Maccabee's Wars

2007-12-06T23:55:00.000-05:00

Happy Chanukah!

Judas Maccabeas was always ready for a fight but the following is a bit too much. It seems ‘tis the season to be jolly; except in Long Beach.

http://www.1010wins.com/Christmas-Tree-Matches-Menorah-Size-in-Long-Beach/1293836

I saw the current height of the tree vs. the Menorah and lo and behold it is no longer a tie, the tree seems to be a lot taller.

Of course on my latest visit to Prague, I saw that the Alte Neu Shul is a lot smaller then all the churches in town. To make up for that, the shul begins a couple of meters below ground to give the interior a ‘taller’ look.

Well it now 'looks' like that time stands still for no man – not even during the holiday season.

As the ‘great’ Rodney King once said “Why can’t we all just get along?”

I guess it’s because we just can’t.

2007-03-08T06:33:00.000-05:00

Olmert’s Folly

The futility of Ehud Olmert’s regime may have finally come to an end.

After testifying before the Winograd Commission, Olmert admitted that in March 2006, he chose a moderate plan of attack which was based on air warfare with a limited ground operation.

Although Shaul Mafoz had been the defense minister at that time, this plan was later executed by then chief of staff Dan Halutz, the latter having accepted the bulk of the blame for Israel’s failure during the summer war.

Incredulously, Olmert defended his move to escalate the war in the closing days in order to pressur the UN Security Council to draft a cease fire resolution more favorable to Israel.

In the end, resolution 1701, did not adequatley address Israel’s security needs and 33 soldiers were killed in the last 48 hours.

Olmert, foolishly admitted, that the escalation would not have been necessary had the earlier ground offensives been succesful.

And who chose that plan?

As Dr. Seuss so elequently wrote regarding Marvin K. Mooney, we can now say the same for Ehud K. Olmert.

Would you just please go NOW?

http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2006/09/marvin-k-mooney-ehud-k-olmert-would.html

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/834549.html

2007-02-22T01:00:00.001-05:00

Truth or Fiction?

David Assaf, a prolific historian, recently published a collection of articles in Hebrew under the title of “Caught in the Thicket: Chapters of Crisis and Discontent in the History of Hasidism.”

Most of the articles have already been translated into English but are unavailable online.

The gist of the collection is that stories which have circulated in Hasidic circles about the Hasidic masters have been in direct conflict with versions of the same stories presented by Maskilim, who were anti-Hasidic.

Assaf tries to unweave this web and present the truth as he sees it.

After brushing through the first article, I came to the realization that this was a thoroughly researched work. There were over a hundred lengthy quotes from both side of the spectrum.

However, as with all human beings and even some historians, a bias comes through. In Asaaf’s eyes, Hasidism and a select few of their leaders take a turn for the worse.

But why is that? Can’t a historian search for the truth and present it as he sees it in a true historical light?

Maybe.

But if time and again your search leads you to negativity about your subject matter, bias must enter the picture.

In a previous volume published in English, entitled “The Regal Way: The Life and Times of Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin,” Assaf did not present Rabbi Israel Friedman in the best light.

But if it’s the truth what does it matter?

Well, sometimes it’s not the truth and even if it is true maybe it shouldn’t be presented at all.

In the past I have been a defender of “The Making of a Godol,” by Rav Nathan Kamenetzky and all of Nosson Slifkin’s works. I still stand by those decisions. Both of these authors addressed ideas that needed to be addressed to certain audiences. Both authors gave information which helped many appreciate Torah and Torah scholars, more so than they had before.

However, I do not see the same in Assaf’s latest work. Even if there is no malice, even if the discoveries and assertions are all truthful, what’s the point? Why do we need to know? If the point is to embarrass individuals or groups, well, that’s another matter.

And if the history presented is a lie, that is also another matter.

Ariel Toaff, in his most recent book, entitled “Pasque di Sangue” (Bloody Passover), makes outrageous claims that the Blood Libel which Jews have been accused for centuries may be true.

There is more than embarrassment when publishing such lies. There is potential for rampant anti-semitism. There is potential for bodily harm as well.

Now I’m not comparing Assaf’s work to Toaf’s. The latter is a work of fiction in the guise of academic research. The former is a ‘true’ historical analysis. The damage by the latter is immense, not so the former.

But did we need either to be published?

I don’t think so.

2007-01-20T18:21:00.000-05:00

Correction

After reviewing the Tradition article on Torture and the Law a second time, I see that I misinterpreted R. Bleich’s position.

In quoting R. Kook’s position as to torture, it seems that a Hora’at Sha’ah would only be needed to violate murder, which would be illegal both under Noahide and Judaic law.

As to torture, however, it seems that once the person who will be subject to torture is categorized as a rodef, torture would be permissible, and may be required by law.

I regret my misinterpretation of R. Bleich’s article, as per my previous post, and do so apologize for my error.

2007-01-14T23:50:00.000-05:00

On the Warpath

In the recent issue of Tradition devoted to War and the Jewish Tradition, many questions were raised as to the permissibility of war, how to act in war and the permissibility of torture.

Though the guest editor of the periodical admitted that these articles were written prior to the War in Lebanon this past summer, the articles showed a liberal sensitivity that was uncalled for and neglected to mention rabbinical authorities who would otherwise differ.

Rabbi Yitzchak Blau questions whether “Israel is truly in a state of war with the collective body of Palestinians when Israel frequently hires Palestinian workers.”

He states, further, that “Palestinian children do not directly harm or plan to harm Israeli’s and therefore are not rodfim.” Nor does he feel that those who encourage terror and who “pat a terrorist on the back for killing, [should be viewed as] a rodef.”

Has Rabbi Blau forgotten all the materials gathered by MEMRI which shows the constant incitement to murder and become homicide bombers? Why does he ignore, the children who spew the same venom as adults? Is it not the children who for years have been attacking Israeli troops with rocks and whatever they can get their hands on?

Those who encourage terrorism, stand behind it and do not oppose it are not necessarily “excluded as innocents not involved in hostilities.”

Rabbi Shalom Carmy, in his article regarding the origin of Cannan and Amalek, quotes Rav Eliyahu Henkin “that Jews cannot arrive at decisions [about who holds an Amalek pedigree] on our own but only through divine command.”

Further he quotes Professor Avi Sagi and R. Avigdor Amiel that the war against Amalek is only a spiritual one and “[w]hen Judaism declared war against militarism it was not through militarism.”

Rabbi Carmy neglects to mention Rav Herschel Schechter’s view that the Palestinians are the reincarnation of Amalek. It is not the pedigree of the Nazis or the Arabs that we should be examining, but the evil spirituality which they take upon themselves. As I understand Rav Shachter, acting as Amalek is the reincarnation of Amalek and the Torah’s Mitzvah of Zacher Amalek applies to this new reincarnation.

Worse yet is Rabbi J. David Bleich’s article on the ‘ticking bomb’ and Jewish Law. To basically look to a Hora’at Sha’ah, an ad hoc emergency directive, to authorize a ‘torture warrant’ is ludicrous.

According to the author, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook would only allow torture, “if the entire Jewish people or perhaps only the entire populace of the Land of Israel” were in danger. To say that Rav Kook’s thesis would be “applicable only when the threat is of the magnitude of a nuclear holocaust” is equally ludicrous.

The entire Jewish nation and the world at large are threatened every day by terrorism and annihilation. Whether it’s the Palestinians at a local level in Israel, Hizballah in Lebanon, Iran with its nuclear aspirations or Islamic fundamentalists in Iraq and worldwide, we are all in danger.

If one person could be saved based on the torture of an individual, as heinous as it may seem to the “human psyche,” it is well worth it. When the author quotes rabbinic lore to “[l]et the law pierce the mountain” it does not mean that our sensibilities to save the world, using torture, are wrong. It means that we should use the law to find a way to save the world, even via torture.

Better to remember the phrase Kol Hamatzil Nefesh Achas M’iyisroel Ke’ilu Kayem Olam Molei then to focus on the rights of those who wish to harbor terrorism.

2006-12-19T22:47:00.000-05:00

South Park Redux

Headline News

Police were called to stop a high school choir from singing a Christmas carol because it was offensive to Sasha Cohen.

No not that Cohen.

Not the “throw the Jew down the well” Cohen.

This was done because the carol was thought to be offensive to Olympic medalist Sasha Cohen who’s father is Jewish (her mother is not).

If there’s any justice, this insanity should be satirized in a future South Park episode.

See the following commentary in the Washington Times.

http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20061217-103054-9924r.htm

2006-12-19T21:49:00.000-05:00

Al-Zawraa, Al-Jazeera Zardoz?

Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes reports that Al-Qaeda propaganda is being broadcast throughout the Arab world via Egyptian television.

In essence it is the same videos of bombings of ‘enemy’ vehicles that have already been shown on the internet on Al-Qaeda websites.

There should be no surprise that Arab regimes throughout the world are always willing to show the most disgusting aspects of they’re own lives. Our examination need not go further than the Arab Media’s endless reels of violence coming out of Gaza and Iraq. If it must, then we have the virulent racism of the movie “Obsession” to cheer us up during this holiday season. If we really want to feel great, we can always watch the Holocaust denial conference which recently took place in Iran.

But with over two billion dollars of aid given to Egypt every year, totaling fifty billion thus far,

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0412/p07s01-wome.html

must we have the new Al-Zawraa network broadcasting from Egypt? Must our tax money pay for this? Isn’t it enough what Al-Jazeera is showing?

We’d be better off if they put on a 24 hour network showing only the movie Zardoz, one of the worst movies of all time. Maybe it would drive them so insane they’d never want to watch or advocate violence again.

Oh I forgot, they already made that movie – A Clockwork Orange.

It didn’t work.

2006-11-20T23:30:00.000-05:00

Russian Roulette

No nation has murdered more people in the past 100 years than the Russian nation – not the Nazis, not the Arabs, not the Turks, not the Chinese; no one else.

Whether one looks at Stalin or the roots of the ‘cult of personality’ with earlier Russian ‘monarchs’ such as Ivan the Terrible, there is something inherently evil within the Russian core.

Of course, we could always focus on the Germans, the rest of Europe, or any empire down through the ages but Russia always seems to resurface.

Boris Stomakhin, editor of outspoken monthly newspaper Radikalnaya Politika, who had frequently called Russia’s presence in Chechnya an "occupation" and slammed President Vladimir Putin has been sentenced to 5 years in prison by a Russian court.

British police are currently investigating the poisoning of former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin.

Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a critic of Putin and Russia's policy in Chechnya, was hospitalized in 2004 and believed she had been poisoned. Politkovskaya was shot to death Oct. 7 in her Moscow apartment building.

Though Putin was head of the KGB, there has never been any absolute proof implicating any member of the Russian government with any malfeasance.

Boris Volodarsky in an April 7, 2005 article in The Wall Street Journal wrote a fine piece regarding the alleged intentional poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko during Ukraine's presidential election campaign of 2004.

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:GzJw38iV3bgJ:www.princeton.edu/~amoroz/2005/04/kgbs-poison-factory.html+kgb+poisoning&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4

There has been no real proof whatsoever.

But I digress.

I do not wish to focus on the actions of the Russian government but rather on the Russian soul.

When Arkadi Gaydamak, a Russian businessman living in Israel opened his Jewish heart for those suffering from rocket attacks in Sderot and agreed to pay for a week-long vacation at five hotels in Eilat, he is quickly criticized by Ehud Olmert and other members of the Israeli oligarchy.

These very same people abandoned the populace of the North during the 2006 Lebanon War and the residents of Gush Katif during 2005.

This oligarchy is still operating with the Russian soul that was instilled in them at birth, prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, or by their parents who raised them or their grandparents who handed it down to them over the years.

If this soul is not eradicated soon and their Jewish heart is not put in the forefront, the next abandonment will be one of the whole of the Jewish State, with the Jewish nation to follow.

One need only heed the words of Pastor Martin Nemoller to know what will happen if we let history pass us by and do nothing. At the very least we must recognize what is taking place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...

2006-10-31T04:28:00.000-05:00

Anatomy of A Ban

I am currently in Israel for a wedding and came across a copy of "Anatomy of a Ban" by R' Nathan Kamenetsky, author of "Making of a Gadol."

Though the book goes through all the minutiae of the disgusting actions of those who were in favor of the ostracizing of R' Kamenetsky and the manipulations of those Gedolim who came to be in favor of the ban, I found it remarkable how R' Nathan was able to restrain himself from naming those who had acted most outrageously and grievously towards him and who's names had heretofore not been known to the public at large; all this restraint being shown despite the fact that 'Anatomy' was a limited printing solely given to private individuals and never intended to be sold to the general public.

The sad part for the rest of the world and for R' Kamenetsky in particular, more so than the vilification and humiliation is the fact that in 'Anatomy' he states that he no longer has the will and energy to complete volumes 2, 3 and 4 of "Making of a Gadol."

There is continued dispute, however, as to what certain Gadolim are saying about the original volumes.

R' Kamenetsky continues to assert in 'Anatomy' that R' Moshe Sternbuch has said that there is nothing wrong with the volumes and that it is essentially a 'mitzva' to read MAOG, whereby every yeshiva bochur and G-d fearing person should have the knowledge contained therein.

On the other hand, there are those who have said that R' Moshe Sternbuch never said anything of the kind and that the books are a 'buch' which must be burned and destroyed.

I, however, find the conclusion of 'Anatomy' to be most telling about the author's current mood and temperament.

R' Kamenetsky tells the story of one of his ancestors, I believe it was R' Katzenellenbogen, who 9 generations earlier was instrumental in banning works of the Ramchal. Now the same happens to R' Nathan.

Yet like R' Yonasan Eibushitz, who was eventually vindicated in his battles with R' Yaakov Emden, so the Ramchal and other greats from the previous generations have also been vindicated. Will R' Nathan be vindicated as well?

Do we have a case of whatever goes around comes around?

Is it Mida Keneged Mida as I believe R' Nathan currently perceives it?

Is the entire episode the work of the Sitra Achar as R' Kamenetsky almost explicitly states?

Make of it what you will.

2006-09-29T15:33:00.000-04:00

Musings

I haven't had much to write about, though I have been considering writing some articles.

In the interim, here's a blog of experiences I am sure no one has had as unique a perspective as this blogger.

It is the blog of the first woman 'tourist' astronaut who arrived back on earth yesterday.

http://spaceblog.xprize.org/

2006-08-30T14:28:00.000-04:00

Kidnappers Delight

Jennifer Griffin, Fox News reporter, of their Jerusalem bureau, literally took her life into her own hands when she was an adamant force in the release of reporter Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig from “unknown” terrorists in Gaza.

After much investigation, she and her Israeli bureau chief met with leaders of Fatah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad et al in the darkened back streets of Gaza while an Israeli drone flew overhead.

It was an excellent opportunity for Israel to take out a cabal of ‘Mafioso’s.’

Luckily for the Fox team, it did not take place.

Griffin, in her discussions, realized that these ‘helpful’ leaders were taking her for a ride. They insisted they were doing everything they can for the Fox newsman.

At that point, Griffin, pointed out the name of the family who were heavily involved in the kidnapping and she demanded why they had not been arrested. With guns drawn by bodyguards on both sides, she realized she was in great danger and that the ’dons’ of the Palestinians were all in on the same game.

To this author, it’s time that the world understands that every Palestinian excuse is just an excuse. Every one involved in the War against Israel is in cahoots with each other. Hamas, Fatah etal are all on the same page. Not one of them is better than the other. There is no one to deal with now nor will there be in the future.

There is one thing, however, to be thankful for. Ever since the kidnapping, reporters in general have been unwilling to cover the Palestinian ‘story’ in Gaza.

Maybe Orla Guerin of the BBC will give it a shot with her anti-Semitic claptrap -- though I doubt it. She was nowhere to be seen in Lebanon or Gaza during the fighting. Now with Kofi Anon’s visit to Beirut, she resurfaces in the war zone.

Then again, if she were to be kidnapped, the Stockholm syndrome would probably turn her into another homicide bomber.

Oh, how I long for the years gone by when we only find out about the ‘news’ years after it happens.

Then again, I wouldn’t have anything to write about.

See below for the related Fox news story

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,211097,00.html

2006-08-24T14:23:00.000-04:00

Life in the War Zone

After much jetlag, I can finally report on my recent trip to Israel.

The trip was taken with much anticipation and trepidation.

On Tuesday evening August 8th I received a call from a friend telling me about a volunteer mission to Israel sponsored by an ad hoc group named CareforIsrael. Morey Kellman was the energetic leader of this group.

About the first of August he began to plan a volunteer mission to help in the war effort. Less then 2 weeks later 100 people were on their way on Saturday evening August 12th to help in whatever way they could.

As I mentioned, I only found out about the mission a few days prior to departure. My flight was only confirmed on Thursday the 10th 2 days prior to departure and I packed my bags only hours before Shabbat. I ran out of the house minutes after Shabbat was over to be on time for the flight.

Except for the fact that the flight left in a timely fashion and that I had been without sleep for days, the flight was uneventful.

We arrived Sunday evening August 13th to Israel. Buses took us to Jerusalem to the Kings Hotel where we met with a trauma expert who advised us on how to deal with the citizens of the North whom we would be spending our time with in the next few days.

A ceasefire had been tentatively agreed to on Friday to take effect on Monday at 8:00 AM but the war continued to rage.

I could not sleep well that Sunday evening. Consequently I rose at 5:15 AM and headed to the Kotel for Vosikin minyan. Despite the fact I couldn’t catch a taxi, I found someone who stopped to give me ride. He was also heading for Vosikin, so he took me back as well.

I always find the silence that takes place at Neitz at the Kotel an eerie feeling, yet at the same time invigorating.

After heading back to the hotel for breakfast, I grabbed some clothes for three days and a sheet to take with me. I wasn’t going on a camping trip. Ten of us were heading up north to be in the shelters for three days.

It was bit nerve wracking, not knowing what would await us. Yet I had little to worry about.

As we were about to leave, Morey received a phone call from Lev Achad. They were our coordinators for what we would be doing up there and they told us not to come that day. I assume it was because the ceasefire had taken hold, but I can’t be sure.

So instead of heading North, new plans were made for the 10 of us.

We were whisked off to a soup kitchen called Hazon Yeshaya. When we arrived we were put on KP duty peeling hundreds of potatoes. If I had stayed home I wouldn’t want to peel even one, yet here I felt comfortable putting in the hours. After a few hours, we served the locals who came in for a meal. We also tried to give them Chizuk. One of the members of our group, Arnie, had a guitar. He started playing some lively music, so we joined in to dance with some of the patrons. It was uplifting to see the smiles on so many faces.

This particular soup kitchen which serves Jerusalem with some 2500 meals a day, also serves 3000 additional meals to other areas of Israel. Additionally, they made 4000 more meals to be taken up North. The head of Hazon Yeshaya shown on a video visualized to us the horrors that were taking place in the North. As they were driving through some Northern Town trying to deliver food, an air raid siren went off. They hurried off their transport and tried to head towards a shelter. The shelter however was closed, so they had to stand on the outside of it until the ‘all clear.’

Later, they delivered to shelters where one woman said they had not left it for 17 days. No one, she said had come to visit them or to bring food until Hazan Yeshaya had at that moment.

But the shelters were not the only places that needed food. Climbing up 4 stories to a top floor, the soup kitchen crew delivered food to an old couple who could not leave their home, despite the fact that shells were raining around them.

It was extremely troubling to see that the government had abandoned these people. The Israeli papers quoted government officials that they were not delivering food because they did not want the Northern population to become dependent on the State. It’s interesting that this is coming from a State that is dependent on the US, the Jews of the Diaspora and new Olim. It was quite despicable.

Following our time in the soup kitchen, we went to donate blood at Magen Dovid Adom. They took blood from most of group, but I was so weak from the trip, they told me to wait a week. Oh well, I tried.

The next day I was still jetlagged so I woke again for Vosikin. This time I found a cab. After davening which ended about 6:15 AM I walked back through the shuk. It was eerily empty except for 3 or 4 old Arabs who were opening up their stores. It was a quick walk, however, rather then going through the Armenian quarter.

That morning we headed towards an Army base in Tzrifin which is south of Ramle. We were there to pack food packages which were to be airlifted to the remaining troops in Lebanon. If only much of these packages were sent earlier. Stories of soldiers having to take water off the dead Hizballah fighters, breaking into stores for a morsel of food or eating at the local Lebanese populace homes were the stories we heard time and again.

The food was packed on an assembly line. Sixty people placed products such as tuna, canned vegetables and the lot in boxes which were for 4 Meals in a 24 hour period. Each box weighed about 4 pounds and were stacked 180 high on a gurney to be fork lifted away and then parachuted to the troops. On that Tuesday, I had to place canned chocolate in the boxes. First I was placing them gently, but the conveyer was moving so fast at times, I began throwing them in. It was almost like the famous “I Love Lucy” episode where Lucy had to wrap chocolates arriving on a conveyer belt. The belt, however, was moving so quickly that she had to eat most of them just to keep pace.

Later we headed to Sderot which for some time, along with Gush Katif, had been hit by thousands of Kassam missiles. We met with the deputy mayor and saw the extensive damage. We also met with some children of the town who at first said that everything was alright. Then one of them said he was so scared that he needed his father to stand outside the toilet to hum to him, so that he knew he was safe. At all times he knew where the nearest shelter was, so that he could go there on a moments notice.

On Wednesday, the 16th, we headed up North. We met with soldiers stationed in the Golan, who had just come back from the fighting and had lost four men in the last days of the ceasefire. One of their fallen comrades Uri Grossman was the son of a leading novelist and “Peace Now” activist. The father had just been at a protest against the war prior to his son’s death.

Soldiers were now crowding around a newspaper which discussed the funeral and eulogy for their fallen comrade. Mr. Grossman said that Israel will have to ascertain what it lost during this war. He does not have time for that. He is busy with what he and his family had lost, the loss of his son.

Some of the soldiers eventually started talking of their experiences. One, tank commander, told us of the anti-tank missiles which were being shot from kilometers away. They never saw them coming. When they tried to return fire, the Hizballah terrorist surrounded themselves with children. They could not return fire.

Later that day we went to Kiryat Shemona. I was surprised by the lack of destruction. Kiryat Shemona had almost 1000 missiles fall in the center of the city. I saw only mostly blackened fields.

We went to the Hesder Yeshiva on top of the city, sitting directly on the border. One of the ‘bochorim’ showed us the blackened windows of the Beit Hamidrash, the apartment buildings which received a direct hit, and the remnants of Katyushas.

We next headed to the mall in Kiryat Shemona. It wasn’t quite as busy as the ‘Kanyon’ in Jerusalem but people were there. I didn’t notice any damage.

We next met with an officer of the ‘Home Front’ in a forest on the outskirts of Safed. He emphasized that this war was not over and that we were only at the ‘halftime’ break.

That evening, in Jerusalem, we met with Yuli Edelstein. Though he was reluctant to criticize the Olmert administration, he made it quite apparent that Israel was not in a good situation.

The next morning, we met with Natan Sharansky who basically reiterated the same trepidation as Edelstein. He also mentioned that when he resigned from the government last year, he told Sharon that he hoped he was wrong about the Disengagement from Gaza. Unfortunately, he was not.

That Thursday morning we headed back to Tzrifin to pack some more food. This time they put me in charge of the assembly line. It might sound like a piece of cake to press an ‘on’ button and then an ‘off’ button but if you have to watch people getting their fingers caught in machinery, people dropping heavy boxes coming at them at top speed, boxes getting caught in the taping machine and all sorts of problems, I felt like I needed five pairs of eyes.

That evening we heard from an IDF spokesman who said that we can look at this war as a glass half-full or as glass half-empty. It wasn’t a great analogy but it’s all I came away with.

Later that evening most of the mission went back to New York. I stayed for Shabbat to recuperate.

All in all, it was a worthwhile trip, though I am afraid that we are trailing badly at halftime. Moreover, even if we win ‘the game’ our losses which are heavy already will be far worse unless there is major change in leadership.

May this coming year be one of Guela Shlaima, a homecoming from our exile, and a healthy and happy one for one and all.

2006-08-11T14:46:00.000-04:00

Leaving On a Jet Plane

I am, G-D willing, leaving for Israel this Saturday night for a week to volunteer with the organization known as careforisrael.com. I hope to be able to report back while I am there. If not, I will try to give a full report once I’m back.

Lehitraot

2006-08-09T14:26:00.000-04:00

Leftist Morality

The following is an excellent article regarding the perversity of the left.

Thanks to Friedlam again for the submission:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20062213-7583,00.html

2006-08-09T02:52:00.000-04:00

J’ Accuse!

Headline: Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks accuses Israel of moral equivalency.

Left-wing anti-Semitism continues to rear its ugly head.

It’s bad enough that Israel must suffer through moral equivalency where Hizballah is considered on equal moral ground as Israel. Now ‘reporter’ Ricks has taken this one step further. It is now Hizballah and the Arab world with the moral high ground. It is now Israel who is undermining morality by failing to wipe out Hizballah, by letting the battle move slowly, by allowing the populace in the north to be continually bombarded and killed, so that people will pity ‘poor’ Israel and consequently give it favorable PR.

What unbelievable nonsense!

Israel is always receiving horrible PR no matter how moral they try to behave. Despite the pride taken by the Israeli military in being the most moral army in the world, despite the losses they took in Jenin and now in Lebanon and Northern Israel, the world looks disdainfully at the Jewish state and twists and skews the moral equivalency in favor of the Arab world.

Further, it is Hizballah, Hamas and the Arab media who manipulate photo ops to distort the truth. It is Reuter’s photographers who ‘doctor’ images to manipulate the masses.

What’s more, the liberal media allows these manipulative tactics to be shown as truth rather than true fiction.

See below for Ricks’ asinine comments on CNN and a partial acceptance by the reporter interviewing him.

http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Briefs/9075.htm

See also the moral equivalency as 30,000 Muslim protesters in London held banners saying “We are all Hezbollah” and screaming out the same unashamedly.

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10199

Also see the following report by Harold Evans from the Guardian. Thanks to Friedlam for the submission:

'We are all Hizbullah now.'
Really?

Harold Evans August 8, 2006 05:04 PM

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/harold_evans/2006/08/we_are_all_hizbullah_now_reall.html
"We are all Hizbullah now," proclaimed one of the banners at the Stop the War coalition's London march<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5246790.stm> . Really? Is it possible that more than one person has taken leave of their senses?

It was a sign either of profound ignorance or a depraved indifference to human life. Either way, the moral idiocy of the sentiment betrayed the higher purpose of the march.

If we are all Hizbullah now, who are we? Are we the violent hijackers of the state of Lebanon who started this war without provocation and without reference to the elected government?
Are we the "democrats" who hold hostages for years and murder political opponents?

Are we the suicide bombers, Hizbullah's contribution to civilization, randomly murdering innocents in the thousands - Muslims, Jews,Christians, Buddhists, for this cause or that, it makes no difference?

Are we Hassan Nasrullah, the latest pin up boy of terrorism, who competes with Iran's mad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the most dedicated to kill Jews? He makes no secret of Hizbullah's genocidal ambitions. "If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel," he says, "it will save us the trouble of going after them on a world wide basis." Big joke. Are we the puppets of our paymasters in Iran?

Are we the cowards condemned as such by the UN humanitarian chief, JanEgeland, for hiding our fighters and rocket launchers among women and children?

Are we not the cleverest of tacticians? If the human shield works, we are free to attack, and if it fails, Israel will bear the odium. What does it matter that our cruel deceit violates Article 58 of the Geneva Convention?

Are we the renegades who have for six years shown what we think of the Geneva Convention, international law (and UN resolution 1559) by regularly launching rockets across the border into Israel loaded with ball-bearings to shred human flesh. Yes, people died, six in a school bus, but they were only Jews and did you see the world take any notice? Nobody marched in London.

Are we the fiends who over two decades of Islamic terrorism have kidnapped, tortured and killed numerous peacekeepers?

Yes, we are all these things and we are Samir Kuntar

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samir_Kuntar> .

Perhaps the London marchers do not know of Samir Kuntar. He is locked up in an Israeli prison. It was to secure his release by blackmail thatHizbullah guerillas crossed into Israel and kidnapped two Israelis, triggering the conflict. Samir Kuntar is emblematic of Hizbullah's values, their highest priority in any prisoner exchange, so let us hear about him from a woman who opposes his release. She is a social worker in Israel called Smadar Haran he met in 1979.

"It had been a peaceful Sabbath day. My husband Danny and I had picnicked with our little girls, Einat, 4, and Yael, 2, on the beach not far from our home in Naharyia, a city on the northern coast of Israel. Around midnight, we were asleep in our apartment when four terrorists from Lebanon landed in a rubber boat on the beach two blocks away.

"Gunfire and exploding grenades awakened us. Desperately we sought to hide. Danny helped our neighbour climb into a crawl space above our bedroom. I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Then Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out of the front door when the terrorists came crashing in. They held Danny and Einat while they searched for me and Yael.

"I will never forget the joy and the hatred in their voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. I knew that if Yael cried out, the terrorists would toss a grenade into the crawl space, so I kept my hand over her mouth. As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust.

"The terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl's skull in against a rocket with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar. By the time we were rescued from the crawl space hours later, Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives I had smothered her."

We are all Hizbullah now.

2006-08-08T10:19:00.000-04:00

They Might Be Giants

The Israeli cabinet is again meeting to decide whether to launch the second phase ground offensive. Whether this is the way to go is a matter of debate, though this author feels it should have been part of the first offensive.

But one item should be absolutely clear to all.

There should be no debate regarding Lebanon’s offer to move troops into Southern Lebanon. Olmert should not call it an interesting offer with hesitation that it may be a subterfuge.

It is a fool’s game and Olmert wants to play.

His spinning the wheel as if this was the game of Life will only bring more death and destruction. It will end up being a true ‘win’ for Hizballah and the Arab world.

Moreover, all of Israel’s soldiers and populace lost so far will have certainly died for nought.

2006-08-06T23:05:00.000-04:00

The Four Musketeers

It may be early to put blame on who is responsible for the death and destruction in Northern Israel and the failure to obliterate Hizballah, but four names come into fruition.

First is Dan Halutz. The Chief of Staff and Air Force Lt. General in proceeding with a pinpoint air campaign instead of sending in ground forces allowed Hizballah to drop thousands of missiles and kill and injure so many. His limited war has cost and will cost Israel dearly.

Second is Amir Peretz. With no experience for the job of defense minister, he has shown nothing to prove that he has the wherewithal for the job. His greatest success is appearing in as many photo ops as possible with the troops. Their smiling faces belie what awaits them as they go out to war.

Third is Ehud Olmert who brags about the success of the Israeli armed forces with hundreds of Hizballah/Iranian/Syrian missiles killing troops and the populace. Olmert dared to even say that this war is the precursor to the removal of settlements in Judea and Samaria, almost causing a revolt amongst reservists from those areas.

Finally, let us not forget former Prime Minister Ehud Barak who allowed the mass removal of Israeli troops in 2000 from Lebanon. The move emboldened the Arab world. No intelligence seemed to remain in the area to recognize what Hizballah was doing and the resulting war is the consequence of that action.

These are the Four Musketeers.

I would prefer to call them the Four Sons but there isn’t a wise one among them.

2006-07-27T17:38:00.000-04:00

Alien Democracy

Tucker Carlson of MSNBC has been interviewing all sorts of people including Benjamin Netanyahu. Similar to the style of Alan Colmes of Fox News’ Hannity and Colmes, ever-present in the interview is the mention that Hizballah and Hamas were democratically elected, so we should not interfere or object; despite the fact that Carlson, Colmes, and most other media elites all say that these democratically elected “officials” are the “bad guys.”

Well that’s the point! And no one, not even Netanyahu, has effectively responded.

Incredulously, Netanyahu asked Carlson, if he had seen the movie ‘Alien.’ Then Netanyahu went into a longwinded explanation of how Hizballah is the parasitic creature which engorges its host, then destroys everyone around it as it emerges from the belly of its host and for that reason according to Netanyahu, Israel must destroy the host; I assume he meant Lebanon, though he didn’t explicitly say so.

The sad truth is that this lunacy is not far from the truth. Of course, Netanyahu appears on the screen as a lunatic – not very good Hasbarah.

Netanyahu even compared the American Nazi party as being the political equivalent of Hizballah. Carlson, of course, quickly made light of the comparison since Hizballah had at least 15 members in the Lebanese government. He is absolutely correct. The American Nazi party has no such standing in the American political sphere.

However, a more effective response which no one has put forward is the following:

The National Socialist German Workers’ Party, the NSDAP, otherwise known as the Nazi party, was democratically elected. That didn’t mean that the allies should not go to war against it; that didn’t mean that every freedom loving member of the human race were under no obligation to do everything in their power to destroy that democratically elected government. It also didn’t mean that you had to be extremely careful in avoiding “civilian” losses to the detriment of the war effort.

It’s too bad that even Israeli politicians can’t squelch these media elites and nip these nonsensical conundrums in the bud.

2006-07-27T15:55:00.000-04:00

Hizballah Victory?

The Israeli mini-cabinet of Foreign Minister Tzippy Livny, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, former Defense Ministers Sha'ul Mofaz and Shimon Peres, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, Justice Minister Chaim Ramon and Shas Party leader Trade Minister Eli Yishai in voting for a limited ground offensive has foolishly betrayed Israel’s interests in the short and long run.

In the short run, Israel will not be able to able adequately stop the rain of missiles falling on Northern Israel. Hizballah will only be emboldened to continue fighting. With the continued aerial assaults which Hizballah has no defense against, they will have no alternative but to “save face” by bombing Israeli targets.

In the long run, both Hizballah and the Arab world will be encouraged with their “victory” and do even more to destroy the Jewish state.

The fear that Syria may attack if ground forces are dispatched to the Litani River or to within 12 miles of the Syrian border was illogical. Even if they would attack, they would be no match for the Israeli ground forces and certainly no match for the air force.

The Syrian forces would be an easy target since the fighting would be “mano a mano” -- one army against another; not an army vs. a guerilla squad.

On the other hand, if Israel will not proceed, Syria will obtain more weapons and plan a full scale assault with other Arab nations in the very near future.

2006-07-22T23:56:00.000-04:00

Missile Command

How far will the escalation continue?

With Israeli ground troops on the verge of invasion into Lebanon, what can we expect from Hizballah?

If Hizballah has longer range weapons from Syria and Iran, it’s almost a certainty they will use them on Tel Aviv.

In turn, it would seem that Israel will attack Damascus.

If Hizballah has chemical weapons, it’s likely they would use them with permission of Iran or Syria.

In turn, it would seem that Israel would attack Iran.

What would follow at that point?

2006-07-21T00:58:00.000-04:00

Yom Kippur War Revisited?

Every day shows some surprise.

Though 5000 rockets had fallen prior to last year’s withdrawal from Gaza and many rockets have been shot from Gaza since then, it came as a surprise to some that Hamas would attack through an underground tunnel and kidnap Gilad Shalit from sovereign Israeli soil.

It also came as a surprise to some that Hizballah would do the same and kidnap two Israeli soldiers while bombarding Israeli cities throughout the North.

It further comes as a surprise to some that Hizballah is proving to be a formidable force killing Israeli soldiers not once, but twice at the very same location in Southern Lebanon.

The surprises keep mounting when after Israel sends a 23 ton of dynamite equivalent as a bunker buster to a location where leaders of Hizballah are supposedly in hiding, their leader Nasrallah appears for an interview on Al-Jazeera, the very next day.

Now there’s some talk that Hizballah is pushing for Islamic Jihad to open a third front from Judea and Samaria. Maybe that will also come as a surprise.

The Yom Kippur War was also a surprise to many. Thousands of lives were lost and Israel was in danger of being wiped off the map.

As a result, government officials lost their jobs and careers and many in government made a vow that there would be no more surprises. Israel would always be prepared.

Were we prepared for this current War? Will we be prepared for what is to come?

I hope so.

I certainly hope so.

2006-07-19T01:29:00.000-04:00

Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer

A report by Martin Fletcher on NBC was extremely painful to watch.

After sirens go off warning of an imminent attack, Israelis run for the bomb shelter. One man doesn’t make it and is found dead just meters away from the shelter.

He is lying on the ground some distance away from the cameras and the shelter.

A woman standing at the entrance to the shelter is screaming into her cell phone to her husband, “where are you, where are you, why don’t you pick up.”

Off in the distance, we soon find out all too well where he is.

The ringing of a cell phone continues unanswered next to the body.

See Martin Fletcher’s report below:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8004316/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13922915/

2006-07-18T19:19:00.000-04:00

Images of War

Watching this evening’s CBS News, one wonders how the war appears to objective observers, if that is even possible.

An American being evacuated from Lebanon screams at the camera that she hates Israel and everything that is happening is all Israel’s fault.

Another American of Arab descent, prior to boarding a ship to Cypress, stands in front of her car with a bashed out rear window describing the horror of a bomb going off as they were driving to areas of escape.

A Hizballah neighborhood looks like a bombed out ghost town with some injured populace covered in debris being helped away – one particularly so covered up in dust that he appeared to be walking out of the World Trade Center on 9/11.

On the other hand, a CBS reporter is interviewing Israelis in a bomb shelter where they have been for a week and probably will remain in this stifling area without showers or water for weeks more. As they come to the surface to say goodbye, they and others in the area run back to the shelter as Hizballah missiles fall not once, but twice, within a matter of minutes destroying an apartment building killing one man only meters away from the shelter.

Israelis in Tzefat, Nahariya, Haifa and other locales are shown cowering in shock as missiles fall all around them. The same train depot where eight workers were killed on Sunday is shown with more missile strikes today.

What appears on the screen and what is perceived off the screen is that Hizballah, a militia, though a powerful one, acts with even greater strength then a sovereign state.

What appears is Israel, with the best equipped armed forces in the region, a country with some of the best minds in the world, a country noted for it’s heroism and military prowess, fighting a war against buildings, against an unarmed populace just trying to get home or live their lives, while Israel’s own populace must cower in fear and wait until Hizballah runs out of the 10,000 missiles they possess.

These are the very frightening images that we must see and perceive.

I worry about the consequences yet to be faced.

2006-07-17T17:17:00.000-04:00

War Stories

On Friday July 14th, 2006, the New York Post reporter Uri Dan stated the following:

In response to Condoleezza Rice’s call to Israel to exercise restraint in the use of self-defense, Israeli Ambassador to the US, Danny Ayalon responded “I think they misinterpreted our restraint for the last six years.”

Who exactly made this misinterpretation?

The US didn’t.

They understand that action taken by Israel prior to the kidnapping and murder of Israeli soldiers on their side of the border might have been perceived as an over-reaction, even though it would have been a clear response to provocation by Lebanon by allowing Hizballah on its southern frontier.

The UN didn’t.

They failed to implement U.N. resolution 1559 which calls for the deployment of the Lebanese military along the border and for the disarming of militant groups such as Hezbollah. Why should they follow-up on the resolution if they want to give Lebanon a free pass and Israel does nothing about it.

The EU didn’t.

They have nothing but contempt and scorn for Israel. They are so busy bending over backwards to every Arab nation including Iran and Syria, that if Israel refuses to protect their own borders even after leaving Lebanon, why should they care.

Lebanon didn’t.

If they are so frightened from Syria, Iran and Hizballah are they actually going to be frightened from Israel, who up to this point have done nothing to protect their own interests?

Certainly Iran, Syria and Hizballah did not misinterpret Israel’s lack of response in the last six years. They saw Israel as being too frightened of America, Europe and the media to take any proportionate action; too hopeful for peaceful relations with its Arab neighbors instead of seeing them for what they are – a murderous bunch of despots who are all too willing to stir their populace to hate, murder and maim themselves and every Jew they can get their hands on.

But now Bill Clinton and others have said Israel’s current response is disproportionate.

Of course it is. They should have done more years ago and even more now.

Hopefully they will. Hopefully they will clean Hizballah out of southern Lebanon and Hamas out of Gaza.

That might be proportionate. That might be interpreted correctly. That might be enough. I doubt it, though.

2006-06-30T14:07:00.000-04:00

When is a War Not a War?

As we continue to hope for the return, in good health, of Corporal Gilad Shalit and as we mourn over the murder of the young man from Itamar, Eliyahu Asheri, the news from Israel continues to be grim and unfocused.

Israel authorities continue to be adamant that Operation Summer Rains is basically about Corporal Shalit. As an aside, they mention the steady rain of Kassam rockets continually being fired into Israel.

The Palestinian Authority, Hamas, the Arab world at large, the UN, the EU and the media at large focus on the “occupation,” the civilian casualties, and the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian populace.

Both foci are tangential to the real issue.

The “democratically” elected Palestinian government now inculcated with Hamas “officials” is at war with Israel.

It doesn’t matter whether they are a “state,” an occupied land, a government assembly or a bunch of terrorist thugs; they have attacked sovereign Israeli soil and killed Israeli citizens.

When al-Qaeda attacked the US on 9/11 there clearly was only one response. Find the perpetrators and blow them off the face of the earth. It didn’t matter whether they were a state or not; whether they were a government.

An act of war should be responded to as war.

If Mexico attacks US soldiers or National Guardsman on US territory, that is war. If Cuba attacks Guantanamo, that’s war. If Cuba or North Korea fires missiles towards the US, that’s war.

It’s almost laughable that there is a focus on whether the Hamas leaders or the Fatah/PLO non-state of Palestine will or will not recognize Israel.

It is Israel that is the sovereign state. They don’t need to be recognized. The question is whether the world or Israel will recognize any Palestinian state, if it is ever established.

In the interim, Israel is under attack and at war. It should declare the actions of Hamas and Fatah as war. Israel should in turn declare war and respond as the US has done in Afghanistan and in Iraq. It should wage that war with all the immediacy and expedience available at its command.

It should wage that war until either the surrender or destruction of all hostile forces.

2006-06-27T13:57:00.000-04:00

Memories of My Mentor

Rebbetzin Leah German, Leah bas Asher, ZT”L left us this past week on Sunday the 22nd Sivan, 5766.

I do not use the title ZT”L lightly. Though it is usually reserved in usage after the Petirah of a Rav, I have no doubt, it is even more appropriate as a reminder of how she lived her life; more so than anyone I have ever known.

I first met Rebbetzin German in the early ‘90s. By that time, she had already retired from the public school system as a master teacher and principal working under the most arduous of conditions in the city. As difficult as that may have been, she took on the responsibilities of what may have been an even more formidable task; principal of Be’er Hagolah.

Be’er Hagolah, established in 1979, became the first major yeshiva, for children of émigrés from the former Soviet Union. The culture of these children was based on a time warp of totalitarianism. American culture, on the other hand whetted their appetites for a type of freedom that was disingenuous to a Jewish way of life.

Though Rebbetzin’s German’s husband, Rabbi Avner German, the Menahel and Dean of Hebrew Studies, of Be’er Hagolah articulated Be’er Hagolah’s first goal as the Americanization of the students, it was indeed a formidable task. The ardent fervor needed to balance the newfound freedom of American culture with Yahadus, with Judaism, could only be provided by Rebbetzin Leah German.

Rebbetzin German, a brilliant woman, understood many things, most of all, the conflict between American culture and Jewish life in America. Growing up in America, attending public school, she saw first hand the trials and tribulations in maintaining one’s Judaism.

Yet she never wavered.

If she believed in the truth of a matter, there was nothing that could sway her from that truth. For example, after marrying her husband Rabbi German, may he merit long and happy years, with Nachas and pride from his children and extended family, she insisted in dressing in a fashion most befitting a G-d fearing woman, a wife of a Rabbi.

I never saw any woman of such culture, education and eminence who dressed and acted with such modesty; a woman who projected the firmness of granite, yet also the warmth and compassion of a mother to every human being.

Whomever she came in contact with, whether it was from the dregs of society to princely dignitaries, she reached each and every one of them on a lofty level with sometimes one word, one phrase, or one sentence.

The children, whom she came into contact with, all of whom she knew by face, name and class, whether from the public school or the Yeshiva, all loved and admired her. They knew she loved them and only were admonished by her so they could grow up to be better.

Her teacher’s were her own as well.

As a mother asks for help for their children, she would contact anyone, including her own children for help regarding Shidduchim, to potentiate possibilities for marriage.

And it would never be, ‘can you help so and so’ or ‘do you know anybody for so and so.’ It would always be “What can you do for my Yehuda?” or for anyone else who needed a Shidduch.

I heard it first hand. I heard it for myself.

But she never asked anything for herself. Any requests were always for the school, her children, her pupils, her teachers.

Even when parents would argue with her, parents who many times didn’t even pay a dime of tuition, parents who were totally in the wrong, she never lost her patience and would deal with them for hours on end.

Though many times in her working environments, she was exposed to foul language, she never accepted it. She abhorred it. As Rabbi German said, she became physically sick from its use as one can from a foul odor. Her soul refused to become tainted by it.

And she never complained.

Diagnosed with her illness eight years ago, she never let on that she was sick. She continued to work 24 hours a day until the last year of her life. Nothing was ever too much or too hard.

Her son, sitting Shiva in Starrett City, stated that she continued to cook for shabbos for countless guests, making chicken as he described it, with the ta’am of Gan Eden, the taste of the Garden of Eden, which no one in the family could duplicate, even though they had the recipe and they saw exactly how she made it.

Her husband said that in addition to her work in the school and at home, she would cook for hundreds of people in the shul, the synagogue. Her extracurricular life went from cleaning for Pesach to cooking for Pesach, to baking for Shavuos ad infinitum, all for hundreds of people, at the same time running a school for a thousand students.

She even cleaned for the cleaning lady for Pesach so that the cleaning lady shouldn’t have to work too hard; and that was the only time she ever had a cleaning lady to help out.

Lying in a hospital bed, with barely any strength, she insisted that her children first give some food first to the caretaker who had come to take care of the Rebbetzin.

And she never complained.

Her son mentioned that when she first received treatment for her illness, chemicals leaked through the intravenous, which were so harsh and acidic that it caused a wound large enough to fit one’s hand through it. Though the pain was horrendous, her description of it was so mild, no one came to help her until major damage had been inflicted.

Her husband had said that her personal physician never arrived on time for the birth of her seven children, because she never called out in pain for a nurse or a doctor. As a result, it was always thought that she was not ready to deliver.

What did I learn over the years from Rebbetzin German? How was she my mentor? She always offered constructive criticism whether I wanted it or not and I always tried to listen because I knew that she was right. But more so I learned from her grit and determination to stand up for what’s right; to be consistent, to find the truth, to hold on to it and never let it go, no matter what anybody says.

To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, Rebbetzin German was the epitome of ‘speak softly and carry a big stick.’ Yet her big stick was not a weapon of mass destruction. Her call to arms was her integrity, her fortitude, her strength and her brilliance.

She was a woman of Chesed, Gevirah and Tov; a woman of spunk and spirit. As Rabbi German mentioned how others described her – zaltz and feffer -- the spice of life.

She was woman of valor like no other.

I will miss her greatly.

2006-06-11T18:33:00.000-04:00

As Confucius Says “Who’s Confused Now?” Better Known As, Samuel L. Beckett’s “Waiting for the Golem.”

Dr. S.Z. Leiman in his last shiur of the season referred back to an email, he received from a gentleman, which questioned why Dr. Leiman did not address the ‘fact’ that there is evidence of a documentary nature that a Talmid of the Maharal of Prague created a Golem.

The evidence stems from a sefer entitled Yeshurun that combed sources indicating that R’ Eliyahu Ba’al Shem of Chelm, a Talmid of the Maharal, created a Golem and that people confuse that creation as one made by the Maharal himself.

Unfortunately, the real confusion is that this R’ Eliyahu could not have been a Talmid of the Maharal. He is actually a Talmid of the Marshal and possibly a contemporary of the Maharal.

Moreover, R’ Eliyahu Ba’al Shem of Chelm is also confused with R’ Eliyahu Ba’al Shem of Worms, who actually may have been A Talmid of the Maharal. In the Haskama to Gedulos Mordechai, a commentary on the Mordechai with annotations by the Maharal, R’ Eliyahu of Worms indicates that the Maharal was either his Rebbi or, by calling him Moheiranu Rabbaeinu, gives the Maharal the respect due to the Gadol Hador.

Each of the two R’ Eliyahu B’al Shems are buried in their own plots in their respective towns, so they are not one and the same. R’ Eliyahu Ba’al Shem of Chelm was an ancestor of R’ Ya’akov Emden. In Migilas Sefer, R’ Emden mentions that R’ Eliayhu created a man, which may have been a Golem On the other hand, there is no documentary evidence of R’ Eliyahu Ba’al Shem of Worms, who may possibly be a Talmid of the Maharal, creating a Golem. Neither for that matter is there any evidence of the Maharal himself creating a Golem.

Golem stories!

Oh what a tangled web we weave.

2006-05-28T12:56:00.000-04:00

The Pope’s Visit to Auschwitz – What Can One Expect?

A Holocaust survivor, who lost her family at the death camp, met with Pope Benedict, asking the Pope to apologize on behalf of the German people and, one would expect, on behalf of Christianity as well. It was not forthcoming. One should not be surprised. Neither has the Church truly recognized Israel, nor the return of it’s people as rightful heir to their land, though the previous Pope did visit Israel and prayed at the Western Wall.

Moreover, just as we find that current Islamic and Arabic regimes find Israel and Judaism to be an anathema to them, so has Christianity long held their Jewish origin in contempt.

Commenting on R’A. I. Kook’s concept of ‘Orot Genuvim’ (Stolen Lights), R’Bezalel Naor in his translation of Orot makes reference to the idea that the nations of the world will abandon the notion of the “Judean-Christian” tradition because they will recognize that the Judean traditions which they have incorporated into Christianity is antithetical to their own religion.

This will result in a massive increase in anti-semitism whereby the Jewish element of their religion will be thrown out. As a result, Judaism will ‘take back’ what rightfully only belongs to Judaism. In turn, the mass of Jews who abandoned their Judaism will find their faith, and Jewry as a whole will become stronger.

In a letter written in 1947 by R’ Kook’s disciple, R’ Ya’akov Moshe Charlap to Holocaust survivors, one can see how the above has come into fruition. Yet as R’ Naor interprets R’ Kook’s statements to ‘Ha-Milhamah’ (The War) to include World War II as a continuation of World War I, what is to prevent us from including in this amalgam the current Israeli-Arab conflict as well as the War on Terror?

If one examines the following excerpt from R’ Charlap’s letter and adjusts the Christian references to Islamic, one can see how R’ Kook’s ‘predictions’ still hold true today. We can only hope that in ‘the end of days’ the Jewish people will be the better for it.

“At that time they will be nauseated by every glimmer of light and will choose to live in darkness and the shadow of death. They will vomit that which was bestowed on them of Israel’s influence and discerning light. The beginning of their way of folly will be shaking off all contact they had with Israel – blow after blow, in order to be separated from Israel and all its qualities. This itself will be their curse, for every disengagement from Israel is a disengagement from life. For us, Israel, His holy people, it will be a blessing. Thereby will be fulfilled the prophesy, “I shall separate you from the people to be Mine.” To be separated from them and their multitudes, and also to salvage all the good, the pleasant fields of Israel, which were damaged and spiritually lessened by entering into the territory of strangers; to purify them and return them to the source of their holiness.”

The Charlap Letter, Imrei Noam, Jerusalem: Beit Zevul, 5707/1947, pp.14-16, pgs. 253-254

note 135 to page 109 of Orot, the Orot Inc. Edition, 2004

2006-05-21T13:22:00.000-04:00

Truth, Justice and the Chassidic Way? Look Up In the Sky. It’s Supermen!

Recently a Chassidic newspaper published an article with derogatory remarks against the author of a 3 volume work regarding the Vilna Gaon. Unfortunately the article and its author is the one deserving of the remarks while the author of the 3 volume treatise deserves accolades.

Dr. S.Z. Leiman, in his most recent shiur, said the vitriol against the Vilna Gaon books stem, in large part, from its author’s contention that the Vilna Gaon was correct in his battle against Chassidism, and in part to its author’s belief that R’ Ya’akov Emden was displeased with Chassidic practice. The newspaper said that this last notion was an outrageous fabrication.

It is not.

R’ Emden published at least 2 works indicating his dissatisfaction with Chassidic practice. In one, entitled Mishna Lechem, in a comment on the first Mishna in Meseches Peah, which states that the learning of Torah has no limitation, R’ Emden was extremely critical of those that insist on learning Zohar and Kabbalah to the exclusion of much else. At first, R’ Emden referred to the followers of the false Messiah Shabbsai Tzvi, but then to a lesser extent, R’ Emden began his critique of certain groups of Chassidim who do the same and pray for extended periods of time and move about during prayer as whirling dervishes.

Of course, today, Chassidism is well accepted and considered on equal footing with Misnagdim and the battle with the Vilna Gaon is no more. Moreover, R’ Emden, despite his aforementioned objections, is well respected in Chassidic circles. In fact, a commentary of his on Pirkei Avos was recently published with Haskamos from great Chassidic scholars. Copies of the alleged siddur of R’ Emden can be found in many Chassidic homes and their bookstores.

The issue, at hand, then is not who was right when the “war” began, but historical accuracy and the respect of Jews for each other.

Dr. Leiman, ended with an anecdote told to him personally by, I believe, the Shkolyer Rebbe. When the Ba’al Shem Tov’s soul was told to come down to earth to be born, the Ba’al Shem Tov asked, who would be alive during his lifetime. He was told that the Penei Yehoshua would be one of his contemporaries. The Ba’al Shem Tov was impressed. Additionally, he was told that the Node BeYehuda would be the leader of the Prague community. Again, the Ba’al Shem Tov was heartened. Finally, he was told that R’ Ya’akov Emden would be a contemporary during his lifetime. The Ba’al Shem Tov replied, ‘Oib Azoi, Ich Fir Zich Nisht’ i.e. “If so, I’m not going.” He knew that R’ Emden would have great fortitude in the “battle” for Torah and he did not want to be involved with him in a lengthy adversarial role.

The Ba’al Shem Tov was told not to worry. He had nothing to fear from R’ Emden. R’ Yonason Aybshutz would also be a contemporary and he would be taking up all of R’ Emden’s time.

In the end, R’ Aybeshitz was vindicated, as was the Ba’al Shem Tov, as well as the entire Chassidic movement.

2006-05-15T14:22:00.000-04:00

We're Off To See The Wizard

Today is the 150th birthday of L. Frank Baum, the author of the Wizard Of Oz, and the 50th Anniversary of its appearance on television.

It seems people are so in love with the story that they will go to any length to find meaning in it, as well as in their own lives.

The following are some examples of the above with some "drush" or jewish interpretation of Baum's classic:

http://www.israpundit.com/2006/?p=1160

2006-05-11T23:23:00.000-04:00

Choices -- Do We have Bechira?

In the latest issue of New Scientist, one can find another "theory" regarding quantum physics in which we may not have control of our actions. Why have morality? Why have laws? Why have mercy? No more justice, no more science?

Read on.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025504.000;jsessionid=JAAEGFGLAKMO

Free will - you only think you have it

04 May 2006

Zeeya Merali

'"WE MUST believe in free will, we have no choice," the novelist Isaac Bashevis Singer once said. He might as well have said, "We must believe in quantum mechanics, we have no choice," if two new studies are anything to go by.

Early last month, a Nobel laureate physicist finished polishing up his theory that a deeper, deterministic reality underlies the apparent uncertainty of quantum mechanics. A week after he announced it, two eminent mathematicians showed that the theory has profound implications beyond physics: abandoning the uncertainty of quantum physics means we must give up the cherished notion that we have free will. The mathematicians believe the physicist is wrong.

“Abandoning the uncertainty of quantum physics means we must give up the cherished notion that we have free will.”

"It's striking that we have one of the greatest scientists of our generation pitted against two of the world's greatest mathematicians," says Hans Halvorson, a philosopher of physics at Princeton University.

Quantum mechanics is widely accepted by physicists, but is full of apparent paradoxes, which made Einstein deeply uncomfortable and have never been resolved. For instance, you cannot ask what the spin of a particle was before you made an observation of it - quantum mechanics says the spin was undetermined. And you cannot predict the outcome of an experiment; you can only estimate the probability of getting a certain result.

"Quantum mechanics works wonderfully well, but it's not complete," says Gerard 't Hooft of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who won the Nobel prize for physics in 1999 for laying the mathematical foundations for the standard model of particle physics. One major reason why many physicists, including 't Hooft, yearn for a deeper view of reality than quantum mechanics can offer is their failure so far to unite quantum theory with general relativity and its description of gravity, despite enormous effort. "A radical change is needed," says 't Hooft.

For more than a decade now, 't Hooft has been working on the idea that there is a hidden layer of reality at scales smaller than the so-called Planck length of 10-35 metres. 't Hooft has developed a mathematical model to support this notion. At this deeper level, he says, we cannot talk of particles or waves to describe reality, so he defines entities called "states" that have energy. In his model, these states behave predictably according to deterministic laws, so it is theoretically possible to keep tabs on them.

However, the calculations show that individual states can be tracked for only about 10-43 seconds, after which many states coalesce into one final state, which is what creates the quantum mechanical uncertainty. Our measurements illuminate these final states, but because the prior information is lost, we can't recreate their precise history.

While 't Hooft's initial theory explained most quantum mechanical oddities, such as the impossibility of precisely measuring both the location and momentum of a particle, it had a major stumbling block - the states could end up with negative energy, which is physically impossible. Now, 't Hooft has worked out a solution that overcomes this problem, preventing the states from having negative energy (www.arxiv.org/quant-ph/0604008). "It was an obnoxious difficulty," he says. "But having solved it I am more and more convinced that this is the right approach."

Essentially, 't Hooft is saying that while particles in quantum mechanics seem to behave unpredictably, if we could track the underlying states, we can predict the behaviour of particles.

Others are impressed. "This is a very beautiful theory that tells us about the world on the smallest scales," says physicist Willem de Muynck at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. "But these are scales that current experiments cannot reach, so if anything the theory is before its time."

As enticing as 't Hooft's theory may be to physicists, it has an unexpected and potentially frightful consequence for the rest of us. Mathematicians John Conway and Simon Kochen, both at Princeton University, say that any deterministic theory underlying quantum mechanics robs us of our free will.

"When you choose to eat the chocolate cake or the plain one, are you really free to decide?" asks Conway. In other words, could someone who has been tracking all the particle interactions in the universe predict with perfect accuracy the cake you will pick? The answer, it seems, depends on whether quantum mechanics' inherent uncertainty is the correct description of reality or 't Hooft is right in saying that beneath that uncertainty there is a deterministic order.

Conway and Kochen explored the implications of 't Hooft's theory by looking at what happens when you measure the spin of a particle. Spin is always measured along three perpendicular axes. For a spherical particle, the particular axes that you choose and the order in which you carry out the measurements are up to you. But are your choices a matter of free will, or are they predetermined?

What the mathematicians proved is this: if you have the slightest freedom to choose the axes and order of measurement, then particles everywhere must also have the same degree of freedom. That means they can behave unpredictably. However, if particles have no freedom, as implied by 't Hooft's theory, the mathematicians proved that you have no real say in the choice of axes and order of measurement. In other words, deterministic particles put an end to free will (www.arxiv.org/quant-ph/0604079).

Arguments about free will are as old as philosophy itself, and ever since quantum mechanics was proposed people have attempted to connect free will to the indeterminacy at the heart of this theory. "We're proud because this is the first solid proof relating these issues," says Conway.

Kochen and Conway stress that their theorem doesn't disprove 't Hooft's theory. It simply states that if his theory is true, our actions cannot be free. And they admit that there's no way for us to tell. "Our lives could be like the second showing of a movie - all actions play out as though they are free, but that freedom is an illusion," says Kochen.

“Our lives would be like the second showing of a movie, playing out as though we are free, but freedom is an illusion.”

Since the mathematicians believe that we have free will, it follows for them that 't Hooft's theory must be wrong. "We have to believe in free will to do anything," says Conway. "I believe I am free to drink this cup of coffee, or throw it across the room. I believe I am free in choosing to have this conversation."

Halvorson says the debate really boils down to a matter of personal taste. "Kochen and Conway can't tolerate the idea that our future may already be settled," he says, "but people like 't Hooft and Einstein find the notion that the universe can't be completely described by physics just as disturbing."

For philosophers, both arguments can be troubling. "Quantum randomness as the basis of free will doesn't really give us control over our actions," says Tim Maudlin, a philosopher of physics at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. "We're either deterministic machines, or we're random machines. That's not much of a choice."

Halvorson, however, welcomes the work by 't Hooft, Conway and Kochen. "Philosophy has separated itself from science for far too long," he says. "There are very important questions to be asked about free will, and maybe physics can answer them."

From issue 2550 of New Scientist magazine, 04 May 2006, page 8

2006-05-11T12:04:00.000-04:00

Woe Onto Us

Arutz 7 is showing a video from Israel-TV channel 10 on its website. It may appear to some as if those who are in soildarity with Yesha are orchestrating their removal from Gush Katif for the television cameras.

Particularly problematic is a man being carried a few feet and then put down.

Sad to say it doesn't look good. However, giving the man the benefit of the doubt, he may have been slightly injured, recovered quickly and asked to be put down.

I don't know.

The left wing Israeli media would be ecstatic if Yesha Council is shown in a bad light.

You be the judge.

http://www.arutzsheva.com/news.php3?id=103408

2006-05-11T11:25:00.000-04:00

The Looney Letter

Here is an interesting comment on the letter by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President Bush with the the actual translated text.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/65803.htm

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/87770eaa-df78-11da-afe4-0000779e2340.html

2006-05-11T01:08:00.000-04:00

The Bad and The Ugly -- There Is Nothing Good Here

After having seen first hand the stupidly, arrogance and thievery in Romania, it should come as no surprise to see what Diane Sawyer and Nightline presented last night regarding the horrific treatment of abandoned children.

Read the report but more importantly watch the video:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1941485&page=1

2006-05-09T22:59:00.000-04:00

Listen and Weep

A long time ago in a place far, far away, BBC radio understood news reporting.

Listen to this audio found recently in the Smithsonian archives.

Thanks to Debbie Schlussel who first presented it on her blog on May 5th.

http://www.israelreporter.com/files/radio/BergenBelsenHatikva.mp3

http://www.soundportraits.org/on-air/bergen-belsen/transcript.php3

http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2006/05/new_holocaust_d.html

2006-05-09T12:20:00.000-04:00

Disengagement vs. “Engagement”

With all the talk of disengagement or convergence in Judea and Samaria by the Israeli government, the “disengagement” from talks with the Palestinian Authority has been promising. Without talks there is little movement of financial aid, business transactions, cultural exchange or travel without restriction. As sad as it might be for individuals when there are shortages of supplies for their basic needs and care, that responsibility falls to the “benevolent” Hamas regime who give out confectionaries when there is a suicide bombing.

If Hamas would be less interested in destroying Israel and more focused on the needs of their populace, there wouldn’t be any humanitarian crisis. But as with all anti-Semitic Arab regimes, once blood is smelled, once the regime feels that its adversary is soft and weak, the Arab regime will scream for bloody murder and act accordingly.

Is it possible that the US and the Israeli governments are finally taking this lesson to heart? Even Shimon Peres, the ultimate “paper tiger” is threatening to destroy Iran.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/i_latestdetail.asp?id=38100

Yet the United States, Israel and Shimon Peres in particular have had a long history of engaging in talks which proved disastrous; Israel with the Arabs, the US with Iran. So what’s a country to do? Engage in “peaceful” talks or “disengage” from peaceful notions with nations who thrive on their adversaries’ apparent weakness?

For an interesting take on how the US should handle Iran and its failure to do so in the past, see the article below from today’s Wall Street Journal:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008353

NUCLEAR DIPLOMACY

The Perils of Engagement

Calling for talks with Iran is just cheap talk

BY AMIR TAHERI

Tuesday, May 9, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

Something interesting is happening with regard to the crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions. Slowly the blame is shifting from the mullahs to the Bush administration as the debate is redirected to tackle the hypothetical question of U.S. military action rather than the Islamic Republic's real misdeeds. "No War on Iran" placards are already appearing where "No Nukes for Iran" would make more sense.

The attempt at fabricating another "cause" with which to bash America is backed by the claim that the mullahs are behaving badly because Washington refuses to talk to them. Some of this buzz is coming from those who for years told the U.S. to let them persuade Iran to mend its ways. They include German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his British and French colleagues in the European Union trio that negotiated with Iran for years. Preparing to throw in the towel, they now say the U.S. should "directly engage" Iran. That would enable them to hide their failures and find a pretext for blaming future setbacks on the U.S.

The "engage Iran" coalition also has advocates in the U.S. Over the past few weeks they have hammered the "engagement" theme with op-eds, TV soundbites and speeches. Some have recommended John Kennedy's "sophisticated leadership" during the Cuban missile crisis as a model for George W. Bush. The incident has entered American folklore as an example of "brilliant diplomacy," but few bother to examine the small print. The crisis, as you might recall, started when the Soviets installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, something they were committed not to do in a number of accords with the U.S. Kennedy reacted by threatening to quarantine Cuba until the missiles were removed. The Soviets ended up "flinching" and agreed to removal.

In exchange they got two things. First, the U.S. agreed never to take or assist hostile action against Castro, offering his regime life insurance. The second was to remove the Jupiter missiles installed in Turkey as part of NATO's defenses. Instead of being punished, Castro and his Soviet masters were doubly rewarded for undoing what they shouldn't have done in the first place. And Castro was free to do mischief not only in Latin America but also in Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf, often on behalf of Moscow, right up to the fall of the U.S.S.R. Applied to Iran, the "Kennedy model" would provide the mullahs, now facing mounting discontent at home, with a guarantee of safety from external pressure, allowing them to suppress their domestic opponents and intensify mischief-making abroad.

Believe it or not, the second model for engaging Iran is actually Jimmy Carter's policy towards the mullahs. Mr. Carter has called for a "diplomatic solution," and Zbigniew Brzezinski, his national security adviser, has published an op-ed blaming the Bush administration for the crisis. He writes: "Artificial deadlines, propounded most often by those who do not wish the U.S. to negotiate in earnest, are counterproductive. Name-calling and saber rattling, as well as a refusal to even consider the other side's security concerns, can be useful tactics only if the goal is to derail the negotiating process."

Let's forget that the "artificial deadlines" have been set by the IAEA and the U.N. Security Council, and that most of the "name-calling and saber rattling" has come from Tehran. But let us recall one fact that Mr. Brzezinski does not mention--that the Carter administration did "engage" with the mullahs without artificial deadlines, saber rattling and name-calling. The results for the U.S. were disastrous.

In 1979, soon after the mullahs seized power, Mr. Carter sent Ayatollah Khomeini a warm congratulatory letter. Mr. Carter's man at the U.N., a certain Andrew Young, praised Khomeini as "a 20th-century saint." Mr. Carter also tapped his closest legal advisor, the late Lloyd Cutler, as U.S. ambassador to the mullarchy.

A more dramatic show of U.S. support for the mullahs came when Mr. Brzezinski flew to Algiers to meet Khomeini's prime minister, Mehdi Bazargan. This was love at first sight--to the point where Mr. Carter approved the resumption of military supplies to Iran, even as the mullahs were executing Iranians by the thousands, including many whose only "crime" was friendship with the U.S. The Carter administration's behavior convinced the mullahs that the U.S. was a paper tiger and that it was time for the Islamic Revolution to highlight hatred of America. Mr. Carter reaped what he had sown when the mullahs sent "student" fanatics to seize the U.S. embassy compound, a clear act of war, and hold its diplomats hostage for 444 days. "The Carter administration's weakness was a direct encouragement to [anti-American] hard-liners," wrote Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, one of the hostage-takers, years later.

Mr. Brzezinski's op-ed took the title "Been There, Done That," meant as a sneering nod to events that led to the liberation of Iraq. A more apt title, however, is: "Been There, Done That, Learned Nothing"--a nod to Mr. Brzezinski's failure to learn the lessons of Iran even three decades later.

The third model for engaging Iran is the Clinton model. Beating his own drum, Bill Clinton has rejected the threat of force and called for "engaging" Iran. This is how he put it in a recent speech: "Anytime somebody said in my presidency, 'If you don't do this, people will think you're weak,' I always asked the same question for eight years: 'Can we kill 'em tomorrow?' If we can kill 'em tomorrow, then we're not weak." Mr. Clinton's pseudo-Socratic method of either/or-ing issues out of existence is too well-known to merit an exposé. This time, however, Mr. Clinton did not ask enough questions. For example, he might have asked: What if by refusing to kill some of them today we are forced to kill many more tomorrow? Also: What if, once assured that we are not going to kill them today, they regroup and come to kill us in larger numbers? We all know the answers.

Mr. Clinton did not reveal that in 1999 he offered the mullahs "a grand bargain" under which the Islamic Republic would be recognized as the "regional power" in exchange for lip service to U.S. "interests in the Middle East." As advance payment for the "bargain" Mr. Clinton apologized for "all the wrongs that my country and culture have done" to Iran, whatever that was supposed to mean. The "bargain," had it not been vetoed by the "Supreme Guide" in Tehran, might have secured Mr. Clinton the Nobel Peace Prize he coveted, but it would have sharpened the mullahs' appetite for "exporting" revolution.

President Bush can learn from the Kennedy, Carter and Clinton models by not repeating their mistakes. What the U.S. needs is an open, honest and exhaustive debate on what to do with a regime that claims a mission to drive the U.S. out of the Middle East, wipe Israel off the map, create an Islamic superpower, and conquer the world for "The Only True Faith." The options are clear: retreat and let the Islamic Republic advance its goals; resist and risk confrontation, including military conflict; or engage the Islamic Republic in a mini-version of Cold War until, worn out, it self-destructs.

With the options clear, Messrs. Carter, Brzezinski and Clinton along with other "engagers" would have to tell us which they favor and, if they like none, what alternative they offer. Calling for talks is just cheap talk. It is important to say what the proposed talks should be about. In the meantime, talk of "constructive engagement" is sure to encourage President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's intransigence. Why should he slow down, let alone stop, when there are no bumps on the road?

Mr. Taheri is author of "L'Irak: Le Dessous Des Cartes" (Editions Complexe, 2002).

2006-05-08T22:45:00.000-04:00

As Some Nincompoop Said to Mr. Spock “Bashert, Bashert What Is Bashert?”

A recent article in New Scientist pointed out how to choose a mate. It was more enjoyable than the Halachic version espoused in the current issue of the RJJ Journal.

Read away.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025491.300;jsessionid=CCIMGEJDBHNH

Love special: How to pick a perfect mate

29 April 2006

From New Scientist Print Edition.

Martie G. Haselton

Martie G. Haselton is in the Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture at the University of California, Los Angeles

SELECTING a mate is the most crucial decision of our lives. We spend a huge amount of time and energy trying to find that special someone. Our appetite for a relationship fuels a billion-dollar industry of match-making services, lonely hearts ads and online dating. Yet we're often not satisfied. A survey in 2005 of more than 900 people who had been using online dating services found that three-quarters had not found what they were looking for. We seem as much in the dark as ever about who is a suitable match for us.

As a scientist studying human behaviour, I am not too surprised by the mysterious nature of how we go about choosing a partner. Mate selection is a highly complex process. We are consciously aware of only part of it; the rest is either inherently unpredictable or operates outside our awareness, which leads us to the perception that love is about ineffable chemistry.

Let's start with the conscious part. There are some things we all find attractive. Men tend to desire women with features that suggest youth and fertility, including a low waist-to-hip ratio, full lips and soft facial features. Recent studies confirm that women have strong preferences for a virile male beauty - taut bodies, broad shoulders, clear skin and defined, masculine facial features, all of which may indicate sexual potency and good genes. We also know that women are attracted to men who look as if they have wealth, or the ability to acquire it, and that both men and women strongly value intelligence in a mate. Preferences for these qualities - beauty, brains and resources - are universal. The George Clooneys and Angelina Jolies of the world are sex symbols for predictable biological reasons.

Of course, we don't all fall in love with super-mates like these. An average person who did would be headed nowhere, because super-mates are inaccessible to all but a few. This is likely part of the reason why love evolved: to bond us for cooperative child rearing, but also to assist us in choosing, so that we don't waste time and energy falling for someone who is unattainable. Instead, people tend to fall for others who, on attractiveness, intelligence and status, are of a similar "ranking" to themselves.

So much for outward appearances. What about the less obvious cues of attraction? Fascinating work on genetics and mate preferences has shown that each of us will be attracted to people who possess a particular set of genes, known as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which play a critical role in our ability to fight pathogens. Mates with dissimilar MHC genes produce healthier offspring with broad immune systems. And the evidence shows that we are inclined to choose people who suit us in this way: couples tend to be less similar in their MHC than if they had been paired randomly.

How do people who differ in their MHC find each other? This isn't fully understood, but we know that smell is an important cue. People appear to literally sniff out their mates. In studies, people tend to rate the scent of T-shirts worn by others with dissimilar MHC as most attractive. This is what sexual "chemistry" is all about.

The message here is trust your instincts - except that there is an alarming exception. For women taking hormonal contraceptives, the reverse is true: they prefer men whose MHC genes are similar to their own. Thus women on the pill risk choosing a mate who is not genetically suitable (best to smell him first and go on the pill afterwards). This is a prime example of how chemical attraction can depend on your circumstances.

Here's another example: attraction can fluctuate over the menstrual cycle. Men evaluate women's scents as more attractive when they are near ovulation, and in our studies at UCLA we have found that men are more loving towards their partners as ovulation approaches. Women's preferences for certain male scents and other male features change over their cycle. Near ovulation, they prefer masculine traits; at other phases of their cycle they prefer less sexiness and more stability. All this suggests that the path to love can be somewhat random, particularly for women.

Having sex can also complicate the way you perceive a potential partner. After sex, the brain releases oxytocin, which results in that warm, companionable feeling of love and the creation of the social bonds that facilitate cooperative child rearing. Watch out: sex on a whim can lead to feelings of love for a person who is entirely wrong for you.

Sex, of course, is not love. For scientists, love is a conundrum: strictly speaking sexual desire takes care of reproduction, so what could be the purpose of love, especially since it makes us believe we have found our one true "soulmate" in a world filled with billions of alternatives. How would our ancestors have been served by such behaviour? One possibility is that feelings of love act as a "stop rule" that terminates our search for a mate, even if only temporarily, so we commit to one person and get on with the business of mating.

But that still poses the question, if the roads to love are so varied and random, how do we decide on a particular mate? It turns out that the problem of choice under uncertainty can be described and solved mathematically. Evolutionary psychologists Peter Todd at Indiana University in Bloomington and Geoffrey Miller at the University of New Mexico used a computer simulation to determine how a person might best choose from a number of potential partners. They set it up so that the person first assesses a number of the options before them to decide what is the best they can aspire to in terms of attractiveness, and then goes for the next person they come across who meets their aspirations out of those they haven't already encountered.

The researchers found that the optimum proportion of possible mates to examine before setting your aspirations and making your choice is a mere 9 per cent: so at a party with 100 possible mates, it's best to study only the first nine you randomly encounter before you choose.
Examining fewer means you won't have enough information to make a good choice, examining more makes it more likely you'll pass the best mate by. No doubt, the models underestimate the complexity of real mate choice, but the fundamental insight is clear: don't search indefinitely before choosing lest you miss out on all the good mates or run out of time altogether.

Who we fall for is determined by a mix of factors, some of which we are aware of, some of which we experience indirectly. Happenstance can play a major role, especially if we meet someone just after calibrating our aspirations, or at a particular stage of our hormonal cycle. There may be that special someone out there - but they're not necessarily the only one.

Martie G. Haselton is in the Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture at the University of California, Los Angeles
From issue 2549 of New Scientist magazine, 29 April 2006, page 36

2006-05-07T21:15:00.000-04:00

Judas Within Our Own Midst

Watching two reports on Dateline NBC and 60 Minutes about Ethanol 85 (E-85), a mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, it seems that the oil crisis can be solved immediately.

What was disheartening was that venture capitalist Vinod Khosla expressed the long held sentiment that oil companies are keeping gasoline prices inflated for large profits.

Mr. Khosla expressed that E-85 could be made available for about $0.70 a gallon and that it would only cost a relative small pittance for oil companies to make it available. (Approximately $20 million in distribution costs vs. tens of billions in yearly profits.)

Mr. Khosla had been told by one oil executive to be very careful and to tread lightly. The executive was adamant in stating that the price of gasoline can be lowered to well below the price of E-85.

Imagine, pricing of gasoline going for well below $0.70 a gallon. It’s not the Arab petroleum producers we have to worry about but rather our own price gouging profiteers.

See the sites below for info from the two shows:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/04/60minutes/main1588659.shtml

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12676374/

2006-05-07T11:42:00.000-04:00

Amen

A new children’s book on the value of saying Amen has just been published. It is an English version of the original Hebrew edition which came out 4 years ago.

Its anonymous author also published a Halachic volume on the recitation of Amen 2 years prior to the previously mentioned Hebrew edition. The Seforim have a number of Haskamos attached and the Halachic Sefer was also published anonymously.

Almost certainly, the Author is a fine man who has devoted his life to this subject and publishes anonymously so that no one gives him undue credit for his work.

However, Dr. S.Z. Leiman in his latest Shabbos Shiur points out 2 major errors in the use of source materials.

Firstly, the author presents the story of the Ger Tzeddek, who as Polish nobleman converted to Judaism under pain of death. At his execution, a great Rabbi hid in the branches of a tree and responded Amen when the Ger Tzeddek screamed out with his last breath Baruch Dayan Emes.

Unfortunately, there is no substance to this story. All accounts put a Jewish child at the scene who dressed as a gentile and then gathered up the remains of the Ger Tzeddek for burial. Any Rabbi hiding in the branches of a tree would have been immediately spotted and executed.

There was no mention of Amen.

Secondly, the author of this children’s book quotes his own Sefer, saying that one is obligated to forfeit his life if he is not allowed to say Amen Befarhesya with 10 men in attendance. The original source is from an obscure Sefer published in 1913 without any Haskamos.

According to Dr. Leiman, of all those who disagree with the Rambam, such as the Rosh,for example, who say that you may forfeit your life for a Mitzvah other than the original three of Avodah Zorah, Shfichas Domim and Gilui Arayos, no one says that forfeiture is allowed for a Shev V’al Tasah situation such as being forced not to say Amen.

It doesn’t even follow as a Chilul Hashem situation since you aren’t being forced to do anything. Moreover the quote from the 1913 Sefer is misconstrued, since that author uses a Kal Vachomer, an a priori inference, to make a point. There is no absolute psak to say Amen under fear of death.

In actuality, the new Ger Tzeddek story was adapted by the author from the Sefer Hereh V’aaino Nireh, which referred to a blood libel which took place in 1790 in Grodno, where people responded Amen to the dying declaration of R’Elezar ben R’ Shlomo Verblover Z”TL who was brutally murdered after being quartered at the site of his execution.

Dr. Leiman concluded by reading from the text of a letter written recently by the Admor of Slonim in reference to the adjustment of stories for the sake of making a point.

See the end of these previous posts for his conclusion:

http://judahmacabee.blogspot.com/2006/03/tipping-scales-how-much-is-too-much-my.html

http://judahmacabee.blogspot.com/2006/03/lie-with-no-legs-to-stand-on-as.html

2006-05-06T22:40:00.000-04:00

Scary Stories

The cold war is not over. In fact, political games are being played where it could get a lot hotter.

It seems that China and Russia are very happy with Iran developing atomic weapons. Couldn’t be, you say? It would be madness, you say? Take a look at these two articles and decide for yourselves.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HD20Ad03.html

http://www.jewishindy.com/article.php?sid=5616

2006-05-05T14:54:00.000-04:00

Whatever Goes Around Comes Around - Quotes From Around the World

After a reading an article by Charles Krauthammer in today’s Washington Post, I came across a few quotes that have been made recently and over the years; the article and the names attributed to the quotes are found at the end of my post.

1. "Western countries know that they are not capable of inflicting the slightest blow on the Iranian nation because they need the Iranian nation. They will suffer more and they are vulnerable."

2. “Our strength lies in our intensive attacks and our barbarity...After all, who today remembers the genocide of the Armenians?”

3. “Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.”

4. "China appreciates and supports the diplomatic efforts of all parties and call on the international community to exercise patience and restraint in order to give more time to diplomatic efforts.''

5. "We are convinced that there is no military solution to this crisis. The same, I believe, is the position of the UK and Germany as publicly stated by their ministers. And I don't think sanctions as a means to solve a crisis have ever achieved their goal."

6. “However much we may sympathize with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbor, we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole British Empire in war simply on her account. If we have to fight it must be on larger issues than that.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/04/AR2006050401458.html

Never Again?
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, May 5, 2006; Page A19

When something happens for the first time in 1,871 years, it is worth noting. In A.D. 70, and again in 135, the Roman Empire brutally put down Jewish revolts in Judea, destroying Jerusalem, killing hundreds of thousands of Jews and sending hundreds of thousands more into slavery and exile. For nearly two millennia, the Jews wandered the world. And now, in 2006, for the first time since then, there are once again more Jews living in Israel -- the successor state to Judea -- than in any other place on Earth.

Israel's Jewish population has just passed 5.6 million. America's Jewish population was about 5.5 million in 1990, dropped to about 5.2 million 10 years later and is in a precipitous decline that, because of low fertility rates and high levels of assimilation, will cut that number in half by mid-century.

When 6 million European Jews were killed in the Holocaust, only two main centers of Jewish life remained: America and Israel. That binary star system remains today, but a tipping point has just been reached. With every year, as the Jewish population continues to rise in Israel and decline in America (and in the rest of the Diaspora), Israel increasingly becomes, as it was at the time of Jesus, the center of the Jewish world.

An epic restoration, and one of the most improbable. To take just one of the remarkable achievements of the return: Hebrew is the only "dead" language in recorded history to have been brought back to daily use as the living language of a nation. But there is a price and a danger to this transformation. It radically alters the prospects for Jewish survival.

For 2,000 years, Jews found protection in dispersion -- protection not for individual communities, which were routinely persecuted and massacred, but protection for the Jewish people as a whole. Decimated here, they could survive there. They could be persecuted in Spain and find refuge in Constantinople. They could be massacred in the Rhineland during the Crusades or in the Ukraine during the Khmelnytsky Insurrection of 1648-49 and yet survive in the rest of Europe.

Hitler put an end to that illusion. He demonstrated that modern anti-Semitism married to modern technology -- railroads, disciplined bureaucracies, gas chambers that kill with industrial efficiency -- could take a scattered people and "concentrate" them for annihilation.

The establishment of Israel was a Jewish declaration to a world that had allowed the Holocaust to happen -- after Hitler had made his intentions perfectly clear -- that the Jews would henceforth resort to self-protection and self-reliance. And so they have, building a Jewish army, the first in 2,000 years, that prevailed in three great wars ofsurvival (1948-49, 1967 and 1973).

But in a cruel historical irony, doing so required concentration --putting all the eggs back in one basket, a tiny territory hard by the Mediterranean, eight miles wide at its waist. A tempting target forthose who would finish Hitler's work.

His successors now reside in Tehran. The world has paid ample attention to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's declaration that Israel must be destroyed.

Less attention has been paid to Iranian leaders pronouncements on exactly how Israel would be "eliminated by one storm," as Ahmadinejad has promised.

Former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the presumed moderate of this gang, has explained that "the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world ofIslam." The logic is impeccable, the intention clear: A nuclear attack would effectively destroy tiny Israel, while any retaliation launched by a dying Israel would have no major effect on an Islamic civilization of a billion people stretching from Mauritania to Indonesia.

As it races to acquire nuclear weapons, Iran makes clear that if there is any trouble, the Jews will be the first to suffer. "We have announced that wherever [in Iran] America does make any mischief, the first place we target will be Israel," said Gen. Mohammad Ebrahim Dehghani, a top Revolutionary Guards commander. Hitler was only slightly more direct when he announced seven months before invading Poland that, if there was another war, "the result will be . . . the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe."

Last week Bernard Lewis, America's dean of Islamic studies, who just turned 90 and remembers the 20th century well, confessed that for the first time he feels it is 1938 again. He did not need to add that in1938, in the face of the gathering storm -- a fanatical, aggressive, openly declared enemy of the West, and most determinedly of the Jews -- the world did nothing.

When Iran's mullahs acquire their coveted nukes in the next few years, the number of Jews in Israel will just be reaching 6 million. Neveragain?

1. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

2. Adolf Hitler

3. Adolf Hitler

4. Director of the department of Arms Control, Chinese Foreign Ministry, Zhang Yan

5. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

6. Neville Chamberlain, In Search of Peace (1939), p. 393

2006-05-02T19:38:00.000-04:00

Do We Still Remember?

In reference to a Yom Hazikoron post on "The Zionist Conspiracy," I made the following comment which I post here as well:

http://jschick.blogspot.com/2006/05/yom-hazikaron-more-than-22000-israeli.html

1. In a pre-pesach issue of Hashavua, a weekly religious paper, there was an interview of David Hatuel, the husband and father of the murdered Hatuels.

Since the murder of his wife and children, he has been meeting with Victims of Terror giving them Chizuk.

The article makes note of a visit to a woman who lost a family member and refused to speak to anyone. Mr. Hatuel, when visiting her, made mention of what would be his feelings if only one member of his family survived. At that point the woman's depression began to ease.

Mr. Hatuel has recently remarried.

2. On a recent trip to Scotland, I spoke to Yoni Jesner's mother. A few weeks prior to speaking to her, I saw a documentary where she met the Arab family whose daughter received Yoni's organs in a life saving procedure.

This documentary, entitled "Real Life: A Mother’s Journey" was quite moving and raised serious questions and provided insightful answers.

3. The Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills with Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld and the OU led a solidarity mission to Israel prior to the Sabbaro bombing.

I watched the horrific scenes on the Thursday when it took place, as I prepared to go on the mission a few days later on Sunday.

In Israel I attended an impromptu memorial service at the site. It pains me to even think about it.

Many of our group paid a Shiva call to the Roth's and Raziel's home, which were only a few houses from each other.

There were many people, so I was only able to enter the Roth's home. The father of Malki Roth displayed tremendous inner strength and fortitude.

Mr. Roth read a composition that Malki had written at age 11, stating that no Jew should ever give up hope, that each and every loss should be felt by each Jew as their own loss; not just another number.

A Mr. Schonbrum told Mr. Roth, that people in his shul were talking about the loss of Malki as if it was their own loss.

Mr. Julian Yudelson, showing tremendous compassion, told Mr. Roth of his own 14 year old daughter, who died at a Shabbaton.

Upon leaving, Mr. Yudelson vigorously took Mr. Roth's hand and tried to give him true chizuk. He told Mr. Roth, that he must be very strong because the pain will never completely go away.

Rabbi Schonfeld concluded by saying how the phrase of Hamokom took on new meaning with all the Availum in Yerushalayim.

Hashem Yikum Es Domom.

2006-05-01T21:18:00.000-04:00

Hayom Haras Olam

A friend of mine reached her 35th birthday on Shabbos. On the same day I came across the most recent issue of the RJJ journal (Pesach 2006) which had an article by Yerachmiel Schapiro entitled "Birthdays in Halacha." As an aside it mentioned that “Chazal tell us that actually man (not the world) was created on Rosh Hashana, and this is in part what gives the day its unique and holy significance.”

Thus if our counting of the world only begins from Adom Harishon, what exactly took place during those earlier “days” and why weren’t they counted?

I can’t begin to answer such a question since we really don’t understand how Hashem built this universe or what existed prior to it.

But a recent article published in last week’s issue of New Scientist, featured an hypothesis by Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog which indicated we should look at the creation of the universe through a quantum theory “looking glass” using a “top-down” analysis.

For the uninitiated let me explain.

Quantum Theory can be explained through the Heisenberg Principle. If you were told to find a ping pong ball in a darkened room, the only way you would be able to find it without the assistance of light is to feel for it. If you happen to find it, you would have moved it ever so slightly and it would no longer be in its original place.

When we ”look” for items on the subatomic level, whatever instrument we use, will “change” the item we are looking for, either from it’s place, or change it into some other particle.

Hawking’s and Hertog’s new theory states that our actions within our own universe influenced how the universe originated. We just can’t see how it’s happening because we would have to be outside our own universe in order to “see” it. We can't "see" the beginning because our universe is like the surface of a sphere, with no definable starting point.

According to their theory, named the no-boundary proposal, there are a number of different types of universe possibilities which averaged out to what we “see” today. But they all stemmed from one singularity which according to Hawking we know nothing about, because we have no knowledge about the starting conditions.

But looking at the average of the possible types of universe, we can say that our universe went through an early burst of rapid expansion from one singularity. In fact, “when the universe was small enough to be governed by quantum mechanics, it had four spatial dimensions and no dimension of time;” sounds like Sohu U’vohu to me.

Hawking further states that “observations of final states determine different histories of the universe. A worm’s-eye view from inside the universe would have the normal causality. Backwards causality is an angel’s-eye view from outside the universe." Can this have anything to do with our Bechira? Does this have anything to do with our actions in this world having an effect in the celestial world? Can the Machlokes regarding the situation of Ya’akov's Ladder be explained using this theory? I’ll leave that for the brighter minds and stars out there.

But for your perusal, see the article below:

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/mg19025481.300;jsessionid=OMICIAEGCDBC

Exploring Stephen Hawking's Flexiverse

20 April 2006

Amanda Gefter

How to build a universe

HERE'S how to build a universe. Step one: start at the beginning of time. Step two: apply the laws of physics. Step three: sit back and watch the universe evolve. Step four: cross your fingers and hope that it comes out looking something like the one we live in.

That's the basic prescription for cosmology, the one physicists use to decipher the history of the universe. But according to Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge and Thomas Hertog of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the steps are all backward. According to these physicists, there is no history of the universe. There is no immutable past, no 13.7 billion years of evolution for cosmologists to retrace. Instead, there are many possible histories, and the universe has lived them all. And if that's not strange enough, you and I get to play a role in determining the universe's history. Like a reverse choose-your-own-adventure story, we, the observers, can choose the past.

This bizarre state of affairs has its roots in Hawking's work in the 1970s. Early in his career, Hawking, along with physicist Roger Penrose, proved a theorem showing that our expanding universe must have emerged from a singularity - a place where gravity becomes so strong that space and time are curved beyond recognition. In this situation, general relativity - our best description of how space, time and matter interact - no longer applied.

So what rules did apply? Hawking and Hertog suggest that the universe was so small at this time that quantum effects must have been important. We don't yet have a quantum theory of gravity, so we can't be sure exactly what the rules were, but the principle still stands, they say. "The real lesson of these so-called singularity theorems is that the origin of the universe is a quantum event," Hertog claims. And that, of course, opens the whole universe up to some very strange phenomena.

The famous double-slit experiment highlights the bizarre reality of how a universe born in quantum mode might behave. In the experiment, a screen with two open slits faces a sheet of photographic film. When light is shone through the slits the film registers where it lands. If the light goes through both slits the film shows an "interference pattern" of light and dark bands. Such a pattern is typically produced by interfering waves - one from each slit. What's spooky is that even when a lone photon is fired at the slits it still creates a pattern of light and dark bands - as if it were two waves.

In 1983, Hawking and James Hartle of the University of California at Santa Barbara, took up this picture and applied it to the evolution of the whole universe. They did that using the "sum over histories" interpretation of quantum theory, first set out by the late Richard Feynman. Feynman suggested that the way to interpret quantum phenomena such as the double-slit experiment was to assume that when a particle travels from point A to point B, it doesn't simply take one path - it takes every possible path simultaneously; the photon travels through both slits at the same time and interferes with itself, for example.

In this scheme, when a photon travels from a lamp to your eye it moves in a straight line, but it also dances about in twists and swirls, travels to Jupiter and back, and ricochets off the Great Wall of China. The obvious question, then, is why do we see only ever see one path, straight and simple? Feynman's answer was, because all the other paths cancel each other out. In the sum-over-histories interpretation, each path can be mapped out as a wave. Each wave has a different phase (effectively a starting time), and all the waves added together create an "interference pattern", building upon one another where their phases align and cancelling each other out where their phases are mismatched. The sum of all the waves is one single wave, which describes the path we observe.

Applied to the universe, this idea has an obvious implication. Just as a particle travelling from point A to point B takes every possible path in between, so too must the history of the universe. In one history, the Earth never formed. In another, Al Gore is president. And in yet another, Elvis is still - well, you get the idea. "The universe doesn't have a single history, but every possible history, each with its own probability," Hertog says.

But there is a twist: the history that we see depends on the experimental setup. In the double-slit experiment, it has been shown time and again that if we use a photon detector to find which of the two slits the photon went through, it no longer creates an interference pattern, just a single spot on the film. In other words, the way you look at the photon changes the nature of its journey. The same thing happens in Hawking and Hertog's universe: our observations of the cosmos today are determining the outcome - in this case, the entire history of the universe. A measurement made in the present is deciding what happened 13.7 billion years ago; by looking out at the universe, we assign ourselves a particular, concrete history.

If true, this is no mere curiosity; Hawking and Hertog have tossed the notion of a unique, observer-independent cosmology out the window and thrown the sacred laws of cause and effect into question. But they're not exactly being violated, Hawking says - it's all to do with perspective. If we could stand outside the world, we would be able to see the present affecting the past, as when an observer affects a photon's path through the universe. From inside the universe, though - from the only place we can possibly be - no observer sees causality violated. What we observe in the present, the "final" state, is one entire, causally consistent history or another: from within any given history, cause and effect proceed in the usual manner.

"Observations of final states determine different histories of the universe," says Hawking. "A worm's-eye view from inside the universe would have the normal causality. Backwards causality is an angel's-eye view from outside the universe."

So the idea is that to unravel the past, we must sum together all possible histories of the universe. What does that mean?

Hawking and Hertog equate the cosmic histories with how the geometry of the universe evolves in each possible case of going from point A (the beginning of time) to point B (now). To start with, this seems straightforward enough. We can specify the state of the universe at point B by making certain observations of the world around us - the universe has three large spatial dimensions, its geometry is close to flat, it is expanding, and so on.

What about point A, though? Mapping out the paths of a photon from a lamp to our eye is not too hard because we know the beginning point - the lamp - and the final point: our eye. We know nothing about the universe at the beginning of time, however. After all, that's what cosmology is supposed to tell us.

This is where the sum-over-histories interpretation comes into its own. The mathematics behind this approach to quantum theory contains an oddity: the answers only come out right when the calculation is done in imaginary time. That doesn't mean make-believe time, but rather a time dimension that is expressed using complex numbers. This is not an entirely esoteric idea: electrical engineers routinely use complex numbers, which are split into "real" and "imaginary" parts, to design electrical circuits. In the hands of cosmological engineers, imaginary numbers turn out to have profound consequences.

Hawking and Hartle's original work on the quantum properties of the cosmos suggested that imaginary time, which seemed like a mathematical curiosity in the sum-over-histories approach, held the answer to understanding the origin of the universe.

Add up the histories of the universe in imaginary time, and time is transformed into space. The result is that, when the universe was small enough to be governed by quantum mechanics, it had four spatial dimensions and no dimension of time: where time would usually come to an end at a singularity, a new dimension of space appears, and, poof! The singularity vanishes.

In terms of the universe's history, that means there is no point A. Like the surface of a sphere, the universe is finite but has no definable starting point, or "boundary". Hence the idea's name: the no-boundary proposal.

This has led Hawking to define a new kind of cosmology. The traditional approach, which Hawking calls "bottom-up" cosmology, tries to specify the initial state of the universe and work from there. This is doomed to fail, Hawking says, because we know nothing about the starting conditions. Instead, he suggests, we should use the no-boundary proposal to do "top-down" cosmology, where the only input into our models of the universe comes from what we observe now - together with the idea that our universe has no boundary in the past.

Improbable tuning

The result of this process, he says, solves a long-standing problem of cosmology: fine-tuning. Most cosmologists think, for example, that the universe went through an early burst of rapid expansion, or "inflation". There is some evidence to support the claim, but there's also a problem. Standard inflationary models require a very improbable initial state, one that must have "finely tuned" values that cause inflation to start, then stop in a certain way after a certain time: a complicated prescription whose only justification is to produce a flat universe without any strange topology, and so on - a universe like ours.

Such a prescriptive method makes hard and unsatisfying work of producing the universe we see today. While a cosmologist can put these values into the equations "by hand", it is not exactly a satisfactory way to develop our model of how the universe works. In the no-boundary theory, however, there simply is no defined initial state. "In the usual approach it is difficult to explain how inflation began," says Hawking. "But it occurs naturally in top-down with the no-boundary condition. It doesn't need fine tuning."

To do top-down cosmology, Hawking and Hertog first take a whole raft of possible histories, all of which would result in a universe with features familiar to us. "We then calculate the probability for other features of the universe, given the constraints," Hertog says. Specify a universe that is three-dimensional and flat, for instance, and you can have histories that involve inflation and histories that don't. "Top-down cosmology does not predict that all possible universes have to begin with a period of inflation, but that inflation occurs naturally within a certain subclass of universes," Hertog says. The process creates a probability for each scenario, and so Hertog can see which kind of history is most likely. "What we find is that the inflating histories generally have the largest probability."

In many ways, top-down cosmology is an unsettling idea. Usually, science demands that our observations come out as output - we certainly don't expect them to be the input. That, after all, denies us the chance to see if the theory matches up with observations. What's more, the sum over histories is formed by calculating the various probabilities for a universe like ours to arise out of literally nothing: that means we can never know anything for certain about how our universe got to be as it is.

We shouldn't be surprised, Hertog says: quantum theory has long shown us that it is impossible for us to know everything about the world around us. In "classical" physics, we can predict both the exact momentum and position of a particle at any time, but quantum mechanics doesn't allow it. No one suggests that quantum mechanics is wrong because of this, Hertog points out - and experiments have shown that it is not. What quantum theory has given us now, Hertog says, is some indication about the nature of inflation, where before we had none. "Before, we had no prediction at all - and indeed no notion of likeliness - on this issue."

For many, it remains a difficult argument to swallow. Science since Copernicus has aimed to model a universe in which we are mere by-products, but top-down cosmology turns that on its head, rendering the history of the universe a by-product of our observations. All in all, it is very like the "anthropic landscape" argument that is causing controversy among string theorists (see "Putting the you into universe").

Princeton University physicist Paul Steinhardt is certainly unimpressed by Hawking and Hertog's scheme. "It's kind of giving up on the problem," he says. "We've all been hoping to calculate things from first principles. Stephen doesn't think that's possible, but I'm not convinced of that. They might be right, but it's much too early to take this approach; it looks to me like throwing in the towel."

Stanford University's Andrei Linde is similarly unconvinced. There are a number of technical assumptions that make him sceptical. "I don't buy it," he says.

The past is out there

The merits of Hawking and Hertog's new approach to cosmology might be decided by experiment. The theory predicts specific kinds of fluctuations in two cosmological phenomena: the cosmic microwave background radiation produced just after the big bang, and the spectrum of primordial gravitational waves. These fluctuations arise from applying the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics to Hawking and Hertog's scheme: in this scenario, the universe's shape is never precisely determined, but is influenced by other histories with similar geometries.

If Hawking and Hertog are right, quantum uncertainty will manifest as slight differences from what standard inflationary theory predicts for the CMB. The top-down predictions only differ from the standard cosmological model at a level of precision that has not yet been reached in observations, however. The top-down signature in the gravitational wave spectrum should be easier to differentiate, but since we haven't yet detected any gravitational waves, we'll have to wait for that proof too.

For Hawking and Hertog, there's simply no doubt that top-down cosmology is the only answer. It's simple: if you can't know the initial state of the universe, you can't work forwards from the beginning: the top-down approach is the only one that works.

Hartle agrees. Hawking and Hertog's scheme may seem strange, but it is the only way forward because we are part of the experiment we are trying to observe. "It's a different viewpoint, but it's sort of inevitable," he says. "Colsmologists certainly should be paying attention to this work."

The trouble, of course, is that if they are right, we're involved in the making of that history. In that case, we have a new set of instructions for building a universe. Step one: look around you. Step two: find the set of all possible histories that end up as a universe like the one you see. Step three: add them together and create a history for yourself.

From issue 2548 of New Scientist magazine, 20 April 2006, page 28

Putting the you into universe

Hawking and Hertog's cosmology adds an interesting twist to the ongoing debate in physics about the existence of multiple universes. At issue is the fact that string theory, physicists' most popular candidate for a "theory of everything", describes not just one universe but a near infinity of them. Some physicists are willing to accept that these theoretical universes actually exist, both because string theory doesn't seem to favour any particular universe over all the others in the bunch, and because their existence could help explain the apparently fine-tuned features of our universe.

Take, for example, the value of the cosmological constant, the force that appears to be causing the expansion of the universe to speed up. It is a very small force, and no one has yet explained why it should be so. The trouble is, its size happens to be a number that sits in a very narrow range of values that would allow life to exist. This coincidence has compelled some physicists to make the so-called anthropic argument: maybe there are multiple "pocket" universes that branch off from one another, and within each the constants take a different value. In that scenario, there is bound to be one universe with a cosmological constant like ours and we should not be surprised to find ourselves in the one universe hospitable to life.

Many physicists argue that this is just giving up on the problem of explaining why our universe is the way it is - it is not, they say, science. Hawking and Hertog's new idea adds fuel to this fire. The picture of a never-ending string of pocket universes is only meaningful from the perspective of an observer outside any one universe, Hawking says - and that, by definition, is impossible. Parallel pocket universes can have no effect on a real observer inside a single pocket, so, according to Hawking, they are theoretical baggage that should be eliminated from cosmology.

But Hawking has a replacement in mind - and it is just as mind-boggling. His view is that the string theory landscape is populated by the set of all possible histories. Rather than a branching set of individual universes, every possible version of a single universe exists simultaneously in a state of quantum superposition. When you choose to make a measurement, you select from this landscape a subset of histories that share the specific features measured. The history of the universe - for you the observer - is derived from that subset of histories. In other words, you choose your past.

2006-05-01T19:39:00.000-04:00

Rationalism -- Understanding of Conflict and Cooperation Through Game-Theory Analysis

Looking a the latest map of Israel, printed by Mapah, I saw that Gaza was now completely colored in a shade of brown indicating that it was all under Palestinian authority.

Unsurprising as this may be, I did notice many of the names of settlements listed on their approximate locations without streets and written in very small print. Next to the small print was, in parentheses, the word Harus spelled Hay Reish Vav Samech.

I wasn’t familiar with this word. After checking a dictionary, I saw the definition as broken or destroyed.

Why couldn’t they write Churban or Shavur, openly. Better yet, why couldn’t they use a better definition – expelled or abandoned.

Where’s the rationality?

Prof. Robert Auman who received the Noble Prize in Economics spoke of rationality at the One Israel Fund Dinner last Wednesday night.

He said the actions of homicide bombers are more rational than those of the Israeli government. The definition of rational is one consistent with attaining a goal; consistent with, or based on, or using reason. The Palestinians are then rational because their goal is for Israel to give up. Israel politicians, such as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, speak of being tired of fighting, tired of everything; unless his goal is to give up and accommodate the Palestinians, there is no rationality on the part of the Israeli leadership.

When you are in a mine full of toxic gases or climbing Mt. Everest and freezing out in the cold, the last thing you do is to say you’re tired and that you need a rest. If you decide to take a rest at that point, it most likely will be your last.

Maybe the word Harus was appropriate after all. We are broken and destroyed. But not dead yet. Let’s hope we find the will to be rational; to find the will to live.

2006-05-01T19:01:00.000-04:00

Revisiting George Costanza

On Tuesday March 28,2006 I discussed an article entitled "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy," by the dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government Stephen Walt and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer.

http://judahmacabee.blogspot.com/2006/03/quote-from-george-costanza-manure-dont.html

Though I personally felt the article was so full of flaws that it did not even merit a response, much less to have it put in the limelight, I decided to bring it to your attention because the article was making its way around the internet and there were many who were giving it credence.

Having thought that it would lay in the dustpans of forgotten research, I was surprised to find two articles in the Jerusalem Post commenting on it.

Thankfully, there are still people out there who are not fooled by manipulation of the facts. Surprisingly, even Noam Chomsky, no great lover of Israeli policy, found major flaws within the assumptions made therein.

I leave the websites and the JP articles for your perusal:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1143498893823&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1143498893816&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1619905/posts

Updated Apr. 26, 2006 2:04

Think Again: First come words

By JONATHAN ROSENBLUM

Are we Jews too sensitive to what non-Jews say about us? The Haggada, which we just read on Seder night, hints at the answer. The telling of the story of our enslavement in Egypt begins "the Egyptians [spoke] evil about us" (usually mistranslated as "the Egyptians did evil to us"), followed by Pharaoh's exhortation to the Egyptians to deal cleverly with the Jews lest they grow too numerous and betray Egypt by joining forces with its enemies.

The Haggada hints that Jews ignore the way they are spoken about at their own peril. Actions too often follow words.

For that reason the recently published published paper, "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy," by the dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government Stephen Walt and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer deserves to be taken seriously. The authors claim that a powerful pro-Israel lobby has for decades subverted American interests in favor of those of Israel, a nation that can lay no strategic or moral claim to the massive support it receives from the United States.

Walt and Mearsheimer's core concept of an "Israel Lobby" proves hopeless as an analytical tool. In their telling, this amorphous lobby includes those who disagree on every aspect of American and Israeli policy: The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal editorial page; the Brookings Institute and the American Enterprise Institute; Ehud Barak's leading supporter, billionaire toymaker Haim Saban, and neo-conservative supporters of Binyamin Netanyahu. In short everyone, who does not call for Israel's dismantling.

(Though Walt and Mearsheimer offer the usual pro-forma assurance that they too do not question Israel's right to exist, they offer an Elysian vision of a world without Israel, and use fabricated quotes to portray Israel's birth as an instance of ethnic cleansing. They mention no threat to America other than those caused by Israel's existence - neither a nuclear Iran nor Islamic fanaticism. The Nixon administration's airlift of arms during the 1973 war, when Israel's existence hung in the balance, is cited as an example of the Israel Lobby's undue influence.)

As former Jerusalem Post editor Bret Stephens noted in The Wall Street Journal, the alleged conspiracy includes, or has infected, nearly all Americans - 66 percent of Americans who follow foreign affairs support Israel, as opposed to 9% who are more sympathetic to the Palestinians. The Walt/Mearsheimer thesis sounds like nothing so much as the 1950s sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

CURIOUSLY, the one group immune to the machinations of the lobby is American Jews. The war in Iraq is the coup de grace in Walt/Mearsheimer's indictment of the lobby's kidnapping of American foreign policy on behalf of Israel. Yet American Jews opposed the war in higher percentages than any other group.

Their best evidence of an all-powerful Israel Lobby consists of the self-serving claims of past and present AIPAC officials, who consistently overrate their own efforts and downplay those factors that predispose Americans to support a strong Israel.

HOWEVER WEAK as an analytical tool, the "Israel Lobby" is a potent rhetorical device. Walt and Mearsheimer accuse supporters of Israel of attempting to squelch debate on American policy toward Israel, but it is they who seek to suppress debate.

They prefer to dismiss such renowned scholars as Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami as members of the lobby than to engage their arguments; to portray President George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (not to mention former president Bill Clinton) as helpless dupes of the lobby than to discuss their policy choices.

In particular, Walt and Mearsheimer seek to secure the predominance of anti-Israel views on university campuses, which they note, in a rather large understatement, remain the last bastion into which the tentacles of the lobby have not reached. Indeed if there were an Israel Lobby, and labeling all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic were its tactic, the steady drumbeat of criticism of Israel on elite campuses and in the elite press would be the clearest proof of its inefficacy.

AS AN example of the lobby's attempt to intimidate critics, the authors cite Daniel Pipes's Campus Watch project, which publicizes the classroom statements of anti-Israel professors. They do not explain, however, why the classroom statements of professors should be any more immune from scrutiny and criticism than those contained in their published works.

Walt and Mearsheimer cite the documentary Columbia Unbecoming, exposing the biases of Columbia University's Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC), as a particularly egregious example of attempted intimidation. They rely on the "findings" of an internal Columbia University committee to exonerate MEALAC. But they fail to note that the committee was hand-picked to whitewash the charges: Two of its five members had signed a petition calling on Columbia University to divest from all companies connected to the Israeli military, and the university vice president to whom the committee reported was one of the petition's initiators. A third committee member served as the thesis advisor of one of the professors most criticized by the documentary.

Walt and Mearsheimer complain of a handful of university Israel Studies departments, chiefly financed by Jewish philanthropists, but ignore entirely the far more numerous and larger Middle East Studies Departments, dominated by pro-Arab professors and supported by Saudi and other Arab oil money.

By raising the spectre of an "Israel Lobby," Walt and Mearsheimer have laid a trap for the American Jewish community: the more the Jews protest the more they "prove" the existence of a lobby. And we have fallen into the trap. With the exception of James Taranto of the on-line Opinion Journal, the most effective responses to Walt and Mearsheimer have all come from prominent American Jews: Alan Dershowitz, Ruth Wisse, Elliot Cohen, Martin Peretz, Dennis Ross, Bret Stephens, Martin Kramer, Cong. Jerrold Nadler, CAMERA and the New York Sun (a remake of the old Forward).

The Jewish community has repeated the same mistake that it made over The Passion, when instead of letting Christian New Testament scholars carry the ball, the ADL took the lead in attacking Mel Gibson's film. Non-Jewish academics should have been allowed to take the lead in exposing the rot at the heart of the Walt/Mearsheimer paper. But the paper cannot be ignored. It provides a potent alert to what Jewish students face on America's elite campuses, and the poisons being fed the next generation of American leaders.

Noam Chomsky, champion of Israel?

By ERIK SCHECHTER

What do Noam Chomsky and the neocons have in common? They both stand accused of protecting the enormously powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington from legitimate criticism. That's right, hell has frozen over. Professor Chomsky - the far-left MIT linguist who has consistently (and often quite viciously) criticized Israel since the early 1970s - is apparently a big softie when it comes to Zion.

Or so say assorted left-wing critics.

The brouhaha began in late March when two American academics published in The London Review of Books a paper critical of the Israel lobby. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argued that neither idealism nor hard-nosed practicality justified American support of the Jewish state. Nevertheless, a "loose coalition of individuals and organizations" has been steering US policy in that direction for years.

Though hardly a novel idea, the essay caused a wave of controversy because the authors were not your run-of-the-mill, paranoid kooks. Mearsheimer sits on the international academic advisory board at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, at Bar-Ilan University, and both he and Walt are leading lights of the realist school of international relations. Their critique simply could not go unanswered.

Indeed, following the publication of the article, professors and pundits of all stripes took to their keyboards.

Now, I will not address the many errors of the M-W piece or explain how arguing that lobbies drive foreign policy upends the whole realist paradigm; that's been done elsewhere and by people far smarter than me. What's interesting is where Noam Chomsky stepped out on the controversy.

Writing in Z Magazine, the aging anarchist commended Mearsheimer and Walt for their "courageous stand" but then attacked their notion of an informal, far-flung lobby as an empty label. "M-W focus on AIPAC and the evangelicals," wrote Chomsky, "but they recognize that the Lobby includes most of the political-intellectual class - at which point the thesis loses much of its content."

Max Boot, a neoconservative fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted the very same thing when he quipped, "In Mearsheimer-Walt's telling, the Israel lobby seems to include just about every American politician, think tank and newspaper." Now who could have imagined Chomsky manning the same barricade as the neocons?

BUT NOT to worry, he won't be joining the GOP or Likud anytime soon. He still thinks Israel serves as the brutal attack dog of American imperialism - having first helped the oil companies back in 1967 when it smashed an uppity Nasser and, thus, discredited secular Arab nationalism. Likewise, Chomsky still bleeds for the Palestinians. It's just that he objects to the part about capitalists needing to be goaded into regional domination. And, the MIT linguist is not alone on this point; radical journalist Salim Muwakkil and Columbia professor Joseph Massad also dismiss the blame-the-lobby argument. In the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram, the latter wrote, "The record of the United States is one of being the implacable enemy of all Third World national liberation groups Why then would the US support national liberation in the Arab world absent the pro-Israel lobby is something these studies never explain."

The problem is that, while Muwakkil is African-American and Massad is Palestinian, Chomsky is a Red Sea pedestrian - and that raises suspicions in some left-wing circles.

Veteran pro-Palestinian activist Jeffrey Blankfort, for example, has taken issue with Chomsky's early experiences in the Marxist-Zionist Hashomer Hatza'ir movement, saying that they somehow blinded him to the political machinations of his fellow American Jews.

Amazingly, Blankfort - himself Jewish - has lambasted Chomsky as "a boon for AIPAC" and, by extension, "Israel's position in the United States."

Like Blankfort (and post-Zionist historian Ilan Pappe), James Petras also disagrees with Chomsky on the M-W paper. In fact, the Marxist sociologist gets downright nasty in his critique, suggesting that Chomsky's analytic skills "are totally absent when it comes to discussing the formulation of US foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly the role of his own ethnic group, the Jewish pro-Israel lobby and their Zionist supporters in the government."

Once again, Chomsky is covering for the tribe.

One would think that the Jewish anarchist has already paid his dues. Chomsky has attacked Israel time and again; described French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson as "a relatively apolitical liberal of some sort"; commended the scholarship of the late Israel Shahak, author of the vile Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, and claimed that the charge of anti-Semitism is used to stifle criticism of Israel.

Yet the tragedy of Chomsky is that, for people like Blankfort and Petras, all this counts for nothing. The latter still accuses him of playing with the evidence in order to hide the role of the pro-Israel lobby and the "ZionCons" in hatching the current Iraq war.

Though Chomsky never answered the e-mail I sent him, I asked anti-Zionist firebrand and DePaul University professor Norman Finkelstein what he thought of these unseemly attacks on his mentor. "I see no point in probing motives," he told me, "One should judge any argument on its merits."

All true, and still the fracas with Chomsky proves that, if you're Jewish, no matter what you say and do, you're always just one essay away from being labeled a pro-Israel lobbyist.

The writer is a former Jerusalem Post military reporter

2006-04-28T18:30:00.000-04:00

Flying Back To America

On Monday morning of the 24th of April, we flew back to the USA.

With the long wait for the Nesher, the time spent in line at airport security, the long built in delay prior to departure, sitting on the plane for 15 hours or so with turbulence comparable to a roller coaster ride, you might ponder the following: If only Star Trek were real and we could shout into our cell phone “Beam me up, Scotty.”

But I’m not so sure. The apprehension, the excitement, always makes the trip to Israel special and memorable. And this time, returning to America, there was one more memory. About half way through the flight, Yom Hashaoh had just begun in Israel. Though it was still brilliantly sunny outside the aircraft, an announcement came on the PA system saying that we would find Holocaust related movies, which were not part of the regularly schedule in-flight movies, on our monitors. The first film was Life is Beautiful which I had seen many times already and the second was Everything is Illuminated, which I had not seen.

The second film starred Elijah Wood and was directed by Live Schreiber. It was excellent. Though I must admit, I have read reviews which said that it did not do justice to the book upon which it was based. No matter, I can always read the book at some other point.

Though it had very few vignettes of the Holocaust within the film, it still touched greatly on its ramifications. Though it was more like a road-buddy movie with some amusing moments, it was very poignant and reminded me a great deal of a personalized Kever Avoth trip I took this past summer and of a trip I took with Dr. Leiman about 10 years ago, which I fondly recall and refer to as ‘the Grateful Dead Tour.’

But those stories I’ll leave for another time.

2006-04-28T18:27:00.000-04:00

The Dead Sea

Sunday after the Chag, the day before we left to return to America, we spent the day at the Dead Sea.

Don’t believe the nonsense people tell you that it’s harder to get sun burned at the Dead Sea because of the altitude or whatnot. They are selling you a fish story, though there aren’t live ones here.

With temperatures in the high 90’s it didn’t take more than a few minutes to start feeling the pain of a burn. Luckily I didn’t stay in the sun too long and survived my stay.

Memo to Self:

Self, bring the suntan lotion next time.

2006-04-28T18:26:00.000-04:00

Isru Chag or Was It?

Being that it was a few days before Yom Hashoah, it was interesting to revisit the new section of Yad Vashem. Having been there twice before, I focused on some different artifacts.

I felt weird looking at Nazi board games with plastic pieces of swastika emblems adorning the game instead of cars or the like as board pieces. I saw all types of crazy ‘Tchatzkes’ as souvenirs of the German Reich. In a small alcove, I saw a black and white photo of a dining room with a prominently displayed sign, stating ‘no Jews allowed – this is a Jewish free zone.’

The year the photo was taken was 1905, almost 30 years before Hitler came into power and forty years before the end of the War.

Who woulda thunk it?

2006-04-28T18:23:00.000-04:00

Achron Shel Pesach, Shevii Shel Pesach and More of a Walking We Will Go

Walking the hills and steps of Jerusalem is always an adventure but walking from Katamon to Givat Mordechai is something completely different.

No matter what you do, you can’t find a route without massive inclines. I knew I should have taken that topographic map with me; maybe I’ll do it next time.

The walk was almost like Krias Yam Suf. Then again, how appropriate; that was the day of our walk.

On Achron Shel Pesach, it was quite strange walking by Pizza shops, bakeries and the sort while we were still making Yom Tov meals and eating Matzos. I didn’t mind it all. Besides, I got to eat Chametz even quicker after Pesach, since some of it most certainly had been baked the day before.

Freshness is in the eye of the beholder.

2006-04-28T18:13:00.000-04:00

What’s Wrong with Israelis, Anyway?

On the last day of Chol Hamoed, we decided to take a bus from the Central Bus Station to Mini Israel. Unfortunately, there is no bus to this well advertised ‘minor’ tourist attraction.

At the ‘misinformation’ counter of the Tachana Merkazit, we were told that we could take a bus to Latrun and that Mini Israel is only a few minutes down the road. The bus driver, who actually would be passing by the site but said he couldn’t stop because there was no stop there, also agreed that it was a few minutes down the road. He did, however, assure us that we would see a bus stop for the return trip right in front of the site.

Well, needless to say, everyone was selling us the Brooklyn Bridge, though there was no water in sight. In fact, the bus stopped in area which looked like the cornfield in ‘Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest.’ I didn’t expect to see Cary Grant but I was wondering if a crop duster was going to fly over us and try to kill us.

No need to worry about that, though. The heat and the THIRTY minute walk were more likely to be the culprit of our demise.

After arriving at the site, we were in for more treats. First, they overcharged us. I guess that’s what the ‘Special Rates’ for tourists were all about. Then, the lack of shade and water always leads to a good time. I guess if they have to bury you in one of the models, you won’t go home and complain about it.

When we asked about the bus stop to go home, they said the closest one was up the road. I didn’t ask them how far it was, since I already knew that it was FOURTY-FIVE minutes up the steeply inclined road. They did, however, give me a telephone number for a taxi which would charge me at least 140 Shekels to go back. They, however, wouldn’t actually make the phone call for us; that was our problem.

Luckily we met some people whom we barely knew and they procured a ride with their tour bus which was organized by Yeshiva Ohr Samayach. They graciously offered to take us back to Yerushalayim.

As a bonus, they stopped at a beautiful lookout on Har Adar, a few kilometers west of Jerusalem. The view, especially from on top of the monument, was stunning.

You just never know how things are going to work out, sometimes.

2006-04-28T18:12:00.000-04:00

A Day on the Road with Irwin, Part Deux

On Monday the third day of Chol Hamoed, or the fourth, whatever may be your preference, we were off to Kever Rachel, not through the heart of Beit Lechem through Derech Beit Lechem, on what is now known as Arafat road, but rather through a circuitous route next to the security fence.

After driving along the fence we reach an opening next to the Kever, where the fence is opened to let the bus through. In previous years it was more than disheartening to go directly through the Machson to Beit Lechem, but this roundabout way was pitiful.

Afterwards, we passed through Beitar, Efrat and Bat Ayin. Continuing on, we went to Britannia Park where we viewed the site of the battle between Goliath and Dovid Hamelech.

Further along, we headed to the Bar Kochva caves and crawled through a few of them. Following that, we walked through vineyards with ever so tiny grapes growing on the vine.

The day ended at the concert in Chevron with thousands of people singing, dancing and praying at the Meorath Hamachpailah; particularly noticeable were the many who were able to Daven at the shrine for Yitzchak Avinu which is only opened for Jews 10 days a year.

It was thrilling to walk through the streets of Chevron with so many people. If only everyday would be like this one.

2006-04-28T18:05:00.000-04:00

A Day on the Road with Irwin, Part One

Irwin Borvick of One Israel Fund sure knows how to show people a good time, even on a damp, rainy and cold Sunday Chol Hamoed.

First off, somewhere past a remote army base on the turn off away from the Dead Sea, our bus crossed through a military fence and went east towards the Jordan River.

About 20 feet from the river there is a lookout where you can see the river. You can actually go up to the river as well. Looking over the width of the river, which can’t be more than 50 feet across, you can see a Jordanian guard next to a Jordanian flag standing at the other bank.

He is “guarding” a bunch of tourists who had come from the opposite direction. There were at least 50 tourists waving to us from the other side. They were probably there because it was Easter Sunday and there was a large church on the other side of the bank.

The significance of this particular location was that we were probably within a kilometer of the very spot where the Jews crossed the Yarden coming into Eretz Yisrael.

We next headed to Ainot Kedem near No’omi and Yitav; not that this bit of geographical information would help you find it.

We took a non-existent road to this Yishuv, its population consisting, of basically one family with their baby and a bunch of young adult volunteers helping them out. They were surrounded by Arabs but felt quite comfortable minding their animals and their crops. It looked pretty calm and peaceful to me, whatever that’s worth.

Continuing on, we took the Alon Road and went to Bal Khatsor, the fourth highest peak in Israel and even on that overcast day we could see the towers of Tel Aviv. Our guide, Era Rappaport told us that on a clear day we would also be able to see the Jordan valley, Gush Etzion and the Golan. Seems like a good spot to give to the Palestinians. Why not? They can then target all those locations with a hand held missile.

Next we were off to Shilo for Mincha, coming in through the back way passing Adai Ad, Achia and Shvut Rachel. Who knows how much longer these places will still be in existence.

After Mincha, we headed up to Har Grizim and viewed the remnants of Kever Yosef, Har Eival, Shechem, Elon Moreh and Itamar, the entire view seen from a balcony over the archaeological remains of the Shomronim “Beit Hamikdash.”

Afterwards, we headed into the town where their “Kohanim” were burning “Noser” from their “Korban Pesach” which for whatever reason, they did two days before Pesach. Well I guess that fits in well with their Mezuzoth which are engraved over the Lintels of their homes, written in old Hebrew and Aramaic lettering. Era said that the writings were something different from the Arba Parshiyoth, but I wouldn’t have known the difference.

Finally, we went up to Itamar and took a last look at an area that may not be with us much longer. Overall, it was a glorious day but we left with apprehension of a tragedy in the making.

2006-04-28T17:48:00.000-04:00

Waiting in the Hotel Lobby

I had hoped to meet some friends on Shabbos Chol Hamoed but I fell asleep sitting on a couch in the Dan Panorama hotel. When I awoke, sitting nearby were an elderly couple from Tel Aviv.

In my broken Hebrew and their broken English, we were trying to have a conversation.

After an hour and a half, I learned that the gentleman had fought in Italy in the Jewish Brigade of the English Army, had fought in the War of Independence and helped liberate and retrain countless number of Jews who survived the Holocaust.

I was taken on a world wind tour of Jewish History at the dawn of the creation of the State of Israel. Reliving history through the spoken words of someone who was there sure beats second hand tales.

In some small way, I guess that’s what reliving Yitzias Mitzrayim is all about.

2006-04-28T17:45:00.000-04:00

And a Walking We Will Go

They say that every Arba Amos one walks in Eretz Yisroel is another mitzvah.

No one, however, had in the mind the types of walks we were making.

For example, just on Erev Shabbos after the Sedorim, we walked 45 minutes up the hills of Yerushalayim to Derech Chevron in Talpiyot for our second Yom Tov meal; then it was another 45 minutes up to the hotels on Keren Hayasod; then it was 45 minutes down to the Kotel; then it was another 45 minutes back to the hotels; then after the Shabbos evening meal on Rechov Linkolin, otherwise know as Abraham Lincoln street, it was a half hour back to Katamon.

Did I forget to mention the hours of standing at the Kotel and just waiting and talking to people along the way? How about the 90 degree weather which came along with the Sharav or Chamsin or whatever you want to call it?

No need to make you jealous, though.

Sigh! I miss it already.

2006-04-28T17:44:00.000-04:00

Sedorim in Israel

The title of this blog is actually an oxymoron.

Why is it necessary to have more than one Seder? I won’t bother you with the Halachik ramifications but I will regale you with tidbits from the joyous occasions.

At the first Seder there were approximately 15 people; some from Queens, some from Philadelphia, others from elsewhere around the USA, all now living in Israel. In addition, there were people of course from Israel. Moreover, to my right were Hungarians and to my left were two twenty-something girls from Poland, reading from their Polish-Hebrew Haggaddahs.

And as different as everyone was, we were actually all the same. Everyone read from their Haggaddahs and spoke a bit of their own slavery and their own liberation. It was a moving experience.

The second Seder was an all-English affair. Most of the 19 people in attendance were from Great Britain. The Ma Nishtana, however, was read in French, Italian, Dutch and, I believe, even in Japanese, though you could have fooled me. The rest of the Haggaddah was read in Ashkenazi Hebrew with instructions in an Oberlander German – Ashkenazi Yiddish.

All in all, two wonderful evenings spent with wonderful people. Leshana Haba’a Berushalayim Habnuya.

2006-04-12T08:43:00.000-04:00

A Paraphrase of a Quote from George Costanza: 'I Smell More Manure.'

Another Odious Fragrance From Our Friends In Europe

Take a gander at this article:

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/gross200604111311.asp

April 11, 2006, 1:11 p.m.

Football Killing FieldsOutrage and disbelief as world soccer body condemns Israel, not Hamas.

By Tom Gross

Israel is used to being singled out for unjust criticism and subjected to startling double standards by the United Nations, the European Union, much of the Western media and numerous academic bodies. But now FIFA — the supposedly nonpolitical organization that governs the world's most popular sport, soccer — is getting in on the act as well.

FIFA has condemned Israel for an air strike on an empty soccer field in the Gaza Strip that was used for training exercises by Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. This strike did not cause any injuries. But at the same time FIFA has refused to condemn a Palestinian rocket attack on an Israeli soccer field last week which did cause injuries.

With the soccer World Cup, which takes place only once every four years, just weeks away, it is a time of mounting emotion for the hundreds of millions of people across the globe who passionately follow the game.

As FIFA meets in the next few days to decide what action to take against Israel, the double standards involved could not be more obvious. Up to now FIFA, which sees itself as a purely sporting body, has gone out of its way to avoid politics, and has refrained from criticizing even the most appalling human-rights abuses connected to soccer players and stadiums.

NOT A WORD ABOUT SADDAM AND THE TALIBAN

When Saddam Hussein's son Uday had Iraqi soccer players tortured in 1997 after they failed to qualify for the 1998 FIFA World Cup Finals in France, FIFA remained silent. Uday, who was chairman of the Iraqi soccer association, had star players tortured again in 1998. And in 2000, following a quarterfinal defeat in the Asia Cup, three Iraqi players were whipped and beaten for three days by Uday's bodyguards. The torture took place at the Iraqi Olympic Committee headquarters, but FIFA said nothing.

Again, FIFA simply looked the other way while the Taliban used U.N.-funded soccer fields to slaughter and flog hundreds of innocent people who had supposedly violated sharia law in front of crowds of thousands chanting "God is great." (Afghan soccer coach Habib Ullahniazi said that as many as 30 people were executed in the middle of the field during the intermissions of a single soccer match at Kabul's Ghazi Stadium.)

FIFA equally failed to speak out when soccer stadiums in Argentina were turned into jails.

AND CHILE AND CHECHNYA

FIFA's silence was no less deafening when, according to the International Red Cross, about 7,000 prisoners were detained (and some tortured) in Chile's national soccer stadium after Augusto Pinochet seized power in 1973.

Nor did the organization threaten Russia with sanctions after Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov was murdered by a bomb explosion at Grozny's Dynamo stadium.

As for the Middle East, FIFA refused to criticize the decision to name a Palestinian soccer tournament after a suicide terrorist who murdered 31 people at a Passover celebration at the Park Hotel in Netanya in 2002. (At the tournament, organized under Yasser Arafat's auspices in 2003, the brother of the suicide bomber was given the honorary role of distributing the trophies to the winning team.)

FIFA also failed to condemn the suicide bomb at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa in October 2003 which injured three officials from the leading Israeli soccer team Maccabi Haifa.

ISRAEL IS DIFFERENT...

But then last week, FIFA finally found a target worthy of its outrage, and leapt into action. That target was Israel.

The international governing body for soccer condemned the Jewish state, and announced that it was considering possible action over the Israeli air strike last week on the Gaza soccer field that had been used for terrorist training exercises. The field, which had also reportedly served as a missile launching pad, was empty at the time; the strike itself came in response to the continuing barrage of Qassam rocket attacks directed at Israeli towns and villages.

Only a couple of days earlier, one of those Qassam rockets landed on a soccer field at the Karmiya kibbutz in southern Israel, causing light injuries to one person. Several other Israeli children and adults needed to be treated for shock. The attack was claimed by the Al-Quds brigades, an armed wing of Islamic Jihad. The soccer pitch is regularly used by children and it was only a matter of luck that there were not greater injuries. (Since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza last year, several members of the kibbutz, including a ten-month-old baby, have been wounded after their homes took direct hits from Qassams. Israelis elsewhere have died after being hit by these weapons.)

... BUT NOT QASSAM ROCKETS

In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Jerome Champagne, FIFA's deputy general secretary, who had personally condemned the attack on the Palestinian soccer pitch, refused to extend a similar condemnation to the attack on the Israeli pitch.

Champagne said he had discussed the matter with FIFA president Sepp Blatter and that a decision on what action to take against Israel would be announced soon. Champagne, a French national, also sent an official letter to the Israeli ambassador to Switzerland. (FIFA is based in Zurich.)

A FIFA condemnation of Israel is no small matter. The incredible passions that soccer arouses in most countries around the globe seem to have few boundaries. For example, it was said that the only time the guns fell silent during the Lebanese civil war was during the 1982 World Cup matches.

Individual Israelis, outraged by FIFA's blatantly one-sided decision, have been sending e-mails to FIFA asking why "they care more about the grass on an empty soccer pitch than the human lives saved by strikes on the Qassam launching pads."

ANTI-SEMITIC BANNERS AND CHANTS

They have also asked where FIFA is when anti-Semitic banners go up in European soccer stadiums, and there are chants from spectators about sending Jews to the gas? And where, they wonder, are the FIFA sanctions against the Arab or Asian countries that refuse to allow Israel to compete in Asia?

Other questions have been raised, too — why, for instance, FIFA has moved games from Israel because guest teams were afraid to come to Israel, but has never banned any other national teams from playing home games on account of local Islamic violence. Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey were allowed to continue playing matches at home.

In response to some of this criticism Champagne — perhaps unaware of the phenomena of some radical Jews being at the forefront of whipping up hate against the Jewish state — wrote to the Jerusalem Post saying he couldn't possibly be biased against Israel because his wife was Jewish.

AP FAILS TO MENTION QASSAM ATTACK

In its widely circulated report on the FIFA condemnation of Israel, the Associated Press also failed to mention the Qassam rocket attack on the Israeli soccer pitch. As a result, and not for the first time, AP gave its readers around the globe an unbalanced impression of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The popularity of soccer ensured AP's story was used by dozens of news outlets — among others, Al-Jazeera, CBC News of Canada, and the Los Angeles Times. Only the Israeli press mentioned the Qassam attack on the kibbutz Karmiya soccer pitch, an attack which the Islamic Jihad website admits to carrying out.

"WE ARE NOT IN POLITICS"

The outrage felt in soccer-mad Israel at these astonishing double standards is all the greater since FIFA president Sepp Blatter has made it clear that FIFA should not become involved in politics. Following calls last December from German politicians that Iran should be banned from participating in the forthcoming World Cup (which starts in Germany on June 9, 2006) because of repeated Holocaust denial by the Iranian president, Blatter said "We're not going to enter into any political declarations. We in football, if we entered into such discussions, then it would be against our statutes. We are not in politics."

Indeed so emboldened does Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad now feel by FIFA's support that he announced last week that he will likely attend Iran's opening match against Mexico in Nuremberg on June 11. Holocaust denial is a serious crime punishable by a prison term of up to five years in Germany, but Ahmadinejad no doubt feels that powerful international bodies like FIFA will protect him.

A BLIND EYE TO DUBAI

Meanwhile FIFA (and other sporting bodies) continually turn a blind eye to boycotts of Israeli sportsmen.

In February, Tal Ben Haim — the Israeli national soccer team captain, who plays his club soccer for the English Premiership team Bolton Wanderers — was banned from joining his Bolton teammates for their training matches in Dubai. FIFA pointedly ignored this. So did Bolton despite the fact that the team claims to be among the leaders of the campaign to "Kick racism out of football" in the U.K.

Only last week, another English club, West Ham, left their two Israeli players, Yossi Benayoun and Yaniv Katan, at home when they went to Dubai. FIFA naturally had nothing to say.
Whilst Israel is often slandered as an "apartheid state," (despite having several Arabs playing in its national team), Dubai has received no criticism for what appears to be a clear "apartheid" policy.

Indeed, were Israel allowed to compete against other Asian teams for a World Cup berth, rather than against the likes of England and France, the relatively strong Israeli team would most probably have been able to qualify for this year's World Cup.

RONALDINHO AIDS TERROR VICTIMS

Not all is rotten in world soccer. Some individuals still seem to know right from wrong. Last week, Ronaldinho, the Brazilian superstar widely regarded as the best current player in the world, donated signed footballs and shirts to Israeli child suicide bomb survivors, saying he hoped his gifts would "warm the hearts of the children who have suffered so much."

But FIFA, meanwhile, apparently thinks it is acceptable for Palestinian terror groups to continue targeting such Israeli children, firing missiles from the Gaza Strip, even though Israel has left the area.

— Tom Gross is the former Jerusalem correspondent for the London Sunday Telegraph and New York Daily News. Among his previous pieces for NRO is "Jeningrad".)

2006-04-11T11:35:00.000-04:00

Ridiculous Israeli Politics

MK Uri Ariel of the National Union-National Religious Party called for the dismissal of Tzippy Livni, Israel’s Foreign Minister.

Ariel made the announcement after Livni appeared on ABC’s Nightline where during her interview she said that actions against civilian targets are deemed as terrorist actions while those against military targets are not.

I am no fan of Kadima but Livni, who is high up on the Kadima party list, is undeserving of such called-for dismissal.

I saw the interview on Nightline and Livni made it quite clear that actions against military targets are not to be tolerated by any Israeli government. In essence, she was saying that Israel is at war and will defend itself. She is not saying that Hamas or the Al aqsa Brigade of the PLO are not terrorist organizations. As long as they go after civilian targets, they are.

If terrorism is not defined, then Israel is a terrorist entity; as many leftists define it.
Further, real terrorists become "freedom fighters."

I’m tired of Menachem Begin being called a terrorist because the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel. For all those who believe in revisionist history, wake up and smell the coffee. It was a military target!

Moreover, why is the "crisis" being brought up weeks after this interview was broadcast? Whatever Kadima plans with their unilateral engagement is a matter left to debate. What Tzippy Livni did in this matter, is, at worst, of minor consequence and, at best, the beginning of a redefinition of term being bandied about too vociferously.

2006-04-11T09:24:00.000-04:00

Rakevet, Rakevet --- Holchim al Harakevet - Autobusim, Gam Kein

I took a ride on the Israeli Railroad System.

I thought I was in Europe.

It was clean, timely and fast.

As you ride from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv you can see in the distance the tracks, tunnels and bridges being laid for the Modi’in – Tel Aviv route. You can see other construction as well. There are new roads and byways being built in and around Jerusalem.

Some roads have already been completed, to a major extent. I took the bus from Jerusalem to Tiberias. It went along route 6, the central Israeli toll highway. On your left are Israeli fields. On your right are fields as well. But many times the view is blocked by the security wall. But really, do I need to see Tulkarem so badly.

Using route 6, the ride only took two hours and 15 minutes, and that was with traffic and stops.

The train ride from Tel Aviv took little more than an hour. On the way back to Jerusalem we stopped in Tel Aviv’s Hashalom station. It connects right into the Azrieli shopping mall. You don’t even have to be checked by security since we were already checked when we entered the train station. The same holds true when we left leave the mall to enter the station.

I can’t wait for the light rail system in Jerusalem; It should be a lot of fun. But I guess I’ll have to. It’s not due for completion until 2008-2009 and even that’s not fixed in stone. For those in Israel who know what it is to wait, have Savlanut, have patience. Remember Ben Gurion 2000, the new Airport terminal, was not ready until the end of 2004.

Shucks; they never changed the name.

2006-04-11T09:22:00.000-04:00

Ain Chadash Tachas Hashamesh, Part Deux

Friday Night I was invited out and one of the other guests was a former Paleontologist. No, it wasn’t David Schwimmer. We were discussing the age of the world. ( Please don’t ban this blog, just yet.)

He noted something of minor interest. I had mentioned that the Tiferes Yisroel in a Drasha printed in the back of early editions of the Yachin and Boaz Mishnayos, but now deleted from new editions, stated that according to Kabbalah we are in the third reincarnation of the earth. Further according to scientific data at that time, in the 19th century, there was a theory that if you dig into the earth you will find three layers accounting for prehistoric times.

The Paleontologist suggested that this theory is no longer extant.

However, the current scientific evidence accounts for six eras, which "coincidentally" may account for the 6 days of creation.

Interestingly enough, there are minority opinions which discount the age of the earth as being 5,766 years. Rather those years correspond to the age of modern man, being Homo sapien sapien, which dates back approximately 10.000 years according to current scientific data. Further, the Torah begins with Adam Harishon because he is the first man and Chavah is the first woman who Hashem communicates with and we all come from them.

Unfortunately, as the case may be today, whereby no Gadol is really willing to publicly expound on this issue, possibly because of the apprehension that there could be all kinds of repercussions, the same may be said to some extent regarding the more superior Gadolim of the past.

Oh well, just another thought provoking Shabbos meal in Katamon.

2006-04-10T02:09:00.000-04:00

Ain Chadash Tachas Hashamesh

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin spoke on Motzei Shabbat at Jeshurun Synagogue in Jerusalem and delivered his Shabbos Hagadol Drasha.

In essence it connected the Pesach Seder to the failure of religious Zionism.

At the Seder we relate the story of the Exodus. We are to relate the story as if we were experiencing it . How can we do that? The best way to tell a good story is to "act it out." Doing so makes the experience come alive as it should because we were there.

How were we there? We were there because our family was there; our immediate family, our distant family, all of the Jewish people.

( On a side note, this can best be explained from a shiur I heard last week from Rabbi Paysach Krohn who told the story of I believe Rabbi Shimon Schwab though I could be mistaken, who as a child contracted whooping cough and was told to inhale water vapor from hot water as a remedy. When he was leaning over the pot of water, some one bumped into him knocking the scalding water over his arm burning it severely. It eventually healed. Skin cells regenerate approximately every 120 days though it took over a year before his arm looked as it did before. When someone asked Rav Schwab, how is it possible for us to experience Yetzias Mitzrayim as if we were there, he answered with a question. is Is his arm not the same arm as it was before the accident? Skin regenerates and people regenerate, but they are one and the same. We don’t say that this is a new arm. It is the same arm that was there when the scalding water burnt it. So too, the Jewish People of today are the same ones who went out of Egypt.)

So who are we to relive the Exodus? Originally we celebrated the first Seder before we were redeemed, prior to Chatzos, prior to Macas Bechoros. Why were we celebration an act that had not taken place? Because we were optimistic and believed that G-d would redeem us. So now as well, when we sit at the Pesach Seder, we should have trust in Hashem that things will be for the best and he will redeem us with the Final Geulah.

But what’s taking so long? We are required to believe that this can happen any moment. Yet we sit and wait for 2000 years. Well if we are an extension of our previous selves and we are one big family, then still in all we’re certainly not a happy family.

In Israel, polls recently taken showed that approximately two thirds of the people hate the settlers more than anyone else. The Palestinians came in at a distant second. Amongst the Chilunim, a substantial number actually love the Palestinians. Israel was one of the first nations to give aid to Moslem countries during earthquakes, Tsunamis and wars.

What’s going on here? Is it V’ahavta Leraiacha Komacha, in reverse? Not exactly.There are minority opinions that R’ Akiva explained the phrase as loving all people as yourself. So are the Chilunim actually frum? Nope! Rather it is the failure of the religious Jews, L’ahavta the Chilunim or even others whom they perceive as less frum than themselves, Komachem, who are failing at this Mitzvah.

Can anyone find shuls other than of the egalitarianism types that open their doors to others without trying to be Mekarev them? Almost none.

Yet all is not lost. Recently an invitation went out to Chilunim and all types of Jews to come to Kol Nidrei and Neilah services which would last exactly 75 minutes, ending in a timely manner, with no obligations upon the participants; just come as you are. Rabbi Riskin said that for a beginning it was a great success.

Maybe, we can have a bit more tolerance. Maybe we can say Kol Dichpin Yeisaii Veyaichol as if we mean it.

2006-04-06T03:23:00.000-04:00

Psst! My Name is Arnie, Can You Do Me a Favor?

Dateline Jerusalem Thursday April 5, 2006 10:30 AM

Usually when you go into a shul and someone comes around collecting for Tzedakah, people have to ask for change. When the person collecting the monies can’t supply the change, both parties are a little despondent.

That’s not the way things turned out for me on my first day back in Jerusalem.

At the Shtibblach Minyan in Katamon, the happy-go-lucky Gabbai, (at least that’s the way he always appears to me) who goes by the name of Arnie, asks me to do him a favor. He wants to give me change. The more change he can give me, the better.

Unlike black-market change places, he wants to give me American small change for American large bills.

I told him I only had twenties, so he gladly hands me twenty singles for a twenty dollar bill.

Now I can give out my shliach Mitzvah Gelt in smaller denominations. Who exactly did whom the favor?

Life in Aretz, don’t you just love it.

2006-04-03T21:54:00.000-04:00

Ye of Little Faith

There are way too many blogs out there covering the same old things, among them my own. But there is one out there that is beginning to disturb me a great deal.

It is one of the many, written by articulate individuals, but one of the few that has a large following.

What disturbs me is that it is written by a very knowledgeable fellow and that its audience is drawn from both the left and the right, sometimes from the fringe of these communities.

This normally would not be of any consequence except that I find the comments to be highly influential and possibly heretical.

The author of the blog asserts that he is left wing modern orthodox and that he is a rationalist with regard too Yahadus.

He claims that there is room for agnostics within orthodoxy and that half, if not most, of the modern orthodox are conservadox orthopraxers with ideology not nearly as important as the practice of Halacha, though that practice is lax.

Further, the belief of the thirteen principles of faith is of little relevance, so long as one believes in G-d.

I beg to differ. Without a doubt, most of the Rationalists within orthodox Jewish philosophy, have always stressed belief as part and parcel of their rationalist thought.

Many have felt that failure to observe most principles of faith borders on heresy.

In days of old, the Jewish people have faced trials and tribulations from within.

Whether it was Korach and the Eirav Rav, the ten tribes, Hellenists, the Maccabees, the Tzidoikkim, the Essenes, the Karaites, Sabbetaianism, the Hasidic movement, the Haskalah, the Reform movement, the Conservative movement, Chabad Messianism or the Kabbalah movement, who all sought change, traditional Jewry still withstood the test of time.

Yet many of these groups posed a danger and that danger sometimes originated in rational skepticism.

Without rationalism, it can be difficult to function, to understand our world.

But without faith, we can easily fall down that slippery slope and take many others along to that calamitous precipice.

---- Something to think about it, in that twilight zone of the blog world.

2006-04-01T22:47:00.000-05:00

Try As We Might, Sometimes We Just Can’t Get It Right

Dr. S.Z. Leiman, in his shabbos shiur today, reiterated the mistakes people so often make when quoting others.

David Ellenson, in two separate works on R’ Ezriel Hildesheimer, mentioned that R’ Hildesheimer, in one of his teshuvoth, (Shailoth u’teshuvoth R’ Ezriel Hildesheimer, volume A, Siman 238) accused Zacharias Frankel of being an apostate.

This was repeated in a volume of Tradition in 1992 and most recently by Dr. Marc Shapiro of Scranton University in “Saul Lieberman and the Orthodox."

Being a subscriber to Tradition and having read two of Dr. Shapiro’s works, I have no doubt, that this error as espoused by Dr. Leiman, was based on Ellenson’s misrepresentation or, at best, misunderstanding of R’Hildesheimer’s works or character.

Dr. Leiman pointed out that R’ Hildesheimer, though he disagreed with Frankel, always had great reverence for Frankel, both while Frankel was alive and posthumously.

Ellenson, on the other hand, who is president of Hebrew Union College, has an agenda against the Orthodox.

Ellenson (in Tradition in Transition – The Orthodox Rabbinate and Apostasy pg. 171) stated:

…”Frankel’s rejection of these views and his insistence that Jewish law had developed over time were sufficient to allow Hildesheimer to label him a meshummad [an apostate]. Frankel, as a non-orthodox Jew in matter of belief, had, in the eyes of the Orthodox, somehow stepped beyond the boundaries of the Jewish religious community. As late as 1873 an Orthodox leader thus felt constrained to utilize a term of apostasy to describe the leader of another Jewish religious viewpoint. Hildesheimer’s use of meshummad to characterize Frankel is a direct result of the legacy he received from his medieval rabbinic forebears on this issue. As such it reveals the limitations inherent in this approach, even from the perspective of Hildesheimer, in the changed circumstances of the nineteenth century.”

What was only revealed, however, was Ellenson’s bias. After Dr. Leiman reviewed the Teshuva, it became quite clear that R’ Hidesheimer was referring to another Frankel who had written a book in German and was by his own admittance an apostate.

In a volume by Wolfgang Ber Frankel aka Binyamin Yissacher Halevi Frankel, (his name, prior to his conversion to Christianity), this other Frankel wrote a volume which spelled out the Tetragammon throughout the book in German.

The question before R’ Hildesheimer was whether the book should be put into a Genizah because of the use of G-d’s holy name.

R’ Hildesheimer’s response was that we can be lenient with such a book since it was not written with any holy intentions, and possibly in part because this fellow was a meshummad, and because of its content, that it actually should be burned.

Well it just goes to show you. We can’t get it right all the time.

Maybe next time I’ll just email Amiel Hirsch and Yosef Reinman.

Maybe they can clear up what is the necessary criterion to become a real meshummad.

2006-03-31T00:31:00.000-05:00

As the World Turns… --- What Were They Thinking!

The Polish Government has put in for a name change. They want to change the name of Auschwitz to something else because they feel people are assuming that it was a Polish death camp and not a German one.

It’s really a shame that some might make such a ‘mistake.’ There were so many good Poles during the war who had no knowledge of a death camp in their backyard.

Crematoriums? What crematoriums? Odor? What odor?

G-d forbid, we should incriminate the Polish people. Hitler exterminated the Jews all by himself.

Shhhhh! Let’s just change the name. Know one will know. It'll be our secret.

2006-03-30T13:10:00.000-05:00

Where are the Gedolim?

Paysach Krohn recently gave a speech regarding the Haggaddah where he mentioned how administrations, teachers and Rebaiim tend to give up on children.

Today I came across 2 excellent articles in reference to the continuous notion of the “in doubt throw it out” attitude of our Yeshivoth whereby kids are constantly being put at risk to an exclusionary policy or to the sword of Damocles of expulsion and as a consequence thereof, at risk in the world at large.

http://jschick.blogspot.com/

http://www.mschick.blogspot.com/

The problem seems to be more prevalent in the Chareidi world yet Rabbi Krohn who is a member of that world mentioned the story of Rav Shwadron who was a frequent visitor to the Krohn home.

Rav Shwadron had come for Pesach Seder shortly after Rabbi Krohn’s father had passed away. During the Seder, Rabbi Krohn was hurrying the Seder along, preventing his children from asking too many questions or from describing at length what they new about the Haggaddah story.

Rav Shwadron had warned Rabbi Krohn to stop rushing. Eventually Rabbi Krohn let the Seder drag out until the wee hours of the night.

Now Rabbi Krohn wished the Seder had ended earlier because he knew that Rav Shwadron, who lived in Eretz Yisroel, had only one Seder obligation and Rav Shwadron had told Rabbi Krohn in the past that he always ate the Afikoman before Chatzos.

After the Seder, Rabbi Krohn explained to Rav Shwadron that this was the very reason he was rushing the kids to finish.

To paraphrase Rav Shwadron, “G-d forbid that my need to eat the Afikoman should outweigh the needs of your mother. Your mother is an Almonah. She waits the entire year to hear her children and grandchildren and to have Nachas from them. That is her joy. Eating the Afikoman by Chatzos is at best a D’rabanon. Looking after the needs of an Almonah is a D’oraisah!”

If only all of us could have our priorities as straight.

The latest news regarding the Yeshiva system is the latest ignominy in failing to prioritize properly. Morality is now at a new low, part of our morose existence. Rav Shwadron, z”tl has left us, as have many of the Gedolim. Is there no one to step forward?

2006-03-28T21:39:00.000-05:00

A Quote from George Costanza: “Manure, Don’t You Just Love the Way It Sounds – the Way It Rolls off of the Tongue”

A good friend of mine pointed out an article that has been making its way around the internet.

The article appears on the London Review of Books website.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html

Don’t rush out to buy the book.

The authors of the article theorize that Israel has been a poor ally of the US and that “the Lobby” has prevented any cogent debate on whether the U.S. should support Israel, to the extent that it does, based on its own interests. In addition, the authors advocate a debate, whether it is appropriate to support Israel based on moral grounds.

From my point of view, it’s true. There is an Israeli lobby with AIPAC acting in the forefront. As with any successful lobbyist, the more preparation, effort and ingenuity you put at your disposal, the more successful you’ll be. The same can be said for any enterprise.

Will one have moral questions while lobbying, especially when one is lobbying on behalf of a State that represents a people who have been on the verge of annihilation for the best 2000 years? Will one have moral questions when any move one makes may jeopardize the existence of those people not only in Israel but elsewhere around the world?

One is not a “de-facto agent for a foreign government” when one has these questions. One is just examining themselves in a ”dual containment” capacity by doing their job to the best of their ability and looking into their soul.

The Jewish people have always had a moral code to live by. Many times they fail in pursuing morality either by advocating their own personal notion of it or because as human beings they are only human.

But let’s not manipulate facts to show our own biased sense of history. Let the facts speak for themselves.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the British, with the Balfour Declaration, promised the Jewish people a State of their own. It would be on land that was part of a British Mandate, which had previously been in the hands of the Ottoman Empire, and previously under other governments, as far back as the Roman Empire who usurped the land from the Jewish people.

There were no Palestinians back then and there were none at the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. There were only Arabs who at best were tied together in a tribal manner, who had also been given states throughout Asia and Africa.

But that wasn’t enough. So after Israel declared its independence and the UN recognized Israel as a lawful state, the Arabs attacked en masse. They told other Arabs in the area to leave. They were ready to butcher the severely undermanned and under armed Israelis; to rape and pillage as they had done for a good number of years as is their wont.

They didn’t succeed. So as part of their modus operandi, they accused Israel of massacres that never happened; projection, what a concept.

But today, everything remains the same. The so-called Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world continue to cry about occupation when the rules of engagement of war permit the Israelis to remain where they are until a settlement of some type can be reached. That may never happen if the Israelis constantly face terrorism from their “peace partners.”

Despite living under this constant state of war and terror, Israel has always been a good ally of the US. For many years, it was the combat model for the US. America’s weapons were tested in many wars. Israel developed new and better weapons on that basis, with that technology shared with the US Government.

For many years Israel stood at the forefront of democracy against the former Soviet Union. Today, just as the US has taken the “war against terror” overseas and not had to fight it on US shores, Israel, though it is fighting for its own life on its shores, protects the US by having that war take place overseas.

The authors are also mistaken in comparing the war on America as a war on Israel and vice versa. Al-Qaida’s war has always been on western civilization and on the Arab states who allowed western personnel and morality on to their “holy” soil.

I could go on and on and debate many of the points in an article essentially based on fallacies, but I would be giving it too much credence by dignifying it as one worthy of debate.

Come to think of it, I'd rather not soil myself with any more manure.

2006-03-26T15:06:00.000-05:00

It’s the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine.

An ode by R.E.M. seems to be spinning in my head.

With the polls for the Israeli elections indicating a victory for Ehud Olmert and Kadima, Muslim rage continuing in Iraq and elsewhere, Hamas and Abu Abbas of the Palestinian Authority continuing political talks, the news regarding Iran’s proclivity in assuring their people that they will be the next evil-axis state to attain nuclear power has been put on the backburner.

The funny thing is that the Iranian Islamists are Shiites who are not Arabs and they wish to be the leaders of both the Sunni and Shiite Pan-Arab nationalist movement.

To Arab Sunni Islamists, Iranians are Zoroastrians. Shiites, including Arab ones, on the other hand, are heretics who must be "re-converted" or put to death.

Of course, that shouldn’t be surprising, with the current trial, in “liberal” Afghanistan, of the Muslim who became a Christian convert facing a possible death sentence. You know, it’s that moral Sharia law.

Well, as Amir Teheri so eloquently put it, everything will be fine as soon as Iran “destroys” Israel. Then Iran’s mortal enemies, i.e. the rest of the Arab world, can focus on destroying Iran. Wow; nuclear proliferation, what a concept!

But why worry about these mundane matters.

In a recent issue of New Scientist, two articles suggest the world really looks like it’s coming to an end.

In the article entitled “grudge match,” the ‘hockey stick’ theory is presented where global warming is presented as a graph whereby the last thousand years appear as the shaft of a hockey stick, with no increase in global warming, while the last few years are the blade of the hockey stick which points up and indicates massive global warming beginning now.

In the second article entitled “Nightmare in Manhattan”, a nightmare scenario is presented whereby a small nuclear device is detonated in New York City.

Oh well, we can still hum R.E. M. songs: ‘First We Take Manhattan…’

See the articles below:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg18925431.300.html

Nuclear nightmare in Manhattan

A truck pulls up in front of New York City's Grand Central Station, one of the most densely crowded spots in the world. It is a typical weekday afternoon, with over half a million people in the immediate area, working, shopping or just passing through. A few moments later the driver makes his delivery: a 10-kiloton atomic explosion.
Almost instantly, an electromagnetic pulse knocks out all electronics within a radius of 4 kilometres. The shock wave levels every building within a half-kilometre, killing everyone inside, and severely damages virtually all buildings for a kilometre in every direction. Detonation temperatures of millions of degrees ignite a firestorm that rapidly engulfs the area, generating winds of 600 kilometres an hour.
Within seconds, the blast, heat and direct exposure to radiation have killed several hundred thousand people. Perhaps they are the lucky ones. What follows is, if anything, even worse.
The explosion scoops out a crater 20 metres across and 10 metres deep, sending thousands of tonnes of highly radioactive debris into the air as a cloud of dust. What goes up must come down, and radioactive detritus starts piling up.
Within the first hour, enough fallout settles to fatally irradiate tens of thousands of people in the immediate area. Even 20 kilometres downwind, the majority of people caught in the path of the plume are exposed to life-threatening levels of radioactivity. Anyone less than 30 kilometres downwind will need to get out or find shelter, fast. For 150 kilometres or more downwind of the blast, dangerous amounts of fallout continue to drizzle down.
This nightmare scenario is one the US government is taking seriously. In the past two years alone, it has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to dealing with the aftermath of an act of urban nuclear terrorism, or a 9/11-style attack on a nuclear plant.
Making a bomb is not as difficult as you might imagine. The "gun-type" atomic weapon akin to the one dropped on Hiroshima is essentially a matter of shooting one piece of highly enriched uranium into another. Princeton University physicist Frank von Hippel, in a New York Times interview not long after 9/11, estimated that simply dropping a 45-kilogram lump of weapons-grade uranium onto a second piece of a similar size from a height of about 1.8 metres could produce a blast of 5 to 10 kilotons - that is, the explosive force of 5000 to 10,000 tons of TNT. With enough highly enriched uranium in the world to make hundreds of thousands of such weapons, and frequent reports of nuclear material being stolen from the former Soviet Union, it is far from unthinkable that terrorists could get their hands on enough to make a bomb.
In 2004, a US government-funded working group published an estimate of the number of radiation casualties that would follow a 10-kiloton detonation in a mid-sized city of 2 million, the size of Washington DC (Annals of Internal Medicine, vol 140, p 1037). The numbers make for sobering reading: 13,000 killed immediately; 45,000 facing certain death regardless of treatment; 255,000 at risk of dying without hospital treatment; and a further 140,000 in need of observation. Even a 1-kiloton explosion, from a smaller device or an imperfectly executed detonation, would produce perhaps a third to a half that number of radiation casualties, according to group member Jamie Waselenko of the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville, Tennessee.
It is the quarter of a million lives that could be saved that are exercising the minds of US policymakers. All of those casualties will be suffering from acute radiation syndrome, otherwise known as radiation sickness. All are potential survivors, but at present there would be little that doctors could do for them.
Most of what is known about radiation sickness comes from animal studies and accidents, and from medical records from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The syndrome is a collection of symptoms that get progressively worse with increasing exposures. The simplest measure of exposure is a unit called a gray - the number of joules of radiation energy absorbed per kilogram of tissue.

Walking dead

Any exposure above 2 grays or so is deadly serious. People irradiated to this level or higher quickly get sick, then get better again. However, this "latent phase" is only temporary. Some time later, from a few days to a month, they fall ill again, and often die. Not surprisingly, the more radiation you absorb, the more organs are involved, the quicker the immediate symptoms come on and the shorter the latent phase.
The body's most susceptible vital tissue is the bone marrow, specifically the stem cells within it that give rise to new blood cells. These are impaired at doses as low as half a gray and are usually wiped out completely and permanently above 5 grays. When the stem cells die, blood-cell counts - most critically those of neutrophils and platelets - start to drop, eventually plunging to zero after days or weeks. Without neutrophils, the first-responders of the immune system, radiation victims are at high risk of opportunistic infections. Losing platelets is also seriously bad news: without them blood cannot clot, leading to potentially fatal bleeding from even the smallest wound.
Upwards of 5 grays, the gastrointestinal tract is also affected. Radiation kills any rapidly dividing cells, such as the ones lining the intestinal tract. The resulting damage can cause gut bacteria to leak into the bloodstream, where they overwhelm the already compromised immune system and cause septic shock. At exposures above 10 grays, the central nervous system is damaged too, and death is certain, with or without treatment.
The standard treatment for radiation syndrome is "supportive care": blood and platelet transfusions, antimicrobials, fluids, anti-emetics and other "comfort measures". These treatments are better than nothing but are often not enough, and would be extremely difficult to deliver on a mass scale in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. Which means that despite receiving technically survivable doses of radiation, a large proportion of those 255,000 people will die.
The US government is determined to shift the odds in their favour. "What we're aiming to do is to be able to treat every casualty," says Norm Coleman of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, who has been helping the Department of Health and Human Services plan its response to a nuclear attack.
The government is putting its money where its mouth is. In 2005 it awarded a total of $47 million to several groups of radiation researchers, including $29 million to the newly formed Centers for Medical Countermeasures against Radiation (CMCR). Their mission is to gain a better understanding of the biology of radiation damage, find faster ways of diagnosing radiation exposure levels, and discover better drugs. In July 2004 President Bush signed the Bioshield Act into law, committing $5.6 billion to counter nuclear, biological and chemical threats. And late last year, the government put out a call for companies to develop drugs that preserve and restore neutrophil counts in radiation syndrome, with secondary emphasis on platelets. So far no such drugs have been approved in the US, but there are candidates.
One obvious option is G-CSF (granulocyte colony-stimulating factor), a cytokine that stimulates the bone marrow to pump out new blood cells. Sold by Amgen of Thousand Oaks, California, to treat neutrophil loss caused by cancer therapy, G-CSF works by preventing the death of the bone-marrow precursor cells destined to become neutrophils, and by boosting their rate of proliferation.
G-CSF is not yet licensed for radiation sickness, but it has been used in 28 cases of accidental radiation exposure and boosted neutrophil counts in 25 of them (although many of the patients died anyway). The animal results also look good. In November, Tom MacVittie of the University of Maryland in Baltimore reported that G-CSF, in combination with supportive care, improved survival rates in irradiated dogs. The US government already has large amounts of G-CSF stored in a strategic national stockpile.
Even so, there are serious doubts over G-CSF's suitability for mass administration in the event of a nuclear terror attack. The drug is expensive, up to $400 per dose, and a patient would typically need daily doses for at least two weeks. It can't be left unrefrigerated for more than 24 hours. Worse still, although it has been given to thousands of cancer patients, side effects are common and can be severe, says Waselenko. Another Amgen cytokine, thrombopoietin (TPO), has shown promise in platelet deficiency, but has been ruled out as a radiation countermeasure because it sometimes causes life-threatening side effects.

Doctor's dilemma

Cytokines' adverse effects present doctors treating radiation syndrome with a dilemma. To save lives you need to treat everyone who might have been exposed, but diagnosing exposures with any real precision takes days, and you don't want to give a drug with potentially serious side effects to people who don't actually need it. One quick-and-dirty sign of serious exposure is nausea and vomiting. The trouble is that almost half of those with dangerous radiation exposure won't vomit, while large numbers of people who are merely traumatised will.
Compounding the problem is the fact that after a detonation, many people will probably be instructed to hunker down in a sheltered spot such as a large building until the fallout has diminished enough to make a dash for it. "These people are going to be several days from even being evaluated," says Waselenko. But you don't have days. G-CSF only works if started within a day or two of irradiation.
So the search is on for better drugs. An ideal radiation countermeasure would be effective, cheap, and easy to make and administer. It would have a long shelf life, minimal side effects if given to someone who turned out not to need it, and would still work even if administered days after exposure. One drug, a steroid called 5-androstenediol or 5-AED, seems to hit most of those targets.
5-AED is cheap, chemically stable and apparently very safe. Developed by Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals of La Jolla, California, as an adjunct to chemotherapy, 5-AED was identified as a radioprotectant by Mark Whitnall of the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1996. It is now being jointly developed as a radiation sickness drug by AFRRI and Hollis-Eden.
Last October, Hollis-Eden announced that in their clinical trial 5-AED significantly increased platelets and neutrophils, without adverse effects, in a group of non-irradiated human volunteers. And in a study led by haematologist Gerard Wagemaker of Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, reported at the annual meeting of the American Society for Hematology in Atlanta, Georgia, in December 2005, 5-AED significantly reduced symptoms in irradiated rhesus monkeys and accelerated the recovery of their neutrophils, platelets, red blood cells and all-important stem cells.
"This steroid exactly mimics the actions of [the platelet-stimulating cytokine] TPO and G-CSF combined - so far, the most effective combination of cytokines for radiation damage to the bone marrow," says Wagemaker.
Although 5-AED is AFRRI's most advanced and, to date, star performer, it's not perfect. Like G-CSF, you need to get it to people quickly: it has yet to be shown effective if used more than a couple of hours after exposure.
Whitnall's team is also looking at other compounds. They have identified some analogues of vitamin E that have mild radioprotective effects in rodents when given prior to irradiation. "At this point we don't really know how they work, though," admits Whitnall. A soybean isoflavone called genistein also appears to provide modest levels of radioprotection, with virtually no side effects. Another very early-stage option is based on stem cells (see "Saved by a cell").
Some other drugs are also racking up good results in mice. One agent, a protein isolated from a parasitic microbe, temporarily switches off cells' programmed suicide apparatus, according to Andre Gudkov, chief scientific officer of the agent's developer, Cleveland Biolabs of Cleveland, Ohio. Fewer self-destructing cells seems to translate into higher survival rates for irradiated mice. Another molecule, developed by Proteome Systems of Sydney, Australia, mimics the ability of two closely paired mitochondrial enzymes, superoxide dismutase and catalase, to scavenge for free radicals, and can also keep irradiated mice alive.
The drive to develop radiation countermeasures could have some everyday pay-offs. For one thing, drugs such as 5-AED might allow us to go back to nuclear power with more confidence. And as Wagemaker points out, ageing populations will become increasingly vulnerable to blood disorders, just as the supply of donors will be dropping. "It is expected that the number of platelet infusions that are needed will at least double in 10 years' time," he warns.
No one knows the real odds of a nuclear attack on a big city. Hopefully, the nightmare will never come true, but if it does, at least there may be a stash of lifesaving drugs waiting in the wings.

Bruce Goldman is a writer based in San Francisco

From issue 2543 of New Scientist magazine, 18 March 2006, page 36

Saved by a cell

Drugs are not the only option for treating people whose bone marrow has been badly damaged by radiation. Cellerant Therapeutics of San Carlos, California, is developing a therapy that is a halfway house between a bone-marrow transplant and a blood transfusion.
After the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, doctors attempted to give bone-marrow transplants to some lethally exposed firefighters. They had little success, in part because it takes weeks for an injection of bone-marrow stem cells to replenish a patient's white blood cells. Cellerant's approach relies on cells called progenitors, which are already part-way along the developmental path leading from stem cell to blood cell and so provide an almost instant supply of replacement blood cells.
Progenitor cells grow easily in the lab and can be frozen until needed. Once thawed and infused into a vein, they start producing neutrophils and other blood cells within a matter of days, and stick around in the body for about six weeks. By then the patient's own damaged bone marrow should be starting to bounce back. And unlike other treatments, progenitor cell therapy ought to work even if it is started several days after exposure.
Radiation biologists like Cellerant's approach. "It makes perfect sense," says Nicholas Dainiak of Yale University. It could also be used in conjunction with drugs such as 5-AED that stimulate the surviving bone marrow.
So will it work in practice? Mice whose bone marrow has been almost completely wiped out survive infections if given a single infusion. In 2007, Cellerant hopes to begin trials in cancer patients who need near-lethal doses of radiation and chemotherapy.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18925431.400.html

Climate: The great hockey stick debate

18 March 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Fred Pearce

It is a persuasive image. Dubbed "the hockey stick" soon after it was first drawn, the graph shows the average temperature over the past 1000 years. For the first 900 or so years there is little variation, like the shaft of an ice-hockey stick. Then, in the 20th century, comes a sharp rise like a hockey stick's blade. The graph seems proof at a glance that we are drastically altering the climate of our planet.
So it is not surprising that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chose to put the graph in the summary for policymakers in its 2001 report. Some of the scientists must have hoped that the image would become an icon of climate change.
An icon it has certainly become, but not always for the reasons those scientists hoped. For the sceptics who dispute that global warming is real, or say it's nothing to worry about, the graph was like a red rag to a bull. They made it the focus of their attacks, hoping that by demolishing the hockey stick graph they would destroy the credibility of climate scientists and the notion of global warming as a phenomenon caused by human activity.
In the minds of many people they have succeeded. The hockey stick graph is widely regarded as controversial, if not plain wrong. "The hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics," physicist Richard Muller wrote in Technology Review in 2004. Others have described it as rubbish or even as a downright fraud. So what's all the fuss about? And who should you believe?
The saga began in the late 1990s, when palaeoclimatologist Michael Mann, then at the University of Virginia, and his colleagues embarked on one of the first serious attempts to work out the average global temperature over the past millennium. Direct temperature measurements go back only as far as 1860, so to extend the record back in time they had to use indirect or "proxy" records of temperature, such as the annual rings of trees and isotopic ratios in corals, ice cores and lake sediments.
Such proxy records have been painstakingly assembled by thousands of researchers around the world, but their reliability varies and there are also regional biases. Many records come from temperate parts of Europe and North America, for instance, where scientists are plentiful and trees have clear annual rings; there are very few from the southern hemisphere.
Prior to 1998, attempts to reconstruct past temperatures had been based only on a handful of regional tree-ring records. Mann's team tried to build a more global and reliable picture by including as many proxies from as many different regions as possible. It was pioneering work. The first version of the hockey stick graph, showing average temperatures in the northern hemisphere going back to AD 1400, was published in Nature in 1998.
The following year the team extended the reconstruction back to AD 1000, relying on the few proxy records that go back this far. This 1999 version appeared in the 2001 IPCC report, and is the one to which the term "hockey stick graph" usually refers.
At the time, 1998 was the warmest year on record (now surpassed by 2005, according to NASA), so based partly on Mann's work, the IPCC summary stated that "it is likely that the 1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year during the past thousand years". That got headlines. And trouble - not least for the voluble, self-confident Mann. It was the start of a barrage of detailed questions and well-publicised attempted refutations. The hockey stick turned into an implement with which to beat climate scientists.
The debate has spread well beyond the scientific community. Republican senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who calls global warming a "hoax", has repeatedly attacked the hockey stick. Last year, Congressman Joe Barton of Texas ordered Mann to provide the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which Barton chairs, with voluminous details of his working procedures, computer programs and past funding. "There is a concerted effort to undermine the IPCC. There are people who believe that if they bring down Mike Mann, they can bring down the IPCC," says Ben Santer of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California. Santer himself came under attack after writing a chapter in the 1995 IPCC report.
Mann, however, still brims with self-confidence. Now at Penn State University, he treats his critics with something close to contempt. "A lot of scientists would have retreated, but Mike is tenacious," says Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, his collaborator on the climate science blog RealClimate.
Mann's style does not always help matters. "The goddam guy is a slick talker and super-confident. He won't listen to anyone else," says Wally Broecker of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York. "I don't trust people like that."
“Mann is a slick talker and super-confident. He won't listen to anyone else. I don't trust people like that.”
So the politics is nasty, but what about the science? First, the big picture. The rise in temperatures during the 20th century is generally accepted because it is based on direct measurements. What the hockey stick graph shows is that such a sustained and rapid rise is an anomaly in the context of the past thousand years. This is what you would expect if human activity is to blame for the 20th-century warming, but it is suggestive only. The warming might be caused by natural factors.
Evidence of human involvement comes from many other sources, including climate models. The simulations created by these models can be made to match the temperatures measured over the past 140 years only when the increase in greenhouse gases is included. These graphs also appeared in the 2001 IPCC summary.
The hockey stick has been repeatedly misrepresented as the crucial piece of evidence when it comes to industrialisation and global warming. It is not. Even if the hockey stick were shown to be a doodle that Mann did on a napkin during a night out, the evidence that the world is getting warmer, and that this warming is largely due to human activities, would still be overwhelming.

Fraught with danger

Leaving that aside, did Mann get it right? Does the hockey stick accurately reflect northern hemisphere temperatures over the past 1000 years? There is no doubt that reconstructing past temperatures from proxy data is fraught with danger. Take tree ring records. They sometimes reflect rain or drought rather than temperature. They also get smaller as a tree gets older, so annual or even decadal detail is lost. "You lose roughly 40 per cent of the amplitude of changes," says tree ring specialist Gordon Jacoby at Lamont-Doherty.
To reveal the "signal" behind the noise of short-term and random change, a proxy record for one region must be based on as many tree ring records as possible. It must also correlate with direct measurements of local temperature during the period of overlap - which adds another layer of complication, as in some cases human factors such as pollution might have affected recent tree growth.
So the first question is whether the proxy records Mann chose are reliable indicators of temperature. Some have been questioned. "He has a series from central China that we believe is more a moisture signal than a temperature signal," Jacoby says. "He included it because he had a gap. That was a mistake and it made tree-ring people angry."
Mann accepts that some of the measurements he uses do not directly represent temperature change. His argument is that, for instance, coral records showing rainfall levels in the Pacific are proxies for the El Niño cycle and so for changes in ocean temperatures. Jacoby is not convinced. "I'm not slamming what he did overall. It was a great effort, a great step," he acknowledges. "But he got into hot water by defending it too hard in places where he shouldn't."
Broecker is less accommodating. He says that Mann's hockey stick cannot be right because it does not show the Little Ice Age from roughly 1550 to 1850 or the Medieval Warm Period after 1000, whereas most tree-ring chronologies do show these periods. It is a point seized on by many sceptics, but Mann is unmoved. His point of departure almost a decade ago was that tree ring records alone won't do when it comes to measuring global temperatures, because they are biased towards temperate North America and Europe.
Many other researchers agree. "The Little Ice Age is primarily a European and North Atlantic phenomenon," says Keith Briffa, a tree ring analyst from the University of East Anglia, UK. "And the geographical extent of the Medieval Warm Period is still massively uncertain, because data is sparse."
Indeed, the proxy records suggest that high temperatures in one region tend to be balanced out by low temperatures in another. The tropical Pacific, for instance, appears to have cooled during the Medieval Warm Period and warmed during the Little Ice Age. "The regional temperature changes in our reconstruction are quite large; it's simply that they tend to average out," Mann says.
Most attacks on the hockey stick, however, focus on Mann's statistical methods. The meta-analysis he pioneered, in which different proxy records are merged, involves sorting and aggregating these signals and smoothing the result. Mann then meshed this proxy synthesis with the instrumental record.
Critics complain that by combining smoothed-out proxy data from past centuries with the recent instrumental measurements, which preserve more short-term trends, Mann created a false impression of anomalous recent change. "To be fair, Mann did correct that later on," Jacoby says. This made the blade shorter, but did not change much else. Mann also points out that he was one of the first to include error bars, which show how much variance is lost due to smoothing.

Flaw in methodology

A more serious accusation has come from two non-climate scientists from Canada, who claim to have found a flaw in Mann's statistical methodology. Stephen McIntyre, a mathematician and oil industry consultant, and Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph, Ontario, base their criticism on the way Mann used a well-established technique called principal component analysis. This involves dividing "noisy" data into different sets and giving each set an appropriate weighting. McIntyre and McKitrick claim that the way Mann applied this method had the effect of damping down natural variability, straightening the shaft of the hockey stick and accentuating 20th century warming.
There is one sense in which Mann accepts that this is unarguably true. The point of his original work was to compare past and present temperatures, so he analysed temperatures in terms of their divergence from the 20th-century mean. This approach highlights differences from that period and will thus accentuate any hockey stick shape if - but only if, he insists - it is present in the data.
The charge from McIntyre and McKitrick, however, is that Mann's computer program does not merely accentuate this shape, but creates it. To make the point, they did their own analysis based on looking for differences from the mean over the past 1000 years instead of from the 20th-century mean. This produced a graph showing an apparent rise in temperatures in the 15th century as great as the warming occurring now. The shaft of the hockey stick had a big kink in it. When this analysis was published last year in Geophysical Research Letters it was hailed by some as a refutation of Mann's study.
McIntyre and McKitrick say that their work is intended to show only that there are problems with Mann's analysis; they do not claim their graph accurately represents past temperatures. "We have repeatedly made it clear that we offer no alternative reconstruction," McIntyre states on his Climate Audit blog.
The obscure statistical arguments were overshadowed in late 2005 when Mann refused to give Congressman Barton his computer code. Mann regarded the code as private property, but his opponents claimed he feared refutation of his findings. Mann did eventually publish the code, but the damage was done.
In the meantime, three groups had been scrutinising the claims of McIntyre and McKitrick. Hans von Storch of the GKSS Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany, concluded that McIntyre and McKitrick were right that temperatures should be analysed relative to the 1000-year mean, not the 20th-century mean. But he also found that even when this was done it did not have much effect on the result. Peter Huybers of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts came to much the same conclusion.
The work of Eugene Wahl of Alfred University, New York, and Caspar Ammann of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, raised serious questions about the methodology of Mann's critics. They found the reason for the kink in the McIntyre and McKitrick graph was nothing to do with their alternative statistical method; instead, it was because they had left out certain proxies, in particular tree-ring studies based on bristlecone pines in the south-west of the US.
"Basically, the McIntyre and McKitrick case boiled down to whether selected North American tree rings should have been included, and not that there was a mathematical flaw in Mann's analysis," Ammann says. The use of the bristlecone pine series has been questioned because of a growth spurt around the end of the 19th century that might reflect higher CO2 levels rather than higher temperatures, and which Mann corrected for.
What counts in science is not a single study, however. It is whether a finding can be replicated by other groups. Here Mann is on a winning streak: upwards of a dozen studies, some using different statistical techniques or different combinations of proxy records (excluding the bristlecone record, for instance), have produced reconstructions more or less similar to the original hockey stick.

More variability

Some reconstructions show much more variability, especially those based only on tree rings, but every reconstruction to date supports the main claim in the IPCC summary: the past decade is likely the warmest for 1000 years (see Graphs). Whatever the flaws in Mann's original work, it seems the broad conclusion is correct.
McIntyre is not impressed. "There is a distinct possibility that researchers have either purposefully or subconsciously selected series with the hockey stick shape," he told one reporter.
The sceptics are unlikely to give up, whatever the conclusions of a panel set up by the US National Academies to assess temperature reconstructions. But for most climate scientists, the controversy is a sideshow. Whatever happened before 1860, the world has been getting warmer since that time, and there is no doubt in their minds that industrialisation is mostly responsible.
What really matters is the future. The IPCC is predicting a rise of between 1.4 and 5.8 °C by 2100. Now take a look at the scale on the hockey stick graph. As Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany points out: "If humanity takes no action and this century sees a temperature rise of 2 °C, 3 °C or even more, the current discussions over whether the 14th century was a few tenths of a degree warmer or the 17th a few tenths cooler than previously thought will look rather academic."
The subtext of many attacks on the hockey stick is that if the world was warmer 1000 years than it is now, this shows there is nothing unusual going on and we can all stop worrying. Not so, says Briffa. If the world was warmer 1000 years ago, it would suggest the climate system is very sensitive to outside influences, whether past solar cycles or present accumulating greenhouse gases. "Greater past climate variations imply greater future climate change," he says. From this perspective, it would be most worrying if all the hockey sticks really are wrong.

From issue 2543 of New Scientist magazine, 18 March 2006, page 40

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03242006/postopinion/opedcolumnists/61349.htm

Israel and the Ayatollahs

March 24, 2006 -- Some claim they've found the perfect solution to Iran's nuclear ambitions. It's simple: Israel attacks the Islamic Republic to destroy much of its nuclear infrastructure, setting the bomb project back by a decade, time for a more responsible regime to emerge in Tehran.
This would please the Europeans, because it would remove the spotlight from their appeasement policy, which is partly responsible for the crisis. They could shake their heads in a "told you so" gesture at the mullahs, and feel glum about their ability to stand above dirty games played by "immature powers" such as the Islamic Republic and Israel.
Also happy: The Americans (who clearly lack a policy on Iran - indeed, can't even agree on a diagnosis of the problem) and the Arab states, now shaking in their sandals at the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.
Russia, too. Hostilty to its neighbor is deep-felt in Iran, which lost territory to Russia in bitter wars with the czars. By the middle of this century, Iran's population will outnumber Russia's. A nuclear-armed Islamic Iran would emerge as an even stronger player.
In short, a great many countries have a direct interest in preventing Iran from going nuclear - yet none is prepared to dirty its hands in the matter. Hence all the talk about Israel taking action.
Yet Israel would not top any list of countries that might be subjected to Iranian nuclear bullying or attack.
Israel has a small air space to defend and is well equipped to destroy missiles launched from Iran. Any nuclear attack by Tehran's terrorist agents in Lebanon and the West Bank, meanwhile, would also kill large numbers in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.
Yes, the anti-Israeli discourse of Iran's rulers is as virulent as that of Hamas and other Palestinian radical groups. But that discourse is partly prompted by the regime's desire to hide its Shiite identity so that it can claim the leadership of radical Islam, both Shiite and Sunni.
In fact, regardless of who rules in Tehran, Israel and Iran have common strategic interests.
If Israel had never appeared on the map, the energy of pan-Arab nationalism movement, which dominated Arab politics in the post-war era, would have been directed against two other neighbors: Turkey and Iran. To a certain extent, it was anyway. Even today, the Arab League claims that the Turkish province of Iskanderun is "usurped Arab territory" and regards the Iranian province of Khuzestan as "occupied Arab land."
And Arab Sunni Islamism is an even more deadly threat to Iran. It was Arab Sunni Islamism that destroyed the Shiite holy shrines in Iraq in 1802, and returned last month to do so again in Samarra. The same movement is behind the cold-blooded murder of several thousand Iraqi Shiite men, women and children since 2004.
To Arab Sunni Islamists, Iranians are gabrs (Zoroastrians); Shiites, including Arab ones, are rafidis (heretics) who must be "re-converted" or put to death.
Both pan-Arab nationalism and pan-Arab Sunni Islamism are as much mortal foes for Iran as they are for Israel. Neither nation will be safe unless the twin monsters are defeated and the Arab states democratized.
Were Iran to "destroy" Israel, at a huge human cost to itself, it would only be realizing the dream of its own mortal enemies. This is why there is virtually no popular support in Iran for an anti-Israeli policy that goes beyond rhetoric or limited support for Iran's clients in Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories.
Thus, Israel has no reason to assume a responsibility that far stronger powers don't wish to face. In fact, part of Israel's problems stem from the failure of its successive leaders to steer the country clear of other people's quarrels.
In successive wars during the Cold War, Israel destroyed the Soviet-built arsenals of several Arab countries. That helped protect Washington's Arab allies against aggression by pro-Soviet Arab powers - and thus kept the the Soviets from gaining indirect control of the region's vital oil resources. Israel, however, was "rewarded" by not being allowed to translate its military victories into a political settlement that reflected its national interests.
In 1980, Israel knocked out the French-made Iraqi nuclear-weapons center, even though Saddam Hussein was making that bomb to drop on Tehran. The Israeli action helped the major powers avoid catastrophe in a region vital to their interests. Israel's reward? Being described by Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris, as "a criminal state."
To be sure, Israel should make it clear that it would retaliate with double force against any attack. But it should also remind those urging it to act that the Islamic Republic's policies, including its quest for nuclear weapons, represent a threat not only to Israel but to many other nations in the Middle East and beyond.

Iranian author Amir Taheri is a member of Benador Associates.

2006-03-23T13:22:00.000-05:00

Muslim Frumkeit

I came across a copy of Maimonides by Sherwin B. Nuland, M.D. It was a biography of the Rambam from a medical perspective.

One of the bits of information I did not know was the difference between Shiites and Sunnis.

The Shiites, similar to Karaites, only believe in Koran Sh-beksav while the Sunnis, like orthodox Jews, believe in Koran Sh-beksav and Koran Sh-balpeh.

I don’t know if this accounts for any variations in anti-semitism by the Muslim world, but I do know that the anti-semitism is insanely virulent.

Recently I saw a video where Dr Wafa Sultan, appeared on Al-Jazeera, the Arabic television network.

She described how, as a young girl, anti-semitism was inculcated in her and all Syrian children. It made her so terrified of Jews that she refused to act the part of the Israeli prime minister Golda Meir in a school play.

In her first week in the United States she and her husband went to a shoe shop in Hollywood. Her husband asked the clerk where he was from and when he said that he was an Israeli Jew, his wife ran away without shoes, barefoot.

Her husband followed her and said, ‘How stupid you are.’ She responded that she was scared to death because he was from Israel; “I reacted in a very bad, negative way, because of the way I had been raised, for the past 30 years of my life.”

It shouldn’t be surprising that this attitude is all over the Arab world and inculcated in every child from birth; if not, in the womb. The propaganda machine from the Palestinian Authority, has been expounding all of the above for years and I’m sure with Hamas in charge it will increase at least ten-fold.

It’s refreshing, however, to hear someone in the Arab world admit to it.

Copy and paste these two sites below to see the article and video:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2092167_1,00.html

http://switch5.castup.net/frames/20041020_MemriTV_Popup/video_480x360.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=null

2006-03-21T23:21:00.000-05:00

Historical Accuracy vs. Story Time

After finally viewing “Munich” I began to wonder; what’s wrong with Steven Spielberg? At best he is a ‘Tinuk Shenishba.’ More likely he is part of the left-wing Hollywood liberalism which is currently on display in “V for Vendetta.”

If “Munich” had only been a story concocted by some Hollywood writer, then the entire outcry against the film would be ‘much ado about nothing.’

90% of the film was basically good filmmaking with an interesting story. However, the crying liberalism by the characters was almost laughable.

Memo to Spielberg: If you want your audience to buy ‘moral equivalency,’ don’t have your characters wear it on their sleeves.

Memo to Tony Kushner: If you want your audience to believe that your characters are credible, don’t attempt to equate your notion of sexuality with theirs.

Memo to both Kushner and Spielberg: Stick with the facts. You’ll have a better film and more credibility. Better yet, you may actually win a few Oscars.

“V for Vendetta,” on the other hand, which is based on fiction, was able to succeed where “Munich” failed.

As with most good science fiction/fantasy it was able to hide its liberal bent within its ‘story.’

People can agree or differ with its premise of a George Bush type character becoming a tyrant by expanding “Patriot Act” type laws into de-facto totalitarianism, but the characters are believable. The same cannot be said of “Munich” which is based on real events.

Either way, advice to those who make us weary: If you have an agenda and you have a ‘story’ to tell, base it on the ‘facts.’ It’ll go a long way.

The attached reviews are for comparison purposes:

http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2006/03/v_for_propagand.html

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060316/REVIEWS/60308005/1023

http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2005/12/munich_as_broug.html

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051222/REVIEWS/51214004

2006-03-20T00:56:00.000-05:00

The Lie with No Legs to Stand On

As a followup to a shiur by Dr. Leiman two weeks, Dr. Leiman gave another shiur regarding how important truthfulness is to historical accuracy.

In short, the story of the Golem allegedly made by the Maharal of Prague has long been known to have been put into print by Rav Yudel Rosenberg in 1909. It was meant to be a story for children as the Marcus Lehmann stories had been.

Dr. Leiman, in previous shiurim had made mention of a Jubilee compendium of Rav Rosenberg's works which list some Talmudic discourses such as on Tractate Nedarim and his 'story books' which Niflo'os Maharal is listed as one.

The expose in Dei'ah VeDibur which quotes the Shineveh Rav as having 'his heart pierced' every time he read from Niflo'os Maharal 'since Rav Rosenberg admitted it was a forgery' is obviously a fallacy since the Shineveh Rav died in 1898 while the 'story book' was written in 1909.

Further when the retelling of the Shineveh Rav's angst was mentioned in front of the Peshvorsk Rav, the ADMOR Rav Yaakov Leizer of Peshvorsk refused to accept the incident as true.

The ADMOR refused to accept its veracity because he recognized the falsehood in the story. Why, you ask? How could he know whether it was true or not.

Well you see, the Peshvorsk Rav was the very same Rav who gave out the 'krechts' during davening when he felt pain from a broken arm. He was the very same Rav who called his students over to let them know the truth about the 'krechts.' It had nothing to do with his Kavanah during davening.

He wanted to make sure they would not accuse him of misleading them. He did not want them to become a "Ba'al Teshuva" based on a fallacy; moreover, if they would find out the truth independently, they would then reject all that he taught them.

Only a person such as the Peshvorsk Rav would recognize the fallacy in the story attributed to the Shineveh Rav. Only a person who was mindful of truth in all situations could recognize when a 'white lie' was being told.

Where people may go 'off the derech' because of a laxity in historical accuracy, 'the end does not justify the means.'

See below the related article with Dr. Leiman's letter to the internet.

http://seforim.blogspot.com/2006/03/deiah-vedibur-fabrication-dr-leiman.html

As I noted previously, the Haredi mouthpiece Dei'ah veDibur had a rather insightful piece on the falicy of the Golem of Prauge. However, although the article ended with the hope that after bringing this fabrication to the readers attention people will only tell true stories. Rabbi Dr. S. Leiman, however, notes that the story itself in Dei'ah veDibur contains a rather glaring inaccuracy.

Letter by Dr. Leiman:

The March 1, 2006 issue of _Dei'ah Ve-Dibur_ -- a haredi journal -- includes an essay entitled: "The Golem of Prague -- Fact or Fiction?." Adducing evidence from a variety of sources, the essay concludes that "it is unclear whether or not the Maharal ever made a golem."
Much of the blame for leading people to think that the Maharal had made a golem, the essay suggests, rests with Y.Y. Rosenberg [sic: while all the other rabbis mentioned in the essay are entitled "Rav" or "Rabbi," only Y.Y. Rosenberg, who was a distinguished rabbi with ordination from the greatest rabbis in Poland, is defrocked], whose 1909 volume on the Golem of the Maharal (Sefer Nifla'ot Maharal) is identified as a forgery. The essay concludes with appropriate warnings that one should rely only on literature that is "historically reliable."
Such a critical reading of Jewish literature -- and concern with Historical truth -- is certainly a welcome breath of fresh air from a circle that has not always covered itself with glory regarding such matters. Alas, the essay fell into the very trap about which it was warning others: beware! One paragraph reads:
"At one point the author [Y.Y. Rosenberg] of the book actually admitted that he had invented the story. In _Halelu Avdei Hashem_, which contains stories in Yiddish about HaRavMoshe Aryeh Freund zt"l, av beis din of the Eida HaChareidis, Rav Yechezkel Halberstam zt"l of Shineveh, author of _Divrei Yechezkel_, is quoted as having made the following comment. "A shochet ubodek from Antwerp heard from the Rov z"l, who heard from his father the Rov of Honiad (an important Jewish community in Hungary), who heard from the Rov of Shineveh (eldest son of the Divrei Chaim zt"l of Sanz). The Shinever Rov said that whenever he sees the book _Niflo'os Maharal_ it pierces him because the author of the stories personally admitted to him that he fabricated the whole thing."
Leaving aside significant errors of translation, the Shinever Rov -- Rav Yechezkel Halberstam, author of _Divrei Yechezkel_ and eldest son of the Divrei Chaim -- died on 6 Teveth, 1898. Rabbi Yehudah Yudl Rosenberg published his _Nifla'ot Maharal_ for the first time in Warsaw, 1909. It can easily be proven that the book did not exist until shortly before it was published in 1909. The Shinever Rov never heard of the book, never saw it,and was not "pierced" by its content.
Indeed, one should rely only on literature that is "historically reliable."

2006-03-17T16:53:00.000-05:00

Reading Writing and Racism

As a followup to the selfishness and lack of righteousness in the secular world, I came across an article by Michelle Malkin discussing a performance of 'poetry' by one Autum Ashante who's father, Batin Ashante, is also a 'poet' for the Nation of Islam.

Oh joy, oh joy, but to hear once again the glowing accolades of Farrakhan. What more 'Nachas' can one have? Should we even wonder what kind of 'def poetry jam' little Autum displayed for us? You can bet it didn't sound like Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons.'

Why show any Hakoras Hatov to America for trying to rectify slavery because they may have felt it was wrong? They are no better than the Egyptians who enslaved the Jews for hundreds of years and even with G-d performing miracles against Pharaoh and his minions wouldn't admit to any moral turpitude.

Yet the Torah allows marriage with Egyptian converts after a number of generations because of the Hakoras Hatov we should feel for the fact that Ya'akov and his sons were given refuge in Egypt.

America, on the other hand, is evil; pretty much like our 'gutter religion,' as it has been called by "the honorable minister Louis."

Read the article and weep.

http://jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin031506.php

37-year-old poisonous ‘poet’ is in demand

By Michelle Malkin

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

One of the nation's fastest-rising poetry prodigies is a 7-year-old New York girl whose poisonous demagogic advocacy of black separatism makes Al Sharpton look like Mr. Rogers.

Autum Ashante' of Mount Vernon, N.Y., has performed at HBO's Def Poetry Jam, The Cotton Club in L.A., The Apollo Theater in Harlem, the African Street Festival, Caroline's on Broadway, the Russell Simmons Phat Farm Fashion Show, Steve Harvey's "Big Time," a prestigious Grammy Foundation event, and at universities and other venues across the country.

She recites her verses not only in English, but also in fluent Swahiili and Arabic (she attended the Islamic Darul Arkam School in Mount Vernon).

Autum has appeared at a tribute to black nationalist Marcus Garvey, America-bashing 9/11 conspiracy-monger Amiri Baraka's annual family cookout, and the extremist New Black Panther Party's Million Youth March. The city of New York honored her with a proclamation for inspiring "her peers, as well as adults, while also demonstrating the power of a father's love, the importance of education and the limitless boundaries of the human mind." New York City councilwoman Yvette Clark called her "one of the most precious young talents that this world has ever known."

Most recently, as New York Post education reporter David Andreatta reported this weekend, she was invited to perform at public middle and high schools in Peekskill, N.Y., for Black History Month.

Here, in full, is what precious little Autum — groomed by her single father, Ashante, a Nation of Islam poet/activist — spewed:

White Nationalism
Put U In Bondage
White nationalism is what put you in bondage
Pirate and vampires like Columbus, Morgan, and Darwin
Drank the blood of the sheep, trampled all over them with
Steel, tricks and deceit.
Nothing has changed take a look in our streets
The mis-education of she and Hegro — leaves you on your knee2grow
Black lands taken from your hands, by vampires with no remorse
They took the gold, the wisdom and all of the storytellers
They took the black women, with the black man weak
Made to watch as they changed the paradigm
Of our village
They killed the blind, they killed the lazy, they went
So far as to kill the unborn baby
Yeah White nationalism is what put you in bondage
Pirates and vampires like Columbus, Morgan, and Darwin
They drank the blood of the sheep, trampled all over them with
Steel laden feet, throw in the tricks alcohol and deceit.
Nothing has changed take a look at our streets.

Autum's performance also included commanding white students to remain seated as she led black students in a recitation of the "Black Child's Pledge," which reads in part:

I pledge allegiance to my Black People.
I pledge to develop my mind and body to the greatest extent possible.
I will learn all that I can in order to give my best to my People in their struggle for liberation.
…I will discipline myself to direct my energies thoughtfully and constructively rather than wasting them in idle hatred.
…I will train myself never to hurt or allow others to harm my Black brothers and sisters…
These principles I pledge to practice daily and to teach them to others in order to unite my People.

Complaints from shocked students and parents led to a tape-recorded apology sent to all parents apologizing for the performance. Autum's father condemned white district officials as "racist crackers." Autum defended her poem by explaining to the Westchester Journal News that white people are "devils and they should be gone. We should be away from them and still be in Africa."

And make note of this: The official who invited Autum to speak, Melvin Bolden, is a public school music teacher, Peekskill councilman, and producer of her first spoken word album.

Who is surprised? If you set aside a separate holiday for Black History Month in the public schools, if you set aside separate graduation ceremonies, college dorms, academic departments, recruiting programs, and government contracts and subcontracts by race, you send a message that hardcore racial separatism is not only acceptable — but desired.

Autum Ashante' is the natural offspring of militant multiculturalism and government-sanctioned identity politics.

We reap what we sow.

2006-03-16T13:33:00.000-05:00

Stephon Marbury vs. the Jews

Marbury, for those who don’t know, is the self-proclaimed ‘star’ point guard for the New York Knicks. The job of a point guard is to lead your team in a selfless manner and make the players around you better, similar to Jason Kidd of the Nets who actually was traded at one point for the very same ”Starbury.”

Unfortunately, wherever Marbury goes, chaos seems to follow. This year the chaos has been found off the court with the verbal diatribes between Marbury and his coach, Larry Brown, who happens to be Jewish.

Now this factor has nothing to do with the title of today’s blog. There is no apparent anti-semitism being espoused. The title has more to do with Middoth. Though, both the coach and player have tremendous egos and both are speaking Loshon Horah about each other, B’rabim, that too is not the issue.

The issue is that Marbury has always been selfish. The expression of “there’s no ‘I’ in team” never got through to him. He must have failed spelling very early on.

Even his ideas of Tzedakah have been warped, as for example, when he sponsored a poetry/rap contest for inner city public school kids whereby the main event was the appearance of a ‘gangsta-rapper’ who was cheered to no end and was emulated through the verbiage of the ‘poetry’ used by these kids.

In Judaism, however, selflessness has been one of the higher attributes of Yahaduth. Tzedakah has always been in the forefront. But there are all kinds of causes. Where does one give to and how much does one give?

I received the following note by email today. I have edited out the names as a matter of privacy. I’m sure what happened to this young girl could happen to any of us. I leave it for your perusal.

B"H
>
>March 12, 2006
>
>
>
>Dear Friends:
>
>Will you join me in helping “X” in her time of need?
>
>As you may be aware, “X” has been sick for over a year. Her illness
>has been so debilitating that she has spent much of the past year
>relegated to bed rest. “X” has been suffering from severe vertigo and
>balance problems (falling), audio deficits, and distortion of vision.
>She has gone from doctor to doctor, and has been in and out of the
>hospital for numerous procedures and tests, trying to get a diagnosis
>for her illness.
>
>After a year of tests and doctor visits, “X” has finally been
>diagnosed with neurological lyme disease (for information visit
>http://www.columbia-lyme.org/flatp/lymeoverview.html
> ). Now “X” has
>a diagnosis and a plan of treatment, but she can't afford the treatment.
>In fact, she can't even afford to pay the basic costs of living.
>
>”X” 's treatment for this disease will require a minimum of eight weeks
>of at-home IV antibiotic infusions, which will require home nursing. She
>will also need neuro-cognitive testing, which she is scheduled to do at
>the Lyme Disease Research Center at Columbia University. She will also
>require cognitive and vestibular rehabilitation as well as vision
>therapy.
>
>The home nursing is not fully covered by her insurance, and the IV
>antibiotic treatment is only covered for half of the necessary
>treatments (the treatments cost about $150 a day for a minimum of 8
>weeks). The cost of the neuro-cognitive testing is not covered by her
>insurance (the cost is $3,250 for the two days of testing). Her
>physical and other therapies, testing and hospitalizations are at best
>only partially covered.
>
>Therefore, as a concerned friend, I am trying to help her with the costs
>of fighting this disease. To give you some idea of what this has cost
>so far, doctor and hospital costs alone for the past year totaled over
>$22,000 in out-of-pocket expenses (i.e. those expenses not covered by
>Blue Cross), plus more than $2,500 in co-payments for medications.
>
>I urge you to join me today in supporting this worthy cause. There can
>be no better use of your "Mayser Kesofim" dollars then to truly help
>another survive. In order to help, you may send a check payable to
>"Zichron Shmuel" (tax deductible) and mail it to:
>
>Chesed Fund – S.L.
>
>PO Box 20922
>
>New York, NY 10025
>
>Together, we can make sure “X” receives the treatments that she
>needs without the additional stress of worrying how to pay for it.
>
>Thank you & Tizku L'mitzvoth,
>
>
>
>S.Z.
>

2006-03-15T21:26:00.000-05:00

Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold

As a postscript to Saturday March 4th's blog, the losing hockey team in a 4-3 match hosted the winning team last week and beat them soundly 7-0.

I guess Melville was right after all.

I can hear the losers groaning, "marooned for all eternity, in the center of a dead planet, buried alive, buried alive."

2006-03-14T23:12:00.000-05:00

The Purim Story Continues

Ahmed Saadat, the alleged murderer of Rechavam Ze'evi has been captured by Israeli forces in Jericho.

Notwithstanding the accusations of collusion with the British and the Americans, the benefit to Ehud Olmert's election campaign, and the alienation of the palestinians who destoy a British building in the same vein as their actions regarding the caricatures of Mohammed, (destroy, destroy, destroy) the capture of Saadat is the beginning of justice.

A few years ago in August 2001, shortly after the Sabbaro massacre, I was on a solidarity mission to Israel when our group met Knesset minister Ze'evi at Neot Kedumim. He spoke at length of the appreciation he had for our visit at that time. He was murdered shortly thereafter in a major hotel in Jerusalem.

The palestinians have been nothing but a hindrance in the apprehension of terrrorists and murderers.

If this is Ze'evi's murderer, let this be the beginning of the capture of every last one of them.

Timche es zacheir Amalek.

2006-03-11T22:16:00.000-05:00

Kesheim She'Mevorachim Al Hatov Kach Mavorchim Al Ha'Rah - Just As We Bless G-d For The Good So Shall We Bless G-d For The Bad

It's amazing sometimes when you hear a speech and you feel it's directed at you.

On Friday I was preparing to go to my friend's son's Bris which took place on Shabbos. My mother wanted me to accompany her to the Bakery to pick up some goodies to take to another friend whom we would be staying by for Shabbos.

Prior to going I had a problem with starting my car and once the engine turned over I let it keep running in front of the Bakery.

As I was standing near the car, a traffic agent told me to move the car along and as I was complying he was using a handheld device to copy info off of my registration sticker.

Disgusted by the fact that he's trying to ticket me even though I'm leaving, I hurry off. Not knowing whether I'd received a ticket or not, I'm both furious at myself for putting myself in a bad situation and at the agent for manipulating the circumstances.

But then in shul on Shabbos I heard a speech by the Mora D'asra of the Tzierei of 14th Avenue, Rav Baruch Saks.

He asked how we can Bless G-d for the 'Bad' which occurs to us with the very same energy we Bless G-d for the 'Good?' His answer revolved around two more questions.

Why is Purim known as purim? Firstly, it should be known as Pur because there was only one lottery. Secondly, why name a holiday after a lottery which was meant to destroy the Jewish people?

Well the answer lies within the question. The very same circumstances surrounding the 'Bad' lottery turned out to become a 'Good' lottery.

Haman's actions brought forth the circumstances which allowed Esther to become Queen, the building of the second Beis Hamikdash through the benevolence of Cyrus, and a yearly celebration of a wonderful holiday.

This turnabout is also seen in the 'order' to drink Ad-She-Lo-Yoda.

We are to drink 'wine' until we can't tell the difference between cursing or blessing Haman and Mordechai.

Why drink 'wine' rather than whiskey? Well, for one, the miracle which replaced Vashti with Esther took place at a party where wine was being served, probably to excess. Moreover, Esther's party for Achashveirosh and Haman was one where wine was also served.

Why again, wine over whisky?

Well, in times gone by, when the Jewish courts had the authority to administer capital punishment, they used to serve the codemned man Shaichor or a type of whiskey. On the other hand, when a man was depressed, in general, he was served wine to lift his spirits. Whiskey, 'deadened' the spirit; something possibly needed for the man who was going to his execution.

In fact, the 'custom' for wishing people a L'Chaim after drinking whiskey stems from the execution scenario. We want to reverse the custom for a man about to die to a wish for life to a person who's having a drink, especially a celebratory drink.

The turnabout by drinking to excess until Ad-She-Lo-Yoda also refers to the changing of the supposed 'Bad' to the 'Good'.

A devastating decree by Haman turned into a celebration through Mordecahi and Esther.

So should we Bless G-d with the same energy for the 'Bad' as we Bless G-d for the 'Good.'

On a closing related note, my friend, the father of the new baby, named the baby after his father.

The grandfather of the new baby, who passed away about 5 years ago, had a tough time when he came to America from Europe. But he always had a steadfast perseverance to any obstacle.

Aside from 'making a living' and rasing children with the proper Derech, there were always people who made things harder with their 'suggestions.'

When the immigration officials wanted to change his last name because it was too hard to pronounce, he refused, because the name was a connection to his roots and family.

When neighbors and officials suggested that he place his mother-in-law in a nursing home because the family didn't have money for themselves, he responded that so long as the family will have food to eat, she will have food to eat; so long as the family has a roof over their heads and a bed to sleep in, so will she.

And she did. She remained with the family all of her life.

The great-grandmother and the grandfather of this new baby are long gone and that's sad. But now we have a new member of the jewish family.

So when we Bless G-d even for the apparant 'Bad,' we hope to end up in the long run with the 'Good.'

As the new father said so eloquently how he hopes his sons will have the same attributes as his own father, I already knew, and hoped, that in the long run, we would see that wish come into fruition.

2006-03-10T10:34:00.000-05:00

Holocaust Cinema -- Part Two

If one must make comedies about Nazi Germany why must it be filmed in Berlin?

Dani Levi, the director of "Alles auf Zucker," a film which ridiculed the orthodox, in Germany, now is making "Mein Führer," a comedy being filmed in the heart of Berlin.

Is it really necessary to regale the Berlin populace with Third Reich draperies, so that latent Nazis can have some Nachas?

Even Eytan Fox, the director of such abominations as "Yossi and Jaeger" and the more recent "Walk on Water" didn't dress up Germany in full Nazi regalia.

Let's just stick with the original production of "The Producers," starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, two very funny Jews, and forget about making tasteless Holocaust comedies.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2072666,00.html

2006-03-09T04:04:00.000-05:00

Cinema of the Holocaust

There have been numerous films on the Holocaust. The ones that sometime have the most impact are the fictional stories based on true events. From Schindler's List to Europa, Europa to Life is Beautiful, these stories open the heart. Other's such as The Tin Drum sicken it.

Lately I've seen some of the smaller films which may have been missed by most of you. The Last Butterfly, Good Evening Mr. Wallenberg and Rose's Songs are quite interesting films about Thereseinstadt and the last days of the war in Budapest.

Recently, Germany has been exploring it's own past with films such as Downfall and Napola which focused on the last days of Hitler and the elite youth movement. More of late, they are focusing on the very small few who tried to fight against the Nazis.

Though I have not seen the film, I have heard good things regarding Sophie Scholl: The Final Days about the last six days in the life of a renowned German anti-Nazi activist.

An excellent film which I have seen is Rosenstrasse about the women who protested against the Nazis to be reunited with their Jewish families through marriage.

Though it may go against the grain of our sensibilities towards inter-marriage and the notion that there were any 'good' Germans during WWII, it is a fine film and I highly recommend it.

2006-03-08T23:41:00.000-05:00

Oh Canada, Glorious and Free, We Stand on Guard, We Stand on Guard For Thee

Adam Stern led Canada to an 8-6 victory over team USA in the World Baseball Classic. He did so by hitting a solo inside the park home run giving Canada an 8-0 lead. With the score 8-6, Stern saved the Canadians with a great catch robbing the USA of a 3 run home run.

Stern, who last year as a member of the Boston Red Sox, along with his teammates, Gabe Kapler and Kevin Youkilis, became a blip on the Jewish radar watch, when the 3 entered a game in the ninth inning.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=14485

It was the only time 3 Jews were on the same playing field in a mjor league baseball match. The event is being commemorated on a set of baseball cards by the Upper Deck Company.

Who needs 'Let's Go Mets.' Why not 'Let's Go Jews!'

http://jewishmajorleaguers.org/crdst/the_card_set.html

2006-03-08T16:24:00.000-05:00

Jewish Life -- English Style

On Sunday, The Tottenham Hotspur English Premiership League Football team defeated the Blackburn Rovers 3-2. Who cares you say? Aside for the fact that the first half was one of the most exciting soccer matches I've ever seen and that an Egyptian named Mido scored the game winning goal, his 7th goal in the last 11 games, the game should have no relevance to any sports fan. Certainly, the game should be of no consequence to anyone interested in Jewish life. But you'd be wrong.

You see, Tottenham has been known as "the Jewish team" for quite some time now. Over the years, it's players, ownership and fans have been well represented by Jews. The gentile fans have sort of adopted the Jewish heritage onto themselves; even the players have gone along for the ride.

A friend from England who now lives in New York told me how when his sister had been an intern teacher in the English public school system, a black child from the class came over to her and exclaimed "Miss, do you know what I am?" The frum teacher replied, "No, what are you?"
The boy cried out, "I'm aYid!"

The teacher had no idea what the precocious child was referring to. Little did she know, that many Tottenham Hotspur fans referred to themselves as Yids in support for the team.

The players have also enjoyed having Jewish roots brought to the forefront.

Edgar Davids, a black player from Paramaribo, Netherlands reported in the Jerusalem Post (though I cannot find the link) that his grandmother was Jewish.

Ahmed Mido, from Cairo, can only chuckle as his name is interchanged with Yido.

The fans attending games constantly come up with chants and songs with references to the Jewish theme. Unfortunately, anti-semitic fans of some of the opposition teams rear their ugly heads, by hissing instead of booing or whistling at "the Jewish team."

Who cares, you say? Well the Tottenham fans know all too well that the hissing refers to the gas chambers -- just another opportunity for anti-semites to say 'Love you.'

2006-03-07T07:07:00.000-05:00

The Self Hating Jewish Anti-Semite -- Making a Buck on Your Own Nation's "Tzorus"

The New York Post reports today on the furor over the invitation of Norman Finkelstein to speak at Columbia.

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/64796.htm

Mr. Finkelstein, the author of "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering" and "Beyond Chutzpah" could have aptly used the titles of his books regarding himself.

"Exploitation," for example, is an 'expose' on how Jews are manipualting countries to fund 'innocent' countries to support the welfare of Jews. A 'proof' is that Switzerland is being forced to overpay compensation while the US is not. "Chutzpah" tries to rehash the age-old canard that disagreeing with Israel is not anti-semitism.

The chutzpah here is that these are considered scholarly works. The further Chutzpah is that its author is invited to speak at Columbia University. How long do we have to put up with these psuedo-intellectuals who are only interested in lining their pockets at the expense of others and in the long run at the expense of themselves? Why do we have to put up with these lightning rods for fame and power?

If all the monies in the world were given to Jews for the Holocaust, it would still not be enough. Even with what has been distributed today, survivors receive only a mere pittance.

Although the US could have done more for the Jews during the war. It did not participate nor was it a partner with the Germans towards the Final Solution. The Swiss, on the other hand, in just one example, were complicit with the Germans during their visit to Theresienstadt while they marvelled at "the city of the Jews." Unfortunately, the "city" was a farce where Jews were being killed by the thousands on a daily basis.

The endless conundrum where the Israelis are being compared to their Nazi persecutors and portraying the Israelis as Nazis is getting old and tired. Didn't we do away with the notion of "Zionism is racism?"

Well, Columbia never seems to get it straight. They've always had a long line of "distinguished scholars" on campus. Most notably Edward Said, the self proclaimed historian who's expertise, if any, was as an Engish professor. Should we be surprised that the great landmark of Butler Library is still named after the former President of Columbia, who often dabbled in anti-semitic diatribe?

I guess, what goes around keeps on coming around.

When will it ever stop?

2006-03-06T09:05:00.000-05:00

Kol Yisroel Areivim Zeh Lo Zeh

A few days ago I made mention of an interview which took place on the BBC where the editor of an Egyptian daily found nothing wrong with a caricature of Anne Frank and Hitler in the same bed while at the same time being outraged regarding those caricatures depicting Mohammed in any fashion.

We have long known of the culture of the Arab world vilifying Jews. They always make excuse for it as well.

In the long run we understand the consequences of their actions -- just to mention a couple; kidnappings and murder. The latest being a Jew in France supposedly "only" kidnapped, tortured and murdered for ransom. We know better.

If not for the grace of G-d, anti-semitism could destroy us all. We have a responsibility to do everything we can to make sure that it doesn't happen and when it does, to take action so that it does not go unpunished.

A thorough article on the latest incident which is published in today's New York Times follows:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/international/europe/05france.html?incamp=article_popular

Torture and Death of Jew Deepen Fears in France

By CRAIG S. SMITH

Published: March 5, 2006

BAGNEUX, France, March 3 — Two strips of red-and-white police tape bar the entrance to the low-ceilinged pump room where a young Jewish man, Ilan Halimi, spent the last weeks of his life, tormented and tortured by his captors and eventually splashed with acid in an attempt to erase any traces of their DNA.

The floor of the concrete room, in the cellar of 4, rue Serge-Prokofiev, is bare except for a few packets of rat poison, a slowly drying wet mark and a dozen small circles drawn and numbered in white chalk, presumably marking the spots where the police retrieved evidence of Mr. Halimi's ordeal.

Mr. Halimi, 23, died Feb. 13, shortly after he was found near a train station 15 miles away by passers-by, after crawling out of the wooded area where he was dumped. He was naked and bleeding from at least four stab wounds to his throat, his hands bound and adhesive tape covering his mouth and eyes. According to the initial autopsy report, burns, apparently from the acid, covered 60 percent of his body.

"I knew they had someone down there," said a young French-Arab man, loitering in the doorway of a building adjacent to the one where Mr. Halimi was held. He claimed to live upstairs from the makeshift dungeon but would not give his name or say whether he knew then that the man was a Jew. "I didn't know they were torturing him," he said. "Otherwise, I would have called the police."

But it is clear that plenty of people did know, both that Mr. Halimi was being tortured and that he was Jewish. The police, according to lawyers with access to the investigation files, think at least 20 people participated in his abduction and the subsequent, amateurish negotiations for ransom. His captors told his family that if they did not have the money, they should "go and get it from your synagogue," and later contacted a rabbi, telling him, "We have a Jew."

The horrifying death has stunned France, which has Europe's largest Muslim and largest Jewish populations. Last weekend, tens of thousands of people marched against racism and anti-Semitism in Paris, joined by the interior minister, Nicholas Sarkozy, and smaller marches took place in several other French cities, including Marseille.

In the wake of the riots that broke out in the immigrant-heavy Paris suburbs last fall, the case seems to embody the social problems of immigration, race and class that France has been facing with so much uncertainty. The emerging details raise deep fears of virulent anti-Semitism within the hardening underclass, and point to the decaying social fabric in which that underclass lives.

Those that the police say kidnapped and killed Mr. Halimi called themselves the Barbarians, and included people of different backgrounds: the children of blacks from sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, of Arabs from North Africa, of at least one Persian from Iran, and of whites from Portugal and France.

The gang's leader was a tall, charismatic young man named Youssouf Fofana, 25, one of five children born in Paris to at least nominally Muslim immigrants from Ivory Coast. When he was a teenager, the family moved to the bleak neighborhood of 12-story concrete apartment blocks where Mr. Halimi was held.

Trouble started early. He studied plumbing at a local vocational school but by the age of 16 had already begun a series of run-ins with the police, eventually racking up 13 arrests for everything from theft to fencing stolen goods. In 1999, at the age of 19, he stole a car, beating the Portuguese owner who tried to intervene. He was arrested and sentenced to his only jail term, serving two years in prisons in Nanterre and Fleury-Mérogis, neither far from Paris.

He returned to his mother's apartment and used his prison credentials to assume the role of senior tough among younger, idle men and women, people in the neighborhood say. Lawyers familiar with the case suggest that this is when the seeds of the Barbarians were sown.
By 2004, the police say, he tried extortion, aiming at prominent French Jews. When that failed, the gang apparently turned to kidnapping, using young women as bait.

The Barbarians are thought to have been behind six attempted abductions, four of Jewish men, before succeeding with Mr. Halimi.

In a case in early January, a woman tried repeatedly to get a Jewish music producer to meet her on the outskirts of Paris, finally managing instead to persuade his father to come to a suburban parking lot, on the pretext that she had music CD's that belonged to his son. Several men met the father instead, beating him senseless when he resisted their attempt to force him into their car.

Mike Akiba worked with Mr. Halimi at Voltaire Phone in Paris, one of a dozen tiny Jewish-owned cellular telephone shops along Boulevard Voltaire in the 11th Arrondissement. He said Mr. Halimi was alone in the store when a 17-year-old French-Iranian girl came in and flirted with him. Mr. Akiba said she might have thought Mr. Halimi, a handsome man with piercing brown eyes, was the owner.

Mr. Halimi told Mr. Akiba about her the next day and said he had agreed to meet her that Friday night near Porte d'Orleans, a neighborhood on Paris's southern edge. Mr. Akiba last saw him about 10:30 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 20, as he drove from Boulevard Voltaire in his Champagne-colored Renault Twingo.

Mr. Halimi apparently met the woman as planned, then drove her to Sceaux, a suburb near Bagneux, where his captors must have grabbed him. His car was later found abandoned in a parking lot there.

Mr. Akiba said the investigating police officers discovered the gang had tried the same tactic on several men in the other phone shops.

Mr. Halimi was taken to the Pierre-Plate housing project in Bagneux, and initially held in an empty third-floor apartment at 1, rue Serge-Prokofiev, with the help of the building's superintendent, according to the lawyers who have seen the investigative files. The gang covered his eyes and mouth with tape, leaving only a hole for a straw.

The Halimi family's first contact with the kidnappers was the night of Saturday, Jan. 21, when a gang member called Mr. Halimi's girlfriend and instructed her to log on to a Hotmail e-mail account. That began a series of agonizingly disjointed communications from Mr. Halimi's abductors that included hundreds of phone calls and e-mail messages, and ransom demands that started at $500,000 and dropped to $5,000, said the family's lawyer, Francis Szpiner.

After a few days, the gang moved their captive to the concrete basement room beneath a section of the building a few doors down. They shaved his head and sliced his cheek with a knife, photographed him with blood running down his face, and e-mailed the picture to his family.
As the days wore on, his captors turned increasingly cruel, stripping off his clothes and beating, scratching and cutting him. A burning cigarette was pressed into his forehead.

The family was instructed to send a ransom to Ivory Coast, via Western Union, and Mr. Fofana traveled to that country at least once in early February. According to reports after his eventual arrest, it was after the ransom failed to arrive that the torture of Mr. Halimi began in earnest.
The police did not yet know the identities of the gang members but were close on their heels.

Around Feb. 10, Mr. Fofana briefly visited an Internet cafe on the Rue de la Fidélité in the 10th Arrondissement, wearing a cap and a scarf that covered his mouth and nose. "I don't even think he took his gloves off," the manager said Friday. Just 15 minutes later, he said, police officers arrived looking for a black man, a computer-generated sketch in hand. They lifted fingerprints from the keyboard Mr. Fofana had used and confiscated the computer's hard drive and the 5-euro note he had paid with.

On the evening of Feb. 13, Mr. Halimi was found. It is not yet clear when he was stabbed or whether his captors thought he was dead when they dumped him among the trees behind the Ste.-Geneviève-des-Bois train station south of Paris.

Two days later, with the case beginning to make shocking headlines, Mr. Fofana flew back to Ivory Coast and was soon moving freely about town with a girlfriend, identified by the French media as Mariam Cissé. Meanwhile, the police had begun circulating sketches of two women who had served the gang as bait, drawn from the recollections of the men who had been approached.
One was the 17-year-old French-Iranian believed to have lured Mr. Halimi to his death. The sketch of a second woman proved particularly accurate, and when it was shown on television, many people recognized her as Audrey Lorleach, 24, lawyers involved in the case say.

Fearing she would be caught, Ms. Lorleach turned herself in and led the police to her boyfriend, Jérôme Tony Ribeiro, a young man of Portuguese descent. He gave the police Mr. Fofana's name.

When Mr. Fofana saw his name and image in the French media the next day, he was enraged and called Mr. Halimi's father and girlfriend and various of his accomplices in France from Abidjan, threatening them all — and confirming his whereabouts to the police. He was arrested on Feb. 22. [Mr. Fofana was returned to France on Saturday after being handed over to French custody by Ivorian authorities, Agence France-Presse reported.]

So far, a total of 19 people, ages 17 to 39, have been arrested in connection with Mr. Halimi's abduction and death, including the French-Iranian woman, whose first name is Yalda.
The police found Islamist literature and documents supporting a Palestinian aid group in the home of at least one of the people arrested, but lawyers involved in the case dismiss Islamic extremism as a motivation, noting that many of the people involved were not Muslim. The Halimis' lawyer, Mr. Szpiner, denied French news reports that the gang had called Mr. Halimi's family and recited the Koran.

Mr. Fofana has admitted his involvement. In an interview videotaped by a local journalist at the police station in Abidjan and broadcast on French television, a smiling, relaxed Mr. Fofana denied that he killed Mr. Halimi and dismissed the anti-Semitic aspect of the abduction.
"It was done for financial ends," he said on the tape.

Standing in the doorway in Bagneux near where Mr. Halimi was held, the young French-Arab man smiled when asked about Mr. Fofana. "He was nice, everybody liked him," he said. "If the police bring him back here, the guys in the neighborhood will liberate him."

2006-03-04T21:38:00.000-05:00

Tipping the Scales -- How Much is Too Much?

My friend went to see his nephew play in an elementary school hockey game between two modern orthodox Yeshivoth. Both teams had poor records. The visiting team had one win versus seven losses while the home team had zero wins versus seven losses. With 27 seconds left in the contest, and the home team winning 4-3, the visiting team apparently scored a goal which evened the match at 4-4. But play continued until the buzzer sounded.

Being that one referee was absent for the contest, the other referee missed the goal and did not stop the action. At the moment of the score, the visiting team screamed in celebration. When play did not stop, the home team tried to act as if there was no score.

At the conclusion of the game, my friend who's nephew played for the now "losing" visiting squad ran over to the coach of the home team, the coach also being a Rebbi in the Yeshiva. My friend asked the Rebbi incredulously about the goal. The Rebbi said "I didn't see it go in."
The Rebbi then turned to his players and asked "Did you see any goal?" The response was a bunch of sheepish looks followed by silence. "I guess there wasn't any goal, then."
My friend walked away with his nephew feeling that he was had.

Did the Rabbi see the goal? Was there one even scored? Was the Rabbi trying to protect his kids? Was there a lack of sportsmanship? Was a lesson being presented to children on both sides that would have immense ramifications later. I don't know. I wasn't there. I'm not a mind reader and I can't predict the future.

However, after glancing at a book called "Off The Derech -- Why Observant Jews Leave Judaism," by Faranak Margolese and listening to a shiur by Dr. Shnayer Leiman, I began wondering about some of things we do for the "benefit" or Chinuch of others.

Margelese' thoughts on why we lose too many of our youth is the following:

If there isn't enough positive feelings, belief and implementation ability given over to Jewish children by parents, teachers and friends, children can go off the derech. On the other hand, in order to stay the course, it doesn't matter how much of the three factors exist in the child, just as long as they all combine to keep the child on the Derech.

For example, even if you have an emotionally battered child but he/she has enough intellect and/or belief to compensate, the child will remain frum. On the other hand, a child with a positive self-image or a child instilled with strong belief can compensate for a lack in having an intellectual understanding in Yahuduth.

As long as the combination of the three factors is enough to reach the level needed, which she calls the 100% level (i.e. the total of the three factors add up to the level needed for the child to remain frum), then the child will do so. In other words, all actions taken will either bring a child closer to or further away from the "Derech."

Dr. Leiman's shiur further piqued my interest in this area.

The Shiur began with the introduction of a scholarly Halachic periodical entitled "Ohr Yisroel," where a question was raised if one is allowed to "make up" stories about the "Gedolim" if it will show a positive attribute to be emulated, i.e. a lesson to be learned. After quoting from many sources, the author concluded in the affirmative. However, Dr. Leiman, seemed to differ. His shiur which was based on an article by a Rabbi Mondoshine posed the following:

Ruchama Shain, in a book published in 1990 called "Reaching the Stars," had a supposedly true story where the names of the protagonists were changed to protect the privacy of these individuals.

Basically, the story was regarding a Yeshiva Bochur who wanted to do some research on a topic. He was told that he would find what he was looking for at Hebrew University.

Being a 'good Yeshiva boy' he had never been to a University. He knew, however, that he would probably be at the University for many hours, so he packed himself a lunch and he was on his way.

At some point in his research, he decided to take a break. He went over to a water fountain to wash. He ate his food and Benched by heart and 'out loud.' A librarian came over in a huff and accosted him for eating in a Library, disturbing the solitude of the Library and for Benching incorrectly.

The Bochur apologized by saying he did not know that one could not eat in a Library and did not know that silence had to be maintained in the reading room. But incredulously he asked what mistake had he made in the wording of his benching.

The Librarian told him that in the Rachem portion he added the words V'Lo Nikosheil similar to the words in Ahavas Olam. He then smiled and said that this was his minhag and he is sure it would be found in some Benchers.

She then pulled off the shelves many of the Siddurim in the Library and dared him to find it. He could not. This probably bothered him a great deal, so he made it his business to find his nusach in some Siddur.

Eventually, he went to Mea Shearim, found a Siddur, made a photocopy, circled the V'Lo Nikosheal, placed arrows pointing to it, all in red ink and sent it off to the Librarian. But he didn't hear from her.

A few years later, he received a wedding invitation. It was in Yerushalayim, so he decided to go even though he didn't know who sent the invitation. At the wedding, he saw no one he knew -- neither on the Men's side nor on the Woman's side. (it was probaly a Chareidi Wedding -- no mixed seating.) But someone spotted him and came over to him.

He was told that the Kallah wanted to meet him. He went over to her but he didn't recognize her. The Kallah then told him that she was the Librarian and his letter arrived just at the moment when she was receiving a marriage proposal from an Arab whom she was planning to wed.

When she saw the Yeshiva Bochur's note and the words V'Lo Nikoshail circled in red she had a change of heart and became frum.

Nice Story? It was repeated many times in other volumes over the next 15 years with minor variations where the Yeshiva Bochur was actually a famous Gadol and other minor discrepancies.

Yet the story supposedly first appeared in print with the 1990 publication.

Dr. Leiman then pulled out a 1937 volume by Shai Agnon. In it was the same story of sorts except that the girl was a doctoral thesis student from Germany who had come to eat at the Agnon's house in Eretz Yisroel.

After completing the meal, he began benching and she corrected him when he said V'Lo Nikoshail. Agnon said that this was his father's minhag. She retorted that's impossible and that he would not find this nusach anywhere.

Sometime afterwards, on Agnon's father's Yartzeit he went to buy a new Siddur to use during the davening. While searching, he came across a Bencher which looked quite similar to one used at his father's table in Poland. Lo and behold, it had V'Lo Nikoshail.

Agnon was so excited, he sent the Bencher off to Germany with a congratulatory note to the young woman for receiving her doctorate.

Yet that was not the end of the story. Years later, the woman said she was coming to make Aliyah with her future husband and that she would be honored if Agnon could attend their wedding. At the end of Sheva Brochot, she handed him a leather bound jeweled encrusted Sefer.

It was the Bencher.

Agnon exclaimed how he had bought the Bencher for a few Prutahs and now she encases it in such an ornate binding. The young woman replied, that she received Agnon's note just at the moment when she was about to marry a fellow gentile student. When she opened the note and saw V'Lo Nikoshail encircled in red, it changed her life. The Sefer certainly deserved to be bejeweled and he deserved to have it.

If you didn't know by now, Shai Agnon was a fiction writer. But not all of the story was fictitious.
The minhag of his father was true.

Dr. Leiman pointed out that in the back of the Shulchan Aruch on Halochos of Brachos, there is a commentary from the Rav of the Polish town where Agnon and his family lived.

The Rav comments that he had a minhag to say V'Lo Nikoshail in Rachem but had no source for it. He also did not recommend anyone else to follow his minhag.

Nevertheless,what ever you believe, the entire piece is a great story.

But in response to the article in "Ohr Yisroel" the current ADMAR from Slonim wrote in the next issue that a Rebbi should not change the facts to suit the moral because the morals of the Torah are based on Emes. [Of course, for Darchei Shalom, you don't have to spill the beans on everything. If your wife has a new hat, you don't have to tell her how ugly you think it looks.] The ADMAR quoted a story from the Peshvorsk Rav who had broken his arm and gave out a 'krechts' (a wail) during davening.

Afterwards, he called together his Talmidim to explain why he yelled out. They responded it wasn't necessary to explain. But he said it was. He yelled out because of the pain and not because he had more Kavanah. He did not want any of his students to have a false impression less at some time in the future they feel he wasn't being truthful about this and that possibly he wasn't being truthful about everything else he taught them.

So how far do we push someone for their benefit? Are we pushing them for our benefit? Does the end justify the means? Maybe.

Maybe not.

You be the judge.

2006-03-03T12:46:00.000-05:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

2006-03-03T11:23:00.000-05:00

Come Out from Beneath the Covers

One can only read with disgust about the recent allegations of monstrous child abuse taking place outside of our community. However, after speaking recently to Rebbeim and teachers who are providing Chinuch, it seems that the percentage of cases within the orthodox world is not significantly lower than in the world at large.

Having worked for a Jewish Social Service Agency, I am well aware of the distressing accusations and alleged behavior within the community. But one cannot help but be concerned about false accusations as well. It is all too easy. How many times have spouses, who are in the midst of a bitter divorce, made false accusations? How many times have people in an abuse of power made false accusations?

The Loshon Hara is not exclusive to child abuse. The media is currently having a field day with the accusations against a renowned Rabbi in upstate New York in reference to a lawsuit against the Rabbi for behavior involving sexual harassment.

Lives are being destroyed on a daily basis. Yet, what if even a small percentage of the accusations leveled against alleged abusers are true? Where do we draw the line between protecting those who cannot protect themselves and protecting the falsely accused?

In a recently published book by Rabbi Dr. Warren Goldstein , Chief Rabbi of South Africa, entitled "Defending the Human Spirit - Jewish Law's Vision for a Moral Society," Rabbi Goldstein stressed that there is a theme or principle in all laws. In Jewish law, it is the Vulnerability Principle. The Torah mentions time and again to do justice by the stranger, widow and orphan. It is a theme to protect those who have difficulty to protect themselves. Though a judge in Jewish law is not to be swayed by the poor against the rich or vice versa, he may advocate on behalf of the poor person because they may not be in a position to advocate for themselves.

The question remains, however, who is that vulnerable person in each particular case?

Let's be careful out there.

2006-03-02T19:56:00.001-05:00

Bush and Isiah Thomas -- One and the same?

Though I voted for Bush in the last 2 elections and was elated when Isiah Thomas was brought in to replace Scott Layden as GM of the New York Knickerbockers, I begin to wonder about the moves each of them have made lately.

After watching and listening to the AP video, in which Bush assured local goverment officials that all preparations were being made prior to Hurricane Katarina, Bush seems to be more and more as if he's a Saturday Night Live caricature of himself.

Better yet, he seemed more like Isiah Thomas stating that a plan is in place when he trades for a player with a heart condition who now seems to be out of gas because he's afraid to go all out.

Yet why worry! A report on PBS, made 6 months after Katarina, showed the New Orleans Gulf Coast community living in terrible conditions and the Federal government (FEMA) and local officials telling them to take a hike. Further, the plan in place by the government is to shore up the levies to a level ill-suited for a community already known to have hurricanes with potential devastating effects.

But who cares! The levies won't be ready in time for the next hurricane season, anyway.

Oh, let's not forget about Thomas' plan. It so far has cost the Knicks almost 200 million dollars a year and will do so for many years to come, the worst record in the league and the #1 unprotected draft choice gone with the wind to Chicago. They don't call it the windy city for nothing.

Yet people make mistakes, though most of the time they won't admit it. Ask Bush if he made a mistake about Dubai, always a leading member in the race to boycott and bad-mouth Israel. Ask him what was he thinking when he let his top people allow DPW to control US ports in any manner. What happened to the war on terrorism? Don't we have to fight it at home too? Oh, I get it. We only have to be concerned about the terrorists overseas.

Sorry to say that George Bush been asleep on the job. So has Isiah Thomas. Maybe they're both dreaming of Vladimir Putin, a former head of the KGB, Bush' trustworthy friend; a man of moral integrity -- just like Thomas.

Maybe Putin can play point guard for a few rubbles.

2006-03-01T22:40:00.000-05:00

Jewish love for Israel and fellow man -- Wherfore Art Thou? -- The real Shakespearean tragedy

Another Observation:

After reading Kol Dodi Dofek, it seems that the Rav felt that the American Jewish community could have done so much more during World War II and could have saved many Jews from annihilation during the Holocaust.

Though I disagree with the comparison of the Holocaust to the current situation with the Yishuvim and felt it was wrong to wear Stars of David prior to the Gush Katif expulsion, the silence of the Jewish community at large regarding Yehuda, Aza and Shomron grows more and more each day. It is as if the Rav could have reiterated his Drasha today. His words should speak volumes to World Jewry. They should be deafening.

Yet I only hear silence.

2006-03-01T21:03:00.000-05:00

Who killed whose G-d?

After reading a newly published YU booklet on Drashas from Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, I found it interesting that anti-semitism in the 50's reared its ugly head somewhat in the same vein as it does so today.

John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State during the Eisenhower administration, answered a question as to why the Arabs hate the Jews; his response being something to the effect that the Jews killed their G-d.

To paraphrase the Rav, it was as if Hashem placed the words into his mouth; almost as he put words into the the mouth of Billam's donkey. What Dulles actually wanted to say was that he and fellow christians like him hated the Jews because they "killed" their G-d.

So time stands still for no, anti-semitic, man.

Christ-killer accusations have long been the fashion trend. Now they even make movies about it.

The General Hospital soap of the Arab world has long been about blood sucking Jews. The editor of a leading Egyptian daily has no problem with a cartoon of Hitler and Anna Frank in the same bed. He told the BBC that there's nothing wrong with it. On the other hand, the caricatures of Mohammed are a different story; that's blasphemous.

Well, we'll always have our fellow Jews like Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg to set the record straight.