Books

If you are interested in the history of the written and printed word, and if particularly in Wissenschaften des Judentums, a great article in Tablet:

Catalogues and Critical Scholarship: The Fate of Jewish Collections in 19th-Century Germany
Tracing the birth of ‘Jewish studies’ as we know it
By Ismar Schorsch
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/194367/catalogues-and-scholarship


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It's A Lot Worse Than You Think

It's not terrorism.

It's the new religion.

I guess people have to try out a bunch of new religious expressions, ranging from New Age to Yoga to EST to Head-Chopping. I mean, the Aztecs did it, didn't they?

National Geographic
Jewish Extremists’ Attacks Rattle Christians in Holy Land
Assaults on churches by right-wing Jews, a new phenomenon, raise concern about movement’s increasingly aggressive tactics.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/151224-israel-jewish-terrorism-arson-christian-church-multiplication/

Fire Damage at the Church of the Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes in Northern Israel

Photograph by Baz Ratner, Reuters 

... Taking a page from the Islamic group ISIS operating in neighboring Syria, a small group of young fundamentalist Jews influenced by radical religious leaders target Christian sites as centers of heretical idol worship and unwelcome missionary activity. In the past three years, a dozen churches and monasteries have been bombed, burned, or vandalized. Until the June firebombing, no one was charged in any of these incidents...

It is not Islam. It is not Judaism. It is a new religion in the Cradle of Civilization that needs human sacrifice.

It is the Great Achievement of our age, and it is the Great Disaster, too, to discover now at this time of the 21st century that Armageddon is not essentially Armies that Clash by Day and Night....

It is the ceaseless invocation of a new Moloch who desires bloody human hecatombs.
Destruction has been discovered to be Religion!

How shall we handle this with our puny logic?

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Americans Take The Lead

Rabbi Rick Jacobs

Forward
Rabbi Rick Jacobs Tells Reform Jews To Fight Israel's 'Misguided Policies'
November 6, 2015
http://forward.com/news/breaking-news/324231/rabbi-rick-jacobs-tells-reform-jews-to-fight-israels-misguided-policies/

The leader of American Reform Jewry said Diaspora Jews should not support the misguided policies of Israeli leaders and that Israel should look to North America for moral guidance.

“Asking Jews around the world only to wave the flag of Israel and to support even the most misguided policies of its leaders drives a wedge between the Jewish soul and the Jewish state. It is beyond counterproductive,” Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said in his keynote speech Thursday night to the union’s biennial conference in Orlando.

“Jews who see brokenness in the treatment of Israel’s minorities, or in the way ultra-Orthodox views of Judaism are being enshrined in secular law, are being told that, when it comes to Israel, you should check your commitment to tikkun olam at the door; we will not,” Jacobs said.

Tikkun olam, the Hebrew term that means repairing the world, traditionally has meant doing good works that benefit the wider community. Jacobs said it also applies to repairing Israel. ...

!  שטאַרק ווערטער

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