Regions that expelled the Jews have lower GDP than those that didn't

From RRW

Kicking Medieval Jews out of Europe damaged the economy...and the effects are still seen TODAY: Regions that expelled them have lower GDP than those that didn't

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3484434/Kicking-Medieval-Jews-Europe-damaged-economy-effects-seen-TODAY-Regions-expelled-lower-GDP-didn-t.html

Stabbing victim pulls knife out of own neck, kills terrorist | The Times of Israel‏

From RRW

http://www.timesofisrael.com/stabbing-victim-pulls-knife-out-of-own-neck-kills-terrorist/

JVO Blog: Who's Responsible for Charity?

Jewish Values Online (jewishvaluesonline.org) is a website that asks the Jewish view on a variety of issues, some specifically Jewish and some from the world around us -- and then presents answers from each of the denominations of Judaism. Nishmablog's Blogmaster Rabbi Wolpoe and Nishma's Founding Director, Rabbi Hecht, both serve as Orthodox members of their Panel of Scholars. Nishmablog, over the years, has also featured the responses on JVO by one of our two Nishma Scholars who are on this panel. 

Recently, the Jewish Values Online website has offered a new service -- a blog which presents comments on various topics within Judaism and the Jewish world. See
http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/jvoblog/index?aid=0. 

Rabbi Hecht is now also a blogger on this site and will be developing a series entitled  
The Distinctiveness of Judaism, 

His latest post 

Who's Responsible for Charity?
is now available at http://jewishvaluescenter.org/jvoblog/whos-responsible


A link is also up on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/JewishValuesOnline/?fref=ts

"Pushy Zionists," Then and Now

From RRW
 

http://www.jns.org/latest-articles/2016/3/3/pushy-zionists-then-and-now-hillary-clintons-emails-and-a-history-lesson-1#.VtjFkIwrKWc

As published by the Jewish News Service - 3 March 2016

"PUSHY ZIONISTS," THEN AND NOW

by Rafael Medoff

The allegation that Israel's ambassador once charged through the halls of the White House, barging into room after room in search of President Obama, is reminiscent of a similar accusation made against an American Zionist leader in the 1940s. Both claims reek of the hoary stereotype of pushy Jews behaving inappropriately in the halls of power.

The charge concerning then-Israeli ambassador Michael Oren appeared in a recently released email that was sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by one of her advisers in October 2012. The adviser claimed that when Oren heard President Obama was secretly meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, "Oren raced around the West Wing searching for Barak, opening doors and looking in rooms." Obama's national security adviser supposedly "heard about Oren’s frantic snooping and raced after him, catching him, and escorted him out." 

Secretary Clinton responded to her adviser, “Doubt that it happened, but, these days, who knows???” It's regrettable that Mrs. Clinton would have entertained even the possibility that such a wildly implausible story might be true, knowing of Ambassador Oren's impeccably professional demeanor and mild temperament. Oren, who is currently a Member of Knesset, said this week that the allegation was a "total and utter fabrication."

It will probably be scant consolation to the former ambassador, but he is not the first to endure attacks of this nature. Beginning in the 1970s, a number of books and articles have peddled the notion that Rabbi Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, the most prominent American Zionist leader of the 1940s, "stormed into [President] Truman's office and pounded his fists on his desk," as one recent version put it, alleging that Silver's behavior provoked Truman's private antisemitic outbursts. Most incarnations of the story present it as evidence that overly aggressive Zionists have endangered American support for Israel.

Like the claim about Oren, the allegation against Silver is entirely implausible, since--to begin with--nobody could possibly "storm" into the Oval Office without being tackled by Secret Service agents. Furthermore, Truman's calendar shows only two meetings with Silver during those years, in both instances accompanied by other Zionist leaders--yet none of those other leaders, some of whom were Silver's bitter enemies, mentioned any fist-pounding in their memoirs of the period. Nor did Truman himself mention it in his own autobiography, even though he discussed his dislike of what he called "the extreme Zionists." Moreover, historians have never found evidence of Silver pounding Truman's desk in any of the relevant archival collections.

My own investigation traced the accusation back to a remark once made by Elinor Borenstine, the daughter of Truman's Jewish friend and business partner, Eddie Jacobson. When I interviewed Mrs. Borenstine about this several years ago, it turned out she was relying on an old essay by her father which had not mentioned Silver at all.

The fascinating postscript to all this is a long-forgotten controversy from early 1948, in which famed syndicated columnist Drew Pearson reported this ugly outburst by Truman in an exchange with New York Post publisher Ted Thackrey:  "Pounding his desk, [Truman] used words that can't be repeated about 'the (blank) New York Jews'. 'They're disloyal to their country. Disloyal!'" In retrospect, one is tempted to wonder if Truman, in his complaints to Eddie Jacobson or others about Zionist leaders, actually was projecting something of his own notoriously intemperate ways.

Depictions of Jews as pushy are often concocted for the purpose of intimidating them into silence or acquiescence. Tales of pushy Zionists, whether in the 1940s or our own era, likewise serve as political weapons. They are intended to discredit their targets as uncouth and therefore unworthy of serious consideration. They are also meant as a kind of warning shot: back down (on whatever the issue happens to be) or expected to be smeared.

Israel-related policy struggles are not for the faint of heart. Those who take unpopular positions sometimes find themselves victimized by rumor-mongers and their ilk. Abba Hillel Silver felt the sting of those darts but did not allow himself to be cowed--and neither, one suspects, will Michael Oren.

Dr. Rafael Medoff is the founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. He is the author of 16 books about Jewish history, Zionism, and the Holocaust, including The Historical Dictionary of Zionism (coauthored with Chaim I. Waxman.)

Dear Ted Cruz -- Part 2

From RRW

Here is second view:

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/

 *****

Please also see 

Dear Ted Cruz -- Part 1 
Dear Ted Cruz -- Part 3 

Dear Ted Cruz -- Part 1

From RRW

Here is one view:

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/

*****
Please also see

Dear Ted Cruz -- Part 2 
Dear Ted Cruz -- Part 3

Jews for Judaism - Crash Course‏

From RRW

Y JEWS SAY NO TO JESUS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49l-g_TtGhI&sns=em

Douglas Aronin:‎ Nisan vs. January: Perspectives on Remembering the Holocaust‏

From RRW

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/nisan-vs-january-perspectives-on-remembering-the-holocaust/

Nixon's Jewish problem. Again.‏

From RRW

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2002/03/nixon_and_the_jews_again.single.html

Question to Ponder:

 

Was Nixon being MORE anti-Semitic by keeping his musings private

Or

Was he being LESS anti-Semitic by merely privately expressing his opinions without disseminating them to te public at large?

Huffington Post: What Comes First: Society Or Government?

When Ben Carson was asked about the seemingly absence of Christian values in Republican domestic policy, he responded that the issue is not the necessity of caring but the role of government in such a process. The people in society should care without the structure of government. But what if society does not so respond on its own? 

While not actually referring to Halacha, my latest Huffington Post blog had Halacha in mind in responding to Mr. Carson's perspective. Please see What Comes First: Society Or Government?

My original title for the post, btw, was 'But What Must Come First?' but it was changed by the editors.

Please feel free to comment here or there.

Rabbi Ben Hecht

Al-Qaradawi : Arab Failure .The Jews turned their deserted land into an Oasis‏

From RRW

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPBe4J0_iaQ&sns=em

A chance to reaffirm America's commitment to Israel

From RRW

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/a-chance-to-reaffirm-americas-commitment-to-israel/article/2583716

New RBH Series in Toronto

TORAH VALUES AND WESTERN VALUES
Conflicts and Overlaps

 
at Adath Israel, 37 Southbourne Ave
Sundays at 9:00 a.m.

 

Fourth Series: Human Rights and Freedoms

February 28 - April 10

February 28   What is a human right? Do we really have rights?
March 6        Liberty - Are we really free? In what was, now and before?
March 13       Restrictions on Liberty - Valuing when we are not free and why.

No class March 20

March 27       Freedom of Conscious - How far do we really get to think?
April 3            Freedom of Religion - What about the Torah’s attitude to idolatry?
April 10          Freedom of Speech - When is too much and when is not enough?

Orthodox Union Calls on Nevada State Democratic Party to Accommodate Sabbath-Observant Citizens in Upcoming Caucus

From RRW

http://advocacy.ou.org/orthodox-union-calls-nevada-state-democratic-party-accommodate-sabbath-observant-citizens-upcoming-caucus/

Libi BaMizrach: The Passing of Justice Scalia . . . and Halacha‏

From RRW

http://libibamizrach.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-passing-of-justice-scalia-and.html?m=1

Passing of Antonin Scalia‏

The OU and RCA just issued this press release on the passing of U.S. Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia. In a world that more and more seems to limit the right of freedom of religion in the evaluation of conflicting rights, Judge Scalia's voice will be sorrowfully missed.

OU/RCA on the Passing of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia "A Dedicated Public Servant...Contributed Much to Expanding Religious Liberty in the US" (Feb 15, 2016) Today, the leaders of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America - the nation's largest Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization - and the Rabbinical Council of America - a membership body representing 1,000 Orthodox rabbis, issued the following statement with regard to the death of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia:  The leadership of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America and the Rabbinical Council of America was saddened to learn of the passing of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. Justice Scalia was a towering intellect, passionate architect of American law and dedicated public servant. Of course, as a member of the high court, Justice Scalia shaped so many areas of the law, but for the American Orthodox Jewish community, among the issues dealt with by the court, one of the most important to us is that of religious liberty. Through his opinions in many cases interpreting the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, (with the notable exception of his majority opinion in Employment Division v. Smith), Justice Scalia moved the jurisprudence of that topic away from an extreme view of strict separationism and back to a principled approach of government neutrality toward and equality among religions. On the whole, Justice Scalia contributed much to expanding religious liberty in the United States and we are thankful for his service. We extend our condolences to his beloved wife, children and grandchildren.   * * * * *

Nishma-Parshah: Tetzaveh

Take a look at what's on

NISHMA-PARSHAH

for Parshat Tetzaveh

Tetzaveh: One Action; Opposite Meanings
http://nishma-parshah.blogspot.ca/2016/02/tetzaveh-one-action-opposite-meanings.html

New RBH shiur on Koshertube: Defending Oneself and Defining Oneself

One is always called up to defend oneself against enemies. What happens in many societies, though, it that the very definition of the society is then defined by this battle. Leaders are identified by their ability in the fight against the enemy. Is this also the way of Torah or is it, within Torah, that we choose to define ourselves outside consideration of the
fight.

In his latest Koshertube shiur, Nishma's Rabbi Hecht discusses this issue. We invite you to view Defending Oneself and Defining Oneself at http://koshertube.com/videos/index.php/blog/archives/templates/components/index.php?option=com_seyret&Itemid=4&task=videodirectlink&id=22028

From RRW

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.703252?v=EDE84B6C074146C4E28FD65F20420955&v=EDE84B6C074146C4E28FD65F20420955

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 Lipsky

The death of Justice Antonin Scalia, coming as it does at a time when some of the most important Supreme Court cases are being decided by votes of five to four, is bound to rock the presidential election. But nowhere will his passing be felt more keenly than in the religiously fundamentalist communities, including Orthodox Jews, who viewed the justice as one of the great defenders of their right to stand apart.

Scalia 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.

Who Are The Palestinians? What And Where Is Palestine?

From RRW

http://www.newswithviews.com/israel/israel14.htm