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Having grown slightly bored with the Shema, this Messianic worship leader decided to mix things up by pretending to perform the Birkat Kohanim at the same time. “If this doesn’t excite the congregation,” he thought, “I’ll try the Batusi next week.”
“A shore kiddy Shane, ooh, by mitzvotav!”
Sheol (שְׁאוֹל) is a place mentioned in the Tanakh as the destination of the dead. Shaul (שָׁאוּל) is the Hebrew name for Saul, the first Israelite king, as well as Paul the Apostle. Messianic congregations frequently use “Shaul” in place of “Paul” to make the New Testament seem more Jewish.
Note that the consonants for both words are the same in Hebrew. As you can imagine, this poses problems for Messianic congregations whose leaders can’t actually read Hebrew—for example, Yeshuat Yisrael, which put together this slide for one of the many PowerPoint sermons it offers on its website.
Why does everyone have a tattoo of a hebrew phrase?
Is it not the weirdest thing ever! Everyone from Victoria Beckham to Justin Bieber to your mom has one.
And then you have the people who get the Hebrew wrong—which is what you’d expect, really, when people get a tattoo in a language they don’t understand. Have you seen Bad Hebrew Tattoos?
(My favorite entry, by the way, is the person who designed a religious tattoo by switching her keyboard to Hebrew and typing in English letters. Oh, and the word she picked doesn’t even mean what she thinks it means.)
Protip: When you pick a name for your fake synagogue, pick a name you can pronounce correctly.
I was going to mock this video for the poor Hebrew and the Star Wars-style scrolling text, but the heavy echo effect makes it feel as if Jesus Yeshua is right here with me.
Aaronic? No. Moronic? Yes.
Seriously, this Jewish playacting is just awful. The last line of his so-called “blessing” may as well be random syllables because he forgets so much of it.
These people are going to give themselves whiplash if they keep bowing every time someone says “baruch” or “blessed.”
Also, did anyone else read Highlights for Children growing up? This video reminds me of the “What’s Wrong?” puzzles on the back cover. “Can you spot the five silly things this congregation is doing during the Torah service?”
I was prepared for him slaughtering Hebrew and adding a line about Jesus to the blessing for putting on a tallit, but he still managed to surprise me by unknowingly ending his blessing with “todah rabah” (“thank you very much”).
Who needs the first two thirds of the blessing over wine—y’know, the part that actually makes it a blessing—when you’re Messianic? Jesus will fill in the words for you.
