Is John Oliver Jewish?

John Oliver is filling in for Jon Stewart this summer, 2013. He is one funny dude.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

On 2/6/2011 we wrote:

We laughed out loud at the latest video clip that the Jewish Humor Central Blog posted (hat tip) from the Daily Show's John Oliver.

And then we thought, he is so funny, yes, John Oliver is Jewish. (But he isn't.)

We base our conclusion in particular on his ability to invent a new Jewish holiday for the purposes of celebrating a political victory in Texas as you will see in the hilarious clip below.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Jewish Speaker of Texas State House
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook

Read More

Is it kosher to bring a gun to the swim club?

Unless we are talking about a super-soaker toy, no, not in my backyard. It is not kosher to bring a gun into my swim club. I don't really care what the gold old boy yahoos in West Virginia do - see the story below. Just don't bring any gun to the Teaneck Swim Club or the JCC where my friends and relatives go to swim in safety.

And by the way even the toys are getting downright dangerous. Consider you can "ice" your friends with the NERF SUPER SOAKER ARCTIC SHOCK Water Blaster - about which we are told by Hasbro:

This powerful soaker lets you freeze your friends with icy blasts of water! The ARCTIC SHOCK soaker’s Ice Drum has a large 25-fluid-ounce capacity and you can fill it with ice for a super-chilled soak. Fill the drum and pump for a freezing blast of water at targets up to 30 feet away! The Ice Drum works with other Clip System SUPER SOAKER blasters (sold separately) and SUPER SOAKER Water Clips work with the ARCTIC SHOCK soaker. Fill additional Water Clips (sold separately) and use them to refill fast. Put the competition on ice with the ARCTIC SHOCK soaker!

From ProPublica, some dangerous summer news.

Now, You Can’t Ban Guns at the Public Pool
by Lois Beckett, ProPublica

If you feel unsafe at a public pool in Charleston, W.Va., you may soon have the right to lie there on a towel with a handgun at your side.

For 20 years, Charleston has been an island of modest gun restrictions in a very pro-gun rights state. But its gun laws — including a ban on guns in city parks, pools and recreation centers — are now likely to be rolled back, the latest victory in a long-standing push to deny cities the power to regulate guns.

Since the 1980s, the National Rifle Association and other groups have led a successful campaign to get state legislatures to limit local control over gun regulations. These "preemption" laws block cities from enacting their own gun policies, effectively requiring cities with higher rates of gun violence to have the same gun regulations as smaller towns.

Before 1981, when an Illinois town banned the possession of handguns, just a handful of states had preemption laws on the books. Today, 42 states block cities from making gun laws, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Even Illinois, which has long allowed its cities to pass gun control measures, is about to invalidate local restrictions on concealed handguns and ban any future local regulation of assault weapons.

Gun rights advocates argue that allowing cities to have their own gun laws creates an impossible situation for law-abiding gun owners, who cannot be expected to read ordinances for every town they might pass through.

The preemption campaign has racked up so many victories nationwide, it's now focusing on holdouts like Charleston, population 51,000.

Charleston's current gun restrictions include a three-day waiting period to buy a handgun, and a limit of one handgun purchase per month, as well as bans on guns on publicly owned property, such as parks and pools.

West Virginia Delegate Patrick Lane crafted an amendment to an unrelated state bill, now passed, that will likely force Charleston to erase those restrictions.

"Crime could happen anyplace. You obviously want to be able to defend yourself and your family if something happens," Lane said, when asked why anyone would want to bring a gun to a public pool.

The NRA did not respond to requests for comment, but its website calls Charleston's restrictions "misguided" and "unreasonable." Its site has closely tracked the progress of the repeal of the ordinances, which it states "would have no negative impact whatsoever on Charleston." The site has repeatedly criticized Charleston's Republican mayor for "speaking out publicly against this pro-gun reform."

It's not clear what effect the spread of preemption has had on public safety. "It's very hard to determine what causes crime to go up and down, because there are so many variables," said Laura Cutilletta, a senior attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

But in Charleston, Police Chief Brent Webster says he's worried about losing the city's current restrictions, in particular the law banning guns at city pools, concerts and sporting events.

"You will have some citizens say, 'I can do that now, so I'm going to do that,'" Webster said. "I am greatly concerned."

"When they're diving off the diving board, is that [gun] going to be in a book bag? Is that going to be lying under their towel and an eight-year-old kid is walking through the pool area and picks it up?"

Two of the city's former police chiefs also say they're worried about losing the ban on guns in public places that attract kids.

"That has nothing to do with the Second Amendment right. It has to do with public safety," former Chief Dallas Staples said.

Charleston's mayor, Danny Jones, who's fought to keep the gun restrictions, said the city now has no choice but to do what the state legislature wants and roll them back. The state legislature packaged the rollback requirement with a popular measure giving Charleston more leeway in how it raises taxes.

"I'm still reeling from all this, because it's going to affect us in a very negative way," Jonestold reporters after the law passed.

Keith Morgan, president of the West Virginia Citizen's Defense League, a gun rights group, said the group been pushing for an end to Charleston's ordinances for years, and that the change would protect law-abiding gun owners from a "minefield" of conflicting local laws.

Lane, the West Virginia delegate, also said that gun-owning commuters were put at risk as they traveled through different cities with different rules.

But neither Lane nor Morgan could cite an example of a gun owner being prosecuted for accidentally breaking the law during their commute, or by accidentally wandering into a city park. When Morgan himself once showed up at the Charleston Civic Center with a gun, he said, he was simply asked to leave, and he did. In lawsuits the West Virginia Citizen's Defense League filed against gun ordinances in Charleston and Martinsburg, the plaintiffs cited their fear of potential prosecution.

The main burden of Charleston's laws for gun owners has been the inconvenience of waiting three days to purchase a handgun, and only being able to buy one handgun at a time — something that can be particularly troublesome "if you're buying a present for your family and there happens to be a Christmas sale at the retailer," Lane said.

Former Charleston law enforcement officers say the handgun restrictions, passed in 1993, helped the city tamp down on the drugs-for-guns trade that was rampant at the time. But since then, gun stores have sprung up right at the city's borders, said Steve Walker, a former Charleston police officer and now president of the West Virginia branch of the Fraternal Order of Police.

"Honestly, I don't know whether with them repealing it, it is going to help them or hurt them," Walker said of the handgun restrictions.

State legislators said that city officials are overplaying their fears.

"I don't see everyone with a concealed carry permit deciding to go to a pool and carry a gun," said Democrat Mark Hunt, a state delegate, "So what if they do? They're law-abiding citizens."

Charleston’s mayor said he has a plan if somebody brings a gun poolside: “We're going to close down the pool."

Read More

Michelle Bachmann Warns us that Minneapolis - St. Paul are the new Sodom - Gomorrah

The Daily Currant reported last week that Michelle Bachman has threatened to "Leave Minnesota Over Marriage Equality" because the new Twin Cities are now just like the old Twin Cities of the Bible. This is funny stuff (5/13/13):

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann threatened to leave Minnesota today if the state goes ahead with its plans to legalize gay marriage.

In an interview with a local television station, the conservative firebrand said she believes God will destroy Minneapolis once the legislation is enacted, and wants to be far away when the reckoning happens.

"The Bible is very clear on this issue," she told KSTP-TV this morning. "Homosexuality is a sin, and God will punish communities that support it.

"Sodom and Gomorrah thought they could defy the will of God, and we all know what happened to them. If the governor signs this legislation into law the Minneapolis-St. Paul region will be next.

"I have a friend from Eden Prairie who's already packed everything she owns into her car and is driving out to Montana as we speak. These are very scary times. I don't want my family to be the last ones out."

...Although none of the other states has suffered from Biblical-like destruction, Minnesota's most outspoken voice in Congress told anchor Bruce Nolan that it's only a matter of time.

"I don't know what it will be, Bruce," she said. "It could be an earthquake. It could be a volcano. It could be some sort of flesh eating virus. All I know is that God does not let homosexuality go unpunished, and Minneapolis is next in line for his wrath.

"It breaks my heart to think that the Democrats are willing to play politics with the lives of so many Minnesotans. And I hate to leave so many of my constituents behind, but I urge them - please, please - follow my example and get your loved ones to safety before it's too late."

In a subsequent interview with The Daily Currant, Bachmann says she's not sure where she'll go if she leaves, but is seriously considering Oregon as a possibility since its constitution bans same sex marriage.

"I've heard wonderful things about Eugene," she says, "and I think (Democratic) Congressman (Peter) DeFazio may be vulnerable to a challenge. They're the nicest people in the world out there. I'm sure we'd be welcomed with open arms."

Update: The governor signed the bill ("Minnesota Legalizes Gay Marriage: Gov. Mark Dayton Signs Bill Into Law") and, so far, no destruction.

Clarification: This story is a joke.

Read More

Is Jonathan Krohn Jewish?

No and yes. According to the Times, the young (former) conservative is being brought up as a Christian. So no, definitely Jonathan Krohn is not Jewish by religion.

Update: At 17, Krohn was doing teshuvah - repenting his conservatism - i.e., he adopted liberal ideas and went to study philosophy at NYU. MSNBC reported in the video clip below, wherein Lawrence O'Donnell lauded him for converting to the "bright side".

Update 2: The Times reported on Krohn: "The Growing Pains of Jonathan Krohn" (4/28/2013)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As to his religion, according to the Times, Jonathan Krohn's mother was Jewish before she converted to Christianity. According to Jewish law, Jonathan is a Jew. Appropriately, the Times is silent on the issue of whether his Baptist parents gave him a bris. It seems the young Christian conservative did not have a bar mitzvah but he did get a present,

He received a computer from his maternal grandfather for his 13th birthday. “In the Jewish culture in which my mom was raised, 13 is a big deal,” he said. “But since I’m a Jewish Christian, I don’t do a bar mitzvah.” (Decades ago, his mother became a Baptist.)

Even in parentheses, the fact that the boy has a Jewish mother, makes him a (latent) member of the tribe. In 2009 we said: We do envy this young man who has concluded at such an early age that the world is precisely the way it should be, that progress is not needed, that government ought to be curtailed and that Rush Limbaugh is NOT a big fat idiot. We wish we had learned all that by the time we were 14. Even now we are struggling to rid ourselves of the desire for progress and the esteem with which we hold those who dedicate their lives to public service in the quest for better government and leadership in our country. //reposted from 3/8/09 because this little feller is finally talking a bit of sense//

Read More

Video: Bangladesh Fanatics Demand Death Penalty for Blog Blasphemy

Bangladesh fanatics gathered to demand the death penalty for blog blasphemy:

"Hundreds of thousands of people have held protests in Bangladesh to demand that the government introduce an anti-blasphemy law that would include the death penalty for bloggers who insult Islam."

See the video report on AlJazeera.

Read More

Is Naftali Bennett Jewish?

New Yorker has a long rambling article ostensibly about Naftali Bennett, who is a Jew, and a right wing politician in Israel. The article is by David Remnick, editor of the magazine and also a Jew and politically a liberal. Remnick throws into the article his historical narrative about how Israeli politics has veered further and further to the right over the past decades.

Full of back-stories and color, as New Yorker articles must be, we wondered about the bottom line motives for this write-up. Our inquiry to a religious friend in Ra'anana asking whether he knows Bennett brought this response, "Bennett lives a couple of blocks away, but I do not know him nor have I ever met him. I am not sure that I have even seen him. He lives a minute away from another big shot, Yakov Amidror who is Netanyahu’s personal National Security Advisor... Bennett has made a big splash, although I haven’t a clew why."

I suppose Remnick went over to Ra'anana ostensibly to find out if and why Bennett matters. In the process he gives us this color with a surprising and strange local comparison:

...Bennett’s house is large, modern, filled with sunlight. He and his wife have four children, ranging in age from six months to seven years. There were toys and strollers scattered everywhere, and open packages of Huggies. The place didn’t have the ascetic feel of a settler outpost: there was a Viking stove, a Nespresso machine, laptops, flat-screen TVs. This was the style of the bourgeois pioneer.

Finally, Bennett came in. We made coffee and went out to the green back yard to talk. More toys, a barbecue. I’d heard people compare Ra’anana to Englewood, New Jersey—prosperous, good schools, close to the city—and it felt that way, but with better weather...

In effect this long combined profile and history lesson in New Yorker boosts Bennett's influence. So now we muse, Why would a left-leaning writer want to do that? Remnick seems to tell us why at the close of his essay:

...And so this is the moment of Naftali Bennett. I’ve rarely seen a novice politician so confident, and with such reason. Each day, he is climbing in the polls, skimming off votes from the Likud and Netanyahu...

You see the simple and overt Talmudic logic. Boost the more radical one to split the rightists and thereby to help the left.

Postscript: Wait just a sec. Isn't that why and how the radical rightist party Hamas came to power in Palestinian politics? Americans and Israelis thought that boosting them would split and weaken the Palestinian cause. Hmm, maybe that is not such a good logic after all. We believe that divide-and-conquer is not such a good strategy. You just end up shooting-yourself-in-the-foot.

An op-ed in the Daily Beast, "Why I Like Naftali Bennett," by Shaul Magid, spells this thinking out in another roundabout way.

Read More

Video: Mitt Romney's Mormon Religious Belief: There will be "a war that's coming in to kill all the Jews"

See this video clip. As part of his Mormon faith, Mitt Romney believes that there will be "a war that's coming in to kill all the Jews" (at about 1:35 in the video) and that Jesus will come to "split" the Mount of Olives to stop it and then he will reign in Jerusalem and Missouri.



Mitt gets defensive, argumentative and testy in this interview. It makes me worried and uncomfortable to hear that this man believes Jesus will come back and protect "all the Jews". I'd rather have a mainstream Protestant president like Barack Obama who supplies real sophisticated armaments to Israel.

Vote for Obama - Biden.

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

Read More

Walk away from the illusion of conversation

We like the analytic mode of discourse. It is more Talmudic. So a while back we noted the use of the concept "illusion of competence" that someone employed to describe what happens when you practice at a golf driving range. When you later go out an play you find that how you do in practice has weak correlation to performance on the course.

In today's Times two academics published an op-ed that used the notion “illusion of explanatory depth,” calling it "an idea developed by the Yale psychologist Frank Keil and his students."

This essay describes research that separates real explanation and understanding from what we used to call "double talk", i.e., when someone explained the incomprehensible with additional incomprehensible or non-related ideas.

There is so much of that going around in this political season, more than we can ever recall. We resigned from political conversation of any kind this year because of that and because of one other concern, namely the utter rudeness and obnoxiousness of the discourse of this campaign.

We said to a right wing friend yesterday at a wonderful Shabbat Tea social event, that we would not engage with her in political discussion this time around because of the rude and obnoxious talk coming from both side of the aisle.

Apparently, that balanced criticism was not sufficiently clear or acceptable to her. She immediately responded by attacking me with her certainty that Obama supporters started the rudeness, hence she had every right to keep it going.

I walked away.

The Times essay is a brilliant restatement in social scientific terms of what we know from common sense. Thoughtful discussion on issues often brings people together. Harangues laden with double talk mostly keep people apart.

Read the essay by Steven Sloman, professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences at Brown University and Philip M. Fernbach, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business. It purports to reveal, "why partisans can't explain their views."

And just walk away from those who want to harangue you. There is no point in staying to try to talk.

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

Read More

Republicans: I can't talk politics with you

I told a good Republican friend I was having lunch with yesterday that I can't talk politics with him this time around.

I explained that the level of personal attacks that I was seeing directed at Obama and at his supporters was simply unacceptable. Rhetoric coming from that side was tilting too far away from facts, policies and substance and towards sarcasm, cynicism, mockery and slander.

And so, end of discussion. The choice is to vote for Obama, for facts, policies and substance, or for Romney, for sarcasm, cynicism, mockery and slander.

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

Read More

Video: The Jewish Channel Exposes Anti-Zionist Work of Former Republican Spokesman Yossi Gestetner

Bravo. Solid journalism by TJC.

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

Read More

Is David Yerushalmi Jewish?

Previously we wrote about anti-Shariah crusader David Yerushalmi. He is back in the news again at the National Review and Mother Jones, according to Sarah Posner at Religion Dispatches.

A strong objection at NR to Yerushalmi's crusade is that he proposes a preemptive solution to a problem that does not yet exist.

On 7/31/11 we wrote: The Times has a front page article on the lawyer, David Yerushalmi, "The Man Behind the Anti-Shariah Movement" by Andrea Elliot. It is quite negative in tone, critical of his anti-Shariah agenda, his campaign against Islamic law.

We are opposed to every facet of Yerushalmi's bigoted campaign. Let us make it as clear as possible. Attacking Sharia as an evil by association with terrorism is equivalent to attacking Nike shoes because terrorists wear them. Law, scripture, propaganda -- all those can be the clothing of evil and terror. Going after the garb to make it outlawed is a misdirection of gargantuan proportions that will accomplish nothing except to engender a backlash.

Finally, the Times is catching up and catching on. Nearly five months ago we criticized this agenda, based on what we read in a Mother Jones article. On 3/7/2011, we posted this about David Yerushalmi:

Yes, David Yerushalmi is a Jew. According to an email by him published in Mother Jones, he is an Orthodox, practicing Jew. He says, "My parents are Russian Jewish immigrants who came to this country ...in the 20th century." Yerushalmi is an attorney and a right wing political activist.

The article in Mother Jones is quite negative and accusatory from the title on through, "Meet the White Supremacist Leading the GOP's Anti-Sharia Crusade." Its author Tim Murphy summarizes his attack on Yerushalmi, "States across the country are considering far-right bills to ban Islamic law. For that, we have hate-group leader David Yerushalmi to thank."

He goes on to describe the Yerushalmi campaign quite negatively:

Last week, legislators in Tennessee introduced a radical bill that would make "material support" for Islamic law punishable by 15 years in prison. The proposal marks a dramatic new step in the conservative campaign against Muslim-Americans. If passed, critics say even seemingly benign activities like re-painting the exterior of a mosque or bringing food to a potluck could be classified as a felony.

The Tennessee bill, SB 1028, didn't come out of nowhere. Though it's the first of its kind, the bill is part of a wave of related measures that would ban state courts from enforcing Sharia law. (A court might refer to Sharia law in child custody or prisoner rights cases.) Since early 2010, such legislation has been considered in at least 15 states. And while fears of an impending caliphate are myriad on the far-right, the surge of legislation across the country is largely due to the work of one man: David Yerushalmi, an Arizona-based white supremacist who has previously called for a "war against Islam" and tried to criminalize adherence to the Muslim faith.

The anti-Sharia movement gets quite Talmudic in the ways that tries to avoid the appearance of racism, while accomplishing its anti-Islamic aims. Yerushalmi's sample legislation, which he promotes, cloaks itself in language substitutions, as in,

...a sample bill Yerushalmi drafted at the behest of the American Public Policy Alliance, a right-wing organization established with the goal of protecting American citizens from "the infiltration and incursion of foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines, especially Islamic Shariah Law."

In a 40-minute PowerPoint that's available on the organization's site, Yerushalmi explained the ins and outs of the sample legislation. His bills differ from the failed Oklahoma amendment in one key way: They don't mention Sharia. Instead, they focus more broadly on "foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines." As Yerushalmi explained in an interview with the nativist New English Review in December, the language is "facially neutral," thereby achieving the same result while "avoiding the sticky problems of our First Amendment jurisprudence."

We are not pleased to read about Yerushalmi accusations that he supports racists and racism,

Yerushalmi has suggested that Caucasians are inherently more receptive to republican forms of government than blacks—an argument that's consistent with SANE's mission statement, which emphasizes that "America was the handiwork of faithful Christians, mostly men, and almost entirely white." And in an article published at the website Intellectual Conservative, Yerushalmi, who is Jewish, suggests that liberal Jews "destroy their host nations like a fatal parasite." Unsurprisingly, then, Yerushalmi offered the lone Jewish defense of Mel Gibson, after the actor’s anti-Semitic tirade in 2006. Gibson, he wrote, was simply noting the "undeniable Jewish liberal influence on western affairs in the direction of a World State."

Despite his racist views, Yerushalmi has been warmly received by mainstream conservatives; his work has appeared in the National Review and Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace. He's been lauded in the pages of the Washington Times. And in 2008, he published a paper on the perils of Sharia-compliant finance that compelled Sen. Minority Whip John Kyl (R-Ariz.) to write a letter to Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Chris Cox.

Oy, we are liberal and Jewish and simply don't like being compared to "a fatal parasite" -- so Mr. Yerushalmi has not exactly won us over, even with his sharply argued Talmudic rhetoric.

The man replies after the fact to the article, having refused to be interviewed by the writer whom he accuses of "bigoted journalism." Okay but why now write an email? In it Yerushalmi denies that he is a "white supremacist" because, "As an Orthodox Jew, whose grandparents and parents were immigrants to this country, I am the first person that real white supremacists wish to murder. Have you not read neo-Nazi or KKK literature?" Murphy probably did read that literature, which adds to the contradictions that enhance the newsworthiness of this story.

Yerushalmi denies he is racist, even though he admits that his writings are suffused with racist discussions.

And he gets worked up because something else Murphy says.

Secondly, you suggest I am a racist because I criticize liberal Jews. I dare say that insofar as I am an orthodox, practicing Jew, my criticism of liberal Jews can hardly be counted as "racism;" yet, indeed, you make this asinine argument.

This fails the Talmud test, there is no logic here in the refutation. If Murphy sees fit to apply the tag racist to a Jew because of how he attacks other Jews, that is his right - and it is all the more ironic and interesting.

And then we listen as Mr. Yerushalmi calls other charges in Murphy's essay, "patently absurd" or a "patent falsehood" or "a bigoted ad hominem attack" and threatens Murphy with "a legal brief" and implies that he will sue Murphy for "actual malice."

Whew!

We are grateful that this article and reply came out before the Jewish holiday of Purim. It gives us a chance to point out a timely seasonal irony.

To preface this, when we were twelve we wrote a school report on Judah P. Benjamin, a Jewish politician who supported slavery in the US Senate and then rose to political prominence in the Confederacy during the civil war. While in the Senate, once after Benjamin delivered an eloquent pro-slavery speech, one of his opponents rose to criticize Benjamin, calling him "an Israelite with Egyptian tendencies." Even at the age of twelve we could see that this a was delicious political rhetorical irony.

Shifting to the case at hand, the enemy of the Jews in the book of Esther is the nefarious Haman, the Agagite.

He conspires with the King of Persia in a racist anti-Semitic plot to have the Jews killed,

Then Haman said to King Ahasverus, "There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king's laws, so that it is not for the king's profit to tolerate them. If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed..." (Esther 3:8-9).

Well certainly, Yerushalmi is not seeking to pass legislation to kill all the Muslims in our kingdom.

But  he does go after a certain people dispersed among us, the Muslims. And he does go after their laws that are different from those of every other people. We do think it is fair to rise in the chamber of debate and to ask ironically, is Mr. Yerushalmi a Jew with Agagite tendencies? Is he acting in ways that appear nefarious and racist against another people? Obviously, Murphy thinks that he is, and it makes for an interesting article.

Read More

Teaneck Deputy Mayor Adam Gussen for Congress against U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett

Politicker NJ informs us that Teaneck Deputy Mayor Adam Gussen announced his decision to run for Congress against U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett.

Of course, we endorse Gussen.

Garrett is a far right extremist who is against progress and a tool of the wealthy republicans.

Gussen needs to articulate clearly what he stands for. Conventional knowledge about the district tells us that Garrett has a giant advantage.

Reports have it that, "Garrett, chairman of a subcommittee that regulates the financial markets and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has been raising funds aggressively over the past year. His last campaign report showed $1.6 million on hand on Sept. 30."

Good luck Adam. You will need it. /repost from 1-9-2012/

"God's Favorite Prayers" 

Read More

Shmuley Boteach Warns the Forward of Legal Action

In February the Forward published an article about Shmuley Boteach's candidacy for congress in New Jersey. We did not like the article. We do not like the Forward. We consider it to be a high-school-quality newspaper with little original news reporting content of any value. The article about Boteach impressed us as an example of poor journalism, laden with suggestions and innuendo of wrongdoing, where none was merited.

According to a news report now (Boteach’s Battle Royale: Celebrity rabbi threatens to sue Jewish Daily Forward newspaper), Rabbi Boteach now has responded to the article with a lawyer's letter. Good for him. The article and a copy of the lawyer's letter was published in "The Washington Free Beacon" which we never heard of before but which describes itself as, "a nonprofit online newspaper that began publication on February 7, 2012. Dedicated to uncovering the stories that the professional left hopes will never see the light of day..."

Oh gee whiz why does he do this to us? We endorsed Shmuley's candidacy because we like the idea of a rabbi in congress. But by throwing in with the radical right wing, Shmuley is making it hard for us to continue to support him.

One thing for sure we disagree with. Shmuley chalks up the Forward's hatchet job on him as motivated by left wing political leanings at the paper. Oh gosh golly, we think of the Forward as a rightward leaning rag. Okay, we see that our perspectives differ.

We do hope this campaign will not get too dirty and that the Jewish press - especially the Forward - does not turn to raking muck to attack a hard-working serious and effective rabbi.

Ads: Talmudic Books for Kindle on the Talmud, Bible, Kabbalah and Prayer
The Kindle Edition of the Classic Soncino Talmud in English

Read More

Will the War Against Religious Terrorism Ever End?

Will the War Against Religious Terrorism Ever End?

Mark Juergensmeyer, in Terror in the Mind of God, lays out five ways that the reign of religious terror can come to an end. Let's consider each. First consider the end will come with the forceful eradication of the terrorists, what appears to have been the US response to the 9/11 attacks, continued with the more recent killing of OBL.

Juergensmeyer outlines,

The first scenario is one of a solution forged by force. It encompasses instances in which terrorists have literally been killed off or have been forcibly controlled. If Osama bin Laden had been in residence in his camp in Afghanistan on August 10, 1998, along with a large number of leaders of other militant groups when the United States launched one hundred Tomahawk cruise missiles into his quarters, for instance, this air strike might have removed some of the persons involved in planning future terrorist acts in various parts of the world.

It would not have removed all of them, however, and the attempt may well have elevated the possibility of more terrorist acts in reprisal. The war-against-terrorism strategy can be dangerous, in that it can play into the scenario that religious terrorists themselves have fostered: the image of a world at war between secular and religious forces. A belligerent secular enemy has often been just what religious activists have hoped for. In some cases it makes recruitment to their causes easier, for it demonstrates that the secular side can be as brutal as it has been portrayed by their own religious ideologues.

The 1998 U.S. attack on Osama bin Laden's camp neither destroyed the militant Muslim's operations nor deterred his aggression. Immediately after the attack several other American embassies were targeted, and several months later, in February 1999, George Tenet, head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, announced to the press that he had "no doubt" that "Osama bin Laden and his world-wide allies and sympathizers" were plotting "further attacks" against U.S. installations and symbols of American power. In Algeria, attempts to eliminate Muslim militants also had violent repercussions. When the military junta in Algeria halted the elections and began running the country with an iron hand, popular support for the Islamic party and violent resistance against the junta escalated.

In order for the destructive strategy to work, a secular government must be willing to declare total war against religious terrorism and wage it over many years, as the Israeli government attempted to do against its terrorist opponents.

Second consider the approach of "cracking down" -- one step back from wiping them out. Juergensmeyer suggests this has not been and will not be a fruitful path.

A second scenario is once in which the threat of violent reprisals or imprisonment so frightens religious activists that they hesitate to act. This is the strategy adopted by many law enforcement agencies to "crack down" on terrorists: even if the authorities cannot eliminate the terrorists completely, they can at least frighten them by raising the stakes associated with involvement in terrorist activity.

Though some fringe members of activist groups may have been sobered by such threats, it is doubtful that the "get tough with terrorists" strategy has had much of an effect on the more dedicated members. In the view of most of them, the world is already at war, and they have always expected the enemy to act harshly. In fact, they would be puzzled if it did not. So the threat of an additional increment of penalty to be meted out for their actions has had little if any deterrent effect.

The case that is sometimes offered as a successful instance of terrorist intimidation is the one involving Libya. In the mid-1980s Libya was thought to harbor Muslim activists responsible for a series of acts of international terrorism against the United States. In 1986 the United States undertook an air strike against the leader of the country, Muammar el-Qaddafi, in reprisal. The missiles were aimed at one of his residences, and in fact a member of his family was killed in the attack, but el-Qaddafi himself survived. Over ten years later there were very few terrorist acts aimed at the United States attributed to Libya. Were the air strikes effective?

It is doubtful. Although it is possible that Libya was eventually intimidated by the strikes, the immediate response was quite different. According to the RAND--St. Andrews Chronology of International Terrorism, the number of terrorist incidents linked to Libya and directed against the United States rose in the two years following the U.S. air strikes: fifteen in 1987 and eight in I988. The most devastating terrorist attack against the United States in which Libya has been implicated--the tragic explosion of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 on board--occurred in December 1988.

Third consider the possibility of violence winning. This example that Juergensmeyer cites seems less compelling when you consider that Rantisi was assassinated in April 2004:

The third scenario is the reverse of those cases in which terrorism is defeated or diffused: it is when terrorism, in some way, wins. This is the outcome for which every religious activist, understandably, has yearned. When I asked the Hamas leader Dr. Abdul Aziz Rantisi whether Jews and Muslims could live in harmony in the area he described as Palestine, he affirmed that they could--but not under the present arrangement. He could not accept "Israel's sovereignty over Palestinian land," he said. But the two groups could live in peace if the situation were reversed and the land were controlled by Palestinian Arabs. "Jews would be welcomed in our nation," Rantisi explained, adding that he did not hate Jews as such. He pledged not to mistreat them "when we become strong." He hoped for a South Africa-type solution, where the whole of the area would be united--Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank--and the Palestinians who had left the region would be allowed to return. With Arabs then a majority, Rantisi would accept democratic rule over the united region, which would be called something other than Israel.

It is a solution that would delight Palestinians both inside and outside the Hamas movement. Needless to say, it has not been a solution enthusiastically embraced by Israel. Given that fact, and considering that Israel holds a preponderance of military power in the region, could any part of the radical Islamic Palestinian objective be achieved? As I suggested earlier, acts of terrorism tend to be strategically unproductive and do not usually lead to transformations of power. If one is not willing to wait, as Dr. Rantisi claimed he was willing to do, beyond his own generation and perhaps the next, symbolic action will have to be replaced by the kind of strategic planning aimed at achieving goals either totally or incrementally. Revolutionary changes can occur through a well-organized mass movement, as in Iran, or an effective military force, as in Afghanistan. They might also come about through political pressures, as in Sudan and Pakistan, where regimes have capitulated to religious nationalist ideologies in what have been incremental but virtually bloodless coups. But as noted earlier, none of these cases has involved terrorist acts as the primary means of achieving power.

A fourth path to resolution entails the separation of religion from politics. Many would like to see this happen, but the likelihood now seems more remote than ever. Juergensmeyer discusses,

The fourth scenario for peace is one in which religion is taken out of politics and retired to the moral and metaphysical planes. As long as images of spiritual warfare remain strong in the minds of religious activists and are linked with struggles in the social world around them, the scenarios we have just discussed--achieving an easy victory over religious activists, intimidating them into submission, or forging a compromise with them--are problematic at best. In some cases where religious politics had previously been strong, however, the image of cosmic war itself has been transformed. A more moderate view of the image of religious warfare has been conceived, one that is deflected away from political and social confrontation.

The extreme form of this solution--one in which religion returns to what Casanova described as its privatization in the post-Enlightenment world--is unlikely, however. Few religious activists arc willing to retreat to the time when secular authorities ran the public arena and religion remained safely within the confines of churches, mosques, temples, and synagogues. Most religious activists regard the social manifestation of cosmic struggle to be at the very heart of their faith and dream of restoring religion to what they regard as its rightful position at the center of public consciousness.

Yet, in the 1990s, many Islamic countries witnessed a certain reaction against politicized religion. In 1999, Iranian students demonstrated in support of such leaders as the moderate theologian Abdol Karim Soroush, who argued that interpretations of religion are relative and change over time. He made a distinction between ideology and religion, and claimed that Muslim clergy had no business being in politics. Similar statements have been made by such moderate Islamic thinkers as Hassan Hanafi in Egypt, Rashid Ghannouchi in Tunisia, and Algeria’s Mohammed Arkoun. For them, the image of struggle consists largely of a spiritual battle or a contest between moral positions rather than between armed enemies.

The fifth path is one wherein, "secular authorities embrace moral values, including those associated with religion." Juergensmeyer gives several examples,

These moderate solutions have required the opponents in the conflict to summon at least a minimal level of mutual trust and respect. This respect has been enhanced and the possibilities of a compromise solution strengthened when religious activists have perceived governmental authorities as having a moral integrity in keeping with, or accommodating of, religious values. This, then, is the fifth solution: when secular authorities embrace moral values, including those associated with religion.

In some cases where religious violence has been quelled, religion has literally been subsumed under the aegis of governmental authorities. In Sri Lanka, for instance, the efforts of the government to destroy the Janarha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)--the People's Liberation Front--a movement supported by many radical Buddhist monks, were double-pronged. The harsh measures involved tracking down and killing the most dedicated members of the movement. The more accommodating measures included efforts to win the support of militant religious leaders. In 1990 President Ranasinghe Premadasa provided a fund for the financial support of Buddhist schools and social services, and created a Ministry of Buddhist Affairs, naming himself the first minister. Premadasa created a council of Buddhist advisers, including Buddhist monks who had been quite critical of the secular government previously. One of these told me in 1991 that after Premadasa's pro- religious measures, the government was finally beginning to "reflect Buddhist values."

In other cases, such as the British response to Irish terrorism, the government's stance in following the rule of law and not overreacting to terrorist provocations demonstrated its subscription to moral values. This made it difficult for religious activists--with the exception of Rev. Ian Paisley--to portray the government as a satanic enemy. It also increased the possibility of some sort of accommodation with religious activists on both sides of the Northern Ireland dispute--leading to the signing of a peace accord in 1998.

So, will the War Against Religious Terrorism Ever End? We hope it will. [reposted]

Read More

Sarna Slams Soloveichik, but too Softly

Professor Jonathan Sarna has levelled a strong critique against Rabbi Meir Soloveichik in an essay in the Forward, criticizing Soloveichik's testimony to congress about the funding of birth control, concluding:

...one hopes that Congress will ignore the testimony of Soloveichik. To focus on the religious liberties of employers while overlooking those of their employees, and to focus on only the free exercise clause of the First Amendment while ignoring the dangers of coercive religious establishments, is to pervert what Washington meant when he spoke of “liberty of conscience” and to set back the cause of liberty and justice for all.

The problem with Sarna's critique is that it is correct, but it is on a level too high to be meaningful. Sarna measures in theory, weighing institutionally wrapped religious rights against the clear legal individual rights of citizens. In our democracy all rights of organized groups derive from the rights of citizens on an individual basis. The Church does not have constitutional rights per se or any rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence. In fact, as we learned in grade school, a major impetus for the democracy in our land is "freedom of religion" for individuals. That never meant freedom of a religion to oppress the rights of individuals.

Also, Sarna was gracious in bequeathing some distinction to Soloveichik as "one of the foremost Orthodox rabbis of his generation" but failed to mention that he spoke on behalf of himself and not on behalf of any organization of American Orthodox Jews. We know that the notion of "organized" Orthodox Jewish religion is mainly an illusion. It seems to us that Soloveichik spoke as an individual Orthodox Jew on behalf of the powerful and truly organized institution known as the Catholic Church. And that makes little sense to us. We are quite sure that congress already understood the lack of weight behind Soloveichik's testimony and ignored it out of hand without the prodding of Sarna's counterargumentation.

We are disappointed that Sarna did not parse the specious argument made by Soloviechik at the heart of his testimony. He said mainly illogical things about Obama's accomodation to the Church. Obama's accomodation allows the insurer to provide the coverage for birth control, thereby creating a Talmudic shield around the Church, which now can claim it is not really providing birth control for its non-Catholic employees.

Soloveichik said before congress as follows, "This putative accommodation is, however, no accommodation at all. The religious organizations would still be obligated to provide employees with an insurance policy that facilitates acts violating the organization’s religious tenets. Although the religious leaders of the American Catholic community communicated this on Friday evening, the administration has refused to change its position, thereby insisting that a faith community must either violate a tenet of its faith, or be penalized."

The "facilitates acts" notion is specious, as Soloveitchik ought to know. The Church does not believe that all birth control in the world is an abomination, including that practiced by non-Catholics. It never could even imagine to say that. The Church has no authority over non-Catholics. So the idea that helping pay for birth control by non-Catholics is "violating the organization’s religious tenets" is simply wrong. There is no such "tenet" in the Church that prohibits the practice of birth control by non-Catholics. And there is no tenet in the Church that prohibits an individual Catholic from paying for birth control by a non-Catholic.

This is a bad mistatement, a falsehood, that is compounded by the next rhetorical escalation of the testimony, namely that Obama is, "insisting that a faith community must either violate a tenet of its faith, or be penalized." That sounds bad but it is not true. Soloveichik makes it almost sound like Obama is making Catholics use birth control against their will.

We won't go so far as to say that all of this particularly shady and misleading logic is a violation of the "false testimony" clause of the Ten Commandments. But we will say that in this case the rabbi came quite close to violating a tenet of his own faith.

Read More

Is Democracy in Israel Kosher?

A lot of people are pushing the notion in Israel that democracy is not kosher, says David Remnick of the New Yorker magazine in an editorial comment.

He reviews a wide number of examples of how democracy is "threatened" in Israel and indeed centers in on the religious tensions that are current there. Here is his pungent prose on that matter.

Herzl envisioned a pluralist Zionism in which rabbis would enjoy “no privileged voice in the state.” These days, emboldened fundamentalists flaunt an increasingly aggressive medievalism. There are sickening reports of ultra-Orthodox men spitting on schoolgirls whose attire they consider insufficiently demure, and demanding that women sit at the back of public buses. Elyakim Levanon, the chief rabbi of the Elon Moreh settlement, near Nablus, says that Orthodox soldiers should prefer to face a “firing squad” rather than sit through events at which women sing, and has forbidden women to run for public office, because “the husband presents the family’s opinion.” Dov Lior, the head of an important West Bank rabbinical council, has called Baruch Goldstein—who, in 1994, machine-gunned twenty-nine Palestinians at the Cave of the Patriarchs, in Hebron—“holier than all the martyrs of the Holocaust.” Lior endorsed a book that discussed when it is right and proper to murder an Arab, and he and a group of kindred rabbis issued a proclamation proscribing Jews from selling or renting land to non-Jews. Men like Lieberman, Levanon, and Lior are scarcely embittered figures on the irrelevant margins: a hard-right base—the settlers, the ultra-Orthodox, Shas, the National Religious Party—is indispensable to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition.

Read More

Is Rush Limbaugh Jewish?

Yes, Rush Limbaugh is a Jew. Rush's Conservative Gentile persona is a successful act that has earned him record multimillion dollar contracts in the radio business.

Rush's real name is Ronald Levy. He was born on the upper West Side of Manhattan. His father was a dermatologist and his mother a junior high school librarian. He attended the Ramaz School where he excelled at floor hockey and then Amherst College where he double-majored in art history and chemistry.

Rush was accepted to Albert Einstein Medical School of Yeshiva University. He had to withdraw during his first semester because he could not control his mocking derisive laughter when confronted with the illnesses and infirmities of the hospital patients.

Happy Purim everybody. א פריילעכן פורים
Rush! Rush! Rush! !רָשׁ! רָשׁ! רָשׁ

חַג פּוּרִים, חַג פּוּרִים,
חַג גָּדוֹל לַיְּהוּדִים!
מַסֵּכוֹת, רַעֲשָׁנִים,
שִׁירִים וְרִקּוּדִים!

הָבָה נַרְעִישֶׁהָ:
רָשׁ רָשׁ רָשׁ!
הָבָה נַרְעִישֶׁהָ:
רָשׁ רָשׁ רָשׁ!
הָבָה נַרְעִישֶׁהָ:
רָשׁ רָשׁ רָשׁ!
בָּרַעֲשָׁנִים

//repost from 5769//

Read More

Was Andrew Breitbart Jewish?

Yes, Andrew Breitbart was a Jew. He died suddenly March 1.

The conservative pundit said he "grew up in Brentwood (i.e., Los Angeles, California) a secular liberal Jew" who celebrated his bar mitzvah and "has the tape to prove it."

In an effort to discredit the congressman, in June 2011, Breitbart publicized personal tweets and emails sent by Rep. Anthony Weiner to various women.

Fox News reported:

News of Breitbart's death reverberated on Capitol Hill and on the presidential campaign trail. Rick Santorum said he was "crestfallen."
"What a powerful force," Santorum said. "What a huge loss, in my opinion, for our country and certainly for the conservative movement." 

New Yorker magazine had profiled him earlier in brutally unflattering terms.

Rage Machine: Andrew Breitbart’s empire of bluster
by Rebecca Mead

On Sunday, March 21st, the day that the House voted to pass health-care reform, Andrew Breitbart, the conservative Internet entrepreneur, was thousands of miles away, at home in Westwood, a neighborhood of Los Angeles. Breitbart, who in the past year has become a fixture on Fox News and a regular at Tea Party events, spends a lot of time on the road. In the preceding weeks, he had addressed the California Republican Spring Convention, in Santa Clara—“It’s warfare to save the soul of the United States of America,” he told the audience—and had introduced Sarah Palin at the National Tea Party Convention, in Nashville...more...

/original post 2010/

Read More

Haaretz: Is Rick Santorum an Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jew?

No, not yet. Rick Santorum is not an Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jew. He is not Jewish. He is an American Catholic politician. 

A political analyst for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has a biting (a bit tongue-in-cheek) take on Santorum's mix of religion and politics.

With a beard and a shtreimel, Santorum would be perfect for an Israeli ultra-Orthodox party

The battle over contraception and other 'culture wars' now raging in American presidential politics can make an Israeli feel right at home.
By Chemi Shalev

"Hadarat nashim", the exclusion of women, is the catchphrase that encompasses all of the recent manifestations in Israel of the attempts to distance females from sitting at the front of the bus, singing in military ceremonies, publicly accepting prizes, appearing on public billboards and what not. It's what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was talking about a few months ago when she reportedly told the Saban Forum in Washington that such things remind her of Iran.

Last week, in yet another sign of the close affinity of Republicans with Israel, "hadarat nashim" crossed the Atlantic and reached the U.S. Congress.

Representative Darrel Issa summoned an all-male panel – including an Orthodox rabbi of impeccable pedigree, Yeshiva University's Meir Soloveichik - to testify before his House Oversight Committee on the Catholic confrontation with the Administration over financing contraception for employees.

Issa refused to allow third year Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke to testify before his committee, thus providing Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman with a perfect comeback line to Clinton, who had cited Rosa Parks, the famous African-American civil rights hero, in her critical remarks about Israel in November. "At least in the Knesset, we allow women to testify," Lieberman might say.

Though there is clearly "a difference of sky and earth", as the Hebrew saying goes, between the U.S. and Israel, America's so-called "culture wars", such as those that have erupted in presidential politics in recent weeks, can sometimes make an Israeli feel right at home. The Republican battle cry that the Obama Administration is waging a "war on religion", for example, is standard operating procedure for Israel's ultra-Orthodox political parties. Hardly a day goes by without an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, leader or pundit circling the wagons and drumming up support by claiming that one secular politician or another – especially if his last name is Lapid - is waging a "war on Judaism" or "war on the haredim". And in recent days, if you close your eyes, listen to his words and conjure him with a beard and a traditional Orthodox shtreimel (fur hat) on his head, one might easily cast Republican frontrunner Rich Santorum as a leader of an Israeli ultra-Orthodox party rather than the devout Catholic that he is.

Santorum's views on contraception (wrong), abortion (never), gay marriage (no different than polygamy), homosexual relations (akin to bestiality, and traditionally punishable by death, according to the Book of Leviticus) are not much different, and, in some cases, perhaps slightly more rigid, than most Haredi politicians in Israel. Santorum's opposition to Federal and State intervention in school education is already being immaculately implemented in Israel's so-called "Independent" school system, in which religious studies are predominant and very little "secular" studies – such as math or the sciences – are allowed to get in the way. Santorum's skepticism about evolution, which he tried to translate into law in 2001 when he was the Senator from Pennsylvania, would be par for the course in ultra-Orthodox circles, where one wouldn't dare to mention the name Darwin, even in dreams.

On the other hand, and contrary to some of his Republican rivals who champion "states' rights", Santorum sees nothing wrong with federal legislation of "family values", just as Israel's religious parties have relied on Knesset laws to regulate issues ranging from marriage and divorce through working on the Sabbath all the way to pig farming. And Santorum's reference to Obama's "phony theology" is par for the course for haredi politicians who routinely describe Zionism as a "phony religion".

Of course, the critical difference between Israel and America is their drastically different political systems. American presidential candidates, if they are to win elections, have to appeal to a broad spectrum of voters, including moderate and mostly secular independents, which means that extreme conservatives such as Barry Goldwater or fanatic liberals such as George McGovern generally lose elections badly. For the same reason, many Republicans are increasingly worried that Santorum might also be too radical to beat Obama in the November elections, (although his increasingly controversial statements in recent days suggest that he's doing whatever he can to make sure that he doesn't get the nomination).

In Israel's proportional system, however, ultra-Orthodox parties don't need to pander to the general public or to bother with formulating policy on such irksome issues as the economy or national security: they can afford to think only of their own narrow constituency and its parochial interests. Given that the two main political blocs, left and right, are always short of an absolute majority, perennially at loggerheads over the "cardinal" issue of peace and territories and wouldn't trust each other if their lives depended on it, they have no choice but to rely on the religious parties to be their coalition partners. Secure in the knowledge that they will always hold the balance of power and be the kingmakers, the religious parties allow their secular colleagues to get on with their business of pretending to make peace or trying to annex the territories, whichever the case maybe, and all they ask for in return is influence, religious laws, autonomy, and enormous amounts of cash that will guarantee their predominance in a few short decades.

What saves America from this imposition of religious edicts in the public sphere is its two-party, winner take all political system. Imagine, though, that America also had a proportional system, with a staunchly social-democratic and dovish Democratic Party on the left and a fanatically free market and hawkish Republican Party on the right, both waging a never-ending political world war on the economy and America's place in the world. Now imagine that between these two poles there is a third party, a single-issue party, made up of Catholic fundamentalists and Protestant Evangelicals and perhaps even a rabbi or two thrown in for good measure, whose main raison d'etre was to eradicate godlessness and instill religiosity in American life.

Of course, the natural alliance of this third party would be with the Republicans, but if the Democrats got more votes, there is no doubt that the two sides would be able to reach an accommodation, with the Democrats being allowed to pursue their policies in exchange for far reaching concessions on abortions, say, or contraception, or religious education. If this doesn't sound plausible to you, it's because you haven't been exposed enough to the absolute cynicism of proportional coalition politics, which can make for the strangest of bedfellows (though not of the type that Santorum finds so offensive).

In any case, even in the current setup, if I were a Republican religious conservative, especially the "Jesus candidate" that Santorum has described, I would urgently dispatch an emissary or two to the courts of some of Israel's ultra-Orthodox rabbis and to the backrooms of their political representatives. If one is going to do battle in the confrontation between church and state - or synagogue and state in this case - one might as well learn from the pros who have been winning at this game for many, many years.

Read More

Amazon Judaism forum: Why do Haredim Target the Modern Orthodox?

Quite interesting that there is an Amazon Judaism forum linked to our book pages:
Why do Haredim Target the Modern Orthodox?

Not a bad discussion.

Years ago we wrote a paper explaining our view at the time of why they do that:

Apocalyptic Orthodox Judaism

Meanwhile keep in mind tomorrow is free Kindle book day.

Free Kindle Book, one day only, Monday, February 20: God's Favorite Prayers

More Titles From Talmudic Books

• Kindle Talmud Temurah
• Kindle Talmud Kerithoth
• Kindle Talmud Meilah, Tamid, Middoth and Kinnim
• Kindle Talmud Niddah
• Kindle Mishnah Seder Tohoroth

Titles by Tzvee:

• Kosher Talmud (Bavli Hullin)
• Kosher Prayers: selected from Yerushalmi Berakhot
• Kindle Rashi: the Greatest Exegete

Free Kindle Book, one day only, Monday, February 20: God's Favorite Prayers

Read More