All posts tagged: Moses

How can you make God speak again? A 13-year-old student had the answer.

How can you make God speak again? A 13-year-old student had the answer.

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — One of my adult students recently asked me: “You know how God spoke to Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, Moses, Isaiah and the rest of the prophets? Why doesn’t God speak anymore? Why did God just, well, shut up?” It is a very good question. A quick answer: After Malachi, there was no more prophecy, and God stopped speaking. But the Talmud has a different answer. Even though prophecy had officially ended by that time, the voice of God could sometimes speak to people in a bat kol, or soft, quiet tone. Literally, though, it means the “daughter of a voice.” God could speak to us in the voice of a young girl.  Which brings me to a great Jewish theologian who also happens to be among the youngest. She only had one line of theology, but I have remembered it for almost a decade.  Some years ago in Hollywood, Florida, I was very close to the family of Rebecca Adler, now in her early 20s. She became bat mitzvah under my tutelage. …

Robert Moses and Isamu Noguchi Battled for Decades—About Playgrounds

Robert Moses and Isamu Noguchi Battled for Decades—About Playgrounds

Published by José Betancourt

In 1980, an Isamu Noguchi sculpture was abruptly removed from the lobby of the Bank of Tokyo in New York. Some customers had found the looming presence of the suspended 17-foot cube unsettling, and the bank’s leadership shared their unease; one report likened the folded aluminum structure to a guillotine. Once it was removed, Noguchi quipped to a friend, “We are out in the street where we belong.” His tongue-in-cheek remark reflected his conviction: that sculpture belonged not in bank lobbies and stuffy galleries, but out on city streets. Though widely acclaimed as a sculptor, Noguchi spent five decades working to pull sculpture off its proverbial pedestal, insisting that it be lived in—embedded in plazas, parks, and playgrounds as sites of civic interaction. He wanted his work to serve a social good, and to be enjoyed by the public rather than private collectors. An exhibition at The Noguchi Museum, aptly titled “Noguchi’s New York,” reads as an ode to this utopian vision. Related Articles Isamu Noguchi: Red Cube, 1968. Photo Miguel de Guzmán and Rocío …

God’s Dwelling Places: Moses’ Tabernacle – OpentheWord.org

God’s Dwelling Places: Moses’ Tabernacle – OpentheWord.org

Published by Sam Flores

Model of Moses Tabernacle in Timma Park, IsraelCredit: Ruk7, Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 By Dr. Steve Phifer Altars The Patriarchs built altars to honor the places where they met with God. These rocks and high places were meeting places not dwelling places. Abraham’s Mount Moriah was to become David’s Mount Zion, God’s dwelling place, but it was still only a mountain. Jacob may have called his stone pillow, Beth-el—house of God, but it was still just a rock. Moses would be the one to build God a house, a moveable one, but still a dwelling place for the Most High. A Tabernacle in the Wilderness It is strange that the God who is everywhere present would desire a dwelling place in the earth. In the Scriptures I see three dimensions of God’s presence: God’s omnipresence—His presence in all of creation (Acts 17:28), God’s Inner Presence—His presence in the hearts of His people (2 Cor 6:16), and God’s Manifest Presence—His presence within the praises of His people. (Psalm 22:3) The house that Moses built was for …

Six Works to Know by Grandma Moses

Six Works to Know by Grandma Moses

Published by Jenni Sidey

“Her primitive paintings captured the spirit and preserved the scene of a vanishing countryside.” So reads the epitaph of American artist Grandma Moses (aka Anna Mary Robertson Moses), whose lifetime remarkably stretched from the Civil War to the Kennedy administration. A self-taught artist who didn’t start painting until her late 70s, Moses created scenes of a bygone American era that were treasured by the public yet kept at a distance by the art establishment. In the 1,500-plus works that she painted, mostly between the late 1930s and her death in 1961, Moses fused her personal experiences with national history and created soothingly nostalgic views of America. She was dubbed “Grandma” by audiences that were quick to embrace her and found comfort in this matronly, salt-of-the-earth figure during times of great change, which included World War II, the Cold War, and the civil rights era. After a quiet life raising five children on a farm and running a successful butter-making business, Grandma Moses became a media sensation, her fame controversially surpassing that of other female artists …

Lennie James on Frank Moses, Season 5

Lennie James on Frank Moses, Season 5

Published by Daniella Wilson

[This story contains major spoilers from the Mayor of Kingstown season four finale.] The introduction of Detroit crime boss Frank Moses, played by Lennie James, in Mayor of Kingstown season four was different than any prior foes faced by fixer Mike McLusky (Jeremy Renner) in the show’s fictional Michigan town full of maximum-security prisons. Leading protagonist McLusky has taken on the Russian mob, Aryan Brotherhood gangs and Columbian drug dealers, but Frank Moses is a smoother and more calculating criminal. If the average person met Moses without knowing his line of work, one might assume he was a successful businessman from Detroit who has traveled the world; he can engage in conversation about the rarest of art, artifacts or vintage wine from around the globe, and chat about vinyl jazz recordings from greats like John Coltrane, Miles Davis or Charlie “Bird” Parker. Moses came to the town of Kingstown as a connoisseur of the finest things in life, yet he befriended and mentored one of the city’s most notorious gang leaders — Deverin “Bunny” Washington …

Rabbi Says That Moses’ Challenge Was His Prophetic Personality, Not His Stammering Tongue – OpentheWord.org

Rabbi Says That Moses’ Challenge Was His Prophetic Personality, Not His Stammering Tongue – OpentheWord.org

Published by Sam Flores

Moses confronting the Egyptian Pharaoh.Credit: by James Tissot Moses circa 1896-1902/Wikipedia/Public Domain “[Moses] understood that turning the Hebrews around, transforming them from embittered and small-minded slaves into an inspired nation committed to becoming a holy people and a kingship of priest/teachers would require nurturing, small talk, listening to paltry concerns and petty complaints until—step by step—he would succeed in convincing them, elevating them until they became a ‘God enthused’ nation.” By Teresa Neumann    (Israel)—Shlomo Riskin, chief rabbi of Efrat and founder and chancellor Ohr Torah Stone Colleges and Graduate Programs, has published a commentary in The Jerusalem Post addressing the issue of Moses’ speech “impediment” and why he was not allowed to enter the Land of Israel before he died. Quoting Deuteronomy 3:26, “But the land was angry with me because of you and would not hearken to me…” Riskin asks, “Why does Moses blame the Israelites, saying ‘”because of you’?’ Was it not because Moses struck the rock rather than speaking to it? (Numbers 20:12).” “I believe,” says Riskin, “that a deeper insight …

Researcher States Ancient Inscription Discovered in Egypt Refers to Moses – OpentheWord.org

Researcher States Ancient Inscription Discovered in Egypt Refers to Moses – OpentheWord.org

Published by Sam Flores

Moses confronting the Egyptian Pharaoh.By James Tissot circa 1896-1902/Wikipedia/Public Domain A researcher recently stated that an Egyptian inscription carved into stone at Serabit el-Khadim located on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula refers to Moses, the Daily Mail reports. It was part of over two dozen inscriptions found at the site of an ancient Egyptian mine in the 1990s. After studying the inscription, Michael Bar-Ron concluded that it reads in ancient Hebrew ‘zot m’Moshe,’ which translated means ‘This is from Moses.’  It appears that it was etched into the stone before the Hebrews actual exodus out of Egypt, but while Moses was confronting pharaoh about the Hebrew’s release from Egypt. It also indicates that Moses had become a folk hero among the down trodden Hebrews. “I took a very critical view towards finding the name ‘Moses’ or anything that could sound sensationalist,” Bar-Ron added. “In fact, the only way to do serious work is to try not to find elements that seem ‘Biblical,’ but to struggle to find alternative solutions that are at least as likely.” Bar-Ron studied …