Emet HaTorah Update 15 October, 2015

Shalom, everyone! I hope you all were blessed during the High Holy Days. There have been so many things going on with Emet HaTorah the last few months that I thought I would take a few minutes to review and try and catch everyone up on what all is going on.

You may be asking, "What happened to the newsletter?" And rightly so. Since even before the Patterns of Praise conference in August, we have been running non-stop. There was a lot of preparation involved in putting together our first conference and it took a lot out of us. However, in my estimation, it was a huge success. I am still hearing reports of the life-changing impact it had on those who attended. Joe and Debbie Good did such an excellent job of helping us to understand Jewish prayer and giving us details on using the siddur (prayer book). I believe everyone in attendance was blessed and walked away with a challenge to begin a life of prayer.

Speaking of the Patterns of Praise conference, we will be doing a duplicate conference next month in Macon, GA at Nachamu Ami Messianic Synagogue (NAMS), just a little over an hour outside of Atlanta. The dates are November 13-15. Please mark your calendars, register on our website and spread the word through social media or word of mouth! If you didn't make the first one, we hope you'll consider coming to this one. We are very much looking forward to it.

Leading up to the Patterns of Praise conference, I had taught a college-level class on the Mishnah and Talmud in May and June. We were able to record this and are currently in the process of editing the audio. We have had someone with audio experience volunteer to help edit this series, so we are super excited that this will finally be completed soon. We will be reducing down nearly 12 hours of lectures into about 7 hours or so and making it available through our ministry. As a reminder, monthly supporters of Emet HaTorah will be receiving a set of these teachings for free. And if you are thinking this is a repeat of the teachings from a couple of years ago, this is all new material, much more organized and a lot more extensive.

Since we're on the topic of audio, we have almost completed editing the audio from the Patterns of Praise conference and will have this resource available shortly. Again, if you are a monthly supporter you will automatically be receiving a copy of this resource as well. It will be a resource that will completely change the way you think about prayer and challenge you to a lifestyle of prayer.

There have been several challenges this year as well. One of the challenges is that the printer we use for CD printing has gone down again. It has not been working for months and this has kept us from being able reproduce existing audio resources and moving forward with new ones. We had looked at outsourcing the printing, but it was not a feasible solution. It was way out of our budget. However, Baruch Hashem (bless God), we believe we have turned the corner on this problem. Though a generous donation last week we were able to purchase a new printer. We hope to be back in production in just a few days. This is perfect timing, as we will be reproducing at least two complete series of audio resources as mentioned above. We are very thankful!

Many of you might also be asking, what happened to all of the audio that had been posted over the last 2 years on the Gospels and the Acts study? Unfortunately, we had to remove them at the request of FFOZ, because our classes were comprehensive and were basically giving away their years of research and hard work for free. There was miscommunication at the onset of the classes and I posted them on the website under the impression that I had permission to do so. The good news is that I have begun a new teachings series. Let me tell you about it briefly…

Beginning with the start of the new Torah cycle, I began teaching through the Torah again, but with a specific focus. I wanted to learn the midrash—the ancient Jewish commentary on the Torah that has been passed down and studied alongside the Torah for an unknown amount of time. Many of the concepts and teachings found in the midrash go back to the time prior to the Apostolic Scriptures (New Testament), which makes it a wonderful resource to understand concepts that Yeshua and his disciples may have been familiar with. It is filled with Scriptural exegesis, commentary, word-play, parables, legends and messianic expectation. It's a resource I already use in my studies, but have not done a complete study of the midrash alongside the weekly Torah readings. I have already posted the first class and will be recording the second one tonight (Parashat Noach—which will hopefully be one of the best, as it has some amazing connected themes).

I'm sure there's more to talk about, but that's all for now. Is the newsletter still going? Yes, I'm working on trying to get an issue out next week. Please keep this in your prayers. It's just difficult trying to do everything with limited time and resources. Thank you for your prayers and support, and feel free to give us a shout and let us know how we're doing. Blessings to you and your family!

Darren Huckey
Director, Emet HaTorah