Free Download of the Soncino Talmud in English Online at Halakhah.com: 25,000+ satisfied customers a month

The Soncino Babylonian Talmud English translation is online - at a site that is not anti-Semitic or polemical.

Download the Talmud in English free at http://www.halakhah.com/ - 25,000+ downloads each month! 300,000+ each year.

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH WITH NOTES, GLOSSARY AND INDICES UNDER THE EDITORSHIP OF RABBI DR. I. EPSTEIN B.A., Ph.D., D. Lit. FOREWORD BY THE VERY REV. THE LATE CHIEF RABBI DR. J. H. HERTZ. INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR. THE SONCINO PRESS, LONDON.

Contains the Sedarim (orders, or major divisions) and tractates (books) of the Babylonian Talmud, as translated and organized for publication by the Soncino Press in 1935 - 1948.

The site has the entire Soncino Talmud edition in PDF format and  about 8050 pages on line in browser compatible HTML format, comprising 1460 files — of the Soncino Talmud.

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Highlights:

• A newly formatted 2-column PDF version of the Soncino Talmud at Halakhah.com.
• A Kindle edition of the Soncino Talmud available from Amazon.com: The Kindle Soncino Talmud in English

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Is Israel's National bird the Hoopoe - Duchifat - Hud Hud Kosher?

No, in fact Israel's National bird, the Hoopoe - Duchifat - Hud Hud, is not kosher. It is "an unclean animal that may not be eaten."

The Times had an editorial in June 2008 that talked about the newly designated Israeli National bird, the Hoopoe - Duchifat (Hebrew) - Hud Hud (Arabic). The writer proposed that this decision on the bird would help Israel achieve peace with its neighbors.

In June 2008 Stephen Colbert quipped caustically that the bird is not a valiant eagle, "May you (Israel) emulate the noble long-billed hoopoe by squirting fecal matter at intruders."

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Here is the Times op-ed from 2008.

Will Peace Take Flight?
By JONATHAN ROSEN

LATE last month, Israel announced that it had named the hoopoe as its national bird. The long-billed hoopoe, which has a punky orange crest tipped black, is barely mentioned in the Bible (as an unclean animal that may not be eaten) but it plays a role in rabbinic literature and in Islamic lore as well. It is celebrated, among other things, as the messenger that shuttles between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. It is in other words well suited to the symbolic burden the country has placed on it.

The idea that birds can be emissaries to a battered world — like the dove and raven sent out by Noah — motivated Israel’s decision to adopt a national bird as part of its commemoration of 60 years of statehood. In Hebrew the name of the bird is duchifat. In Arabic it is hud hud. And in English hoopoe is a word that sounds, as Emily Dickinson noted about all feathered creatures, strangely like hope.

The news was announced at the official residence of the president of Israel, Shimon Peres, who in the late 1940s changed his name from Persky to Peres because he saw a giant lammergeier, or bearded vulture (in Hebrew, a “peres”), circling overhead. Legend has it that the lammergeier, which no longer breeds in Israel, killed the Greek tragedian Aeschylus by dropping a tortoise on his head. Birds can be dangerous, which is precisely why the United States chose the bald eagle, though Benjamin Franklin complained, in a letter to his daughter, that the eagle was a cowardly bully while the turkey was nobler and feistier and therefore a more apt symbol for America.

In Franklin’s time, a young democracy wanted a warrior bird; in the 21st century other considerations carry the day. The cross-section of Israelis who did the voting to choose a national bird — including schoolchildren, soldiers, academics and Knesset members — rejected the possibility of a raptor (specifically, the much-loved, and endangered, griffon vulture) as sending the wrong signal for the country. They also rejected the night owl, which Arabs believe to be an evil omen.

I first saw a hoopoe in 2000, the year the Oslo Accords officially fell apart. I had known about the bird since childhood, when I learned that King Solomon — who, with his storied ability to understand the speech of animals is the Dr. Doolittle of Judaism — had sought out the hoopoe in order to build the Temple. It had not occurred to me, until I began bird-watching, that the bird was real.

But there I was, in a small bird observatory in Jerusalem, with a soldier whose job it was to net migrating birds, weigh them and then toss them back into the air. “Filthy birds,” he said, pointing out one that was heading for a hole in a wall and then adding that they reeked of excrement. So much for the bird who helped the king build a house for God. It was, however, a lesson worthy of Solomon, seeing this lofty bird that smells of mortality. It is the nature of birds to embody multiple elements, shuttling as they do between earth and sky, between ancient and modern, between wild and tame. They are emblems of our heavenly aspirations and yet they are the closest living relatives to the dinosaurs.

The search for a national bird was organized by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel and led by an Israeli ornithologist, Yossi Leshem. Dr. Leshem has created the International Center for Bird Migration in Latrun, the site of some very bloody battles in Israel’s War of Independence and home to a vast war memorial. The center’s hopeful slogan, printed in Hebrew, Arabic and English, is “Migrating birds know no boundaries,” in contrast to the people on the ground, for whom boundaries are everything. This gives birdlife an added poignancy in Israel.

Israel is a surprisingly good place for bird-watching (half a billion birds fly through the country during migration, converging from Africa, Asia and Europe). Jeremiah noted that “the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times” and she still does — every year, 85 percent of the world’s white stork population migrates over Israel, despite the general upheaval of the world below.

A hoopoe is the hero of the Persian poet Farid al-Din Attar’s “Conference of the Birds,” a medieval allegory in which a group of birds sets out to find the king of the birds. The hoopoe is their leader, artfully persuading all the reluctant birds to come on the quest. In the end, they manage to find the king of the birds, who turns out to be God. The birds that have made it into the bird king’s presence are filled with radiant insight but they are consumed — they discover they are part of God and they are obliterated in the divine effulgence. This is a happy ending if you are a mystic but it is chilling if you are not.

Attar, a Sufi, believed that all religions are a path to God. It is part of the endless irony of history that the place where Attar once lived (and that in fact expelled him for heresy) today threatens with obliteration those nations, most especially the Jewish state, that it deems an abomination. Whether even the wisdom of King Solomon, and his magical avian emissary, can devise an answer to this threat is one of the great challenges of the coming days.

Jonathan Rosen, the editorial director of Nextbook, is the author, most recently, of “The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature.”

/reposts from 2008/

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JStandard: My Dear Rabbi Talmudic Advice Column for August

Published in the Jewish Standard, Dear Rabbi: Your Talmudic advice column

Dear Rabbi,

My son, his wife and children have decided to make aliyah to Israel. My husband and I understand their practical and idealistic motivations for this decision. We applaud what they are doing and feel pride in their Judaic and Zionist ardor. We plan to visit them in Israel periodically, but we have no plans to move there.

At times we both admit to ourselves that we worry about them and that we will sorely miss them. What advice can you give us to help us cope with this bittersweet situation that we face?

Stuck in Bergen County
New Milford

Dear Stuck,

First, know that you are not alone. In our area, a good number of Modern Orthodox families with young children make aliyah. An underlying motive for this uprooting is the financial burden of local day school tuition. That concern combines with years of sincere devotion to the Zionist dream. Modern Orthodox education encourages pride in the miracle of the State of Israel. And many Jews simply feel a mystical attachment to the Land of Israel.

When younger couples and single college age children decide to make aliyah, that move is logistically less complex. But it also leaves parents with long distance communications challenges and airplane trips to see their offspring.

Many of our area families boast three generations of dedicated Zionists. I recall the excitement in our family when I was a young child and my grandparents announced they were making aliyah. That event took place way before such moves became more common among American Jews, when living in Israel meant making sacrifices and accepting a lower standard of living, even hardships.

Based on what I know from experience and from friends and what I sense in your inquiry, I don’t entertain the notion that you try to dissuade your children from going. Yet there are several ways to reduce the anxiety and loneliness that you fear.

First, do the travel. It’s been said for decades about the situation of American Jews, “There is no galut if you commute.” You are not fully in the exile if you make enough periodic visits to Israel. And you will feel close to your children and grandchildren as you see them progress and grow at intervals.

Next, use the technology. When my grandparents went to live in Israel, plain old telephones were a rarity and long distance calls were expensive and low-quality. Nowadays, even with the time differential, you can vividly see and interact with your Israeli family via Internet video applications such as Skype and FaceTime. Voice phone calls cost little or nothing.

Third, try to form informal social support mechanisms. You can make efforts to connect to other nearby parents and grandparents whose children have made aliyah to share concerns and, of course, to keep abreast of the best airfares and apps to use for the suggestions above.

Last, you can heed your children, when they inevitably suggest to you that you join them in their adventures, and you can make aliyah yourselves.

Dear Rabbi,

After many years of regular worship I started to pay more attention to the Alenu prayer that we recite at the end of every service. I do not understand why we say this so frequently and at the end of each synagogue session. Also, I have become uncomfortable with what I feel is the confrontational tone of the prayer and its proclamation that we are the only true faith and all other gods are worthless and powerless.

Can you help me find renewed relevant meaning in this regular recitation?

Pluralistic, not Pugilistic
Teaneck

Dear Pluralistic,

Your question draws attention to one of the great complexities of our prayer book – the different moods and motivations that flow throughout our services. One of those distinct philosophies, succinctly expressed in the Alenu, is that we are in constant competition with other faiths, that there will be an end to the contest of history, and that there will be only one winner – us.

In religious terms we refer to the “last minutes of the game” as the messianic age, the time at which we will emerge from the battles of the ages and the all the world will recognize us as the worthy people who worship the one true God.

In the services in the synagogue this theme comes to the forefront at particular times. The Alenu is famously one of the crucial liturgies in the Musaf additional service of Rosh Hashanah in the section of the Amidah that we call Malchiyot – kingship. We enthrone God on the New Year as our sovereign and we initiate our declarations of that with the Alenu.

The prayer concludes, “And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall the Lord be One, and his name One.”

Most of the rest of the year, and throughout our prayers, we allow other themes to dominate at the core of our services. I suspect with reasonable certainty that we are not yet at the end of time. But permit me to offer this metaphor to help explain why it makes sense to me that we conclude every service before we leave the synagogue with the not-really-inclusive, and actually somewhat combative, Alenu prayer.

I see our synagogue as our team’s locker room where we gather together at our half-time breaks. We share our diverse team talk there for a while. And when we are done, right before we go outside onto the field to resume the contest and competition in the arena of our communities, we engage in a spirited spiritual pep-talk.

We say team-like things: that we are number-one, that our God is number one, and that we will crush our opponents! In the theological language of our prayer that comes out: “We therefore hope in you, O Lord our God, that we may speedily behold the glory of your might, when you will remove the abominations from the earth, and the idols will be utterly cut off, when the world will be perfected under the kingdom of the Almighty, and all the children of flesh will call upon your name…”

Whether you see yourself as an active team player or as an avid spectator, you should be able to root heartily for your team, the Jewish People, and do so with the Alenu prayer.

Dear Rabbi,

What does it mean when you say you offer in your column “Talmudic Advice”?

Seeking answers
Fort Lee

Dear Seeking,

By saying I supply Talmudic advice I mean that I offer in my column advice only, and not halakhic rulings or decisions. And I also mean that in Talmudic fashion I try to see more than one dimension of an issue and encourage the questioner to find his or her own best solution.

The Dear Rabbi column offers timely advice based on timeless Talmudic wisdom. It aspires to be equally respectful and meaningful to all varieties and denominations of Judaism. You can find it here on the first Friday of the month. Send your questions to DearRabbi@jewishmediagroup.com

Groove with God's Favorite Prayers

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Is Ice Hockey Jewish?

I never thought of ice hockey as a Jewish sport, even when I played it as a kid in rented ice rinks at midnight or on those rare frozen winter days in central park. There simply were no Jewish professional hockey players that I knew of.

But now my friend Sharon has provided indisputable evidence that yes ice hockey is a Jewish sport (on an amateur level) with her brilliant photos from the Maccabiah in Israel.

Please purchase God's Favorite Prayers

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Is Basketball Without Yarmulkas Kosher?

In a post called, "Chief Rabbis, Basketball and Tolerance," blogger Andrew Griffel in Ops and Blogs in  The Times of Israel argues as follows.

Once upon a time long long ago Rabbi Soloveitchik told MTA orthodox high school students that they could play in Madison Square Garden with or without wearing their yarmulkas and tsitsis. It was up to them.

The chief rabbis in Israel are not as tolerant as Rabbi Soloveitchik. Therefore the chief rabbinate ought to be abolished.

We agree with the conclusion, if not with the non-linear logic of the post. And now that the office of chief rabbi has turned 100% nepotistic, the end of the institution is just around the corner. See Israel elects new chief rabbis.

Finally, consider this remarkable video of orthodox couples who are marrying in Israel outside of the regulation of the rabbinate - חתונה בלי הרבנות - הוויה - טקס ישראלי‬‎.

כתבה ביומן בערוץ 1 ביום שישי, על זוגות שמעצבים את טקס החתונה בעצמם בלי הרבנות

עוד על חתונה יהודית בלי הרבנות באתר הוויה

www.havaya.info

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Is the Chief Rabbi of Israel Kosher?

No, the chief rabbi of Israel is not kosher.

Increasingly Israelis are growing tired of their failed institution of the Chief Rabbi. The Times reports on the chief rabbi selection process -- regarding David Stav "currently the rabbi of Shoham" -- "Promising ‘Real Revolution,’ Israeli Jolts Race for Chief Rabbi" that the nuclear option is on the table - namely the dissolution of the institution of chief rabbi.

...All of which has made many here question the very need for the chief rabbinate, an institution with roots in the 17th-century Ottoman era that was formalized by the British in 1921. Once revered as a platform for intellectual and spiritual leadership, the $5.6 million operation, whose chiefs are paid $100,000 a year, has lately been dismissed as an anachronistic patronage farm rife with corruption.

Judaism is famously nonhierarchical, with individual rabbis worldwide having authority to interpret Jewish law for their congregations or communities, but the rabbinate and its religious courts are the only legal authorities here on family law and kosher food.

As many as one-third of Israeli couples marry abroad or live together without marrying rather than follow the rabbinate’s strictures. Jewish law requires that the husband agree to divorce, and about 3,400 women a year are denied dissolution of their marriages. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis, mostly Russian immigrants and their children, are barred from marriage and adoption because they cannot adequately prove their Jew identity; only conversions conducted by rabbinate-authorized rabbis are accepted.

“This institution has to be abolished for the sake of religion, and for the sake of the state,” said Moshe Halbertal, a professor of Jewish philosophy at Hebrew University. “Israel’s identity as a Jewish state has other much more essential components than legislating Judaism.”

We concur and observe that the crooked cannot be made straight -- the Israeli chief rabbinate is not kosher -- it should be dissolved.

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Rabbi Abraham Rosenfeld's Nachem Prayer for Tisha B'Av

Rabbi Abraham Rosenfeld's Nachem Prayer for Tisha B'Av inserted in the Amidah for Minhah.

From “The Authorised Kinot for the Ninth of Av,” London, 1979. I believe that Artscroll censored out this version in their reprinted edition. This liturgy in our view is more authentic to historical reality.

Click to expand.

44 New Talmudic Books for Kindle | The Amazing 36 Volume Kindle Talmud in English | Whence and Wherefore | God's Favorite Prayers

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Free Kinnos Kinnot Lamentations Elucidations for Tisha B'Av

Reuven Brauner wrote to us from Raanana, Israel about his publication on the lamentations (Hebrew: kinnot or kinnos) for Tisha B'Av, "Key Notes for Kinnos." The work is available in PDF format for free downloading at http://www.halakhah.com/:

The Tisha B'Av poems of lament, the Kinnos, like all our Piyyutim and Selichos, were written in a poetic language and style containing hinted references to verses in Tanach, stories in the Talmud and Midrashim, and other historical incidents like the Crusades. They are difficult to comprehend and appreciate by even the most knowledgeable modern speaker or student of Hebrew, not to mention those who are not fluent in the Holy Tongue.

What chance is there for most of us to fully understand the depths of their messages of sadness and despair, prayer and hope?

In a modest attempt to rectify a part of this problem, I have selected a few key words and phrases from each Kinnoh and provided a flash of information regarding their definitions and references in hope that the reader will be able obtain a measure of meaning from and appreciation for what he or she is reading during the services of this day of fasting and repentance.

This work I call A Few Key Notes on Kinnos. It has been designed to be used as a sort of quick reference guide and companion volume in conjunction with a proper Sefer Kinnos.

I have also added some brief prefatory remarks regarding the authors of the various Kinnos, and some other background material of interest.

The information in this monograph is based primarily on the work on the Kinnos of the great liturgical researcher and scholar, the late Dr. Daniel Goldschmidt, his footnotes and comments, which was published by Mossad Harav Kook and which I highly recommend.

44 Talmudic Books for Kindle | The Amazing 36 Volume Kindle Talmud in English | Cosmology and Religion meet in Whence and Wherefore | God's Favorite Prayers

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Dear Rabbi Swims in Hudson River on a Triathlon Relay Team

It happened on Sunday, July 14! We did it!

And believe me - it was tough!

Update: Yitz's dad (that's me) swam 1500 meters in the Hudson as part of a relay for Team One with teammates Harvey (bike) and Leiba (run).

Yitz completed all three legs of the tri in excellent time.

Yitzhak Zahavy's Team One Family Fundraising Triathlon Event. Help Celebrate Three Lives with Three Sports.

Yitz Tells What Happened
On October 27, 2002 my platoon in the IDF was attacked by a hamas suicide bomber outside the city of Ariel. Three soldiers, Amihud Hasid, Tamir Masad and Matan Zagron, where killed saving my life and the lives of my fellow soldiers. The One Family Fund is helping their families cope with the difficulties of life without their loved ones.



New York City Triathlon July 14
To celebrate the lives of the three brave Israeli soldiers who saved my life, I will compete in the NYC Triathlon. I will swim, bike and run to raise money for their families and for other families who lost their loved ones to acts of terror.
Helping Out
Please help support victims of terror and their families by donating as much as your can. Please donate.
Check out the story about my fundraising efforts  in the Jewish Standard.
My Goal
This year my goal is to raise $3600, that is $1200 for each man who saved my life.
The One Family Fund
The One Family Fund is at the side of Israel's terror victims – be they civilians or soldiers- from the moment of an attack through the many years of recovery. OneFamily provides victims and their families with the emotional, financial, legal and material assistance they need to rebuild their shattered lives. Through hospital visits, camps, retreats, holiday programs and one-on-one assistance, OneFamily is helping more than 2400 families.

Pledge / Donate

Thank you for your generous help.

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GulfNews.com: Is ‘World War Z’ a pro-Israel film? Movie-goers in the gulf region share Talmudic views

Paramount Pictures’ World War Z movie, starring Brad Pitt, imagined that the world was overrun by zombies and that Israel, one of the few countries that knew they were coming, built a wall around itself to prevent zombies from invading.

Gulf News has a fairly balanced report about a new zombie movie. Pro-Israel? Some say yes, some say no.

Dubai/Muscat: Movie goers from the region had mixed feelings regarding the zombie apocalypse film World War Z, which has sparked controversy for an alleged supposed pro-Israel bias.

The movie, starring Brad Pitt, imagined that the world was overrun by zombies and that Israel, being one of the few countries that knew they were coming, built a wall around itself to prevent zombies from invading.

People from all over the world took to social media to point out the resemblance between the barrier built in the movie and the separation wall built by Israel in the West Bank to separate it from the occupied Palestinian population, adding that the movie was promoting Israel’s policies.

“While I was watching the movie I did feel like I was supposed to feel good about the wall, the fear of the zombies made the wall look comforting rather than atrocious. I felt like they were attempting a mind shift. It was also interesting that only the [Israeli intelligence agency] Mossad was able to figure out the problem before everyone,” said Canadian national Mohammad Syed, works in the oil trade sector in Dubai.

Dubai resident Aleena Khan, from Pakistan, also said she believed that the movie was glorifying Israel, adding that the movie presented a misleading picture of the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis.

“I don’t think it was trying to justify Israel’s occupation, but it was glorifying the Israelis by emphasising on peace and harmony of the two nations, which is far from the truth. One has to face facts and admit that Israel is hostile towards Palestinians. It was a very rose-tinted version of what the relationship between the Israelis and Palestinians actually is,” she added.

Dr Abdul Khaleq Abdullah Professor of Political Science at UAE University on the other hand thought that the wall symbolised Israel’s insecurity.

“Plenty of Israeli propaganda came from the movie but the fact that they built a wall in my opinion shows how Israel feels insecure and so would go to any length to protect itself even if it meant coming up with over-the-top solutions like building the barrier or wall”

Palestinian national Saif Khalil, did not think much about the wall symbolism however thought that referring to Occupied Jerusalem as part of Israel was uncalled for.

Other movie-goers in the region said some people, especially Arabs and Muslims, were reading too much into the movie.

Palestinian national Maen Hadid, who works in a Dubai-based media company, said he did not feel the movie was trying to convey a pro-Israeli policy message.
“I think that the movie showed Israel as a country that normally exists just like any other country but their solution was to build a wall to protect those left inside, including the Palestinian Muslims,” said Hadid.

Bader Al Lawati, an Omani, said that after watching the movie, he read about the controversial views in the media and, “didn’t even think about it that way while watching the movie.”

British teenager Gwynfor Callaghan, who was born and brought up in Oman, said those viewing the wall scene as symbolising the situation of Palestinians were overreacting.

“It is a fiction made by Americans, so don’t think that the scene was intended against a group,” the British School Muscat student said...

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Alicia Keys Performs in Tel Aviv 7/4/2013 - Video

Hand-held video quality alert - Our neighbor (and favorite) Alicia Keys featuring Idan Raichel performing in Tel Aviv - fallin' - mimaamakim - אלישה קיז ועידן רייכל פוליינג ממעמקים



Hat tip to Alicia for performing in Tel Aviv.

Hat tip to Blog in D Minor for the link to the video.

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Without Wearing Neckties, Israeli Jewish adults attending synagogue 'happy and healthier'

Even though the ordinary Israeli who attends synagogue does not even own a necktie, a social scientist has "proven" that "Israeli Jewish adults attending synagogue 'happy and healthier'"

In fact the researcher involved already knew the answers before he even conducted his "studies." Professor Jeff Levin has spent his career "proving" the health benefits of religion for the world. There is zero chance at this stage of the game that he would come up with a conclusion to disprove his base assumptions.

We are shocked by this discovery though for a specific reason. We've been criticized for discussing in our "Dear Rabbi" column a rule requiring tie-wearing by Jews in a local synagogue if they want to receive a Torah-honor on Sabbaths and Holidays.

Here's a nugget from a letter to the editor of the Jewish Standard that fervently defends the wonderful meaning of the tie-wearing practice by Dr. Reuben Gross:

Rabbi Zahavy takes a strong stand with the congregant. He labels the shul’s dress code as “nonsense.” This is hardly appropriate language coming from a rabbi about a shul’s policy, which follows the dictates of no less a person than the prophet Ezra (6th century BCE), who enacted the rule that individuals should give special “kavod” (honor) to the Sabbath, marked by their change of clothing.

Truly we did not know that Ezra the Scribe (usually not called prophet) knew about neckties in the 6th century BCE.

And so we wonder how Jews in Israel who attend shul regularly can be happier and healthier even though they do not own or wear ties.

Or let's be positive here. Can you imagine just how happy and healthy these synagogue attenders would be in Israel if they wore neckties?

Perhaps we can start a new program to promote even greater health and happiness in Israel: Neckties Without Borders for Religious Sabras.

Here is a news report on the impressive research on the health benefits of attending synagogue:

Israeli Jewish adults, who go to synagogue regularly, pray often, and think of themselves as religious are much healthier and happier than their non-religious counterparts, two new studies have suggested.

Baylor University researcher Jeff Levin, Ph.D, said that commitment to Jewish religious belief and practice is strongly associated with greater physical and psychological well-being.

One study used 2010 data on 1,849 Jewish adults from the Israeli sample of the European Social Survey and has been published in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, an official journal of the American Psychological Association.

The other study used 2009-10 data on 991 Jewish adults from the Israeli sample of the International Social Survey Programme's Religion III survey and has been published in the Journal of Happiness Studies. (ANI)

Rabbi Neckties

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Was Marc Rich Jewish?

Yes, Jewish-American billionaire Marc Rich was a Jew. He will be buried in Israel.

JPost reports on Rich's controversial life:

LUCERNE, Switzerland - Jewish-American billionaire Marc Rich, who invented oil trading and was pardoned by then US president Bill Clinton over what had once been the biggest tax evasion case in US history and busting sanctions with Iran, died on Wednesday from a stroke in Switzerland at 78.

Rich fled the Holocaust with his parents for America to become the most successful and controversial trader of his time and a fugitive from US justice, enjoying decades of comfortable privacy at his sprawling Villa Rosa on Lake Lucerne.

Belgian-born Rich, whose trading group eventually became the global commodities powerhouse Glencore Xstrata, died in hospital from a stroke, spokesman Christian Koenig said.

At the villa, with views of the nearby mountains and grounds sloping down to the banks of the lake, security guards and other staff could be seen but there was no sign of family members.

"He will be brought to Israel for burial," Avner Azulay, managing director of the Marc Rich Foundation, said by telephone. Rich will be buried on Thursday at Kibbutz Einat cemetery near Tel Aviv.

Many of the biggest players in oil and metals trading trace their roots back to Rich, whose triumph in the 1960s and 70s was to create a spot market for crude oil, wresting business away from the world's big oil groups.

To his critics, he was a white-collar criminal, a serial sanctions breaker, who they accused of building a fortune trading with revolutionary Iran, Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, apartheid-era South Africa, Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania, Fidel Castro's Cuba and Augusto Pinochet's Chile.

In interviews with journalist Daniel Ammann for his biography, The King of Oil, the normally obsessively secretive Rich admitted to bribing officials in countries such as Nigeria and to assisting the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.

Clinton's regret

Rich became a fugitive in 1983, fleeing to Switzerland to escape charges of exploiting the US embargo against Iran to make huge profits on illicit Iranian oil sales. He was also indicted for wire fraud, racketeering and tax evasion.

He remained under threat of a life sentence in a US jail until Clinton pardoned him during the last chaotic days of his presidency, a move that provoked moral outrage and bewilderment amongst some politicians.

Clinton later said he regretted granting the pardon, calling it "terrible politics."

"It wasn't worth the damage to my reputation," he told Newsweek magazine in 2002.

Rich, who was born Marcell David Reich in Antwerp on December 18, 1934, began his career with one of the biggest trading houses of the time, Philipp Brothers, subsequently Phibro, aged 20. He left in 1974 with a fellow graduate of the Phibro mailroom, Pincus "Pinky" Green, and set up Marc Rich and Co AG in Switzerland, a firm that would eventually become Glencore Xstrata Plc.

"We are saddened to hear of the death of Marc," Glencore Xstrata Chief Executive Ivan Glasenberg said. "He was a friend and one of the great pioneers of the commodities trading industry, founding the company that became Glencore."

In later years, Rich's fortune dwindled after his property portfolio was hit by the Spanish housing crisis.

"I invested a lot of money there and because of the crisis also lost a lot, at least on paper," he said in a rare interview, with Swiss economic magazine Bilanz. Forbes put his wealth at $2.5 billion.

Rich once told Fortune magazine he was a normal person with an image problem.

"I've been portrayed in a horrible way," he said, "as a workaholic, a loner, a money machine. It's not a true picture."

Ken Hill, a US Marshall who hunted Rich around the world for more than a decade, once said Rich profited from greed.

"The smoking gun is greed," he said. "This is what Marc thrived on - the greed of those who had commodities and were in positions of influence and power."

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Was James Gandolfini Jewish?

He was such a powerful acting persona, sure we'd like to claim him as a member of the tribe. But no James Gandolfini was not a Jew. Shockingly, he passed away at age 51. He was a superlative actor who made his biggest hit in the Sopranos on HBO, considered by many critics to be the greatest series of its kind of all time.

The Times tells about him:

James Joseph Gandolfini Jr. was born in Westwood, N.J., on Sept. 18, 1961. His father was an Italian immigrant who held a number of jobs, including janitor, bricklayer and mason. His mother, Santa, was a high school cafeteria chef.

He attended Park Ridge High School and Rutgers University, graduating in 1983 with a degree in communications. He drove a delivery truck, managed nightclubs and tended bar in Manhattan before becoming interested in acting at age 25, when a friend took him to an acting class.

Gandolfini's father worked as the head custodian at Paramus Catholic High School in New Jersey, and we assume the family was Catholic.

Haaretz wrote about his characters' Jewish links. Gandolfini  made a humorous Israeli ad for yes.co.il.

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Forbes: Waze Will be the Wikipedia of All Maps and the Search Bar for the Real World

Forbes has a background article on Waze in the aftermath of the news that Google will buy the company. What Waze Adds To Google: A View From Waze's CEO

It turns out that Waze is not just a GPS app for your car on your smartphone. Waze is a community of users who will contribute to the indexing of the physical world. It aspires to be to the actual earth, what Google is to the Internet. Or something like that.

After reading the interview with the CEO of Waze, it seems to me that Waze wants to be more the user edited Wikipedia of the real world of roads and traffic. And keep in mind that the crowd-sourced quality of Wikipedia information is not always the greatest.

Bardin said the new user interface for search was the map. But how did Waze build its own maps, which are thought to be just as good, if not at times better, than the ones $410-billion-market-cap Apple produced? By crowd-sourcing GPS data, and “combining the algorithms of people.” It sounds straightforward in theory, but it involved building a hierarchical structure of passive users and editors, a self-managed community like Wikipedia. The community has country managers who oversee area managers, who then oversee the editors, with each level having a greater level of permissions to alter Waze’s maps.

And the big brag from the CEO that earned the company a bid of over $1 billion: “Whenever you’re going onto the web, you start with a search bar,” he said. “Wherever you’re going in the real world, you’re going to start with Waze.”

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Google Will Buy Israeli Waze App for > $1 Billion

Google is buying Waze - an excellent GPS and traffic app that I have used on my Samsung Galaxy S3. I use it as a second source of traffic information as I make my way across America's worst road - the Cross Bronx Distressway. It's fairly accurate and offers creative alternative routes when needed.

Join 648,000 others. Get Waze from Google Play.

This is great news for the Israeli high tech sector.

This is bad news for United Jewish Appeal and Federation fund raisers. Even though there is poverty and need in Israel, it gets harder to raise money in the US for destitute Israelis, each time another Israeli company reaches a billion dollar valuation.

Google said to be close to buying Waze, developer of crowdsourced map app
By Elizabeth Heichler, IDG News Service

Google is close to a deal to acquire Waze, maker of the eponymous crowdsourced mapping app, for at least $1 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal and others.

The potential deal was first reported by Israeli business site Globes which said it would be worth $1.3 billion, citing sources.

Started in Israel, now with offices in Palo Alto headed by CEO Noam Bardin, the company says it has about 45 million users in 193 countries, according to the Journal. Waze originated in 2006 as an open-source mapping project led by CTO Ehud Shabtai; the company formed two years later with venture-capital backing, according to information on its website.

The app allows users to tap into shared traffic and navigation information. Data on road obstacles, rush-hour snarls, accidents and the like can be shared with other drivers in real time. The most recent version of the app delivered last month, Waze 3.7, includes integration with Facebook that places Facebook events in users' navigation lists and allows them to see the progress of Waze-using friends travelling to the same event. Users can also join the community of map editors to improve data on the maps themselves, which use TIGER (Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing) data from the US Census Bureau. The app is free, supported by location-based advertising.

How to use waze.

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Is Sigourney Weaver Jewish?

Now it is far-fetched that anybody would think that actress Sigourney Weaver is Jewish. No, Sigourney Weaver is not a Jew.

The tall actress who we know and love from Alien, to Working Girl to Avatar, and who we once met and told her how much we liked her work, is a Christian of Scottish-English extraction.

But it is noteworthy that IMDB reports that when she was young after graduating from high school in 1967, she spent several months on a kibbutz in Israel. /repost from 7/16/10/

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Is Economist Nouriel Roubini Jewish?

Yes, famous economist Nouriel Roubini is a Jew.

He was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1959 to Iranian Jewish parents. He moved to Tehran, Iran, when he was two.  He is currently a U.S. citizen and speaks English, Farsi, Italian, and Hebrew.

Roubini spent one year in college at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before moving to Italy and receiving his B.A., summa cum laude in Economics from the Bocconi University  in Milan in 1982.

He received his Ph.D. in international economics from Harvard University in 1988.

June 7, 2013 he predicted that gold prices will drop 30% to below $1000.

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The Daily Beast: Dear Rabbi: Should I Shoot Women?

It happens. When you practice irrational thuggery in the name of religion it does not take long for an impressionable young person to get a really wrong idea. On the Daily Beast we read, "Dear Rabbi: Should I Shoot Women of the Wall?" by Sigal Samuel on Jun 6, 2013.

Fortunately (did we reach rock bottom yet?) there was no violence today as women prayed at the wall under a heavy police guard. It's getting clearer every day that Orthodox Judaism has decided to resort ever more often to bullying and thuggery against what it sees as weak Jewish opponents - women who want to pray. Not brave; not heroic. But the legacy of bullying vulnerable women via rabbinic decree goes back a long way to illustrious roots.

The Daily Beast reported, "In a disturbing QandA session, a 17-year-old Jerusalem yeshiva student asked a rabbi in an online forum whether it’s permissible under Jewish law to shoot and kill members of the liberal prayer group Women of the Wall when they gather at the Kotel. The boy was arrested today after Rabbi Baruch Efrati alerted police to the question—which, true to the rabbinic tradition of she’elot u-teshuvot (responsa literature, literally “questions and answers”), he nonetheless deigned to answer...."

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Times: Israel Trying to Fix the Broken Haredi Community

Haredim in Israel are held captive from their birth by communal leaders who keep them from general and advanced education and bar them from socialization into the streams of Israeli cultural and commercial life.

The Times' Jodi Rudroren writes "Israel Prods Ultra-Orthodox to 'Share Burden'": "...Because of Orthodox men's commitment to full-time Torah study and a fear of assimilation, only a little more than 4 in 10 of them work, less than half the rate of other Jewish men in Israel, and their average salaries are 57 percent of other Jewish men in the country. Nearly 60 percent of Haredi families live in poverty, and by 2050 they are expected to make up more than a quarter of Israel's population..."

The Haredi community needs help.

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