And There Arose A New King...

The Jewish people follow what is called the Parashat Hashavua (weekly portion) in the synagogues, which is a portion of the Torah (first five books of Moses), along with what is called the Haftarah (a reading from the Prophets that corresponds to the Torah portion). There are two differnt cycles, one being a triennial (a 3 year reading cycle), and an annual cycle. My family has been following the annual cycle for a couple of years now, and it has been amazing to see how many times things in our life fall in line with the portion for that week.

This weeks portion is called Sh'mot (lit. "names", which is the Hebrew name for the book of Exodus) and begins in Exodus 1:1 and goes to Ex. 6:1. In this portion we read in ch. 1 vs. 8 the following:

"Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph."

Now, what I find very interesting is that in just a couple of days we are going to inaugurate a new President. This new president is not like our Presidents that came before. Previously, all of our Presidents have had similar backgrounds in that they came from a Judeo-Christian background, regardless of whether they actually lived it out in their official term. Their thinking was, for the most part, according to the ethic of America which was established upon Judeo-Christian values and ethics. What is interesting to note is that our new President-elect has foundations which are drastically different from every previous President - and that is Islam. I don't care to argue whether Obama is actually a Muslim right now (there are opinions either way), but I simply want to note that his beginnings were grounded in Islam, which is foreign to the American foundations.

Now, is it interesting or not that this weeks Torah Portion tells us that a new King arose in Egypt that did not "know" Joseph?

Hence, I am lead to end this post with a link from WND, a link that happens to be the Headline article for today (01/17/09). Please go *here* to read an article that should cause your eyebrows to raise a bit.

A new king arose that knew not Joseph. God be merciful.

.j.