My Stamp Bible

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...