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'Israel is only with the conquered land' in one page is being sent to you for your kind reading and evaluation. Please see the attachment.

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Why did the children of Israel ask to “borrow” gold, silver and jewels of the Egyptians knowing they would not be paying it back?

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Shalom, if I may ask another question regarding Jacob. It is said that he dwelled in tents. What does this mean exactly? I was told that it meant he studied the Torah. Is this true?   Thank you.  

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Dear friends, I am a Christian pastor (not evangelical or fundamentalist!) and I have a question about Shabbat. I pray you will have patience with my question if it is poorly worded, especially if in any way I give offense. Stories about Jesus tell of him performing forbidden deeds on the Sabbath. (Picking grain, healing a man with a withered hand) The Christian scriptures (in Mark 2 and 3) give no indication that life was being threatened in either case. And, in both cases, Jesus and his followers were criticized by the Pharisees. (I’ll get to my question) I believe that the Pharisees were quite right in their criticism. Am I right in believing that Shabbat is core to the Jewish faith of the day? What I mean is not just that it was ‘important,’ but that in some ways it was a non-negotiable correlate for the shalom that G-d intends for all of creation……that the tob me’od of Creation offers a picture of life in all of its fullness, i.e., Shalom. So, when you start picking away at Shabbat - by doing the kinds of things Jesus and his friends were doing - you are doing far more than picking away at little rules. You are, in fact, denying that G-d’s design for creation is worthy; by abrogating Shabbat you are second-guessing the hesedh that is G-d’s orientation toward his people, and even the whole cosmos. It’s like a stack of Jenga sticks, it seems to me: pull one out and the whole thing could collapse: the “thing” being a complete cosmology of divine delight in creation. Breaking Sabbath aligns one with a vision of a godless world. It’s just that serious…..and hence the Pharisees were correct. Is that a more-or-less accurate depiction of the seriousness of Sabbath and its observance . . . . . That “Sabbath” and “Shalom” are very much in the same family…..not the same, but with a very substantial overlap? Of course, as a mainline Christian I look to an eighth day Sabbath, along with associations of ‘new creation’ and even ‘new Adam’ (both are phrases used by the apostle Paul), but that’s really another story. I just wonder whether I am accurately characterizing an ancient, and perhaps modern, sense of Shabbat/Shalom. I thank you for your patience and kindness in considering my question.

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What ever happened to the 48 Levite cities? Do they still exist today, and if so, do they still have the same names? Does any of the architecture from them still exist?

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I am trying to create a "profile" of the mindset of the Jewish people during their captivity in Egypt up to and including the appearance of Moses. Holy Scripture says that they prayed to God for deliverance from bondage, so they must have thought that God could deliver them in some way. But what did the Jews believe about God then, and what could He do? Did they only know Him through the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) and Joseph? Did the Hebrews only know their stories and how God interacted with them, or was there an oral tradition passed down to a few, some, or all the people regarding the creation, flood, fall of humanity, etc?

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K’vod HaRav, Isn’t there a statement by חז״ל to the effect that had the non-Jewish world known at the time when the Romans were laying siege to Yerushalaim what they stood to lose if Yerushalaim was destroyed, they all would have come to defend it?