The eleventh day of the fifth month of the 2730th year of our dispersion.

Intestinal microbiota play a large role in man's health. There are hundreds of different microbes in the GI tract, many of which cannot be cultured and therefore cannot be isolated or "discovered." The makeup of these microbes is determined by several factors. Breastfed babies have high levels of Bifidobacteria in their GI tract. Bifidobacteria are helpful and inhibit cancer. Formula babies have Bacteroides and clostridia in their GI tract, among others.

The infant's immune system develops in different ways in response to the intestinal microbiota. If a microbe gets established early in the infant's life, the immune system accepts it and will not attack it as a foreign agent. A formula-fed infant is exposed to a diverse group of genera early in life; I hypothesize that their pathogenic species have fewer problems getting established later on and causing cancer and other diseases.

I also hypothesize that an adult with an imbalance of intestinal microbiota due to being formula-fed as an infant cannot completely correct this, as his immune system will not as readily receive the beneficial bacteria even if ingested, and will not as readily attack the pathogenic bacteria to make the gut's environment favorable to the beneficial bacteria.

After the infant grows into a toddler and begins to eat real food, their gut stabilizes. Before long their guts are like that of an adult and the immune response has been trained properly. At this point it is necessary for the child to be exposed to a variety of harmful microorganisms to continue to properly develop his immune system. The "hygiene hypothesis" explains that an over-sanitized society full of antibacterial products actually leads to autoimmune disease because children are not exposed to enough harmful bacteria.

And finally, who knows what kind of microorganisms ride into the GI tract on unclean meat or an animal carcass torn by beasts? We are not to eat them or even to touch them. If we did, perhaps an harmful organism would become establised in our intestines and give us health problems later on. Why else would Peter and Ezekiel have placed such emphasis on the fact that they had never, in their entire lives, eaten anything unclean? You can be forgiven for all kinds of sins through sacrifice and repentance, but something about unclean meat must stick with you once you have eaten it. I think there must be more going on than we can see or discover, which is why the Law seems like foolishness to one who believes he is capable of discerning truth himself, without the help of יהוה.

These are just a few examples of how יהוה may use microorganisms to punish and reward certain kinds of behavior. For further reading, see the Wikipedia articles on gut flora and the hygiene hypothesis.

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The ninth day of the fifth month of the 2730th year of our dispersion.

The "Sheep and Goat" judgment of Matthew 25, like most of the sayings of the Messiah, is not understood by most who read it. I will endeavor to explain it here. Here is the translated quote from the Messiah:

But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.' Then the righteous will answer Him, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?' The King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.'

First of all, who are the nations mentioned here? Do not be so quick to assume that all people are involved. The Greek word used here, ethnos, is used to translate several Hebrew words: am and goy. The Peshitta here has a word from the root "am" which simply means "people," so I don't have any reason to believe it was originally "goyim" or specifically Gentiles which are mentioned. However, notice the phrase "one of these brothers of mine." Who is a brother of the Son of Man? Matthew 12:50 holds the definition of a brother of Messiah: one who does the will of the Father. In John 1:12 it is said that to those who received him, he gave the right to become children of יהוה. Messiah is the firstborn Son of יהוה; other sons of יהוה are his brethren. So those who received Messiah have the right to become his brethren, and those who do the will of the Father truly become such.

So if a group of people are coming before Messiah and are being organized based on how they treated the brethren of Messiah, does it make any sense that they would be his brethren? John states in his first epistle that all the children of יהוה love each other. One without love is excluded by definition. A brother of Messiah is not judged based on his love or lack of love for another brother of Messiah; there are no brothers of Messiah who do not love each other. However, those outside the body have varying attitudes toward the brethren. Some love and bless us, others persecute us. It is these people who are being judged based on their treatment of the brethren of Messiah. I think the language in the verse makes it clear there is a third group of people present. But I could be wrong - it's just my theory.

If my theory is true, The passage in Matthew 25 is merely the final fulfilment of the promise to Abraham that all who bless his children will be blessed and all who curse them will be cursed. We are the children of Abraham, and the children of יהוה, and the brethren of Messiah. All who bless us are the "sheep" and all who curse us are the "goats." Messiah sorts them out when he comes in glory. I think this is the explanation of the sheep and goat judgment. All through the Millennial Reign and even after when the New Jerusalem arrives there are people outside the Kingdom who are required to worship יהוה but who are not members of His family. I don't think a lot of orthodox Chrisians realize this.

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The eighth day of the fifth month of the 2730th year of our dispersion.

What does it mean to fear יהוה? Solomon, according to 1 Kings 3:12, was the wisest man ever to live. He stated in his Proverbs that the fear of יהוה is the reshith da'ath, the arche sophia, the beginning of knowledge. What is the fear of יהוה? What does it mean to fear יהוה? Christians throw this terminology around all the time. But what does it really mean? Do you look under your bed and in your closet at night to make sure He isn't there? Do you pray that He doesn't squash you like a bug? What does it mean? How do you fear יהוה?

Solomon's father David gives us the answer. It's very simple. Read Psalm 19:7-11, and Solomon's words will cease to be cloaked in mystery.

The law of יהוה is perfect, restoring the soul;
The testimony of יהוה is sure, making wise the simple.
The precepts of יהוה are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of יהוה is pure, enlightening the eyes.
The fear of יהוה is clean, enduring forever;
The judgments of יהוה are true; they are righteous altogether.
They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold;
Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.
Moreover, by them Your servant is warned;
In keeping them there is great reward.

This is an extended Hebrew parallelism. The following words all refer to the same thing: Law, Testimony, Precepts, Commandment, Fear, and Judgments. Now how many people do you know who consider the Torah, with all its laws, holidays, restrictions and commandments, to be perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, and true? How many of them have their soul restored by it, and how many acknowledge that it endures forever? How many of them desire the commandments more than gold and consider them sweeter than honey? How many of them are warned by the Law and realize the reward in keeping it?

The answer to those questions is the same number of people you know who have the beginning of knowledge. The rest of Proverbs and the rest of the Scripture will not do you any good if you don't have the beginning of knowledge, just as you cannot read a book before you learn the alphabet. Maybe that's why we still put the Pentateuch first in our Bibles. Ever think of that?

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The seventh day of the fifth month of the 2730th year of our dispersion.

After threshing and winnowing a hundred square feet of oats by hand (a job more normally suited to wooden flails and the feet of oxen), I have come to the conclusion that יהוה designed agriculture to be lossy. Like a compression format which does not retain all of the original data, men were never designed to harvest every scrap of edible food from their land. As the value of the food goes up, the efficiency goes down. It is not difficult to pick every tomato off a tomato plant. On the other hand, oats, wheat, and barley are very good for you, but to get the edible seed out of the husk and off the stalk requires a good amount of work. At some point, without complex machinery, it becomes so difficult to remove every single husk in a manner that doesn't result in the loss of a single oat groat that it is not worth the caloric output. In other words, if all you did all day every day was husk oats using only your hands, and were so meticulous as to lose not a single groat, and ate nothing but the products of your labor, you would use up more energy than you took in and would die of starvation.

Now if you use an easier method, like trampling the oats under the feet of cattle, it is less energy-intensive for the human eater, but oats are necessarily lost in the process due to the rapid and uncontrollable movement of the cattle. Winnowing involves throwing up the entire harvest, handful by handful, in a sustained wind, and gathering the groats with come down a short distance away. It takes a lot less energy than manually sifting through the oats and picking out the chaff but again, groats are lost in the process as something unpredictable may happen, such as a gust of wind blowing them into the grass.

So, in the absence of higher technology than hand tools, I theorize that as your input-to-output calorie ratio grows more favorable due to innovation in technique, more grain must be planted to offset the decrease in efficiency that results from not de-hulling each individual grain and keeping track of each individual groat. In ther words, if you are going to harvest your grain like a genuine Hebrew Israelite, a lot of it is going to end up in the grass, or in the dirt, to spring up wild the next year or to be eaten by a wild animal. This is in addition to that which is intentionally left in the field, as gleanings are not allowed to be taken and the corners are left standing.

This concept, taken together with the idea of the scapegoat on Yom Kippur, supports in my mind the notion that a wild or feral population of clean animals is important to a healthy ecosystem in a Torah-observant community, as does Isaiah 5:8. "Woe to those who add house to house and join field to field, Until there is no more room, So that you have to live alone in the midst of the land!" That is, woe to that society which has no wild spaces, and which leaves no agricultural product unharvested and unturned into a commodity, and which has no room for wild or feral animals. The food chain breaks down and the ecosystem suffers. Perhaps equally important is the effect on a poor man who may not own any animals but is a skilled hunter and can bring in meat from the wild with his bow. Of course, by prosecuting any man who hunts without a state license and by charging fees for these licenses, our government has essentially established a claim on every single wild edible animal in the land, in direct blasphemy against יהוה, who has stated that He owns every wild animal. Psalm 50:10: "For every beast of the forest is Mine, The cattle on a thousand hills." Do you need the State's permission to hunt יהוה's animals, or His permission only? I have personally hit three deer with my car, but if I had purposefully shot them instead on my own property for meat, I would be a poacher.

Why do these state laws exist? Because of greed. Because greedy men hunted more than they could ever eat and would have killed all the wild animals for fun, if they had been allowed. What a damned race this is! We have also screwed up by introducing feral pigs, which are a genuine nuisance and a direct result of disobedience of the food laws.

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The fourth day of the fifth month of the 2730th year of our dispersion.

What formerly was, has passed away. What has come, is called Hope Abbey. It came to me in a dream. It is a name for my house. It is a place people can come to learn about the commandments and how to live correctly. But more than anything, it represents the hope that others will follow us; the hope that my children will grow up to make disciples; the hope of the coming of Messiah a second time. The fact that some are repenting gives us hope that many more are coming.

All references to the old name have been revised. A name with no meaning is superseded by a name with meaning.

In other news, John Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said this of the massive layoffs in the airline industry:

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The third day of the fifth month of the 2730th year of our dispersion.

There was a man who planted every year, and every year he harvested. He didn't have much more than his hands, but he had great skill with his hands, and could harvest the stalks, thresh, and winnow the wheat on a threshing floor of stone, using wooden flails. He would soak the grain, sprout it, dry it in the sun, and grind it into flour with a millstone. His oxen and a simple plow helped him plant in the spring. His sons helped him and learned the tasks. It was hard, strenuous work, but they ate.

His firstborn son inherited the land. He went to the towns and bought a sickle from a blacksmith who was skilled in metalworking. He cut the wheat with the sickle. He was able to go much faster, even though he had to spend time sharpening and maintaining the sickle. He used his father's millstone and threshing floor and retained the traditions of his people. His sons helped him and learned the tasks. It was still hard work, but they ate.

His firstborn son inherited the land. He went to the towns and bought a scythe from the blacksmith. He could go through the wheat much faster than his fathers did. His sons bound the gain into sheafs. They threshed the grain and winnowed as his fathers had done. He learned to keep his blade sharp and the wooden handle in good condition. His sons helped him and learned the tasks. It was still hard work, but they ate.

His firstborn son inherited the land. He went to the towns and bought a mechanical reaper. The same oxen that pulled his plow in spring could now pull his reaper in the fall. It saved them hours of work and allowed them to produce more grain to sell, and to buy more land to plant more grain. He knew enough about the reaper to fix it when it broke down. His sons raked the grain and bundled it. He taught them how to operate the reaper, and left them his father's sickle and scythe. It was still hard work, but they ate very well.

His firstborn son inherited the land. He went to the towns and sold his old reaper, to buy a new machine which raked and bound the grain automatically. This binder was pulled by a gasoline-powered tractor. He also bought a threshing machine and a tractor-pulled plow. He could harvest much more grain than his fathers. The binder had many moving parts, but most of the time, he still knew how to fix it when it broke. Sometimes parts would wear out and he would have to buy new ones, but he was able to afford this because of his increased production. He taught his sons how to operate the machines. He slaughtered his oxen one year and they ate very, very well.

His firstborn son inherited the land, which by now had grown quite large. His first action was to sell the threshing machine and the binder and buy a combine. He did not need his sons' help, so he paid for them to go to a university. One of them became a doctor. Another became a biologist. A third became a chemist. None of them wanted to farm, so when he was old he sold his land to another man who had many, many acres and who was buying up more land to farm. This man hired many other men to work on his land. He ate very well, but ate none of his own produce.

He, in turn, sold the land to a large company, which planted genetically modified seeds on the land and harvested the crop using the best and most advanced machines available. When a machine broke, professionals were called in to repair it. It was all very expensive but this company had enough money to finance the whole operation. The CEO ate extremely well.

Then something terrible happened to the economy, and the money was all gone. There was no money to hire anyone to fix the broken machines. There was no money for gasoline to power them, even if they worked. There was no electricity. Someone thought it would be a good idea to use the binder and the threshing machine, because they were powered by animals, but no one knew how to fix those machines either. Another suggested that they use animal-powered plows and reapers, but no one knew how to train the animals. A third suggestion was to use a scythe or a sickle, but they were all very old and rusty and no one knew how to sharpen them again, and besides the wooden handles were rotted away. The chemists, doctors, and biologists were absolutely no help at all. That year, no one ate well. Hardly anyone ate at all.

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The second day of the fifth month in the 2730th year of our dispersion.

Cheesemaking, brewing ales and lagers, making wine and mead, making vinegar and yogurt and buttermilk - all processes necessary to the continuation of our culture - are basically accomplished through the culturing of a specific microorganism. This is a little harder than it sounds.

First, you have to isolate your desired little beastie from all the millions of others that are floating around, waiting to land on something they can eat and reproduce in. Then, you have to give it an optimal place to grow and shut out all its competition. Third, you have to maintain that colony, day and night, for the rest of eternity, or you'll have to go back to square one.

Thankfully, many of these microorganisms are found in predictable places. Lactobacillus spp. in milk, Saccharomyces cerevisiae in the air and on the skins of fruit, Acetobacter in the air all summer long. Also making this process easier, the different buggers have their own preferred media. Lactobacillus in milk or bread dough (depending on the strain), Acetobacter in a diluted alcohol mixture. However, careful temperature control and sanitation must be applied or all you will end up with is a wild mix of invisible microbes chowing down on your medium, each other, and themselves.

Do you think you will always be able to buy freeze-dried thermophilic bacteria, distilled vinegar, cultured yogurt and buttermilk, or active liquid brewer's yeast? If you like these things or their products, and you are concerned about the availability of food in the near future (which you should be), you might want to invest a few dollars in a place to grow and culture them.

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The first day of the fifth month in the 2730th year of our dispersion.

I don't think I have ever written a proper article on the importance of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. It was one of the first things I realized on my walk, so it undoubtedly was passed over in favor of more important topics. I believe Ted has touched on it more than once but it is so critical that it must be hit again.

Alcohol - and its partner in crime, yeast - are of paramount importance to the Torah-observant Israelite. Every reference you see to a vineyard in the Scripture might as well be a reference to a winery. In our culture (partly, I believe, due to Prohibition), the brewing of ales and the production of wines is in the hands of capitalists with the ability to produce large quantities of a consistent product. However, formerly in this country, and still in Italy, where I spent a few years growing up, many make their own wine and children drink it from a young age.

One thing we sometimes miss in our Wal-Mart mindset is that you can only eat what is in season. You can only have grapes if they just came from the vine. Irradiation, pasteurization, refrigerated transportation, and other modern preservation techniques were not available to the ancients. If you were eating grapes, it was because there were grapes ripe, on the vine, ready to be eaten, within a few days' walking distance of your dwelling (or perhaps, donkey walking distance). Otherwise it was dehydrated raisins.

The rest of the year, to enjoy the health benefits and taste of fresh grapes, we have multinational corporations import then from the Southern Hemisphere of the globe, at great expense. But the ancients had a far superior method to preserve the grape: they allowed the yeast on the grape skins to ferment the juice (now called "must" by wine-makers) into a delicious beverage called "wine." Old wine is a mature, fully fermented beverage. New wine is still fermenting and has a sweet flavor. Fermentation reduces the sugar content and adds alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. If sealed in an old, inflexible skin, fermenting wine would cause the skin to burst open due to the rapid formation of carbon dioxide in the must. A new skin would swell, but not burst (as a truly hermetic seal would have been impossible, air would have found a way to escape after a certain amount of pressure was put on the skin from inside).

It is easy to get drunk on new wine because it is sweet and tastes similar to non-alcoholic, unfermented grape juice. Old wine, as most know, has more astringent flavors imparted to it by the grape tannins that either compete with or overwhelm any residual sweetness, depending on the attentuation of the yeast strain involved. It is better sipped, while eating and speaking with friends and family about matters of Torah.

The problem with fresh grape juice is that most people don't want to suck on the feet of the wine-pressers. It would be a great avenue for the spread of disease. However, during fermentation, the alcohol that is produced kills any and all pathogenic organisms. It has a remarkable preservative effect, making wine a far superior beverage to fresh juice. Remember that without pasteurization, it is impossible to keep wild yeast from fermenting the juice. Even with pasteurization, without a hermetic seal, it is impossible to keep microorganisms (harmful or otherwise) from taking over the must. You have to boil the juice down to a concentrate and purge the receiving container with sulphur.

Ted has informed me that ancient beer, with a low alcohol content of 1-3%, served as a good hydrator. It would also have been easier to preserve beer than water, due to the alcohol. Hops in modern beer also have a preservative effect. And finally, the action of the yeast remove heavy metals from the water, effectively filtering and sanitizing it for human consumption.

And in the face of all this evidence, so many religious people feel that alcohol is sinful! I haven't even gotten into its applications as a first aid antiseptic, a surgical anaesthetic, an antidepressant (for those who are on the verge of death anyway), and a solvent for the extraction of useful compounds from medicinal herbs, among many others. No wonder it is so heavily taxed - it is such an essential part of what I like to call "real life."

My biggest problem with the Christian anti-alcohol arguments is that they start from a moral premise. They almost always begin by condemning alcohol. Even moderation, they say, is a vice. With this presupposition, they, as the judge of truth, proceed to allegorize, idiomize, and otherwise demolish every positive Scriptural reference to wine, usually on the basis of the assertion that God "couldn't possible" advocate the ingestion of alcohol.

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The twenty-ninth day of the fourth month in the 2730th year of our dispersion.

I have been quite busy lately taking care of my animals and my garden. But by "living by them," that is, the commandments of יהוה, I have grown much and my friend and true brother in the faith, Ted Walther, suggested that I post here what I am thinking instead of just emailing him about it. So, it is with some reluctance that I take up the "pen" again in my fight against all kinds of lawlessness, but if it will benefit even one soul who passes these pages, then let it be.

I will open things back up with a bit about genetics. Current orthodox genetic theory (Crick's Central Dogma) prescribes that DNA remains more or less constant over the course of one's life, and that DNA basically regulates its own replication, the transcription of RNA, and the subsequent synthesis of proteins. "Evolution" or variation within species occurs through natural selection; that is, members with certain mutations or characteristics die off and do not reproduce, where members with desirable mutations are selected to carry on the race. This has implications for a Torah observant society as those with undesirable tendencies (i.e. murderers) are removed from the gene pool.

However, the newer and perhaps more accurate theory of the fluid genome postulates a large number of changes in gene expression can occur in an individual's lifetime based on what are called "environmental changes" within the cell. I think that if this is true, it has far greater implications for us. It may be a mechanism for Yehowah to change the genetic expression of an individual during his lifetime in response to his obedience, and not just "select" better genes for his children

Think about it. After a few decades of keeping the food laws, sacrificing animals, resting on the Sabbath, and keeping the rest of the commandments, the genetic makeup of an individual (or even a culture) may actually change to reflect the change in habits. It replaces the strict, unwavering determinism of the Central Dogma with a more meaningful, reactive organism.

Here are a few articles about it.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/DCD.php

I should also mention that I believe "blue cheese" such as Gorgonzola and Roquefort to be unclean, even if made from the milk of a clean animal. What makes a blue cheese blue is mold of the genus Penicillium. Mold on your house is leprosy. If a Torah-observant Israelite discovers this same mold growing on his cheese, he can wipe it off with vinegar, as he may clean the walls of his moldy house. Without this stipulation almost all unwaxed hard cheeses would be potentially unclean as they are all prone to grow mold on the outside as they age. But if one finds mold throughout his cheese, as in the French styles mentioned above, he would have to throw it out, just as a moldy apple or moldy bread is thrown out, and just as a house that is taken over by mold is to be burned to the ground. I should add that mold spores are everywhere and it is impossible to refrain from ingesting them. However an infestation of mold is easy to see and to distinguish from food which is not infested with mold.

Another ingredient in almost all worthwhile cheeses is either a thermophilic or mesophilic bacteria culture. One might think that since bacteria are not considered as either clean or unclean by Torah, that they would be excluded as unclean. However these cultures come from milk originally and are ubiquitous in any stage of the product (Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Streptococcus thermophilus), and are easily cultured from milk by a knowledgable man. So, adding these cultures to create cheese might be a shortcut but it is not like adding mold, which is unclean. Also, like yeast, bacteria and other microorganisms were unknown to the ancients, so their absence in the Torah's food laws is not necessarily to be taken as a prohibition. Though if you were to eat the yeast on the bottom of your fermenter you'd be in for a nasty surprise... like the bacteria, they're not "food," they are like tiny machines to help us make the food.

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Hiatus

In case you were wondering where I have gone off to, here is an excerpt from an essay by one who said it better than I could:

"An early victim of collapse is the sense of normalcy. People are initially shocked to find that it's missing, but quickly forget that such a thing ever existed, except for the odd vague tinge of nostalgia. Normalcy is not exactly normal: in an industrial economy, the sense of normalcy is an artificial, manufactured item.

"In Russia, normalcy broke down in a series of steps. First, people stopped being afraid to speak their mind. Then, they stopped taking the authorities seriously. Lastly, the authorities stopped taking each other seriously. In the final act, Yeltsin got up on a tank and spoke the words "Former Soviet Union."

"In the Soviet Union, as this thing called normalcy wore thin due to the stalemate in Afghanistan, the Chernobyl disaster, and general economic stagnation, it continued to be enforced through careful management of mass media well into the period known as glasnost. In the United States, as the economy fails to create enough jobs for several years in a row, and the entire economy tilts towards bankruptcy, business as usual continues to be a top-selling product, or so we are led to believe. American normalcy circa 2005 seems as impregnable as Soviet normalcy circa 1985 once seemed.

"[The sense of normalcy] was, and is being brought down in the late Soviet Union as in the contemporary United States, through almost identical means, though with different technology. In the Soviet Union, there was something called samizdat, or self-publishing: with the help of manual typewriters and carbon paper, Russian dissidents managed to circulate enough material to neutralize the effects of enforced normalcy. In contemporary United States, we have web sites and bloggers: different technology, same difference. These are writings for which enforced normalcy is no longer the norm; the norm is the truth - or at least someone's earnest approximation of it.

"So what has become of these Soviet mavericks, some of whom foretold the coming collapse with some accuracy? To be brief, they faded from view. Both tragically and ironically, those who become experts in explaining the faults of the system and in predicting the course of its demise are very much part of the system. When the system disappears, so does their area of expertise, and their audience. People stop intellectualizing their predicament and start trying to escape it - through drink or drugs or creativity or cunning - but they have no time for pondering the larger context."

-Dmitry Orlov, "Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century"

I have stopped intellectualizing my predicament.

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