My Stamp Bible

One of the more difficult commandments in the Torah for me to fully understand, is the Law of an Israelite soldier who falls in love? with a girl he finds among those taken captive in war. As a former soldier in the IDF, it was made very clear to us that we are to have no interaction whatsoever with the civilian population in Lebanon & Syria when I was there on guard, protecting the Northern border of Israel. In fact, one of the more well-known protest movies at the time: SHTAY ETZBA'OT MITZIDON (literally, 2 fingers on the map from Sidon)  – showed one of the soldiers falling in love with a Lebanese girl, and how detrimental it was to his unit from an ethical & security points of view!  So, G-d commands us in Deuteronomy 21:11-14 that if we fall in love with a girl after we (most likely) killed her father & brothers   –  she must become unpretty for a month, in which she will mourn for her family. Of the following stamps, all of mourning women, it is har...

 One of my many friends sent me a box full of stamps, most still on paper, so I am enjoying removing the paper by soaking them, drying them and adding them to my different collections.  The Hawk is mentioned many times in the Bible, but the one that touches me the most is Job 39:26, as it is an important part of G-d's response to Job. Basically, G-d tells Job that he doesn't know anything about how the Creator runs the world, and is given many proofs of this sad fact. One of these is the flight of the Hawk: "does the hawk take flight by your wisdom and spread its wings toward the South?" In this passage, G-d is speaking to Job and challenging his understanding of the natural world. By using the hawk as an example, G-d emphasizes the significance of Creation, and reminds Job that it is beyond human comprehension. The hawk taking flight is a metaphor for Divine wisdom & guidance, illustrating that it is G-d ho directs & empowers His creatures! On a totally ...

 So, it's been a while since I posted last. I discovered, through my specific interest of Maps on Stamps, that Syria has more maps of Israel depicted on their stamps, than any other country in the world, including Israel !!! So, a friend from the UAE sent me stamps from Syria from 2019 & 2023, showing the Map of Israel, and in addition, what a surprise!, was a stamp that celebrates UNESCO International Year of Indigenous Languages. Syria decided that their language will be Aramaic, since there are small groups/communities who still speak Aramaic as their daily language. Even I, and thousands of others who study the Daf Yomi (a blot of Talmud a day)  – can't speak Aramaic as a colloquial language!!! As far as I know, Syria is the only country that has a stamp showing the Aramaic language. In a very tense time for the people in Judea, Ravshake (or Rabshakeh), acting as a messenger (or emissary) from the King of Aram, the original country where Aramaic was founded as a l...

 When I was Nine Months old, there was a plane crash en-route from Uruguay to Chile, later to be known as the  Andes flight disaster  ( Tragedia de los Andes ) and the  Miracle of the Andes  ( Milagro de los Andes ). Since I was so young at the time, how did I learn about it? Well, you might say: "from his stamp collection"; unfortunately, this is not the correct answer... When I was studying the Kosher Dietary Laws, as part of my training to become a Rabbi, one of our Rabbis asked the following (horrible & terrifying) question: "if you were on a plane that crashed, and in order to survive you had to choose between the non-Kosher food in the flight's kitchen, or the dead people - which do you choose"?! The reason for this question is that even though there is a "prime directive" (as I call it) to live in the Commandments; you must choose (if possible) the lesser prohibition. For example, if you have a choice between pork and a chicken that was kill...

My newest addition to the Stamp Bible is a FDC from Israel showing a scene from the Opera Nabucco by Verdi that was finally decoded for me by one of my best friends! Nabucco is, apparently, the Italian pronunciation of Nebuchadnezzar Israel issued this stamp commemorating Verdi’s 200 th birthday, and it depicts Abigail on a chariot pulled by a beautiful white horse! The other addition is a stamp issued by Iran showing a wall-mosaic of a Persian Archer from the era of Cyrus the Great.

 One of my friends sent me a stamp from UAR (United Arab Republic) - a unity of Syria and Egypt that was established in the late '50s. The stamp depicted an onion, and that reminded me of a verse in the Book of Numbers that says that the Hebrews "complained... we remember the fish which we ate freely in Egypt... the onions and the garlic" (Numbers 11:1-5 ESV). So, I love collecting stamps, and I love studying the Bible - why can't I combine those Two loves into One?! So, I got my self an Interleaved Bible Journal Edition, and I am going to create my own Bible depicting stamps that are related (sometimes indirectly) to the verses on each page! I know that it will never be complete - there are over 17,000 stamps showing horses, and not that many mentions in the Scripture, but I want you, the readers, to suggest matches between stamps and verses.  What I have so far is a few stamps from Egypt with those verses in mind, a stamp from Barbados (1987) showing the Ten Command...