Is there a blessing for the Czar?
Title:
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With Rabbi, Dr. Reuven Ben Avraham-Goossens, PhD.
Let us commence by
reading Shemot- Exodus 3:15 in Ivrit and English.
וַיֹּאמֶר עוֹד אֱלֹהִים אֶל-מֹשֶׁה, כֹּה-תֹאמַר אֶל-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵי אֲבֹתֵיכֶם אֱלֹהֵי אַבְרָהָם אֱלֹהֵי יִצְחָק וֵאלֹהֵי יַעֲקֹב, שְׁלָחַנִי אֲלֵיכֶם; זֶה-שְּׁמִי לְעֹלָם, וְזֶה זִכְרִי לְדֹר דֹּר
“And אֱלֹהִים (Elohim) said moreover
unto Moshe: ‘Thus shalt thou say unto B’nei Yisrael - the Children of Israel: יָהוָה
אֱלֹהֵי (the LORD of your fathers), the אֱלֹהֵי (Elohey) of Avraham,
the Elohey of Yitzchak - Isaac, and
the Elohey of Ya’aqov - Jacob, hath
sent me unto you; this is My Name forever, and this is My Memorial unto all
generations.” Shemot- Exodus 3:15. (JPS).
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Regarding Rabbi, Dr.
Reuven Ben Avraham-Goossens:
As the Rabbi always
encourages every one, “it is good living within our Jewish life style, for
within it there is a wonderful journey to be found, certainly it is one that is
worth living in. However, the Rabbi is now 80 year old, yet he has remained so
strong in his faith and he has never strayed from it. Regardless of his massive
health problems that has plagued him for the past twenty plus years, which has
seen him so close to death on two occasions in 2022 and 2024. Even his own
brilliant doctor and Rabbi’s Mishpacha never expected him to come home from hospital alive both
those times, as he was beyond critical. But were his strength lies is, no
matter how extremely ill he was, his faith and his constant prayer (when he was
conscious) whilst he was
in hospital, saw him come home, although he is still under medical and home
nursing care, and lives in a hospital bed, but he remarkably continues to write
Hebraic Studies!
Shmuel Elisha, Rabbi’s personal Assistant and Secretary since 1984.
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“Is There a Blessing for the Czar?”
“A Blessing on
your Head … Mazeltov, Mazeltov”
I will begin with popular question in
“Fiddler on the Roof”: “Is there a blessing for the Czar?”
I am sure that most of us have
seen the play or the movie and we will well recall, that
very question one of the townspeople asks the rabbi of ‘Anatevka’. And indeed it was a good question, right? Of course right! After all, we
have a blessing for almost everything, we
have a blessing for this, and a blessing for that. Thus surely we must have a
blessing for the Czar.
If so, what would it be?
The rabbi’s answer was, as we all
know, quite clever: “May Elohim bless and keep the Czar (short pause, with a
very rapid finish) far away from us!”
Of course the rabbi did not have to do much thinking to come up with this
reply, for he knew it quite well. In fact, everyone in Anatevka should
have known it of by heart:
But we should ask ourselves, “should
we pray for the welfare for the leaders of the country we live in?”
First: When and how did the notion of Hebrews praying for the emperor, king,
queen or ruler of the land wherein we happened to live, arise?
Second: What can we learn from this history which help us understand how and
why we pray for the officers or representatives or, collectively, the
government, of the land in which we live today, a country that will be so very
different from where we the Hebrews, or Israelites originally used to live?
First, where did it all begin? Where
did we first start praying for the rulers of the land where we happened to
live?
The answer is of course, is in the
Tanakh.
When Yisrael - Israel was
exiled from Judea to Babylon in 597 BCE, the prophet Yirmyahu – Jeremiah wrote
a letter to the deported Hebrews from Judea. As is clearly stated in Yirmyahu - Jeremiah 29:1;
“Now these are the words of the
letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem unto the residue
of the elders of the captivity, and to the priests, and to the prophets, and to
all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon”. (JPS).
And what does he say to them? Well in
brief he really says - “Settle down there! Take a Wife! Have
children! Multiply!” But here it is as he wrote it;
“Thus saith צְבָאוֹת-
יְהוָה(the LORD of hosts), the
אֱלֹהִים of Israel, unto all the captivity, whom I have caused to be carried away
captive from Jerusalem unto Babylon: Build ye houses, and dwell in them, and
plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them; take ye wives, and beget sons and
daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands,
that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply ye there, and be not
diminished. And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to
be carried away captive, and pray unto יְהוָה for it; for in the
peace thereof shall ye have peace” Yirmyahu - Jeremiah 29:4-7. (JPS).
And, in addition: “Seek the shalom”, peace, but it can also be translated as “the welfare” - “of the city to
which you have been exiled. And pray for its welfare, for in its welfare you
will find your own.”
There is a similar message in the
Apocryphal Book of Baruch ostensibly the work of Jeremiah’s scribe. He
writes: “Pray for the life of Nebuchadnezzar.”
This is shocking. “Nebuchadnezzar?” Let’s face it Nebuchadnezzar was the conqueror
of Jerusalem the very one who plundered our “Beit HaMikadash” the “Temple” and deported its inhabitants to Babylon! And yet,
Baruch is calling on us to pray for him and his son Belshazzar. Why? So that “their days on earth
may be like the days of heaven.” Really? The Book of Ezra says essentially the same thing:
“Pray for the life of the king
and of his sons” Ezira - Ezra 6:10 (JPS).
So, we have a tradition going back
millennia that, wherever we happen to live, we should pray for the welfare and
peace of the community, and of its rulers even if they have caused us
misfortune.
So the Tanakh and the texts of early
prayers makes it very’ clear not only we should pray,
but also why: because we’re strangers; and aliens and thus we lack rights. We
live at the sufferance of, or at the mercy of, the ruler or rulers of the land
where we happen to live. We employ our Elohim for the rulers to be good to us.
Hence, although we may literally be
praying asking for our Heavenly Father to be merciful to the rulers of our
land, the ultimate concern of our prayer is in reality for our own safety and
security.
By the Middle Ages,
in our prayer schedule arrived a widely adopted text to fulfil this object.
This text is known by its first words, “Ha-noten teshuah la-melachim” – “Who givest salvation unto kings” (Tehillim - Psalms 144:10 JPS). This prayer
soon became a prominent part of the regular public worship of us Hebrews on Shabbat in most parts of the world.
The prayer reads
as follows:
“May the One Who grants victory to kings and
dominion to princes, ... bless, protect,
guard and help, and exalt, magnify and uplift (the rulers of our land).
May the supreme King of kings mercifully grant them life and protect them, and
save them from every trouble, woe and injury, … and
may they succeed in all their endeavours. May the Supreme King of
Kings mercifully inspire them to deal kindly with us.” (emphasis added).
What kind of a prayer is this?
It really does not matter where we
live, for this generic prayer suggests that somehow we do not belong, and I
suppose many of us know it, whereas many have gotten very much used to be where
we are!
But like it or not, the day will come
when we will all, and I do mean every single Hebrew on earth will be heading
home to Eretz Yisrael! How do I know that, it says so in the Tanakh and I
believe every single Word of it!
But let me commence
without dispersion over thousands of years ago:
First, we need to understand that the
prophets, foretold so many things, and I have just covered our dispersion to
Babylon, but of course currently we are still living in a far larger dispersion
from the one when the Romans destroyed the second Temple, and we were scattered
because sadly’
“ … ye shall be plucked from off the land … And among these nations
shalt thou have no repose, and there shall be no rest for the sole of thy foot;
but יְהוָה (the LORD) shall give thee a trembling heart, and
failing of eyes, and languishing of soul” Devarim
- Deuteronomy 28:63 & 65 (JPS of the Torah).
It was estimated that at that time,
there were around 6 million Yidden in the land, and just over 5 million were
dispersed far and wide, whilst around just under 1 million remained somehow,
but they suffered greatly by the hands of the Romans fulfilling Moshe’s
prophecy:
“And ye shall be left few in number,
whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude; because thou didst not
hearken unto the voice of יְהוָה
אֱלֹהֶיךָ (the LORD thy
Elohim)” Devarim - Deuteronomy 28:62 (JPS).
However, Moshe also prophesied that
that the dispersion would be in his own words, to the four corners of the
earth”;
“And יְהוָה (the LORD) shall
scatter thee among all peoples, from the one end of the earth even unto the
other end of the earth” Devarim - Deuteronomy 28:64 (JPS).
Of course the great news is that
Eretz Yisrael is a Nation once more, and there are Israelites who
have gone home from hundred’s of countries living there now. But sadly Yisrael
is far from being a great Nation, like it will be one day in the future, for
the country today is very much a secular nation, to say the least, but it is
sadly not one that is dedicated to אֱלֹהִים (Elohim), blessed be
He!
The truth is that the great return as prophesied has not as yet occurred and let’s face it, myself and
most reading this are still living in a foreign land! But it will be Elohim
that will finally move us!
“For I will take you from among the
nations, and gather you out of all the countries, and will bring you into your
own land …Then the nations that are left round about you shall know that
I have builded the
ruined places … I יְהוָה have spoken it,
and I will do it” Yechezkel -
Ezekiel 36:24 & 36 (JPS).
Thus in the meantime we will have to
continue to pray for our leaders, regardless who they are.
In the meantime we will always
remember that “Fiddler on the Roof” is a wonderful memory one we will never
forget; Oy Tevye you’re
still singing?
“If I were a rich man
Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum
All day long, I'd biddy biddy bum … ”
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Thus dear readers, it
is important to remain on a solid path in our beloved faith, and uphold our 613
Mitzvoth’s from the Torah, and do not venture into some of the things that have
been added by countless rabbis of the past. The truth is this, if it is not in
the Torah, or anywhere in the whole of the Tanakh,
it cannot be a law, or a commandment. And that means no matter what they try to
call it, and who supposed to have remembered countless laws for so long after
the Wilderness experience, and suddenly some rabbi managed to get it so much
later. If you believe that, well that rabbi must have had a role in “Back to
the (Future), or mystically to the past?”
“Trust in יְהוָה with all thy heart, and
lean not upon thine own understanding. In
all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct thy paths.” Mishle Shlomo – Proverbs 3: 5-6. (JPS)
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down the page!
This site was originally created, for those who desired to return to our blessed and wonderful faith. Thus be wise and work on your faith and pray at least two or three times a day (if possible) and always seek our beloved אֱלֹהִים - Elohim’s guidance, for His love is always with us, especially when we seek Him, blessed be He! However this site has become very much a teaching site with hundreds of studies!
Remember what אֱלֹהִים - Elohim, blessed be
He, said the following via several of our prophets...
“Return unto Me, and I will return unto you, saith צְבָאוֹת- יְהוָה- the LORD of hosts”. Mal’a’chi - Malachi 3:7. (JPS).
And Remember ...
Enjoy your Sabbath Rest, Shabbat Shalom!
אֲנִי
יְהוָה
אֱלֹהֵיכֶם, בְּחֻקּוֹתַי
לֵכוּ; וְאֶת-מִשְׁפָּטַי
שִׁמְרוּ, וַעֲשׂוּ
אוֹתָם
וְאֶת-שַׁבְּתוֹתַי, קַדֵּשׁוּ; וְהָיוּ
לְאוֹת, בֵּינִי
וּבֵינֵיכֶם-לָדַעַת, כִּי
אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם
“I am אֱלֹהֵיכֶם יְהוָה - the LORD your Eloheichem; walk in My statutes,
and keep Mine ordinances, and do them; and hallow My Sabbaths, and they shall
be a sign between Me and you, that ye may know that I am אֱלֹהֵיכֶם יְהוָה
- the LORD your Eloheichem”.
Yechezkel - Ezekiel 20:19-20. (JPS).
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“Hebraic Studies” motto is as
follows;
“The More Torah, the
More Life”
For אֱלֹהִים יְהוָה - the LORD Elohim, Blessed be His Sanctified Name,
He
is the one who gave us our Life!”
May the שָׁלוֹם - Shalom = Peace
of צְבָאוֹת- יְהוָה= the LORD of hosts.
be with you, and please always uphold our blessed שַׁבָּת - Shabbat, as
well as the מוֹעֲדִים - Mo’a’dim - Feasts, and continue saying your
daily תְּפִלָּה - Tefeelah’s (Prayers) and regular בְּרָכָה - Be’ra’chah’s (blessings) before food and drinks,
etc!
שָׁלוֹם
עֲלֵיכֶם - Shalom Aleichem -
Peace be with you!
Rabbi, Dr. Reuven Ben Avraham-Goossens, PhD.
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