29/30 Acharei-Kedoshim: Day 4 (Wednesday) | Gleanings for the Converts

5 Iyar 5786 AM | 1 AVE.

Blessed are You, LORD our God, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us by Your Spirit and invited the nations to share in the richness of Your Word. We thank You for the people and state of Israel, including the Messiah, our First Fruits, through whom the harvest of life has begun.

Today is the eighteenth day of the Omer according to the minority Sadducean and Essene counts, which is 2 weeks and 4 days.

May the Spirit of Truth prepare my heart for the revelation of the 50th day.

7:08 AM EDT in Albany. 

Jonathan Writes:

The reading for this morning is Leviticus 18:22-19:14.

This is the link to the Daily Chumash with Rashi at Chabad.

The Daily Wisdom from the Lubavitcher Rebbe is titled "What It Means to Be Holy." 

I am especially appreciating Leviticus 19:10 this morning, in its Chabad translation:

"You must not glean the young grapes of your vineyard. Nor may you collect the fallen individual grapes of your vineyard. You must leave them for the poor and the convert; I am God, your God."  

 

I feel very much like the poor one and the convert who is blessed to eat the grapes that fall from the master's vines, together with the crumbs that fall from the master's table. The Torah is arguably the oldest living written law code on Earth. It was not until quite a bit later that Saint Bede and King Alfred gave my English forefathers an Ecclesiastical History of the English People and the Doom Book.

Now we're approaching our 250th here in America: 

Ambassador Huckabee's blessings for Yom Haatzmaut

Well said and thank you for your service, Ambassador Huckabee.

Chag Ha'atzmaut Sameach!

P.S. As far as the next step with Iran is concerned, perhaps President Trump should invite Prime Minister Netanyahu to address Congress in the days remaining before a formal war vote is required, i.e., by May 1, 2026. We are the United States of America, not the Islamic Republic of Iran. The people of the United States didn't elect a Supreme Leader. We genuinely believe in Constitutional checks and balances. We've given President Trump plenty of leash to run with, but ultimately Congress needs to authorize a prolonged military campaign. We owe it to ourselves and our brothers and sisters in Vietnam to remember the commitment we made in the War Powers Resolution of 1973. 

There are two key steps Congress could take to improve US and world nuclear security before May 1: ratify the CTBT and authorize President Trump to use prolonged military force against Iran, if necessary. These two balanced steps will secure Trump's Republican nuclear leadership legacy for generations and will galvanize the international community to keep the collective defensive architecture of the NPT from completely falling apart in a horizontal proliferation tsunami. The world simply cannot afford a new nuclear arms race and the inevitable catastrophe that will follow. We need a moonshot partnership program to scale up civilian SMR and fusion nuclear technology, not a nightmare program to destroy the world in a fission holocaust.