The following is an opinion piece from Rabbi Elchanan Poupko in The Jewish Press
Moral Clarity Matters and You are on the Right Side of It
http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/dear-ted-cruz-moral-clarity-matters-and-you-are-on-the-right-side-of-it/2016/03/02/
The following is an opinion piece from the Forward
Quit Using 'Judeo-Christian Values' To Exploit My Faith
http://forward.com/opinion/334403/dear-ted-cruz-quit-using-judeo-christian-values-to-exploit-my-faith/
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American Orthodox Jews will miss Scalia, their great defender
Religious Americans of all creeds will feel the loss of The Great Scalia, but his passing is a blow for the Orthodox Jewish community, who saw the justice as protecting their right to stand apart.Seth LipskyScalia was the speaker in 2008 at the annual banquet in New York of the Agudath Israel, which filled a vast ballroom at the Hilton Hotel. At one end is a dais of four tiers, along which sat more than 100 of the great rabbis dressed in black and wearing long beards. And there among them sat Justice Scalia, flanked by the Novominsker Rebbe, Yaakov Perlow, and the city’s police commissioner, Raymond Kelly.It was a glorious sight, and Scalia delivered the sort of remarks for which he is so widely appreciated by religious Americans. His key point was the Founders of America had not intended the First Amendment to exclude religion from the public square. He also told a wonderful story, which I have related many times (including in recent hours) about a teacher, Father Murray, at Xavier High School in Manhattan, where Scalia studied as a lad.Scalia, imitating Murray’s Boston accent, related the teacher’s explanation that when one studied Shakespeare, it wasn’t the Bard who was on trial — it was the students. And that is how Scalia himself viewed the relationship of judges to the authors of the Constitution. He felt a burden to study their words to divine what they had originally intended and then to act accordingly, which led to one of his most famous dissents.The case was called Lemon v. Kurtzman, in which an atheist, Alton Lemon, himself a constitutional lawyer, sought to bar the Quaker State, Pennsylvania, from using public funds to reimburse church-affiliated schools pay for help teaching secular subjects. The court sided with Lemon and over-ruled Pennsylvania. It said the wall of separation between church and state wasn’t absolute, but it set up what became known as the “Lemon test.”It was a complex formulation to test when Congress had violated the prohibition on passing any law respecting an establishment of religion. Scalia hated the Lemon test’s hostility to “an excessive government entanglement with religion.” In a subsequent case, Scalia likened it to “some ghoul in a late night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried” and “stalks” our jurisprudence, “frightening the little children and school attorneys.”In 2013, Scalia came to Yeshiva University here in New York for a symposium on “Synagogue and State.” He appeared on stage with the Modern Orthodox star Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and the constitutional lawyer Nathan Lewin, another giant in the struggle for religious freedom. Scalia had recently been mocked in the press for confessing he believed in the Devil.When his interlocutor sneered a question about what the Devil was up to now, Scalia had replied: “Getting people not to believe in him or in God.” At Yeshiva, the justice warned against a misreading of the first clause of the Bill of Rights, which says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Why was it worded that way, Scalia asked.After all, at the time the First Amendment was ratified, a number of the states had religious establishments, meaning laws establishing an official church in the state. What the Founders feared, he suggested, was not only the establishment of a national church but the disestablishment of the state churches. He suggested we are now in an era of Establishment clause “incoherence.”How his view will be missed as all this is sorted out. When a Catholic charity known as Little Sisters of the Poor filed its appeal to at the Supreme Court, where the nuns are seeking protection from the Obamacare birth control mandate, the first friend-of-the-court brief filed was from a group of rabbis who understood that if the Little Sisters can be pushed around, the rest of us can, too.Their case now looks in doubt. Because they lost in the 10th Circuit, they need a majority of the nine justices to win their liberty. Hobby Lobby, a company owned by religious Christians, won its case, involving similar questions, by the narrowest margin, five to four, with Scalia in the van. Predicting high court decisions is a dangerous game, but it’s at least possible that religious Americans may begin feeling the loss of The Great Scalia even before a new justice is confirmed.Seth Lipsky is editor of The New York Sun. He was a foreign editor of The Wall Street Journal, founding editor of The Forward and editor from 1990 to 2000.
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Learn more at http://Oversight.House.Gov
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Breslover Research Institutes Book On Esther
The Relativity of Theory"And it all depends upon what our ears are attuned to hear and what are eyes are trained to see. And on a deeper level, it all depends on what we really WANT to see. So non-believes see what they want, because they've decide beforehand what they will see. ""...But only when we look for inspiration will we find that inspiration. If we predecide to mock, we will find a pretext to do so."
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We
finally got a rare glimpse of the embattled Gaza Strip and a chance to
see what life was like under the rule of Hamas. In 2007 we tried and
failed to get into Gaza through the Israeli-controlled…
00:33:41
Added on 10/07/2012
2,595,826 views
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Jewish activist and writer Lori Palatnik says that American Jews should start returning to Israel.
http://www.ibtimes.com/american-jews-should-move-israel-fulfill-end-days-biblical-prophecy-says-activist-2284722
«When asked to speak at certain Zionist functions, many Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa are asked to focus on the mistreatment they experienced under Arab rule—not the ways in which they successfully coexisted with Muslims, or the serious discrimination they have faced in Israeli society after arriving in the Promised Land. In anti-Zionist circles the situation inverts: the hosts are delighted to hear tales of Israeli malfeasance but are deeply hostile if the topic turns to the oppression and expulsion of Jews from Arab countries or if the Jews proclaim a proud connection to Israel. Either way, non-Ashkenazi Jews are engaged with only as far as they support someone else’s narrative. Once they seek to speak in their own voice, their putative allies disappear.‘Most non-Ashkenazi Jews in the world live in Israel, and so a boycott of Israel functionally acts to exclude most Jews of color from global conversations.’»
While this video is a few years old, its message is as relevant today as when it was first delivered.Jews may learn more compassion by listening how a vulnerable Jewish College Age Kid is easy pray to cults. Instead of judging, maybe we need more kindness and empathy.
"“Violence by man against man is in contradiction with any religion worthy of that name, and in particular with the three great monotheistic religions,” Francis told a crowd filling the Great Synagogue just down the Tiber River from the Vatican. “Life is sacred, a gift of God.”“Every human being, as a creature of God, is our brother, regardless of his or her origin or religious affiliation,” he said, calling on Christians and Jews to “put into practice the logic of peace, of reconciliation, of forgiveness” in the Middle East and elsewhere."
The phenomenon of the court Jew, voicing the Jewish community’s interests, began in the Middle Ages.
An article from the Jewish Press by Rabbi Philip Lefkowitz
http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/the-tragedy-of-the-modern-day-court-jew/2016/01/12/
An Opinion piece from the Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Anti-Israel-historians-get-a-taste-of-their-own-medicine-439176
This is something that demands our attention and thought
An article from David Golinkin
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-the-chief-rabbinate-of-israel-will-eventually-disappear/#
Now, Christopher Hitchens further conversation with Martin Amis discussing anti-semitism and England with Jeffrey Goldberg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxxTubvpM3k&sns=em
An Opinion from the Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Why-good-for-Jews-is-bad-for-Jews-437808
We join with the many praying for a refu'ah shelaima for Yeshaya ben Chava
ALL EUROPEAN LIFE DIED IN AUSCHWITZ By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez
I walked down the street in Barcelona , and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz ... We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world..
The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.
And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride...
See, further...
https://m.facebook.com/notes/ku%C5%A5-ko/all-european-life-died-in-auschwitz-by-sebastian-vilar-rodrigez/10200873534858515/
Of course, we must still also recognize that the Muslim world is itself divided and that the critique of one group within this world should not be presented and/or understood as a critique of all Muslims. Nonetheless, Europe and the promoters of the values of rights and freedoms must also recognize that there must be some acceptance of a certain standard in order for one to be deserving of a claim to these rights and freedoms. -- RBH
And so I leave you with that thought. Be true to the tradition of the great people who have come here. Spend as much of your time and your heart and your spirit as you possibly can thinking about the 99.9 percent. See everyone and realize that everyone needs new beginnings. Enjoy your good fortune. Enjoy your differences, but realize that our common humanity matters much, much more.- The entire article is available at the Harvard Gazette, here.
For the purposes of your being here today, what makes you a community? ... Because you think your differences are important. They matter. But on this special day, what you have in common matters more. That is the ultimate simple test of humanity's future. Are our important differences or our common humanity more important? You have to decide. You have to decide for our common humanity,- Umich
While you should treasure the differences that make you and your Tradition unique, nevertheless, it is even MORE important to treasure Your Common HumanityNow let's spin it regarding Jewish groups:
and to Transcend those differences.
While you should treasure the differences that make you and your Tradition unique,
nevertheless, it is even MORE important to treasure Your Common Heritage
and to Transcend those differences.
“Their actions, the things they say and write against the State of Israel and IDF soldiers in the foreign press, feed anti-Israel and anti-Zionist campaigns, and even terror organizations such as Hamas quote from things Breaking the Silence say during Hamas actions against the State of Israel on the international stage,” they said...
The Yeshiva University - Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary Family mourns the passing besavya tova of our Rosh Yeshiva and chaver,
Rabbi Yosef Weiss, ZT"L
אברהם יוסף בן חיים ישעי
Husband of Rebbetzin Miriam Weiss.
Father of Hershel, Chaim Yeshayah, Shamshon, Rivka Taub, Rochel Gottesman, and the late Esther Alster, a”h.
Grandfather and Great-grandfather.
Son-in-law of long-time president of the Breuers KAJ Kehilla in Washington Heights, Dr. Raphael Moller z"l.
Hespedim took place on Monday in the Glueck Beit Midrash in Yeshiva. Recordings are available here.
Shiva is being observed at the Weiss home in Manhattan:
473 West End Ave (@ 83rd St.)
New York, NY
Tel: 212-873-9497
Tuesday Mincha at 4:10 PM
Wednesday and Thursday Shacharis at 7:15 AM
Minchah 4:20 PM
Born in Hungary in 1920, Rabbi Weiss immigrated to America with his family as a young child. Rabbi Weiss graduated from Yeshiva University High School, Yeshiva College, and received his semicha from RIETS as a student of Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik. He was a world renowned Talmid Hacham and Rosh Yeshiva. He began his teaching career at YU as early as 1938, when he delivered Rav Moshe Soloveichik’s Chazara shiur. Rabbi Weiss was the Perez F. and Frieda Friedberg Chair in Talmud at RIETS. In the mid-1960s, Rav Weiss took the helm of Kehillas Moriah on the Upper West Side and quickly became one of the community’s leading poskim. (Read more here.)
May Hashem comfort the family among all those who mourn for Zion and Yerushalayim.
"Experts say European Jews have not felt this threatened since World War II, when 6 million Jews were murdered in the Nazi Holocaust. Jews have been targeted in Belgium, Denmark and other European countries, but France has seen the worst of it. Jews have increasingly reported assaults and intimidation, mostly from Muslim extremists. While some attacks have been linked to anger at Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, most have been of an anti-Semitic nature."
Please see:
http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=1225.0
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/12/06/why-hanukkah-is-the-perfect-festival-for-religious-freedom/" More than half a century ago, the Oxford philosopher John Plamenatz noted that religious freedom was born in Europe in the 17th century after a devastating series of religious wars. All it took was a single shift, from the belief that “faith is the most important thing; therefore everyone should honor the one true faith,” to the belief that “faith is the most important thing; therefore everyone should be free to honor his or her own faith.”This meant that people of all faiths were guaranteed that whichever religion was dominant, he or she would still be free to obey their own call of conscience. Plamenatz’s striking conclusion was that “Liberty of conscience was born, not of indifference, not of skepticism, not of mere open-mindedness, but of faith.” The very fact that my religion is important to me allows me to understand that your quite different religion is no less important to you."
Douglas Aronin The Blogs The Times of Israel
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper-a-final-look-at-the-pollard-affair/
