Weekly Bracha 46

Fine Messiah-loving peoples of the interwebs, welcome! Enjoy the weekly bracha, summarizing this past week (or two!) in the Messianic blogosphere. Only the important stuff. Plus relevant news items from the Jewish and Christian worlds.

• The Scoop About Paganism – Messianic organization First Fruits of Zion has published materials that are already causing a stir: In What About Paganism?, Toby Janicki attempts to sort through the crazy “paganoia” and junk scholarship to get to the bottom of holidays like Christmas and Easter, and in doing so, refutes Easter’s links to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. 40 comments on this blog, many more on their Facebook page. This is bound to shake some things up.
• WikiLeaks and Israel – Love ‘em or hate ‘em, WikiLeaks’ public dump of thousands of classified documents has some interesting world intelligence on Israel. Maoz Israel summarizes.
• New Messianic music album – A friend of mine, Troy Mitchell, has published his first Messianic album, Yoke of the King. Check it out! As a Messianic music lover, it’s one of the best albums I’ve heard in years.
• Amish come to Israel, ask for forgiveness – Repenting from their long history of anti-Semitism and Replacement Theology, the Amish said publicly,
  

  God reminded me that this is not who He is. We no longer want to reject you or look at you as not being God’s people. You were God’s people long before we were.

• Intermarriage among Messianics – blogger James Pyles and I have a series of posts on Jew-gentile intermarriage:
  • Unequal Yoke
  • Sweet Forbiddent Jew-Gentile Lovin'
  • But Will the Children be Jewish?
• Donate money to supply families devastated by Israel fires – The Messianic Jewish Alliance of America is supplying furniture and supplies to Israeli families devastated by the recent Israeli fires. Can you spare a few dollars to donate? 
• All That The Lord Hath Spoken – James on Torah observance for gentiles, with comments getting into the Didache, the state of Messianic Judaism, and more.