Dibattito Giudaismo e Cristianesimo (The debate with Italian subtitles)

Good evening to everyone. Welcome again to Beit Gabriel. We have a special event tonight. And as I spoke to the guests that we have here tonight, we just met a few minutes before the lecture and tried to plan the way we will do the debate, or the argument I should say, about searching for the truth, proving the truth. And I explained them that my goal here tonight is that I would like to ask him a few questions about some of the things that Christianity presents in the last 2,000 years, and they themselves do it with their activities. And I would like first the guest, his name is Danny, right? Danny? Danny, I would like him to first present himself because we do not know that much about him. So we'll give him a few moments to explain who he is and then I'll take it from there.

Okay, thank you, Yosef. It's really a pleasure to be here tonight and to have this opportunity to speak in front of you. And I only wish that our churches would have this type of attendance in the middle of the week. I mean, that's a testimony to the fact that, that you all are concerned about truth, and I think that's great. And I think that's something that we can share, that we are concerned about truth. We're not just concerned about how we feel when we wake up in the morning. You know, we care about if there is a God and who this God is and how we can know who this God is. So I just applaud you that you are concerned about these things and that you're wanting to hear the the questions and answers that we both have. I teach at a school in Midtown Manhattan called the New York School of the Bible. I'm not a pastor, but I've been a seeker after truth for many years, and that truth led me to believe in Jesus Christ. Sometimes he's called Yeshua HaMashiach, so as not to be offensive to Jewish ears. I was searching for truth for many years, and it wasn't until I became a farmer and I had a chainsaw injury. We lived way at the end of a dead-end road. The chainsaw bucked back and hit me in the head, and I lifted my hands up to see if I still had a skull left. When I lifted my hands up, I saw that my wrist was half cut off and the blood was just gushing out. Well, to leave out a lot of details, I was laying in a pool of blood and suddenly I realized I wasn't alone. I knew as clearly as I know that you're sitting here, I knew that, that God was there. And I was filled with such a love and such a joy and such a peace. I knew that what was most important for me at that point was to find out who this God is. And I was always the biggest skeptic in the world, and I always needed proof. And for me to believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross and he died for me was something I just couldn't take on faith. To me, the idea of faith was just unacceptable. My understanding of faith was either you go with faith or you go with reason, and I wasn't about to go with faith. So it took me a long time of searching before I became convinced that the one with whom I had had that encounter was in fact the Messiah. Thank you.

Okay, thank you very much. I would like to start with a short introduction before I start with the questions that I have. As some of us know, and those who don't know will find out now, we have three main religions today in the world. It's Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The chronological order is that the Torah was given to the Jewish nation 3,318 years ago in Mount Sinai, in front of millions of Jews that accepted the Torah from God. Christianity is approximately 2,000 years old. The story of Jesus, as our friend just mentioned to us is 2,000 years old, and the New Testament is approximately a little bit after, close to 2,000 years old, and Islam is just less than 1,400 years old. Today in the world, after Judaism was given in public in front of millions of people, we have more than 80,000 religions and cults started after Judaism were founded. Just in United States alone, you have more than 10,000 religions in United States alone and cults. Of course, when a normal human being is seeking for the truth, he doesn't have time in 70, 80 years that he lives here to search every cult that starts every Monday and Thursday, right? So obviously, we tonight will try to answer and to ask some of the questions that Christians prove and try to prove to Jews. I would like to debate it. But before I start, I would like to set some rules. And my friend will correct me if anything I say disagree. He has the permission to stop me right there and to correct based on his opinion and understanding at any time. But we are not interested in believing. We are interested in knowing. Comes the Torah The Torah never referred to the Jew to become a believer. Yes, it's mentioned in some places that you have to believe in God, of course. But for those of you who came to the lecture that I gave here in the past few years, I have all the sources. If anybody has questions, I will give you the sources. The Torah referred to us and gave us an obligation to know. You should know I'm your God. You should know I am the master, there is no other. You should know there was no one before me and there will never be one other than me. Your eyes saw that I got you out of Egypt and many, many other examples. The way of the arguments today is only based on scientific proof. Anything that me or my friend here will not be able to prove, it's worthless. Because to tell stories, I can start telling you stories from now until I'll be 70 years old. The question, do you want to believe me? It's your choice. We don't want to waste time on things that are open to questions. Only scientific valid proof that leaves no doubt. Like in math, 2 2 4, you prove it, there's no arguments. What you believe in has a big problem. In science, believing means not knowing. A scientist says, I believe that this medicine will help, nobody will take him serious. But if he says, we know after thousands of times that we checked and we saw the medicine always worked, then it's approved. The difference between knowing and believing, it's a huge difference. We should know a very important part in history. None of the two religions, as I mentioned, Christianity and Islam, ever denied the truth of Judaism. Exactly the opposite. Christians, a very large portion of their religion, which they call our Torah, the Old Testament, none of them ever in history, for many arguments that were done in the past between rabbis and priests in the last 1,000 years, none of them ever came to claim that the Jews never got the Torah in Mount Sinai because They adopted the Torah and they believe in the Torah and they just call it the Old Testament because they claim that they have the New Testament, which was given to them later after the Bible was completed. For those who do not know, the Bible has 24 books until the Book of Kohelet. And right after the Bible, they claim there was another prophet. His name is Jesus. And he had— and from that moment on, they have what they call the Evangelists, the Evangelion. Which are a combination of 4 books, which is— well, you're going to hear soon, but they are basically claim that God gave another part. So they are now, according to their belief, we have the Old Testament and the New Testament. Everybody understand when a writer gives a book, part A, and the writer give book part B, and it's the same writer, the same God that gave the book, and they are not denying the identity of this God, right? He gave that book. That means part A and part B has to match. It cannot be that we will find in part B things that completely the opposite of part A. Chronological order which is different, names of people that were changed for whatever reason. Numbers that do not match the Old Testament, and so forth and so on, which I'm going to give some of these examples. According to common sense, once a person comes into a room, we do not know who he is, and he brings a book for the first time, do not know him. We have to give him the benefits of the doubt that he has something to tell us, and he claims that he got a book from God. It's hard for us to know because this is a story of one person, 50/50. But there is one way to know for sure that this book is not from God. All you need to do is find one mistake in the book. If you are going to find one human error in the book, even if some of the book was given by a divine origin, Once you have one human error that cannot be answered, that's the end of that book. Right there. Why? How can I rely on the rest of the book when it got mixed with human error? Nevertheless, if almost in every chapter of the book you're going to find human error, which leaves no doubt that this book can never be given by the creator of the world. And it's exactly the opposite. People like me and you with certain goals in life set and falsify books and claim they receive it from a divine origin. You have to be very clever, perhaps a genius, to be able to write a book to follow the Torah, the Old Testament, and not to make human error. Because it's almost impossible to do it. You need to have large knowledge in Judaism. You have to know the Bible, which is, as I say, 24 books. And I'm going to quote a lot of the things that I'm going to say. It's from the New Testament. I marked myself, some of my notes are here, and I would like to ask Danny those questions. I told him before, I did not expect him to be able to answer all the questions. If he does, very well. And if not, we're not running anywhere. We're here. He knows our address. If he has the answers, he can come back. Some of these questions I asked priests in the past, and I'm waiting for many years for them to come back. So maybe he will have more success from those. But this is what took place in the last few years. Now I would like to start with One quote from the New Testament which gives us a very serious question. In the book of Matthew chapter 5, I'm quoting word by word from what Jesus himself told his students. Do not think I came to contradict the Torah and the prophets. I did not come to contradict. I came to fulfill. If heaven and earth will be canceled, even one letter from the Torah will not be erased. Even one little yud. Yud is the smallest letter in Hebrew. One more comment I would like to make right here is that you know the original way, the original text of the Torah, it's the holy language, the Hebrew. No one denies it. The Torah was given in Hebrew language and later on it was translated to 70 different languages, including Greek and many other languages. 500 years ago there was a Christian theologian, Martin Luther, the famous Martin Luther, not Martin Luther King, he called after him, he named after him, and he translated— he's actually the beginning of the Protestants— and he translated the Bible to German. And he apologized in his introduction, and this is what he wrote: It's impossible to translate from the holy language to foreign languages. All the holy literature belongs only to the holy language. Obviously he did the best he can. If you take 100 people to translate one chapter from the Hebrew Torah, there will be differences in the words. Why? Because some names in foreign languages, it can be translated in different ways. So we have to stick to the original way. But I'm going back to what I started. In the book of Matthew chapter 5, it says, do not think I came to contradict the Torah and the prophets. I did not come to contradict. I came to fulfill. If heaven and earth will be canceled, not one letter from the Torah will be canceled. Not even one yud. If one person will erase one letter from the Torah and will come to teach that to others, will be cursed in the kingdom of heaven. This is Matthew chapter 5. And my question to Danny is as follows: To the best of my knowledge, I do not know Christian people today that I observe, observe the Sabbath. I don't know Christians that keep kosher like we do. Maybe there is, but I do not know. I do not know Christians that put a phyllo in. It's definitely not a part of everyday religion for them. So my question to you is like this: based on your introduction, you called Yeshua from Nazareth, you called him the Messiah. Later, I know that you're going to describe him as the Son of God. And the question that I have to you is like this: if the main figure in Christianity, which everything is around him, which you call him the Messiah, if he wrote in the book which you quote, it's your source, not mine. It's the New Testament, which we the Jews never accepted as the truth. We contradict that book. We only believe in the Torah. We never believed and we will never believe in the New Testament. The reason is you're going to understand in the next hour that we have why. But my question to you so far, and that's the first question for tonight, please explain me if the book of Matthew comes and brings a quote that this is the word of of Jesus to his students, how is it possible that close to 1.5 billion people today do not listen to their Messiah, to their hero?

Thank you for that question. It's a very good question, and I appreciate the fact that you're asking an important question, you know, not just a question that deals with the translation of a word. And I, I just want to reaffirm what, uh, Joseph has been saying, that, uh, there are many areas of agreement between his position and the position which I'm going to present, which I believe is the Christian position. And so several of the things that Joseph said is it's about knowing and not simply believing. In fact, it's a misunderstanding of what the New Testament says. Yes, the New Testament says believe. But Jesus says, if you look at what believe means within that context, Jesus says, I do many miracles so that you might believe. Now, what that actually means in context is, here's the evidence, and I'm giving you this evidence that you might know who I am. So we're both agreeing about the, the significance of evidence. That's very important. And we also both agree that the— if the New Testament can even begin to be considered as the Word of God, it must fit intimately with the Old Testament. If it doesn't fit intimately with the Old Testament, something is the matter. So that brings us to the question, Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount, and what Jesus was teaching. And let me, let me read you the entirety of that quote. And I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna read off the whole Sermon on the Mount, but Notice in verse 17 what Jesus says, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them." Rabbi Yosef was saying, "Well, how is it that Christians do not follow the Law of Moses and they don't put on tefillin?" Well, Jesus said that he didn't come to abolish it, The law couldn't be set aside. We know that clearly from Tanakh itself. But what he did do was fulfill it. And the evidence that we have— there's much evidence, in fact, that the Christian looks at— that something would follow the Mosaic Covenant. In fact, let me read you a few verses. The first verse comes from Jeremiah 31. It talks about a new covenant. And there are many, many verses in Tanakh that talk about a new covenant. And this one goes, "Behold, the days are coming," says the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt." of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. There are many citations I can make within Tanakh itself that a new covenant would come, and the conditions under the new covenant would be very different from the conditions under the old covenant. Let me just read you from the prophet Hosea. Hosea, is that how you say it? Hosea. Okay, this is from Hosea 2:18-19. In that day I will make a covenant with them, with the beasts of the field, with the birds of the air, with the creeping things of the ground. Bow and sword of battle I will shatter from the earth to make them lie down safely. I will betroth you to me forever. That means marry, by the way. Yes, I will betroth you to to me in righteousness and justice and loving kindness and mercy. Now, I want to point out about that particular prophecy that the conditions that Hoshea— Hoshea, do I have it right?— the conditions he's pointing to are conditions that are radically different from the conditions that were experienced under the Mosaic Covenant or Brit Brit, Mosaic, Brit. Anyway, in the Mosaic Covenant, the Jewish people couldn't even come into the presence of God. Only the high priest, the, the, the main kohen, could come in, and that was in the holy place only once a year. There was hardly any marriage. In fact, we saw at Sinai, the Jewish people, when God spoke to them from the fire of Mount Sinai, They were terrified and they trembled and they said to Moses, or Moshe, they said to Moshe, "You just tell us what God wants us to do. We'll do it. But as for listening to this God, we can't do that lest we die." So what we find are conditions very opposite when we're talking about the New Covenant, very opposite of what we find under the Mosaic Covenant. Thank you.

Okay, I'm afraid that you did not even touch the question that I asked you. I mean, you gave us something from Jeremiah, which I'm going to respond to. This is what you said, but before I repeat your quote, I would like to ask a question. This is my question to you. If a person will come and show up in this room and tell us he's Eliyahu HaNavi, Elijah the Prophet, And he came to tell us about the salvation that is on the way. Right? And we are going to ask him, Mr. Eliyahu, can you prove to us that you are Eliyahu? And he says, what do you mean? The Bible says that God said that I am going to send you Elijah before I send the Messiah. That's a proof that I am Elijah. What would we say to this person? Would we waste a second with him? Okay, to come and take the text as the Christian church did and write a story based on some of the verses that appear in the Bible to match their needs and to match their goals, that's not a proof. That's not a scientific proof because I can do it just as well as they did. Mike, what you caught in Jeremiah, this is what it says over there. It says like this. It says, I'm going to bring the Jews from the land of the north and gather them from the land. Blinds, cripples, pregnant, giving birth, large crowd will return here. This is talking about returning to the Holy Land from all the exiles. They will come with tears and I will lead them. There are days who come and I will renew the covenant with the Jewish nation, not as We received it for 3,300 years so far, but until this is going to happen, we are going to establish it this time for eternity. As you know, the Jews never— unfortunately, all of the Jews in the world did not stick to the laws, and many of them are not aware of most of the laws. But this time it will be for eternity, which will mean that this covenant that we're going to make is not possible that it's going to contradict what we receive in the Torah. Why? Because in many places in the Torah, and I'm sure you heard it many, many times, the Torah says clearly, this is the Torah for you and your children for eternity. La'ad u'le'olme olami means forever, for eternity. Many places in the Torah, the Torah warns the Jew not to erase one mitzvah from the Torah or not to modify the Torah in any way, and the punishment for that is execution. If a Jew adds any word to the Torah based on his own opinion or erase the letter from the Torah, something like this has to be cleaned from the nation of Israel. Now, my question to you was, if I'm coming and claiming in front of the, the crowd that Jesus is the Messiah and he has a divine power. And I am bringing in my book a quote that he warned his students. Those were his original followers, which are much better than the followers today, 2,000 years later. And he told them, be careful not to ever modify the Torah. And not only that, there's one thing I did not mention. But this is one more sentence that he told them. He told them clearly over there, everything the rabbis, chazal, the sages, the prushim, are telling you, you must do. So we find from here not only that he admits that the written Torah is the truth of God, the oral Torah which were passed from generation to generation are 100% valid, and he warned, he's telling them, to him, his students, not to change. Now we have a serious problem. Because as you already directed us that no one is allowed to change or to modify the Torah in any way, and if he does such a thing and teach to others, he will be cursed by God. We come to a series of problems that apply to him himself. Some of the things, first of all, it's like this. He comes and says through the entire New Testament, he called himself like a regular human being. And not only that, when one time he said, "Son of God," the crowd wanted to stone him to death. And he said, "What do you want? All the Jews called the sons of God." As the Torah says, "Banim atem l'Hashem Elokechem." You are the children of God. I chose you from all the nations. To be my nation, so I'm only one of them. He did not answer, I am a special son of God, different than all the Jews. I am— what do you want from me? I'm one of them, but I'm nothing different than all the other Jews. That's my understanding from that. So my question to you was, just to make it sharp to the point, the point is instructions and everything you're going to speak in the next hour or the next heir here, it's irrelevant because you are not following his instructions. And if he's your hero, and if he's the Messiah, and if your future depends in his hand, how do you not obey his will to his students, his instruction to his students? That was my question. But before I finish the question, I would like to ask you something that relates to it, and this is it. In the beginning of the book of Matthew chapter 1, for those who do not know the story of the New Testament, this is how it starts. There's a person, Joseph. He meets a woman named Miriam. Joseph and Miriam, Joseph and Mary, Yusuf. It depends on how you want to call it, but it's the same person. Yosef, Joseph, he got engaged with Miriam. Two Jews. Two regular Jews. He got engaged. In the old days, the engagement used to take place and few months later the chuppah and moving together were taking place only few months later. When he comes back later, he finds out that his fiancée— remember fiancée is not today like you give her a ring and it's over. Fiancée means she already had Kiddushin. He put a ring on her hand. She is already Eshet Ish almost 100% with some changes. And he comes back and he finds that she is pregnant, knowing he never touched her. When he asked the question, obviously she needed to save her life because in the old days they did not give reward to prostitutes or to people who will do something against their husbands. So what did she tell him? God came to me and made me pregnant, and this is from the Holy Spirit. And later, of course, the story is he's gonna become the Messiah. My question to you is like this. I'm gonna read the beginning of the book of Matthew. Matthew is one of the four books. There's Matthew, John, Luke, and Mark. And obviously, if it's— Yes, please.

Joseph, you, you've already issued a about 5 questions. Would you like to give me an opportunity to address some of those things first?

If yes, just let me— just, well, it's all one question actually, because I'm not going to different 5 subjects.

I mean, it sounds like it though, because I had it broken up into a number of different parts.

Well, so just allow me to finish that and then take your time. Okay, so the book, the book of Matthew And the other 3 books are claimed to be given from a divine origin. And remember my words throughout this lecture: if you find one mistake in a book that a person hands to you and claims that God gave him this book, one contradiction, one mistake, it's the end of the story. You do not want to waste one more second on that book, right? How can I follow a book that has such human error? I would like to read to you the descendants of Joseph, right, and Mary, the story, how did it start. According to the Torah, according to the Torah, the Messiah, the Mashiach, must be a descendant from King David. This is what the Torah named him, Mashiach ben David. The Messiah, a son of David, which means he has to link to King David. This is what God says in the Old Testament. Comes the people who wrote the New Testament, and they know that the story has to match to the Torah because it has to be from the same God. There cannot be any contradiction. So they come and describe all the generations from King David until Joseph the carpenter. And why? Because they trying to link Jesus to King David. If Jesus is not connected to King David, he cannot be the Messiah. Because if he's going to be a grandson of King David, he has a chance. Not necessarily that he's the Messiah, but at least he has a chance. If he's not from the family of King David, as righteous as he may be, cannot be the Messiah. So here is the book of Matthew. Coming to tell us how we reach from King David to Joseph the Countertop. Please pay attention to the name. The Book of Matthew chapter 1 writes like this: Joseph, the husband of Miriam, he was the son of Jacob, the son of Matan, the son of Eleazar, the son of Eliud, the son of Yachin, the son of Tzadok, the son of Azur, the son of Eliakim, the son of Avihud, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shaltiel, the son of Yechonayahu, the son of Yeshua, the son of Amon, the son of Menashe, the son of Hiskiahu, the son of Achaz, and so forth and so on. We open the book of Luke. Remember, it must comply with the book of Matthew. Because they claim that it was given by God. God does not make such errors. Let's see the way Matthew described the descendants of Joseph the carpenter. Chapter 3, I'm giving the sources later, you're gonna watch the recording if you want to double-check me, please do so. The book of Luke chapter 3 says Jesus was the son of Joseph, the son of Eli. The son of Matat, the son of Levi, the son of Malki, the son of Yanai, the son of Yosef, the son of Matityahu, the son of Amotz, the son of Nahum, the son of Chisli, the son of Nagi, the son of Machat, the son of Matityahu, the son of Shimi, the son of Yosef, the son of Yuda, the son of Yochanan, the son of Resha. 5 different differences in the descendants of King David. Now tell me please, if we will open up the Torah and we see Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac was the father of Jacob, Jacob was the son of Joseph, Joseph was the son of Ephraim, that we read it in one part of the Torah. And we would open another chapter and speaking about the same family, and instead of that order, it would be from the same book, from the same God supposedly, who would say Abraham is the son of Matityahu. Matityahu is the son of Menashe. Menashe is the son of Yosef. Yosef is the son of Yitzchak. Yitzchak is the son of Mustafa, and so forth and so on. My question to you is What other proof you need more than that, that this book is a complete human error? The order of the descendants— God does not make mistakes. God knows all the orders from King David until he reached Joseph the carpenter. But I have a better question. It's all one question, don't get me wrong. I mean, I know you presented it as 5 different questions, but I disagree because it's all one issue. We are talking now only on one issue. You are describing in two books from the evangelists that describe the order of the generations from King David to Joseph the carpenter. Now, my first provision in this question is that the order— there are 25 differences. How can it be if it's from God? And the best part is, why did you waste almost a page to describe us that Joseph the carpenter, he is a grand-grandson of King David, when right there yourself in the book of the New Testament you write that he has nothing to do with Jesus. He is not his father. He was out of town and he came and he found out that she is pregnant and he asked her what happened and she said God Is the son of my son. So the father of my son. My question please, and I finish with this. My question to you is: who is the mother of Jesus everybody saw? He came out from Miriam. When you ask every priest in the world, including the Pope, and we did it about 8 years ago, the answer is God. When you ask who is the father? God. Is God. Jesus is a grandson of King David? King David is the father of God? That's my question. And if not, why did you write it? And plus, you wrote it with so many mistakes. 25 different names. It cannot be from God.

I'm done.

You have to agree that it's all one issue. It's long, but it's one issue. One issue.

Well, I'm gonna— if it is one issue, I don't see it, so I'm gonna have to answer them separately. So you're gonna have to bear along with me a little bit.

Okay, okay.

Let me start very briefly with the last challenge. And the last challenge is, well, well, who is Jesus? Is Jesus the— is, is Jesus a bastard? Is Jesus the the child of an indecent relationship? Well, of course, you can— you probably can anticipate the answer. We hearken back to Yeshayahu, Isaiah 7:14, where it says a virgin will give birth to a son. And that's why Joseph— if you read the New Testament, you find out that Joseph went ahead and married Mary. At first he was going to put her away. He was going to break off the engagement, but then he had a revelation from the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit told him, "Do not be afraid to take Mary. She has been impregnated by the Holy Spirit," which again is in line with Isaiah. As far as the differing genealogies, I haven't studied that very thoroughly. But my understanding is that one genealogy represents the genealogy through his mother Mary, the other one through his father Joseph. You might argue, well, Joseph wasn't really his biological father, but there is evidence in Tanakh— don't press me on it, I can't tell you where exactly it is— but evidence that a genealogy can be adopted, as a child can be adopted that adopted child can assume the genealogy of the adoptive parent. Getting back to Jesus again, because Rabbi Yosef is very correct— if Jesus is teaching that we should be following the law and we're not following the law, then there's something the matter with our faith. And so I just have to hearken back to the distinction I made before that you'll find in Matthew 5:17 that Jesus He says, I didn't come to destroy the law. The law cannot be destroyed. It comes from God. It must instead be fulfilled. And that's what he did through his death. He was the ultimate offering. And if you look at Isaiah 42 and Isaiah 49, it talks about how God— you say Hashem— Hashem will provide a person as a breach. As a covenant. And that's exactly what he did with the blood of the Messiah himself. There are many, many indications through the Nevi'im that the Messiah would die for the sins of the people. He would be the ultimate atonement, kaphar, kaphir, the ultimate atonement, as God had promised that he would make the ultimate atonement and not the Levitical priests. As far as the oral law, if Joseph does bring up citations from the oral law, as a Christian, I have to reject them. And the reason I reject the oral law is the reason that first-century Jews rejected the oral law, because we see not only no evidence for such a thing thing in the New Testament. We see no evidence for such a thing even in, uh, the, uh, Hebrew Scriptures. I would challenge you to think of one prophet— you know, the prophets were very strong about saying, Israel, you messed up here, you messed up there, and you didn't do this right, and you rebelled against God, you don't even know who your master is— but the prophets never once said to Israel, Israel, you violated this particular stipulation of the oral law. We do not see any evidence for the oral law whatsoever. And so I would turn the challenge around to Rabbi Yosef and say, you believe in evidence, you, you rest your case highly on evidence. I would like you to show me some evidence for there being an oral law. I would also like you to show me some evidence. You cited something, but I don't know where that citation is, where it says that the Mosaic Covenant is ad olam, or eternal. We see that about the covenant with Noah. That is talked about as eternal. We see that about the covenant with David, David. That's talked about as eternal. The covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. That is called eternal. There are many citations that these covenants are eternal, but I would challenge you to find one citation in Tanakh where it says that the Mosaic covenant is Ad Olam.

Many people understand Hebrew, but then I'll translate it to English. The Torah that I put in front of you will not be erased from your mouth and from the mouth of your descendants or from the mouth of their grand-grandchildren from now to eternity.

You ask it?

This is Isaiah 59, verses 20 to 21. Yeah, 59. While you're looking, I hold myself very tight for this one of the This is the incredible trick that the Christian church used in the last 2,000 years. Even though 800 years ago in philosophical arguments with the Ramban and other great rabbis with the head of the churches of that time, they brought it to their attention and some of them in some countries later corrected it in their books. Until this moment For sure intentionally. No benefits of the Da'at whatsoever. They take the original Hebrew text and falsify it according to their mission. Tell me please, for those who know Hebrew, who can translate the word Alma, what it means in English? The word Alma. Young girl. Baruch Hashem, 4 or 5 people say it. Comes the Christians, take a verse from one of the prophets that, by the way, has nothing to do with talking about the Messiah. The story over there is the king of Achaz. There is a war and he is afraid to go to the war. Comes the prophet Yeshayahu, Isaiah, and tells him, don't worry, God God told me that we're going to win the war. Do you want a sign? The king that was a righteous king, he said, no, I believe in your word. You're the prophet and I don't need a sign. Comes the prophet and says, I'm giving you a sign anyway. Your wife is pregnant and she's going to have a son and his name is Immanuel. Nobody knows his right name. Nobody sees. How does he know? He's a prophet. How did he call his wife? Ine— some say, by the way, you should know about this, some say that the prophet was speaking about his wife. Some say it's not clear there if he was talking about his daughter. But either way, the word that the prophet used was ine a'alma hara yoledet ben. Here is the young lady becoming pregnant, pregnant, excuse me. Here is the young lady pregnant. She's going to give birth to a boy and his name will be Emmanuel. Tell me please, why would a person take a word that every ignorant Jew 2,000 years ago that you stop in the street And some of you may just answer my question and ask him, tell me the translation of the word Alma. Everybody knows it's a young lady. Young lady, whether she's virgin, whether she's not a virgin. Ah, but I have a problem. I'm looking for a source to prove that he's talking about a virgin woman, that she's pregnant, right? It's gonna fit my suit. So the point is like this. Everybody that wants to make up a story and take words from one language and modify them and translate them in a wrong way on purpose to fool the crowd, that's not an honest way. Now, I don't know your knowledge in Hebrew, but you don't have to believe me and the crowd. You go and check in the original divine language, the holy language. Nowhere in history Someone claimed the word Alma means a virgin, and I have sources if you want, I will give them to you right now. If you want, I'll give them to you later, of popes and heads of the Christian Church that apologized in the end and say that this should not be translated as a virgin. But with all the respect, you still did not even touch one of my questions so far.

I'm just dying to get back.

Please, please, please, please.

Okay, now that, that's a very big subject you opened up. I'm glad you did open it up, but I want to return, I want to return to Isaiah 59. And if you do have your Tanakh with you, I would encourage you to take a look at it, because I made the claim before that nowhere in scripture does it talk about the Mosaic Covenant as being eternal. And I would assert that in this passage also it's talking about a covenant that is coming, a covenant that is coming with the coming of the Messiah. And so I'm going to start reading in verse 16, and it says, he saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no man to intercede. Now this is God speaking. Then His own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him. He put on a breastplate— righteousness is a breastplate— and a helmet of salvation on his head. He put on garments of vengeance for clothing and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak. And then we're going to go down to verse 20, just to shorten it up. In verse 20, I was reading in verse 16. 16 through 17.

I did not quote from 16.

I know that, but I want to build up the context to demonstrate that this is not the Mosaic Covenant that's being talked about. This is a very important point because when the Bible talks about the New Covenant— rather, yes, the New Covenant— it talks about the New Covenant as being eternal, never the Mosaic Covenant. And so in verse 20 This is talking about a future covenant because it's talking about a redeemer coming. In verse 20 it says, and a redeemer will come to Zion and to those in Jacob who turn from their transgression, declares the Lord. And as for me, this is my covenant with them, says the Lord: my spirit that is upon you and my words that I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth or out of the mouth of out of your offspring, or out of the mouth of your children's offspring, says the Lord, from this time forth and forevermore. The question is, is this a future covenant, or is this the Mosaic Covenant? Nowhere does it say it's the Mosaic Covenant. In fact, the context is talking about the Redeemer coming. Now, can I— would you like me to respond to Isaiah 14:7?

Just one comment about what you say. 'Asher samti beficha' in Hebrew means the words that I put in the past, not in the future. You are modifying the verse. The verse says clearly, and I'm sorry, I mean, you read it from your sources, but I have the original source, and the original source, as it was written by God, as you admit, was given in a holy language, and everybody here is familiar with this. 'Varai asher samti beficha.' Anybody, please, please, anybody here? The word "something," it's in the past or it's in the present or it's in the future? What is it? Past? Of course, obviously the past goes into the future. You coming now and claiming there's no indication that it belongs to the past, rather it belongs to the future, it's incorrect. Excuse me for saying that. Saying it, but you never answered what I just stopped before to make a comment. Please tell me how the word Alma in your translation became a virgin. Where did you get that thought? Who taught you that false translation of the word? Please.

Okay, I'd be glad to answer the question, but let me just return to Isaiah 59 because this is Patience, please.

But if I don't, if I just may, we're never gonna reach anything like this.

Oh, there'll be other times.

No, no, but I'm asking you a question to the point, please, with all the respect, answer the questions at the spot.

Why?

Because— No, no, but here I ask you a very simple question, very simple, yes or no. You admit that the word Alma means young lady, or you still hold that it means to a virgin? Because you used it as a fact before, that Isaiah is speaking about a woman, that she is a virgin that is going to give birth to a person. By the way, the rest of the sentence, as you may know, speaking about that boy would live great life with milk and honey and all kinds of beautiful blessing, which we all know that Jesus did not have these kinds of life. Plus, if we already speaking about the subject that you brought up, according to all the prophecies that speaking about the Messiah, each one of them clearly without any doubt saying the Messiah will collect all in his lifetime, all the Jews to the Holy Land, and in his time all the Gentiles will love Israel and will World will admire Israel. No wars will be in the world. Everybody would live in peace. The tigers and the goats will be friends. And many, many other examples in the prophecy. Not one of the prophecies that the prophets gave about describing the days of Messiah is even a little bit similar to the life of Jesus. So please, I don't want to continue. I want to stop right here, give you time to answer, but please answer to the point, to the point, please. I'm not— Definitely. Okay.

Definitely, and I respect your questions, and I think each question you've asked is very important, but I do want to bring some closure to Isaiah 59 first, because I agree also with you that Sambi is past tense. But often if you study prophecy, you find out that God talks about future events in past tense. And so again, I want to look at the context. I read a few verses before that section. I want to read a few verses after that section now to demonstrate that we're talking about the kingdom, the future Davidic kingdom that is coming. Then the next verse is Isaiah 61: Arise, shine, your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. We're talking future now. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth and thick darkness the peoples, but the Lord will rise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And the nations will come to your light, and the kings to the brightness of your rising. And we Christians also applaud the coming Jewish kingdom. But you might take this as bad news. We believe we're going to be part of it along with you. So that's the bad news.

The good news is it's coming.

Okay, now for Isaiah 7. And that's very important, the word alma. I have to confess that alma can be translated as young maiden, but if you look up the various places where alma is used in the Tanakh, you'll find that it is what we call an equivocal word. Now I don't know who those old And he will open his heart, will apologize for our translation of Alma. But I might apologize about some things. I'm not going to apologize about that. There are many reasons that we believe that Alma should be translated as virgin. There are many, many reasons. I'm going to go into a few of them. Remember, as Rabbi Yosef pointed out, this this is going to be a sign to the king. How can, how can a natural birth be a sign to anybody? Only a miraculous birth would be a sign. But there are much more compelling reasons than that. You see, the verse, the verse itself reads— let me read you this verse, it's from Isaiah 7:14— therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, Behold, the virgin, or as you might say, young maiden, shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel, or Immanuel, God with us. And so the question is, who is this Immanuel? Jewish tradition has always said this is just a normal human being. This Emmanuel has nothing to do with what it's literally saying, God with us. It doesn't have to do with Jesus. But again, if you look at the context, and chapters 7 through 12 form a unified prophecy, if you look at the context, you find that Emmanuel is only used 2 other times in Scripture, and they're both found in the next chapter. And so good principle of interpretation would demand that the way you understand one instance of Emmanuel must be the way you understand it in the next two usages in the next chapter. And so what I'm going to do is read you the context for these two other usages of Emmanuel and demonstrate that this Emmanuel is no mere human being, but actually God with us. And so if you have your Hebrew scripture you want to follow along, this is from Isaiah 8, and I'm going to read from 6 to 8. Inasmuch as these people refuse the words of Shiloah that flows softly, and rejoice in Rezin and Ramaliahs son. In other words, they were trying to make a treaty with Rezin, who was the king of Damascus, the king of Aram. Okay, Rezin and Ramaliahs son. Now therefore behold, the Lord brings up over them the waters of the rivers, strong and mighty, the king of Assyria and all his glory. He will go up over all channels and go over all banks. And what this is talking about is the fact that Assyria that was threatening Israel and eventually took Israel into captivity would also threaten Judah. And so King Ahaz made a treaty with Assyria. But Assyria thought, who needs to keep this treaty? I'm gonna have my cake and eat it too. I'm gonna take all Judah. And so it says that this king and his army passed over these channels and went over the banks. And he will pass through Judah. He will overflow and pass over He will reach up to the neck, and stretching out of the wings will fill the breadth of your land. What it's talking about there is that Assyria, the nation of Assyria, will gobble up all of Judah except the neck. And the neck, of course, if you know your history, that represents Jerusalem. And remember King Hezekiah and Isaiah held up Jerusalem. And Isaiah went out and Hezekiah, a prophecy, because Hezekiah and all the people came before the Lord, they humbled themselves, they cried out to God, and God sent them an incredible rescue. That night the angel of God went out among the Assyrian army and destroyed 185,000 of the Assyrians. When the king, Sennacherib, got up next morning, Saul's army was destroyed, he took the rest of the army and he went back to Syria, and that was the end of the Syrian invasion. But I want to complete that quote because it says, "He will overflow and pass over, he will reach up to the neck, and stretching out his wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel." Now what it's saying here is harkening back to the original use usage of Emmanuel. It's saying that Emmanuel seemed to be the owner of the land. How could a mere human being be the owner of the land? Let's look at one other context. And this is just the next verses. Starting in verse 9. Isaiah says, be shattered, O you peoples, and be broken in pieces. Give ear, all you from far countries. Gird yourselves and be broken in pieces. Gird yourselves, but be broken in pieces. In other words, all these nations are going to be broken. Take counsel together, but it will come to nothing. Speak the word, but it will not stand. Why not? He concludes the statement by saying, for God is with us. But in Hebrew, that word is for Immanuel. What Isaiah is saying there is The nations have all these plans that are not going to stand, that are going to be broken. What's going to stand in the way? Emmanuel. See, this Emmanuel is not a mere human being. This Emmanuel is the one who stands against all these nations that are coming against Israel.

Thank you. If you know, in Hebrew language, there are tens of names, or perhaps hundreds of names, that the meaning of those names is God is with us, or God watch over us, or God is our source, or many other names. Nobody ever claimed that just because the word El, Emmanuel, or different El, or Daniel, or all kinds of names, because the name El is in it, so he's the Messiah or he's the master of the land. But I just want to make sure that I highlight the point that I told you before. Please, we are still speaking about the Alma, the young lady, and I would like to give you an example what I meant before, maybe to make it a little bit more clear to you. This is what I'm going to go ABC. First, the Prophet was sent to the King of Achaz before the war with both 3 Kings, as you mentioned, the prophet Isaiah lived 600 years before Jesus was born, 2,600 years ago. As you know, I'm sure, 26 in the time of King Hezekiah, 2,600 years ago. That means 600 years before Jesus was even born, before anybody knew about him, God sent the prophet to tell the king of Israel that right now I'm going to send you a sign that you're going to win the war. And please pay attention to the details because the way you presented it, you skip one or two things that change the entire subject. And this is— those are the things which I like to highlight. First, the first example is that the dollar Or the wife is pregnant, nobody knows about it yet, she will give birth to a boy. The name of that boy eventually will be called Immanuel. This boy will eat delicious food such as butter and honey, even though remember the prophecy described that in this particular moment there were ambush around the land. Starvation. There is nothing to eat. Even simple basic food are not in the existence. Comes the Prophet against all odds and tell him this son that will be born will already eat like a king. Even though he's still not even an infant. And before he will know to tell the difference between good and bad. The country will be redeemed from the enemies. Tell me please, what's the connection between the sign that God sends 600 years before Jesus was born? God sending a sign to the people of the land that the wife of the king or the daughter is going to have a baby and this baby would live like a king. Meaning, even though right now it's hard to believe that in 9 months the situation will change completely, that's how you know that God is serious about what he promised. Now remember, the word Alma, I insist, without any doubt, means young lady. Nowhere in the entire Bible it says that Alma means a virgin. I would like to give you a proof for that in case you have a doubt. It says like this: The way of the eagle in heaven, in the way of a boat in the middle of the ocean, the way of a man with relation with the young lady, Alma. I will translate: The same way when an eagle fly in the sky, he does not leave any track. Nobody knows that an eagle was there 5 minutes ago. There's no track. The same way when a boat passed in the ocean, 10 minutes later you don't have any tracks. A man that have relation with Alma, okay, leaves no track. Based on your translation, it should have been the opposite because the word Alma It's a young lady, not a virgin. And if, remember, if we were talking about a virgin woman, for sure a man leaves a sign. After a man has relation for the first time with a virgin woman, the verse should have said the opposite. The same way a man leaves track after having relation with a virgin, and the verse says exactly the opposite, which is a clear proof to the fact that we are talking about a young lady, has nothing to do with a virgin. And this is what you've been using for many, many years to tell the people that there's a prophecy that's speaking about a virgin, knowing this prophecy has nothing to do with Jesus. Remember, this is in different context, 600 years before, and the signs that the prophet David gave the nation of Israel never happened in the life of Jesus. Jesus did not born into this situation and lived his life like a king. In his life, they didn't need a sign that the enemies would leave the land. And in 9 months, what's the connection? Why would God come to the king now and give him a sign to this existing moment about something that is going to happen 600 years will have no connection whatsoever. But not only that, remember that so far from the beginning of the conversation, I asked you about the 25 differences between one book, which is Matthew, and the other book, which is not supposed to contradict. If God gave the descendants of King David, he has to to match 100%. A normal human being does not need more than one mistake in a book that someone is claiming that God gave it to know that it's not a divine book. If I open the book and I have 25 different mistakes in half a page, not one mistake, 25 different mistakes, which one of the two books were given by God. It's impossible that God gave two books with 25 different names. God doesn't know the order from King David until he— until we arrived to Joseph the carpenter. Plus, even if there were no mistakes, even if the names are 100% match, who wants to come to describe that Joseph is a grandson of King David When right after that he himself write that Yosef has nothing to do with the son, is not the father. Now I would like to respond to what you say before. You say that sometimes descendants go by the mother. You know very well that it's a very, very incorrect statement. Because throughout the Torah, the Torah always refer to the father. L'mishpakhotam lebet avotam. Nowhere in history a person became a Kohen because his mother is a Kohen. If his mother is a Kohen and his father is just an Israelite, he is a regular Israelite and he doesn't have all the benefits of the Kohen. Nobody, nobody in history before Christianity even started had even the thought to think to link a person based on his mother. One thing, and plus, just to finish one more sentence, if it goes by the mother, as you may refer, tell me please, why did you waste a page to prove that the father is a grandson of King David? You should have done the opposite. You should write Mary is a daughter of Jochebed, the daughter of Rachel, the daughter of Sarah, the daughter of Leah, the daughter of whatever, and until you reach King David. There's no indication that you were trying to link Miriam to King David, and you agree that King David is not the father of God. You understand that? So please answer me this question, just to that particular question that we left open from before, the 25 contradictions and the father And the, the, the, the son and Joseph and this, then everything that I just mentioned.

Okay, okay, let me just deal very briefly with the genealogy again. You know, why are there two genealogies? Maybe the Bible just wants to cover the bases, and because Joseph isn't the biological father, maybe they thought, well, they have to justify it with both. I'm not sure exactly why. Uh, getting back to the Isaiah prophecy, which is a very, very important prophecy, and I have to apologize, it's 25 minutes. Please, I, I have already dealt with that, but let me finish my answer. That there are two different genealogies being presented there. The genealogy of— well, let me finish responding to some of the other things.

Subject that slams home?

I want— well, I am. There's so many subjects. I've got a shame subject.

I don't know who you're clapping for, but I'll just take it personally that you're clapping for me.

Getting back to Isaiah now, because that's a very, very important prophecy, and, and I think, I think Yosef raised some very important challenges. And the one regret I have regarding them is that it's— there are a lot of details involved, and I don't know how well you're able to follow it, but one of the Gee, which— where do I start? Let me start with Emmanuel. You know, is Emmanuel merely a name or a mere— or a description of who this person is? God with us. Now, there are a lot of ways to answer that question. One way is to show that so many prophecies in Scripture, so many prophecies that talk about Messiah actually being— I don't know how you say it— Yahweh, Adonai— not Adonai, but for instance, from Jeremiah 23:5, especially 6, it talks about a child being born, a branch of David. So everybody knows that we're talking about the Messiah here. And then it says, you know what his name is going to be? His name is going to be God, and that's the Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh. God our righteousness. That's incredible. What that's saying is Messiah is going to be Yahweh. And beyond that, it's also saying that Messiah is going to be, as the New Testament has said in so many ways, and also I would add that Tanakh that our righteousness, if we are going to come before God, it could never be in our own righteousness. It has to be in the righteousness that is given as a gift by God. And so it says about this child who is the branch of David, it says about him that he is going to be God our righteousness because we do We cannot have confidence in our own righteousness because if we're really honest with ourselves and we look at ourselves, we know how far short of God that we fall. And so we know that there has to be an offering, but not like the offerings that were made traditionally in the temple, offerings that had to be offered over and over again. It would have to be the Messiah himself who would be offered as a a covenant, a once-and-for-all offering, the very offering that all Israel has been waiting for, the very offering that would make us righteous in God's sight. But let's go back to the context, because I think the context is the most important thing. And as I mentioned before, if you're going to understand Isaiah 7, it's related to Isaiah 8 and 9 and 10, 11, because what Isaiah does in these chapters, continues to return to the same theme. It talks about a child being born. For instance, in Isaiah 9. Let me just read you Isaiah 9:6-7. "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name," here's his name again, "his name will be called," Wonderful Counselor. I think it's peleot, a word that only pertains to God. Mighty God, in other words, El Gibbor. Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. And upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, uh, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from this time forward and even forever. What that's saying is, and it's something that we agree with the rabbis, that This is talking about Messiah. It's talking about that branch that's gonna come from David. But here, notice he's called 4 names, 4 additional names, and these aren't just names like Daniel or Nathaniel or Emmanuel. These are descriptions of who the person is because you got 4 lengthy descriptions which go along with Emmanuel. Here Isaiah is giving us an expanded picture of who this child is who is going to be born. And so one of the names: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Can these be names like David or, or, or John or Nathan? Or no, these are descriptions of who Messiah is going to be. And then if you look at Isaiah 11, Isaiah again for the third time in his book, and the the only time, talks about a coming of a child. And so, however we understand Emmanuel and Alma, it must be consistent with these other contexts. Now, here's Isaiah 11: There shall come forth a root from the stem of Jesse. Again, we know that we're talking about Messiah, right? And a branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of understanding, spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge. And it talks about this everlasting kingdom coming from the root of Jesse. Again, everybody agrees we're looking at the Messiah. And here again, this child is born. I would, I would assert that responsible principles of interpretation require that we we understand these three immediate contexts in the same light. As we look at Isaiah 7:14 about a virgin who's going to give birth to a child, we have to understand this child is a Messianic King. Why do we understand as Messianic King? Because chapter 9 is talking about a child being born who's a Messianic King, and chapter 11 talks about a child being born who's the Messianic King. Now, Rabbi Yosef talked about the fact, well, this was made— this prophecy was made 700 years earlier, and it seems to have been made to King Achaz. And yes, it was, but I would argue, if you look carefully at the language, you'll see that not only was it made to King Achaz, but it was made to the whole household of Israel, or the household of David. So let's go back 7:10. And it says, moreover, the Lord spoke again to Ahaz, saying, ask for a sign for yourself, the Lord your God. Ask it either in the depth or the height above. And Ahaz said, I'm not going to ask, nor will I put the Lord to the test. Of course, he didn't want to hear anything from God. Then he said— Isaiah said, now hear, now, O house of David. He's going beyond Ahaz, or Ahaz. Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord will give you a sign. Now tell me if I'm wrong about this, Rabbi, that you in Hebrew is not the singular you, it's the plural you. Isaiah is talking far beyond King Ahaz. Now But let me just add one other fact to this equation. The fact is that oftentimes in Scripture you have multiple fulfillments. The same prophecy might be used to deal with present time and might also be used to talk 600, 700, 800 years in the future. God's Word is so rich and deep, we shouldn't limit it to one fulfillment. Let me give you an example of this from Zechariah. He sits the high priest Joshua, Yeshua, down in a chair, and he says, take the silver and gold and make an elaborate crown and set it on the head of Joshua, or Yeshua, the high priest. And by the way, this is so unusual because high priests couldn't be kings, kings couldn't be high priests. This had to be prophetic, and in fact we know it is prophetic because it goes on to say, then speak to him saying, thus says the Lord of hosts, saying, behold, the man whose name is the Branch— and now suddenly we're talking about Messiah, right? The man whose name is the Branch, from, from his place he shall branch out and build the temple of the Lord. We know we're talking about Messiah. Yes, he will build a temple of the Lord, and he shall bear the glory. He shall sit on his throne, and he shall be a priest on the throne. In other words, when Messiah comes, he is going to introduce a new world order, because what he is going to do is unite the kinghood with the priesthood. He is going to be the one ultimate rosh. Or head. Now, what does this mean? What it means is Zechariah, the book of Zechariah, is talking about the prophet Joshua, probably around the year 450 BC. But he is also talking at the same time about the coming Messiah. Now, what I'm saying here, and I think, I think the context bears me out. Isaiah 7, what it's saying here is that we're not simply talking about a prophecy to King Achaz. The prophecy that was given to him, we see many indications that, that it reaches far beyond this king. One last point: the Messiah being God. There are many prophecies in, in the Tanakh that indicate Messiah is going to be God. You believe that the Messiah is going to be born Bethlehem. Micah 5:2 says that of Bethlehem shall come forth the one who's going to be king. And you know what it says about him? It says about him that his goings forth have been of old, from everlasting. In other words, the child's going to be born, but he always existed. He always came from everlasting. There are so many examples, even in Torah, of God coming as a human being. Look at, uh, Yaakov wrestling with an angel who turns out to be God, and he named the place where he wrestled with this angel Keni'el. Why? Because he declared that he saw the face of God. Or take the three, the three men who came to Abraham when he was sitting by the Oaks of Mamre, and he fed them a meal. And it turned out that two of them were angels who went to Sodom to spy out what was going on, and one of them remained to discuss matter after having this meal, remained to discuss discussed matters with Abraham. And this individual is identified as Yud-Vav-Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh. In other words, God himself in the flesh, wrestling with an angel who turned out to be God. And he named the place where he wrestled with this angel Peniel. Why? Because he declared that he saw the the face of God. Or take the three men who came to Abraham when he was sitting by the oaks of Mamre, and he fed them a meal, and it turned out that two of them were angels who went to Sodom to spy out what was going on, and one of them remained to discuss matters. After having this meal, remained to discuss matters with Abraham, and this individual is identified identified as Yud-Vav-Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh. In other words, God himself in the flesh.

You're mixing between— we are— you are giving an example from angels and you refer that the angels are God. So no, that's not what it says. The angels brought a message from God. They didn't say anywhere that the angels are God. Plus, plus, I'm having a serious problem.

Why?

Because if you ignore question number 1 and you address question number 2, it's not going to prove anything. Why? Because we cannot go to question number 2 when we're stuck with question number 1. So what are you referring to? You say, okay, I don't have an answer about these contradictions. I do not know why they refer to the father and they try to prove that he's a grandson of King David when yet— I'm sorry, can I speak up for a second?

Thank you.

My name's Rich, I'm a friend of Michael's, that's why he invited me down here.

I'm sorry, I think that's mine and Michael's fault. Michael can tell you man to man, I have been pleading with him for 3 days please give me Rabbi's phone number so Danielle and Rabbi can speak so they can both make this as fruitful as possible to everyone so there will be no hidden questions.

I apologize, that's my fault.

Maybe I should have been more forceful, but you said you can't move on to question 2 without question 1.

Had this phone time— No, no, no, that's not— maybe you didn't— I did not mean what you— no, no, wait. No, no, no, no, I have no problem of him saying I don't have the answer. And I will come back to you when I will be able to come back with the answer, and then we move on. Then we don't have a problem. But every time I'm asking a question, he refers to different things, and I just heard him for more than 20 minutes about a different subject. But just pay attention. We were arguing about this name Emmanuel for maybe half an hour when I didn't even give 3% of what I have here. So obviously we're going to need 20 meetings in order for me just to ask a question. Ask some simple questions. But it's okay, I'm gonna try to ask the shorter questions because I understand what you say. All right, sir, the point is like this. I'm expecting you please to come back to me at your convenience, not today, with the answers. How is it possible that there are 25 mistakes in a book that claim to be from God? It's impossible that God made mistake in the text. This is— we conclude that. Question number 2: If Jesus is the Son of God, who needs to waste time to prove from King David all the way to Joseph when we say Joseph is not the father? Third question is— please, that's a new one— please explain me how do you have more than 150,000 different versions to the New Testament? You have today, if you want the source, I have it. I will give you the source. Please explain me how there are more than 150,000 different texts. Okay, that's question number 3. Question number 4, please tell me how is it possible that in the New Testament it says that Jacob went to Egypt with 75 people when everybody agrees that the Torah says that Jacob went to Egypt with only 70 people. Okay, please write it down. I'm gonna make it a little bit slower for you to make yourself the comments. So that was question number 4. Question number 5, please tell me, from all the religions in the world— you know what, I should say it differently— from the 3 major religions, because I do not know 80,000 religions and cults. That's not my purpose in life. But from 3 religions: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Please show me— there's one prophecy in Christianity. Islam never gave one prophecy. It's interesting that the Muslims call Prophet Muhammad, when yet I promise you, searching the entire Quran, there's not even one prophecy in the entire Quran. Prophecy means a clear message for very serious, for a very long time, hundreds of years or thousands of years later, that a person had no indication that something like this is logical to happen. But he came and described a complete prophecy. Christianity has one prophecy. The Christians write, if you want the source, I'm saying everything not by heart, but if you want the source, it will take me a minute to give you the pages where it is in the New Testament. But I'm sure you are aware of it already. So please, it says over there that the Jews will never return to the Holy Land. When we ask the former Pope that just died about a few months ago, we asked him, how do you explain that there is one prophecy in the New Testament that says the Jews— God left the Jews after the destruction of the Second Temple? That's what you claim in your books. And it says clearly over there that the Jews will never return to the Holy Land. Every blind person knows today that there are approximately 6-7 million Jews living in Israel, more or less. There are many Jews. We are not talking about the State of Israel. We are not in politics. It has nothing to do with the State of Israel. They say Jews will not return to the Holy Land. So the Jews return to the Holy Land. Question number, what is it, 7? Question number 7 is, please tell me, the prophecies throughout the Bible, there are many, many prophecies that speak on time of Messiah. All of them, with no exception, describe that in the time of Messiah, the Jews will have great life. The enemies would leave them alone. There will be no war. The Jews will not suffer from anyone. Nobody ever suffered. The Jews never suffered more than the time that Jesus lived, in the time of the Romans. In his lifetime, millions of Jews were dead. Millions. Up to that time, so many millions of people died from the time of Babylon, 600 years before him. From the time of Nebuchadnezzar and his time when the Romans came to Israel and slaughtered the Jews daily, every day, and destroyed the Holy Temple. That was one of the worst times in Jewish history. Since then until today, we have not even one indication of what the Bible said that the Messiah will do for us that Jesus did for us. Not even one, not two. There are many, many signs that the Messiah will do. I don't have the time now to start listing all these prophecies, but you know about all the prophecies that speak for the future in the time of Messiah. I gave you 3 or 4. I can give you more if you insist. But none of those indications occurred in his time. Now, the Messiah is supposed to save the Jews from all the nations, and all the nations will come to Jerusalem to learn from the Jews' Torah. Now tell me please, a person that could not save himself when the Romans put him and hung him on a cross. His words to God was begging God to save him. And the Romans were telling him, no, save yourself. Let's see if you are going to be able to save yourself. He could not save himself. How can he save us? He couldn't help himself. Plus it says that the Messiah in one of the prophecies will have children. Will have descendants. He will have Zerah. Zerah means descendants. You know, as I know, that Jesus never had children. Please explain me. The most important mitzvah in Judaism is the first mitzvah from 613. The first one, which makes it very important, is to marry man and woman. And the marriage institution is the holiest thing in God's eyes. How is it possible that the Christian church took one of the foundations of the world and made the priests unable to marry and have children when it contradicts one of the most important foundations of God? Please tell me how a person that you refer to God was hungry one day walking with the students.

Shh!

And this is in the book of Mark. John chapter 11, you can write it down. The next day he entered Jerusalem and Jesus was hungry. And he saw from far away a fig tree that has plenty of leaves. And he started to get closer to the tree, maybe he will find some fruit to eat. He came to the tree and he found no fruit other than leaves. Because it was not the proper season for the tree to give fruit.

—out of paper, by the way.

Yes, and which, you know, very good. You know, there's no coincidence. So it says like this: I'm cursing. I'm glad you enjoy, but please, we are now only arguing to find the truth. We're gonna shake hands, we'll stay friends. Nothing here is personal. I want to double, double, I mean, say it again. The point is, I'm asking questions that if we're gonna get the answer to all these questions that we ask, we have a very serious problem. Why? Because we declare always that if you find one mistake in the Torah, that's going to be the end of Judaism. One mistake, not two. And we have very many, many mistakes that we highlight, as I saw, some of that you heard from me. And shh, if we're gonna get the answers to all these contradictions and all these impossible things, then we are people that are seeking for the truth. We're gonna have to double-check our future. But I'm continuing with what I said. He was very hungry and he was looking for what to eat. There was nothing to eat. And he went close to the fig tree and he saw some leaves. And what did he do? He cursed the tree. Correct me if I'm wrong. He cursed the tree and says, "Nobody will ever eat fruit from you." Question number 1 regarding to this: if I am God or the Spirit of God is in me, that means I'm a superpower. That means I'm supposed to save the world. That means when I look at the tree— one time a student asked him, "Can you tell us how many leaves on the tree?" And he said, let me get closer and count. If I am God, I need to go to the tree and start counting how many leaves. Oy vavoy if we have such God that we have to count how many leaves. How can we even waste a second with this kind of God? And I'm not saying it as a joke, don't get me wrong. This is a solid point, please answer. And the most important thing, what is the crime of the tree? That God made a rule in nature that the tree has only few months in Israel, as you know he lived in Israel, that he can give fruit. And that was not the time of the fruit. Why the tree has to be cursed that he will never give fruit? Shh, please. And why would God be interested to curse something that he made? Plus, the next question. Tell me please, Jesus said in the New Testament in Matthew 24, if a person come and make magic to you and give you signs that he is the Messiah, do not believe him. This is his words. Because there are many falsified messiahs and false prophets. And can make magic and fool the crowd. And yet, in another place in the book of Luke chapter 7 and in John chapter 4, his student came to him and say, how can you prove to us that we should believe in you? He say, because I'm able to do magic. You just said yourself, don't believe in people that able to walk on water. Or to feed people with a loaf of bread, many people. Why? It's magic. The Egyptians used to do it, as you read in the Torah. Moses throws his cane, becomes a snake. Comes the impure Egyptians, one of the worst nations in history, the ancient Egyptians. Each one of the kids threw his cane, it became a snake. Does that mean they are God? The Torah just told you, if they are able to make magic, They are nothing because this is a part of the power that God put in nature that the impure people are able to do magic. Is that an indication that he is the Messiah? For sure not. Plus, he himself admitted, don't believe people who make magic. And they asked him, how do we know you are the Messiah? Because I am making magic. Is God making such mistakes? Such contradiction? I'm sure that is not. The next question is— Shh!

Could you email me these questions? I am. No, you don't need it.

You're gonna have a recording. We're gonna give you a recording.

I'm gonna have to be able to answer these questions. You want a good answer, right?

Whatever you can answer right now, you have the time to do it. Whatever you cannot answer right now—

I wish you won't cut me off.

No, no, wait, wait, I didn't finish, believe me, I gotta put some of the— oops, I'm sorry. Okay, the next question, I gotta bring these questions out because I don't have a problem sitting here and listening to your answer, don't get me wrong. I have the time and even if the crowd will leave, I'm gonna still stay here to listen because I am seeking for the truth. But I have— I told you, this is all short questions as you see, not like the first ones. First one was very long, but I learned my lesson.

No, you don't know how long the answer is going to be.

Ah!

You're going to do a big exposition.

No, I tell you what, I'm afraid of another 20-minute speech about one of the questions, and the night is over. How about my fears?

How about my fears of the end of the question?

You're giving me under the belt now. Okay, so I'm almost done. I'll cut some. Almost done, and then you have the microphone for yourself. The next question that I got for you is: The Torah, as you admit, is the word of God, says you should love your friend like you love yourself. And in the book of Matthew chapter 5, it says love your friend and hate your enemies. The Torah never says it. The Torah says the opposite. Even if you have a Jew that is not your lover, is not such a great friend, he speaks bad about you, he is still your brother and you have to love him. Comes the book of Matthew chapter 5 and says, "Love your friend but hate your enemies," contradicting the Torah clearly. It's the same God, remember. They claim that God also gave that. Comes the Torah and says you should love your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your money. Meodecha. May I respond?

If you are really a truth seeker, and I trust you are, may I just respond? To which one? Because the last one is going to be very short.

Okay. And very easy. Which one? Then you should love your friend like you love yourself. Yeah.

Okay, let me, let me read that in context. As you probably know already about me, context is very important. Without context, we can't arrive at any meaning. And so Jesus says, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. You see, what Jesus is arguing against— You pulled the words for me. What Jesus is arguing against is not Tanakh. He never spoke against Tanakh, but simply to say he would fulfill it. What he is arguing against there is the misrepresentation of Tanakh, because you're You're perfectly right. Nowhere in Tanakh does it say hate your enemies. Okay, thank you.

So now, it was my next thing to you to say is that the New Testament says if a person hits you on one side, slap you on your face, give him the other side. That's what it says. Give him the other side. The Torah comes and says if a person attacks you, you have the right to attack him first. Right? Everybody understands? You understand that? So it contradicts.

Can I respond to that? Yes. Okay. Jesus often talked in hyperbolic language. That's figurative, metaphorical language. And so often he would say, "If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better to enter heaven without one of your hands than to go into hell." Now, what he is saying when he uses metaphorical language, and let me just apply that to what Yosef is saying. Let me read that to you from Matthew 5 again. He says, "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye, tooth for tooth.'" Again, he's not talking against Torah, but he's talking against the misuse of Torah. Because what people would do is they'd say, "Oh, the Bible says an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. You hurt me and you punched me, I'm going to punch you back." Jesus is saying no. Jesus understood correctly that that is not a principle that we as individuals exercise, an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. In no place in the Bible does it talk about revenge. That was a principle for governments to exercise. So what he was saying when he said turn the other cheek, he was saying rather than take revenge— what he meant was rather than take revenge, it's better to allow yourself to get hurt, you know, without talking against, you know, of course they take it to the courts.

That's the contradiction. The Torah does not allow a person to invite another person to attack For instance, the Torah says if a person comes to attack you, you don't stand there and let him kill you. You misunderstood. Oh, maybe. Possible.

Go ahead. What Jesus is saying is— no, he's not saying let the person attack you first. Turning the other cheek and getting slapped in the cheek didn't really represent a physical assault. That was another way of saying if somebody verbally abused you, metaphor— take away your honor. It's better rather to endure that than to seek revenge.

I see. Okay, so I accept what you just say, but allow me then in that case to ask you this question. If a person sue you in court to take your jacket, your kilt, whatever you want to call it, kotonet, give him your coat also. The Torah says if a thief stole from you $100, what's the punishment for that thief in court? He has to pay double. It's in the text of the written Torah. Ganav mishalem kefel. A thief pays double. Comes the New Testament and says not only that you agree with him taking illegally, taking your jacket, give him also your coat. That means be a complete fool. Let the people come and take you. Now tell me please, if I'm gonna come— wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait— if I'll come to you or to the priest in your church and steal or take or sue him in court for his jacket knowing it's his jacket, do you know one priest in history that kept the word of Jesus and gave his coat? I'm looking for this guy. Please find him.

Again, again, Jesus had utmost respect. Tora law. Let me, let me just think. Okay, he had utmost respect for the law of the Torah and didn't teach in any way to denigrate the government and the civil authorities, not at all. But what he's saying, again, this is the context of not taking revenge, and he's saying rather than taking revenge, allow yourself— if the court is going to be unjust to you, it's better to suffer injustice than to take the law into your own hand and seek revenge.

It says to sue you in court. Tovea ut chaladin means take you to court, not by violence forcing you to give him his jacket. These are the words. Suing you in front of the judges. Come, don't let him take away your jacket knowing it's yours. Give him your coat also. What would you say about the next one? If a person force you to walk with him 1 mile, walk with him 2 miles. That's Matthew chapter 5.

Okay, again, it's the same context because it's—

let me read that whole body. Based on what you say, by the way, then every person, not a Jew, not a Christian, that will— you will try to make him join the religion. And remember, we both agree that the Old Testament is the word of God. I disagree with you that the New Testament is the Word of God. We never accepted it, and we have a list of many mistakes and contradictions, as I said before. But if a person comes and we have a mutual interest to be— to make him a believer, to make him a person that believes in a Creator to the world, and you— and he's gonna hear you saying that there is a way to take verses from a divine book and translate it completely the opposite. Like you said, I think, I believe you say metaphor, metaphoric verses. Then, excuse me, excuse me, but with all the respect, every person will take the divine book and translate it according to his convenience. Oh, wait a minute, you should not kill, you should not kill, it didn't mean really kill. This is what you've been saying here.

We have to understand the literature, whatever we're reading, whether it's the Tefillin or the law. We have to understand it according to the way it's intended.

Jesus accepted the Oral Torah, remember? Accepted the Oral Torah. Yes, he did. 100%. I will quote it again to you. I will quote it again. Wait, wait, wait. You say no? No problem.

I challenge you to show me where either in Hebrew scripture or the New Testament there is any evidence for oral law.

Okay, first of all, I will give you in Parashat Shoftim, in the chapter of Judges, this is what it says: And in that day, for any generations— as you know, the Torah refers to every generation, not only to the generation that receives it. So it says like this: if you have a question and you came to the judge or to the rabbis in your place and you ask them what to do, everything they going to teach you based on my Torah, you must listen to them. Do not move any, do not move even a bit. All right, you must listen to everything they tell you. And then right after that, skip a verse or two and you'll see the end of these sentences. And if a person does not listen to the judges in the courts of every generation, he should be cleaned from the face of the earth. And he did not listen to the rabbis that in charge of the Torah. Now I'm going to show you where Jesus himself agree with that.

Wait a second. Wait, you didn't even establish that that's talking about oral law though.

It has nothing to do with oral law. Okay, tell me please, what's the meaning of the sentence, these are the torahs and the laws and the sentences and the board of stone that I put in the hand of Moses in Mount Sinai? Torahs, plural. How Torah means teaching. No, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

God gave Moshe many different teachings.

Okay, now when Torah in Hebrew, if you'll be a little bit more precise, in order for me to tell people Torah means instruction. Okay, now please understand what I'm trying to explain. If a person wants to refer to one Torah, which is the written Torah, he used the word Torah. If he wants to use for plural, he will use the word torot. Torot. And this is what the Bible says. Those elehatorot. No, you don't— teachings or instructions? No, not correct. Not correct. Not correct. Because you have to remember, unlike in English, in English you say instruction, instructions. But in Hebrew you don't use the same verses. This is what you say. Torah includes thousands of instructions in the word Torah. But torahs mean two different kinds of instructions. Now I want to ask you a question. It's an intelligent, it's common sense question. You believe in the Old Testament like me, so we have an understanding on that issue. What I'm going to ask you. Comes God in front of the mountain. And you should also— I hope you agree with me— that from 80,000 religions and cults, the only religion that was given in front of millions of witnesses was the Jewish Torah. Not Christianity, not Islam, not Buddhism, and none of the 80,000 cults ever started in front of witnesses. Now, in the Torah God comes, that will be a little long, so please bear with me. No, no, until now. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, it's not fair, not fair. Everything now I gave you permission to respond, and I will give you as long as you want to respond. And when you responded for 10, 20 minutes straight, I didn't say a word. So I gave you permission to finish your subject. I'm gonna need a time. All right, but I would like, I would like to ask you this question. Are you denying the fact That Christianity started with the story of one woman that never had even one witness to her story. She comes and claims God came to her in a dream. It also happened to Muhammad. Muhammad came from the desert and he claimed that Angel Gabriel gave him the Quran. Which means, according to Christianity, it's possible that God will use a very strange way to come to a person in a dream or in hidden rooms and give him a book which he is interested to publish to all the people in the world, but for whatever reason he did exactly the opposite of his goal. Because if I would like to give instruction to all these large audience here tonight, I will not take one person and take him behind the scene and give him the instructions in the secret and then tell him, go convince the people that this is what I want from them. Why should I do it? As you saw in Mount Sinai, when God sent Moses to redeem the Jewish people from Egypt, he came to him in a burning bush and he told him, I want you to go and save my nation from Egypt. Moses answered him this thing. Moses told him, I am not interested. They won't believe in me. They will not believe me. They will say, God never spoke to you. If I would be God— thank God I'm not— but if I would be God, I would be very insulted. Why? If I have a righteous person that I want to make him my messenger, and I come to him and I speak to him, finally, for the first time in history, I reveal myself to a person and I tell him "Go and do ABC." And he begins to argue with me. "No, they won't believe me." Right away he has doubt in me. Why? Maybe I cannot do whatever I want. Maybe I'm limited. You may expect God to come to Moses and say, "Don't be a chutzpan." What is this chutzpah? "Just go and listen to what I told you. Abraham never asked questions. Just do what I told you." No, that wasn't the response of God. Pay attention to the response of God. What did he say? You're right. I make a sign in front of everyone that they'll know that I sent you. When you gather the people around the mountain, I will speak to you in public that everybody will believe in you for eternity. Word by word, I'm quoting you the verse in the Torah. So what God told us is real opinion. My opinion is to serve my purpose. My purpose is that my children will follow my ways. As many places in the Torah it says, I wish that the Jews will be faithful and follow my laws. It's not so hard to keep it. It's not beyond the ocean.

It's not above the sky. Yosef, can I just interrupt you and say, I agree with everything you're saying.

Saying. I know that part. You should—

we have a saying, Christians have a saying, you're preaching to the choir. No, I am agreeing with the principle, and I didn't say you don't.

Actually, I started with the fact that you agree, but I'm getting to the point. This is all a preparation for the question, and I told you in advance that it's going to be long, so you cut me in the middle. And I told you that I'm give— I'm going to give you as long as you need to respond to what I say, even longer than my— asleep by then. No, they're not. They're used to me already. Every average lecture of mine, if 3 hours enough. So yeah, even though sometimes they force me out by 10 o'clock, but that's okay. Now, I mean, I'm going to make it a little bit shorter. So the point that I'm trying to make is like this: God already told us that when he gives religion, he is not interested to give it to a person in secret. It's going to defeat the purpose, not help the purpose. When Moses asked him, nobody believes in me, he said, I'm going to I want to speak to you in front of them because I want them to believe in you. What makes us think that God changes mind? God is not me and you that change the mind every 2 minutes. He already told us the way he is interested to give religion. Now when a person asks you, how do you know the Jews received the Torah in Mount Sinai? And you yourself will answer it to your believers. You will tell them because millions of Jews were standing and listening to God speaking to Moses. That's why we know for sure that Torah is from God. Do you have one witness? One person, not two. Even one, it's not enough. You always need minimum two. Please tell me, do you have two witnesses that can come and swear that they heard God coming to Mary in a dream and tell her whatever the prophecy that you mentioned before? Or there is any two witnesses that God came to Muhammad and gave him the Quran? How is it possible that these people never thought to bring two or three or five witnesses to their story? Because everybody can say whatever you want. I had a dream, it's right away 50% out forever. Tell me please.

I can speak? Please. How long are you going to give me?

As long as you need. You're not going to interrupt me? That's— I'm not promising.

We have to establish some better ground rules, I think. Believe me, I'm trying. Please understand me. And I agree with just about everything Yosef says. You know, I'll even go further. In Torah, it says that everything has to be established by 2 or 3 witnesses. 3 witnesses. And Jesus even said the same thing. He said, don't believe me if I'm just talking on my own, but believe me because of the evidences. And, and so I want to talk to you a little, just a little bit about the evidences. Has anybody here read David Klinghoffer's book Why the Jews Rejected Jesus? And Paige, please get the book. He's an Orthodox Jew and he's trying to justify to justify why the Jews had every right in the world to reject Jesus. But on page 117 of that book, he admits some incredible supernatural signs, some verification. He said from the time of the crucifixion for the next 40 years until the destruction of the temple, and he's getting this from both Talmud and he's getting it also from Josephus. And he's saying these are things that Orthodox Jews believe. And he's saying in that 40-year period from the crucifixion until the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, 40 years later, there were all sorts of supernatural omens. Now, supernatural omens aren't good signs. They're really bad signs. And these are the signs that he talked about. He talked about a temple light that wouldn't stay lit. They kept on lighting it and it kept on going out. The east gate of the temple wouldn't stay closed. It kept on opening. And if you know the prophet Ezekiel, you know that God left when he got angry with the Jewish nation. He left through that east gate. It was almost as if God was saying, "I am out of here." Even more dramatic than that, Klinghoffer says that during those 40-year period, Throughout the entire land of Israel, people saw incredible spectacles in the sky, chariots and war cries and screaming and everything that suggested there was going to be a war. In other words, Klinghoffer agrees that there were all these supernatural signs coming from God warning about the impending destruction of the Temple. There are many forms of signs and evidences. The miracles that Jesus performed, you know, the Jewish people of Jesus' day never, never suggested that it was a sleight of hand by which he did these miracles. They all admitted that he did the miracles, but I think, as Yosef was suggesting, that he did it by sorcery because he was in league with the devil. But if you'll You read the New Testament accounts of the trial, they never brought that up against him as a charge. I don't even think they believed it. His signs were so incredible and the good that he did. He healed everybody who came to him. He fed miraculously thousands of people on several occasions. He raised the dead. Who? The Jewish people never took issue with that. They never claimed that he never did what the New Testament said he did. You don't even have that in the Talmud. The Talmud doesn't offer any contradictory evidence. If these were fabrications that you find in the New Testament, the Talmud would be full of charges that these things weren't true. They never contested it. These things. Okay, and let me, let me just finish. The very fact that the writers of the New Testament died martyrs' deaths proclaiming to the end that what the things that they had written about was true demonstrated that they didn't have any political motivation for getting together and lying about stealing Jesus's body away or these various miracles. In fact, when you read the New Testament accounts, and I hope you will because it's very interesting. In fact, it's very much like Tanakh, because in Tanakh you read about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and it lets all the ugly things about them hang out. When you read in the New Testament, you read about the disciples of Jesus. They were all meatheads. They were all foolish. They didn't even understand Jesus. But what that does is establish their authenticity. If they were willing to humble themselves so much in their own writing to show what jerks they were, it means that what they were about and what they wrote wasn't about trying to build themselves up.

By the way, you just answered one of my questions.

Good! Finally!

And I'll tell you what, don't be so happy. Because I tell you, I got something.

I got something in here.

But I give you what you just said. At the end of the fact, the point I wanted to present to you is that the reason that the Old Testament is full of so many mistakes and so many contradictions— some of them—

the Old Testament?

The New Testament is full of so many contradictions and so many mistakes. Mistakes is because the followers of Jesus, as you just said, were complete ignorant Jews. And he described his students who do not know alphabet. And when you come to ignorant people that cannot be accepted to any yeshiva and ask them to falsify a book claimed to be from God, what do you expect? Every page have so many mistakes. Believe me, I have such a list here, maybe 10% of the things I wanted. Not that I thought that I'll be able to do everything in 2-3 hours. But I—

Joseph, you got a big problem there. I'll tell you what your problem is. The problem is, if these disciples of Jesus, the ones who wrote the New Testament— and granted, they didn't graduate from any yeshivas and they were unlearned— but if they were so laughable, how is it that Christianity took off? How is it that even many of the Pharisees followed what these foolish people were teaching unless they were convinced that something miraculous— unless they were convinced that the hand of God was involved. I'm glad you said it.

And from your words, I'm gonna prove to you that Judaism is the only valid religion. From what you just said, when I come to a crowd and I try to convince them to be my students, and I start to to gathering all the homeless people of the street as he did, as you know, those ignorant that do not know anything anyway and gather them to be students and have himself a cult. When I come and this is my goal, why would, what kind of religion I'll design to these people? An easy religion to practice that everybody will jump and say, hey, we with you. 100%, everything is allowed. Or I will design a religion that is so complicated, so difficult to keep. What will be an easier job for me? To come and tell them, for instance, one of the times the student told him, you told us we're not allowed to violate any rules of the Torah, so how come you eat bread without washing your hands, without netilat yadayim? They asked him, those ignorant challenged him. So he said, he started to curse the rabbis. But in another page, as I mentioned before, he told his students, make sure you follow the instructions of the servants of Moshe, the sages, because they have it from generation to generation. So now you just say that you must listen to the rabbis, those are the ones who keep the Torah of Moses alive. And when the students ask you why you yourself don't listen to them, he started to curse them. Or when he told them that they're not allowed to violate the rules of the Sabbath, the next day students came and they wanted to cut wheat on the Sabbath, and he told— and he started to see that they're getting angry at him, so he He told them, I allow you today to cut weeds. Why? I am the master of the Sabbath. Come on, you just say in the book of Matthew, as I mentioned before, no one is allowed to contradict one little law, and if he does, he is gonna be cursed. I'm sure they're allowed to violate one of the most important rules of God.

See, I, I, I'm sure they would like to hear my explanation. I'm sure they would.

You're cutting me in a nice way. I surrender.

I'll always try to be nice. What Jesus did, he never said you don't have to follow the law or the law is not important. And that's why Yosef is correct. He told the people to follow those in leadership. He did nothing. He wasn't a revolutionary. He did nothing to try to undermine the authority. But what he did do was point out that their interpretation of the law wasn't an accurate interpretation. You see, the religious leaders would criticize Jesus for healing on the Sabbath, and Jesus pointed out that they were hypocrites. Why? Because they did many things themselves on the Sabbath. They would water their animals. They would assist with the birth of their animals. The priests would minister on the Sabbath. And so he understood correctly, and the religious Jews of the day should also have been able to understand that there are certain commandments that are more important than others, that it is justified if somebody is starving to death to pick food on the Sabbath day. Wait, please, please, please.

I used an example that is the worst sin in Judaism. Cutting weeds on the Sabbath is one of the 39 laws that we're not allowed to do on the Sabbath. You want the proof? I'll give you the proof.

Okay, let's see it, let's see it.

I give the proof. Comes a person named Sefarad. You read in the Old Testament, Sefarad, he went on the first Sabbath after accepting the Torah and he started to pull weeds, trash from the ground and Moses didn't know what to do with him. He took him and put him in jail. He asked God, God, this is what he did, what should I, would I do with him? God came and told him execute him in front of the entire nation. Leman iru v'irau. That a person like this has no right to live. And Jesus, as I mentioned before, and you agree with me, I'm not bringing sources that do not exist, and it says he allowed his students to do what Shlomo did. Now you just said no one is allowed to contradict the Torah, and you allow them to do something that the Torah says that it's death penalty. And when they told you, how are you allowing us such a thing? You say, I am the master. Of the Sabbath? You have to make up your mind. If you're the master of the Sabbath, that means God does not exist. You are a new God. The Torah is not true. If you come and say the Torah is the word of God, be very careful not to modify it, and you come and start changing it according to your need every day, then not only you're not the Messiah, you're not even a student.

Are you allowed to defend yourself on this Sabbath? Are you allowed to minister in the temple on the Sabbath?

Not to the point.

Is the— but what is the point?

The point is, can I come to one of my students that's sitting here and he tell me, please, I'm going to lose a million dollar if I'm not going to cut my weeds tomorrow because on Sunday there's a huge storm. I want to take my workers only tomorrow, Rabbi. I'm begging you, please let me cut my 'Wheat, because I'm going to lose $5 million.' Whatever the case is, do you know in history, in history before Jesus, after Jesus, any rabbi that kept what Jesus suggested not to move an inch from the Torah that will have the guts to come and tell a student you're allowed to cut the wheat on the Sabbath? Such a— it's such a violation.

But wouldn't you admit that there are exceptions? Yes. Don't— wouldn't you admit that there are some more important.

Only life risk. There is only one exception to the law. If a person is in a life threat, such as pregnant woman, she may get into problems, complications, or person needs a hospital, we are the Jews driving on a Sabbath. Or if we need to light fire to save the life of a Jew, even in— even if he's— if we're not sure, he has high fever, just there is a 1% sentence that a person is going to die, comes the Torah and say the laws were given for us to live. Thanks to them, not—

How about, how about circumcising a child on the 8th day and violating the Sabbath?

Which comes first? Comes the Torah in a clear sentence and told us that we allowed to do it on the 7th day. And if you know, in the chapter 19 of of the Talmud, the Mishnah, asking this question and has about 2 pages with proofs and verses from the Torah. How do we know that we're allowed to circumcise the baby in the 8 days? And you asked before about the oral laws, and maybe that's the time for me to respond to your question. You have to use common sense, which is very simple. What's the common sense? God God brings the Jews in front of Mount Sinai and gives them the written Torah. The written Torah, say Torahs. You disagree with me, but we'll take it further. Now tell me, if God comes to millions of people— remember, that's 1,300 years before Christianity, so there's no argument yet. The argument will start 1,300 years later, but at this point everybody sees that event. Comes God and says to the Jews, Here is the Torah I'm giving you, and the Jews listening to Moses speaking. How do we know? Nobody would be interested to take such a difficult religion to keep, so many laws changing their lifestyle completely, unless if what the Torah says is the truth. So when I read about myself that God spoke to Moses, I'm a witness. If it's not true, I will say, Mr. Moshe, there's a mistake in the book.

May I? It's a good point. It's a good point. It's a very good point.

I will give you the time, but give me another minute. Comes the Torah to Moshe and say— come one Jew and say to the crowd, excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, anybody heard here God speaking to Moses and giving him authority to be the leader? Please raise his hand. We are not interested to get it. We are free people. We want to do whatever we want. Like today, people don't want They didn't want to be religious. What made millions of people all of a sudden became 100% strict and follow the rules? The fact that they heard God. Now you may come and say, well, how do we know about the Oral Laws? Very simple. If you search in the entire written Torah, there are 613 laws. Not in one place the Torah gave instructions, the written Torah, The Torah never gave instructions for people how to follow these mitzvahs, these commandments. Which one? All of them. The 613 laws that describe Judaism. Without the oral laws, there is no way to understand one law. Such, I will give you an example. The Torah says you have to circumcise a male born on the 8th day. You should cut the orlah. We know what we cut when we circumcise a baby. Now, if we wouldn't have the oral laws, right when Moses brings down the Torah, people will say, what you brought us, Chinese book? Okay, God says you should not cut the orlah. What's orlah? Mordechai would say, orlah, it's this. He would say, orlah, it's this. She would say, orlah, it's the nails. He would say, Moses, what's orlah? There is no oral Torah according to your opinion. What's oral? Where we have to cut? God say that if we don't cut it, we're not Jews. We want to be Jews, but God didn't tell us where to cut. Is it possible? I'm losing my eternity if I'm not circumcise my children, and God will not tell me even alphabet how to do it, how to cut, what happened when the baby is sick. One question. Second, the Sabbaths. The Sabbath. I gotta keep the laws of the Sabbath. I don't know if you know, but there are thousands of laws. They hear you every week.

Maybe I can say something.

You ask me a question, I'm answering.

We need new rules. That's what we need.

Okay, so you say it like this. You say the over—

we need an oral law for our discussion here. I'm asking I'm asking—

you ask me a question, I'm answering you. And the point is like this: God say you have to observe the Sabbath, and a person that does not observe the Sabbath except him exclude himself from Judaism. Why? It's the covenant that we made with God. It's applied to Jews, by the way, also, not only to non-Jews. But a Jew that refused to keep the law of the Sabbath, he puts himself in violation. And he is not able to do certain Jewish holy ceremonies. Why? Because it's the covenant that God made with the Jewish nation for eternity. That's the word of the Torah. Now, where does it say in the written Torah, from the thousands of laws that we keep, most of us here, where does it say it? Counts the Torah in 12 different places and says that if a Jew does not keep the law of the Sabbath, he will be stoned to death. And his soul will cut for eternity. Tell me please in the entire written Torah, God comes and gives me an order, you should keep the Sabbath, you should not do any work on Sabbath. Comes a Jew that just accepted the book and says, okay God, I'm willing to listen to you. Where are the instructions? There's nowhere in the world where it says one detail about the Sabbath. Same thing to tefillin, the same thing each one of the laws. Comes the Torah and separate between the written laws and the oral laws. You know why? The non-Jews will not have it. Okay, because if the non-Jews will have it in their hand today, nobody in the world will know if he is an original descendant of the Jewish nation. Why? Everybody wanted to be a son of God in that generation, because the goyim, the non-Jews, they wanted to be religious as They want to join the nation of God who everybody admits that got the Torah from Mount Sinai. Everybody, the goyim, admit it. And they translated it to 70 languages, which shows interest.

So what do we have to do? Everything will be in a book. We will become Jews in 2 minutes. You're somebody who cares a lot about evidence, and I respect that. And you say that there must be an oral law because Because if there was no oral law, we wouldn't know how to circumcise. Not even a simple notion. Abraham was somehow able to circumcise, and he didn't have any oral law. The oral law, according to you, what, didn't come until Moses? How was it that Abraham was able to be a Jew and live before God and not have the oral law? Maybe there are other ways that they were able to follow the law. Without some mythical oral law for which you have no evidence.

I have news for you. There is a sentence in the Torah that says that I loved Abraham because he kept my torahs, again plural, written and the oral, and the laws and everything. Eke vashem shammar Avraham etorotai mitzvotai vechukotai. Abraham kept all my laws. Comes the oral Torah. And ask you a question. The Oral Torah say how— wait, wait, no, no, the opposite.

I'll tell you how you prove my point. When you said that Abraham kept my Torahs, that proves the point that Torahs are instructions or laws, not two separate bodies. Because according to Jewish tradition, there was no oral law until Moses.

Who kept— who gave Who gave Abraham all the instructions, what to do and how to do, before the Torah was published? And I want to get your attention to one thing that the Torah says, that before the world was created, 974 generations before the Torah was ready, before the physical world was created, and before everything here started, the divine Torah was already existing. Now, if you know about Noah after the flood— I need some evidence on that. Okay, no problem. If Noah after the flood, when he came out of the ark, how did he know how to tell the difference between pure animals and not pure animals? The Oral Torah answers: because God gave the main people from the time of Adam, every person that the Torah highlights, had all the laws of the Torah for him and all his followers until it was published in front of millions of people. And by the way, you should know that even the Sabbath was given a little bit before Mount Sinai. And now you have to also remember one thing. There was— if a person wanted to keep the laws of the written Torah, every Jew will do it completely different than the other. Now, you know that the Jews were living in exile for more than 2,000 years until about 60 years ago they started to gather in Israel. You also know there were no internet, no telephones, no communication, and the Jews were spread all over the world with no communication. Now, you also know that when the time— when the Yemenites, for instance, way before the destruction of the temple, they went to Yemen. And the Jews were spread all over the world and they gathered to Israel, as I said, just before Israel became a state. Each one of them brought with him, with his family, thousands of oral laws that did not change a bit. Circumcision in Yemen was the same one in Poland. And the same thing, the Torah. The Jewish Torah has 304,805 letters. Much longer than the New Testament. Much longer than the Quran. If you go to every synagogue in the world, you tell the rabbi to open the Torah. The Torah is one. The Torah is the same Torah. Everywhere you go, you see the same Torah. However, when you want to open up Quran in Kuwait and Quran in Saudi Arabia and Quran in Israel, it's not the same Quran. There are many differences. Same thing, the New Testament, as I mentioned to you before, 150,000 differences on the text. It's very simple.

I'm confused about that. What are you referring to when you say 150,000 different—

I'll explain. If I brought the original book now, and we have, Baruch Hashem, a lot of people here, and each one of them had to take a feather and copy even only 100,000 letters, that's all. Each one has to copy. Now remember, there's no printing machine. So I have to sit from morning to night and write a page, two pages. It takes between 1 to 2 years to write a sefer Torah. So now, if a person does it, what are the chances that a person will write manually 100,000 letters? Remember, the Torah is tripled in that, 300,405 letters. But I want to just ask you as an intelligent question, a person write 100,000 letters, is it possible that he will make 100, 300, 500 mistakes? 10th of a percent. You know what? Let's go to the minimum. One letter out of 100,000, it's very normal that a person made a mistake. Especially in the Hebrew letters. Why? The Hebrew letters are very similar. The Yud and the Vav, it's exactly the same. The difference is one little dot. If the ink spread by a bit, the letter change. So now when the people copy it manually, in time when there is no electric, And they did everything manually. The battery died. Okay, so that gives me more permission to talk now.

We don't want to give you any more permission. You do very well without extra permission.

Thank you very much for the compliment. But, but, Reuben, you were doing it too fast. I'll take care of you later. But the point was that a person makes at least one mistake. Comes, he makes one mistake in the letter Dalet. He makes one mistake in the letter Resh. He makes one mistake in the letter Lamed. He makes one mistake in the letter He. He made it Chet. It's very similar letters. Now between him and him there are already 4 differences. And between— now when everybody copied from the original text with only one letter mistake, now we have, I don't know, 100, 200 people. There are already 200 different texts. Multiply by 2,000 years, what do you get?

Okay, now finally, when you were talking about 150,000 ver— I couldn't figure out what you were talking about. Okay, what Yosef is talking about is that there are 150,000 variants. When you look at, when you look at textual variants, you see there are over 5,000 5,500 ancient Greek manuscripts. And what textual critics have done is to, is to record every variation among these 5,500 texts. And so if you add up all those variations from all those different texts, you come up with something like 150,000. Yosef is correct, but let me just point out, if you divide it by 5,500 to get an idea of the average number of variants per text, you're not talking about that many. And when you recognize you're just talking about a letter, one letter out of a word, what you come down with, even though you might have those variants, is you come down with a text where There's really no question about the text because we're just talking about little spelling mistakes for the most part.

Spelling that changed the meaning of the words in many places.

But you see, we have— if we have 5,500— but it's— if we have 5,500, the book is not the same anymore. Even if— well, we don't claim, we don't claim that that these copies that were made of the originals are divine. But we do claim that originally, the same way with Tanakh, that originally it was all inspired by God. It was all without error. That's the same thing that we claim. And I would agree with you about those number of errors. But if you're talking about the many different words, and I can't tell you how many different words there are in the New Testament, And you're looking at all those different letters, you're really not talking about a whole lot at all when you're talking about 5,500 texts. In fact, most, the vast majority of textual critics acknowledge that even with these variations, it doesn't change the meaning of the text in any palpable way.

According to my sources, according to my sources, and I check the sources in Christian sources, Christians wrote criticals of the New Testament, not Jews, because if I will bring you from the rabbis, you say, oh, the rabbis wrote what's good for them. And if you want, I will supply you with those sources. Those 150,000 spelling mistakes, as you call them, change in many places names and dates and complete things from the actual story. Now, if we have one diamond that's worth $100 million, And it's 5-carat, 10-carat diamond, and that's an original one. Each one of the people here took out of his pocket one diamond and threw it at me, and my original diamond fell and got mixed with all of them. And they're all an exact copy of the original one, but they're all Russian fake diamonds. It's very hard to tell the difference, if you know what I mean. Even experts sometimes cannot get fooled by it. Now, it's a fact. That one of them is an original diamond. It's worth fortune. Since it got mixed with 150,000 diamonds, even if one of them was really given by God, it's worthless because it got lost. Go find it now. That's what I'm trying to— wait, wait, you're not letting me finish. I'm just about to finish, you cut me. One more sentence. The point is like this: if a book is divine, Just that you know, in Torah, if you take a Sefer Torah, when you take it out, everyone rise. If it falls on the floor, people are fasting. We give a lot of respect. It's the book of God. And I'm sure you would rise also as respect to God, giving the Old Testament. But if one letter is missing, it lost all its holiness. If I take a Torah from here and put it in a suitcase and send it with El Al to Israel, believe me, You lost all your friends. Through the Torah, they threw it in the luggage. But if it had missing letters in it, it lost its value. Why? If it's divine, it must be perfect. If it's 99.9, it's not divine, it's human. Find me the original New Testament. Can you point to that?

None of us have the original manuscript. You, we don't have the original Mosaic manuscript. Sure we do. No, we don't. Sure we do. The oldest text that we have are the Dead Sea Scrolls. We do not have anything older than that.

Incorrect. Not true. Incorrect.

I can point out a lot of rabbinic scholars who would challenge you on that, and not only challenge you, but they would also say Moses didn't even exist, let alone write it. Now, that doesn't mean— now, of course, I don't go along with that, but just because you can come up critics, and Yosef mentioned New Testament critics who take issue with the New Testament. You can find Old Testament critics who take issue with the Old Testament and where it came from.

Right now, if a person will walk into the room and give you this book, and you hold the book, and he just told you, I received it from God, and you say, how do I know it's from God? He tells, I give you a week to test. If you find one mistake in this book, then you know God doesn't make mistakes. So you ask him, what kind of mistakes you're talking about? I mean, he asked you, what kind of mistake? Say geographical mistake, mathematical mistake, dates, contradictions. So you may, you may say, okay, give me a week, I'll check it carefully. You open it in the first page and you find the Twin Towers collapsed in Brooklyn. You have beautiful stories that God just gave him the book, he claimed. And you see the Twin Towers just collapsed. He gives you a date, maybe the date is correct, whatever, it's irrelevant right now. It collapsed in Brooklyn. You as an intelligent person, and I'm sure you are, I saw it. So I want to ask you a question, but honest, give me an honest answer. Would you waste another second continue to review the rest of the book, or you feel it's a waste of time? He just told you it's from God, and, and inside it say the Twin Towers collapsed in Brooklyn. Please answer this. Would you waste a minute after that, or you go to more valuable things to do?

You want my answer?

An honest answer, please. And, and you won't cut me off? No, I'm waiting If I found—

I have to admit, if I found in the New Testament that there were contradictions that couldn't be explained, say, from copyist errors or something of that matter, it would seriously undermine my belief in the New Testament. But let me just add this, that I acknowledge You were afraid I would add something.

No, in America there's always a "but." Things are nuanced.

You need "buts." That's why they put that in the language. "Buts" are important.

Take the time for your "buts." Shadila, let's go.

But what if, what if I find such incredible wisdom in the New Testament? What if through a relationship with Christ I find that through this relationship and through his wisdom, I'm miraculously changed. What if— wait, wait, wait, let me— you said you wouldn't— wait a second, you said you wouldn't interrupt me. Let me finish. Let me finish. Let me— I've been—

this person, he doesn't know. I mean, we're talking somebody right now came from the street.

Must I follow your rules exactly? Do I have not a little bit of, of room to answer it the way that I can give you permission to fool me. You see, you see, one reason— and I appreciate the fact that Yosef talks about evidence. Thank you. And reasons to believe. I, I really appreciate the fact that he wants to base his faith on solid ground. I do too. And there are many reasons that I believe in the New Testament. One reason The reason I believe in the New Testament is a personal reason. The reason I came to Christ is that Christ changed my life. I was a crazy, mixed-up kid. I saw 5 PhD psychologists or psychiatrists, and they were all highly recommended, and each one of them left me worse off than I was before. I have been following Christ now for 31 years, and it's only been getting better. And the more I study the Word, and also the Old Testament too, the more I study that, the more I see such wonders in wisdom and understanding. Wisdom that can only come from a divine source. Does somebody have questions? Because you're probably getting bored just listening to the two of us.

Anybody is bored? No. You know that what you just said, it's not a scientific proof because Muslims can swear that Quran makes their life so much better and Hindus and all other cults. So that's really not an indication that shows that religion is true. But going back to my question that I asked you, thank you for your honest answer. So obviously a normal human being would come and say common sense, not a genius, a normal human being. You don't have to be extra smart. If a person will claim that this book is from God, and I opened it and I saw in one page that the Twin Towers collapsed in Brooklyn, I tell my friend, I gave you your chance, you lost it, you blew it. Thank you very much, I'm a busy person. Fair? I gave him the chance. I took a week, I reviewed the book. I got lucky, after an hour I found that mistake. Please explain me.

I am limited in paper.

Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. Alright, go ahead. Go ahead. Please, me or you? Yeah, I mean, please explain me how does it say in the New Testament that the cave of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is in the city of Nablus? When every person in the world that knows a little bit Israel and knew Israel for the past generations know that the cave of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is in the city of Hebron. How can it be such a mistake in a divine book? God— Yes, here you go, here we go. It says like this in the New Testament.

Where is it at so I can find it?

It says here, it says Jacob was very— I don't have, in this particular time, I don't have the source.

Wait, wait, wait. I can't answer a question where I can't find the reference.

No, no, in most of the places that I quote him, I wrote the sources. In this particular one, I don't have the source, but I will prove you that it exists. I mean, we read it. Okay. Also, well, if— well, now it's too late to get it, but I'll get it to you maybe even today. We'll see. But no, well, maybe I'll email it to you. Okay. All right. But let's agree one thing. If I'm going to prove to you that the New Testament says that the cave where Jacob was buried, even though the Torah says that it's in Hebron, it's in the city of Nablus. Is the argument over or you continue to come up with new opinions and new arguments based on what you said before?

I complimented you before, Yosef, because you were asking substantive questions. Yes. What this question is, is not as rich and as substantive as some of the others that you were asking. I really don't know what to say about that, and until you find a reference for me, I really don't know how to answer you.

Okay, but I'm repeating my question. If I will find you the source and show you where it is, I have it in my house, it's just a matter of an hour, you'll have it in an email when I get home. When I get you the source and show you— Well, maybe I have a help here from a good friend of mine sitting somewhere here. He will help us to find the source. I told you before we started, and I am sure you believe me, that before I say something, I check myself at least 5 times. You have to check yourself twice, but I check myself at least 5 times. So it's only a matter of— Shh! No, please! Concentrate on what we have here. This is the stage right here. So please, Mike, I'm repeating my question to you because it's a matter of moments or a matter of hours. If I show you that the New Testament, which you claim God gave it, and it has such a geographical mistake that it's obviously impossible that God doesn't know where the New Testament— where the cave is, is this the end of the argument or we're going to have to continue? To prove? That's my question to you.

At first I said I wasn't going to ask you, but you make such a persuasive case for an answer, I will try to answer. Now, it's probably not going to be the type of answer you like, but I don't know if I can satisfy you on this. But there are— the reason that we believe in something believe in something, it usually doesn't hinge on a simple little word or a simple little fact. If I find so many reasons to believe in the New Testament, if I believe in the miracles, if I believe— and I think a much more meaningful thing to pursue would be the prophecies of Jesus, about the many prophecies that show that Jesus Jesus would actually, or the Messiah would die for the sins of the people. And Isaiah 53 talks about, all we like sheep have gone astray, but God laid upon him the sins of us all. And it talks about him being a burnt offering. There are many such prophecies. In fact, in Zechariah— now this has good news and this is bad news, because in Zechariah 12:10 it talks about how talks about how God is going to pour upon Israel in the end a spirit of grace and a spirit of supplication where they will call out to God. And it says about that, that they will look upon him whom they have pierced and they will mourn for me. And at that time it goes on to say how a fountain of forgiveness of grace and cleansing will be opened in the midst of Jerusalem for the Jewish people. And of course, what this is saying is if you are really a sincere Christian, you have to love the Jewish people because you recognize that we will all be brothers someday. Maybe right now we are divided by a lot of different issues, but if a person really loves Christ, they are going to to love his people, and his people are the Jewish people. He came as a Jew, and so a Christian has to recognize that all the apostles were Jewish. And so what I'm saying is that there are many reasons why I believe in the Christian faith. There are many prophecies I can point to that Jesus fulfilled. There are many, many miracles that he performed that are attested to not only in the New Testament, but extra-biblical sources also. There are all the wisdom I talked about. And another, I think, very, very fruitful area for us to explore is the consistency between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Because you're not gonna like me for this if I say it, so brace yourself, put on your proverbial seatbelts. But I would argue, if we ever continue this again, that the New Testament is more consistent with the Tanakh than the rabbinic understanding, or as Yosef says, the Talmud. I think the Talmud has gone far astray, and I think the New Testament is much more faithful to the Old Testament revelation. So what I'm saying— I'm going to get back to your question— what I'm saying is Yosef He says, what if this one word was a problem? And I have to weigh that one word, that one problem, and it is a problem for me.

I think I gave you more than 30 different problems, not one word. I mean, I asked you about one word, but I asked you about 25 mistakes in the descent.

I think I answered that, didn't I? No. I said they're two separate genealogies.

How can it be for one person two separate genealogies?

People have a mother and they have a father.

Father, don't they? No, but I already answered that. I told you descendants based on the Torah, which you agree is the word of God, does not go by the mother. Well, it may suit your purpose, but it's not proper.

But this situation is unusual because here you have a genealogy from a father who is not the biological father. So to cover all bases, perhaps That is the rationale, and I don't know the rationale because the New Testament doesn't give the rationale for giving two genealogies. But perhaps that is the rationale, to cover all bases, that biologically he's a child of David, he's a descendant of David, and also through adoption he's the son of David.

Well, adoption, you know that if I will— if I'm a kohen, which means a high priest in the Holy Temple, and I adopt I have a son and that's my only son, he cannot be a Kohen. And based on your argument, he is entitled to be a Kohen. But the Torah says clearly an adopted boy, it's not your original biological son. Yes, the Torah says, "Le mishpakhotah." Every time the Torah says, "Le zera." Zera means seed. It means from the seed, not from buying him in a supermarket. Some kind of agency, even though you love him very much. I want to ask you a question. I mean, I'm not really insulting, it's just something that just came to my mind. And this is a question that you may have to ask yourself based on what you are trying to answer. I'm just giving you an example. If I adopt a dog, is this dog will be my original son? I'm just giving you an example. You know, people giving inheritance to dogs and they give them $10 million. $1 million. You hear this on the news all the time. Based on your argument, he's gonna say that this dog is his son. He has to be a Kohen. He has to be whatever he is. If he's the mayor of New York, so this dictionary— I would agree with you. No, no, thank you very much. Now, if the Torah comes and says, "Le zera," zera means seed. Okay, you don't believe me? Open the dictionary and check. And seed means his biological son. And it's obvious, and there's many, many sources. Not always. Not always.

Sometimes zera is used in a figurative sense.

Can you prove? Yes. Please. Can I ask you a question? Maybe you help me with that because I'm not such an expert with the New Testament sources. What does it mean?

Acts. That's the book of Acts. That's a New Testament. That is the book that follows the Gospel of John.

Here is your sources for the cave. Jacob, please read it loud. Here is the source. You can check it.

Jacob and our fathers went down to Egypt and died there and were carried to Shechem.

It's Nablus, right? Check, double-check me. Everybody knows where Shechem is. What is Shechem? Nablus or Hebron? Nablus. Okay, Shechem.

And buried in the grave which Abraham had purchased from the sons of Hamor in Shechem.

That's another mistake. I highlight the mistakes. First, Abraham never purchased it from the sons of Hamor in Shechem. Read in the Old Testament, he got it from Ephron. So that's a very serious contradiction from their— Where is the New Testament? Please bring it back. Baruch Hashem, we found the source. So we have the source. Huh? I found it. I have it. I showed him. I told you it's gonna take minutes. You didn't believe me. Excuse me.

It's a home court advantage.

Look at the crowd. The next thing they're gonna have flags here, you know. But actually, I'm willing to— I'm actually, by the way, to make it 100% fair, I'm willing to come to your home court and argue the same things with you in front of the Christian crowd.

I don't have a home for it.

Well, we will make you one. So I give you the sources. By the way, I'll have to look. Okay, I'll give you another thing if we already meant— yes, yes, please copy everything. By the way, you see there, I have a full list of contradictions which we didn't even discuss this, but we'll leave it for another time because really time is running out. I want to conclude this in the next few minutes, with your permission. I want to tell you, in the year 160, which is about almost 1,840 years ago, there was a priest, one of the heads of the Christian church. His name was Titanus. I hope in English it sounds the same. I don't know how to say it in English, but you know which one I'm referring to? Titannus. Please write it down. I mean, it's a foreign word. I mean, it was copying from English. So Titannus, and he wrote in his book that there is a serious problem with the contradictions between the four parts of the New Testament: John, Mark, Matthew, and Luke. And because of that, he decided— he offered the Christian church to modify and make a book and compromise. Since we have so many different problems, we cannot answer our crowd. How is it possible there are so many mistakes in almost every chapter? Why don't we make a new version of the New Testament and we will address all the problems and all the contradictions? Now I want to ask you, please, based on what we spoke in the last 2-3 hours, in the serious warning of the Old Testament, which they agreed the Word of God. What is the punishment of a person that erased one letter from a divine book? No, loud, loud! Death punishment. How is the head of the Christian Church, because he's dealing with so many human errors, offering to take the New Testament and modify it completely and match between the contradictions? You don't have to believe me.

That's why I'm not denying that there's somebody heretical. You got all sorts of people, but that doesn't mean that we would ever judge them.

That's why I'm giving you the name. All you have to do, remember, it was the year 160 to the Christian counting, and I give you his name. Personally, I don't care about that.

I don't care that there were certain heretics.

One of the most important things is important Christians.

Church, you know, who advocated this thing or that thing, you know.

Why, you know, that should bother you very much. That shows that the Christians are not loyal to the divine text. They do whatever they want with that based on their needs.

You see, there are Jews who convert to Christianity too.

Does that, does that— is that— I want to ask you a question. Is that a proof of something? I will I will tell you that today there is inflation with ignorant Jews, unfortunately, that never learned Judaism because of the exile condition, because of money problems, money issues. It's very expensive to get Jewish education. Someone like you, which is educated and intelligent and has some knowledge, can take any ignorant Jew from the street and in 20 minutes make him believe believe anything you want. I promise you. I have news for you. In many flights that I took to places in the world, sometimes in the airport, I always— I mean, not always, but sometimes I met priests. And he saw me with the yarmulke and they come and they initiate conversation. And I promise you, and that's not a lie, everyone who sat with me, the maximum he sat next to me was 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, he ran away that I don't have to— I will not see him by mistake. Why? When I started to shoot the list of the questions that I had. As a matter of fact, I'll tell you a story that just happened about 8 years ago. It was the Sabbath, and unfortunately it was the Sabbath because at that time I used to film all the seminars that we're making. We had a seminar in New Jersey with a very important Jew from Mexico. His name is Dr. Betesh. And Dr. Betesh said, while giving an example, a comparison between Judaism to other religions, he said, everyone who wants to bring a priest or any Christian educated person to argue, I'm open to suggestion at any time, any time, any place. Guess what? There was a little Persian 7-year-old kid at that seminar, 7 years old. He thought it's going to be a nice challenge. He walked in the hotel and he found a priest, a pastor from New Jersey. I looked at his card, he had about 7 or 8 different titles, and I understood he had a large crowd. They had also a seminar there, so he invited him to the argument. And this is an important pastor. He later himself said that he was a pilot in Vietnam. He told his life story, and based on that conversation that we had over there, I wish I could I could film it, but I couldn't do it because it was the Sabbath. He asked him about 4 or 5 issues, not 30, 50 that we dealt with tonight. Well, the whole conversation was maybe 40 minutes, and then this was the reaction of the priest. May God be my witness, he hold his hand like this, head like this, and he say, oh my gosh, my mother will kill me. When she find out I converted to Judaism. That was his answer. Yes, I'm serious. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me finish the story. Wait, wait, wait. You're giving me— Ignorant Christians.

I agree. You've already admitted—

I gave you a pastor. A pastor. A pastor, not an ignorant Christian. Okay, all right, you answer my question. All right, all right, all right, all right. Okay, okay.

About to convert, you're mistaken.

I— you still did not answer the last question that I asked you. You, you stopped.

You never gave me a chance. I did.

You answered, but not to the point. You told me that if a person will come with a book— before I told you about the Cave of Jacob, before I found you the source, I asked you, a person will show you that the Twin Towers collapsed in Brooklyn. Is that an indication that this book can be given by God? You hesitated, but in the end you say, well, that will be the end of this book for me. Now when I show you the source, you contradicted yourself completely. Ah, let me explain.

Let me explain. Can I— do you think I can dig myself out of this hole now? I don't know, you got me pretty deep there. The distinction that I would I wish to make is if there is no way to reconcile this mistake with what I believe the origin of the New Testament to be, then I've got a problem. But as with this case of Shechem, I do believe that there is a way to reconcile. I might not know right now, but I do believe there's an explanation. And also, What I try to explain is that there are so many compelling reasons to believe that the New Testament is God-breathed, along with the Old Testament. There are so many that I am mandated by logic and reason itself to believe that there must be some way to reconcile these disparate elements. I don't think that's a contradiction.

Abraham, tell me, please, please, please, please.

I have to study that first. I don't know how to answer it. We said it in the beginning, but again, please, if just think of your wife. If your wife has been faithful to you for 50 years and somebody brings you a report and says that in some way she was unfaithful, are you going to believe that report? In light of 50 years of proven faithfulness. It's the same way with me in the New Testament, and the same way a Christian— if it has proved itself to me in so many different ways, if the writers have proved themselves. You know, you ask the question, who would believe? It's easy for people to believe the New Testament because—

proof, but that's not the proper word to use.

Well, let me, let me talk to you anything. Well, please give me a chance. Give me a chance. What you said was there was every reason in the world for people to believe in Christianity. It's so easy. It took away the law. You know, why wouldn't people believe in it? But just think of the difficult things that people had to risk their lives in order to believe in the New Testament, because it was the death penalty, as you point out, to believe against people's understanding of the Old Testament. And besides that, how could anybody believe in the, the leader of the faith, Jesus Christ, dying on the cross, and there being any validity in that religion, unless there were actual miracles that took place? Who would want to believe in somebody who was stripped naked and tortured to death? Who would want to believe in that unless there were compelling reasons? So I would assert there are many, many compelling reasons.

Reasons and proofs are completely two different things. There are many, many reasons why so many people in the world doing foolish things. The fact that 60% of the youth smoke drugs or use LSD or cocaine doesn't mean that my children and your children also have to follow it because we both agree that it's not the proper life. So using a majority, what the people does, or so many reasons why people follow one person, I have news for you. I have a list of more than 50 false messiahs here. Do you want me to start and tell you the life story of each one of them? It may change you from one to the other because they all claim what you just said. You know, I have a list of the last 2,000 years. There's books full of false messiahs, even among Judaism. That one of them, everybody was sure that he is the Messiah, and it turned out he died. And once he died, the rabbis said that was a false belief. It's impossible. You should know one thing, and I'm sure you do know, but for the crowd, the Bible says that Elijah will come 3 days before the Messiah will appear, and he will tell the entire nation to prepare for the arrival of the Messiah. And the Messiah will save the Jews from all their agony and pain. Those conditions never happened in the life of Jesus. The Jews suffer since Jesus from the Christian church more than any other nations. Tens of millions of Jews were tortured and were forced in the time of the Inquisitions, forcing them, tear them away from their land, from their family, putting taxes on them, burning them with the Torah for the last 1,000 years in the name of the New Testament, even though the New Testament promised that is the religion of love. What kind of religions of love that claim that they have the truth will bring people and police and in the basements of churches all over history, as you know, in Spain and in Portugal in Portugal and in many other countries and burned the Jews and tear their body to two halves in a wheel because they refused to accept the New Testament. I never did, even though I'm a little strict. I have a reputation that when I come and argue with a non-religious Jew and try to make him religious, not everyone can use this direct approach. No problem, I respect his opinion, but I never use a wheel to rip him to two. Because he doesn't want to become a shomer Shabbos. It never occurred to me. If I have the truth, I'm going to use common sense and proof. If I don't have what to offer, I'm going to hire gangsters to do the job. And that's what Muhammad did. What do you think? When he came up with the Quran, right away they started to murder people. Judaism is not a missionary religion. If any, we are opposed collecting Gentiles from the world and come adopt them into Judaism. The opposite. That's not our goal. It wasn't my intention with you and your friend here. The opposite. If you would consider it, it's your choice.

Everyone has a free choice. May I respond, please? If a Christian really knows their religion, if they— and the simplest thing to recognizes that Jesus came as a Jew, all his apostles, all his followers were Jews, everyone who wrote the New Testament with perhaps the exception of Luke were Jewish, anybody who realizes these facts, anybody who realizes what Paul says about the Jewish people, that the gifts and the calling of God cannot be revoked, Anybody who really believes would never treat Jews like that. What does that mean? Well, I have to say— one second, wait a second— sadly, sadly, many aspects in the name of Christ, many horrible things have been done. But please remember that Christianity, true Christianity, was hijacked for a long time, you know, within the Catholic Church. It was forbidden to translate the New Testament or the Bible itself into the vernacular, into the common language of the people. People were put to death. Christians were put to death for translating the New Testament. In other words, darkness had come over the entire Christian church establishment for long periods of time. But Christians who know their religion have to love the Jews. And so I have to apologize for those people in the name of Jesus who did what they did to the Jewish people. There is no reason for that.

Okay, thank you for that. And I would like to conclude, and first of all, I thank everyone that showed up and behaved in a nice way with patience. I want to remind everyone that the reason for this debate was all intelligence. He is trying to prove their side. We're trying to prove our side. We have questions about what they claim. In my opinion, I would like to conclude my side, and then Danny will conclude his side. In my opinion, and you have the right to judge according to what you just saw, in my opinion, I presented a lot of questions, and we still have time for him to come back with 15 or 20 questions that are not solved. Some of the contradictions. Predictions and mistakes. If he will be able to answer them, then it will be maybe a point to re-meet again and hear the answers. But if he is not, for whatever reason, that pastor that I told you from 8 years ago, he said to Dr. Batesh, give me 3 days. You still going to be in New York? He said yes. In 3 days I will get back to you. Until today we are waiting for him. Dr. Bethege sent him or somebody that affiliate with him sent a letter to the Pope, the ex-Pope, about the question that I asked about King David's descendants. If Joseph is not the father, why did you waste a whole page to describe his descendants? We sent it to the Pope. He sent it to the Pope and the Pope sent him an email back from the Vatican. The answer to your question will be given by the Father of the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem. He will answer your question. Right away it's a question why the head Christian in the world don't know to answer this question. So when he sent to the Father Joseph something, I don't remember his full name, in the Church of Nativity, the answer is, dear Jewish brother, the answer to your question is in the book The Birth of the Messiah. I'm sure you're familiar with that book. Yeah? No? So he gave us a book, a name of a book. Dr. Batesh asked 5 experts to read the book and look in the entire book for the answer to this question, and there was obviously no answer. So he sent them back another email, and the father apologized and he said, I'm sorry, I gave you the wrong source. The name is another book. And 5 other people read the new book that he gave, and the answer was not given. He thought maybe they'll leave him alone. They contact him for the third time, and until today— okay, and until then, until today, we never got back an answer from the Vatican, from the Christian Church. In my opinion, we will never get an answer answer to this question because the people who wrote the New Testament made such a critical mistake there is no way to correct it. Because if it is divine, there cannot be such a human error in it. If you try to prove that she did not cheat on her fiancé and her husband and she did not become pregnant by another person, which we have her name, the real father of Jesus, I did not want to bring it up, I did not I didn't want to make this conversation ugly, that's why I kept it outside. If you want, I'll give you the source, what's his real father's name. But we, in that case, we asked many, many experts in the Christian world and the answers were never given. And plus, I asked my friend here, so far in many years that I've been doing it, not one of these questions was answered. Everything I told you right now is the truth. I'm waiting for you to be the pioneer, the first one who really give me the answers. And believe me, I will be the first one to bring you back up here and let you read your answer in front of all the audience if they agree to come one more time. Because we are not trying to hide the truth. Judaism always educated to questions, and the whole Talmud is questions and answers. And one last sentence for you. For tonight again. Everybody has to remember from the entire question, from the entire arguments, in my opinion, one very important sentence: if it's divine, there cannot be mistakes. The rest of the book can be marvelous, beautiful, copy from the Old Testament, copy from here, copy from there, opinions, beautiful stories, miracles, miracles happened, didn't happen. We don't even want to waste time of challenging the miracles. That's not even the issue here. Because I told you, and Jesus himself admits that making miracles is not an indication of anything. The conclusion that I'm trying to make to Danny and his friend right here is very simple. Divine has to be perfect. One mistake, not 50, not 500, one mistake One contradiction in a text, 25 mistakes in a descendant, the Kavits in Shem, 75 people went with Jacob to Egypt, and so forth and so on. The list is huge. I cannot go blinded after my feelings. Feelings mean nothing. A lot of people, because of their feelings, they are in jail, they are killed already, their families are broken. Judaism did not educate to go by your heart, by your feelings. Yes, feelings is important, but when your feelings say that your cousin is stealing from your register, from your business, but he's your cousin, you don't want to fire him. That's your feelings. But the common sense say that if you don't fire him today, you will be homeless in a year. Common sense wins over the heart. Believing means not knowing. If you believe in the New Testament, you have nothing. You prove you have answers to all the dilemmas, then you are free from any conscious problem. If you want to close your eyes and ignore all, believe me, and I promise you, if you want, I will continue to send you more and more questions for the next year. I have a lot more sources I have books in my home that I didn't even start to bring because I knew the time will not give. It's 11:30.

Take your time, please. Well, I think the questions you raise are pertinent. I don't think they're as weighty or significant as some of the others. I think there are other things that we can also look at, not to dismiss the question of contradictions. You know, there's the, there's the question of how well the New Testament fits in with the Old Testament, and is our Christian understanding more accurate, more in line with the Old Testament, than the Talmudic or rabbinic interpretation of Tanakh? For instance, let me just throw out another verse for you, because from a Christian understanding, we are under the New Covenant now, that the Old Covenant has been fulfilled. Fulfilled. And we see a lot of evidence for this in Scripture. One piece of evidence I did mention to you before was the fact that nowhere in Scripture does it mention that the Mosaic Covenant is eternal, but in fact there are many indications in Scripture where it is going to pass away. And let me just read you this one verse from Jeremiah 3:14-16, and it It goes, return, O backsliding children, says the Lord, for I am married to you, and I will take you from one city and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion. I will give you shepherds according to my heart who will feed you with knowledge and understanding. Then it shall come to pass when you are multiplied and increased in the land, says the Lord, that you— that they will say no more The Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, and that represents the Mosaic Covenant, doesn't it? It shall not come to mind, nor shall they remember it, nor shall they visit it, nor shall it be made anymore. There are many indications that the Mosaic Covenant is going to be replaced by a New Covenant, which is termed everlasting. And that's what you have to deal with. You have to deal with the question of, has the Messiah come? And what is the evidence that the Messiah has come? I haven't talked about the New Testament evidence, and purposely, because you're interested in the Old Testament evidence. So I've been trying to give you evidence from the Old Testament. There's a lot of indications in the Old Testament that Israel is not going to succeed. Succeed in earning their righteousness under the Mosaic Covenant, that there would have to be a change. For instance, the Jewish people are often called stiff-necked people. Now, I'm not putting the Jewish people down. I happen to be Jewish myself. Talks about them being a stiff-necked people. What would change it? Well, the New Covenant entails a change of heart, that God would come to the people in conjunction with the Messiah and take that hard heart and replace it with a soft heart, and he would cause the people to always follow him. There had to be a change, and that change would deal with not only a change in who we are but a change in the priesthood too. Remember that Moses promised the people that it wouldn't just be the Levites who were priests. He promised that there that they would be a whole nation of priests. And you see, here's the bad news again. You will be a nation of priests, but the bad news is you're going to be stuck with us. We're going to be with you. We're going to be part of Israel, and we're going to be judging the nations along with you. So you might as well get used to that idea, because it's not only in the New Testament, it's also in your Old Testament. One last thing.

Why One last thing, with your ending statement, you just erased all the questions that I gave you from the prophets that showed that all the signs that the prophets gave that what happened in the time of Messiah, not even one of them happened in the life of Jesus. You put everything aside like we did not discuss for the last 2 hours. I ask you about the peace, I ask you about— wait, wait, wait. I ask you about all the Jews going back to the land and building the temple. There are so many prophecies, not even one of them happened in his life. The prophecy said that he has to have a son and he never had a son. He did not— Show me that. Well, let's go. I'll show you if you want. I'll show you right now. But I don't want to end it to the end of the night. It's in the book of Isaiah.

My wife is going to be calling me pretty soon.

Shake it. But— shake it. But the point is, you choose to put away all the questions that I brought you from the prophets, that not one of these prophecies suit the life of Jesus. And not only that, he died, and without— he couldn't even help himself, and he never helped the Jews. If any, he brought the Jews more agony than anybody in history, and you put it all aside and you come and say he's going to come, he, he was the Messiah. He said, well, you're ignoring reality.

Like to take a look at the prophecies that talk about the Jews rejecting their own Messiah?

We've got plenty of those too. Okay, remember, first your job is, with my opinion, is to answer all the contradictions in the New Testament. Once you cover one by one in We need new ground rules. We need a new oral law. Once you cover all the questions and all the contradictions that we had in your text and in the evangelists and the 4 books of the New Testament, from that moment on you will be able to use the New Testament as a proof to anything. Right now you are not authorized to use the New Testament as a proof when there are so many open issues. You first have to cover those issues. I have heard it, but I haven't used it.

You're the one who's been going to the New Testament. I have just been talking from Tanakh.

You have to agree with me that I did not limit you to anything you wanted to say. I didn't tell you before the conversation, do not use this or do not use that. The opposite. I encourage you. I told you I have questions to you, and then you want to say whatever you want. I'm open to all your questions. But you have to be— I'm sure you're honest, but it's hard to admit, even to greater people than us. All I'm asking you to do is go and get me all the answers to the questions I ask you, and me and you will eat pork in McDonald's on Yom Kippur, and I'll pay the bill. Thank you very much.