegious, an insult to the Being or beings who are supposedly being served or worshipped. No Being worthy of being worshipped would ever want to be worshipped in such manner.)

One of the features of the Seven Laws is that they all belong to a larger system of spirituality and belief - the Biblical system. The Biblical system, or Torah, puts them into context, and helps to flesh them out and give them meaning.

Since official Islam respects the Bible and the Torah, this should not be a problem. Many a Muslim has written me, saying that the Seven Law system resembles early Islam. In other words, they say, Islam contains the Seven Laws of Noah at its core.

Apparently, nothing in Islam is antithetical to Noah’s Laws, and nothing in Noah’s Laws, the Seven Universal Laws, is necessarily antithetical to Islam.

So when, we wonder, will Islam officially adopt Noah’s Laws? When will Muslims stop behaving so cruelly and violently, even among themselves? When will they stop sending themselves, or their wives, mothers, or even their children - more often, actually, someone else’s children - to maim and slaughter others, even their own fellow Muslims?

When will the world - let us leave the Muslim world out of it, at this point, let us just talk of non-Muslim who keep making lame excuses for Muslim “outrage” - clearly and unambiguously condemn such barbarity and cruelty?

And, finally, when will the Muslims themselves condemn this evil, these horrible violations of the world’s most fundamental laws of civilization? When will they wholeheartedly take up the basic requisites of civilization?

In this age of environmental consciousness, let us recognize the truth that every violation of God’s Universal Laws defiles the Earth itself. As the Bible teaches, larceny, sexual immorality, injustice, blasphemy, cruelty and thoughtlessness towards animals, murder, idolatry, etc., all pollute and corrupt the land.

(By the way, the history of man on earth proves that proposition. Look at the ecological disasters that are Nigeria, Kenya, or Zimbabwe, or in India, and China. Look at some of America’s central cities. Look at the Muslim world itself - where deserts fill what used to be called the Fertile Crescent. . .

MD

Before this goes into the newsletter, I’d like to run it here. It concerns our different attempts to tell the world about Noah’s Laws. I was reading the beginning of Leviticus, next week’s regularly scheduled Torah portion. This thought popped up:

All our efforts to reach others need to:

1) begin with the Golden Rule - treat others as you would have others to treat you. Then, 

2) we have the Noahide Laws (from which the Golden Rule is derived). The Noahide Laws give the Golden Rule the supporting framework that it absolutely needs - the reference points it requires. People who believe in the Golden Rule who don’t have the Noahide Laws commit the most horrible atrocities in the name of compassion and what they think is right. . . Then,

3) we have what Leviticus is all about, the Divine call to Israel AND TO ALL Noahides: You shall be holy because I the L’rd your G’d am holy.” (Leviticus 19:2). 

We - speaking of the entire Noahide and Torah outreach movement, not just First Covenant or Rainbow Covenant - may have had the order of these things mixed up, earlier. We usually started with 1) theology and Who is HaShem, G’d of Israel, then 2) the Noahide Laws, and only then 3) the Golden Rule - if we even mentioned it at all.

We tend to take the Golden Rule for granted, it’s “old stuff” to us, but it really is where we need to start. It should be where we all wind up, too.

© 2007 Hiram Rosa and the First Covenant Foundation

I have been hearing this question from others who have come to where I am today: what is expected of truly monotheistic Gentiles or non-Jewish people, people whom we associate with the title B’nai Noach?
 
The Torah has many teachings for us. One of which is that by finding out what G’d IS NOT, we get closer to Him. Even though we find the Seven Laws explicitly listed in Israel’s Talmud (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin - “Courts” - folio 56), they are part of the Torah’s larger context. We learn from the context what is expected of humanity. This is a starting point for us to achieve a higher connection to our Creator. 

In other words, we are not to just remain content with the listed Seven Laws, we need to go further into the understanding that these laws can yield. These seven principles are only main headings for general laws and values. Once understood, in association with their Divine connection to the Creator who revealed them, they reveal other commandments and connections that can logically be classified under each heading (see the First Covenant Association’s main book, The Rainbow Covenant). 

Here’s an example of how this system works. If you don’t commit the Noahide - that is, the universal, prohibited - crime of theft, what do you do? You get a job and become productive so you don’t need or feel inclined to steal. But theft constitutes taking anything that is not yours. This would include different forms of theft - for instance, kidnapping, dealing falsely in business, lying for your own personal gain, etc. This demonstrates that things are not so simple and that G’d provides us with ways to make ourselves better people and more pleasing to Him.
There is always more that we can do to please Him, in other words.       

The question of “where do I belong?” is moot - not capable of being decided - because we can only be where G’d put us. The issue is how one decides to accept His authority in our lives in order to attain a closer relationship with Him. We can only do this by first having correct ideas about Him. Then we can start to see how everything we do in our lives affects our spiritual and our physical outlook.

We live on two planes, the physical and metaphysical, the seen and the unseen. The Seven Laws for the Gentiles - actually, for all humanity - is the starting place to reach a higher connection to G’d. We become unclean by our intentions followed by our actions, but we can rise to cleanliness with our words of repentance and by correcting our actions. The Seven Laws help us moderate our intentions within, so we can control our actions. When we learn this lesson of self-control we become able to discern good from evil and know when we are about to be tempted to do that which we know is against G’d’s will.

We can’t start trying to live by the Seven Laws by just casually trying to find out what they are and how to fulfill them. One needs to study each of the seven general topics or headings, in order to find out what is constituted in that one heading.

You will find out that the more you learn about each law, statute and lesson that constitutes the main principle, you develop a better, stonger connection with that Law. Thus, you are more able to fulfill it.
The initial step is to realize these are Divine laws. Secondly, that they are for your spiritual, as well as physical, benefit. By spiritual, I mean the ability to connect more to G’d, not by emotional acceptance, but by intellectual understanding of why G’d gave us these wise laws and statutes, which will yield a great emotional connection as well.
Maimonides - Rambam - posits three reasons for learning the Ways of the Torah:

We should study them to attain correct ideas about G’d.

To attain a higher moral level of life.

And to learn how to overcome injustice and make the world more just.

Please consider this three-part consideration when studying the Laws. Don’t forget, the first two relate directly to G’d, while the last relates to our fellow human beings. In the three we have the whole man!      

In summary, from the Scripture, the Book of Ecclesiastes 12:13 - 14

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.  For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

We got intense feedback on the last article, about appreciating Christians like Rev. John Hagee. Unfortunately, I managed to accidently delete the posts from the writers who liked the piece, and the writers who hated the piece wrote personal e-mails which I don’t feel at liberty to put up on the blog.

I have put up a link to the Articles Page of the 1stcovenant website. These articles struck me as particularly pertinent to our subject, including the Seven Universal Laws as they apply to Christians and others who don’t share the same faith or belief-system as israel.

These articles include: Judaism and Tolerance (marked as *New*) by Rav Adin Steinsaltz - who recently accepted an appointment as the Head of the so-called New Sanhedrin (although where he stands with it now, if it’s even still operating, is open to question); an article from the New York Times called Noah and 9/11, written by Tom Friedman for the New York Times on the first anniversary of 9/11/01; and an article by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Fulfilling our Biblical Mandate. I would also urge readers who still have a question about Torah and tolerance to read the commentary in the Hertz Pentateuch (the “Hertz Torah” or “Hertz Chumash”) on Deuteronomy 4:19. This is the passage where Moses our Teacher speaks of the stars, planets and other mere creations “allotted” to other nations. The commentary is headed “Religious Tolerance” and, by the way, it specifically speaks of the Noahide Laws.

 

This topic came up in the January 2007 Covenant Connection. We appreciate Pastor John Hagee.

He loves Israel and he hates Israel’s enemies. He recognizes that Israel’s enemies, like Hamas and the Nazis, for instance, are the enemies of all mankind. He says so, often, and millions of people listen to him and find truth in what he says.

Quite a number of other Christian pastors, like the late Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell, have much the same love for Israel and disdain for Israel’s enemies as Rev. Hagee.

These good people who bless Israel - that is, they bless Israel as well as they know how - are themselves blessed. The Bible declares it - look at Genesis 12:3, 27:29, and other passages - explicitly. In fact, this is a basic principle of Torah - that G’d bless those who bless Israel and curses those who curse Israel. It’s one of the metaphysical constants of Creation. In secular terms, it’s one of the core principles of human history.

Now, many of these people who bless Israel and “believe in” Israel are Christian “dispensationalists.” That is, they believe that Israel remained Israel after the founding of Christianity, and that the Church has not replaced the people or Children of Israel.

This has become a mainstream Christian teaching. Not long ago, the Roman Catholic Church formally accepted this idea - that Israel’s covenant connection with G’d remains intact. And today, many millions of Catholics favor Israel over Amalek, despite overwhelming propaganda which favors Amalek.

Those who bless Israel are blessed, the Torah teaches.

Who are we to disdain or reject those whom G’d has blessed?

We recognize that many or perhaps even most Christian dispensationalists expect the People of Israel to convert to Christianity. Yes, we know that many of them believe that those Jews and Noahides who aren’t “born again” as devoted Christians will, basically, be toasted alive, tortured in incredibly gruesome ways. This will happen, they believe, along with the coming of the Messiah, whom they believe to be Yeshu (or “Yeshua”) ben Yosef.

The thing is, these people have no inclination to torment or murder Jews themselves. All that, they think, is up to G’d. And we are content to leave the matter there. We, too, put our trust in G’d. They can believe what they want about the end times, the end of the current age. Yes, they may indeed think that people who don’t accept Yeshu or Jesus as they do are doomed. We who don’t accept their belief-system are, supposedly, doomed. But we - we will take our chances.

They grant that G’d gives us free will and that He doesn’t compel us to accept their belief-system. We pay them the same respect. And, because we have a system called the Noahide Law or First Covenant at the core of our Torah, we can also say this: they are not incurring G’d’s wrath or dooming themselves by not accepting all of our spiritual beliefs upon themselves.

They don’t regard G’d as we regard G’d, completely, but that doesn’t mean that they are criminals in G’d’s eyes. G’d forbid! They are blessed! They are also, generally speaking, keeping the Seven Universal Laws as the Seven Noahide Laws currently apply to them.

Some of us have been seeking out traces of Christian theology in good souls who claim to be Noahides and denouncing them. Oy. (The idea is that they’re coming “undercover,” with a secret agenda to convert us to their Christianity.) Some longtime Noahides have been saying that, before these people even come into the Noahide tent as visitors, to look around, they need to abandon their cherished life-long beliefs or face a strip-search, to make sure that they’ve left all the beliefs that have previously sustained them outside the Noahide tent.

This is not the way to hasten the process of world redemption.

Look, we need the blessings of these blessed people and we can’t and shouldn’t insist that they need to worship Israel’s national G’d, Whom they don’t know yet, or Whom they are not comfortable directly addressing yet.

We do believe that they should, if they feel so inclined, get to know something of our way of thinking. The way that the principles of Judaism and Torah AREN’T taught in the world is a shame. Most Christians don’t even think it’s worthy of study as a religion separate from Christianity. Most Muslims are taught to despise it. Most Hindus and Buddhists and New Agers have no idea what Torah is. Neither do most atheists or agnostics.

We believe that, if we simply welcome these people without deliberately insulting them, by showing them the majesty and sweetness of G’d’s Torah, we will advance the process of Redemption. We believe that, if we allow these blessed people to study the Universal Torah in peace, they will come to appreciate it more, and more, and more.

That’s our “secret agenda.”

Once people of goodwill get into the 7M - the Seven Universal Laws, the Noahide Laws - they begin to acquire the Hebrew revolutionary approach to many things. If they lacked them at all before, they pick up the strong belief that - for instance - what we as human beings do in the world really matters, that G’d really cares, and that we’re supposed to find out what He wants of us and not just assume that we know it all - that He wants and expects us all to walk humbly w/ Him. . .

We have had Christians come to us and try to convert us to Christianity - but I’ve never seen them succeed. Again, I say, we’re willing to take our chances. Naturally, we don’t want to waste time, not theirs, and certainly not ours (and there are a whole lot more Christians around who might want to argue than there are Jews or other Torah people). But this doesn’t mean that we can’t give them the benefit of every doubt.

We want them to give the Torah, Israel, and what we believe to be G’d’s Plan the benefit of the doubt. We want them to taste the Torah’s sweetness. We want them to come closer to G’d, as we understand Him. We want them to understand that we count on His love and mercy, omnipotence, and forgiveness - and that they can too.

Our G’d is tolerant and we can afford to be tolerant with Him. Tolerance of the different theological beliefs that Noahides might hold is an inherent part of our Torah. We do our faith and creed no credit when we show people who might have a grain or two of curiosity about our Way no tolerance when it comes to putting up with their many differences with us. We can’t show them G’d’s love and tolerance and mercy when we refuse to show them those qualities ourselves.

To sum up, when these good people bless us, Israel, they receive blessing; that’s a biblical guarantee. When they knock themselves out for the State of Israel - all honor goes to those who do so, who sometimes even put their lives on the line for the survival of Jewish Israel - G’d doesn’t sneer at them for their failure to believe in Him as we do. What kind of G’d would He be if He did?

We believe that these good people could receive even more blessing if they blessed Israel and also G’d’s Torah; if they treated the Seven Laws in our custody and the Bible which Israel has helped give them just a little more respectfully. . . if they would do that, if they would help Israel be Israel in the most important way possible, by helping the people of Israel themselves find the worth in their own Torah. . . we could transform the world together so fast, we’d see the Messiah in our own lifetimes . . .

Good morning,

MD

Links:

1) to the latest edition of our thought-provoking, information-rich monthly newsletter: Covenant Connection

http://1stcovenant.org/pages/newsletter.htm

2) to the links page on the website - with many new external links.

http://1stcovenant.com/pages/links.htm

3) to our latest voice (radio) and video - the Orthodox Union interviews Rev. Jack Saunders and Michael Dallen, in a show titled “The Jew, the Minister, and B’nei Noah; Zelda Young interviews them too, together with Rabbi Michael Katz, in a special hour-long program on Toronto’s CHIN-FM, with listener call-ins.

In the Bible, Amalek is the anti-Israel.

       Starting in Genesis, Amalek comes into the world as the grandson of Esau - Esau, Abraham’s grandson, Isaac’s son, and Jacob’s dangerous brother, Esau.

Esau is the man who thought so little of God’s blessing that he traded it for a pot of soup! His illegitimate but direct descendant Amalek bred and multiplied and became a family and then a nation: a jealous, cruel nation.

In the course of more than 100 generations, Amalek spread, like a virus. It shared its seed with every nation. 

The theory of this blog piece is that, historically, not merely as metaphor but in a very real sense, Amalek exists as an infectious spirit: a contagious infestation of fierce jealousy, envy, injured pride and ultra-violence.

God created Israel as a force for holiness: Amalek is Israel’s opposite. Amalek is Israel’s destroyer.

Nazi Germany incarnated Amalek. From 1933 until May, 1945, Amalek ruled Germany. The German people became Amalek.

This is not to say that every single German in that time period became evil. Not at all: the Germans themselves suffered from the Nazis. Some Germans hated the Nazis and everything they stood for. Some Germans were good, even saintly people. But it’s still fair to say that, in that time period, the German people accepted Nazism. In other words, the spirit of Amalek infected the German people.

The Nazis infected the Arab world with the Amalek virus, and the same virus has now spread to much of the Muslim world. Again, some Arabs today and some Muslims today despise this evil, just as there were Germans who lived under Hitler and the swastika who hated Nazism. But it’s still fair to say that the spirit of Amalek infects the Arab world and that the spirit of Amalek infects Islam.  And now Amalek - as the Nazis did - threatens the world.

Amalek hates Israel and all whom it associates with Israel. Amalek hates America.

Amalek is furiously jealous. Amalek attacked America and “the Jews” on 9/11. Amalek infects and has become Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda and Fatah and Hamas. Amalek cannot be appeased. Amalek threatens the world like the Nazis - the Muslim and Arab Amalekites’ recent predecessors - menaced the world.

Exodus 17:16: The Lord hath sworn, the Lord will have war with Amalek in every generation (from generation to generation).

Israel is commanded to “blot out the memory of Amalek.”

The spirit of Amalek operates as the antithesis of and greatest hindrance to the manifestation of the reign of God in the world.

‘When will the name of these [Amalekites] be blotted out?’ asks the Midrash, the ancient rabbinic commentary on the Book of Exodus. ‘When idolatry is eradicated together with its worshippers, and God is recognized throughtout the world as One, and His kingdom is established for all eternity.’ (Midrash, Mechilta on Exodus, chapter 17)

In Deuteronomy 25, God commands Israel: Remember what Amalek did to you, on the way, when you were leaving Egypt: that he happened upon you on the way, and he struck those of you who were hindmost, all the weaklings at your rear, when you were faint and exhausted, and he did not fear G’d. . . You shall wipe out the memory of Amalek from under the heavens - you shall not forget! (Deuteronomy 25:17-19)

Amalek appears in every generation. Not every evil character and not every enemy of Israel is Amalek. The Babylonians who destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem weren’t Amalek, for instance. Neither were the Romans who destroyed the Second Temple. But the Edomites who called out to the Babylonians to “destroy, destroy” (as the Bible’s Writings record) were Amalek; the Nazis were Amalek, and the Arabs and Muslims who live jealous of Israel, who pray to a Jew-hating Allah, who furiously envy Israel: they are infected with the spirit of Amalek.

Al-Qaeda and the vicious terrorists who carried out the attacks on America “and on the Jews” on 9/11 are Amalek. By attacking America they hurt Jews and by attacking Jews they hurt America, they think.

Go the First Covenant Website to the August, 2006 Covenant Connection, the First Covenant Foundation’s monthly newsletter, to learn more about Amalek.

MD

Hiram wants to get into Isaiah 53 and the true identity of G’d’s suffering servant. We had an article here on the subject, but, as I went through it, trying to correct a huge number of misformatted punctuation marks, I decided that I just didn’t like the article that much. It wasn’t that it was strident or offensive to Christians - though it did seem gratuitously offensive - but that it just didn’t do a good enough job of interpreting Isaiah chapter 53.

Isaiah 53 is very important. It scrolls across the beginning of the Mel Gibson movie, the Passion of the Christ, and much of the point of that movie is that prophecy - Isaiah - foretold that “a man” should suffer horribly for the sake of G’d before man. But anyone who reads Isaiah chapter 53 in context with Isaiah chapters 49-52 and 54 should immediately recognize that the “man” is Israel, the Jewish people as a whole. It’s the Jewish people, not a single Jewish man (that is, not just Jesus, or Yeshu ben Yosef, but the Children of Israel collectively) who represent G’d’s special instrument to bring Torah principles to the rest of humankind. What Isaiah is saying is that the Children of Israel will experience great suffering as they try to accomplish the special mission that G’d has given them.

Probably the strangest thing about the history of Isaiah 53 is the way that that it, through what we might call the Gibson intepretation of the chapter, has promoted Jewish suffering - that Isaiah’s acute prophecy has directly contributed to the woes of the Jewish people on earth, by making them out to be the bad guys, the bad people who cause the horrible suffering of their own fellow Jew, Jesus.

A good article on the subject of Isaiah 53 - on its meaning, on its history, on the Gibson version of it, etc. - would be very welcome here. In the meantime, if you want to see  the article that we used to have here, please contact Hiram, in care of this blog, and he can send it along to you himself. 

Our purpose here is to introduce people of every creed to the greatness of the Seven Universal Laws. The world needs to discover the depth and brilliance of the Noahide Laws. That just isn’t going to happen if, instead of straightly explaining these sublime principles, we try to take people’s precious religious ideas and feelings away from them. The First Covenant Foundation exists to give, not to take or diminish. We have this tremendous Biblical system to offer - the stories of Adam and Noah and Abraham and the patriarchs and Moses, etc., and true knowledge of right and wrong. We don’t do our job when, instead of adding to people’s knowledge, we insult, mock or diminish their reality.

Every spiritual institution, whether church, temple, synagogue, or mosque, should teach the Seven Universal Laws. Without eliminating existing religions (and true understanding of Isaiah 53 isn’t about to eliminate Christianity), these sublime moral principles, the Seven Universal Laws, will eventually bring the world’s people together in harmony and love.

 MD