If you're confused about Messianic Judaism, well, good news, because I have Rabbi Michael Scoback of Juice for Judaism here to discuss it with me. Welcome, Michael. Thanks. Great to be here with you, Karen. So most people are not familiar with Messianic Judaism, so can you explain the origin of it? It's a little bit complicated, and there are several stages to what we actually have at this time. It really goes back probably to the late 1800s in Russia and then a little bit in England as well. And what you had were Jewish people who had embraced Christianity. They became Christians, but they were finding that the expectation was that they would totally assimilate into a non-Jewish culture. They would have to give up everything about their Jewish identity. And these were people who did not want to do that. They wanted to somehow feel that even though their faith was in the Christian faith, so to speak, meaning they had embraced Christianity, they did not want to feel that they had to give up their Jewish identity. And so this movement originally became known as Hebrew Christianity. And it was at that point originally not very sophisticated. They may have just simply wanted to proclaim that I'm a Jew. I'm a Jew who believes in Jesus. And it did not become a very organized movement. It was quite small. From Europe it moved over to North America and it had very, very modest beginnings. The movement was never large at all. It was quite small until approximately the 1960s where you had the whole cultural revolution in North America and across the world. And you had something called the Jesus movement with basically young people across the world, often from the hippie movement that were finding religion, finding spirituality. And so you had in the 1960s, many Jewish people were drawn into this search for God and it landed them in Christianity. And so you had now in the 60s a large number of young Jews who were modern and sophisticated, and they as well wanted to somehow maintain a Jewish identity. That's the real, I would say, roots of this movement. You had Jewish people who, even though they had embraced Christian faith, wanted somehow, and it was a struggle to maintain a Jewish identity. What happened though at the same time was that you had simultaneous to this or parallel to this, beginning sort of in the 1950s, the explosion of what we call now evangelical Christianity. In the Protestant world you had in the early 1900s and the late 1800s what you called the fundamentalists. And this was sort of a neo-Christian movement that was looking to being more conservative and they felt more traditional. And they were lampooned in movies like Gone with Inherit the Wind. So the fundamentalists, I'm sorry, basically emerged to a great extent into the evangelical movement in the 1950s and 60s, and it has exploded since then. And this is a movement that is focused, almost primarily focused on evangelism obviously, which means sharing your faith, spreading your faith. And they felt that they needed a way into the Jewish world. They felt that the Jewish people were extremely resistant to conversion. They saw that Christianity was spreading widely throughout the entire world to many different ethnic and cultural groups. And they saw that the Jewish people were seemingly impervious to Christianity. And one of the problems is that these groups are driven by what they call an eschatological vision, meaning they are pretty much convinced that the end times are upon them. They believe that the second coming of Jesus is imminent. And one of the problems is that according to many evangelicals, Jesus will not return until the Jewish people accept him. And so there was this pressing need to find a way to reach the Jewish people effectively. And they had seen that for centuries the Jewish people just simply would not convert. The Jewish people would say, look, I was born a Jew.  I'm not switching teams. And so they felt that this idea of Hebrew Christianity would be an effective way of reaching Jews. And so what happened was in the 1960s and 70s, different church organizations latched on to this technique as a modality for evangelism. They felt that by presenting the gospel, presenting Christianity in trappings that were Jewish, it would be more palatable to Jewish people. And so that's how the movement basically became quite large because it had now the backing of this massive Christian world behind it. And as they began to convert more and more Jews in the 1960s and 70s, these Jews themselves did not want to assimilate into the Gentile churches. That was the original intention of these church groups. They saw Hebrew Christianity as a way station, as basically a jumping off point to which they could then bring Jews into the church. And the Jews that ended up embracing Christianity did not feel they wanted to give up their identity and join churches. And so beginning really in the 1970s, you saw the emergence of a messianic congregational movement. And so in the early 70s, there may have been a handful of what you would call messianic synagogues. And now there are hundreds of them in North America and hundreds throughout other parts of the world. What would you say are the stated goals of messianic Judaism? Is it to convert Jews to Christianity or is it to extend the evangelical brand? Their websites basically don't tell you? Well, again, because the websites are there for two reasons. They're there to sell their product, in which case it's a different message than speaking in-house to their supporters. So basically, you have to understand the theology of evangelicals.  And what drives them primarily is the sense that they have an obligation. If you want to call it an ethical obligation to share their faith. In the same way, if you saw some person drowning in the ocean, you would probably try to jump in and save them. So they see basically a world that is perishing. They see people that are facing eternal damnation. And so the goal is to save people. This is exactly what evangelical Christianity is all about. The heart of the Christian Bible is a verse which many people have heard from the Gospel of John chapter 3, verse 16, which says that God loved the world so much that he gave his only son that he would basically take upon himself the sins of the world and all who would believe in him would have eternal life and not basically the opposite of that, which is eternal damnation. So the goal is essentially to save people and that is by getting them to embrace Jesus. In this situation, do they baptize people in a mikveh? So normative Christian practice is that once a person has accepted Jesus, they seal the deal with baptism. Baptism itself is not the essential part of it. The essential part is for the person to embrace in their heart faith in Jesus. And as a sign that this is what happened, as a sign that the person has been reborn, all Christian groups practice baptism of various degrees. Some will go entirely into water, which is usually the practice among evangelicals. And so they do basically immerse people in a body of water. It could be in a river, it could be in a lake, it could be in a swimming pool. They generally do not use a mikveh. Although many of the, as we'll probably discuss soon, many of the Messianic groups will refer to it as mikveh because it's a euphemistic term. Again, Jews are not usually looking forward to getting baptized. What is the official Messianic Jewish position on someone like yourself?  Well, it's hard to speak about an official Messianic position. They don't have a pope, and there's not one single voice that speaks for all of them. But basically they would see someone like myself, like any other, what they refer to as an unsaved Jew. As a matter of fact, Jews for Jesus, when they speak about Jewish people, they will fill out reports every day about their activities. So they refer to people like myself as a UJ, unsaved Jew. And they don't really distinguish between rabbis and lay people in general. Now, for someone like myself, they usually will look at a little bit differently because the work that I've been doing since really about 1983 has been to counter groups and to help Jewish people that have been affected by groups like this. So they basically will look at me as a particularly nefarious person. They often will tell their members not to speak to me. They'll often call me the devil or the antichrist or Satan because they see me as not just a regular rabbi that runs a congregation. They see someone like myself as being specifically there to oppose what they're doing. A lot of people have probably never even heard of Jews for Jesus or other messianic groups. Others, like myself, have had encounters with them on the street or have been sent mailers. So can you explain what the recruitment process is like? So it's really important to understand that what you've been describing is really the very tip of the iceberg of recruitment and probably the least significant and least effective side of recruitment. And the truth is that Jews for Jesus specifically were masters at using this approach but for reasons that are hard to actually grasp at first. So let me just step back for a few moments. You see, one of the problems that groups like this faced was that for Jewish people, Christianity is not on the menu. It's simply not on the menu. And they found over the years that if they would be speaking with a Jewish person and they might even be able to get that Jewish person interested in Christianity, interested in Jesus, they found that often Jewish people would say, look, but I'm Jewish. And that sort of dot, dot, dot, look, but I'm Jewish and Jews don't believe in Jesus. It's sort of like an axiom, Jews don't believe in Jesus. And one of the things that these groups wanted to accomplish was to make it very clear that, no, that's not true, that there are Jews who do believe in Jesus. And that was the brilliance of this basically public relations effort by groups like Jews for Jesus specifically to crack that assumption. And so by going to the streets and they did this tactic early on in the 60s and late 60s, early 70s, they were very provocative and they would go right into the heart of Jewish communities. And it was alarming to people and there are people who spoke about it. And what they were hoping for was that pretty soon every Jew would know that there is a group called Jews for Jesus. And I think they accomplished that. I think that, and if you think about that, you know, imagine any company that's trying to sell a product and they have the kind of name brand recognition where everyone knows the name of their product. That's pretty successful. And so what they accomplished by doing this, by getting the Jewish community provoked and upset and aggravated and talking about them and focusing on them, was that now every Jew on the planet knows that there are groups like Jews for Jesus, which means that there are Jews who believe in Jesus. And so if you're a Jew living in the middle of nowhere or even the middle of a large city with many Jewish people and you become interested in Christianity, you won't feel like some strange person who's the only person in the world who's doing this. It feels much more comfortable to know that there are others like yourself. That being said, that was one of the reasons I think that taking to the streets and approaching strangers was an effective idea. The other reason is that these are groups that are all trying to raise money for what they do. And while virtually no Jewish people ever respond positively to Christians that approach them on the street for conversion, many Christians will applaud what they're doing and come over to them and say, really, I love you guys and you guys are great. Can I get on your mailing list? And so what they ended up doing by this was not necessarily reaching a lot of Jews in a positive way, but they were able to build up their support base. So the reality is that there have not been many Jewish people who ever really responded positively to someone who approaches them on the street. People are busy. They're going to where they're going. They're rushing. It's intrusive. These people are strangers. And the whole message for many Jewish people is offensive. And so the recruitment process does not work like this. Jews for Jesus themselves did a study years ago where they surveyed 8,000 Jews who did convert to Christianity. And they asked them, how did you make this transition? Meaning what was the path for you to come to Christianity? And again, virtually no one said because someone gave me a pamphlet on the street or because someone knocked on my door. But almost all of them said it was through the influence of a Christian friend, neighbor, or business associate. Meaning that what happens is Jewish people who don't have a profound spiritual Jewish life, meaning Jewish people who may be successful in many other ways and never really connected with their own faith as a spiritual path often have what we refer to as a whole in the soul. And it could be filled in many ways. They may get involved with yoga. They may get involved with new age spiritual practices. They may get involved with some kind of Western form of Buddhism. But many of them would be open to Christianity if they meet Christians who are sincere and loving and kind and spiritual. And so that's really what often happens. It's a Christian friend or neighbor or business associate who begins to talk to them about their faith and gets the Jewish person interested. Now the role that groups like Jews for Jesus play is very important. And this is not well known. If you look at groups like Jews for Jesus, and by the way, there are probably over a thousand of them in North America alone. They're not the only player here. They have a lot of competition. But what they do primarily is not knocking on the doors of strangers or going out on the street and handing out literature. They do a lot of their work in churches.  To train them how to do it, meaning what should you not say to Jewish people? What should you say? They give them training materials. And they help basically recruit and train a sales force, a massive sales force of people who have relationships with Jews. These are not cold calls. These are people that have Jewish friends and neighbors. And they're the ones that actually get the process rolling. Meaning these are the people that might invite a Jewish person to their church for a Bible study. They may actually just meet during lunch to discuss spiritual things with their Jewish friends. But what happens is they'll often hit this roadblock that I mentioned before that the Jewish person may get very interested in Christianity. But they're going to say to their Christian friend, but I'm Jewish and Jews don't believe in Jesus. And at this point, the Christian person could say, well, I happen to know a Jewish person who believes in Jesus. Would you like to meet with them? And at this point, they will then take out the business card of the Jews for Jesus staff person that came to their church and gave her presentation. And they'll set up a meeting. And so what happens really is that the Jews for Jesus people are not primarily cold calling on the street Jewish people that are strangers to them. But they are going to meetings that are set up by their sales force. And in sales, we call this closing, meaning they're coming to close the sale at the end. Meaning that the Jewish person is already predisposed to Christianity. It's just that they assume that this is not a Jewish option. Jews don't believe in this. And now the Jews for Jesus staff person could say, look, I was just like you. And I've been a believer for the last 30 years and I go to a messianic congregation. And that often is what it takes to close the sale. I've already talked about the websites of these organizations and how they're rather opaque about their motivations. So talk to me about the other kinds of obfuscation that these groups engage in. For instance, using Jewish symbols and using Yiddish and Hebrew names to get people on site. It's essentially a tactic that's used in order to accomplish a goal. As I said before, these are groups that are struggling to overcome what they see as a strong Jewish resistance to conversion. And to a great extent, that's based upon the assumption that many Jewish people have that Jews don't believe in Jesus. It's not a Jewish thing to do. And so what they're trying to accomplish is to create the impression that no belief in Jesus is a Jewish thing to do. They want to give the impression that number one, it's Jewish. And number two, they want to downplay the kind of language and symbols that are provocative to Jewish people. Meaning that they're sort of red flags to tell Jewish people, oh, this is Christianity. So what will happen is that they engage in a tremendous amount of euphemism. So for example, these are groups that will generally not refer to Jesus as Jesus or Jesus Christ. They will refer to him as Yeshua, which they say is the Hebrew name for Jesus. It's not clear that that's the case. But they give him a Hebrew name, Yeshua, and they'll say Yeshua HaMashiach, which is Hebrew for Jesus the Messiah. Now again, when Jewish people hear Jesus Christ, they know exactly what that is. When they hear Yeshua HaMashiach, they just know it sounds different and they don't know what it is. And then the person's able to say, well, that's the Hebrew name of Jesus. Because again, it's interesting that in the world, it wasn't so long ago that if you told people that Jesus was Jewish, it was a shock to them. That happens to be the case. And many Jewish people bought into that as well, that there's nothing Jewish about Christianity, nothing Jewish about Jesus. And so by using that sort of less harsh, less abrasive term, Yeshua HaMashiach, rather than Jesus Christ, they're able to, A, sidestep a term, a name that is turning Jewish people off, and it becomes a point of conversation. They may refer to the New Testament as the Brita Chadasha. They may refer to, as we said before, baptism as the mikveh service. They may refer to someone like the Apostle Paul as Rav Sha'ul, Rabbi Saul.  That's in terms of language. Then in terms of symbolism, in terms of the optics. So for example, at a Jews for Jesus synagogue, at a Messianic synagogue, you won't see crosses.  You'll see Jewish stars, Israeli flags. If you walk in, you'll see a holy ark and iron kodesh that has a Torah scroll inside. The rabbi is referred to as the Messianic rabbi, not the pastor or minister or priest. They will be celebrating the Jewish holidays, no Christmas or no Easter. So they'll have Shabbat. They'll have Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Yom Kippur, Chanukah. But what they do is they give all of these Jewish holidays a Christian spin. So for example, they speak about Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, as the day where these are people who believe that their sins are forgiven because they believe in Jesus. Or they'll say that Passover is the holiday of redemption because Jesus redeemed them. And they take over all of the symbolism of the holiday. So as an example, they will have at their services a Passover Seder, which we're going to be celebrating in a few days. So they'll say, sure, there are four cups of wine and the wine represents the blood of Jesus. And there are three matzahs on the Passover table, on the Seder table. They will insist the three matzahs represent the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And they'll say that the matzah, the middle matzah is broken because that's the Son who was killed. The Son is killed and that's why the matzah is broken. And they'll say that the matzah has little holes in it because Jesus was pierced. And they'll say that the matzah that we break is wrapped up in a white cloth because Jesus was buried in a white shroud. And they'll say that that piece of matzah, the Afikoman, is put away until the end of the Seder and then brought back because that's the second coming of Jesus. And so what they basically do is to co-opt everything that Jews do and they give it a Christian interpretation or a Christian spin. The timing of this podcast taping is right before Passover. So can you describe a little bit what these evangelicals see in having Saders and making them Christian? Well, but it's interesting because there is a sort of an ironic twist to all of this. It's almost a delicious irony in that this has been going on now pretty much full force since the 1960s where, again, hundreds and thousands of these groups are trying to reach out to Jews by co-opting Jewish traditions, Jewish symbols, Jewish practices and using them as basically a lever and leverage to convert them to Christianity. The irony is that over the past decades Christians themselves have gotten very interested in the historical Jesus. Who was Jesus? And there are churches now that are waking up to the fact that Jesus was a Jew and not just a Jew but he was a observant Jew. He was someone that preached that people should observe the Torah. And so now you're finding that in many churches they will blow a shofar. Often people will put on a talit. They will have these Passover Saders. Not only because they're trying to reach out to Jews but because they themselves are trying to discover and get in touch with who was Jesus. Who were the original Christians? What were they like? Would the original Jesus movement look like anything that we have in Christianity today? And one of the things that's happened over the past I would say decade now is that as more and more Christians explore the roots of their own faith they're discovering that the roots are in Judaism and the more that they study Judaism the more they become attracted to Judaism. And so one of the strange things that I never anticipated in the work that I'm doing is that up until 7 or 8 years ago my audience was about 100% Jewish. But once we began putting up things on the internet now it's there for everyone to watch. And so we're getting bombarded by people that for decades have been very, very serious spiritual evangelical Christians who are now studying our material and discovering that the Jews have a point and that maybe Jesus is not the Messiah. And so now there is literally an avalanche of people leaving the churches because of this very movement, because of this very focus on the Jewishness of Jesus. So it really, it's a double-edged sword. It's been used as a way of luring Jews into the church but it's become a catalyst for many, many people to leave the church. What has been the Jewish response to not only cultural appropriation but out and out cultural theft by these groups? You know, I think that if we go back to the early days when we were first exposed to this movement, it was outrage. Meaning there was a sense that our precious sacred symbols and practices were being used as a tool to convert us to another faith. And it seemed in its smacked of deception and not just cultural appropriation. I mean it's one thing for people to appropriate symbols for their own desires and their own pleasure but here it was being used as a tool in order to lure Jewish people away from Judaism. So it was seen really as doubly insidious. And that's the basic reaction that the Jewish community has had. But it goes beyond that. Meaning that when you think about it, Christians in general for the past 2,000 years have appropriated the Jewish Bible. Meaning that the message of the church has been essentially that Jewish people don't understand their own Bible and that if we really understood the message of the Hebrew Scriptures, if we really understood the Torah and the prophets, it would lead us to Christianity. And so the church has appropriated the Bible as their own. As a matter of fact they demonstrated this in a very concrete way by gluing the New Testament onto the back of the so-called Old Testament and calling it the Christian Bible. So this has been part of the church's message all along. That they've basically appropriated the Hebrew Scriptures as their own. But what happens with the Messianic movement is they take it one step further. Meaning that not only are they saying that the Jewish people don't understand their own Bible but they are now embracing and appropriating the practices of rabbinic Judaism. Meaning that if you look at the way Messianic Jewish people practice their faith, they're not practicing it according to what the Bible teaches. They're practicing it according to what the Talmud teaches. The rabbinic sources teach. And this is strange because officially Christianity rejects rabbinic Judaism. Meaning they see anything that's not part of the Bible is seen by them as illegitimate. Meaning that one of the doctrines of the evangelical movement is what we call Sola Scriptura. Only the Scriptures. And they don't accept the legitimacy of the Talmud. They don't accept the legitimacy of the rabbinical teachings. But strangely and ironically the Messianic movement really in a very slavish way follows exactly the way rabbinic Jews and Jews that follow in the traditions of rabbinic Judaism practice. Meaning that you won't find Hanukkah as an example in the Bible. And yet all the Jews for Jesus and all the Messianic groups practice Hanukkah. You won't find the idea of a bar mitzvah in the Bible. The idea that at the age of 13 a man becomes a boy becomes a responsible to observe the Torah, a girl at the age of 12. That's not written anywhere in the Bible. That's something which is found in the rabbinic writings in the Talmud. And yet all of these groups practice bar and bat mitzvah. The way they have their wedding ceremonies. The Bible doesn't speak about having a canopy, a chuppah and smashing a glass and the bride going around the groom seven times. There are many ways in which Jews practice their faith and it's according to the teachings of the Talmud that are based upon the oral Torah. These are people that are basically saying that and this is what we call in Hebrew tremendous chutzpah not only are you misunderstanding the Bible you don't even follow in the beliefs of the Talmud because if you really believe the Talmudic teachings you would also embrace Jesus. And here it becomes sort of science fiction because it was specifically the rabbinic establishment that did not accept Jesus or the teachings of Christianity. We could always debate the Bible. We don't have necessarily an easy way of resolving this because Christians have their own interpretations of the Bible and when they claim to it so you could say it's their word against ours but in terms of the teachings of the rabbis this is a tradition that we've preserved and here it becomes sort of bizarre to say that we don't understand the teachings of our own rabbis. So it's really, you could call this cultural appropriation to the nth degree, sort of taking it to absurd levels. Something that most people understand about Judaism is that Jewish people do not proselytize. However, Messianic Judaism has a really strong affinity for proselytization for obvious reasons they're trying to get more people into the fold. How does this reconcile with Jewish people who are then asked to turn around and proselytize for Jesus? So Christians refer to this process as discipleship and once someone accepts Jesus and gets baptized they are mentored.  The general schedule, if you could call it that, in these movements in their churches and in their congregations is that they have their major prayer services on the Shabbat, the Messianic groups. But they often have a lot of weekday activities as well. Bible studies in the middle of the week and fellowship groups and meetings in people's homes. It's very hands-on. There's usually people that are very much on top of you to tutor you, to train you, to get you firm in the faith, so to speak. And there is an expectation that at some point you will share your faith. There is an expectation that if you've come to faith and you now are saved and if you now know the truth, so how could you not share this with others? And people will usually begin sharing their faith with their friends and family. That's exactly where it begins. So that's often really what happens and what's expected. Now, what's interesting is that the degree of embracing of Judaism varies from group to group, meaning that in the Messianic Jewish world you have a spectrum that goes from extremely traditional in terms of their Jewish practice to what you call Jewish practice very light. And so in some circles they will go to the extent of keeping the dietary laws, observing the laws of Kashrut, having some semblance of Sabbath observance, and all the way down to basically very little Jewish observance at all, other than doing the kind of things like having Passover satyrs or lighting Chanukah candles, which you could say is fairly typical of North American Jews that may not even necessarily be very religious, but as cultural expressions they will do those kind of things. I should say, by the way, just an addition, when people are, use the word recruited, when people basically will join groups like this, when they do embrace Christianity, it really ultimately becomes a total reworking of their life, meaning that usually they begin to lose their friends that they had previously, either because they just don't have as much common with them anymore, or because they're told by their leaders to stay away from your old friends and your family because they will be a negative influence. So there will be usually a radical transformation in people's lives in terms of who they associate with, how they spend their time, what they will read. Really they become usually a radical transformation in people's lives. So one of the reasons that Jews for Judaism exist is because of disconnection between people who have joined Messianic Jewish groups and their friends and their family and people that they grew up with. My understanding is that in situations like this the messages that they're getting from their other congregants is that maybe their old friends aren't real Jews or that you're not going to the same place that they are. I'm not sure they'll be told that they're not real Jews, but it's a natural process where people that have radically transformed their belief system will just simply begin to associate more and more with people that they share that with. They will begin going to Christian programs and reading Christian books, and they will have less and less common with their Jewish friends and Jewish activities, but they will try to maintain many Jewish contacts for the purpose of reaching out, meaning that they become their contact list in terms of who they're going to approach to share their faith. So it both is a detachment from their previous Jewish life, but not totally because they do not want to lose these as people that they can then approach to share their faith with. Tell me what the end game is for these groups. Is it Israel full of Christians? Is it the Second Coming? Well, for groups like Jews for Jesus, they do see Israel as the epicenter for everything, and that's why these are groups that have expanded dramatically their outreach in specifically the land of Israel. And for them, the end game, there's two. One is for the individual. Again, they want to see every person in the world, not just every Jew, but the goal of evangelism is to see every person in the world come to faith in Jesus. And that's why evangelism is not just directed to Jews. There's massive evangelism trying to reach every group in the world. Every group in the world is being targeted. We could say that there's a special emphasis placed upon reaching Jews out of proportion to the number of Jews in the world. But be that as it may, they do have a global plan to ultimately reach the entire world. Now, the end game for them, as I mentioned before, is eschatological, meaning that they see in the near future their belief is that Jesus is going to return and that's going to bring about massive changes in the world. It's a little bit strange for us to discuss now in terms of the Christian belief in Satan and the antichrist and the devil and the rapture and the tribulation. There are many, many different Christian views about what is ultimately going to happen in the end of days. But on the simplest level, they all believe that Jesus is going to return and that's what they look forward to. Something that we're obviously interested here on this podcast is, is this harmful? And if so, what is the harm? It's not a complicated question. You know, one of the things that I think is assumed in the world is that these are groups like what you could describe as cults. And I think that's a misnomer. I think that I would distinguish between groups like this and what we refer to as cults. I think people often will label groups like this as a cult.  I don't think that's an accurate use of the term. Or people use the word cult to describe groups they see as bizarre or strange, meaning that if people have strange religious practices, they must be a cult. Technically speaking, cults are groups that strip away people's critical thinking and their personal autonomy by psychological pressure and manipulation. They're groups that basically destroy people's free will and ability to function as independent people. They become essentially slaves to a group and its leader. I wouldn't say this is characteristic of evangelical groups. I think there are cultic aspects to it. For example, cults will forbid people to question and to think critically. And these are groups, messianic groups, who tend to discourage people from questioning. But it's not as draconian. It's not going to be where they're actually controlled. I think the damage is not so much that they're going to be some kind of automaton that has lost their critical thinking abilities and their personal autonomy. But I think that the problem is more of a theological problem as we would see it. Meaning that these are people that essentially have ended up rejecting almost all the basic tenets of Christianity, of Judaism, and they've embraced the tenets of a foreign religion, of another religion. So it's basically people who have, from a Jewish perspective, embraced teachings that are just simply not true. So for example, it's just not true in Judaism that Jesus was the Messiah. It's not true in Judaism that you need someone to die for your sins. So on one level, the problem is that these are Jewish people, unfortunately, who have embraced ideas that are not true. The second problem is maybe a more serious spiritual problem. It can get very complicated, but Christians don't simply believe that Jesus was the Messiah. And it's interesting that in their sales pitch to Jewish people, that's all they speak about. Their focus is on trying to prove that Jesus was the Messiah. What they don't really reveal often, at least in the beginning, is that they don't simply believe that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. They believe Jesus was God. They believe that Jesus created the world. They pray to Jesus. They worship Jesus. And in Jewish terms, that's a very serious problem. Because in Jewish terms, we're not supposed to worship anything or anyone other than the Creator Himself. And we simply don't believe that Jesus was the Creator of the world. We believe He was a created being. And so it's really, unfortunately, involving Jewish people in what Judaism terms as idolatry. Idolatry is a very serious problem. So I would say the downside to this is, A, that it really brings them into very, very problematic waters spiritually.  One of the things that we see in our work here is that this devastates families. It drives a tremendous wedge between family members. So people, unfortunately, that in a very sort of irresponsible way embrace this path, as I mentioned before, without really due diligence, without really carefully researching whether this is really the truth, they do it at the peril of their spiritual life from a Jewish point of view, of their relationship with God and the relationship with their family. And it's tragic that people in a very cavalier fashion, you know, jeopardize all of that simply because they didn't do enough research. They didn't look both ways before the Cross Street. They didn't get a second opinion. You know, people when they buy a house will pay a home inspector $500 to check out the foundation and the roof and the boiler.  And what we found in our work is that when Jewish people do that, when people open themselves up to trying to understand why is it that for the last 2000 years Jewish people have not embraced these Christian claims, we have found that the vast majority of people will not accept these claims. If we take Messianic Judaism to its logical conclusion, that implies that the 6 million people who died in the Holocaust did not go to heaven because they didn't accept Jesus into their hearts. Well, I mean, I think it's something that Christians struggle with.  This is something that troubles, you know, sensitive Christians.  You know, it doesn't seem very loving or fair or kind at all.  It's a very, very difficult idea. You know, or even someone who is knowledgeable, someone who, for example, like myself, I've studied the New Testament in Christianity now, you know, for decades, you know, and, you know, I've come to the conclusion it seems very clear to me that it's simply not true. I'm also going to be going to hell forever according to these people because for them, I've rejected God. Even though my entire life is focused on God and serving God, these people insist that, no, you don't believe in God because if you believed in God, you would believe that God is a Trinity.  So it is troubling to many Christians and they struggle with this. And some of the answers that they give to this question are even more bizarre than the belief itself, meaning that in many of these messianic groups I've seen they'll say something like, well, you don't know whether at the last minute before these people died in the gas chambers, they accepted Jesus on their lips. You know, it's sort of a desperate kind of attempt to relieve themselves of the discomfort of this kind of belief. But yeah, it is the kind of doctrine that evangelicals are stuck with, I guess less fervent Christians. I remember I was once on a panel discussion on a TV show here in Toronto with a messianic leader and before our segment, the host of this show was interviewing the moderator of the United Church of Canada. This is a few years, this is many years ago actually. And this is a person that was the head of a denomination who didn't believe in the divinity of Jesus, didn't believe in the virgin birth, didn't believe that Jesus was resurrected, didn't believe that Jesus is going to come back, and didn't believe that you have to believe in Jesus to go to heaven. So there are many Christians who don't accept this doctrine.  But we're talking about the evangelical world and the messianic groups and the Jews for Jesus groups are all within that framework of the evangelical world who do believe that accepting Jesus is, you know, the entrance fee, if you will.  We're living in a time of growing anti-Semitism and rising hate crimes against Jewish people. Is there an extra layer of danger to these groups? So it's a good question because it's really a double-edged sword. On the one hand, evangelicals tend to be, you know, at least in their own language, very loving of Jews and very supportive of Israel, and that tends to be the case. Meaning that in the world today, you don't find many groups at all that are supportive of Israel. Even in the Christian world, you know, the more liberal Christian churches tend to be very hostile to Israel, whereas the evangelical groups tend to be very supportive. So that's on the one hand. On the other hand, it's very interesting that, you know, you've had many evangelical leaders who have actually said this, both in writing and verbally, that, you know, they expect something of the Jewish people, meaning that here they're giving all this support to Israel and, you know, all this love to the Jewish people and, you know, there's an expectation that we're going to respond in kind. You know, we saw this, it's not the first time this has happened. At the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, so Martin Luther was very critical of the Catholic Church. He would say, you know, these are people that brutalized Jews and persecuted Jews, and, you know, he was very, very hostile to the Catholic Church because he felt that the way they behaved towards Jews would drive Jews away from embracing Jesus. And so he began his career by saying, we have to embrace the Jewish people and be kind to them. And his assumption was that by being nice to the Jewish people, they would flock to the Church. And within 20 years, he came to see that that wasn't happening, that the Jews were not responding positively to his overtures, and he then became a rabid Jew-hater, and he published the most disgusting, vile literature about the Jewish people that you can imagine that became the basis of a lot of Nazi propaganda. So there is a danger that when people are being nice to you as a tactic, they're being nice to you because they assume you're going to respond in a certain way, meaning that it's not unconditional love, as they often say that it is. There's often, you know, a hitch. And, you know, so I've seen many evangelical leaders who say, look, you know, if Jews are not going to respond positively, maybe we're going to rethink our support of Israel. So this is an interesting dilemma.  There were Jewish people who were very concerned that this film might provoke anti-Semitism. And what's interesting was that there was absolutely zero understanding or, you know, sense of, sense in the Christian world that the Jewish concerns were of substance. There wasn't any attempt to try to understand why a film like this would be so hurtful to Jewish people. You know, there's an old saying in the Jewish world that if you really love someone, you know what hurts them. And the fact that, you know, by and large evangelicals did not really get what was hurtful to the Jewish people about this film really sort of brought to light, you know, a big question mark about, you know, the authenticity of the love that they profess for the Jewish people. So on the one hand, you know, that they do have affection for the Jewish people because, you know, the Bible calls the Jewish people God's chosen people. We're the firstborn son of God.   In Genesis chapter 12. But the problem is that for them, blessing the Jewish people only has one meaning. For them, blessing the Jewish people means getting us to believe in Jesus. They don't really see much of anything else as blessing us other than, you know, again, the support that they show to the rights of the Jewish people in the land of Israel. Some of the work that Jews for Judaism does is to help people get out of groups like Messianic Judaism groups. So can you explain to me a little bit about the thought process that happens to people when they decide to leave and then describe how they leave? You know, most people that have joined Messianic groups or have converted to Christianity are very, very happy where they are. And they don't seek us out. By and large, what happens is it creates a panic in their families. Their families are devastated by this. You know, it was, I guess, it still may be one of the last taboos in the Jewish world, meaning that, you know, Jewish families are tolerant of a lot of different things.  Maybe it's changing. But what happens is we're usually contacted by the families. And the families themselves usually have been thrown into turmoil by this. Unfortunately, many families do all the wrong things when this first happens.  They'll try to print things off the Internet and give it to their children to read. Many parents will insist that their children go to see a psychiatrist. There must be something wrong with them. And what often happens is the relationships break down. You know, they begin to pull away from each other. And we will see the family, usually after a lot of damage has already set in.  Meaning that, you know, parents cannot insist that their children follow in their spiritual footsteps. Parents cannot insist that their children, you know, practice Judaism. They could try to train their children as they grow up. They could try to influence their children. But, you know, once someone becomes an adult, they're free to believe in whatever they want. So what the parents can do is to encourage their children to make an informed decision. Meaning that, you know, how could I ever really respect your decision if you didn't really fully check it out? And they can encourage them to then meet with us. So that's one way in which we're able to, you know, interact with Jewish people is by having their family or sometimes their friends refer them to us. A second way is that for the past 30 years we've been going to some of their annual conferences. Now, we're not really welcome at the conferences and we're not there to, you know, to really be provocative or to upset anyone. We're not there to protest. All we really do is we basically check into the hotel and we sit in the lobby and people who are interested in talking to us will come over and speak with us. We do not speak to anyone unless they will come over and speak to us. But what we found over the past 30 years is that a lot of them are curious. A lot of them, you know, may not necessarily pick up the phone and give us a call, but if we're there in the lobby of the hotel where they're spending a week at their conference, so we have had a chance to speak with many people at these conferences. And the third way now has been simply over the Internet, which I guess for most people is the easiest thing to do. No one's looking over their shoulder and they could be someone that's a very dedicated and devoted member of a Messianic congregation, but they may get curious. They may be on YouTube and they may be watching their favorite pastor, but then one of our videos pops up on the side.  And we have found that, you know, if people are willing to engage with the teachings of Judaism, if people are willing to really think through why it is that Judaism does not accept the claims that these groups make, we have found that they will generally side with the Jewish point of view. And then what happens with, I would say the majority of people that have been part of the Jews for Jesus movement that leave is that they then embrace their Judaism in a very serious way. You know, we think that what happens is, again, the Jewish people that have converted to Christianity through these kinds of movements generally were not profoundly spiritual in a Jewish way beforehand. What these movements have done, they've gotten people to be very serious about a relationship with God and very serious about the Bible. And so we have found that when they leave Christianity, they will basically turn all of that energy back towards Jewish ways of pursuing a relationship with God and studying. The news is full of discussion about how YouTube radicalizes people, but it sounds like you've had the opposite experience with the work that you do.  But if you are surfing the Internet and you find videos from a Jewish point of view explain why Jesus is not the Messiah, you're going to only watch it because you're interested in watching it. And we have found that this has become an incredibly powerful tool to really affect people. I feel like we could talk about this for the rest of the day, but unfortunately you have no more time because it is two days before Passover when we're recording this. So Rabbi Michael, I want to thank you very much. If people want to get in touch, it's Jews for Judaism. All of the information on how to get in touch with you will be available on the Patreon page Thank you very much, Rabbi Michael. Thank you for having me on.


At Horace Mann, we applaud educators' dedication to teaching excellence, ensuring all students receive a quality education. We believe in helping educators find solutions to help them achieve financial success, to live better and retire happier. That's why we proudly sponsor the NEA Foundation Horace Mann Awards for Teaching Excellence, to honor educators selected by their peers for their professional excellence and dedication to their students. Please join me in congratulating and honoring the five individuals who are this year's Horace Mann Award recipients. What I'm doing right now is the hardest I've ever worked in teaching, and it's the best year I've had ever. I get to do every day the things that I think are the most important to education, and I love it. I absolutely love it. This is the Success and Innovation Center at Mount Blue High School. It's kind of Dan Reiter's dream project. A couple years ago, the opportunity presented itself to design a program that will provide multiple pathways to students for success. Becky had a vision for, like, a kind of a social work office. I had a vision for a makerspace where kids could create and make and design. Having a combination of what he does and a combination of what I do works really well. And what we've discovered is nobody else is quite doing what we're doing. Folks asked us, well, where's the model? Who's doing this? And we would say, here's the model. We're doing this. Oh, you're going to dig it. So the Success and Innovation Center is a place on campus where any student, any faculty member, can come with whatever problem they're facing. Dan opens the door up to everybody. They can work on a project or they can work on an idea, and Dan tries to get the resources in that room to help them with their ideas. I got in there and I realized he had a 3D printer. I had never been exposed to technology like that growing up in rural Maine. People are building things, soldering. But it really gave me a chance to express how creative I can be. So that's a little commentary from you on this. Okay, go for it. Since today we're just biasing to action to try stuff, go for it. You're going to start doing that. A shark. A shark. That kind of space that we need more of in education, where we're focused on the unique needs of kids as individuals, and then we look to connect them to the resources. We're super fortunate that we have a state senator who thinks this is one of the greatest things he's ever seen. I just had this great vision of this teacher who kind of bounced around the boundaries. He broke the paradigms of education. That's what you need. Somebody to be innovative with what's going on out there. Dan is teaching them how to use different computer programs. Maybe it's just from a design thinking standpoint. They're learning how to use technology in a different way. Design thinking is human-centered, empathy-fueled, problem-solving. The other thing that I was thinking about was the lab. It completely transformed everything I was doing in the classroom. I turned all of my teaching into an opportunity to teach kids to be problem solvers. What does he do that reveals that problem? And you're going to find text evidence to prove it. He really encouraged trying new things, new programs. It's so good. I'm going to tweet that out. He liked to bring in a lot of interesting technology. I would hold in that to be a world of social media. Dan is just an incredible individual. Just the creativity and the energy from him and the others in his troops. Awesome. Fantastic. It's just inspiring. This community is amazing. They support really good things. Great stuff happens in the western foothills of Maine. Well done. We just need more people to realize it. If you guys knocked it out of the park, it was absolutely unbelievable. So I applaud you all.


Now, after this there are few chemical properties of phenol that we have to discuss, in which again there are reactions only, name reactions are there basically, okay. So, you will see the next one we have that is the properties of phenol, chemical properties. So, next one you see I will write down here, chemical properties of phenol. Chemical properties is nothing but the chemical reactions involved in this method. The first reaction we have is formation of ester, how ester forms from phenol, okay. For this we take sodium phenoxide, okay and sodium phenoxide we can prepare from phenol. Because the reaction is this phenol and when it is heated with NaOH, in this reaction H2O goes out and we will get sodium phenoxide which is ONA plus H2O. This is the reaction we have, okay. Now, this sodium phenoxide is allowed to react with, we can use acid chloride for this purpose, acid chloride or we can also use acetic anhydride, both we can use, we will see the both reaction. So, when this acid sodium phenoxide is allowed to react with acid chloride or anhydride it forms phenolic ester, okay. Acid chloride is what? Acid chloride is nothing but CS3 C double bond OCl, this acid chloride. Anhydride is nothing but CS3 CO whole twice this anhydride, okay. Now, this reaction, the reaction with anhydride it takes place in acidic medium, okay. That is for that purpose we are using concentrated H2O4, the medium is the reaction is this, for this the medium of the reaction is pyridine, medium of the reaction is pyridine solvent we use, right. Now, you see how the reaction we have over here. Suppose, I am taking first acid chloride, okay. So, how the reaction takes place in acid chloride, okay. So, we have sodium phenoxide which is ONA on the benzene ring, ONA and when it is allowed to react with acid chloride this ClC double bond O, CH3 and the solvent we are using is pyridine. It gives NaCl and its oxygen attached with C double bond O, CS3 plus NaCl. This is what the reaction is. This is phenyl acetate. The name of this compound is phenyl acetate. The general name is phenolic ester, the general name is phenolic ester. Another reaction with anhydride we will see. For the reaction of anhydride we can also take OH here phenol directly and when it is heated with CS3C double bond O, OC double bond O, CH3 with concentrated H2SO4. It gives the same compound here which is OC double bond O, CH3 plus we will get CS3COOH. So, acetic anhydride we are using here, acetic anhydride and we are getting phenyl acetate, phenolic ester in this one. Okay. So, what happens in this? This H plus comes over here and oxygen will have the positive charge on it and finally this positive charge takes this bond pair of electron goes out as CS3COOH. Okay. So, we will get an SI carbocation here. We will have the positive charge on this carbon. So, this lone pair of this oxygen attacks onto this carbon, behaves as a nucleophile, attacks onto this carbon and we will get O, C double bond O, CS3, OH will have here, oxygen will have the positive charge on it. Now, to stabilize this positive charge, H plus comes out and we will get this anhyl acetate. Okay. So, this is the method of preparation of esters we have from phenol, acid chloride we can use or we can also use anhydride. Okay. So, now this reaction we have already done now. Another thing which is important over here is like I will write down the node, one node you must write down here and the point is the phenolic esters, phenolic esters on heating with, on heating with AlCl3, AlCl3 gives ortho, or an para-acyl phenol, ortho and para-acyl phenol. This rearrangement of acyl group at ortho and para position, actually what happens, this is acyl group, this group rearrange itself at ortho and para position. This rearrangement we call it as Fries rearrangement. This is known as, known as Fries rearrangement. So, Fries rearrangement is the rearrangement of acyl group of phenolic esters at ortho and para position when it is heated with AlCl3. Right. The solvent we are using is carbon disulfide. For this purpose, the solvent is carbon disulfide. So, you see this reaction, how this reaction goes. Suppose, I will write down the general term here which is the phenolic esters and which is nothing but this molecule. We have O, C O R. This is phenolic ester. Now, this R can be aliphatic or aromatic, both possibility we have. R can be aliphatic or aromatic means phenyl group C stage 5. Now, when it is heated with anhydrous AlCl3, anhydrous AlCl3 in CS2, carbon disulfide solvent. Okay. The product we get here is, the product we get here is OH and here we have C O R plus OH and CO. Now, this reaction is temperature dependent reaction. Right. Depends upon, depends on temperature, what temperature you are taking. Both product can be the major product depending upon the temperature of the reaction. Like at low temperature, like this product is the major product, major product at low temperature. Low temperature means the temperature should be less than 100 degrees Celsius. This is the major product, high temperature means the temperature is greater than 100 degrees Celsius. Okay. So, this reaction is temperature dependent reaction. Depending upon the temperature, we will get the major or minor product in the reaction. Okay. Now, you see the mechanism of this reaction, C O R. Anhydrous AlCl3 is a Lewis acid, electron pair accepted. And that is why the lone pair present on oxygen molecule, this lone pair is accepted by AlCl3 and it forms O, C O R will be as it is. And here, we have AlCl3 minus because it accepts lone pair of electron and this will have positive charge. Okay. Now, in the next step, what happens? This C O R comes out. Okay. Leaving this electron pair behind, C O R comes out. This one. So, minus C double bond O R plus. And with AlCl3 minus, Cl minus also comes out. Okay. On heating. So, it forms a ring with O AlCl2. Now, this acyl carbocation, this one C double bond O R plus. This behaves as an electrophile and the pi electron of benzene ring takes this electrophile. It attacks over here and this will attach onto the benzene ring like this. O AlCl2, C O R, we have hydrogen here, positive charge on this carbon atom, these two bond will be as it is. Right. Now, to gain aromaticity, this H plus comes out and this H plus leaving this bond pair of electron behind so that the aromaticity of the molecule is cheap. And this H plus combines with Cl minus forms HCl. So, the product here is O AlCl2, C O R plus HCl2. In the last step in H2O, AlCl3 goes out and it forms OH on the top and C O R at ortho position. Okay. So, this is the ortho acyl phenol, ortho substituent product. Same kind of mechanism we have at para position. The only thing is here, this pi electron comes over here and this attacks onto this carbon atom and we will get the product. Okay. So, same kind of mechanism we can draw for para position. Got it. If para position is occupied, then we only get ortho substituent product. Okay. If para position is occupied, then we only get ortho substituent product. One note I will write down here. If para position is occupied, we get only ortho product. We get only ortho product. So, this reaction is Frye's rearrangement reaction. The reagent used is and I address AlCl3, okay, in CS2 solvent. Okay, carbon, disulfide. Okay. There are a few more reactions in this. There are name reactions like cold skimmy reaction. We have rhymer-tymon reaction. Okay. So, all these reactions we will see in the next session. Thank you.


The U.S. went to Afghanistan, of course, after 9-11 and al-Qaeda attacks. Our objective all along has been to try to ensure that Afghanistan remains stable and does not once again become a safe haven for terrorist groups that can attack the U.S. And that situation remains the same, and to me, that's still the rationale as to why the U.S. should remain engaged in Afghanistan and not repeat the mistakes of the past of exiting too quickly and forgetting about Afghanistan because it has a habit of coming back to haunt you. And so, for me, the single most important thing for the U.S. now is to make a commitment to remain engaged in Afghanistan for the longer term, but at more sustainable levels. I think in the past we were probably trying to do too much in Afghanistan, and I think it's important that we not go from that extreme to the other extreme of doing too little. Right now I'd give close to a failing grade to the national unity government. But I would have to put that in the context that they were dealt a very difficult hand, which is an agreement that basically created a bit of a two-headed government with the president, President Ghani, and then a chief executive officer, Abdullah, and an agreement to share power and share positions, which basically set the two groups up to fight. So the government's largely been ineffective, you know, certainly from the perspective of the majority of Afghans because it's not addressing some of the key challenges that ordinary Afghans are facing. Instead there's a perception that the government's basically arguing internally about who's going to get this ministry and who's going to get that ministry. We've always known that when sort of the war and aid economic bubble bursts, it's going to be painful. You know, a very high percentage of Afghans listed economy was contracting for the military and for the aid agencies, and that has gone down dramatically. I mean, a few years ago we had 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and today we have 9,800, and that's had a major impact on the economy. In addition to that, the deteriorating security situation has discouraged other investors from coming in and investing, and many rich Afghans are keeping their money offshore because there's not a good business climate to bring their money back and invest in Afghanistan. So a number of these factors, the uncertainty of where things are heading, deteriorating security, the political gridlock, are leading everyone with resources to take a wait and see attitude, and the international community at the same time sharply withdrawing resources, which has contributed to the sharp downturn of the economy from, again, averaging 8 to 9 percent growth rates in the last decade to only about 1.3 percent last year, and that's being felt in terms of, in particular, urban areas where there's high unemployment rates, and you're seeing that very tangibly demonstrated with the number of Afghans we're now trying to leave, and the number of passport applications has gone up from 3,000 to 8,000 per month in Kabul, because so many young men in particular are trying to go abroad to earn a livelihood. It's a very confusing time for the peace process right now, and a challenging time. There's clearly not a military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan. Ultimately, if there is going to be a solution, it has to be an inclusive political process that leads to some kind of political agreement. That's not to say there's not a role for the military. I think the military actually plays an important role as one of the tools in that kind of negotiating process. But the situation is confused now, because for one, there was some progress towards a peace process in talks, which then got completely derailed when the news that Mullah Omar had been dead for the last couple years emerged, and that led to sort of an internal leadership struggles within the Taliban, which are still not fully resolved. Today, we're just hearing the news, even reports still unconfirmed that the new leader who took over from Mullah Omar, Mullah Mansour, was himself shot in an internal Taliban dispute and was reportedly injured. So it's, again, hard to negotiate with the Taliban when they're still trying to sort out some of their own leadership issues. It's also difficult for President Ghani, because one of the first things he did after becoming elected was reach out to Pakistan with the assumption that he really needs to have peace with Pakistan to get them on board to then use their influence to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. And President Ghani made many compromises and discussions, but there's a strong assumption in Afghanistan that he did not get much in return from Pakistan in that regard. And so he lost, he spent a lot of political capital in that peace process effort, which, and now I think is a bit gun-shy in terms of doing that all over again. My own view is that the situation is too complex and the various groups are too fragmented to have a grand bargain. I think more realistically, you're going to have a series of agreements with this faction of the Taliban or that faction of the Taliban. But even getting unity within the Afghan government is difficult. We have different groups within the Afghan government with different views on the peace process. And it's still not completely clear what Pakistan's end objective is in this regard. So I think there's a lot of, again, confusion, lack of clarity about what the interests of all the different groups are. We certainly need me to believe that this is going to be a long process, peace process, as most peace processes are. And we should not be expecting, again, a grand bargain in the short term.


WebMGA is a web server designed to provide researchers with a platform for fast and efficient metagenomic data analysis. It includes more than 20 tools, including ORF calling, sequence clustering, quality control of raw reads, removal of sequencing artifacts and contaminants, taxonomic analysis and functional annotation. Researchers can use WebMGA either through web browsers or programming scripts to conduct individual analyses or to configure and run customized pipelines. WebMGA is free and open-source, making it accessible to all researchers. This article was authored by Neo Baifang, Fu Liming, Zhu Zhengwei, and others.


I'm thinking some of you might not know what the woods in Louisiana are like. So let me help you. Take a normal, perfectly good, pleasant forest. Add a little bit of poison ivy, a hell of a lot of boars and deer, and then as much mud as you can imagine. I'm talking metric tons of the stuff. Every trail, every foot, everywhere.  The mud will be gone and the mosquitoes won't be bad until dusk, but otherwise wear jeans, wear a t-shirt, and suffer. And here's another little fun fact. It loves to rain. Loves to flood too. So much, in fact, that our 57 acre property has a ramshackle levee that borders a stream to the north of our house.  You might be thinking that I don't like the rain. And you'd be right. For a good reason. Trust me. Let's get to that in a second. So this levee, right? 70 years old, as best as we can tell. Already here whenever we bought the property, and it keeps us high and dry.  As best as we can tell, there's a larger brook further up north that this creek branches off of. But it's just a small runoff route. Thanks to a log jam, except for when it rains and the water burst right past the jam and damn near drowns my house. But it doesn't. Thanks to one of the only useful pieces of redneck engineering to ever exist.  Since my family is in the business of not choking on swamp water every time it rains, we check the levee after every bad storm. They come once, twice a month, or something like that. Sometimes back to back, sometimes once a year, doesn't really matter. What does matter is that I'm the one who gets sent out into the muddy hellscape that is our woods trail to check the damned bank whenever a storm passes. It's pretty much a routine at this point. But things get a bit weird sometimes.  Old sheds and clearings no one's ever used. Car seats miles away from the nearest major road and hundreds of feet off the trail.  But every now and then something new turns up or gets uncovered, whatever you'd like to call it. Sometimes it's just an old water well that was covered up and it turns out the concrete plug of whatever was sealing had just finally given out. In other times, it's the remains of some poor family stray trampoline. But last time was different. That's why I'm writing this.  Stay away from any drainage or runoff systems. Flash floods are real after a rain.  But more specifically, avoid the levees. If you have to check them, wait until the mud dries up to look them over. Until the sun beats down and the woods are as bright as can be. Don't wait till it's late and the sun has a chance of setting. And don't do it alone. Don't trust the levees. Last time I went out, it was creepy and quiet, which is pretty much the norm for the woods. You start to hear the bugs and the birds as time goes on, but they seemed a little slower to get revved up after this rain. Nothing to worry about. It was just a couple fallen trees I thought unlucky but expected. Water turns the dirt into mud and the wind takes care of the rest. But usually the things are already half rotten and blow down during the worst of it. Which is why it was a little more concerning when I saw one fall down right in front of me. Contrary to popular belief, trees that have leaves and branches fall awfully slow if you aren't right next to the base, so I had plenty of time to get clear. But it didn't bode well for me. I couldn't even imagine the last time a storm had been bad enough to knock down hardwoods like that or the last time I'd check to see if our chainsaw worked. It was work for another day.  That was closer to the entrance of the tail leading to the levy, so I forgot about it pretty quickly after a few minutes of walking. You focus more on trying to find solid ground so you don't have to spend a few minutes pulling your feet out of a mud hole or two or ten. And then there were the deer rubs. There patches on younger saplings that bucks rub the bark off of, sort of as a claim to the land.  You might see one every now and then, but, well, everything looked dead or dying. Deer wander in herds, sure, and you might see quite a few bucks around in hunting season. It was that time of the year. But it was like every male deer in a 15-mile radius had saw fit to scrape every inch of bark off of every tree they could reach. There were even a few broken nubs on the ground. With blood, like they had rammed the older oaks, or fought each other. That was another weird thing. It wasn't even just the saplings.  If any hunters know anything about this, or hell, any arborists either, let me know. I'm just guessing at what happened, but there were tracks leading every which way, and the trees were more naked than, well, I'm running out of metaphors anyway. You get the gist, Cajun exaggeration only goes so far.  It was supposed to be a 30-minute walk after that. It was a bend in the trail I took every trip, and I knew the way back by heart. But I walked for at least a couple of hours, just plotting through the mud and swatting away the bugs. The trail never ended, and the sky never got dark. I even started marking trees to see if I was going crazy. But I never passed the same tree twice. The sky was starting to get dark. I'd put the walk off until after an early supper, but I kept going. There wasn't much else to do, since I had no idea where the hell I was, and I didn't even have another two hours to spend going the same way back. I figured I'd run into the levee eventually. It ran across the entire northern property line, a few hundred feet before our land actually ended, and I could orient myself then, and cut back across the property. But I never did. Another 30 minutes later, with me trying not to piss myself at every sound I was hearing in the trees, the trunks around me started to look different, blacker, darker than they should have been, even given the setting sun, diseased almost. Like they had rot, but the air smelled fine, still like it does after a rainstorm. I'd like to say I was cool, calm, and collected, but I wasn't. I kept throwing glances over my shoulder, and up at the sky, and glancing at my phone occasionally. It was telling me it was 4.30. That gave me a little bit of pause. It got dark around 5.30 or 5.40 at this time of year, and I must have left the house at 4, given that I ate supper, and had to wash the dishes afterwards. But I was more worried about getting out than my phone bugging out, so I kept going, running even, and that's when I heard it. It was a low rumble at first, like an earthquake, or a train, but it just kept getting louder, and louder, growing from behind me. When I turned around, I was facing directly down the length of the levee, the side to my left sloping away at a steep slant, the right just a mud plain going on for miles. And just around a bend, about a mile down the glorified ditch, I could see something getting closer. Here, I think my words are going to fail me, maybe my fingers too, with the way they're shaking right now. Even staring down at a speeding train with your feet glued to the tracks, or a bowl charging you while your shoelaces are tied together, or something big, black, watery, and beady-eyed, tearing down a concrete and mud trench that hurts to look at in a way you can't comprehend, stretching from right in front of you to the rightmost edge of the horizon. Yeah, it was mostly that last one, but I can't do it justice. It felt evil. I don't say this lightly. I grew up vaguely Christian, and if there was one thing Pa taught me, it's that evil is real and rare. It was his reason for being religious. He said he'd stared down true evil in this world and could only cope by believing in true good. And that's the feeling that hit me.  It looked like a hunk of flotsam one moment, riding on a giant wave and in another. It was something long and muddy with pincers and black eyes, like a crawfish ready to bite back. My feet were moving before I wanted them to, already bringing me towards the edge of the levee. It was impossible to climb up the thing normally, but one of the dark trees had bunches of ivy trailing down its trunk, and one of these vines had continued on down the side of the levee. The other direction wasn't even a choice. There'd be no running in that, just tripping and slipping in the gunk. I don't know how fast that beast was going, but it covered the mile between us in less than a minute. I was barely on the bank when it blew past, sucking the air along with it and nearly sending me tumbling back down into the dip. It stunk like death where it had passed. Not sickly sweet, but rancid and rotting, like seafood baking under the sun for a week. It's hard to say what happened after that. I didn't stick around to find out if that thing could scale the banks of the levee. I just sprinted. For how long I was running and stumbling and cussing, I can't tell you. But eventually my foot snagged on something good and sent me tumbling down to the ground. I thought it was the pincer branch of the thing that nearly got me earlier back to finish the job, but it was just a pile of sticks. Or rather, it was a pile of sticks now. It was hard to tell in the gloom, but it had definitely been something deliberately made before I smashed it. There were two halves of a square twig base, crudely tied together with a wooden figure of something laying on the ground next to me that must have been on some sort of platform. Or altar. Now, I don't know what you know about Cajun culture, but there's something called voodoo that we joke about. Black magic is what we mean, really. And I know that this probably wasn't real voodoo, that it was something else by a more prim and proper name.  Voodoo was the first thing that popped into my head. Fake enough when we were joking around, but less so when you're staring at a witch's doll.  Some things just feel right, and I didn't have any tinder with me to give the figure the proper scorching it deserved. After that, a relatively uneventful trip back to my house, it must have only taken 15 minutes to make it home, and the sky had even lightened a bit once I was out from the trees. Even after I'd stopped running after my fall, when the beast didn't come after me when I crushed the figurine. The talisman, whatever it was.  I don't feel like being in the dark at the moment, and the heat helps me relax. But I can't help but wonder. The woods were never like that before. The levee never bordered a mud flat like that. It should have been more woods. Calmer woods. Something was different. Or rather. Something had changed it. My mind keeps going to that talisman, or idol and witches, and black magic. Tales about things lurking in the swamps and the bayous. Bedtime stories. I wasn't supposed to hear as a kid. And I'm starting to wonder if me and my family are the only ones living on this land.  I am not checking the levee next time.


Good morning everybody. Another new day. Another new trailer. This one's empty. Dropped the loaded trailer and picked up this empty. Got to bring this one over to around Atlanta, Georgia, where all the fun is going on right now. Once I drop that off, apparently I'm rescuing a trailer from a driver back in Tennessee. His truck broke down and I got to go grab that trailer and bring it up to Ontario. Then in Ontario, I have a reload that's bringing me back down here somewhere. So we've got a busy, busy week here. But for now, where they unload these trailers, they want these axles all the way to the back. But they need to be centered with this line here. I like that they put a little arrow there. The center of the axles has to be right here. Unless you're in California, then the center of the rear axle has to be right here. But everywhere else, I don't know, California is California. And we don't ask questions. We just shake our head and don't go there. 12.5 meters center of the axle. So I got to move these, got to move the trailer back. You'll see. So did you see them slide? That's not bad, eh?  And that'll be pretty much exactly centered. Not bad, eh? I haven't slid the axles in over three years. I've been on flatbeds. First try. Still got it. So we're flying through Alabama right now. I have a llama. We're about to get to Birmingham, I believe. The plan right now is it's three hours to Atlanta. We'll be stopping just south of the city there. I got to drop off my trailer there. And then we're Bob tailing. I told you this already, right? Bob tailing up to Cleveland, Tennessee, which is sort of by Chattanooga. We're gonna rescue a trailer that's there. There's a truck that's broke down and we're gonna go get his trailer and deliver that trailer to Newmarket, Ontario, just north of Toronto. Gotta try to be there for Friday and it's Wednesday today. It's gonna be a little bit of a tight fit to fit that in there, but do our best. It's just beautiful down here. Everyone's so nice. Got that southern hospitality. A southern hospitality. I can't talk today. And as long as we don't get any problems going through Atlanta later, we should be able to pick up that trailer today yet and make our way up a few hours at least from there. It's about a 14-hour drive from Cleveland up to Ontario where I got to deliver. We're crossing over the bridge at Sarnia, Ontario from Fort Erie. No, not Fort Erie. That's the other side there by Buffalo. What is the American side again of Sarnia? They're Detroit and Windsor. And then a little further north, there's Sarnia and it's always port something. I'll tell you guys later. I can't think of it right now. Cleveland, Tennessee. I'm bob tailing so I feel like I'm a little... So it's two to two and a half hours up to where we need to go to stop someone for a coffee. That is a definite. That is an absolute. This is sort of like a special little treat. It's good news. We're not quite around the city yet. This is a big city. Traffic actually wasn't that bad because I went in. I think they were building something. Because as long as something's in the box I don't care. It wasn't actually too hot today. I mean for being somewhere down in the south here. It's actually hotter at home. Then again the sun is still way in the sky at home right now and I'm in the same time zone. I'm just so far south that it's set sooner here than it does at home from where this trailer is supposed to be. I hope it's where they told me it was. It's just recovering it right because one of our other drivers is trucks in the shop and apparently they're not sure if they can fix it or not. Someone's got to deliver the first trucker, Josh. You're super hero. You're super trucker hero. All good or done. Way to save the day. Super trucker, Josh. This is the third trailer I've been hooked on to today. I still don't like my automatic transmission in reverse. It's either all or nothing. It just wants to grab and just force you back. It's hard to get a nice smooth, smooth hookup with this thing but I'm still getting used to it I guess. I don't go backwards as often as I go forwards so I don't get as much practice. Well I'm hoping there's parking at this rest area coming up here. I've stopped at four or five different truck stops already and there's been nothing. No parking available and everybody's parked all the way out here onto the road already. So you know that's a good sign. Approaching destination on the left side in 290 meters. So apparently this rest area is closed but it's open to parking for truckers. I hope YouTube shows you what's going on here because they've got no lights here or anything and very often once I upload it's like the footage I'm filming right now I can see just fine in my camera screen in front of me there. Approaching destination of 200 meters on the left side. But then when I upload it to YouTube for some reason YouTube like darkens it a lot and you can't see what I'm seeing. Not much to see just lots of trucks and no parking. Parking spot right here. Nope says no parking on the sign right there.  I don't feel like getting woken up in the middle of the night. Some people don't care. I care. The room to squeak through here. I'm guessing it's going to be all filled up. You have arrived at your destination on the left side. Information center check. So we're calling this information center. It's going to be right packed. Yep right. Hoping I'd get lucky. At least they're making it bigger by the looks of it off to the right here. Good because they need it. Somebody in there too. Well I could make this into a spot possibly. Oh boy. Well we found a spot and I did something I don't like to do very often. I know it was din. I wanted to get the spot before anybody else got it. I saw it right in front of me. I saw another truck over there. I saw a spot in front of me. I was going to turn around and then back in right. But I was scared that if I turn around he'd sneak in and take it from me. So I just nose right into mine. Now I'm going to bed. So glad I found a spot. This is such a bad area. One of the bad areas for finding a parking spot after like six o'clock in the evening. And I pulled in here. Oh like a midnight sun. We're here. Thanks for joining me today. It was a lot of fun. We had three different trailers today. Wow. Tomorrow we're just going to have the one. But we're going to cross the international border tomorrow into Canada. Wish me luck. Hello. This is Todd Taylor, the manager man coming to you live from my studio from Nashville, Tennessee to Spartanburg, South Carolina. When I'm touring or no matter where I'm at, I love watching Trucker Josh TV. And thank you Trucker Josh for pulling that freight from Canada to USA and everywhere you go. Without Truckers, you know, we wouldn't have a lot of food or anything. May God bless you. Safe travels.


Welcome to ToffeeTV and welcome to episode number three of Everton in Reserve, the show where myself, Cameron, sits down and talks about all of the latest news and results from Everton's Academy over the last seven days or so. A big, big thank you to everybody for supporting this series so far. The first couple of episodes were great, really, really enjoyed doing them and really, really enjoyed keeping everybody up to date with the Academy progress. It wasn't a great week for Everton Football Club. This week as a whole, both the Academy and of course the first team, both Everton under 18s and under 23s losing. The under 18s losing 4-0 in the mini-mercy side, Derby to Liverpool. Their first defeat of the season. They're currently sitting in fifth position, three wins, one draw and one loss. Just an off day for the under 18s this weekend. Look, it's not great that it's come up against Liverpool, of course, but everybody has off days. Like I said, we saw it with the first team on Sunday with the tuner lost to Southampton. The under 18s unfortunately come up against a strong Liverpool side and they just couldn't match them on the day. It was quite a heavy defeat, obviously by the score line, but like I said, Everton under 18s are genuinely in very, very good form, undefeated before this game and of course just struggled to pick up anything out of it. But it was quite a heavy defeat and like I said, it's not ideal that it's come against Liverpool, of course, but nothing to be too disheartened about. Only the first defeat of the season in very, very good form other than that. So fully expect the under 18s to bounce back next week and go out and get another three points and climb further up that table. But like I said, it was a disappointing result. It was a disappointing performance, but again, it's nothing to be too disheartened about other than the fact that it was against your local rivals, which is easier said than believed really, isn't it? I know Everton's first team would have been beaten four-nil by Liverpool's first team last week after winning our opening four or five games this season had been very disappointed as well. But hopefully the under 18s can bounce back. I've got full faith they can bounce back. Like I said, they're in very good form this season. Three wins and a draw before the defeat to Liverpool. So nothing too serious to worry about. And Everton's under 23s, unfortunately suffered a last minute defeat to Manchester United's under 23s on Friday night. Manchester United converting a penalty in the last seconds of stoppage time to win the game 2-1 after Everton actually went one-nil up. Quite a controversial penalty as well. To be honest, look, I watched it a couple of times and I am not completely convinced there was a lot of contact. OK, granted, the replays that I saw, they weren't the greatest of replays.  It was a replay that looked a little bit like the player that, but I don't want to throw that on them because they might have been contact that was visible from a different angle. But Ellis Simms put Everton one-nil up in the game. We actually had an opportunity to score just before that as well. They had a one-on-one chance and which, unfortunately, the keeper made a good save from. But after that, he put us one-nil up, Tyler on Young who really important in the goal. He was great with the one-on-one chance as well. He played a fantastic ball to Ellis Simms.  Like I said, ball comes into the box. Ellis Simms takes a shot at it first time. Goalkeeper makes a save and then he follows in with the rebound to make it one-nil to Everton. And then, you know, we're looking in a very, very good position. The under-18, sorry, the under-23 is currently sitting in eighth in their league. Two wins are drawn and three losses. This would, of course, would have meant three wins and only two losses if we could have kept that lead up. We had a big chance to go two-nil up shortly after Ellis Simms put on us one-nil up. There was a little bit of a collision between Manchester United's goalkeeper and defender. It was quite similar to the one I don't know if anybody remembers at Goddison Park a couple of years ago when we played Tottenham Hotspur. And I think it was Pickford in Zoom and it might have been Pickford and Mina, but they absolutely clattered into each other. And then Sondres ran in behind and had an opportunity to score and ultimately did score. This was a quite similar situation. The Manchester United goalkeeper and defender clattered right into each other. Ellis Simms got the ball and it was quite far out. I think he wanted to bring it a little bit more forward before taking the shot. He took the shot just outside the area and Brandon Williams, who is of course a name that we've seen in the Premier League multiple times from Manchester United, got back and cleared it off the line. It was a big, big chance at that point to go two-nil open and really sort of kill the confidence of Manchester United. But unfortunately, we couldn't convey that. And look, you know, I don't think it's something to nail down too much on Ellis Simms for. He's been an absolutely fantastic goal-scoring form so far this season. Again, another goal on Friday night against Manchester United. Okay, he could have made it two and he probably could have had a hat-trick on the day as well, but you can't really go too far into it because he has been in fantastic form. But of course, like I said, it was a golden opportunity. We couldn't take it. And then a little bit later on in the game, Manchester United getting one goal back at Neon Lango with a decent shot to make it one-all. And then of course that last-minute penalty like we mentioned, Virginia's, our Virginia in goal, got a slight touch to it. The penalty was hit with some, you know, frosty to be fair, so it was hit quite hard. It could have got a hand on it, like I said, could have pushed it out, but would have probably been a little bit hypocritical to say that. And unfortunately for the under-23s, like I said, you know, at times in the game, you were looking at another win and a very, very good win away to Manchester United. But unfortunately, due to a last minute penalty, they were defeated. Couldn't be sitting eighth in the league, like I said, two wins one draw and three losses. And unfortunately it was another difficult one to take. Obviously a couple of difficult losses to take recently for the under-23s, one against Liverpool again a few weeks ago, conceding in the first minute and then not being able to get back into the game.  But there you go, like I said, not a great week for everything football club as a whole this week. A couple of decent performances though, like I said, Talon on Yungu looked fantastic to be honest against Manchester United, really comfortable in the middle of the park and played a nice couple of nice balls into Ellis Sims as well to give him opportunities. Again, Ellis Sims was on the score sheet. So there was a couple of decent performances, it was just unfortunate that they could not pick up the three points. And that was the story of Everton's week really, wasn't it? The under-18s being defeated for the first time this season, the under-23s picking up a last minute loss and obviously the first team losing to Southampton.  But it wasn't a great week for Everton in any of the sides, the 18s, the 23s or the first team. But hopefully every one of them can bounce back full confidence that the 18s will bounce back next week. Like I said, they're in very, very good form and, you know, it was just a one-off game. Again, under-23s, very unlucky to lose that game with a last-minute penalty. And the expectation is that the first team bounced back on Sunday against Newcastle. It was a disappointing defeat against Southampton, of course. And, you know, it was a disappointing performance for me. The most worrying thing was the, you know, the fact that those players that were giving their big opportunity to come in and impress the likes of Awolby, the likes of Sigitson, the likes of Bernard, who was given 45 minutes just simply didn't do anything to give the manager any sort of headache whatsoever. A fully expect Antony Gordon to feature. Probably even start on Sunday. Nas and Kanku, of course, will play it left-back with Luka Dean's suspension. So hopefully we can bounce back. Hopefully we're sitting here next week and we're talking about a, not only a positive result for the first team, but also a couple of positive results for the under-23s and the under-18s as well. But it wasn't a great week to be in Evertonian. But let's hope that this one is an awful lot better. Of course, not forgetting the Women's FA Cup finalist Sunday as well. 2pm kickoff, everything taken on. Manchester City, make sure that you support all of the Everton women, of course, on that day. And if you can give it a watch, then give it a watch. Of course, it's on at the same time as the Newcastle game, so I understand it's going to be a little bit difficult. But if we can get involved and support in any way possible, I know the Everton women's Twitter have put out a little sort of call for fans to send them video showing support to the girls ahead of the big day. It would mean a great deal to the football club and us fans as well. Because let's be honest, we need to be supporting our side. So there you go, that is the Everton in reserve report episode number three. If you have enjoyed it, please do hit that like button. Once again, a big, big thanks to Ped and Baz for letting me come on and do these. Really, really enjoyed doing these. Really enjoyed delving in to the academy games and having a little look at the players that are impressing and having a little look at the players that ultimately the hope is we'll be seeing at Goddison Park in the Premier League Sunday. Certainly the likes of Ella Sims, Tyler on Yungu. I'm in Janya, of course, new sign and who played last week in his debut. These are the type of players that you're looking at thinking, you know, I hope to see you at Goddison Park playing in the Premier League one day. So it's nice to see them at this level and see how they're doing. And like I said, it wasn't a great week, but we bounce back and we go again in this weekend's pictures. Big, big thanks for watching. If you have enjoyed it, please do hit that like button. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you are new as well. Share the video, let's try and get as many people involved in these episodes as possible. Don't forget to get over and join us on Patreon as well, cost literally less than a McDonald's meal that you'd probably after ordering now because I don't even know if you can go to Mackeys anymore, but get over, join us on Patreon, leave the video a like, subscribe to the channel. If you want to check us out, The Mighty Blues, it will be greatly, greatly appreciated. Big, big thanks for watching.