I'm not of the 400 left wing Rabbis

Glen Beck (who loves the State of Israel and who has produced material in support of Israel which is more effective than anything that Israel ever produced) - and ignore the deeds (or the inaction) of a President who is leading Israel and our country to doom

only 400 words?

While we are waiting to see if this President, who does not utter the words Muslim and terror in the same sentence, and who worries so much about Jews adding bedrooms to apartments in historic Jewish land, will go with the multitude to do evil at the UN
the big picture is
Egypt may soon fall to extremists (Mubarak's wife and so have fled)
Lebanon falls to Hezbollah
Abbas gives 2000 to suicide bomber martyrs
Book praising suicide bombers found on Southern US border left by illegal alien tried to enter
Syria is Iran puppet
Jordan under huge pressure from all this Arab unrest
Iran exerting dominance over the region
Turkey moving steadily into extremist Moslem orbit
Christians being massacred in Egypt, Iraq etc
Arab slavery by the north Sudanese of blacks S Sudan gains strength even as more and more African Americans convert to Islam
Europe is more and more under Islamic pressure and demographic challenges
Venezuela in cahoots with Iran
N Korea in cahoots with iran
etc.
the world under Obama gets worse and worse/In His SOTU Obama devoted 400 words to foreign policy.

and some of our colleagues defend J Street's defense of a US veto and are regularly criticizing Israel. IMHO-meshuga

to the Gov of Alabama

*********************************************************************************

January 18, 2011

Governor Robert Bentley
600 Dexter Avenue
Montgomery, AL36130
Via: fax 334-353-0004

Let me offer you my congratulations on yesterday's inauguration as the Governor of Alabama. I wish you success, and that these next four years will be years of growth and prosperity for all the citizens of our great State. Leadership has its responsibilities and burdens, and I pray to God that you will bear these burdens with dignity and grace, and that you will fulfill your responsibilities with skill and compassion.

Governor Bentley, I feel a duty to my conscience and my role as the rabbi of the largest synagogue in Alabama to bring to your attention the fact that your remarks at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church yesterday were troubling to me and my congregation, and I believe also to many Alabamians. You are quoted in the Birmingham News as saying:

"There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit. But if you have been adopted in God's family like I have, and like you have if you're a Christian and if you're saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister. . . . Now I will have to say, that if we don't have the same daddy, we're not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

I admire people of faith, and I hope that God guides you through these next years. Yours is a difficult job, to be sure, and you will need Divine Providence to get you through the days and months and years.

I want to tell you about us. We Jews are also deeply faithful people. Our living tradition harkens back to Abraham and Sarah, and forward to our rabbis today. The ideas brought forth by my ancestors were incorporated as the cornerstones of Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, Sikhism and Baha'i, and are the foundations of western ethics and modern spirituality. We are also Alabamians. We pay our taxes. We vote in elections. We send our children to school in this state. We abide by Alabama 's laws and work, each of us in our own way, for the betterment of all. We are good citizens of this state.

Governor Bentley, as a non-Christian, I felt disenfranchised from your grace as our leader in the immediate hours after your inauguration. If you were an archbishop or the pastor of a church, I could take issue with these statements, or even ignore them. But you are my Governor. Our great nation, by law and tradition, provides us with religious freedom. And even though we do not believe exactly alike, we ought to see each other with brotherly affection, and as equals in conscience and human worth.

We Jews, and others who are not Christians, know that we are a minority in Alabama . We know what it is like to be few in number and sometimes seen as outsiders. We are also proud Americans. Governor Bentley, religion in this country is great because every American is offered equal protection and defense from a government that would attempt to dictate conscience and belief. We hope that you would reconsider the sentiments you shared at the historic Dexter Avenue Church , and be a Governor that respects us all and treats us all as brothers and sisters. Please don't use religion to divide us. Unite us all instead. You are your brothers' keeper, and Governor Bentley, we are your brothers.

2500 years ago, the Prophet Malachi told my people: "Have we not all one father? Hath not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, profaning the covenant of our fathers?" I am a religious man, Governor Bentley. We have only one God and one father, and we are all, whether we like it or not, brothers. And we need to be kind to each other as we ought to be kind to our brothers. And we are kind to our brothers for sake of the One God who is the father of all.

I am hoping that I will hear back from you a clear message of enfranchisement and understanding. I am depending upon you for leadership.

Governor Bentley, I plan to send this letter to my congregation. I promise you that I will also send them your response. And Governor Bentley, it would be my honor to invite you and Mrs. Bentley to address Temple Emanu-El one Sabbath evening so that you would get to know us better. I hope you might find time amid all of your duties to reach out to us in the spirit of friendship.

This was not an easy letter to write. But do know that it was written with great hope and prayers for you and our State of Alabama .

Shalom,

Rabbi Jonathan Miller

cc: Temple Emanu-El

Great article on the Talmud all Conservative scholars

Jewish Daily- Ideas
Talmud: The Back Story
By Yehudah Mirsky
.
There is no getting away from the Babylonian Talmud. Love it, hate it, or both, this monumental work, so unlike anything we generally think of as a book, has been central to Jewish life for a millennium and more, managing time after time to find new readers and to summon new forms of reading.

In the English-speaking world, the Talmud is becoming better known thanks to initiatives like the Steinsaltz and ArtScroll translations. Less well-known are the scholars whose labor is shaping how the Talmud is likely to be read and understood for generations to come. Of these, one of the most significant is Shamma Friedman, whose collected talmudic essays, mainly in Hebrew, have recently been published. Friedman, a soft-spoken American who moved to Israel in 1973, has pioneered in the effort to get into the workshop of the Talmud's many editors and offer a glimpse, painstakingly arrived at, of how the great compilation came to be.

Born in Philadelphia in 1937, Friedman studied at the University of Pennsylvania before immersing himself in the Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary under the tutelage of Saul Lieberman and Haim Zalman Dimitrovsky. Both men were former students of Jacob Nahum Epstein, who, at the Hebrew University in the 1930s and '40s, had delved into the foundational questions of how the talmudic texts came to be brought together over time and how the different parts relate to one another.

The traditional "back story" of the Talmud is put forth in the 10th-century "Epistle" of the great Babylonian scholar Sherira Gaon. It is an invaluable source for reconstructing the generations of sages and students, and the chains of transmission, that yielded the Mishnah and Gemara, which in turn, and together, make up the Talmud. Yet many questions are left unanswered by Sherira. When and how were the Mishnah and Gemara, both of which were Oral Torah, written down? What exactly was the role of the post-talmudic Savoraim, the "explainers" who, Sherira says, "rendered interpretations akin to judgments"?

Epstein and others (including Abraham Weiss and Hyman Klein) gained purchase on these questions by investigating the relationship among the three basic historical layers of which the Talmud is composed: sources associated with the sages known as Tannaim, dating from before and up to the composition of the Mishnah at the turn of the 3rd century; the many statements and discussions attributed by name to the Amoraim, sages coming after the Mishnah; and the anonymous editorial voice known as "the stam" (literally, "plain voice") in which the first two layers are embedded and which surrounds, organizes, and discusses them.

The finished Talmud weaves all of these fragmentary traditions and texts into coherent dialogues among sages living miles and centuries apart, regularly transposing and reformulating sources while adding a sophisticated apparatus of explanation. The result is a work that not only is intellectually compelling but regularly achieves powerful literary effects. To Epstein and the others, what became increasingly clear was that strong editorial hands had been at play in the process.

How did all this work over time? Friedman, in a now-classic 1978 article synthesizing decades of research, offered a clear, logical method through which one could differentiate the text's constituent historical layers. He stipulated three sorts of criteria: linguistic (the more Hebrew, the earlier the text; the more Aramaic, the later); evolutionary (the more concise, the earlier; the longer and more involved, the later); and scribal (the more consistent a text across different manuscripts, the earlier; the more various, the later). In addition, however, Friedman focused on the need to understand each sugya (literally, walk or passage)-the basic literary unit of which, in the hundreds, the Talmud is composed-as a literary work unto itself.

In subsequent articles, reprinted like the first one in the new volume of his collected studies, Friedman outlined methods for establishing "families" of early talmudic manuscripts and their interrelationships, reconstructing the transition from hand-written to printed texts, discerning the underlying literary structures of sugyot, and sifting out the literary and (painfully sparse) historical elements in tales of the sages and their lives. With all this in hand, he set out to reconstruct the composition of the Talmud as a whole by grasping the intentions of its editors and earliest interpreters, one chapter at a time. Demonstrating how it could be done, he published in the 1990s two large volumes on a single chapter of a single talmudic tractate (Bava Metzia VI), dealing with the rights of artisans.

This has been, needless to say, an extraordinarily ambitious undertaking. A similar decades-long project, focused less on sugyot and more on whole tractates, has long been pursued by another disciple of Lieberman's, David Weiss Halivni, whose work is grounded in his own powerful erudition and interpretive instincts. Friedman's method, though no less demanding, is more systematic, which has enabled him to train a number of younger scholars. He has also made deft use of technology: the Society for the Interpretation of Talmud, founded by him, now turns out book-length commentaries to individual chapters in which the text's various strata are presented in distinct layouts and typefaces, with synopses, modern-Hebrew translations, and historical commentaries, and with all the manuscript versions viewable side-by-side in appendices. That work has itself has been made possible by the computer. Indeed, another body founded by Friedman, the Saul Lieberman Institute, has placed online all known talmudic manuscripts, whole and in fragments, so that multiple versions can be viewed simultaneously.

Though much of the work by Friedman and his students is perforce technical, its significance extends beyond academic confines and has already begun to reshape historical understandings. (Thus, Jeffrey Rubenstein has shown that Friedman and Halivni's efforts yield a more coherent picture of the evolution of the great Babylonian yeshivas.) Friedman's work has also come to be a reference point for numerous other studies of the talmudic text itself, and modified versions of it have been adopted for Talmud studies in Israeli schools.

Steering a middle course between Orthodox stances that place the Talmud outside of history and a postmodern skepticism that argues against the ability to say anything about its history at all, Friedman's massive scholarship yields a complex picture: a picture of hosts of talmudic sages consciously and ceaselessly reinterpreting earlier traditions in order to achieve coherent teachings to guide them in the present.

This portrait of rabbinic culture begets, in turn, a powerful challenge. Modern intellectual integrity having yielded a restless scenario of fragmentary ancient texts being worked and reworked into the sources we have today, can we somehow put the pieces back together into a coherent and compelling story? And will that story reflect not only the work of the rabbinic interpreters but also the original texts and traditions, by now lost to us, that they were trying, through their editing, to maintain?

The answer is yes, but it will be a different story, in ways both stranger and more familiar: a story of internal ferment and spiritual survival in the face of profound uncertainty.

Halacha influenced by socio-economics

Friday's Post-Tu B'shvat

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Halakha and History

=20

Reuven Hammer

=20

The Tu B'shvat celebrations are over now. Trees have been planted, fruit =
has been eaten and a certain amount of environmental consciousness has =
entered our minds, though probably not enough. None of that, of course, =
has anything to do with the original meaning of Tu B'shvat as found in =
the Mishnah, "The new year of the trees is on the first of Shvat =
according to Bet Shammai. Bet Hillel says - the fifteenth of the month." =
That is, the year of counting the cycle of tithing the fruits begins on =
that date. The metamorphosis of the day only illustrates the way that =
observances grow and change with the times.

=20

On Tu B'shvat two associations automatically come to my mind. The first =
goes back to pre-State days when I was a child in Hebrew School. Every =
Tu B'shvat we were given fruit from Palestine to eat. It was called =
bokser. The problem was that it was truly inedible. I don't know how it =
arrived in America and how long it had taken to get there, but it was as =
hard as a rock and if you did manage to chew it without breaking your =
teeth it tasted a bit like cardboard. I suspect that bokser did more =
than anything else to discourage aliyah. Years later when I tasted it in =
Israel, fresh off the tree, I was shocked at how good it actually was.

=20

The other association is from my student days at JTS Rabbinical School. =
I was given an essay to read written by the brilliant Talmudist =
Professor Louis Ginzberg, who unfortunately passed away my first year =
there so I had no chance to study with him. Ginzberg was undoubtedly the =
greatest rabbinics scholar of that and many other generations. His =
magnum opus, Legends of the Jews, is an unrivaled masterpiece. =
Incidentally, it was translated into English from his Germanic =
manuscript by the young Henrietta Szold who was somewhat infatuated with =
him and was the first woman given permission to sit in on rabbinical =
school classes at the Seminary. Obviously she was not enrolled or =
eligible for ordination.=20

=20

The essay I read was entitled "The Significance of the Halachah for =
Jewish History." It had been delivered in Hebrew as a lecture at the =
Hebrew University in Jerusalem during the academic year 1929-30. "My =
chief purpose," Ginzberg said, "is to demonstrate that the development =
of the halakhah.is not a creation of the House of Study but an =
expression of life itself." His theme was the influence of =
socio-economic factors on the development of Jewish Law and Tu B'shvat =
was one of the primary examples that Ginzberg brought to prove his =
thesis.

=20

Ginzberg demonstrated that the controversies between the School of =
Hillel and the School of Shammai were the result of the differences in =
the socio-economic status of these two groups. The Hillelites =
represented the lower social classes while the Shammaites were wealthy =
patricians. Ginzberg goes through an entire list of the conflicts =
between the law as interpreted by Hillel and that of Shammai and =
demonstrates that in each case it reflects the differing needs and views =
of the upper and the lower classes. The last one he deals with has to do =
with the date of the New Year of the Trees which, as noted, according to =
Shammai was the first of Shvat and according to Hillel was the fifteenth =
of Shvat. Why? "There is no need to indulge in fanciful theorizing, for =
the simplest explanation is that the rich possessed good and fruitful =
fields on which the trees began to blossom a week or two before the =
blossoming of the trees on the meager and unyielding soil of the poor."

=20

Incidentally, Ginzberg also contends that various rabbinic enactments =
against Gentiles in the Land of Israel were not based on Biblical law =
but on the specific problems of that particular generation, faced with =
threats against Jewish settlement in the land because the land was =
controlled by the Romans.=20

=20

=20

Subsequent studies of Jewish Law by such scholars as Prof. Yaakov Katz =
and many others have continued this line, demonstrating that halakhic =
decisions in the Middle Ages as well as those in antiquity were =
frequently made on the basis the needs of the specific community. More =
often than not the realities of life and the need for the community to =
survive economically, politically and socially determined what was =
permitted and what was forbidden according to Jewish Law.=20

=20

As Ginzberg wrote concerning the Pharisees, "They did not avoid dealing =
with the questions that contemporary life presented and solving them =
according to the needs of the day." Halakha is not static and never has =
been. It has always reacted to the needs of the people and the =
conditions of the time. In Israel above all places it is crucial that we =
recognize that a halakha that does not take history and changing =
conditions into account and that does not demonstrate flexibility is a =
dead letter which cannot fulfill the Torah's command "and you shall live =
by them" (Leviticus 18:5).

Giffords Jewish roots

Congress woman who was shot today and first Jewish congresswoman. She wrote this in 2006:

Arizona Jewish Post > GABRIELLE GIFFORDS 10.27.06


My grandfather, Akiba Hornstein, was the son of a Lithuanian rabbi. My
grandfather changed his name to Giff Giffords for reasons of anti-Semitism
and moved to Southern Arizona from New York more than a half century ago. In
the 1940s, he founded my family’s tire and automotive business, El Campo
Tire, which grew into a successful and thriving business for 50 years, which
I ran for several years before serving in the Arizona Legislature.



Growing up, my family’s Jewish roots and tradition played an important role
in shaping my values. The women in my family served as strong role models
for me as a girl. In my family, if you want to get something done, you take
it to the women relatives! Like my grandmother, I am a lifetime member of
Hadassah and now a member of Congregation Chaverim.



When I served in the State Senate in Arizona, I had the opportunity to visit
Jerusalem. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. I had
the opportunity to meet with the then-mayor of Jeru salem, Ehud Olmert, and
I got to see firsthand the sacrifices that Israelis make in the name of
security because of the dangerous state of affairs there.

I will always be a strong supporter of Israel. As the only functioning
democracy in the Middle East, Israel is a vital strategic ally of the United
States. I believe the United States must do everything possible to secure
Israel’s long-term security and achieve a lasting peace in the region. The
failure of the current administration to continue the peace process has been
a loss to America and Israel. That is why we need a new direction in
Washington.



Peace between Israel and her neighbors can only be achieved by direct talks
between the parties. Until the Palestinian leadership and other hostile
regimes are willing to accept Israel’s right to exist, it will be impossible
to achieve peace. I believe that the United States can help by providing a
mediator who can be trusted by both sides, like former President Bill
Clinton. It’s an approach that worked in achieving a peaceful settlement to
the violence in Northern Ireland. People in the Middle East need to know
that the U.S. is serious about the peace process.



We cannot forget our past. I have worked to protect the rights of Holocaust
survivors in our state. In 2002, I sponsored legislation that was signed
into law by Governor Jane Hull, and unanimously approved by the Senate, to
allow victims of the Holocaust, or their heirs, to collect insurance claims
(HB 2541). It re-opened the statute of limitations for these claims. My
opponent, Randy Graf, was one of only 13 legislators to oppose this bill.



As a woman and as a Jew, I will always work to insure that the United States
stands with Israel to jointly ensure our mutual safety, security, and
prosperity. I invite you to visit


www.giffordsforcongress.com.

Ladino

Ladino!
By Yehudah Mirsky

Yasmin Levy.

Long overshadowed by its Yiddish cousin, Ladino—the "other" modern Jewish language, also known as Judeo-Spanish—has increasingly benefited from new waves of scholarly and cultural retrieval. A clearer picture is thereby emerging of what Ladino was, what it wasn't, and perhaps what it might yet be.

King Merodakh's Telegram Julia Phillips Cohen, H-Judaic. Beginning in the 18th century, Ottoman rabbis attempted to craft a worldview responsive to change while reinforcing the symbolic universe of traditional Jewish learning.

Who is Elia Karmona? Michael Alpert, Spiro Ark. On the accomplishments and limitations of Ladino literature and its best-known writer.

A Dawning Problem Maurice Hexter, Bulletin of the National Conference of Jewish Charities. Isolated by synagogue, ritual, and language, Turkish Jews have arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio. How to help them become integrated with their fellow Jews? (1913)

Ottoman Hebrew Sacred Songs Samuel Benaroya, Jewish Music Research Centre. One of the last surviving members of the Turkish Maftirim choir sings on a recording made shortly before his death in 2003. (Audio)
The origins of the language lie in medieval Jewish transliterations of Spanish and other Romance languages into the Hebrew (and Arabic) alphabet. After the expulsion from Spain in 1492, Ladino came into its own as a separate idiom and as the lingua franca of the Sephardi Diaspora in the Balkans and Asia Minor, chiefly as a spoken language but eventually also in print.

Ladino's fortunes would intimately be tied, for better or worse, to those of the Ottoman Empire. Within that multi-confessional, millet system, non-Muslim minorities, formally powerless, were recognized as legitimate sub-groups not only by religion but also by language. In places like Constantinople, Salonica, Adrianople, and Izmir, Jews and the Ladino language thus thrived together. While much of Jewish intellectual life continued to take place in Hebrew, Ladino made its presence felt in practical halakhic manuals and translations of classic texts (most famously a 1547 Pentateuch in Ladino from the press of Eliezer Gershon Soncino).

Later centuries saw a surge of Judeo-Spanish creativity, inspired in large part by what is undoubtedly Ladino's greatest work: an encyclopedic Bible commentary titled Me'am Lo'ez (literally, "from a people of strange tongue," Psalms 114.1). This was the brainchild of Yaakov Khuli (1689–1732), Jerusalemite scion of a distinguished scholarly dynasty who arrived in Constantinople in 1714 to serve as a rabbinical judge. Spurred by the new possibilities afforded by print, as well as by a sense of responsibility for the spiritual health of a community still reeling from the Sabbatian heresies of the previous century, Khuli undertook a massive enterprise of public education, of which Me'am Lo'ez was a chief instrument.

The first volume, on Genesis, appeared in 1730; Khuli completed half of the volume on Exodus before his death in 1732. In the work he draws on rabbinic literature, biblical exegesis, the Zohar, and the rich legal, philosophical, and mystical sources of Sephardi Jewry to forge both simple homilies and intricate discourses. His purpose, he writes in the introduction, is to inculcate four basic ideas: the wonder of God's creation, the centrality of Torah and its commandments, love of one's neighbor, and the fact of mortality. Armed with these, the reader "will know that man's end is to vanish from this world, and so he must take care to win companions that will stand with him in times of adversity, just as one does before embarking on a journey."

Me'am Lo'ez triggered a new wave of rabbinic writing, manifest above all in efforts to complete Khuli's work. In her contribution to an ongoing series on the state of Ladino studies in the journal European Judaism, the scholar Alisa Meyuhas Ginio traces the evolution of the Ottoman rabbinate from the classic work of Khuli and his immediate successors, all of whom were steeped in classical learning and literary style, through a transitional era of figures neither so erudite nor so fluid, to, in the late-19th century, authors influenced by modernization and the European Enlightenment.

It was in these latter decades that, as a literary language, Ladino entered its Golden Age, catalyzed (as Sarah Abrevaya Stein shows in her fascinating book, Making Jews Modern) by the radical uncertainties of modernity and the cultural hungers of new generations of urban readers. Although, as Michael Alpert notes in European Judaism, Ladino novelists were not on a par with their counterparts in Hebrew and Yiddish (indeed, the vast majority of Ladino novels were translations), magazines and journalism were another story.

The first Ladino newspaper, Sha'arei Mizrah, was launched in 1845. From 1860 on, Ladino journalism flourished, grappling with the major social and cultural issues of the day and becoming the primary forum for pioneering studies of the history and culture of Sephardi Jewry. In the 20th century, there were some 300 Ladino periodicals in Turkey and the Balkans in the period between the two world wars.

Ladino culture as a whole could not and did not outlast the Ottoman setting that had given it shape and coherence. Already in the interwar years, the periodicals were fissuring into narrowly segmented audiences; fewer young people spoke the language; and the older texts, printed in the classic "Rashi" typeface, were sealed into the past. The Holocaust and, later, waves of emigration to Israel and the West largely finished off what remained of a lived culture.

And today, when the Ottomans are no more and Turkish Jewry is on the ropes? Unlike Yiddish, Ladino lacks both communities of speakers in the present and enough original literature of the past to leave a canon of its own. Nor did it play a role in setting the ideological terms or creating the leading institutions either of Israel or of American Jewry.

And yet it still has much to offer. The Italian poet Eugenio Montale once wrote of "the second life of art," in which the fragments and traces of an original poem, painting, or novel make their way "back into the streets" and into people's minds, in new and unintended ways but of a piece with the evolving consciousness of the tribe. It may be just so in the second life of Ladino and its treasures, from Me'am Lo'ez and other rabbinic works, to the feats of historical research performed by early scholars, to the political and cultural debates that enlivened the pages of Ladino periodicals.

And then there is the music, both sacred and secular: music that is being rediscovered and reinterpreted by scholars in Europe, Israel, and the U.S., and by artists from Yasmin Levy, daughter of a Ladino composer and cantor, to the Brooklyn-born musician Basya Schechter. In an increasingly globalized world, the recovery of several centuries' worth of Jewish experience, situated at a geopolitical crossroads all its own and set at a different angle from the usual pattern of modern Jewish history, is no small gift.

Click this to view on the web:
http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2011/1/13/main-feature/1/ladino

Who are the happiest

American Jews Lead the Happiest Lives

By CATHERINE RAMPELL
On average, Jews have higher levels of well-being than their counterparts of every other major faith in America, according to new data from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index.
The index uses daily surveys that aim to measure the components of “the good life,” including health, happiness and access to basic needs like food and shelter. The latest results are based on more than 372,000 interviews conducted in 2009 and 2010, and control for major demographic and regional variables
A previous analysis by Gallup had found that the very religious in general had higher levels of well-being than their less religious counterparts.
This latest parsing of the data finds that that is true across all major religious groups: very religious Catholics have higher levels of well-being than moderately religious or nonreligious Catholics, and so on. (Levels of religiosity are based on how often survey respondents report attending services and how important they perceive religion to be in their daily lives.)
The same is true for American Jews: The most religious members of the Chosen People score highest on the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index - although in general a relatively small share of Jews report themselves as very religious, compared to the composition of other religious groups.


so then why?Morty visits Dr. Goldberg, the veterinarian, and says, "My dog has a problem." Dr. Goldberg says, "So, tell me." "It's a Jewish dog. His name is Seth and he can talk," says Morty. "He can talk?" the doubting doctor asks. "Watch this!" Morty points to the dog and commands: " Seth, fetch!" Seth, begins to walk toward the door, then turns around and says, "So why are you talking to me like that? You always order me around like I'm nothing. And you only call me when you want something. And then you make me sleep on the floor, with my arthritis. You give me this fahkahkta food with all the salt and fat, and you tell me it's a special diet. It tastes like dreck! YOU should eat it yourself! And do you ever take me for a decent walk? NO, it's out of the house, a short pish, and right back home. Maybe if I could stretch out a little, the sciatica wouldn't kill me so much! I should roll over and play dead for real for all you care!" Dr. Goldberg is amazed, "This is remarkable! So, what's the problem?" Morty says, "He has a hearing problem! I said 'fetch,' not 'kvetch.

I wonder

If the West Bank is occupied territory, how do the Muslims explain to 2 billion Christians that the Jewish family of Jesus lived in Bethelhem in the "West Bank" 2000 years ago. That has been Jewish land for 3000 yeard and always will be.

see this

NYT and Wash Post anti Israel bias

Week's worth of stories censored by NY Times, Wash. Post
Leo Rennert


The following stories -- in the span of a week -- were widely disseminated. But none made it into the news pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post. It's all too familiar pattern that points to a biased pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel agenda in their news coverage.


Let's take a look at what these two major newspapers did not seem fit to print:


Dec. 24--Palestinian Authority TV ClaimsJesus was a Palestinian, Denies his Jewish Ancestry


Dec. 25--Abbas aims for "Judenrein" Palestinian state -- No room for a single Israeli.


Dec. 25--Hamas Ultimatum: Israel has Two Options -- Death or Leaving Palestinian Lands.


Dec. 28--Abbas Cracks Down on Main Political Rival, Mohammed Dahlan


Dec. 28--Hamas Reported Torturing, Killing Israel-bound Africans in Sinai


Dec. 29--Fatah Bans Abbas Rival from Party Meetings


Dec. 30--Journalist Who Aired Dissension in Abbas' Party Gets Five-Day Detention


Dec. 30--Poll: Solid Majorities of Palestinians Oppose Two-State Solution Along Clinton Parameters


So why did the Times and the Post engage in such conspicuous self-censorship? Because their editors and reporters are determined to paint Israel as the main obstacle to the peace process, while hiding the darker, anti-peace aspects of the Palestinian side -- both Hamas in Gaza and Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party in the West Bank.


Above all, Abbas's rule has to be prettied up because the papers' news sections are heavily invested in painting him as a bona fide peace partner. So corruption, repression, anti-Semitic and anti-Israel incitement, glorification of terrorist killers, denial of historic Jewish ties to Jerusalem and Hebron, and other problematic patterns of Abbas's rule must be carefully hidden from Post and Times readers.


What makes such silence -- such self-censorship -- even more egregious and blatantly obvious is that these are two newspapers that do not hesitate to expose repression under Putin in Russia, corruption under Karzai in Afghanistan, and Mubarak's autocracy in Egypt. Yet, Abbas's rule in the West Bank fits exactly the same patterns -- but fails to make the news pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post.


Bottom line: the Palestinian side is treated with kid gloves; Israel with the gloves off.

Spain is being overtaken by Moslems

Spain Goes on Mosque-Building Spree
Churches Forced to Close

by Soeren Kern
December 30, 2010 at 5:00 am

http://www.hudson-ny.org/1760/spain-mosque-building
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The city of Barcelona, widely known as a European Mecca of anti-clerical postmodernism, has agreed to build an official mega-mosque with a capacity for thousands of Muslim worshipers. The new structure would rival the massive Islamic Cultural Center in Madrid, currently the biggest mosque in Spain. An official in the office of the Mayor of Barcelona says the objective is to increase the visibility of Muslims in Spain, as well as to promote the "common values between Islam and Europe."

The Barcelona mosque project is just one of dozens of new mosques that are in various stages of construction across Spain. Overall, there are now thirteen mega-mosques in Spain, and more than 1000 smaller mosques and prayer centers scattered across the country, the majority of which are located in Catalonia in northeastern Spain.

The Muslim building spree reflects the rising influence of Islam in Spain, where the Muslim population has jumped to an estimated 1.5 million in 2010, up from just 100,000 in 1990, thanks to massive immigration. The construction of new mosques comes at a time when municipalities linked to the Socialist Party have closed dozens of Christian churches across Spain by way of new zoning laws that several courts have now ruled discriminatory and unconstitutional. It also comes at a time of growing anti-Semitism in Spain.

The Barcelona mosque project was announced during a weeklong seminar titled "Muslims and European Values," jointly sponsored by the European Council of Moroccan Ulemas [Muslim religious scholars], based in Brussels, and the Union of Islamic Cultural Centers in Catalonia, based in Barcelona. A representative of the Barcelona mayor's office who attended the conference told the Madrid-based El País newspaper that the municipality would get involved in the mosque project because "although religion pertains to the private realm, this does not mean it does not have a public role."

The idea to build a mega-mosque funded by Spanish taxpayers comes after Noureddine Ziani, a Barcelona-based Moroccan imam, said the construction of big mosques would be the best way to fight Islamic fundamentalism in Spain. "It is easier to disseminate fundamentalist ideas in small mosques set up in garages where only the members of the congregation attend, than in large mosques that are open to everyone, with prayer rooms, cafes and meeting areas," Ziani told the Spanish news agency EFE. He also said European governments should pay for the training of imams, which would be "a useful formula to avoid radical positions."

The Barcelona mosque would be that city's answer to the six-story, 12,000 square meter (130,000 square feet) Islamic Cultural Center in Madrid, which opened in 1992 and is one of the biggest mosques in Europe. It was paid for by the government of Saudi Arabia, as was the €22 million ($30 million) Islamic Cultural Center in Málaga, a small city in southern Spain that is home to almost 100,000 Muslims. (The center's website includes politically correct "news," with headlines such as "Christian Palestine under Zionist Occupation" and "Julian Assange Victim of the Empire of Evil.")

Saudi Arabia, which also built the "great mosques" in the Spanish cities of Marbella and Fuengirola, has been accused of using the mosques and Islamic cultural centers in Spain to promote the Wahhabi sect of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia. Wahhabism rejects all non-Wahhabi Islam, any dialogue with other religions and any opening up to other cultures. By definition, it also rejects the integration of Muslim immigrants into Spanish society.

Not surprisingly, the Saudi government officially supports the Alliance of Civilizations, an initiative sponsored by Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which borrows heavily from the Dialogue of Civilizations concept promoted by Islamic radicals in Iran in the 1990s -- an the initiative calls for the West to negotiate a truce with Islamic terrorists on terms set by the terrorists.