It is very important, in my humble opinion, to recognize and appreciate the people & organizations who "have our back"! Acknowledging these people is something the Jewish People have been doing, ever since the times of our Forefather Abraham. When he was commanded to circumcise himself and the men in his household, the Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 42:8) teaches us, based on the words "the members of the Covenant (or "allies") of Abraham" (Genesis 14:13) – that they advised him to follow through with it and to circumcise. Even though they, themselves, were uncircumcised – they supported him in this extremely difficult decision!
So, the stamp and the verse that I am showing here – was issued by the State of Israel in 2022 to acknowledge "Christians who stand for Israel". At the bottom of the stamp, called a SHOVAL in Hebrew, and a "collectible tab" in English, the quote is from G-d's very first (scriptural) conversation with Abraham: "I will bless those who bless you" (Genesis 12:3)
By the way, depends on the size of the printed stamps sheet, there is always collectible tabs for the stamps of Israel; so, for example, if there are 15 or 25 stamps per sheet, only the bottom 5 will have this added SHOVAL. I find that so many stamps that show very interesting ideas, places or people are even more enriched by the added verse or quote that appear in this added tab.
It is very intriguing to me that the designer of this stamps chose to reverse the order of the words in the Hebrew quote, especially since there are no punctuation marks in the Torah Scroll, neither are there vowels to help us pronounce the words properly! In short, she wrote "those who bless you – I shall bless". Maybe I will meet her one day and ask her about this...
One final thought. Our Sages (Deuteronomy Rabbah 5:15) understand the verse in Deuteronomy (23:8) that we must not hate (or, loathe) the Egyptians "since we sojourned in their land" – that we have to appreciate their hospitality and seek to make peace with them, even though they oppressed us for 86 years out of the 210 that we lived there as a people. I guess that if we applied this idea to our generation – every country that the Jewish people live in, we should pray for the welfare of that government, even if they are "bad for the Jews"!
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