The US Liberty Bell and the Twelve Tribes Restored to their Land (9 July, 2013, Av 2, 5773)
Liberty, the USA, and Israel
The Liberty Bell of Pennsylvania is associated in American consciousness with the foundations of the USA. The bell is probably one of the many bells that were rung to mark the reading of the American Declaration of Independence on July 8, 1776. The bell has come to symbolize the Declaration of Independence and the Creation of the USA in general.
Inscribed on the bell is the expression, "Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof" (Leviticus 25:10). These words are an extract from the Biblical injunction concerning the Jubilee Year.
The Jubilee Year is commanded in Scripture.
Leviticus 25:
8 And you shall count seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years; and the time of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to you forty-nine years. 9 Then you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement you shall make the trumpet to sound throughout all your land. 10 And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family.
The Jubilee Year according to Law (Maimonides, Hilcot Shmittah VeYovel, 10:8-9) may be celebrated only when all the Tribes are in the Land and each Tribe is dwelling in its own Tribal Portion. In order to keep the Jubilee, the different Tribes should not be intermixed with each other.
Perhaps the foundation of the USA somehow presaged the re-institution of the Jubilee?
The connection of the Jubilee Year to the Return of the Ten Tribes has been mentioned many times in our postings.
e.g. Brit-Am Now no. 1240.
#1. The Brit-Am Message for Yom Kippur (5769). An Outline
Extracts:
On Yom Kippur Jews fast all day long and abstain from work. At the end of Yom Kippur it is customary to sound a long blast from the Shofar. This is in remembrance of the shofar that was blown on Yom Kippur in the Jubilee Year. The Jubilee Year fell on every fiftieth year at the end of a cycle of seven recurrences of the seven-year long sabbatical years, i.e. at the end of every 49th year one had the Jubillee Year on the Fiftieth year, Leviticus 25.
During the Jubilee year every Israelite indentured servant ("Hebrew Slave") would be set free. Every Israelite would return to their ancestral Tribal lands. There would be a reaffirmation of freedom of Tribal inheritance. This would not happen immediately at the end of the Year but rather ten days later on Yom Kippur when the shofar would be blown, the servants set free, and Israelites who had lost their inheritances had them returned to them.
Nowadays the Jubilee Year is not celebrated because we do not know which Tribes we belong to and because most of the Ten Lost Tribes are in Exile. Even if we know (as Brit-Am believes it does) where the Lost Ten Tribes are we cannot point at any specific person and say with absolute certainty that they are a lost Israelite and belong to a specific tribe. The Ten Tribes have lost consciousness of their ancestry.
This will change in the future.
The Ten Tribes will return.
Brit-Am is taking the first small steps in this direction.
We are doing something about it.
You too should also do what you can by supporting Brit-Am or in any other way that helps.
The return of the Ten Tribes is associated with the blowing of a shofar.
AND IT SHALL COME TO PASS IN THAT DAY, THAT THE GREAT TRUMPET [in Hebrew "Shofar" i.e. ram's horn] SHALL BE BLOWN, AND THEY SHALL COME WHICH WERE READY TO PERISH (Hebrew: "Ovdim" also translatable as they who were being lost) IN THE LAND OF ASSYRIA (i.e. Lost Ten Tribes), AND THE OUTCASTS (i.e. Jewish Captives) IN THE LAND OF EGYPT, AND SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD IN THE HOLY MOUNT AT JERUSALEM [Isaiah 27:13].
Let us recapitulate some of the above equations:
TRUMPET is Shofar.
WHICH WERE READY TO PERISH [Hebrew "Ha-ovdim, i.e. were being lost] IN THE LAND OF ASSYRIA are the Ten Lost Tribes.
IN THE LAND OF ASSYRIA refers to Europe in general.
THE OUTCASTS means the Jews.
IN THE LAND OF EGYPT in Hebrew "Mitsrayim" can mean Egypt but it also refers to Russia and related areas.
In other words the verse may be paraphrased to say:
## In that time a Great Shofar will be blown and the Ten Lost Tribes who were exiled by Assyria and the Jewish Captives who were scattered to Egypt, Russia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere shall return and they shall worship God in the Temple Mountain in Jerusalem. ##
We all need to repent. Repentance includes helping to bring about the principle of the Jubilee Year. This includes helping descendants of the Lost Tribes know where they are and who they are.
This is what Brit-Am does. Brit-Am is helping Lost Israelites from the Ten Tribes and also from Judah become conscious of their Hebrew ancestry and identity. We are helping them prove that they are Israelites and to remain conscious of it and of its significance, at least in part.
This is connected with the Jubillee Year and with repenting.
Repentance therefore includes, amongst other things, helping Brit-Am.
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Sources:
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The Liberty Bell
http://www.ushistory.org/libertybell/
Extracts:
The Pennsylvania Assembly ordered the Bell in 1751 to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of William Penn's 1701 Charter of Privileges, Pennsylvania's original Constitution. It speaks of the rights and freedoms valued by people the world over. Particularly forward thinking were Penn's ideas on religious freedom, his liberal stance on Native American rights, and his inclusion of citizens in enacting laws.
As the Bell was created to commemorate the golden anniversary of Penn's Charter, the quotation "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof," from Leviticus 25:10, was particularly apt. For the line in the Bible immediately preceding "proclaim liberty" is, "And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year." What better way to pay homage to Penn and hallow the 50th year than with a bell proclaiming liberty?
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Liberty Bell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Bell
Extracts:
The Liberty Bell is an iconic symbol of American independence, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Formerly placed in the steeple of the Pennsylvania State House (now renamed Independence Hall), the bell was commissioned from the London firm of Lester and Pack (today the Whitechapel Bell Foundry) in 1752, and was cast with the lettering (part of Leviticus 25:10) "Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."
A great part of the modern image of the bell as a relic of the proclamation of American independence was forged by writer George Lippard. On January 2, 1847, his story "Fourth of July, 1776" appeared in Saturday Review magazine. The short story depicted an aged bellman on July 4, 1776, sitting morosely by the bell, fearing that Congress would not have the courage to declare independence. At the most dramatic moment, a young boy appears with instructions for the old man: to ring the bell. The story was widely reprinted and closely linked the Liberty Bell to the Declaration of Independence in the public mind.[33] The elements of the story were reprinted in early historian Benson J. Lossing's The Pictorial Field Guide to the Revolution (published in 1850) as historical fact,[34] and the tale was widely repeated for generations after in school primers.[35]