Kasandra

Karen, i am glad you enjoyed it. I very much enjoy it every year. I would like to say here that i am thrilled that more and more christians seem to want to experience our passover seder....my hope is that thier need to see Yeshua in it does not cause them to miss some of the richness of identifying with the original passover...for myself if i were to lead out in a christian/jewish mixed setting i would want to complete it without reference to Yeshua till our traditions were completed.....and then discuss what it might mean in relation to messiah. Make sense?

Shiloh...the chapter you refer to, Genesis 15 , shows two crossing between the animals...HaShem as represented by the smoking pot and another represented as the flaming torch. G-d did not allow Abram to cross between the animals of blood covenant for as you pointed out he knew man would break covanant....but he did have another represent man in the covanant. In other early jewish writing a flaming torch is used to represent the messiach so it is quite possible he was meant here. And it would make sense with your belief of Yeshua as messiah who died in our place.

The "name" of G-d said as Yaweh by christians is not used in Judasim.....the pronunciation of said name was lost after we no longer had a temple, until then it was said but once a year by the officiating high priest. In biblical hebrew vowells were not written and as no one now knows what vowells were spoken we no longer know how to say that particular name. It was considered the holiest name of G-d...and so gaurded as holy and not said in order to avoid using his name in vain. Even now we usually refer to G-d as HaShem (the name) except when in prayer or when reading scripture to avoid his name lightly or in vain. Our reverance for the names of G-d is such that we treat with utmost care and respect our Tanach (bible) and other printed material with the names in it and do not allow them to become damaged by casual usage. If a Tanach becomes damaged it is not thrown away as other books but either stored in a special room at the synogogue or given a burial in our cemetaries.

The "star of david" did not come to symbolize the jewish people till after the time of Yeshua ...it was originally used on a flag, granted a jewish community to symbolize self rule, in gratitude for thier part of a military victory and came from the pagan symbol for luck.......it came to be known as the star of david as he was our most famous king/ruler and who we choose to identify with as a "man after G-ds own heart". This is the explanation given by an older rabbi, a wonderful man who truelly sought to honor HaShem in all he did and made jewish history his lifes passion.