The History of Hatikvah

In celebration of Israel’s birthday we examine the history of our national anthem.

by Marnie Winston-Macauley

Israel, our homeland; a small country that stands for huge ideas and ideals. This small country took a barren desert, surrounded by enemies, and turned it into a lush land, wealthy in its values, and remarkable in its achievements for the region, and for the world.

With the anniversary of Israel’s independence upon us, let us celebrate by looking at our anthem, Hatikvah which has been the voice of Jews for over one hundred years.

Climbing Jacob’s Ladder

“He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.” — Genesis 28:12

The Torah portion for this week, Vayetze, is from Genesis 28:10–32:3 and Hosea 12:13–14:10.

The Jewish Sages teach that when Jacob was on his journey to the city of Harran, he ended up somewhere that he had not intended to go. But it was late, and so Jacob found a few stones, made a pillow, and went to sleep. As providence would have it, the place where Jacob slept was the holiest place on earth.

There, he had his famous dream in which Jacob saw a vision of a ladder resting on earth, stretching up to heaven. Angels were going up and down on it. When Jacob woke up he said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it” (Genesis 28:16). Jacob had unintentionally, but providentially, stumbled upon a virtual stairway to heaven.

Do You Dream about Others?

A few more posts from my Q&A with J at HHH series. Today's question is about dreams.

"My troublous dream this night doth make me sad."

William Shakespeare, King Henry VI

Mommaof3: My husband and I have been married for 5 years, and in the past year or so I have been having some troubling dreams. I try thinking good things before bed, since everyone says that you dream what you're thinking...that doesn't help at all. I keep dreaming about cheating on my husband with 2 different people (who i know in real life). I'm not asking for an interpretation or anything like that. lol Just do you have any advice on how to deal with these dreams? My husband thinks that it is funny because one of the people I dream about is his brother, so he likes to tease me and say that I married the wrong brother. However, it really bothers me to have these dreams about these 2 guys, because then it kind of changes how I think of these people in real life. So I guess I would like to know if you can suggest any ways to stop the dreams, and also how to deal with them (or forget them!) once I wake up in the mornings. (these dreams happen like once every week or so. So not every day, but not just occasionally.) Thank you for speaking so openly about marital sex and all that goes with it! :)

Oh no, what did I dream?!

Exploring Your Erotic Dreams

Posted by Tamar Love

It doesn't take much imagination to interpret the classic train-rushing-through-tunnel dream: It's about intercourse, folks. The train is the penis; the tunnel is the vagina. But really -- when is the last time you dreamed about rail travel? Our guess: a mighty long time.

But you've probably had dreams featuring water, houses, animals, or food, all in the context of sexual or erotic situations. For example, you may have experienced powerful erotic feelings while riding a powerful dream horse, or feeding a dream lover ripe peaches or mangoes. These images can be a little trickier to interpret -- but not altogether impossible

Erotic Dreams What Happens When Experiences Wet Erotic Dreams

By Leena Kiri 

What is the dream?

The first question to be clarified is the difference between Sleep and dreams. Sleep calls the state of suspension of activities conscious mind and the will, which occurs periodically (For several hours a day, usually at night) and that enables rest of the muscular system and a change of neuronal activity. Now are studying the importance of sleep period in the settlement of consolidation of memory and learning. The opposite state is the wakefulness or consciousness and will.

The passage of the monitors to sleep and vice versa is regulated by the central nervous system, with special importance reticular system which is located in the brain stem.

Sleep Throughout the body minimizes its metabolic activity, the muscles relax, the heart rate is slower, blood pressure is reduced, and the inspirations are longer and shorter expirations. However, its activity does not decrease brain psychic during sleep. Periods psychic peak phases coincide with those given in the dreams, and studies had shown that employing up Sleep 50% of a newborn, from 30% to 35% at two years, 25% in childhood, youth and adulthood, and from age 65 will be reduced progressively.

Men dream about sex

Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Managing Editor


Credit: Phase4Photography | Shutterstock

No surprise here, men are more likely than women to dream about sex. And comparing notes in the morning may not be a turn on for either guys or gals, as women are more likely to have experienced nightmares, according to doctoral research reported in 2009 by psychologist Jennie Parker of the University of the West of England.

Get a Move On!

JOYCE MEYER

We keep going around the same mountains instead of making progress. 

The Israelites wandered around in the wilderness for 40 years making what was actually an 11-day journey. Why? Was it their enemies, their circumstances, the trials along the way, or something else that prevented them from arriving at their destination?

As I pondered this situation, the Lord said to me, "The children of Israel spent 40 years in the wilderness making an 11-day trip because they had a wilderness mentality."

God called the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt and directed them to go to the land He had promised to give them as a perpetual inheritance--a land that flowed with milk and honey and every good thing they could imagine; a land in which there was no shortage of everything they needed; a land of prosperity in every realm of their existence.

But the Israelites had no positive vision for their lives--no dreams. They knew where they came from, but they did not know where they were going. They did not know how to see with "the eye of faith."

Where Jesus Christ Has a Real Work To Do There Has To Be A Death

In John Chapter 12 and at verse 12, we come to that point where Jesus Christ rides into Jerusalem, and it is now clear to some that Jesus has not got long to live if he remains in that city.

The scene is one of where the scheme has begun to go into motion to have Jesus Christ, the Son of God, crucified, killed and silenced, once and for all. It has been rumbling on now for some months, and we see this so clearly as John records the details.

When God begins to speak in a new way, there are always those whose only desire is to silence the voice of God. Sometimes people are successful, for a season, until God in His goodness and mercy and persistence, sends someone else along who will speak for him with a stronger and louder and more penetrating voice.

What to do when God doesn't answer...

Today, I just want to share to you Pastor Bill Hybels' interesting experience after a baptism service in their church. 

He writes: "I bumped into a woman in the stairwell who was crying. I thought this was a little odd, since the service was so joyful. I asked her if she was all right. 

She said, 'No, I'm struggling.' 

She said, 'My mom was baptized today. I prayed for her every day for almost 20 years. The reason I'm crying is because I came this close to giving up on her. 

At the 5-year mark I said, "Who needs this? God isn't listening." 

At the 10-year mark I said, "Why am I wasting my breath?" 

At the 15-year mark I said, "This is absurd." At the 19-year mark 

Garden of God

"And though a tenth remains in the land,
it will again be laid waste.
But as the terebinth and oak
leave stumps when they are cut down,
so the holy seed will be the stump in the land." —Isaiah 6:13

Rebecca Rupp, author of children’s and young adults’ books, recently wrote, “When our kids first started gardening, they wanted to grow doughnuts and bluebirds. If only we could, I thought.”

For young children – and maybe even for grizzled adults – gardening represents the potential for good in our world; it represents the hopes and dreams of people from all walks of life. This wonderful observation may shed light on Isaiah’s comparison, in this passage, between the Jewish people and a tree in the garden of God.

In his day, Isaiah spoke to a Jewish people threatened by an Assyrian empire at the height of its power. The Assyrian forces had conquered far and wide and had successfully exerted its power over much of the Middle East. It seemed then that Assyrian control over their world would never end.

When God's Timing Is Taking Too Long

by Joyce Meyer

We all want good things to happen in our lives, but too often we want it now...not later. When it doesn't happen that way, we are tempted to ask, "When, God, when?" Most of us need to grow in the area of trusting God instead of focusing on the "when" question. If you're missing joy and peace, you're not trusting God. If your mind feels worn out all the time, you're not trusting God.

The tendency to want to know about everything that's going on can be detrimental to your Christian walk. Sometimes knowing everything can be uncomfortable and can even hurt you. I spent a large part of my life being impatient, frustrated and disappointed because there were things I didn't know. God had to teach me to leave things alone and quit feeling that I needed to know everything. I finally learned to trust the One who knows all things and accept that some questions may never be answered. We prove that we trust God when we refuse to worry. 

I Want to Be Beautiful

Sharon Jaynes

Today’s Truth
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13 NIV).

Friend to Friend
I was sitting in a crowded restaurant with my family when she walked by in her full-length white satin ball gown delicately trimmed in lace and studded with tiny “jewels.” Crinoline swished as she moved across the room, a rhinestone tiara sparkled on her head, and pearl studded slippers accentuated her feminine feet. Golden ringlets framed her rosy cheeks and puckered lips glistened with a hint of gloss. She knew she was beautiful and glanced around at the admiring smiles of onlookers as she walked through the crowd. She was three-years-old.

I’m not sure when the dream to be beautiful enters a little girl’s mind, but I do know when the dream ends – when the preacher says, “may she rest in peace.” In my book, Becoming Spiritually Beautiful, I told about my shenanigans as a little girl who wanted to be a grown up beauty.

What If You Had Nothing To Lose?

"At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised’." —Job 1:20—21

The book of Job provides us with a stunning example of courage in the face of adversity. Who is not touched by Job’s faith in the face of unfathomable tragedy? Just as he finished learning that he had lost all of his worldly possessions, he discovered that he had also lost every single one of his children. All on the same day!

Job went from being the wealthiest and most blessed man on the planet to being an example of destitution and loss. His response is startling. He did not curse God and he did not question Him. Instead he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”

Dreaming May Help Relieve a Bad Day

MyHealthNewsDaily Staff Writer

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A bad day may not seem quite so painful after we dream, a new study suggests.

The results show that during nighttime dreaming, also known as REM sleep, the brain processes emotional experiences in a "safe" environment, or one in which stress chemicals are low. This processing may take the emotional edge off of difficult memories, the researchers said.

"We wake up the next day, and those experiences have been softened in their emotional strength," said study researcher Matthew Walker, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley."We feel better about them, we feel we can cope."

Dreams can take the edge off

Credit: Dreamstime

Taking the edge off may require, not a stiff drink, but a trip to la-la land. UC Berkeley scientists report in the Nov. 23, 2011, issue of the journal Current Biology that during the dream phase of sleep (also called REM sleep), participants' brains showed decreased levels of certain chemicals associated with stress.

"We know that during REM sleep there is a sharp decrease in levels of norepinephrine, a brain chemical associated with stress," study researcher Matthew Walker, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, said in a statement. "By reprocessing previous emotional experiences in this neuro-chemically safe environment of low norepinephrine during REM sleep, we wake up the next day, and those experiences have been softened in their emotional strength. We feel better about them, we feel we can cope."

You can control your dreams

If you're interested in lucid dreaming, you may want to take up video gaming. Both represent alternate realities, according to Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada. Of course they aren't completely the same. While video games are controlled by computers and gaming consoles, dreams arise from the human mind.

"If you're spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it's practice," Gackenbach told LiveScience in 2010. "Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams." Her past research has shown that people who frequently play video games are more likely than non-gamers to have lucid dreams where they view themselves from outside their bodies; they also were better able to influence their dream worlds, as if controlling a video-game character.

Men dream about sex

No surprise here, men are more likely than women to dream about sex. And comparing notes in the morning may not be a turn on for either guys or gals, as women are more likely to have experienced nightmares, according to doctoral research reported in 2009 by psychologist Jennie Parker of the University of the West of England.

In her study of nearly 200 men and women, ages 18 to 25, Parker found that women's nightmares could be broadly divided into three categories: fearful dreams (being chased or life threatened), dreams involving the loss of a loved one, or confused dreams.

"If women are asked to report the most significant dream they ever had, they are more likely than men to report a very disturbing nightmare," Parker said. "Women reported more nightmares, and their nightmares were more emotionally intense than men's." 

Dreams help us solve puzzles

Scientists have long wondered why we dream, with answers ranging from Sigmund Freud's idea that dreams fulfill our wishes to the speculation that these wistful journeys are just a side rapid-eye-movement, or REM, sleep. 

Turns out, at least part of the reason may be critical thinking, according to Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett who presented her theory in 2010 at the Association for Psychological Science meeting in Boston. She has found that our slumbering hours may help us solve puzzles that have plagued us during daylight hours.

According to Barrett, it's the visual and often illogical aspects of dreams that make them perfect for out-of-the-box thinking that is necessary to solve some problems.

Night Owls More Likely to Experience Nightmares

Roxanne Khamsi, Scientific American 

Like to stay up late? The downside may be more bad dreams, research suggests. CREDIT: Dreamstime

Night owls might think staying up late is a real hoot, but a new study hints that delayed sleep might have a sinister side. People who hit the sack late might have a greater risk of experiencing nightmares, according to scientists, although they add that follow-up research is needed to confirm the link.

"It's a very interesting preliminary study, and we desperately need more research in this area," says Jessica Payne, director of the Sleep, Stress and Memory Lab at the University of Notre Dame, commenting on the new findings.

Night owls have more nightmares

Credit: Jeff Thrower | Shutterstock

Staying up late has its perks (as long as you can hit the snooze button the next morning), but light dreams is not one of them. Research published in 2011 in the journal Sleep and Biological Rhythms, revealed that night owls are more likely than their early-bird counterparts to experience nightmares.

In the study 264 university students rated how often they experienced nightmares on a scale from "0," (meaning "never") to "4" (meaning "always"). The stay-up-late types scored, on average, a 2.10, compared with the morning types who averaged a 1.23. The researchers said the difference was a significant one, however, they aren’t sure what's causing a link between sleep habits and nightmares.