by Kirk Gliebe 

A recent study involving first-year undergraduate students in the United Kingdom found that 50% of British whites and 53.4% of British Asians were myopic(1).  Myopia, also called short-sightedness, is a common eye condition in which people can see nearby objects clearly but distant objects appear blurred. Corrective lenses or surgery are needed in order for people to see distant objects clearly. Many of us struggle with the difficulty of physical myopia, but I wonder how many of us honestly admit to our struggle with spiritual myopia, spiritual short-sightedness? From time to time in our Messianic Jewish walk we find ourselves losing our ability to focus on the big picture. The distractions of olam hazeh, this world, leave us spiritually blurry eyed, incapable of picking out the important spiritual details that G-d desires for us to see so that we might live out our role as his Holy People. What is the solution for this? We must train ourselves to see our world through G-d's eyes and not our own.

Today's parasha is an extended appeal to obey Torah, something which meets with a mixed review in Messianic Jewish circles, and in Jewish Mission circles.  It seems clear to me that it is axiomatic for most of our movement that although we are generally a Torah-positive movement, we function from the presupposition that we are "not under the Law" and that although we are free to obey Torah, we are, in the end, not obliged to do so.

Do you like to make choices?  Whether you do or not, it seems as though for each of us there is a never-ending stream of options that place demands upon our time and threaten the normal and easy flow of our lives. With the blessings of the information age, come even more options, more choices and a still greater demand upon our lives.

by Rebbetzin Malkah Forbes
Beit HaShofar, Seattle

As I drive around to various locations throughout my week, I am stunned and sometimes exasperated by some of the housing prices.  What drives some homes to be exceptionally more?  Location, location.  Want to live by a lake?  See the mountains?  Live in the perfect suburbia with everything you need?  No problem.  All you need to do is sign on the dotted line and hand over your salary - you can have it all.  As we begin Sefer Devarim, we are witnessing Moshe as the first real estate broker in action for Eretz Yisrael.