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Sep 03rd
    Yom Shishi, 24 Elul 5770

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Mosque at Ground Zero? Makes as much sense as . . .

I AM in favor of the Cordoba House being built at Ground Zero, because, you know, there is no context, no emotion, no meaning, no memory that attaches to a place where something very dramatic happened. Of course, it is totally appropriate for something else — anything at all — to happen there.

So, just as I am in favor of the mosque at Ground Zero, I am also in favor of:

The John F. Kennedy School of Government, relocating to the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.

The US Chamber of Commerce Vietnamese Culture Festival — in My Lai.

The Presidential National Leadership Training Degree, conferred at Watergate.

Read more...
 

Is memory part of Islam?

OFTEN, debates are most revelatory about critical issues that the debaters think they are not debating.

This occurred recently in an exchange in Critical Inquiry, a scholarly journal published by the University of Chicago Press.

The debate revolved around whether the Simon Wiesenthal Center should build a Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem.

This seemingly innocent project ran into a buzz saw when it was discovered that the land designated for the project contained, in part, what some Palestinians claimed was a Muslim cemetery, and what the Wiesenthal Center claimed was a former, abandoned, “desacralized” Muslim cemetery.

A long court battle in Israel ensued. Israel’s High Court found for the Wiesenthal Center, affirming that Islamic jurists had indeed desacralized this cemetery. (The project is proceeding, albeit on a somewhat reduced scale due to the withdrawal of its original architect, Frank Gehry.)

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The loneliness of the elderly

Elka Popack, former head of senior programming at JCC, has founded “Smile on Seniors,” an organization that encourages people to visit seniors, if only one hour a week.

Rabbi Dr. Ivan Geller, a gerontologist, delivered an extraordinarily insightful talk on the loneliness of seniors last Shabbos afternoon at EDOS, in conjunction with Popack’s new organization.

Where is loneliness mentioned in the Torah? Geller inquired.

 

Last Updated ( Thursday, 29 July 2010 00:57 )

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The Prime Ministers: from agony to humor to insight

The Prime Ministers: from agony to humor to insight

NO one in the world knows, save a few pilots, Israel’s very top military brass, its prime minister and a few other ministers. No one in Israel knows, no one outside Israel knows. The Jewish people is shuddering in fear. The Psalms flow in anguish and abundance around the world.

Also: imagine this pre-cell phone, pre-email world. This is 1967. June 5, 1967, to be exact, the day of the beginning of the Six Day War. Nobody has the instant scoop.

The beginning was the destruction of the entire Egyptian Air Force in a surprise Israeli attack, the Israeli planes flying so close to the ground that people on the ground could discern the Jewish stars on the bottom of the planes.

This will be a short but intense, costly and difficult war. Successes are not to be disseminated. News blackout is the word.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 29 July 2010 00:57 )

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Did an Israeli Ashkenazi school bar Sephardi students?

DID a chasidic Ashkenazi school in the town of Emmanuel, Israel  bar Sephardi students? Based on some of the reporting and on the Internet banter on the question, one could come to this open-and-shut conclusion:

The discrimination in the chasidic school in Emmanuel is so pronounced that when ordered to accept Sephardi girls by the High Court of Israel (its Supreme Court), the Ashkenazi parents decided to withdraw their children, make their own school (and make it exclusively Ashkenazi) — and then erect a wall between their school and the other school, which, under court order, accepts Sephardi girls.

If this were not enough, the Ashkenazi parents, defying Israel’s High Court, said they would and must listen to their rabbis instead.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 29 July 2010 00:57 )

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JTA News

Abbas to Netanyahu: Freeze settlements or talks off

2 September 2010, 8:30 pm Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that peace talks are off unless Israel extends a partial moratorium on settlement building.... [Link]

Debra Berger, founder of Project Interchange, dies

2 September 2010, 7:41 pm Debra Berger, the founder of Project Interchange that sent influential leaders to Israel, has died.... [Link]

Non-koshered meat banned from Israeli chains

2 September 2010, 5:56 pm Israel's chief rabbi has banned the sale of non-koshered meat to Israeli supermarket chains.... [Link]

Mormons, Jewish group sign pact on baptisms

2 September 2010, 5:39 pm The Mormon Church and Jewish leaders have resolved a dispute over the church's posthumous baptisms by proxy of Jewish victims of the Holocaust.... [Link]

American Jews remain attached to Israel, study shows

2 September 2010, 5:22 pm American Jewish attachment to Israel is holding steady, a new study shows.... [Link]

French Jewish leaders decry Shoah comparisons

2 September 2010, 5:03 pm The French Jewish umbrella group spoke out against recurring comparisons between Nazi treatment of Jews and France’s current policy to rapidly expel Roma migrants.... [Link]

Abbas, Netanyahu to meet every two weeks

2 September 2010, 4:47 pm Israeli and Palestinian leaders will meet every two weeks to advance peace talks.... [Link]

Abbas: Security is key

2 September 2010, 3:55 pm Mahmoud Abbas agreed with Benjamin Netanyahu that securing Israelis and Palestinians was the key to advancing peace.... [Link]

Shabbat Times


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