My Stamp Bible

As kids, we were introduced by my maternal grandfather, who we called Sabba Sugar, to very faraway places that we will never visit. In our young mind, we thought he was making up places like Honolulu and Timbuktu! We actually named the Synagogue (little Shteebel, really; that he took us to, on those few visits to Jerusalem, before moving to Be'er Sheba) of the Sokhatchov Hassidim: "Timbuktu", as we couldn't follow or understand the prayers because of their funny accent and speed! I am not sure what the official language of Mali is, but we really weren't aware of its actual existence! And, Rabbi Google wasn't around 40+ years ago! There are quite a few times that the Bible mentions a faraway place; however, as we are in the days leading up to Tish'ah B'Av  –  the day our Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed  –  I chose two verses from Deuteronomy & Joshua. In Chapter 29 of Deuteronomy, Moses describes what will happen if the Jewish People break the ...

Today is a Snow Day in Fredericton, and a good friend from the Board of Education wished me a happy & safe one. This gave me the idea to write about a snow day in the Bible. The very first Postage Stamp that depicts snow was issued in 1931 by Newfoundland, which was not yet part of Canada, so they had their very own stamps. As far as I know, there is only One incident/instance that the Bible mentions the phrase Snow Day. To clarify, the reason I didn't say "time", is because the same exact wording appears in Two verses: II Samuel 23:20 and I Chronicles 11:22: "On this snow(y) day – Benaiah son of Jehoiada (AKA Yehoyada, as there is no letter J in Biblical Hebrew) killed a lion"! Our Sages have different explanations for: why it is significant that it was snowing that day? The simplest explanation is that it has nothing to do with the lion, but it was such a storm that it was remembered by many people for many years and maybe even decades. Any senior citizen ...

Over the past (more than) 550 years, since the printing type-set (AKA Movable Type) method was used to produce and print books, most notably the Guttenberg Bible – printing books in Hebrew was a great desire of Jewish Authors! Until 447 years ago – there was no such ability in the Holy Land. However, on the 25th of Cheshvan 1577 (Yesterday's Hebrew Date)  – a book named Koheleth Ya'akov (commentary & exposition) on the Book of Ecclesiastics, was printed in Safed (AKA TZFAT). The State of Israel decided to commemorate the 400th Anniversary of this event on a stamp in 1977. There are Two reasons I am mentioning this special event in connection to my Stamp Bible (besides the fact that it happened yesterday, 447 years ago). First: it is a commentary on the Book of Ecclesiastics, written by Rabbi Moshe ben Mordechai Galanti, who is not commemorated on any other stamp in my "Rabbi" themed collection! And, Second, the press (or the Author, we will never know) continued a...

This coming Sabbath, we will read in the Torah (Deuteronomy 29:23) a very harsh description of what will happen in the Promised Land, if the Jewish People do not keep the Covenant they made/signed with G-d in the Plains of Moab (AKA the Trans-Jordan, or, the East Bank of the Jordan River). Moses tells them that the "whole land will be (or, " is " in this translation which I don't understand) brimstone, salt and burning... like the overthrow of Sodom & Gomorrah..." Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld mentioned in our Yeshivah's Rashi class that a modern-day example of such an event is what took place 38 years ago (April 26 th , 1986) in Chernobyl (then USSR, now in the Ukraine), when there was a leak/explosion in nuclear reactor #4. Until now, according to experts, nothing that grows in the Exclusion Zone (10-20 Miles Radius) is safe for human consumption! You all know that my first love (in collecting) was for stamps from Israel, and I have about 75% of the approxim...

This coming Sabbath, we will read what most people refer to as "the curses" (Deuteronomy 28:15-69). As far as I understand, these were not as much for the individual, as they were for the Jewish Nation as a whole! As we were exiled and consequently spread all across the world, it was difficult for our people to understand if this could happen in any of the countries they ended up in, and many of our Rabbis & Sages have interpreted the Torah to conclude that the curses of Leviticus (26:14-43) became the reality during the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem (circa 550 BCE); and the curses in Deuteronomy came true during the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE). As a person who served in the IDF, I was always fascinated by the different symbols army units use for their Insignia, even as a teenager, and I discovered that the Roman forces in Jerusalem had an eagle on their banners, flags and other forms of the insignia. Nazi Germany issued these stamps in January...

 This coming Sabbath, the Jewish People read the Torah Portion of Sh'lach (Numbers 13:1–15:41). The opening topic, which continues well into the  14 th  chapter of Numbers, deals with the story of the 12 men, who Moses sent to tour the Land of Canaan. He asked them to see the land which was promised to our Forefathers: Abraham, Isaac & Jacob, and report back to him. When they came back, they were carrying a cluster of grapes that was so big, that they needed Two (at least) strong, grown men, to hold it on a staff. The State of Israel chose this image to represent the Ministry of Tourism on a stamp from 1954, and it hasn't changed since! The description in the SHOVAL (tab below the stamp) is one of two ways that the men praised the land. First, they said that it is "a land which flows with milk & honey" (Numbers 14:8; first mentioned in Exodus 3:8; and, there are 13! other times this phrase is found in the Torah). The group of 10 (of 12) men actually said this ...