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The Book of Haggai

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Background of Haggai Time: 520BCE (Persian Period) Place: Yehud Kings:  None. Ruled by High Priest + Governor   Political Backdrop: ·        We’re back from exile! Step 1: Assyrians are the Big Bad: Northern Kingdom falls (722BCE) Step 2: Babylonians take over as the Big Bad: Southern Kingdom goes into exile (586BCE)             Exile period… 539BCE: Neo-Babylonian Empire falls to Cyrus the Great (Perisan Empire) Step 3: The Persian Empire sends us home! (538BCE) Primary Themes of Haggai: ·        The necessity to rebuild the Temple! ·        ‘On that day’ no longer refers to returning from exile   ·        Haggai speaks to the leadership – more like the historical prophets than the literary prophets! Structure of Haggai ...
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The View From the Ziggurat - Parashat T'rumah

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The View From the Ziggurat           Imagine that we’re in a Temple.            Sorry, that wasn’t clear. We’re not in that Temple. Take your mind away from Jerusalem and picture, instead, a temple in ancient Mesopotamia. In this part of the world, a temple might be found perched atop a ziggurat - or, in Akkadian, ziqquratum , meaning “to build high”. You can guess from the name that it’s a high place. To get into the temple structure, we need to ascend an incredible staircase. The temple is made of layers and sections, and there are places we mere peasants cannot go. While not all ancient holy spaces were completely identical in all time periods, common features would appear in temple design among Israel's neighbours: courtyards outside, likely for the public; basins of water; altars for animal sacrifice; a structure of multiple layers, and - most importantly of all - a holy chamber that housed the god. You and I cannot e...
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Miriam, Moses, and the Mumpsimus

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  Mosaic from the Abbey Church of the Dormition in Jerusalem           There is a story about a mistake made in Latin, in a Catholic mass, in the 16th Century. The story is of a priest who, when reciting the mass in Latin for his congregation, got into the bad habit of saying the word mumpsimus instead of sumpsimus . Sumpsimus means “we have taken”. Mumpsimus, on the other hand, doesn’t mean anything at all. Despite being corrected, so goes the story, the priest stubbornly stuck to his mistake. His masses were always conducted with the nonsense word mumpsimus , and he could not be talked out of it.  Now mumpsimus does have a meaning. It means someone who obstinately sticks to their opinion even after being shown that they are wrong.  It is a cute story in part because, at least to most of us, it doesn’t really matter. We’re people who pray in a language which isn’t our mother tongue. Even for native Hebrew speakers, the language of prayer...
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